If you, like me, are tired of the burdensome application known as the Adobe pdf reader, give Foxit a try.
“Foxit Reader is small (the download is less than 1MB), so it downloads quickly. It doesn’t need any installation, so you can start to run it as soon as you’ve downloaded it.
And It starts up immediately, so you don’t need to wait for an annoying “Welcome” screen to disappear.”
One aspect of ClearSpace we don’t talk about enough is that we aren’t full-time employees. We work full-time hours, or more, but we aren’t full-time employees. We certainly don’t hide this fact but I’m not sure we focus on it enough as a uniqueness and strength. In some ways our offering directly competes with teams of full-time employees. We offer a viable alternative to staffed developers, you can hire your own staff of developers, architects, etc or you can bring us in. As well, we augment existing teams.
Anytime you identify your competition it’s difficult not to think about what they’re doing. In doing so you can drift into emulating them. It’s like a high school dance. You suck, have no clue how to dance, so you watch that other guy who’s got some moves. Before you know it you’re doing a sad imitation of rolling up the garden hose.
The obvious problem is that in trying to compete with the other choice we make ourselves indistinguishable from them. In those fine, gray line situations we should be doing the opposite, that is focus and highlight what makes us unique not what makes us alike.
We allow our clients to start projects today, not months from now when they’ve hired a team. We allow our clients the flexibility to grow and shrink their teams as their business needs change. They’re able to slow development for a few months while they raise funds, perform research, negiotiate a deal, without having to pay a team of developers.
I guess I’m just agreeing with what my mom always told me, be yourself, be unique. Ok, my mother never said that but I think I’ve seen a mother in a movie say it.
I finally received some encouraging feedback about this site. It’s great to know that not only is someone reading it but they enjoy it. The comment was:
“I love this site. Good work…”
For some reason WordPress marked the comment for moderation, surprising given the high caliber of this particular comment. That of course drew my attention to the commenter’s URI which was serachzoloftblahblah…
I don’t mind you bots and spiders stopping by and fluffing my stats up a bit but come on, now you’re just playing with me. I’m a person, I’m not sure I can handle this emotional roller coaster.
Any relationship should really begin slowly. You catch her eye across the bar, maybe ask a friend about her, meet a few weeks later, eventually have a coffee together, some longer chats, etc. A nice gradual progression.
When’s the last time you meet a girl for the first time as she pushes past you at your front-door with a construction crew trailing behind her, begins some “minor” renovations to your place followed by moving in all her stuff while at the same time “getting to know you”?
Visual Studio is an obnoxious lady. I had to reinstall Windows last week because….well that’s another topic altogether. In doing so I installed Visual Studio again. It takes less time to install the entire OS then it does to install Visual Studio. The beast takes well over an hour to install. Does that make any sense? Of course there’s some technical explanation out there but I don’t want to know it. It’s just a bad way to start a relationship.
If you’ve been sleeping for the past few months, or just using your internet time productively, then you may not know that I’m a self-proclaimed vi bigot. It’s okay, not knowing puts you in the club with most other humans. There’s a really neato plug-in for Visual Studio that emulates vi for the low low price of $69.95.
So you can buy Visual Studio AND a plug-in to “fix” it instead of just using the tool that works in the first place for free, or a small donation.
Finally technology is making some sense.
There was a post on slashdot today titled “Making an Argument Against Using Visual-Basic?” I’m sure it’s clear where I stand on this one.
C# and VB.NET are almost indistinct from a functional standpoint. In the end it is all compiled down to MSIL but we don’t program in MSIL and this isn’t primarily about language functionality. This should be about writing quality maintainable code.
In attempting to compel some clients to migrate off VB and over to C#, the best article I’ve come across that more or less states it all clearly is Not Another C# Versus VB Article.
Some other points not touched on in this article:
I was wondering, during my mks days, what disruptive technology we weren’t allowing ourselves to see. I kept thinking about source control being invisible, possibly at the OS level. It seems I’m not alone in this.
“It seems that the next big change in how we use computers might be the introduction of filesystems that store every old version of every file. With the explosion in size of cheap hard disks, there seems to be no reason not to keep a complete record of your computing life–and several research projects are working on it.”
This of course doesn’t address team collaboration and support for the development process itself, however, it would at least mean I no longer have to run a local Subversion server.
The quote above is from Keeping Your Life in Subversion. I have to confess that I keep my life in Subversion as well.
I recently switched bracket styles in code. Here’s what I used to do:
string sql = “update bug set ixbugeventlatest….”;
reader.writeOut(sql);
int rowsAffected = cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}
It’s clean and doesn’t take up a lot of lines. What I’ve never explicitly done is strived for a code style that makes errors, bad code etc easier to spot. I’ve made the simple switch to this style, which is most likely the more common of the two:
string sql = “update bug set ixbugeventlatest….”;
reader.writeOut(sql);
int rowsAffected = cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}
The result is easier to scan and see the opening and closing braces. Actually I really don’t even have to scan, I can just see them. Technically I like the look of the other style better but I agree the latter is easier to work with so I’ve given up on cool and made the switch.
I’ve been using Persony for several months and it’s great, when it works. The issue I have is it somehow conflicts with my Vonage line. I use persony primarily to collaborate remotely with other developers. Solve a problem together, get a second set of eyes on some code, review sections of code etc. The point is I’m usually on my vonage line at the same time and the calls drop frequently. Annoying as hell.
Guy mentioned another tool recently called vyew. While they’re working on a desktop sharing feature that I wasn’t able to get working, this is more of a collaboration tool so it isn’t in direct competition with persony. The twist with vyew is it’s always on approach. It’s like a boardroom meeting you run and then leave around for weeks after. People who miss the meeting can stop by whenever they like. It’s also free, currently, and requires no software install. Check it out.
An interesting story about innovating from the bottom up.
“In my experience, innovation can only come from the bottom. Those closest to the problem are in the best position to solve it. I believe any organization that depends on innovation must embrace chaos. Loyalty and obedience are not your tools; you must use measurement and objective debate to separate the good from the bad.”
I tend to fall on the choas and ad-hoc side of this debate, however, how do you balance that with accomplishing the business goals that keep you around tomorrow? I can’t imagine trying to run a business with any level of productivity while your entire team feels it’s their job to ignore you and do what they want.
The only answer I know of is to embrace them. Google’s tried this with their 20 percent projects. Most businesses spend energy working to stop these projects in an attempt to optimize productivity. It just doesn’t work that way outside of business textbooks. These pet projects exist in some form, possibly only ideas, and you aren’t going to eliminate them so stop wasting your valuable time. Find a way to get them out in the open, embrace them, talk about them and you’ll be startled what shows up.
The point here isn’t to find usable ideas, that’s gravy in my opinion. I’m sure some companies have tried a version of 20 percent projects and then measured it by how many features and products it’s produced. Do NOT measure that. The value here is in engaging your individuals because that’s how you achieve productivity. Work everyday to drag your people into your business problems. That’s how you engage them and allow them to be productive.
Bottom line, people are naturally productive, crave responsibility and ownership. Don’t think of the problem as how do I ‘make’ my people productive because you can’t make anyone do anything. Have some children if you’re unsure of that one. Instead, think of the problem as what’s broken in our environment that’s preventing my people from being productive and taking responsibility.
You can’t control people, you can control your environment. Assume your environment’s broken everyday. It doesn’t mean you were wrong yesterday and that doesn’t matter. You can control your environment so assuming it’s broken at least puts you in a position of control. It gives you something to actually work on.
It’s the same with personal relationships. The only reason I’m still married today is because I always assume I’m wrong. It isn’t about who’s right, it’s about what I can do. I can control my behaviour not my wife’s so that’s where I need to focus. After I’ve calmed myself down I get into the headspace of ‘ok you were wrong, what can you change to make this better?’
Do the opposite and focus your energy on controlling the people around you’ll frustrate yourself to no end while driving everyone away. Wow, I somehow ended up on my soapbox in the end, sorry about that….
