Notes From the Vault

I'm not doing too badly as a Mulesoft developer (which isn't my main job), given I've mostly been figuring it out as I go along. You won't find too many Stack Overflow answers for Mulesoft problems. One of the reasons we're going all in on Mulesoft is we ended up with more integrations than anyone can track. Many of them are .NET APIs, many are SSIS packages… With Mulesoft, all the integrations are in one place, and can be managed through a single portal. Exchange also makes a pretty good repos...

I'm several months into managing a project to automate a few business processes. Automation is an area I don't like getting involved in, unless it actually makes life better for people, but this project is supposed to automate processes that require several hours of repetitive manual work, and spending that time with clients, which helps with retention, is equally as important. Sometimes, during the discovery phase of such a project, we discover processes that could be discarded or improved with...

The US Catholic article provides a good description of what it means to deconstruct one's faith, and follows that up with a few examples. An entire book could be written on the arguments for and against each of the doctrines enumerated, because they aren't without reason. Many of us experience things in our lives that cause us to perceive some beliefs as being at odds with observable reality. As I got older and wiser the Church's position on same-sex relationships, as an example, seemed increas...

A colleague forwarded me the link to a questionnaire, for a study being performed at the Oxford Brookes University. The study is titled 'Addressing Systemic Precarity: Trans Inclusion and Retention in STEM'. I'm not sure yet whether the survey has or will reach enough transgender people to yield reliable results. I'll expand on some of the answers I gave. The one criticism I have of the survey is that most the questions are around the respondents' experiences in their current positions, rather...

Despite my formal training and academic credentials in corporate security, I find privacy, anti-censorship and security for the individual more stimulating subject areas. The question of how a journalist, blogger, activist or whistleblower could remain anonymous online, indefinitely, makes for some interesting thought experiments. It's possible in theory, because the tools and methods for that do exist, but we fail at it in the real world because of the human element. Most of us don't have the e...

I can't remember how I came across Phil Illy's opinion piece on the 'Queer Majority' site. While I couldn't care less about a load of insipid barely-articulated 160-character posts on Twitter, Illy's claims about the majority of transgender women really should be addressed. My words would likely rub a few people up the wrong way. As Illy described it, 'autogynephilia' is a condition of being 'sexually and romantically attracted to being a woman', which is fine, because there are probably a few ...

It is commonly said that a picture is worth a thousands words, but anyone who's read a good novel might argue the opposite is true. Skillfully-crafted prose can describe feelings, experiences and environments more far better than a collection of vacation photographs. A photo doesn't tell us of a biting cold wind on a bright winter morning, or of the trepidation of finding oneself in an alien culture where few speak English, or of the reasoning and series of actions that led to the photo being t...