Dear git: STOP CHANGING DEFAULT BEHAVIOUR!

My struggles with git have been well documented. One thing I didn’t touch on is its tendency to suddenly change the behaviour of core commands from release to release. I’ve got used, over the last months, to seeing this:

mike@thor:~/git/other/kindle-backup$ git push
warning: push.default is unset; its implicit value is changing in
Git 2.0 from ‘matching’ to ‘simple’. To squelch this message
and maintain the current behavior after the default changes, use:

git config –global push.default matching

Good customer service from Tesco

Due to a mixup over exactly what he wanted, I bought a phone from Tesco (Moto G 4G) as a birthday present for my youngest son, then found that it wasn’t wanted.

I just called them. They’re coming tomorrow to pick it up, and will refund me in full, not charging for the pickup.

This is quality service. It makes me much more likely to buy expensive items from the again, knowing that they’ve treated me well this time andsafe in the knowledge that they will treat me well in the future.

Nice, work, Tesco!

Six days to go till the new Doctor!

I’m writing on Sunday night, and full of anticipation for next Saturday, when we’ll see the Twelfth Doctor for the first time. (My family will be camping near Swansea; we and the friends we’re with will all go into a cinema in Swansea to see the new episode as it’s broadcast.)

To help get us all warmed up, here is the chapter Looking Forward from my recent book The Eleventh Doctor — my preview of what I hope the Peter Capaldi era will bring. Enjoy! (And don’t forget to buy the book if you haven’t already!)

“Meanwhile, McCarthy heads for Berlin …”

Back in May 2004, my good friend and occasional colleague Matt Wedel emailed me to let me know his and his wife’s schedule for the next couple of weeks, which was incredible complicated — parents visiting, brothers getting married, academic conferences, research trips. I replied as follows:

“The Show” (Vineyard Community Church, Bermondsey, 21 July 1991)

This post will only be of interest to people who were at Vineyard Community Church, Bermondsey, London, in 1991. So the rest of you shouldn’t feel embarrassed about leaving now.

We put on a variety show on 21 July 1991. When I was cleaning out some old junk (which I do occasionally do) I found some of the paperwork. So I scanned it, and here it is for those half-dozen people who might care.

How unutterably rude Skype has become

I turned on my Macbook this morning to be greeted with this popup:

What the heck, Skype? That’s not how upgrades work. How unutterably rude you’ve become since Microsoft bought you.

Coincidence?