The Amazing Idea to Re-Name Reading

Round at the local shop this morning I noticed the above headline in the Reading Chronicle. This set me thinking.  Here are a few suggestions:

1. New Reading
2. Coppellgrad
   
3. West Sonning
   
4. Greater Tilehurst
5. Krakow-on-Thames

Number 2 would probably have been the favorite had Reading FC managed to come back from 3 goals down against Manchester United on Tuesday evening ("Coppell" is the surname of the Reading FC manager).  Sonning is a small picturesque village a few miles down-river, the residents of which appear all to be millionaires.  Tilehurst is a suburb of Reading.  The last one is in recognition of the large number of Polish workers in the town, so many in fact that the Reading Chronicle actually prints a Polish language edition. 

More details of the renaming plan can be found at the Reading Chronicle Blog.

Feeding the Ducks

A photo that I took one sunny afternoon last month.  I was trying to take some pictures of tree reflections in the Reading University middle lake when this family came and started feeding bread to the ducks and geese. 

Ken Arnold on Object Design

From an interview by Bill Venners on Artima Developer in 2002:

To me, object design is a design of contracts. Contracts define what you are allowed to rely on. Contracts are not expressible in anything less than a human language. You need to have someone sit down and say, if this is true then that happens. You have to spell out all the details.

Uche Ogbuji on Object-Oriented Programming Languages

From a post to the xml-dev news group in 2002:

I do strongly agree that C++ and Java have pretty much given OO a bad name. Meyer's work in Eiffel proves that OO did not need to ditch axioms from abstract data types. Kay's work in Smalltalk proves that OO did not need to ditch dynamicism. Stroustroup started out with a solid, practical core and made too little fuss as a committee ruined it. Joy, as far as I can tell by the language he spawned, enjoyed strapping straitjackets onto paramedic training dummies.

The Cormorant Tree

This is the view that greeted me this morning when I got off the train at Farnborough North.  This tree stands beside the large lake that lies between Farnborough and Frimley Green.  On winter and early spring mornings I often see cormorants in it.  Later in the year they disappear, presumably to the coast.  This morning there were 4 cormorants and 2 carrion crows.