Years ago, on one of my first river rafting trips, a school teacher in the group gave me this advice: Always try to keep your oars dry. At the time, that made no sense to me at all, thinking I needed to keep my oars in the river so I could control the raft. With more experience, I began to notice how hard I was working to avoid rocks. I would power from one side of the river to the other, sometimes over adjusting and needing to back up a little. I eventually remembered the advice from the teacher about keeping my oars dry. I learned to look downriver and move to a safer position earlier. This technique allowed me to relax more and use the current to help me get around rocks and obstacles. As I gained experience, I did not have to row nearly as hard to stay with the flow. And guess what? My oars were not in the river near as much, in effect, keeping them dry. Since that time, I have looked for those simple, seemingly innocent comments that can cause us to ponder about what we are doing and why. My hope for this story is to help others unlock the power and rewards of pondering, in order to understand the why's of our life experiences.

"Naming is one of the most difficult and enduring challenges in software engineering, but few of us do it well. This practical and comprehensive book provides a set of principles, rules, and application guidelines for efficiently choosing good names in your code. These skills can be used throughout your career, and they’re useful for every programming language, technical domain, and experience level. The book incorporates real-world examples to illustrate how to choose good names and avoid bad names"--Back cover

The author defines site-specific sculpture and describes the work and the way each of the six participating Ontario artists have responded to "place". Artist's statements.