It's been far too long since we had a good quote from Winston Churchill.

If you will not fight for right when you can easily win without blood shed; if you will not fight when your victory is sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (1874-1965)

Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, Kanab, United States by Patrick Hendry

It seems to be the thing these days to slam members of the generation known as the Millennials. I understand that this happens with every generation. I'm in the unimaginatively named generation X and I recall people despairing that we'd ever get ourselves pulled together and ready for real life. Somehow we managed, but looking back I understand how they might have worried. We had our fair share of slackers and trouble makers, with the punks, goths and skinheads. And before my generation were the Baby Boomers. They certainly had slackers with their hippies, flower-power girls, stoners and potheads.

Today's cover song is a cover of Gimme Shelter written by The Rolling Stones and performed by The Sisters of Mercy.

Not sure how to describe The Sisters of Mercy (SoM to their friends) to my American readers. They have a unique sound of their own. There's lots of goth and punk in there, but with a dab of electronica and a healthy portion of rock, all stirred together and served with sunglasses. An acquired taste to be sure, but one I happily acquired back in my black t-shirt wearing days. I was as likely to be listening to SoM as the Clash or Iron Maiden, so use that as your guide, but I do recommend giving them a try.

This is an experiment. My friend Justin and I have a shared love of hot sauces and have spoken on many occasions about starting a website or a blog where we can opine about such things. I just happened to receive this bottle of hot sauce from a member of my congregation when they returned from vacation to the Bahamas. I have a cheeky habit of asking people to bring me a bottle of the local hot sauce instead of a postcard, and I am very thankful that most people humor me and my requests.

This sauce is spicy, but not too hot. It has a nice mix of peppers, but nothing too strong like Habanero peppers. The ingredient list shows Pirate Pepper, Bird Pepper and Chili Pepper. It also has some carrot which is one of the magic ingredients that tame the heat in a hot sauce while preserving the flavor.

Excessive branching has long been a problem in the use of source code management systems. First, because branches were difficult and expensive (in effort) in Subversion and then because they had a tendency to proliferate in Git once they were made almost effortless.

There are a few situations where branches make sense, but generally they cause mini-silos that obscure more than they help. I stumbled upon this talk from Thierry de Pauw and I liked it so much, I had to share it here. Despite the click-bait title, he sticks to a comprehensive explanation of why trunk-based development makes sense and how it avoids the mini-silo problem of feature branching.