PC

Tour approaching

2007-05-29T16:17:00.000+10:00

We are just over one month away from the world's biggest cycling race and unbelievably, we still don't know who won the last one. In fact, the saga has gone on long enough for the defendant to release a book about it!

Artistic compensation

2007-03-21T09:54:00.000+11:00

Second Life reminded me of a thesis that I heard about many years ago, focussing on artistic recognition. I haven't actually read the paper, but I recall the elevator pitch.

Artificial Life

2007-03-18T15:12:00.000+11:00

Recently I have been noticing media reports about goings on within a thing called Second Life. After a dozen or so, I figured it was time to investigate. Well, I am intrigued, and online world that isn't about killing dragons and casting spells that seems to have a large support base (I suspect that free entry might have something to do with it). My local government funded media outlet has recently purchased an island . The whole premise seems to have a very artistic/creative slant to it, promising life performances or lectures. I can't see myself joining anytime soon, but it is a concept worth observing. The whole thing reminds me of the book Idoru.

It makes you wonder where this stuff will end up. Will we one day work inside a virtual world? A lot of us deal with people via email or phone only anyway, never seeing the person in the flesh. Education too could benefit - that expert who lives on the other side of the world can now hold global lectures from the comfort of their own home. There would be a darker side too, with cults and criminal organisations using a virtual world to circumvent traditional communication channels.

Yes, something well worth watching.

GTD has stuck

2007-03-18T15:08:00.000+11:00

It is several months since I started the GTD way and think I can say it has stuck. I still carry my lists with me and refer to them regularly. Even if a slip a little, I come back - its never a chore to go back to the lists; every time I think its all in my head a look at my lists tells me not to get cocky. It works because its simple, like most effective systems.

Even a major event coming up has a big piece of butcher's paper in the kitchen covered in 'next actions' on it. My partner is not quite getting GTD-ified, but she likes the list-in-visible-spot concept. She can point to it and remind me: "these are your responsibility. :)

Just what is Agile Testing?

2007-02-28T00:17:00.000+11:00

I seem to notice that I like posing questions in the title of my entries... Anyway, I am currently trying to unravel what exactly Agile testing is. In fact the question could be: how do testers fit into an Agile project? A short Google search tells me that this is still a hot topic, and that there is division over it (an essay from testing.com, Agile Testing, what is it?). I can't help feeling that there is still a silo mentality where each group (development and testing) is going away on their own and deciding what their roles in an Agile project is - which kind of goes against the manifesto.

I have recently witnessed three Agile projects where the testers sat in the same room as the developers but yet both groups built their own set of automated functional tests. This seems crazy to me, but I am willing to accept that I am the odd one out here.

What are people doing elsewhere on projects? Have people been successful in integrating teams as Brian Marick describes, or have you just assumed that the twain shall never meet and focused on getting the developers to produce better code (and functional tests) on their own?

In closing, I do like Brian's categorisation of testing.

Striving for Better, achieving Good Enough

2007-01-17T00:32:00.000+11:00

You could consider me an Agile practitioner. I have worked with processes one might call Agile, with a definite slant towards Extreme Programming. What does that mean? Superficially that means employing certain practices: Short iterations, pair programming, etc. It means not doing all requirements analysis before development starts, and so on.

On reflection, one of the main aspects that I have taken on board is the philosophy of continual improvement. I don't use the word philosophy lightly. As a practitioner of a profession, I seek to improve my methods and learn through this endeavour. This is where my intrinsic nature and Agile thinking align well. My most enjoyable part of a project is the retrospectives: frank, open discussion about how the team can improve itself.

Sure, nine times out of ten a well staffed project team will deliver as required, without the need for much advanced thinking. So why look beyond what we already know? Or, why fix what isn't broken? It is interesting to ponder the Moon landing in the context of these questions - there would have been millions of reasons not to do it. My feelings are that you develop as an individual (or a team) by striving to be better than you currently are; challenging the current assumptions and operations. Identifying areas of improvement and applying analytical process to making the next step; in particular, this means overcoming our natural tendency to aim for 'good enough'.

The usual outcome of aiming for 'good enough' is not as good as we had hoped. By defining an easily achievable level and never increasing it, we allow lapses to occur, the end result being below the set level. It is a natural outcome of becoming too comfortable. Only by continually striving for better can we truly achieve good enough.

Two months on

2007-01-03T09:01:00.000+11:00

I have been using GTD now for over two months and it is worth making a few observations. Having lists for all my tasks is really useful and I am likely to continue to use this system for quite a while. It is quite mentally liberating to have my to-dos outside my head. The contextual names (i.e @Work) are really effective, even if most times I have to scan three or four. I am still persisting with a low-tech approach, with my lists being a set of index cards with a bulldog clip.

The tickler file I struggle with a little. I can see its value and I will add things to it, but remembering to check it every morning is tough, especially when I am on holidays. Also, it doesn't help that the nature of my work means that I already have two other calendars to check. That said, missing appointments is my biggest concern and I blame a lack of a unified calendar system - my phone software can't sync with Lotus Notes at all and has some difficulty with outlook. Also, there seems to be no online, standards based calendar solutions out there; it would be good to simply forward all my Notes and Outlook invites to say my Yahoo address and have everything captured there.

On a more subtle note, the temptation to write down tasks which cannot be completed never goes away. What this means is that the lists can be more like Inboxes, for example: "fix shoes". Now, I am not a shoe repairer so I cannot complete this task. The correct task should have been something like "Take work shoes to Bob's shoe repair". This goes back to processing an Inbox item, doing the thinking up front and then devising concrete actions from there.

My inbox is quite small for things other than email, so I often just process them straight to the lists without a holding area. This does get me into trouble when I am away from my lists and an Inbox item arrives. I would ideally like to use my phone's voice recordings for this but they don't work satisfactorily. Also, I scan my Projects list erratically, I do not have a scheduled time to do this, but it is still helpful nonetheless.

Looney Zunes

2006-11-18T12:53:00.000+11:00

As already stated, I am a recent iPodder. I pride myself on being fad-resistent and only bought one when it suited my purpose. However, I always appreciated the aura that Apple built around their devices. As a technologist who can enjoy stylish items, it was good to see a company willing to spend time making their devices look good. After all, most households own a computer and the beige boxes (which I own) aren't exactly works of art that you would want have on display. Think back to cool science fiction movies like Gattaca and you can see what we needed; Apple provides that. For me, though, I want value for money and that's why I will continue to buy my PCs from small computer shops and then hide them in my study.

So Microsoft figures it is time to give Apple a run for its money and along comes the Zune. I won't describe it because you must be living in a cave if you haven't heard about it. Odd name, but odder still is that it appears that the obvious domain name, www.zune.com, is already taken. Surely that would have been a marketing showstopper. Also, my curiosity lead me to check out the related store. It doesn't appear to be that easy to find. I first Googled "zune store" but there really wasn't anything apparent. So it turns out that it is called Zune Marketplace, off the www.zune.net site which under Firefox looks like something a 12 year old created, a white page with images and some text. This is being a bit picky, but exactly what generation is "Welcome to the Social" supposed to appeal to? Sounds very 1920s to me. I did like this cheeky dig at the marketing campaign. Nonetheless, the Xbox survived to the second incarnation (although gamers are a pretty fickle demographic) and it will be interesting how the Zune performs.

Defining yourself

2006-11-16T18:41:00.000+11:00

As a consultant, soft skills are very important and along this line, a colleague pointed me to an online personality test, which I promptly performed. It is based on Carl Jung's psychological theories and called a Myers-Briggs test. I have been partial to Jung's work, reading a large book on the man some years ago and finding it to be quite sensible. The engineer in me can be skeptical about such things and a pet hate of mine is that Sigmund Freud gets so much attention in pop culture despite having, in my opinion, far more fanciful ideas. I have no doubt that his popularity is due to his fixation on sexuality as a key human motivator. Interestingly, Jung and Freud were friends, or at least Freud saw Jung as his Protege carrying on his theories, but Jung started to disagree and eventually parted company. One of his criticisms was that Freud's sample set was not wide enough to form theories on people in general - predominantly wealthy, conservative housewives. Flicking through Freud's Wikipedia entry, it appears he was a cocaine addict, with there being a theory that this increases sexual interest and obsessive thinking.

Getting back to my original topic, it turns out that I am an INFP. This is interesting because each type (there are 16) has relationships to all the others and this gives you pointers on how to deal with them. So I sent it out to a few of my friends and colleagues and got an interesting response. It turned out that my fiancee was an INTP who apparently make good companions to my type - a fact which empirical methods had already proven to be true. A close friend who I worked very closely with at school was an INTJ, the description of which is very accurate. The relationship between INFP and INTJ is advisor which explains elements of our friendship. I wonder if this interests me because of elements of being an INFP...

The next step would be to do this in an organised with my colleagues and see what comes out. It will be interesting to see if people feel comfortable having their character type freely known by their colleagues.

i(hate)Tunes

2006-11-08T23:06:00.000+11:00

Love the iPod. Can I just say I really love the iPod? Makes me feel like when I first had a walkman with a decent tape collection. There's nothing like walking through crowded Sydney streets of a Friday night with Pnau blaring in my ears so loud that I can barely hear anything else. Its like having a soundtrack for your life. And watching video podcasts is cool. And audio ones too.

But I really, really hate iTunes. Firstly for a piece of software that is only downloading files, why does it need to consume 60% of my CPU!? And not mention the times I left it on overnight to download podcasts or sync with the iPod only to find that it had crashed and no work had been done. Oh, and the fact that there is no resume functionality on downloads, so download 80% and the quit iTunes; when you come back in, it often won't even start again, it just tries and (due to there being a half downloaded file on the file system) fails complaining that the URL doesn't exist anymore - which is wrong! More: you can't control how many files are downloaded simultaneously, so when my bandwidth got choked to 64k (due to download exceeds) it still blindly tried to download three 100MB podcasts at once.

Regarding podcasts, I watch or listen to them and they become 'watched' and lose the blue dot, but often don't get deleted. But sometimes they do. So I have to periodically clean them up myself so I don't fill the hard disk. Annoying.

End rant.

So, what did you do on the weekend?

2006-10-24T09:15:00.000+10:00

I have a confession to make. I went to the Rugby League International between Australia and New Zealand at the Dome. Sacrilege, I know... but I did spend the first half with my walkman on listening to the Melbourne v Sydney soccer match. As a Victorian, rugby is not my greatest love, although I have found myself appreciating the Union World Cup when it was on a few years back. Some of the rules are a bit strange, but as a cricket and AFL fan, I know that this is nothing to write home about. The crowd puzzled me. For most of the match, it felt like we were at a cricket Test - very subdued. The only excitement came when someone looked like they might get somewhere. Considering this was supposed to be an international with a lot of passion in it, it was pretty civilised. I would reckon that you average AFL home and away game would inspire far more crowd activity.

One other interesting thing (at least for sport loving Melbournians) is that the seat-moving-in feature of the Telstra Dome was in action. I heard about it at the time it was built, but had never seen it used. It looks like it reduces the seating capacity so that could be why they don't do it more often. But it looked cool!

The final point is that we only went because we had free Medallion club tickets, including car parking. I wouldn't have paid for what I saw.

Podding

2006-10-19T08:24:00.000+10:00

A comment reminded me of something that I wished to mention. This may surprise some people, but I am the proud owner of a black, 80GB, video iPod. And a pleased one at that - the video quality and storage capacity are awesome. Now, Apple fans will probably be horrified to hear that not only did I not take photos of the packaging and various stages of its opening, but I actually threw the stuff out once I had liberated the iPod! In fact, I had ripped and torn the packaging during the act of opening it - a crime in some circles.

The upshot of it is that I have discovered the 43 folders podcasts and despite the fact that it looked about as interesting as listening to the sound of grass growing, it is actually quite good. I found myself relating quite quickly to their discussions. On a more entertaining front, I discovered Channel Frederator which is an animated/cartoon podcast and has some really good stuff.

First test

2006-10-16T12:33:00.000+10:00

I have now come into some work that will keep me busy for the next month or two, and this will be a good test of my GTD skills. Initially I found I slipped on inbox processing, and have remedied this by trying to have a physical inbox on my desk (previously I just processed things as they came in). However, I am enjoying applying the 'what is this' process whenever something is processed, rather than just delaying that decision. Also, I think I am probably not writing down as many things on my lists as I should be.

Open your mind

2006-10-09T13:44:00.000+10:00

It has been one full week since I started using the GTD processes. Practically, this means carrying my action lists and my tickler file to and from work. A few people have mentioned hi-tech options but the current set up suits me fine. Initial thoughts are that I really notice the mental freedom of not having to keep my to-dos in my head. Its quite relaxing to ride the bus in the morning and not have try to dig up all the things I needed to address, especially on a Monday! When I turned on my computer and looked in my email system's @ACTION folder, I saw that I had a code review to complete. I had no trace of that task in my active memory - and that felt good, meaning I hadn't spent any time over the weekend thinking about it. Yet at the same time, I was more likely to complete it.

While the title of the book makes it sound like the system helps you to do things, the real benefit is that it helps you to do the right things. Tasks that had been floating around for months were finally nailed down and completed. I also like the mental 'inbox' process: something comes in, say a phone message, and you force yourself to work out what the next step is - and that's what you write down. In busier times, I sure I will have a staged inbox cycle where I will process things in a batch, but now I can do most as they come in.

I do Yahoo?

2006-10-06T14:44:00.000+10:00

I have noticed recently that Yahoo have changed their authentication system. It changed before they introduced their flashy new Web 2.0 site, too. Previously, the login was tracked via a cookie with a 24-hour timeout, which meant one login a day at most even if you rebooted. The new system is browser session based so close your browser and it forgets your login session and even your id. I used to be a fan of the old way as it was very simple. It would be interesting to find out why they did it. Perhaps the new site needed it to be this way. The other change is that the default login screen which appears when you go to "mail.yahoo.com.au" is HTTPS by default. This suggests maybe a general tightening of their security policy.

As an aside, the new site is nifty and AJAX-ey but without breaking any new ground. Keyboard shortcuts are nice, although I haven't completely gotten used to them - and have the site doing funny things as a result. One funny note: if you are a poor sucker who still uses Internet Explorer instead of a real browser, the Javascript activity results in a whole barrage of those annoying 'click' sounds anytime you do anything!

Initial experiences with GTD

2006-10-05T10:13:00.000+10:00

It was been almost a week since I got started reorganising my personal planning system and its worth taking a checkpoint of what I have found so far. As my previous posting indicated, I am implementing the processes outline in the book Getting Things Done. Here's a summary of what I have done to date.

Day one: the first step was to gather my initial Inbox of loose ideas. This turned up some interesting things. Here is a sample of things that went in: a pair of brown trousers whose pocket needs fixing, a cat figure that my mother wants me to repair, an iPod brochure and a note that said "Study: Cupboard" on it. It definitely felt good to collect stuff into one spot. Luckily, my work situation at the moment meant that I could process that stuff from home too.

Day two: this was when the fun began. I had to work out what each of the Inbox items meant. Was there a pending action on that item or was it just reference material that needed to be filed? Also, as a result of going through this process I had to think about the contexts that those tasks needed to be done in and how I was going to remember them when that context came about. This is critical for me as I am a big one for having things that need to be done during office hours and completely forgetting about them once I get to work. One of the most well known parts of GTD is the Next Action lists with names like "@Home" or "@Computer." As a result I now have a set of lists for all the contexts I could identify, all stored in my very own Hipster PDA. My lists are: Projects, Waiting For, Agendas, @Shops/Errands, @Computer, @Work, @Home, Calls & Emails and Someday/Maybe.

Day three: I guess this is when I started using these tools in earnest. One of the biggest themes that came out of my Inbox processing was that I had a very messy storage system. So, a lot of my next actions were tidy this or clean that and this is what I spent most of my time looking at. Boy, did I throw out and delete a lot of rubbish - and there's still more to come. In my two email systems, I have no inbox items, with every email being processed in some way. My personal file storage is now unified so that I can add a file to my laptop and sync it to my USB key. That study cupboard is still on the todo list.

Next steps: I have read to the ninth chapter so far where the author is talking about how to prioritise next actions. At this point I am happy to just see how the general process goes and fine tune it a bit. My current level of busy-ness is such that I can probably delay thinking about the priority mechanisms for now. I'll read ahead anyway, just to soak it in, but I suspect I'll need to revisit it at a later date. Beyond that there are topics about deciding how formal to manage the projects and then three chapters on the philosophies behind the processes. I think I'll do alright to work on the mechanics of the system for now.

All in all, I feel good at the moment, knowing that all my actions are tracked in a simple, easy to access format. This does not mean that I am more likely to do them, but it does mean I spend less time trying to remember what I need to be doing.

Trying to be productive

2006-09-28T15:33:00.000+10:00

Some time ago, someone recommended the book Getting Things Done to me. They had noticed my fondness for running a tight ship in terms of detailed task tracking and realised I may be a candidate to take it to a new level. When I am leading a development team, I always end up employing XPlanner, which I will openly admit is not perfect. But it is simple enough that it fits my methodology quite well. In my system, its key job is to track what is and isn't done such that when Bob is sick, Jane can pick up where he left off, and don't have to walk the beat to find out where things are at.

Early in my XP journey (some four years ago), I worked under a regime where no work was done unless there was a task listed for it, with estimate, on the wiki. I liked this system, as the tasks were small enough to guarantee completion within a day and you could go home at the end of the day not having to remember any 'todos' for the next day. The following morning you came into work, had Stand Up, looked at the roster to see who you were pairing with and the went to the wiki to select a new task. It was such a mental freedom to not have to remember (and thus forget) all kinds of little tidbits. I actually believe that this created a more creative state, making it easier to solve difficult problems.

This brings me back to GTD. The key concept the resonated with me was capturing tasks in a logical trusted repository outside of your head. It sounded a lot like what I had experienced before, and was certainly the hook that got me in. Now, the book is quite detailed and at the time I was involved with a project that was not moving particularly quickly so, after reading the first section, I put it on the back burner.

At moment, though a lot of projects of various size and shape are coming up and I believe that it is time for me to delve further. I figure that having experience with such system will hold me in good stead for when I get really busy.

When is an architect an Architect?

2006-09-25T15:37:00.000+10:00

The term architect is an ambiguous one in the software industry. Far more so than in its more traditional home, the building industry, where a firm certification is the deciding factor. And it is an interesting topic because the title is going through a period of uncertainty. Speaking personally, I saw the title as a traditional way of declaring, look I can write program code but, more importantly, I can design the overall system so that others can code it. So when one sees a team, especially a manager, they know the lay of the land.

The problem comes about when two of these 'architects' are compared. Is the architect of a personal website the equivalent of an Internet banking architect? In this case, if this matters to you, then you basically have to drill into their resume and find out what they have really done and see how it lines up with your needs. After all, architects covers everything from system design to CIO-level enterprise strategy planning.

None of this would be insurmountable and probably parallels the building world: house architects versus industrial complex designers. However, when we add the lack of certification to the mix, we pretty quickly discover that everyone is an architect. If I had a dollar for every resume that has passed my desk where the applicant had spent all but their first job as an 'architect', I'd be rich. And from experience, I have worked with many architects who elevated themselves to that position so as to avoid the dirty work of actually coding. This is another cause of problem, since when you are relieved of the burden of implementing the system, you are also relieved of the practical implications of your design.

So what's the answer? Dunno. I can't see certification working because the industry is so dynamic that it would be obsolete within a year. The more progressive elements have compensated for the everyone-is-an-architect problem by expecting hands on philosophies. If you don't want to code, you can't architect here. This is probably the pragmatic approach, as it gives a nice feedback loop from design to implementation. And the corollary is that there are now architects who feel comfortable saying: "I don't want to just draw boxes and produce documents, I want to get in and build the thing."

Thommo's gone

2006-09-13T15:55:00.000+10:00

The St Kilda football club have taken a bold and probably timely step and decided to change coach. Unlike in other football codes, especially soccer, this is a big event in AFL where coaches can be in place for many years.

While this was probably a tough blow for Grant, I think it is ultimately what the club needs to move to the next level and win a flag. Saying that, he can look back on his achievements with pride as the team he inherited was a shambles. Ill discipline and a self destructive culture was the order of the day. It is enough to say that Barry Hall used to play at the club and was only notable for his getting dragged at least once a match. You could say that the fact that the coach was surprised by his sacking means that it was timely, rather than too late; it meant he was doing his best until the end. Ultimately it is his employer's job to judge whether or not that is good enough.

So where to from here? Well, comparing last Friday's game against Melbourne with the subsequent Sydney and West Coast game, it is clear that the new coach needs to bring tactical nous to the position. Injuries are a part of the game and a lead is a lead - it must be defended at all costs and this is where football thinking comes in. It is conceivable that a radical plan could have allowed Saints to hold on, no matter how ugly it turned out. Interestingly, in AFL, tactics are much harder to see, but finals footy is where you really see what happens.

Virtualisation

2006-09-11T12:15:00.000+10:00

While I have known about virtualisation products for a while, it required a day home sick to get me to actually have a look into one. I had done some preliminary looking at Xen, and as a result decided to look into VMWare Server. Xen's idea of ported OSes was a little bit too much for me, although I suspect if you were after high performance it might be your ticket. I was looking for an easy way to pursue my hobby of investigating operating systems. I don't do anything useful with them of course, but I find it interesting to see where things are at. As an active Linux (Fedora Core) user, I like to look at similar alternatives.

So as a result I downloaded and installed the server, which even on Linux was simple (there was an rpm). I very quickly set up a virtual machine and was ready to install my first OS. Solaris 10 was my first victim, and given that I have tried to install 8 in the past without success on a real machine, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was.

Virtualisation appeals to my computer engineering background, because essentially it is a piece of software that acts exactly like a real physical PC. It would probably be quite fun to work on.

V for Victory

2006-09-11T11:54:00.000+10:00

My football team won over the weekend. Which helps to deal with the fact that my other football team lost.

Blogging

2006-09-10T14:46:00.000+10:00

I have decided to begin blogging again after a year or two break from my initial attempts. This time, I feel that I bring a new (and hopefully better) approach to it. Last time, I felt I should be a blogger and therefore I tried to, with the inevitable result that I struggled to write, probably because I was trying too hard. Also, I think that this time I will set the bar low in terms of frequency. I tried to write too regularly (at least weekly) last time and I have to accept that there are some people who have more to say than I do.

My summary of my new philosophy is this: write a minimum of one posting a month and write on any topic. I am hoping that initially, I might use it like a newsletter and schedule a writing time to look back over the month for something to blog about. As it becomes more natural, I expect the blogging to match the occurence of interesting events. Also, I want to use the blog as an outlet for exercising my written skills, which these days is normally restricted to emails.

I have chosen to use Blogger for this new venture because, as a online service user, I really enjoy using services that upgrade themselves and I have confidence that a Google-backed system will follow suit. Other online services that I regularly use are: Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, del.icio.us and Remember The Milk.