Warning to the techies. This is really a family entry. I’ve been in Rome with my family on holiday for the last week. As someone whose children are now doing more interesting things than I am (a natural cause of being on the edge of turning 50 I think) time with my family is increasingly important. Rome is a surpassingly lovely city. One of the advantages of holidays is time to think about things other than work and this trip we’ve been primarily thinking about how beautifully made things were, how astonishing the art is. Everywhere you turn there are beautiful palaces, squares, houses, churches, fountains, and statues. Even the statues on the bridges here are magnificent. My daughter just wrote some poems about this on her blog which I, as a proud father, think are spectacular. Feel free to comment as she likes comments.
My son and I have actually stopped our normal give and take on RSS and open source (his blog) and hacking and DRM and instead been talking about baroque versus classic, Gianlorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini and Michaelangelo Buonarroti and how amazing it is that they could sustain the energy and vision to complete the Basilica de San Pietro over a 120 year period, ten generations or more. It makes the sustained 1-2 year efforts we sometimes put into software seem so insignificant and the the fact that we sometimes don’t put enough effort into making it really beautiful even more criminal. I return with rededicated desire and hope to work on things that last, that matter, and that are as well designed for humans as they can be.
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