Doug Tidwell works for IBM's Software Group Strategy organization, where he's responsible for evangelizing technologies such as Service Component Architecture (SCA), Service Data Objects (SDO) and XForms. Despite his useful appearance, he has been with IBM since 1989. A speaker at the first XML conference in 1997, he is the author of O'Reilly's XSLT, the second edition of which is now flying off the shelves at a bookstore near you. (Procrastinators who begin their holiday shopping on the late side are encouraged to order a few copies now, the better to avoid the last-minute rush.) He lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with his wife, cooking teacher Sheri Castle, their thirteen-year old daughter Lily and their dog, Domino the Wonder Hound.

You can't spell "Back in the Saddle" without "Sad"

We're back from vacation, we spent a week in Reykjavik and a couple of days in Copenhagen and Malmö (Sweden) along the way. I took my Nokia N810 Internet Tablet along with me so the three of us could track our (non-work-related) email. I completely ignored all of my work-related duties for two weeks; I understand that's how vacations are supposed to be. The tablet is fun, although there are some serious usability and horsepower problems with it. (I'm posting from the N810 now.)

The trip was fantastic. I'll post pictures, anecdotes and similarly uninteresting items as they occur to me over the next few days.

The working title of the film is "986 Pages of Unbridled Joy." My book is finally in stores. I got home from the airport to find 11 copies of this titanic tome on the doorstep. Obviously I'm thrilled to see it in print. For those of you who start your holiday shopping early, it's available at a substantial discount from many online retailers.

From the "Sport is the Universal Language that Unites Us All" Dept.: We spent the last night of our vacation in London. We didn't have enough time to go into the city and do anything, so we turned to the television for entertainment. To our boundless delight, we discovered the World Bowls Tour on Sky Sport.

As far as I can tell, the game involves rolling a smallish yellow ball (the jack) to the other end of the carpet. (We saw the game played indoors on some sort of artificial surface, although I imagine other tour events could be played on grass or clay.) Once the jack has been placed, two players roll larger weighted balls down the floor, trying to get their balls as close to the jack as possible. The skill of the bowlers is amazing. Imagine rolling a ball 70 feet along the side of a room. For the first 55-60 feet, the ball travels in a straight line. At that point, it starts to hook towards the middle of the floor, breaking at least 15 feet before it comes to rest within six inches of the bowler's goal. Very cool.

As I continue with this probably disrespectful diatribe, let me apologize in advance to the vast imaginary audience of folks who are both a) Readers of this blog and b) Devotees of this sport.

Many things amused us during the telecast:

• Despite all the rules and judges etc., it just seems like a sport somebody made up when they were drunk. I know every sport started that way¹, but this doesn't seem like it's had enough time to gel into something more stylized and abstract.
• We all agreed that the sport seemed like something our neighbor (neighbour?) Alex Dusek would have made up, although he would have made up more rules and a complete lexicon of slang for various techniques and results. "That was a nice flaming nosher, but your vermiform ontology was out of bounds."
• There were plenty of good seats available. The tournament appeared to take place in the hallway of a small venue (the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre in Sheffield), and maybe 20% of the seats were filled. Total attendance was maybe 80. Maybe.
• The demographics were a little skewed; I didn't see anyone in the audience younger than 110. Even if you converted everybody's age to Celsius, this was still an old crowd. If my dad went to the match, they'd call him "Sonny Boy."
• Finally, a point that I am not making up, even though it's comically related to the previous bullet: The tournament was sponsored by Co-Operative Funeralcare. (If I could make that kind of thing up, I'd be doing something else for a living.) I simply must get an official Co-Operative Funeralcare World Bowls Tour jersey in time for the holiday party season.

After the bowler has released the ball (keeping at least one foot on a yellow bath mat while doing so), they often walk down the floor following their ball, reminiscent of Tiger Woods walking behind an important putt as it wends its way to the bottom of the cup. While enchanted by this spectacle, I extemporaneously composed the following lyrics:

I'm walkin' down the floor wit' me ball, wit' me ball
I'm walkin' down the floor wit' me ball!

As a public service, my daughter and I have recorded the song for the enjoyment of others. (Amazingly, "others" doesn't include my wife, who was trying to get some @#%! sleep at the time.) I'm not allowed to post .mp3 files here, so email me if you'd like a copy.

Breaking news: During my extensive research for this post, I discovered the Laws of the Sport of Bowls online. Enjoy!

¹ If you haven't read Chaucer's ribald tale of the drunken medieval riot that led to the invention of Scrabble®, you really should.