Somewhere in Redmond, someone had way too much time on their hands:
http://www.microsoft.com/click/serverquest
This is a very impressive demonstration of the capabilities of Silverlight, Microsoft’s new development platform for cutting edge web applications. It reminds me of the StrongBad episode: Video Games.
This is an awesome excerpt, posted by my friend Kevin: http://www.raggedclown.com/2009/03/24/beginning-at-the-end/
Sure the economy right now is shit but look on the bright side, at least people can go back to wearing real shoes instead of looking like “low-functioning [elves]“:
http://www.manolith.com/2009/03/27/upside-of-a-down-economy-crocs-to-go-out-of-business/
31 years and going strong.
I just found a great introductory article on DSLR photography in manual mode. Since I got a new camera for Christmas this year, I’ve started reading up again on digital SLR photography. My previous SLR was film-driven and ever since it broke two years ago I’ve been using a Canon Powershot A710 point and shoot, so some of my SLR skills are feeling a little rusty. Really looking forward to creating some great pictures over the coming months, but as ever the first step is lots of reading and an assload of practice.
More details on the new camera to follow. It’s an early Christmas gift from Meaghan and my folks…so excited!
One of the things I love to do is to try new beers. Whenever wwe join our friends for dinner at a new place, one of the things I love to do is try something new to drink. So tonight I decided to share a new beer with you all. This ThunderHead IPA seemed appealing at the store. I’ll update with mmmy thoughts and findings and might even set up a new “beers” page similar to the book list on this blog. Perhaps with comments you can also share the beers you’ve enjoyed and we can get a beer review club going.
GMail now has support for themes to change the look and feel of their interface, something that has been speculated about for quite a while. I usually feel like theming and skinning are really cheesy “value add” items for service-based software, but there is something about the particular implementation that Google have chosen that make me dig it. You should try out the “Tree” theme at least once. It asks for the name of the city you live in and then bases the graphic of the theme upon the current weather in your area.
The Inquisitr put together a collage of some of the available themes, although the preview mode in the GMail interface is more than sufficient. I’ll bore with theming soon enough, but for now it’s cool and fun. I guess I’d never really thought that the GMail interface was ugly before, just functional, but now I do appreciate the touches of color and a crisper feel.
Last night, several of us from SoftSource went out for Lasertag at the Laserport of Beaverton. It was part of our SoftSource social Wednesday event. While we had a smaller turnout than at some of the previous events, we were able to get two great games in: one 3v3v3 and another 3v3 grudge match. I’d forgotten how energetic lasertag can be when you get in there, ducking and weaving, and this morning my quads are hurting from all the ducking down behind walls and firing at people.
It was great to get out with friends from work and compete with them like this. I was able to hold my own pretty well too, coming in #3 overall in the first game and then #1 overall in the second. It reminded me how much fun lastertag really is. I’m going to try to organize another trip there with another group of friends soon. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera last night - doh! So I’ve had to go with some stock photos from the laserport site.
Be careful what you name him or you might get 40 lashes. Does an arbitrary collection of phonetics expressed by the propulsion of air or the absorption of ink really qualify this much emotion? Wow! Just wow!
If Nintendo is my religion (as some have speculated) then should I be hunting down anyone with a “Mario” toy? Sigh.
Does this ever happen to you? Friday night I was engrossed in my project. I was coming off the back of a sixty hour week in which we’d crushed a multitude of bugs, increased test coverage, and performed some great refactoring on our presenter classes to expose code for coverage and consumption much more cleanly. I was in the code, I was breathing the code, I was the code. After a fun Friday night and great weekend I arrive at work this Monday morning refreshed, ready to go, and with absolutely no clue about what I was doing last week. I look up and down the active bug list and find its pretty clean. I scan the solution for signs of life; yup, there’s some code in there and it is apparently ready to do something. It’s time to fill up the Nalgene, take a quick walk around the block, and then check the schedule.
Unfortunately, we’re only implementing part of an agile process, something I don’t have direct control over but have influenced to the best of my abilities. While we have iterations, a backlog, something approximating sprints, and a bug resolution workflow, we don’t really have them filled out in any cohesive manner. There’s a lot of information there, and a lot of contradiction too. It’s a sort of hybrid between the waterfall model and the agile process. The entire project’s worth of requirements, iterations, and tasks were entered on day one. As the project has progressed and been refined, the initial requirements and tasks haven’t always stayed in sync because let’s face it that would be an insurmountable chunk of work to do every week. Unfortunately, this leaves us with agility in terms of project scope, and very much a lack of agility in terms of project planning and tracking. Last week was a focused grind because a specific set of needs were identified and the fire hose was activated. I blasted through an incredible amount of code and tasks but now I find that this morning the hose has been reduced to a trickle as I weave my way through four of five different versions of the truth in search of the next blast of work.
This is something I’ve seen in a couple of places that I’ve worked. It leads me to believe that the source of the problem is that processes such as agile development promise a lot of benefits making people really keen to get on board. However these processes, for all the good they can do, can lead to more bad than good if not followed carefully. The danger is to believe that the process itself will solve the larger problem and that implementing 80% of the process will yield 80% of that safety. Not true! Eighty percent of the process can be just enough to mask the underlying danger that your project is actually way out of control. It looks good on the surface to have things like iterations, continuous builds, sprints, backlogs, and standups flying around, but then someone asks “Where’s the single version of the truth on xyz requirement?” and suddenly the comfortable feeling falls away. No-one knows because the incredible overhead of filling out countless task lists, schedules, work items, and requirements has left little time to keep all of these pieces of information up to date. Furthermore, because of the massive effort that has already been invested, people are less willing than ever to entertain discussions directed at clarifying this information.
The result is that the wealth of electronic information that has been generated and entered into various systems remains heavily under-utilized. Unless the information is quickly and easily digestible it quickly loses value. Instead we tend to operate more by word of mouth than by sprint plans or backlogs. In essence, we’re maintaining a kind of verbal backlog and sprint plan by having morning conversations disguised as standups. It works, the software is being built, and QA have a high confidence in the builds they are receiving. It’s just interesting to reflect upon the process and see what happens when only part of a development process is embraced. It is also useful to remember that the “wealth” of certain set of information cannot be judged by its size, or even by its accuracy (see the complete version of Oregon Law for an extremely accurate and completely indigestible source of information). In my mind, the relative value of information is the ability for that information to be digested and understood in the shortest amount of time possible paired with the ability for that information to be kept up to date with the minimal amount of effort. Information is very much like code in that respect : the shorter and clearer a piece of code is, the easier it is to test and maintain. Similar tenets should be kept in mind for information.
Although its a little out of date, I just wanted to share that Meaghan and I had a great weekend a couple of weeks ago and I’ve been riding high ever since. I share this thought because I think its great to remember that just a couple of days of great relaxation can carry your motivation and happiness through for weeks. I really feel as though life has really been getting back on track recently and I’m excited to be a part of it. One of the most debilitating things about the last eighteen months, getting divorced, and putting my life back together has been that so much time is spent rebuilding or recovering. While rebuilding and recovering are important, its even more important to get excited about the fact that you’re building something new and working towards growth goals as well. Meaghan has been a huge part of that and I consider myself incredibly lucky to be able to do this with her, explore life, and start taking it in new directions.
As I left my apartment this morning to head to work, I walked through the parking lot towards my car and saw this:
Fucking brilliant! Thanks a bunch for that one. It happens, I know, and thankfully the person had left a note, which I truly am thankful for. It just irks me because it’s my car and a set of paperwork that I didn’t want to have to deal with.
/ rant mode on
I have a problem with the term “accident”. Some incidents genuinely are accidents; situations in which no preventative action could have been taken to avoid an unforeseeable outcome. However….more than once a day I see people driving, changing lanes, or parking without using their mirrors, without looking over their shoulder, and without looking around carefully to check before barreling out of or into a parking space. They’re too blindly occupied with the thousand other tasks that they are doing at the time. A burger in one hand, a cigarette in the other, a phone pinned between shoulder and ear, and one elbow on the wheel. Eventually they are bound to hit someone. That isn’t an “accident”- it’s a “probable”. Use your fucking mirrors people, look first, and learn how to drive!
/ rant mode off
Fortunately my workplace has been very understanding and I’ll be able to make up the hours later in the week by working late so that I can avoid taking any time off and save up my days for Christmas.
I called Progressive and started the claims process. They have been great as always and the fact that the driver who hit my car left their full contact and insurance information has helped a lot. So far everything has been pretty smooth, but I’m going to keep a set of running blog entries on this because it has been my experience that these processes are never quite as smooth as insurance companies would have you believe. I’m going to head out to my Mazda body shop this afternoon to get them to look at the damage. The insurance adjustor for Progressive seemed quite eager that I hold off on getting an estimate and wait to hear from the other driver’s insurance company: American Family Insurance as “every insurance company handles estimates differently”. This doesn’t sit right with me so I’m going to head out to the body shop anyway and get them to take a look at it. As far as I’m concerned, they’re going to be doing the work and an estimate is an estimate. I have the name and contact information of the claims adjuster at American Family Insurance and I’m planning to give them a call from the body shop this afternoon to give them a number. I just want to get the repairs done and have my car back as soon as possible to avoid cleaving my week in two. I’d rather avoid having to drive a rental car, but I guess we’ll have to see how bad the damage is and how long it will take to fix.
Now that I’ve started the repairs part of the process, I have to start thinking about all of the things that are easy to forget such as diminished value, repair guarantees, and warranty ramifications. I’m looking to sell this car sometime in the next year and I’m concerned about the effects that this incident may have upon the trade-in or private sale value. A quick check of the Kelly Blue Book site shows that the trade-in value went down by almost $1000 and that the private sale value dropped by about the same amount. That’s not terrible news and it could have been a lot more but considering that I haven’t yet seen any of the other expenses of this process and I’m already potentially $1000 down isn’t good.
Alright, time to head down to the body shop and see what they can tell me. Wish me luck!
Warning: If you haven’t read book 5 and haven’t seen the movie, this post contains minor spoilers!
Meaghan and I went to see the new Harry Potter movie last night at the Regal theatre on TV highway. I have had four free movie tickets in my wallet for the past few months and finally decided that it was time to use at least two of them. Additionally, I received an $8 Regal gift card at the Microsoft event I attended last week and wanted to make use of it before I lost or forgot about it. Free tickets, a free large Sprite, and two dollars for a large popcorn (the total exceeded the $8 on the gift card) was a really great deal! To top it all off, I really enjoyed this movie. I thought it was superb.
I’ve been on the fence about Harry Potter since reading the first few books and seeing the corresponding movies. I thought there was a great story in there that was occluded too often by a target audience identity crisis on the part of the author. Let me digress for a second while I clarify that point. I appreciate that authors, publishers, and even movie directors desperately want to tap into the “universal audience”, as evidenced by their rampant use of marketing hype like “appeals to all ages and demographics” and “has something for everyone”. Unfortunately, there are very few projects that actually achieve this magical universal cross-over appeal. Instead, the attempts made to appeal to all audiences can leave many feeling disinterested and gives off the identity crisis I described above.
In reading the first three books, I felt as though there was a really great back story, a strong set of characters, and several great long-term plot lines that were spoiled by inconsistencies introduced purely to keep the books child appropriate as well. This struck me as even more strange when I read the quite adult-oriented fourth book. Here’s an example of what I mean:
Voldemort is a rampant killing machine, an evil beyond compare who enjoys nothing more than the suffering and ultimate termination of all who would defy him. He kills Harry’s parents without even batting an eye and would have finished Harry too if he could. However, when he has father Weasley at his mercy in the Hall of Mysteries, he simply lets him live. I’m not looking for death and destruction at every turn, but the inconsistency in a major character like Voldemort just sits oddly and makes him feel a lot less dangerous. When Umbridge, almost dead at the hands of a Centaur only moments earlier, is dragged off into the forest by those she assaulted I pretty much assumed she was done for. However, she later turns up unharmed.
That being said, I thought this was the best Harry Potter story so far. From people I have spoken too, the book is one of their least favorites in the series. Apparently Harry is very whiny and irritating in the book This certainly was present in the movie but not to the degree it appears was in the book. The story in this movie was much grittier and the overall atmosphere felt a lot more intense. For the first time in the series I actually believed Voldemort was someone to be truly feared, a harbinger of doom with evil plans afoot versus the rather lame and easily defeatable opponent of Harry Potter from the books before. ”Harry, it was your love that defeated him”- (sigh). The threat to all was very real and the growing danger was a compelling component of the story. The action scenes were very well done and the overall acting and performance of the cast has improved dramatically over the course of the movies. You might find yourself wondering during some of the action scenes whether inspiration was drawn from the Star Wars movies as they can feel a little like massive light saber battles at times, but it was nice to see so much action in this one after being teased for so long. Let’s face it, who wasn’t waiting for the “big battle” with wands, charms, sparks, and firebolts flying everywhere? I know I was.
I’m now somewhat interested in reading books six and seven, just to find out what happens in the rest of the story. I think I’ll give number five a miss as many have reported it as their least favorite. I’ve got a good list of active books going right now, so it probably won’t be any time soon, but for a series I’d pretty much written off it’s nice to see a little interest rekindled. I’m hoping that Voldemort wins; he was pretty cool!
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix receives two thumbs up! I think I’ll even buy the DVD. If you’ve been somewhat blasé about Harry Potter so far, I highly recommend checking out this movie; I thought it was great.
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Stuart Thompson and Meaghan Brown.
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