In general, tech on
30 December 2009 with Comments Off
Zed Shaw has nailed it, 110%.
The main thing I noticed about the experts I’ve encountered is they are into impressing you with their abilities. They are usually incredibly good, but their need for recognition gets in the way of mastery. Everything they do is an attempt to prove themselves and in order to do this they must perform like an actor on stage. There’s nothing wrong with this, and I don’t think the expert can become a master without going through this stage in life. At some point though, the expert becomes comfortable with themselves or fed up with impressing everyone and starts to look inward to the core of their art.
I think this was what was pissing me off when I wrote architects – why business cards need to be bigger and more on architects and titles.
In general on
27 December 2009 with Comments Off
prefect place for tweeting ;-)
also for walking on water if you are a Coot (and there are a few old coots with telescopes here – they take this bird watching thing way too seriously)
In tech on
20 December 2009 with 3 comments
Interesting, from O’Rielly Radar:
The Cult of Scrum: If Agile is the teachings of Jesus, Scrum is every abuse ever perpetrated in his name. In many ways, Scrum as practiced in most companies today is the antithesis of Agile, a heavy, dogmatic methodology that blindly follows a checklist of “best practices” that some consultant convinced the management to follow.
Endless retrospectives and sprint planning sessions don’t mean squat if the stakeholders never attend them, and too many allegedly Agile projects end up looking a lot like Waterfall projects in the end. If companies won’t really buy into the idea that you can’t control all three variables at once, calling your process Agile won’t do anything but drive your engineers nuts.
Thoughts? I’ve seen scrum done well, and done very very poorly. He’s 100% correct about stakeholders tho.
In general, tech on
14 December 2009 with Comments Off
I tend not to read many – or any – physical newspapers these days, but I do read a lot of news, all of it for free, and all of it online. Since coming to the UK, my main sources have been the BBC (where I used to work) and The Guardian, as well as tech news from Ars Technica, and a smattering of New Zealand news from the New Zealand Herald and NBR.
Today, The Guardian released their new iPhone app. They have had a very mobile friendly version of the site available, but it wasn’t overly nice to use – no images, mostly – but it was functional. Their new iPhone app really lifts the quality of the reading experience.
Now, first and foremost: this app costs money. I paid $3.99 on the US iTunes store, and it’s about £2.49 in the UK. If you are the kind of person who thinks “oh, I could just get it for free from somewhere else” – chances are this isn’t an app for you. If you want a polished, easy to use method to read (IMO) a good newspaper, then read on. Remember: the cost is about the same as a Latte. Seriously.
Also, if you subscribe to the UK “oh, you must be a <insert term here> because you read <insert name of paper here>”, sorry, this is also not for you. Crawl back into the class-based-hierarchical hole from whence you came.
OK, so how does it look?
Home screen
Basically, it looks like an extension to the Guardian website. This is good, as they have a very consistent look and feel on the site. This feels like a well designed extension of that. Down the bottom you have sections for research and discovery (ie, favourites and most viewed), links to their various audio podcasts and content, and under more is all the subsections – business, money, sport etc. You can customise what it on the home page – you can add up to 6 sections (in my case, sport was the first to be removed) and how many items to show in each section. The small tags next to each item allow you to browse by that tag – which is great for discovery.
Most Viewed
The article view is pretty much as expected, including a way to browse the author’s other items.
An article
The app also allows you to view the galleries they have, and a host of other content.
The app also allows offline reading, which is good, being that 3 million or so Londoners (and others around the country and world) spend a large chunk of their reading time underground.
offline
All up, I think this is one of the better iPhone apps I’ve seen, and certainly a good indication of how the various newspapers could go about not going bankrupt. I’d pay a monthly fee for this, if they decided to charge for it. I wouldn’t pay as much as a paper subscription, but I think it’d be worth it.
Also, for me, this would replace the absolutely AWFUL free newspapers that are dumped given away on the tube every day. I wish more people would do that, tho it appears to be better since two of the three (now 4) have closed.
Now, will someone tell Chris at NBR.co.nz – this is pretty much what I was talking about in September. When’s the NBR’s one coming?
How could they improve it? I think it’s really polished, and plan to make very good use of it. I’ve only found one thing so far: In the offline settings, allow me to select (or select for me) the sections I’ve marked as favourite. Chances are those are what I read mostly anyway. Or just keep the ones I had selected last time.
Now, as this interface is so good – how about licensing it to other newspapers (outside of the UK) – I’d love to be able to read the NZ Herald like this, or the BBC (who, I’m told, are not likely to do an iPhone app for anything, any time soon. Bother). Or the likes of Ars Technica, which doens’t have a physical presence at all. Or Wired(.com/.co.uk). Or….. you get the idea.
Bravo. Fantastic app.
[BTW, I'm not affiliated with the Guardian at all - or anyone else in media, especially including the BBC, where I previously worked, but don't any more]
In general, tech on
14 December 2009 with Comments Off
Mark Wilden has a lovely post on pairing. From my experience, which isn’t a hell of a lot in this case, I totally agree. Especially this bit (I’m cherry picking parts of this, so please, read the whole thing, it’s absolutely worth the 5 mins):
Pair programming doesn’t encourage quiet reflection and exploration. You can’t just sit back and read some code. You can’t just sit and think. I mean, you can, but then your pair is just sitting there. If you both agree that such contemplation is necessary, that’s fine, but what if your pair is perfectly happy with an existing way? You don’t want to waste their time. You don’t want to argue (unless the other person wants to as well). You give in more often than if you were working alone.
I do this a lot. I dont sit and write code 8 hours a day. I never have, and I doubt I ever will. I tend to think before I code, which may also be why the rigid “write a test, write the code, refactor, repeat” mantra never sits well with me. Sure, I do tests, but I think about what I’m going to write – rather than just rushing in and writing “something” and refactoring it later.
That, to me, is the greatest drawback to pair programming (at least when I’m doing it). You just want to get the story done. Innovation can be stifled. Programming according to generally recognized principles is cast aside, as long as one of the pairs (especially the dominant one) “doesn’t see the need” for it.
…
So that’s why I don’t like pair programming. My weaknesses are exaggerated and my strengths are vetoed. For me, pairing doesn’t work. For plenty of others, it very clearly does work. But not me.
… and I rather agree with that. Maybe it will work for me one day – maybe not. Is it worth a massive drop in productivity – of both parties – to find out?
[really sorry to Mark for giving him the wrong name!]
In general, tech on
9 December 2009 with Comments Off
Steps:
- telnet into the router: telnet 192.168.1.254 (you will need a telnet client. Windows, MacOS and Linux all come with them)
- login as SuperUser, with a password of O2Br0ad64nd (this is public knowledge BTW, but only useful INSIDE your network. This works in the web UI too)
- run the following commands:
dns server route flush
dns server route add dns=8.8.8.8 metric=0 intf=O2_ADSL
dns server route add dns=8.8.4.4 metric=0 intf=O2_ADSL
dns server route list
saveall
exit
- If you make a mistake on a line, press CTRL-C to cancel. dns server route list will show the list at any time.
- If you want to use the O2 servers as a backup, omit the first line (dns server route flush) which removes O2’s DNS servers (which at the time of writing are 87.194.255.155 and 87.194.255.154).
- If you want to use Google as a backup DNS server, not the primary, change the metric to 20 (O2’s ones are 10)
- Enjoy!
As pointed out by Antonio Lulić, you will most likely need to restart your wireless box / router once you have done this. I don’t recall having to do it, but it’s not a bad idea from time to time anyway :)
In tech on
6 December 2009 with Comments Off
This is more a google post, if it helps someone.
Since I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I’ve had problems with iPhoto and AVI files (ie, videos off my camera) – and also preview and anything else which uses QuickTime to play an AVI.
The crash was in the AviImporter library – I assume it’s a 64 vrs 32 bit issue. I also have the latest Perian installed, so I doubt it’s that causing it.
Solution was to compress and remove (ie, backup and remove) the AviImporter-r7 (Intel).component file in /Library/QuickTime. Simple. Easy. I can now play AVI’s from QuickTime, FrontRow, iPhoto etc.
