It started with a tweet from Tim O'Reilly. He mentioned a quote that I'm very familiar with - "Data matures like wine, applications like fish". When I read it I wondered if it was anything to do with. His tweet linked to a blog post called the 11 best data quotes from the DataMarket blog. On that list (which I highly recommend reading) the quote was tentatively attributed to me based on a write up of my 2009 OSDC presentation entitled "Change Bad!". I'd like to take the credit for this, I really would. But I can't. I did feature it on the 9th slide of my presentation but I didn't write it. The problem is that I can't remember where I first read it. Normally I put a reference in at least my notes so that I know which giant's shoulders I am standing on but I've rummaged around in various hard drives and back ups and can't find any reference. Which is a shame because it is a great quote - not least because it is very true. If anyone does know the real origin of the phrase please do leave a comment and I'll put proper attribution in my slides.

The good news is that it has prompted me to clean up and re-publish the papers and slide from various presentations that I have given. I've put up a new index page for my presentations and checked and uploaded the correct versions of all of the files. UPDATE: thanks to A C Censi in the comments the original quote was from James Governor's Monkchips - Why Applications Are Like Fish and Data is Like Wine