How not to behave in a sauna

We went to the movies yesterday. In the evening in Endstation-Kino in Bochum-Langendreer (small kino of about 100 seats near a small railway stop) a Swedish-Finnish film was playing. The film was called "Populärmusik från Vittula" and it was surprisingly funny. It takes place in the north of Sweden, near the Finnish border, in a place called Pajala. The dialog in the movie was mostly in Swedish with Finnish lines in between. I wasn't sure how well I could even follow the movie with German subtitles, but it went fine. Sometimes I would read the subtitles, sometimes they would just be mixing me up and I'd try to focus on listening.
Probably the funniest scene takes place in a sauna, where the drunken men (well, it was a wedding, after all) are competing who can stand the hottest temperatures. All the men of the two marrying families, a Swedish one and a Finnish one, are in the sauna. There's a lot of talking and water thrown on the stove. Slowly but surely all the Swedes are bowing down and hiding in the lower benches where it is not so hot. Two Finns are left on the highest bench and they pour the rest of the water bucket on the stove with these legendary words "Somebody should tell the Swedes that before taking a sauna, it should be heated". After enduring what must be hellish hotness for about five seconds, both heroes must give up and seek asylum lower in the sauna. The Swedes declare an undecided at that moment.

I've started to prepare for the Conquest 2006 conference. It takes place in Berlin in September, but the papers need to submitted by April. I intend to submit a paper this time (first time for me). The paper doesn't have a title yet, but it deals with code inspection, the fallacy that you can insert quality by testing, the problems of code reviews traditionally. I try to keep it within limits and not put everything I know into it. The limit is 12 pages, so far I've done 4. I hope to do a couple more pages this week and another two-three next week. Then I need to draw the graphics and I'll be ready to submit it in good time. Then I hope it gets accepted and I get to talk about it in Berlin later this year. I've also never talked in an international conference before. About time, wouldn't you say?

I received a book delivery today. Weinberg's newest "Weinberg on Writing", one of his best "The Secrets of Consulting" and a psychological book by Csikszentmihalyi called "Flow" arrived today. Writing interests me, as that is a top priority now that I'm not teaching. The third activity I need to perform in this new role is to sell my trainings. That is not far from being a consultant and I though Mr. Weinberg's advice could be useful. Flow is even more interesting. I've noticed that code inspection is a good opportunity to sink into flow, if properly done. Flow is the state of such concentration that it can be considered to be true happiness. Nothing else matters, but the code and the task is clear; find problems in it. It is intellectually challenging and the person performing it likes to use his brain. It seems to be a perfect fit. It said somewhere that "athletes, musicians, writers, gamers, and religious adherents know the feeling". I intend to find out if that applies to software people, too. All the evidence is for it. Sometimes I've been coding for maybe half an hour, when two hours have passed in real life. My stomach is growling and I feel hungry. When you're really concentrated, for example writing a blog entry, you don't notice time passing. You don't care, you don't need anything else, you're happy. I have to read the book to find out if that's what they mean with "flow", but I'm pretty sure it is.
I urge my trainees to create an environment where they can sink into this flow when they are checking code. You need to have no other needs, you must not be hungry, thirsty or tired, you shouldn't be interrupted, so no phone, no email, no text messages allowed. I'm sure the book will give me more hints on how to make it more sure that flow is achieved. We want to achieve flow because when a person is at his happiest, he's also at his most productive. He'll find the most ticks that way.

By the way, I finished "Life of Pi" today. An EXCELLENT book. Here the author tells how he wrote the book.

Next week, I'll visit the Cebit.