If you think about it, and as the article talks about, this is a fiendishly difficult question. If you really want to answer it, you’ll need to know the carbon cost of obtaining all the raw materials required to make all the components of the TV, what it costs to make the components, what it costs to ship the components to where they will be assembled, what the cost of assembly, testing and packaging is, what the cost of shipping the TV to the wholesaler is, what the cost of storing the TVs until they are sold is, the cost of shipping and installation of the TVs, and then, finally, the cost of running and maintaining them after they have been installed — and then you’ll need a similar calculation to figure out the carbon cost of posters.

For most people, including me, that seems like a question that you simply can’t answer. There’s just no way you could actually sit down and figure all these things out. Sure, I could probably figure out the carbon cost of the electricity to run the TVs vs. the carbon cost of some guys driving about with posters, but calculating the whole supply chain cost from beginning to end? It all seems too hard.

All of which is a very round-about way of saying that yesterday was my last day at Imagini, and that come Monday morning, I’ll be working for AMEE. I’m incredibly excited to be joining AMEE, because I believe that answering fiendishly difficult questions like the one above are vital, because everyone in the world should have a way of being able to calculate the total carbon footprint of everything.

Is there anything that can’t be made better by doing it with lego?

Hopefully, everything was migrated across correctly, and all of the RSS feeds still work. Apologies in advance if this post ends up anywhere it should not — please let me know if that’s the case and I’ll be happy to fix it!

Here are the details:

• Main flickr page;
• RSS feed; and
• Map of photos.

Please note that some of the photos are not public. If you want to see these photos, you’ll need to get a flickr account, and then add me as a friend/contact.

“Shipping is a feature. A really important feature. Your product must have it.”

Too right!

“There’s a lot of talk about change being hard, but sometimes it’s harder to keep your mind than change your mind.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve seen the fact that a development team is working in an “agile” environment used as an excuse for not making a decision so many times, it’s crazy. The argument usually goes along these lines: “It’s impossible to know what the right decision is, so let’s just make any old decision. We can always change our minds later. After all, we’re ‘agile’.”

I just want to scream when this happens — just because you use an Agile development process is not an excuse for being lazy in your decision making. Think about the problem, discuss it, mull it over, sleep on it, and start all over again if you need to. But be confident, when you have made your decision, that it’s the right decision.

Yes, you may need to change the decision later, when circumstances change or new information comes along ; but at least start out with confidence, and maintain that confidence until you find a compelling reason to change course.

Oh well, next weekend!

So, congratulations, mate! I am sure you will have a blast — hopefully, we can catch up for a beer soon…

Update: Since everyone keeps asking… 4 minutes.