Author Archives: Jacques Chester

Review: War and Peace and War

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Jacques Chester

Grand theories of history never quite go out of fashion. The impossible complexity of human society so cheerfully refutes our understanding that we have to fall back on intuitive pattern-matching to make sense of it (after a while, this becomes … Continue reading →

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How I am training currently

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Jacques Chester

My main hobby is Olympic-style weightlifting. Normally this means I focus on the two competition lifts, with work on the side to improve technique and to increase strength. A few months ago I partially tore the meniscus of my left … Continue reading →

Posted in Weightlifting | 6 Comments

My diet

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Jacques Chester

People are starting to notice that I’m losing weight. I’ve been dieting since early February, so I guess that makes it approximately ten weeks. In that time I’ve lost almost 12 kilos. If you want to know, in soundbite terms, … Continue reading →

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Review: Drift into Failure

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Jacques Chester

Drift into Failure, by Sidney Dekker, is one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read in a while. “Thought provoking” is usually a shorthand used by buttered-up friends of the author to mean “I agree” or “he/she provided a great … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Systems | 2 Comments

On communicating with the Commonwealth

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Jacques Chester

The big news in my life is that this year I will be plunging into the heady world of business with my first startup, Robojar.

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Review: Venture Deals

Posted on March 24, 2012 by Jacques Chester

It occurred to me recently that, while I plough through a lot of books on my Kindle, I’ve not made an attempt to keep any sort of notes. As Mortimer Adler points out in How to Read A Book, books … Continue reading →

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Does Leadership Matter?

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Jacques Chester

Below is an essay I wrote for a software engineering course taught by Professor Terry Woodings. It’s already dated, in the sense that since I wrote it, Steve Jobs has died. I’ve mentioned it a few times on forums such … Continue reading →

Posted in Life, Software Engineering, Studies | Leave a comment

Cooking and Coding

Posted on November 12, 2011 by Jacques Chester

Sometimes, when we programmers sit down to explain programming, we resort to the hoary old cooking metaphor. “Programming is like cooking”, we say. “We write recipes, and the computer carries them out”. And sometimes methodologists apply it to our work … Continue reading →

Posted in Rants, Software Engineering | Leave a comment

It is done.

Posted on October 26, 2011 by Jacques Chester

Just submitted by dissertation. Alchemist:dissertation jacques$ date; texcount -nosub dissertation.tex Wed 26 Oct 2011 20:15:06 WST File: dissertation.tex Encoding: ascii Words in text: 11775 Words in headers: 283 Words in float captions: 632 Number of headers: 75 Number of floats: … Continue reading →

Posted in Studies | Leave a comment

Another milestone

Posted on October 19, 2011 by Jacques Chester

My dissertation draft has been reviewed by a few other pairs of eyes. I’ve also spent a few days going over it myself. Apart from getting BibTeX to display a sensible bibliography, I reckon it’s about ready for submission. Wed … Continue reading →

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