I’ve recently been settling into a new job in Oxford (a very beautiful city) having been saved from being “credit crunched” (or from being driven totally insane) in Dorking by a very friendly team of Django and Python developers who genuinely want to help save the world. It isn’t often that you will find me talking about my personal life here (and I include my full-time working life in that) but aside from the stark differences in organisational and work ethics that I’ve come to appreciate more and more over the past few weeks, they have a very touching tradition, and it’s the bear you see above.

It harks back to my colleague’s university days where my one of his lecturers had a bear on his office door and insisted that before knocking, students coming to him for advise or help would “ask the bear”, often he answer to the problem would become clear just in uttering it out loud. I’m not totally sure how less disruptive a group of students talking to themselves outside the professor’s door is compared to them actually speaking to him in person, but this tradition is lived on in my office – especially where the likelihood of you already knowing the answer is relatively high.

I asked a lot of very stupid questions today and ended up with the bear on my desk – a guerdon to my tendancies to ask someone else before asking myself.

So: always ask the bear. And if throwing the bear at the offending absent-minded inquisitor isn’t enough, then there’s always Let Me Google That For You!