Author Archives: Richard

Tagging in Notational Velocity

Written by Richard. Posted on March 18, 2010. Filed under computing. Tagged . 3 Comments.

Recently I switched from Evernote to Notational Velocity. I was so sick of the Evernote iPhone app and saw that Notational Velocity synced with Simplenote. Since trying them both out I haven’t looked back. Now, Notational Velocity supports tagging but Simplenote doesn’t, and as I like to search by tag, this was a bit of a problem. So taking the Twitter approach, I simply hashtag my notes, which makes them incredibly easy to find in both Notational Velocity and Simplenote. I don’t put the hashtag in the name of the note but just as the first line. I found that putting the tag in the name looked a bit untidy in SimpleNote. A nice side effect is that in Simplenote, the tags appear as the preview line. Problem solved. #notationalvelocity #simplenote

What we all need is understanding

Written by Richard. Posted on March 14, 2010. Filed under business, programming. Tagged . 1 Comment.
There’s always that storyline in films and TV shows. Parents despair as they become more and more distant from their angst ridden teenage son/daughter who complains of just being mis-understood. There all the signs of neglect on the parents side, by not spending enough time/showing enough love, then there’s normally some sort of event that brings them all together again to be one big happy family. Think John McClane in Die Hard and his daughter Lucy, or Sean Archer in Face/Off and his daughter Jamie. The parents and the teenager are living separate lives and there’s a clash when they come together, because neither understands where the other is coming from.
As a developer one of the ways this problems often occurs is when working with people not from a technology background. Warren Buffett’s famous advice is to simply “Invest in what you understand.”. Many people take the time to understand their market, but do not take the time to understand the technology/process. It’s no surprise to me that the only company that I’ve worked for that’s actually achieved a measure of success is run by people who not only have a very clear understanding of their market, but also have a very clear understanding of the technology they provide. And what of the others that are no longer around? It’s no surprise I spent a lot of time at those places trying to explain how things worked and why things couldn’t be done. Yes, and while some businesses needs to be about pushing the boundaries and innovation, to do so also requires a knowledge of the limitations of what currently exists.
I have been as guilty of this sin as everyone else. As a developer it’s very easy to take no interest in the customer side of things and care only about the technology, and perhaps to a degree this is an even worse situation to be in over having management that don’t understand technology. When this happens solutions that are unusable by anyone can end up being delivered. I know for a fact I have delivered plenty of products without ever asking myself who the product is actually aimed at, all the while being feature focused. Where as now, rather then only caring if something can be done or not, I try and ask myself who will be trying to achieve a task and what is the best way for them to go about doing so. As with anything, there is a balance that needs to be found.
Managers, understand the technology. Developers, understand the market.

There’s always that storyline in films and TV shows. Parents despair as they become more and more distant from their angst ridden teenage son/daughter who complains of just being mis-understood. There all the signs of neglect on the parents side, not spending time with them or not showing enough love. Then there’s normally some sort of horrible event that brings them all together again to be one big happy family and they all live happily ever after. Think John McClane in Die Hard and his daughter Lucy, or Sean Archer in Face/Off and his daughter Jamie. The parents and the teenager are living separate lives and there’s a clash when they come together because neither understands where the other is coming from.

As a developer this problems often occurs when working with people not from a technology background. Warren Buffett’s famous advice is to “Invest in what you understand.” and while many managers take the time to understand their market, they don’t take the time to understand the technology/processes of their business. It’s no surprise to me that the only company that I’ve worked for that’s actually achieved a measure of success is run by people who not only have a very clear understanding of their market, but who also have a very clear understanding of the technology they provide. What of the others that are no longer around? It’s no surprise I spent a lot of time at those places trying to explain how things worked and why things couldn’t be done. And while some businesses are about pushing the boundaries and innovating, to do so requires a knowledge of the limitations of what currently exists.

As a developer I have been as guilty of this sin as everyone else. It’s very easy to take no interest in the customer and to care only about the technology. Perhaps to a degree this is an even worse situation to be in over having management that don’t understand technology, as when this happens, solutions that are unusable by anyone are usually delivered. I know for a fact I have delivered plenty of products without ever asking myself who the product is actually aimed at, all the while being completely feature focused. When I think back to those products, it’s a wonder they survived any sort of usage at all. Now, rather then only caring if something can be done or not, I try and ask myself who will be trying to achieve a task and what is the best way for them to go about doing so. As with anything, there is a balance that needs to be found.

Managers, understand the technology. Developers, understand the market.

How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life

Written by Richard. Posted on March 12, 2010. Filed under books. Tagged . No comments.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who started his autobiography, My Life, with a reference to the book: When I was a young man just out of law school and eager to get on with my life, on a whim I briefly put aside my reading preference for fiction and history and bought one of those how-to books: How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life, by Alan Lakein. The book’s main point was the necessity of listing short-, medium-, and long-term life goals, then categorizing them in order of their importance, with the A group being the most important, the B group next, and the C the last, then listing under each goal specific activities designed to achieve them.

The message is simple. List what you need to do and prioritise it. While that is the core message of the book, it also covers what to do in various situations. What to do when you perhaps feel like you don’t have enough time to complete an A task, or find yourself procrastinating but always doing B or C tasks instead of the more important A ones. The main thing I took away from the book though was to always ask yourself, “What is the most important thing I could be doing right now?”. It’s surprising how asking such a simple question of yourself can have such a huge impact on what it is you actually spend your time doing.

Thoughtbot Clearance & mongomapper

Written by Richard. Posted on January 18, 2010. Filed under rails. Tagged , . 1 Comment.

Having a play with mongomapper and wanted to get Clearance working with it. Seemed to just be a simple case of doing the following in my user model.

  def self.attr_accessible(*args)end
  include Clearance::User

My full user model ended up looking like this:

  class User

    include MongoMapper::Document

    def self.attr_accessible(*args)end
    include Clearance::User

    key :email, String
    key :encrypted_password, String
    key :salt, String
    key :confirmation_token, String
    key :remember_token, String
    key :firstname, String
    key :email_confirmed, Boolean
    key :lastname, String

    timestamps!

  end

Perhaps if I have time, I will look into adding attr_accessible support to mongomapper myself.

Update 13/03/2010: I believe the dependency on attr_accessible in clearance has since been removed. So this small hack is most probably defunct.

Getting out of bed hack: Eat an apple

Written by Richard. Posted on January 15, 2010. Filed under food, health. Tagged , . 2 Comments.

I just can’t get out of bed in the morning. I hate it. I’ve tried having two alarms, tried putting my alarm on the other side of the room (I just end up getting back into bed) and setting my alarm an hour early and constantly hitting the snooze button until the last moment, but nothing has ever worked. Recently though I’ve found a simple way of getting myself into a state where jumping out of bed is easy: I eat an apple while in bed.

I had been feeling a bit sluggish in my morning workouts so wanted to increase my pre-workout carbs, but as I live close to the gym I wanted to ingest them as early as possible so as to not upset my stomach too much while exercising. I decided that an apple first thing suited the bill perfectly in terms of carbs and placed one on my alarm clock that evening so that I could just pick it up at the same time as turning off the alarm. Eating one in the darkness and while lying down was strange at first, but I found that afterwards getting out of bed was incredibly easy. And it’s been that way ever since. I’ve been doing this now for a few weeks and it has made such a difference compared to days where I don’t have to get up particularly early.

I think I may have found a new habit for life.