Well it is that time of year again, i figured i would review the successes and failures from this years Arbitrary Dividing Point In Time Resolutions before i publish new ones for 2011 tomorrow.
1. Develop a business that makes £2000/month after tax - Failed ... Miserably.
Don't think i've earned £2000 from the business all year, never mind per month.
2. Develop a business that is location independent - Technically succeeded ... but really failed.
Technically i have a business and technically it is location independent. However as noted above it doesn't make any money, so while the work could be done anywhere, i couldn't afford to live anywhere else.
3. Visit at least 4 new countries - Failed ... mostly.
Only managed to visit one new country (The Netherlands) this year, which i suppose is better than none, but not looking good for 30 by 30.
4. Read 1 book per week - Success
Ideally i would have preferred to be more regular in my reading - starting and finishing a book each week - but i suppose averaging a book a week will do.
5. Write 1 Moleskine page per day - Success
Over the course of the year i missed a few days for various reasons, but the overall number of pages was right.
6. Watch a maximum of 1 TV episode per day - Failed ... Miserably.
I'm not sure this resolution lasted a day, instead i have ended up watching more TV than ever. In fact even when there was nothing on i have been getting whole series to watch (e.g. The Wire, The Sopranos, Deadwood etc) which resulted in watching up to 12 episodes in a day.
7. Write a blog post once a week - Technically succeeded ... but really failed.
According to the rules of the Blog Duel each week missed had to be caught up on, i missed 18 weeks in a row and then caught up on them all this month, so i technically succeeded. On the other hand the real purpose of the Blog Duel was to write regularly - and in my case improve my writing - in that regard i failed miserably.
Unfortunately the failures don't really fall into neat patterns of recommendations for resolutions: I failed on a frequent feedback resolution (daily TV) and a publicly accountable one (weekly blog posts). I also succeeded on a frequent feedback resolution (daily Moleskine page) and a publicly accountable one (weekly book). Maybe the mistake was not combining frequent feedback and public accountability?
I suspect the first 3 were doomed to failure almost from the start: Resolution 1 was predicated on a certain plan i had for starting a business, when i gave up on that plan the resolution didn't seem important or feasible. Resolution 2 was based on the plan from Resolution 1 and Resolution 3 required the success of Resolutions 1 and 2. It was a bit of a cascade failure really, once the first domino failed to fall, nothing else happened.
I think next year i will focus on relatively simple daily habits that can be publicly accountable and will assist me in implementing wider goals as the year progresses.
Tomorrow i shall unveil my Arbitrary Dividing Point In Time Resolutions for 2011 ...
Friday 31 December 2010
2010 Reading List
1 - The Collaborative Habit by Twyla Tharp
2 - 59 Seconds by Richard Wiseman
3 - The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield
4 - The (mis)behaviour Of Markets by Benoit Mandlebrot
5 - Drive by Daniel Pink
6 - Velocity by Dee Jacob et al
7 - The Art Of The Start by Guy Kawasaki
8 - Brave New World (f) by Aldous Huxley
9 - Linchpin by Seth Godin
10 - Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hanson
11 - The Management Myth by Matthew Stewart
12 - The 4-Hour Work Week (r) by Tim Ferriss
13 - Maverick (r) by Ricardo Semler
Q1 Bonus - The Dice Man (f) by Luke Rhinehart
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14 - Confessions Of A Public Speaker by Scott Berkun
15 - The Man In The High Castle (f) by Philip K Dick
16 - Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds
17 - Neverwhere (f) by Neil Gaiman
18 - The End Of Faith by Sam Harris
19 - The Knowing-Doing Gap by Pfeffer and Sutton
20 - The Design Of Business by Roger Martin
21 - Speak Human by Eric Karjaluoto
22 - Childhood's End (f) by Arthur C Clarke
23 - Outliers (r) by Malcolm Gladwell
24 - What The Dog Saw (r) by Malcolm Gladwell
25 - Blink (r) (a) by Malcolm Gladwell
26 - The Elements Of Style by William Strunk
Q2 Bonus - American Gods (f) #1b1t by Neil Gaiman
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27 - What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson
28 - The Upside Of Irrationality by Dan Ariely
29 - Foundation (f) by Isaac Asimov
30 - Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
31 - The Big Short by Michael Lewis
32 - Foundation And Empire (f) by Isaac Asimov
33 - Leading Change by John Kotter
34 - Second Foundation (f) by Isaac Asimov
35 - Into The Wild by John Krakauer
36 - Delivering Happieness (a) by Tony Hsieh
37 - The Complete Stories Of Sherlock Holmes (f) by Arthur Conan Doyle
38 - Roomanitarian by Henry Rollins
39 - Win Without Pitching Manifesto (e) by Blair Enns
Q3 Bonus - Tell-All (f) by Chuck Palahniuk
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40 - The Bootstrappers Bible (e) by Seth Godin
41 - Neuromancer (f) by William Gibson
42 - The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain
43 - Then We Came To The End (f) by Joshua Ferris
44 - Fascinate by Sally Hogshead
45 - Player One (f) by Douglas Coupland
46 - Notes On The Synthesis Of Form by Christopher Alexander
47 - Head First Rails (e) by David Griffiths
48 - Agile Web Development With Rails (e) by Sam Ruby et al
49 - Pragmatic Version Control With Git (e) by Travis Swicegood
50 - Unbearable Lightness of Being (f) by Milan Kundera
51 - The Art Of Non-Conformity by Chris Guillebeau
52 - The Metamorphosis (f) by Franz Kafka
Q4 Bonus - The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss
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Key:
(f) = Fiction
(r) = Re-read
(a) = Audio
(e) = Electronic
Friday 24 December 2010
My Hikikomori Year
Well it is exactly a year to the day since i left my last job and i can tell you one thing; i really don't miss it.
Unfortunately in the time since, i have come to realise that the same issues i had with the job are endemic to most money-making endeavours. This realisation has caused me to become what the Japanese would refer to as Hikikomori; a hermit who does not go outside. While i probably don't meet the technical criteria - due to ocasional visits to the supermarket (when internet shopping isn't fast enough) and a trip to Barcelona - i like to think i conform to the spirit of the term.
Sidenote: The post title is a slightly obscure reference to the My Hotel Year story from Douglas Coupland's Life After God.
Unfortunately in the time since, i have come to realise that the same issues i had with the job are endemic to most money-making endeavours. This realisation has caused me to become what the Japanese would refer to as Hikikomori; a hermit who does not go outside. While i probably don't meet the technical criteria - due to ocasional visits to the supermarket (when internet shopping isn't fast enough) and a trip to Barcelona - i like to think i conform to the spirit of the term.
Sidenote: The post title is a slightly obscure reference to the My Hotel Year story from Douglas Coupland's Life After God.
Thursday 23 December 2010
Top 10 Books I Read in 2010
1. Rework by Jason Fried and David H Hansson
2. Speak Human by Eric Karjaluoto
3. The Knowing-Doing Gap by Pfeffer and Sutton
4. Player One by Douglas Coupland [Fiction]
5. Foundation by Issac Asimov [Fiction]
6. American Gods by Neil Gaiman [Fiction]
7. The Big Short by Michael Lewis
8. The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely
9. The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield
10. The Man In The High Castle by Phillip K Dick [Fiction]
2. Speak Human by Eric Karjaluoto
3. The Knowing-Doing Gap by Pfeffer and Sutton
4. Player One by Douglas Coupland [Fiction]
5. Foundation by Issac Asimov [Fiction]
6. American Gods by Neil Gaiman [Fiction]
7. The Big Short by Michael Lewis
8. The Upside of Irrationality by Dan Ariely
9. The War Of Art by Steven Pressfield
10. The Man In The High Castle by Phillip K Dick [Fiction]
Wednesday 22 December 2010
New Additions To Best and Worst Airports
Last year i put a couple of posts together on the best and worst airports i have been to. While i didn't do much traveling this year, there are two clear additions to my lists:
Best - Barcelona [BCN]
Terminal 1 in Barcelona is what Terminal 2 in Charles De Gaulle should be; BCN has the same open light feeling as CDG, but with a host of decent shops, restaurants and executive lounges. Security and check-in was nice and efficient, plenty of seating near the gates and theoretically there was free wifi though i couldn't find it.
Worst - Schiphol [AMS]
Ok it's not as bad as the Top 5 Worst, but i would still avoid transiting through it again if possible. The first issue is that it is a single terminal, normally this is a good thing, but when it is one of the largest, busiest airports in the world, that means a lot of walking. Maybe it's just because i had a sore foot, but it seemed like i had to walk from one end of the airport to the other for my connecting flight. I also found it quite difficult to navigate, not sure if it was the layout or the signage, but it seemed like a lot of concentration was required. The only upside was that all of the staff - even security - were very friendly.
Best - Barcelona [BCN]
Terminal 1 in Barcelona is what Terminal 2 in Charles De Gaulle should be; BCN has the same open light feeling as CDG, but with a host of decent shops, restaurants and executive lounges. Security and check-in was nice and efficient, plenty of seating near the gates and theoretically there was free wifi though i couldn't find it.
Worst - Schiphol [AMS]
Ok it's not as bad as the Top 5 Worst, but i would still avoid transiting through it again if possible. The first issue is that it is a single terminal, normally this is a good thing, but when it is one of the largest, busiest airports in the world, that means a lot of walking. Maybe it's just because i had a sore foot, but it seemed like i had to walk from one end of the airport to the other for my connecting flight. I also found it quite difficult to navigate, not sure if it was the layout or the signage, but it seemed like a lot of concentration was required. The only upside was that all of the staff - even security - were very friendly.
Tuesday 21 December 2010
Unique Password Generation System
After last weeks hacking of Gawker Media's passwords, we have yet again been warned to use unique passwords on every site. While I appreciate the security reasons for this, there is no way i can remember 75+ unique, 9-digit alpha-numeric-symbol passwords - henceforth referred to as a 'strong password'.
While my current password system wouldn't succumb to the normal guesses for passwords, or probably even a brute force attack, i am certainly guilty of using the same 5 or 6 passwords over most sites. I have been thinking about how to diversify my passwords for a long time and have looked at various options but they all seemed to have problems:
Write Passwords Down - Back in the day (pre-1996) you were always advised never to write your passwords down. Two things have changed since then: 1) People have way more passwords to remember now and 2) The primary threat is remote (via the internet), rather than requiring physical access to your machine. The rationale for writing down passwords is that you get more security from having unique strong passwords, than you would with re-used weak passwords that you can remember. The only downside - and it's a doozy - is that if someone does get physical access to you computer or even just your password list, you are screwed. You also can't access your passwords remotely if you are travelling or away from your desk (unless you take them with you everywhere which would be pretty dumb).
Encrypted File Storage - Building on the above, how do you make it harder for someone to read your written down passwords? ... easy, encrypt the file. Write down all the passwords in a text or excel file, then encrypt the file with TrueCrypt - whatever you do don't use the built-in encryption in MS Office, it's terrible - using a really strong password. Now you only need to remember one password to open the file and get access to all of your other passwords. Alas it only solves the problem of someone getting access to your passwords, but doesn't fix being able to access your passwords from anywhere because you need admin rights to run TrueCrypt (no use for internet cafes).
Encrypted Online Storage - For a long time i thought PassPack was going to be the best option. Your passwords are double encrypted, stored on a website and there are various nifty security (one-time keys) and management (automatic logon) features. This means the passwords are securely encrypted AND available anywhere. I really wanted to use PassPack, but ultimately two things killed it for me: 1) If the site disappears (goes bankrupt, gets sold), so do my passwords and 2) A website containing passwords has a giant target painted on it for hackers and nothing is 100% secure forever.
Encrypted Hardware Storage - So on top of security and portability, it turned out i also want to have ultimate control over my passwords too. It seemed that the easiest way to have the most control would be to use hardware. I remembered i had seen the Mandylion Password Manager on Think Geek, it is a physical token that generates and securely stores your passwords. Two problems though: 1) Inputting site names or usernames to it with only arrow keys looks to be a serious pain and 2) If you lose or break it your passwords are gone. I also looked at things like: 1Password (not sure about security), Roboform (don't trust it) and Iron Key (expensive) but ruled them out.
Repeatable Online Generation - Ultimately i think i am just uncomfortable trusting my clear text passwords to any hardware or software, nothing is secure forever. I came across a website called PwdMkr which allows you to repeatably generate unique random passwords for websites. It checks almost all of my boxes: self-hosted (so quite obscure and controllable), lots of options (character sets, length, salt), the website can be encrypted for backup and best of all the password isn't stored, you just need to remember how to generate it. My only issue is that i can only protect the site with an .htaccess password. Ok so an attacker would have to break my .htaccess password AND work out my system for generating passwords, but still a worry.
So after years of research and thought, i was still stuck doing what i have always done, then a couple of nights ago i had an epiphany, go back to the future with a Book Cipher!
Book Cipher - A book cipher is a classic espionage technique for passing covert messages. In it's simplest form there is a numeric code which refers to a specific word; e.g. 040 15 07 would refer to page 40, line 15, word 7, but there are a number of ways it could be used to generate a password. Maybe just have a code that refers to the page and line, then use the first letters from each word in the sentence for the password. Alternatively you could refer to a page, then some words on that page could be joined together to make a password. The possibilities are endless. Similar to Repeatable Online Generation, the password is never stored, instead you store a key which allows you to generate the password from a specific book. There are a few things to keep in mind: 1) Make sure you know the edition of the book you are using because if you lose the book, a different edition will probably have different page numbers etc. 2) Portability can be achieved either with a small book you can take everywhere with you or by storing an e-book online (make sure your generation process is suitably obscure). For me this brings together a lot of benefits: 1) I just have to remember a process and not even a single password, 2) There is plenty of redundancy built it - multiple copies of books, multiple storage of keys etc. 3) Security through obscurity. There may not be any fancy encryption, but unless you have Bletchly Park or the NSA working on it, a book cipher is a tough code to crack.
In the end there is always a balance between security and ease of use, how far you go to either side is up to you. Really any of the techniques above will leave you better off than the average person and a book cipher is perhaps a little onerous and obscure.
While my current password system wouldn't succumb to the normal guesses for passwords, or probably even a brute force attack, i am certainly guilty of using the same 5 or 6 passwords over most sites. I have been thinking about how to diversify my passwords for a long time and have looked at various options but they all seemed to have problems:
Write Passwords Down - Back in the day (pre-1996) you were always advised never to write your passwords down. Two things have changed since then: 1) People have way more passwords to remember now and 2) The primary threat is remote (via the internet), rather than requiring physical access to your machine. The rationale for writing down passwords is that you get more security from having unique strong passwords, than you would with re-used weak passwords that you can remember. The only downside - and it's a doozy - is that if someone does get physical access to you computer or even just your password list, you are screwed. You also can't access your passwords remotely if you are travelling or away from your desk (unless you take them with you everywhere which would be pretty dumb).
Encrypted File Storage - Building on the above, how do you make it harder for someone to read your written down passwords? ... easy, encrypt the file. Write down all the passwords in a text or excel file, then encrypt the file with TrueCrypt - whatever you do don't use the built-in encryption in MS Office, it's terrible - using a really strong password. Now you only need to remember one password to open the file and get access to all of your other passwords. Alas it only solves the problem of someone getting access to your passwords, but doesn't fix being able to access your passwords from anywhere because you need admin rights to run TrueCrypt (no use for internet cafes).
Encrypted Online Storage - For a long time i thought PassPack was going to be the best option. Your passwords are double encrypted, stored on a website and there are various nifty security (one-time keys) and management (automatic logon) features. This means the passwords are securely encrypted AND available anywhere. I really wanted to use PassPack, but ultimately two things killed it for me: 1) If the site disappears (goes bankrupt, gets sold), so do my passwords and 2) A website containing passwords has a giant target painted on it for hackers and nothing is 100% secure forever.
Encrypted Hardware Storage - So on top of security and portability, it turned out i also want to have ultimate control over my passwords too. It seemed that the easiest way to have the most control would be to use hardware. I remembered i had seen the Mandylion Password Manager on Think Geek, it is a physical token that generates and securely stores your passwords. Two problems though: 1) Inputting site names or usernames to it with only arrow keys looks to be a serious pain and 2) If you lose or break it your passwords are gone. I also looked at things like: 1Password (not sure about security), Roboform (don't trust it) and Iron Key (expensive) but ruled them out.
Repeatable Online Generation - Ultimately i think i am just uncomfortable trusting my clear text passwords to any hardware or software, nothing is secure forever. I came across a website called PwdMkr which allows you to repeatably generate unique random passwords for websites. It checks almost all of my boxes: self-hosted (so quite obscure and controllable), lots of options (character sets, length, salt), the website can be encrypted for backup and best of all the password isn't stored, you just need to remember how to generate it. My only issue is that i can only protect the site with an .htaccess password. Ok so an attacker would have to break my .htaccess password AND work out my system for generating passwords, but still a worry.
So after years of research and thought, i was still stuck doing what i have always done, then a couple of nights ago i had an epiphany, go back to the future with a Book Cipher!
Book Cipher - A book cipher is a classic espionage technique for passing covert messages. In it's simplest form there is a numeric code which refers to a specific word; e.g. 040 15 07 would refer to page 40, line 15, word 7, but there are a number of ways it could be used to generate a password. Maybe just have a code that refers to the page and line, then use the first letters from each word in the sentence for the password. Alternatively you could refer to a page, then some words on that page could be joined together to make a password. The possibilities are endless. Similar to Repeatable Online Generation, the password is never stored, instead you store a key which allows you to generate the password from a specific book. There are a few things to keep in mind: 1) Make sure you know the edition of the book you are using because if you lose the book, a different edition will probably have different page numbers etc. 2) Portability can be achieved either with a small book you can take everywhere with you or by storing an e-book online (make sure your generation process is suitably obscure). For me this brings together a lot of benefits: 1) I just have to remember a process and not even a single password, 2) There is plenty of redundancy built it - multiple copies of books, multiple storage of keys etc. 3) Security through obscurity. There may not be any fancy encryption, but unless you have Bletchly Park or the NSA working on it, a book cipher is a tough code to crack.
In the end there is always a balance between security and ease of use, how far you go to either side is up to you. Really any of the techniques above will leave you better off than the average person and a book cipher is perhaps a little onerous and obscure.
Monday 20 December 2010
Hardware is Hard ...
A little over a year ago i read about an awesome product called Wakemate, it monitors your sleep patterns and sends a signal to a mobile phone to wake you at the optimum time. I almost always wake up feeling groggy so it seemed like something i would find useful. At the time the release date was listed as January 2010 so i didn't pre-order one because i didn't know where i was going to be in January.
I didn't think much more about it until i got back to the uk and stumbled on a story that the release had been delayed until April, at which point i decided to put in a pre-order. At least two release dates have come and gone since then (late june, late september) and still no product. Each time there was an explanation; the IC they wanted to use was no longer available, design issues, manufacturing issues, certification issues etc etc. Well they are finally shipping - though not to international customers - almost a year late.
The title of the post is a classic technology aphorism, software isn't always - or even often - easy, but hardware is definitely hard.
I didn't think much more about it until i got back to the uk and stumbled on a story that the release had been delayed until April, at which point i decided to put in a pre-order. At least two release dates have come and gone since then (late june, late september) and still no product. Each time there was an explanation; the IC they wanted to use was no longer available, design issues, manufacturing issues, certification issues etc etc. Well they are finally shipping - though not to international customers - almost a year late.
The title of the post is a classic technology aphorism, software isn't always - or even often - easy, but hardware is definitely hard.
Saturday 18 December 2010
Writing pt2
Yup i like the idea of conveying ideas, it just takes longer than expected and i'm never as clear or as convincing as i'd like to be. Had two ideas and drafts today and yet neither posted.
Friday 17 December 2010
Writing
... or lack thereof.
I find myself reaching the conclusion that i am not meant to write. It just seems like a lot of effort and i am never happy with the end result.
I find myself reaching the conclusion that i am not meant to write. It just seems like a lot of effort and i am never happy with the end result.
Thursday 16 December 2010
Wednesday 15 December 2010
Perfect Twitter
Today i finally found the perfect Twitter - All the benefits of New Twitter (on-page photos, better use of width etc) with none of the useless junk (random images, Trends, Who to follow etc).
Alas this beautiful new design is only available if you use Chrome or Safari, if so you can download the extension from: http://www.chrismasterson.me/feather/
Alas this beautiful new design is only available if you use Chrome or Safari, if so you can download the extension from: http://www.chrismasterson.me/feather/
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| Before - Ugly, Cluttered & Nasty |
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| After - Clean, Simple & Minimalist |
Tuesday 14 December 2010
Missed Post
Well somehow i managed it, only 10 posts in to my 18 Days of Blogging and i managed to miss a post already.
Lessons from this:
1) Daily routine is best for building habits - I've been pretty good at writing in my Molie every day, but i think taking the weekends off from posting in this blog breaks the habit too much. I guess my issue with posting every day is that i end up with a lot of crap (see most of the last 10 posts) but without the daily routine i fail miserably (see the last 5 months). Perhaps as a resolution next year i might try to write for an hour every day and use that time to build up to a decent weekly blog post.
2) Going to bed too early wrecks my routine - There is a high correlation between going to bed too early and breaking routine. Missed Molie entries and blog posts are almost always on nights i go to bed before 9am.
Other than that i guess i'll have to post on saturday to make up for yesterdays lapse.
Lessons from this:
1) Daily routine is best for building habits - I've been pretty good at writing in my Molie every day, but i think taking the weekends off from posting in this blog breaks the habit too much. I guess my issue with posting every day is that i end up with a lot of crap (see most of the last 10 posts) but without the daily routine i fail miserably (see the last 5 months). Perhaps as a resolution next year i might try to write for an hour every day and use that time to build up to a decent weekly blog post.
2) Going to bed too early wrecks my routine - There is a high correlation between going to bed too early and breaking routine. Missed Molie entries and blog posts are almost always on nights i go to bed before 9am.
Other than that i guess i'll have to post on saturday to make up for yesterdays lapse.
Friday 10 December 2010
Sleep Sucks
Or more to the point the time wasted asleep sucks, but i can't see myself doing less of it.
Thursday 9 December 2010
Follow Through On Books
I read a lot of books, i don't actually take action based on most of them, they change what i think but not what i do.
I guess it's like Pfeffer and Sutton have observed in The Knowing Doing Gap, there is a big gap between knowing and doing.
The reason this came to mind is The 4-Hour Body. Lots of interesting advice, will i follow it? Maybe.
I guess it's like Pfeffer and Sutton have observed in The Knowing Doing Gap, there is a big gap between knowing and doing.
The reason this came to mind is The 4-Hour Body. Lots of interesting advice, will i follow it? Maybe.
Wednesday 8 December 2010
Philosophical or Scientific Question?
When you leave the fridge door open, do you let the cold out or the heat in?
Tuesday 7 December 2010
Slightly worrying things ...
1) I spent the evening watching a TV show about statistics (check out The Joy Of Stats on iPlayer if you are in the uk) and getting slightly toasted (beer, vodka and sambuca [though not at the same time] is a strange combination).
2) There is no 2.
3) Put down your brains any your entrails, it's time to stop and learn some rails [jingles] ... see video in post below.
4) What i should have posted tonight was titled: Lessons from Zombies and it would have been rather more interesting/amusing.
2) There is no 2.
3) Put down your brains any your entrails, it's time to stop and learn some rails [jingles] ... see video in post below.
4) What i should have posted tonight was titled: Lessons from Zombies and it would have been rather more interesting/amusing.
Monday 6 December 2010
Programming for Zombies! Redux
I finished the tutorials on Rails For Zombies and while they were fun i'm not sure how useful they really were.
I picked up a few snippets of code which will be useful and there were some interesting Rails 3 features, but looking beyond the catchy theme, there isn't much there. I said in the original post that i didn't think it would replace Agile Web Development With Rails, but i don't think it even replaces the first example in Head First Rails. The goal of Rails For Zombies is to allow people to get their feet wet with Rails without having to worry about configuration, but the depth of information is more like dipping a single toe in the water.
What blew me away in the first example in Head First Rails was that i could create and run a functional (though not pretty) web application with 4 lines of code. You never quite get that level of "wow" in Rails For Zombies; unless you have programmed extensively in another language you don't really appreciate the brevity and simplicity of the code in the examples. The coding at the end of each tutorial is fine and provides a good way to check comprehension, but you are never dealing with more than a couple of lines of code so it is hard to know where everything fits in. You also never get to actually play with the application you are supposed to be working on, which is a large part of the feedback.
What would have been more useful is a mashup - Head First Rails For Zombies. Combine the lack of configuration worries and fun theme of Rails For Zombies with building an app from the ground up like in the first Head First Rails example.
What blew me away in the first example in Head First Rails was that i could create and run a functional (though not pretty) web application with 4 lines of code. You never quite get that level of "wow" in Rails For Zombies; unless you have programmed extensively in another language you don't really appreciate the brevity and simplicity of the code in the examples. The coding at the end of each tutorial is fine and provides a good way to check comprehension, but you are never dealing with more than a couple of lines of code so it is hard to know where everything fits in. You also never get to actually play with the application you are supposed to be working on, which is a large part of the feedback.
What would have been more useful is a mashup - Head First Rails For Zombies. Combine the lack of configuration worries and fun theme of Rails For Zombies with building an app from the ground up like in the first Head First Rails example.
The one thing that has really stuck with me is the jingle:
Quite funny and disturbingly catchy.
Friday 3 December 2010
Programming for Zombies!
Today i found the single greatest tutorial site for learning programming; Rails for Zombies!
(Go check out the video on the homepage)
While the awesomeness of adding zombies to anything should be obvious - Pride, Prejudice and Zombies for example - in this case it is awesome for learning.
If you have ever learned any programming language you should be familiar with the cliched "hello world!" example, unfortunately in most 'learn to program' books the examples don't get much more exciting than that. Infact a lot of books on programming don't even get to that stage, instead they have some arcane and obscure steps that you have to get through to even start programming. You can fall at this step for a number of hard to identify reasons which cannot be easily troubleshot in a book. The same is true once you actually start programming the examples, from being on a different version of the software to having a single symbol in the wrong place, your program might not work for a non-obvious reason.
Based on the above Rails for Zombies gets a number of things right:
1) Unique and light-hearted examples - No more boring twitter / ebay / webstore clone examples, while building an app for zombies isn't that useful (until the zombie apocalypse of course) it is certainly different and entertaining. In my experience humor is highly underrated in education, it is amazing how much more memorable an example is if it is funny.
2) Web-based programming environment - This kills two birds with one stone: 1) The programming environment is just there; nothing to install, configure or otherwise go wrong. 2) You know you are using the right version of the software for the examples.
3) Instant interactive feedback - Nothing is more frustrating when learning to program from a book than hitting a brick wall with an example and not knowing how to fix it. Most books assume everything has gone right and only offer tips on the most obvious mistakes. If you happen to use the wrong type of brackets or put a full stop or a capital in the wrong place it can take hours to find and fix. Rails for Zombies provides interactive feedback on what you are doing (useful error messages) and has small enough examples that errors are easy to track down.
4) Reward at the end - Maybe it is just because i love obscure t-shirts, but being able to order a Rails for Zombies t-shirt at the end is a serious incentive for me to finish the course. A lot of books get more complicated and obscure towards the end and are never finished, at least this gives a good reason to make it all the way through.
At this stage my biggest concern is whether you would learn enough to enable you to create an actual application. Sure installing and configuring ruby, rails and SQLite can be a pain, but if you can't do that then you can't actually build anything. Also Rails for Zombies jumps in at a slightly strange point - CRUD operations - without really covering MVC or databases which i think i would have found confusing without having read some books. I suspect i will be able to comment on this more fully when i finish the tutorials.
I'm sure Rails for Zombies isn't a replacement for Agile Web Development With Rails but it is an entertaining way to reinforce what i'm learning elsewhere.
(Go check out the video on the homepage)
While the awesomeness of adding zombies to anything should be obvious - Pride, Prejudice and Zombies for example - in this case it is awesome for learning.
If you have ever learned any programming language you should be familiar with the cliched "hello world!" example, unfortunately in most 'learn to program' books the examples don't get much more exciting than that. Infact a lot of books on programming don't even get to that stage, instead they have some arcane and obscure steps that you have to get through to even start programming. You can fall at this step for a number of hard to identify reasons which cannot be easily troubleshot in a book. The same is true once you actually start programming the examples, from being on a different version of the software to having a single symbol in the wrong place, your program might not work for a non-obvious reason.
Based on the above Rails for Zombies gets a number of things right:
1) Unique and light-hearted examples - No more boring twitter / ebay / webstore clone examples, while building an app for zombies isn't that useful (until the zombie apocalypse of course) it is certainly different and entertaining. In my experience humor is highly underrated in education, it is amazing how much more memorable an example is if it is funny.
2) Web-based programming environment - This kills two birds with one stone: 1) The programming environment is just there; nothing to install, configure or otherwise go wrong. 2) You know you are using the right version of the software for the examples.
3) Instant interactive feedback - Nothing is more frustrating when learning to program from a book than hitting a brick wall with an example and not knowing how to fix it. Most books assume everything has gone right and only offer tips on the most obvious mistakes. If you happen to use the wrong type of brackets or put a full stop or a capital in the wrong place it can take hours to find and fix. Rails for Zombies provides interactive feedback on what you are doing (useful error messages) and has small enough examples that errors are easy to track down.
4) Reward at the end - Maybe it is just because i love obscure t-shirts, but being able to order a Rails for Zombies t-shirt at the end is a serious incentive for me to finish the course. A lot of books get more complicated and obscure towards the end and are never finished, at least this gives a good reason to make it all the way through.
At this stage my biggest concern is whether you would learn enough to enable you to create an actual application. Sure installing and configuring ruby, rails and SQLite can be a pain, but if you can't do that then you can't actually build anything. Also Rails for Zombies jumps in at a slightly strange point - CRUD operations - without really covering MVC or databases which i think i would have found confusing without having read some books. I suspect i will be able to comment on this more fully when i finish the tutorials.
I'm sure Rails for Zombies isn't a replacement for Agile Web Development With Rails but it is an entertaining way to reinforce what i'm learning elsewhere.
Thursday 2 December 2010
I <3 Beer
That is all.
PS It's a real post because i had to look up & lt ; to get a < symbol in the title.
PS It's a real post because i had to look up & lt ; to get a < symbol in the title.
Wednesday 1 December 2010
Technological Nemesis
Everyone has something technological that just never quite works for them, for me it is trying to setup an FTP server. What should be the simple installation of a piece of software, never quite goes to plan. Doesn't matter what software i use, what operating system i'm on, what router i'm using, where i am. It just doesn't work without days of frustration.
Friday 26 November 2010
18 Days Of Blogging
By the end of November i will be 18 blog posts behind in the Blog Duel...
Frankly this is a rather poor show given my lack of other commitments and the relative ease of the challenge. Even more embarrassing is that i managed to post on a near daily basis for 5 months on my older blog (Late Feb to Late July 2007) and yet this year i couldn't even manage weekly. Sure i managed to write a couple of decent posts - by my standards at least - but that wasn't the challenge. So in an effort to kind of meet my seventh arbitrary dividing point in time resolution, i need to make 18 blog posts before the end of the year.
It just so happens that there are exactly 18 working days in December before Christmas, so instead of the 12 days of Christmas or an advent calendar, i will be closing out my year by catching up on my blogging.
Frankly this is a rather poor show given my lack of other commitments and the relative ease of the challenge. Even more embarrassing is that i managed to post on a near daily basis for 5 months on my older blog (Late Feb to Late July 2007) and yet this year i couldn't even manage weekly. Sure i managed to write a couple of decent posts - by my standards at least - but that wasn't the challenge. So in an effort to kind of meet my seventh arbitrary dividing point in time resolution, i need to make 18 blog posts before the end of the year.
It just so happens that there are exactly 18 working days in December before Christmas, so instead of the 12 days of Christmas or an advent calendar, i will be closing out my year by catching up on my blogging.
Saturday 31 July 2010
Things I Learned Today Pt 2 ...
1) Achieving a nice looking finish on MDF is like trying to polish a turd; as Mythbusters proved, it is possible, but it requires more time, effort and cost than a sane person is likely to commit to the task.
2) As a corollary to the above; real wood looks amazing with very little effort, a bit of sanding and a couple of coats of varnish and it is beautiful.
Following on from the above:
3) Instead of spending a load of money on stain for the MDF, i should have taken the hit up front and bought real wood for the shelves. It would have ended up costing the same, taken less time and would have finished looking much better.
4) After around 40 hours of work, i have realised that i probably would have been better off just buying a couple of bookcases from a shop. Ok it is nice that the bookcase i made fits perfectly in the space and maximises the number of books i can store, but it took a hell of a long time and is far from perfect.
I wanted to capture what i had learned incase i forgot, there will be a full blog post on my bookcase project within a week or so.
2) As a corollary to the above; real wood looks amazing with very little effort, a bit of sanding and a couple of coats of varnish and it is beautiful.
Following on from the above:
3) Instead of spending a load of money on stain for the MDF, i should have taken the hit up front and bought real wood for the shelves. It would have ended up costing the same, taken less time and would have finished looking much better.
4) After around 40 hours of work, i have realised that i probably would have been better off just buying a couple of bookcases from a shop. Ok it is nice that the bookcase i made fits perfectly in the space and maximises the number of books i can store, but it took a hell of a long time and is far from perfect.
I wanted to capture what i had learned incase i forgot, there will be a full blog post on my bookcase project within a week or so.
Thursday 29 July 2010
Things I Learned Today ...
1) Trying to varnish a large flat surface with a brush is an exercise in futility; you - or at least i - cannot escape brush marks.
2) Trying to precisely cut-in varnish along a 2 metre length is equally futile; it won't end up straight … ever.
Following on from the above:
3) My new favourite thing in the whole world is a small foam roller for applying goss finishes. It gives an awesomely smooth coating and is seriously quick to use.
4) Masking Tape is your friend. It might take 2 hours to mask off the trim on 4 shelves, but combined with point 3 it takes 5mins to put a coat of varnish on a shelf instead of 30mins with a brush.
To explain the above - shortly there will be a post about my experience designing and building a bookcase, be afraid, be very afraid.
2) Trying to precisely cut-in varnish along a 2 metre length is equally futile; it won't end up straight … ever.
Following on from the above:
3) My new favourite thing in the whole world is a small foam roller for applying goss finishes. It gives an awesomely smooth coating and is seriously quick to use.
4) Masking Tape is your friend. It might take 2 hours to mask off the trim on 4 shelves, but combined with point 3 it takes 5mins to put a coat of varnish on a shelf instead of 30mins with a brush.
To explain the above - shortly there will be a post about my experience designing and building a bookcase, be afraid, be very afraid.
Friday 9 July 2010
Previous Post Update
In April - holy crap where have the last 2 months gone? - i wrote a couple of posts about backing the reprint of Art Space Tokyo on Kickstarter, well it finally arrived!
So far i'm really impressed with the quality of the book, more of a review when i get a chance to read it.
PS I was going to shrink the photos a little, but i actually kinda like how they run outside the content box ... thoughts?
Package Contents - Letter, Signed Uncut Signature & Book
My Name In A Book (line 14)
So far i'm really impressed with the quality of the book, more of a review when i get a chance to read it.
PS I was going to shrink the photos a little, but i actually kinda like how they run outside the content box ... thoughts?
Friday 2 July 2010
Nihilism
"When we find out that the world does not possess the objective value or meaning that we want it to have or have long since believed it to have, we find ourselves in a crisis." - Wikipedia Page on Nihilism
Thursday 1 July 2010
The Bizarre Appeal of Sports Events Pt2
An interesting observation relating to last weeks *cough* post.
It appears that a large part of the appeal is frequency. I noticed a significant decline in my interest when it went from 3 games a day to 2 and now that there is a 2 day gap before the quarter finals, i knida don't care anymore. When it is easy to become immersed in the event for a reasonable amount of time every day it seems much more interesting. Alternatively i may have just watched so much football that i will have no desire to watch any more for the next 4 years ...
It appears that a large part of the appeal is frequency. I noticed a significant decline in my interest when it went from 3 games a day to 2 and now that there is a 2 day gap before the quarter finals, i knida don't care anymore. When it is easy to become immersed in the event for a reasonable amount of time every day it seems much more interesting. Alternatively i may have just watched so much football that i will have no desire to watch any more for the next 4 years ...
Friday 18 June 2010
The Bizarre Appeal of Sports Events
I'll start by saying i am not a football fan. I really couldn't give a rats ass about watching it 99% of the time and yet somehow i have watched 20 of the first 22 matches in the World Cup ... I'm not even just talking about having it on in the background or channel hopping past it, i have sat and watched all the way through twenty full 90 minute matches. That is 30 hours of my life that i am never getting back.
Ok part of the reason i have been watching must be that i am currently of limited employment, which means that i actually have the time to watch 3 football matches a day. But it still doesn't explain why i can't think of anything better to do, i'm not even sure that i actually enjoy watching football.
I have a sneaking suspicion that there must be some psychological reason (or subliminal messages in the tv coverage) that makes people enjoy watching big sporting events, but the exact mechanism - or how i can avoid it - elude me...
Ok part of the reason i have been watching must be that i am currently of limited employment, which means that i actually have the time to watch 3 football matches a day. But it still doesn't explain why i can't think of anything better to do, i'm not even sure that i actually enjoy watching football.
I have a sneaking suspicion that there must be some psychological reason (or subliminal messages in the tv coverage) that makes people enjoy watching big sporting events, but the exact mechanism - or how i can avoid it - elude me...
Friday 11 June 2010
WSIDWML? - Typical Example
Last week I wrote about trying to work out what I should do with my life [WSIDWML?]. While I outlined, in general terms, my problems with answering the question, I didn’t provide any actual examples. This week I will run through an example of my typical train of thought, from inception to dismissal.
Inception
A common suggestion for how to decide what to do with your life, is to think back to what you wanted to be as a child and do that. I presume the theory is that what you wanted to be as a child is more reflective of your true desires, unencumbered by adult worries like pay, practicality and status.
As a child I used to love to draw and in particular draw things that I had designed, so architecture seemed like a logical career choice. At the start of secondary school I tried to work out what the best architecture course was by researching which one had the highest entry requirements - Strathclyde - and I decided that I was going to apply there. The entry requirements drove which subjects I would take in school and what grades I would need to get in exams. When I was 14 I spent a week in an architects office for work experience and loved it. Then when I was 15 I applied to the architecture course at Strathclyde, attended an interview and was offered a conditional acceptance (i.e. if I got the required grades I was in). However at the interview they recommended that I wait a year as I would only be 16 when the course started. Waiting a year would make it easier to live away from home and avoid the isolation of not being able to socialise with peers who would mostly be 18 and over. Both of those points made sense, so I decided I would stay at school for another year.
Somehow during that year I convinced myself that Architecture wasn’t technical and scientific enough - too much airy fairy subjective art - and I would rather study Physics. It turned out that Physics was a little too ‘technical and scientific’ and not practical enough, so I ended up switching to Mechanical Engineering.
In retrospect, throwing away 10+ years of aspiration seems like a rather rash decision, so maybe I should go back to university to study architecture ...
Excitement
Once I have an idea in mind I quickly move to thinking of all of the great reasons to follow through with it. In the example above I would quickly imagine:
That I would love to go back to university and make the most of the opportunity: actually turn up to lectures, study, go to the library, take more varied elective classes etc.
I still really enjoy designing things and I think my broader perspective from the last 11 years would be useful for designing buildings.
How great it would be to design something that everyone can see and will probably still be standing after I’m gone.
Depression
Just as I am getting really worked up to follow through on the idea, somehow everything flips and all of the positive things from the excitement phase are cancelled out by negatives that spring to mind:
Will my enthusiasm fade and I therefore end up as lazy a student as I was the last time?
Would I be able to cope with the artier less technical aspects of the course?
How would I support myself financially?
What would I do after the course, do I really want to be an architect?
The most depressing thought of all is; what if applied and didn’t get accepted? What would it say about how I had spent the last 12 years, if they would have accepted me on the course back in 1998 and wouldn’t now ...
Dismissal
By this point I have totally talked myself out of the idea. If there are that many reasons against doing it, how can it be something that I could conceivably spend the rest of my life doing? So I dismiss the idea and start the cycle again.
No sooner have I talked myself into a direction, than I talk myself out of it. Most of the reasons against pursuing the idea could theoretically - and often easily - be overcome, but I just can’t muster the same enthusiasm for it anymore. Hopefully the above should illustrate why I am having such a hard time narrowing my options.
[740 Words]
Inception
A common suggestion for how to decide what to do with your life, is to think back to what you wanted to be as a child and do that. I presume the theory is that what you wanted to be as a child is more reflective of your true desires, unencumbered by adult worries like pay, practicality and status.
As a child I used to love to draw and in particular draw things that I had designed, so architecture seemed like a logical career choice. At the start of secondary school I tried to work out what the best architecture course was by researching which one had the highest entry requirements - Strathclyde - and I decided that I was going to apply there. The entry requirements drove which subjects I would take in school and what grades I would need to get in exams. When I was 14 I spent a week in an architects office for work experience and loved it. Then when I was 15 I applied to the architecture course at Strathclyde, attended an interview and was offered a conditional acceptance (i.e. if I got the required grades I was in). However at the interview they recommended that I wait a year as I would only be 16 when the course started. Waiting a year would make it easier to live away from home and avoid the isolation of not being able to socialise with peers who would mostly be 18 and over. Both of those points made sense, so I decided I would stay at school for another year.
Somehow during that year I convinced myself that Architecture wasn’t technical and scientific enough - too much airy fairy subjective art - and I would rather study Physics. It turned out that Physics was a little too ‘technical and scientific’ and not practical enough, so I ended up switching to Mechanical Engineering.
In retrospect, throwing away 10+ years of aspiration seems like a rather rash decision, so maybe I should go back to university to study architecture ...
Excitement
Once I have an idea in mind I quickly move to thinking of all of the great reasons to follow through with it. In the example above I would quickly imagine:
That I would love to go back to university and make the most of the opportunity: actually turn up to lectures, study, go to the library, take more varied elective classes etc.
I still really enjoy designing things and I think my broader perspective from the last 11 years would be useful for designing buildings.
How great it would be to design something that everyone can see and will probably still be standing after I’m gone.
Depression
Just as I am getting really worked up to follow through on the idea, somehow everything flips and all of the positive things from the excitement phase are cancelled out by negatives that spring to mind:
Will my enthusiasm fade and I therefore end up as lazy a student as I was the last time?
Would I be able to cope with the artier less technical aspects of the course?
How would I support myself financially?
What would I do after the course, do I really want to be an architect?
The most depressing thought of all is; what if applied and didn’t get accepted? What would it say about how I had spent the last 12 years, if they would have accepted me on the course back in 1998 and wouldn’t now ...
Dismissal
By this point I have totally talked myself out of the idea. If there are that many reasons against doing it, how can it be something that I could conceivably spend the rest of my life doing? So I dismiss the idea and start the cycle again.
No sooner have I talked myself into a direction, than I talk myself out of it. Most of the reasons against pursuing the idea could theoretically - and often easily - be overcome, but I just can’t muster the same enthusiasm for it anymore. Hopefully the above should illustrate why I am having such a hard time narrowing my options.
[740 Words]
Saturday 5 June 2010
What Should I Do With My Life?
A couple of weeks ago I read What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson. While I enjoyed the stories and it was vaguely inspiring, I was initially disappointed that it didn’t help me answer the question posed in the title. Throughout the book the author emphasised that answering the question was not something that could be achieved by reading a book, but I still held out hope that somehow it might. Sure enough when I reached the end - regardless of the frequent warnings - I felt slightly cheated that I was no closer to working out what to do with my life. Having reflected for the last couple of weeks, I still don’t know what I should do with my life, but I think I have worked out what the first step is.
The first step for most of the people profiled in the book was to reduce the number of options of things they could do. “Keeping your options open” is something that a significant number of people seem to aspire to. Having ‘infinite possibilities’ is appealing in the same way that buying a lottery ticket is and is flawed for the same reasons. As things stand my options are about as open as they possibly could be; I have very few commitments tying me to a specific path or location. Unfortunately I am also naive and arrogant enough to think that I could try to do just about anything with my life if I wanted to, I might not succeed but I could try. With that many options, working out what I want to do - and more the point, what I could be good at - is rather difficult.
In hindsight a quote from High Fidelity seems apt:
There has also been an element of fear of failure in my decisions or lack thereof. If I didn’t try, then when I succeeded it felt like luck and when I failed it didn’t matter because I hadn’t tried in the first place. Either way I was damned: Attributing success to luck is a surefire way to feel like you don’t deserve what you have achieved. Attributing failure to not trying means you will always wonder what would have happened if you had tried. This has been true for me, both on the scale of micro-decisions and also on the largest scale of working out what to do with my life. By not narrowing my options and by not deciding what I really wanted to do, I made it impossible to fail, but also impossible to succeed.
Now that I have worked out that I need to narrow my options, the hard part is working out how to actually do that. The two obvious ways - deep analysis or random chance - both seem like cop-outs. Deep analysis seems like a cop-out because it would be very easy to spend a lot of time analysing as a way to avoid making a decision. Random chance seems like a cop-out because random chance is always a cop-out. There are other ways ranging from mixing analysis and random chance, to asking people who know me well what they think, to trying to remember what I wanted to be as a child, but again none of those options seem quite right... I know what the first step is, I just don’t know how to take it.
If anyone has any suggestions for how to start narrowing my options or what I should do with my life, I would be really grateful if you could leave a comment.
[731 Words]
The first step for most of the people profiled in the book was to reduce the number of options of things they could do. “Keeping your options open” is something that a significant number of people seem to aspire to. Having ‘infinite possibilities’ is appealing in the same way that buying a lottery ticket is and is flawed for the same reasons. As things stand my options are about as open as they possibly could be; I have very few commitments tying me to a specific path or location. Unfortunately I am also naive and arrogant enough to think that I could try to do just about anything with my life if I wanted to, I might not succeed but I could try. With that many options, working out what I want to do - and more the point, what I could be good at - is rather difficult.
In hindsight a quote from High Fidelity seems apt:
“I can see now I never really committed ... I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and... I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that's suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.”Everything I have done in the last decade, I have stumbled into on a whim and had one foot out the door. From university, to hobbies, to jobs, to geographic locations, I never set out intentionally and always had an exit strategy. Maybe I committed for the first few months, but then found that I could successfully coast along without trying which meant I ended up bored. After a while being bored I would stumble off to the next option.
There has also been an element of fear of failure in my decisions or lack thereof. If I didn’t try, then when I succeeded it felt like luck and when I failed it didn’t matter because I hadn’t tried in the first place. Either way I was damned: Attributing success to luck is a surefire way to feel like you don’t deserve what you have achieved. Attributing failure to not trying means you will always wonder what would have happened if you had tried. This has been true for me, both on the scale of micro-decisions and also on the largest scale of working out what to do with my life. By not narrowing my options and by not deciding what I really wanted to do, I made it impossible to fail, but also impossible to succeed.
Now that I have worked out that I need to narrow my options, the hard part is working out how to actually do that. The two obvious ways - deep analysis or random chance - both seem like cop-outs. Deep analysis seems like a cop-out because it would be very easy to spend a lot of time analysing as a way to avoid making a decision. Random chance seems like a cop-out because random chance is always a cop-out. There are other ways ranging from mixing analysis and random chance, to asking people who know me well what they think, to trying to remember what I wanted to be as a child, but again none of those options seem quite right... I know what the first step is, I just don’t know how to take it.
If anyone has any suggestions for how to start narrowing my options or what I should do with my life, I would be really grateful if you could leave a comment.
[731 Words]
Friday 28 May 2010
Free Advice For TV Executives - Part 1
I was watching the final episode of FlashForward this morning and it occurred to me that, while it wasn’t a perfect show, it did have potential. Given that there are a lot of TV shows which have no potential, are mediocre at best, then why had FlashForward been cancelled? The easy answer is a lack of viewers; not enough viewers means less advertising dollars, less advertising dollars means that the show doesn’t cover its costs. A simple business decision that anyone would make.
The next logical question is why was there a decline in viewers? According to TV studio executives it is all down to the viewers: people don’t like heavily serialised shows, people don’t relate to the characters, people find the plot too confusing, people can’t start watching in the middle of a series. What the execs universally fail to consider is that it might be their own fault, not the viewers. I have therefore come up with some free advice for TV executives to make good TV shows more profitable.
The first nail in the coffin of any good TV show is a lack of consistency in scheduling. With this in mind can I suggest the following:
No Hiatuses
Nothing is more frustrating when watching a heavily serialised show, than a gap of 3 months in the middle of a season. I’m sorry, maybe it is just me, but when I get into a story I don’t appreciate it being put on hold for long enough that I forget what was going on. Not only is it hard to remember what happened before the break, it is hard to remember why you watched the show in the first place and therefore why you start watching it again.
I don’t think there has ever been a show that has fully retained its viewership after a hiatus. The reasons for this are simple: 1) Loss of momentum - the show has to build interest and momentum from scratch, 2) Lack of caring - the audience forgets why they watched the show in the first place, 3) It is a good sign that the show is about to be cancelled - so why bother watching it again.
The only time a show should ever be put on hiatus is if it has already been cancelled and the network has finished episodes to show. If the show hasn’t already been cancelled the hiatus is almost sure to kill it anyway.
No Random Skip Weeks
Similar to the above, it is incredibly annoying when you tune in for a show only to find it not on. I understand that sometimes networks need to skip a week for special events: Christmas, the Superbowl etc but the disruption seems to be maximised rather than minimised. It isn’t too bad in the UK, generally only the network covering a sporting event interrupts its programming and there is a maximum of one weeks interruption for things like Christmas and Easter. American networks on the other hand, just seem to randomly decide not to air shows for the sheer hell of it. I can just imagine the program scheduler sitting in a meeting and saying; “It’s Bob’s dog’s birthday this week, better run repeats so he doesn’t miss anything.”, it genuinely seems that arbitrary.
Knowing that a show will be on from week to week makes it much easier to build momentum and for the audience to get excited about it.
No Day/Time Changes
This has to be the most obvious observation of all time, but if you change the day or time you air a show, you will definitely lose viewers. Put simply a lot of people watch TV when they have free time, if that free time no longer coincides with your show they will stop watching. Furthermore you won’t pick up viewers who’s free time now coincides with the show because they have missed the start of the season. It would be bad enough if there was one change, but some shows are shuffled around at random.
The first step in retaining viewers is simply not to annoy the hell out of them by making it difficult for them to continue watching the show. Next time I will look at how - heaven forbid - networks could attract viewers mid-season.
[712 Words]
The next logical question is why was there a decline in viewers? According to TV studio executives it is all down to the viewers: people don’t like heavily serialised shows, people don’t relate to the characters, people find the plot too confusing, people can’t start watching in the middle of a series. What the execs universally fail to consider is that it might be their own fault, not the viewers. I have therefore come up with some free advice for TV executives to make good TV shows more profitable.
The first nail in the coffin of any good TV show is a lack of consistency in scheduling. With this in mind can I suggest the following:
No Hiatuses
Nothing is more frustrating when watching a heavily serialised show, than a gap of 3 months in the middle of a season. I’m sorry, maybe it is just me, but when I get into a story I don’t appreciate it being put on hold for long enough that I forget what was going on. Not only is it hard to remember what happened before the break, it is hard to remember why you watched the show in the first place and therefore why you start watching it again.
I don’t think there has ever been a show that has fully retained its viewership after a hiatus. The reasons for this are simple: 1) Loss of momentum - the show has to build interest and momentum from scratch, 2) Lack of caring - the audience forgets why they watched the show in the first place, 3) It is a good sign that the show is about to be cancelled - so why bother watching it again.
The only time a show should ever be put on hiatus is if it has already been cancelled and the network has finished episodes to show. If the show hasn’t already been cancelled the hiatus is almost sure to kill it anyway.
No Random Skip Weeks
Similar to the above, it is incredibly annoying when you tune in for a show only to find it not on. I understand that sometimes networks need to skip a week for special events: Christmas, the Superbowl etc but the disruption seems to be maximised rather than minimised. It isn’t too bad in the UK, generally only the network covering a sporting event interrupts its programming and there is a maximum of one weeks interruption for things like Christmas and Easter. American networks on the other hand, just seem to randomly decide not to air shows for the sheer hell of it. I can just imagine the program scheduler sitting in a meeting and saying; “It’s Bob’s dog’s birthday this week, better run repeats so he doesn’t miss anything.”, it genuinely seems that arbitrary.
Knowing that a show will be on from week to week makes it much easier to build momentum and for the audience to get excited about it.
No Day/Time Changes
This has to be the most obvious observation of all time, but if you change the day or time you air a show, you will definitely lose viewers. Put simply a lot of people watch TV when they have free time, if that free time no longer coincides with your show they will stop watching. Furthermore you won’t pick up viewers who’s free time now coincides with the show because they have missed the start of the season. It would be bad enough if there was one change, but some shows are shuffled around at random.
The first step in retaining viewers is simply not to annoy the hell out of them by making it difficult for them to continue watching the show. Next time I will look at how - heaven forbid - networks could attract viewers mid-season.
[712 Words]
Friday 21 May 2010
2010 Reading List - Quarter 2 Update
This is just a quick summary of my progress towards one of my Arbitrary Dividing Point In Time Resolutions. Some of you may have noticed the 2010 Reading List in the sidebar of the blog, i'm using this to keep track of what i have been reading each week.
You might be thinking: "But Steven, Quarter 2 isn't finished until the start of July, why are you updating now?". Well unlike the first quarter, i have been reading more than 1 book a week consistently since the start of April and consequently have finished my 14 books for the quarter in 7 weeks. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1) More Fiction - This quarter i read 4 fiction books and i finished them more quickly as they require less concentration (so i can read later into the night) and are generally more compelling than non-fiction books.
2) More Re-Reading - I re-read 3 of Malcolm Gladwell's books; other than the fact his writing is almost as compelling as well-written fiction, it is always faster to re-read a book than read it fresh.
The theme of 'influencing, marketing and sales' that i predicted in the Quarter 1 Update didn't quite materialise. The closest i came to those topics was Speak Human, which is almost an anti-marketing book - in a good way. In fiction i have made a start on reading some Sci-fi classics (more to come in Quarter 3) and two Neil Gaiman books (Neverwhere recommended by @TFerriss and American Gods as part of #1b1t) both of which were excellent. In non-fiction, the only lose theme i could claim is epistemology - how to we know what we think we know. While i had not previously made the connection - and it is not explicit - most of Malcolm Gladwell's work relates to epistemological failures; why what we think we know is wrong. The Knowing Doing Gap, The End of Faith and The Design of Business could also fall under this category.
I'm much happier with my reading rate now and am really enjoying it, so no predictions for a theme next quarter.
Other Arbitrary Dividing Point updates:
1. Business - No progress other than starting company.
2. Business - No progress other than starting company.
3. Travel - No progress, but expected it to be back-weighted in the year.
4. Reading - See Post Above.
5. Writing - Managed to write in my Moleskine every day since the last post.
6. Watching - Still watching 2 or 3 shows every day. Quite a few of the shows i watch just now are finishing and i will not be picking any up next year, so that should help.
7. Blog At Least Once A Week - Recently most of my posts have been pretty weak, but there have been a couple that i am reasonably happy with.
You might be thinking: "But Steven, Quarter 2 isn't finished until the start of July, why are you updating now?". Well unlike the first quarter, i have been reading more than 1 book a week consistently since the start of April and consequently have finished my 14 books for the quarter in 7 weeks. There are a couple of reasons for this:
1) More Fiction - This quarter i read 4 fiction books and i finished them more quickly as they require less concentration (so i can read later into the night) and are generally more compelling than non-fiction books.
2) More Re-Reading - I re-read 3 of Malcolm Gladwell's books; other than the fact his writing is almost as compelling as well-written fiction, it is always faster to re-read a book than read it fresh.
The theme of 'influencing, marketing and sales' that i predicted in the Quarter 1 Update didn't quite materialise. The closest i came to those topics was Speak Human, which is almost an anti-marketing book - in a good way. In fiction i have made a start on reading some Sci-fi classics (more to come in Quarter 3) and two Neil Gaiman books (Neverwhere recommended by @TFerriss and American Gods as part of #1b1t) both of which were excellent. In non-fiction, the only lose theme i could claim is epistemology - how to we know what we think we know. While i had not previously made the connection - and it is not explicit - most of Malcolm Gladwell's work relates to epistemological failures; why what we think we know is wrong. The Knowing Doing Gap, The End of Faith and The Design of Business could also fall under this category.
I'm much happier with my reading rate now and am really enjoying it, so no predictions for a theme next quarter.
Other Arbitrary Dividing Point updates:
1. Business - No progress other than starting company.
2. Business - No progress other than starting company.
3. Travel - No progress, but expected it to be back-weighted in the year.
4. Reading - See Post Above.
5. Writing - Managed to write in my Moleskine every day since the last post.
6. Watching - Still watching 2 or 3 shows every day. Quite a few of the shows i watch just now are finishing and i will not be picking any up next year, so that should help.
7. Blog At Least Once A Week - Recently most of my posts have been pretty weak, but there have been a couple that i am reasonably happy with.
Friday 14 May 2010
Note To Self:
Stop leaving blog posts until Friday.
There were at least 3 points throughout the week when I had a good idea for something to write about and some momentum, but decided to just wait until Friday. Now it is Friday and not only have I wasted the morning and a good part of the afternoon doing not a lot, but I just cut the tip of my left ring finger, making it rather painful to type (damn 's' being a common letter). So for the second week in a row, there will be no half-decent - or at least effortful - attempt at a post.
The worst thing is I finally have a desk and keyboard at a sensible height for comfortable typing, but I can't appreciate it due to the cut on my finger.
< / whinge >
There were at least 3 points throughout the week when I had a good idea for something to write about and some momentum, but decided to just wait until Friday. Now it is Friday and not only have I wasted the morning and a good part of the afternoon doing not a lot, but I just cut the tip of my left ring finger, making it rather painful to type (damn 's' being a common letter). So for the second week in a row, there will be no half-decent - or at least effortful - attempt at a post.
The worst thing is I finally have a desk and keyboard at a sensible height for comfortable typing, but I can't appreciate it due to the cut on my finger.
< / whinge >
Friday 7 May 2010
Been Electioneering
Yesterday i posted this digram just before going to vote:
And i think it maybe it requires a little more explanation.
Firstly i do care about democracy, voting and the results of elections. What i find it hard to do is care about something which i have an incredibly limited ability to change. Maybe it is because i'm not involved in a political party. Maybe it is because in the UK there is so little relationship between the overall percentage of votes in the country and the actual power of the political parties. Maybe it's because national democracy is such a huge averaging of public opinion that it is hard for anything to stand out.
So what would make me care more about party politics?
If there was more polarisation between the parties and i found myself strongly agreeing or disagreeing with their policies. (e.g. it is easy to disagree with the BNP).
If politics was more meaningful on a smaller scale and my communities preferences were less likely to amount to nothing because of the preferences of other areas (e.g. if Scotland became independent).
Who knows, maybe being able to be apathetic about political parties indicates a positive convergence in politics and policies...
Firstly i do care about democracy, voting and the results of elections. What i find it hard to do is care about something which i have an incredibly limited ability to change. Maybe it is because i'm not involved in a political party. Maybe it is because in the UK there is so little relationship between the overall percentage of votes in the country and the actual power of the political parties. Maybe it's because national democracy is such a huge averaging of public opinion that it is hard for anything to stand out.
So what would make me care more about party politics?
If there was more polarisation between the parties and i found myself strongly agreeing or disagreeing with their policies. (e.g. it is easy to disagree with the BNP).
If politics was more meaningful on a smaller scale and my communities preferences were less likely to amount to nothing because of the preferences of other areas (e.g. if Scotland became independent).
Who knows, maybe being able to be apathetic about political parties indicates a positive convergence in politics and policies...
Friday 30 April 2010
Writing On Writing - 30 April 2010
After reading Put Your Money Where Your Mouth is again, i realised that i am a hypocrite.
In that post, i used a great photo that i got from the Flickr Creative Commons pool. For anyone unfamiliar with Creative Commons, they are a suite of licenses for intelectual property (photos, writing, software etc) which are far more flexible and less restrictive than the more common Copyright licensing. With Copyright all rights are reserved, which means that the author must give explicit permission if you want to copy, share or reuse the intelectual property. Creative Commons on the other hand has a whole range of licenses covering just about everything between Copyright and Un-copyright. For example, you can allow someone to freely copy and alter your photo, as long as they credit you and don't use it for comercial purposes with an 'Attribution Non-Commercial' license. A complete list of the licensing options can be found here: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
So how does this make me a hypocrite? What i realised was, that although i was happy to use Creative Commons photos from Flickr, all of my photos on Flickr are Copyrighted. I remember when i signed up, the choice for the default license came up and i thought i would go for Copyright just to be on the safe side. The safe side of what i'm not quite sure, but i suspect like many other people i just stuck with what i knew. Revisiting that decision, i am pretty sure that i am never going to make money from my photos, so why bother restricting their use? In the unlikely event that someone did use one of my pictures to make money, it would only be because i had licensed it as Creative Commons, no-one would pay to license one of my pictures, so i would not be missing out. Realistically, like blogging i think i would be pretty stoked that someone liked something i had created.
In conclusion i am going to change all of my photos on Flickr from Copyright licenses to Creative Commons ... now i just have to hope that there is a way to change them all at the same time!
In other news, i am a bit happier with this weeks post than last weeks, i think it flows better and i am more clear in the point i am trying to make. The part i am really not sure about is the personal appeal at the end. Is it effective? Does it come off as too preachy? Is it annoying? Again i would be very grateful if you could comment with any thoughts on the above questions or the post in general.
PS You should check out the rest of danielle bigtooth.'s photos on Flickr, they are awesome.
Update 22:15GMT 30-April-2010: Batch license changes can be made on Flickr by logging in and going to: http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/license/batch/
Update 22:15GMT 30-April-2010: Batch license changes can be made on Flickr by logging in and going to: http://www.flickr.com/account/prefs/license/batch/
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Maybe it’s just me, but it seems impossible to turn on the news without seeing a story bemoaning the decline of some institution or another. From local shops, to community groups, to companies, there is never a shortage of members of the public prepared to whinge about how things are changing. The typical interview is so common and frequent that it has become a cliche; “Oh it’s terrible that < insert institution here > is closing”. However what most of the interviewees seem ignorant of, is that in a majority of cases they - and people like them - are the ones causing the decline.
I will never forget an interview for a news report on the decline of local shops. The reporter stopped a woman outside a new supermarket and asked her what she thought about the loss of local shops. Of course the woman spoke at length about how awful it was that high street shops were closing and that local jobs were being lost. Finally the reporter asked her whether she would continue to shop at the supermarket. To which the woman replied; “Of course, it is more convenient, cheaper and there is better parking”. She showed no inkling that there was a complete disconnect between what she claimed to believe and her actions.
The bottom line is that - as in the example above - there is normally a good reason for the change. Supermarkets take business away from local shops because they have everything under one roof, they are cheaper and they have more space for parking. Community groups break up because people aren’t prepared to put effort in to maintaining them. Steel mills close because they are more expensive than their rivals and customers demand the lowest prices regardless of where the money goes. Complaining about changes is not going to reverse them, only action will and it seems as though a lot of people are not prepared to back up their words with actions.
If someone is not prepared to put their money where their mouth is, then they should lose the right to complain.
I try to put my money where my mouth is. A recent example of this is the Art Space Tokyo project. I might not know much about art, or plan to go to Tokyo any time soon, but I was still prepared to spend $100 to back the project. I believe in the publishing model, I believe in high quality books and I believe in supporting people who provide excellent free information online. A couple of years ago The Flashbulb offered their latest album for download on a bit torrent website, but asked that you buy the CD if you enjoyed the music. I downloaded the album, enjoyed the music and bought the CD. I paid for something I could have had for free because I believe that people should pay for content they enjoy, even if they can get it for free. In both instances it would have been easy to avoid spending money, but I would have felt like a hypocrite for not acting in line with my beliefs. Last week I was tempted to complain that a book shop had gone out of business. Then I realised that if I had cared about it that much, I would have shopped there more and in reality it was not that big a loss. In that instance I changed a belief because the evidence showed that the belief was incorrect.
I urge you to look at your beliefs and ask yourself; am i prepared to put my money where my mouth is? Maybe you are unhappy about the decline of newspapers, but don’t buy newspapers regularly. Maybe you hate the boring hollywood blockbusters that monopolise cinema screens, but don’t go to see independent films when they are shown. Maybe you claim to support local music, but only go to see international bands. If your actions don’t reflect your beliefs, then you either need to change your actions or your beliefs. In an age when most non-essential needs can be met for free or very cheaply, it is important to put your money where your mouth is and support good ideas, even if they aren't perfect.
Like democracy, a small contribution to what you believe in might not make a difference alone. But if enough people put their money where their mouth is and actively support what they believe in, the things that really matter to society will be improved.
[750 Words]
Image by danielle bigtooth. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
I will never forget an interview for a news report on the decline of local shops. The reporter stopped a woman outside a new supermarket and asked her what she thought about the loss of local shops. Of course the woman spoke at length about how awful it was that high street shops were closing and that local jobs were being lost. Finally the reporter asked her whether she would continue to shop at the supermarket. To which the woman replied; “Of course, it is more convenient, cheaper and there is better parking”. She showed no inkling that there was a complete disconnect between what she claimed to believe and her actions.
The bottom line is that - as in the example above - there is normally a good reason for the change. Supermarkets take business away from local shops because they have everything under one roof, they are cheaper and they have more space for parking. Community groups break up because people aren’t prepared to put effort in to maintaining them. Steel mills close because they are more expensive than their rivals and customers demand the lowest prices regardless of where the money goes. Complaining about changes is not going to reverse them, only action will and it seems as though a lot of people are not prepared to back up their words with actions.
If someone is not prepared to put their money where their mouth is, then they should lose the right to complain.
I urge you to look at your beliefs and ask yourself; am i prepared to put my money where my mouth is? Maybe you are unhappy about the decline of newspapers, but don’t buy newspapers regularly. Maybe you hate the boring hollywood blockbusters that monopolise cinema screens, but don’t go to see independent films when they are shown. Maybe you claim to support local music, but only go to see international bands. If your actions don’t reflect your beliefs, then you either need to change your actions or your beliefs. In an age when most non-essential needs can be met for free or very cheaply, it is important to put your money where your mouth is and support good ideas, even if they aren't perfect.
Like democracy, a small contribution to what you believe in might not make a difference alone. But if enough people put their money where their mouth is and actively support what they believe in, the things that really matter to society will be improved.
[750 Words]
Image by danielle bigtooth. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic
Friday 23 April 2010
Writing On Writing - 23 April 2010
A Story Of Unconventional Publishing was my first attempt at two things I have posted about previously: planning and shipping.
To be honest, I’m not that happy with how the post turned out. While the plan did help focus and structure things somewhat, by the end even I’m not sure what my point was. I think I spent too long on the introduction and not long enough on what should have been the body. Shipping certainly helped me get something posted in time, however again I’m not terribly happy with the result. Even with the amount of time I set aside I was still rushed prior to the deadline.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it was better than it would have been without a plan and shipping on time is important. I also think I have learned a few useful things:
1. I need to have a very clear idea of what my point is first, then plan around that.
2. I need to leave more time for editing and proofing.
3. While working to a maximum word count was good, I found myself not only worrying about how to get under 750 words, but also that I would cut too much out.
It will be interesting to re-read the post tomorrow and see how I feel about it then.
I would really appreciate any feedback on A Story Of Unconventional Publishing, was there anything you liked? Anything that wasn’t clear? Anything that was just plain bad?
To be honest, I’m not that happy with how the post turned out. While the plan did help focus and structure things somewhat, by the end even I’m not sure what my point was. I think I spent too long on the introduction and not long enough on what should have been the body. Shipping certainly helped me get something posted in time, however again I’m not terribly happy with the result. Even with the amount of time I set aside I was still rushed prior to the deadline.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it was better than it would have been without a plan and shipping on time is important. I also think I have learned a few useful things:
1. I need to have a very clear idea of what my point is first, then plan around that.
2. I need to leave more time for editing and proofing.
3. While working to a maximum word count was good, I found myself not only worrying about how to get under 750 words, but also that I would cut too much out.
It will be interesting to re-read the post tomorrow and see how I feel about it then.
I would really appreciate any feedback on A Story Of Unconventional Publishing, was there anything you liked? Anything that wasn’t clear? Anything that was just plain bad?
A Story Of Unconventional Publishing
I followed a link to get more details about the project and ended up on Kickstarter. The idea of Kickstarter is quite simple; creators post projects with a minimum amount of money to be raised before the project will go ahead. They also offer various rewards for individual pledges above certain thresholds. In this case, due to the expense of printing a high quality physical book, the minimum pledge total was set at $15,000. Normally the creator would have to get this money from a bank, venture capitalist or publisher in exchange for a share of the profits, or at least interest payments. With Kickstarter the middleman is cut out, the customers put up the money, all of which goes to fund the project.
I love books, so I was blown away when I saw the photos of the first edition of Art Space Tokyo. From the silk screened cloth cover, to the impeccably set glossy pages, I knew I wanted a copy. I might not be terribly knowledgeable about art (far less Japanese art) and I have never been to Japan. At this point, even the prospect of going to Japan is a vague thought for the future, rather than a firm plan. So based on the subject matter of the book, I knew that justifying the purchase was not going to be easy.
I loved the idea of someone self-publishing to maintain the integrity of a book and I loved the idea of using Kickstarter to raise the money, however I couldn't quite bring myself to order a book I only had a tangential interest in. The average book I buy is around $20, so spending $65 on Art Space Tokyo seemed a little excessive. I read the Kickstarter page a few times, looking for an excuse to stump up the cash for the book, but it wasn’t until I realised who the author was that I knew I had to back the project.
Just after I finished my Books Vs E-Readers series of posts, I came across an article on Books In The Age Of The iPad. In an eloquent way it laid out the primary problems with e-book readers and the instances where physical books would still be the medium of choice for reading. It was presented in a very well designed manner, with custom diagrams to illustrate key points. Even the webpage containing the article supported the points being made. I also discovered that the author had written the best product review I have ever seen on the web: GF1 Field Test - 16 Days In The Himalayas. The review was interesting, engaging and presented in a very different way to most product reviews. The quality of the content and design of both of these web pages made the decision to back Art Space Tokyo obvious, so I pledged $66.
The interesting thing about Kickstarter is that the backers are almost as invested in the project as the creator. As a backer I want the project to go ahead, so I checked in regularly to see how the pledge total was progressing. After 15 days of hitting ctrl+r on the Kickstarter website and watching the total steadily rise, finally it broke the minimum funding. There are still 8 days before the deadline and because the minimum amount has been achieved the book is definitely getting made. Right now I am debating whether to increase my pledge to $100 so that I can get my name in the credits ... I think it would be really cool to have my name in a book. Unfortunately I am not sure if ‘being cool to have my name in a book’ is worth an extra $34. Thoughts?
The book is scheduled to be printed next month and dispatched in June, so not too long to wait. Check out the Kickstarter Page.
[746 Words]
Friday 16 April 2010
The Benefit Of Forced Focus
For the last few of years i haven't been watching a lot of films. I would occasionally go to the cinema, but i didn't really watch films on DVD or TV nearly as much as i used to. I was worried that spending a lot of my time on the internet and watching TV shows had degraded my ability to concentrate, to the point that i could no longer focus on one thing for 90 minutes or more.
There was however one strange exception to the rule, i really enjoyed films when i went to the cinema. My original thinking was that i enjoyed movies at the cinema because i was going to see films that i cared about seeing enough to make the effort to go to the cinema. That my enjoyment was related to the quality of the films rather than some innate property of the cinema. On reflection i think it is more likely that i enjoy films at the cinema more because i am forced to focus on the film completely. No internet, no instant messages, no e-mail notifications, no talking and no other distractions. Even the size of the screen and volume of the sound discourage other distractions. Don't get me wrong, i don't think i would enjoy a bad film just because i saw it at the cinema, but for good films i think focus has a big impact on my enjoyment.
While the cinema is great for films and concerts are great for music, i wonder if there is a way to force focus on computer based tasks and activities? Obviously there are software solutions like Rescue Time but there are always other things to distract you on a computer. Ever since computers became able to multi-task people tend to as well. It is interesting that currently the iPhone and iPad only allow you to run a single application at a time. They might be good devices for focus ... until iPhone OS 4.0 is released and they get multi-tasking.
There was however one strange exception to the rule, i really enjoyed films when i went to the cinema. My original thinking was that i enjoyed movies at the cinema because i was going to see films that i cared about seeing enough to make the effort to go to the cinema. That my enjoyment was related to the quality of the films rather than some innate property of the cinema. On reflection i think it is more likely that i enjoy films at the cinema more because i am forced to focus on the film completely. No internet, no instant messages, no e-mail notifications, no talking and no other distractions. Even the size of the screen and volume of the sound discourage other distractions. Don't get me wrong, i don't think i would enjoy a bad film just because i saw it at the cinema, but for good films i think focus has a big impact on my enjoyment.
While the cinema is great for films and concerts are great for music, i wonder if there is a way to force focus on computer based tasks and activities? Obviously there are software solutions like Rescue Time but there are always other things to distract you on a computer. Ever since computers became able to multi-task people tend to as well. It is interesting that currently the iPhone and iPad only allow you to run a single application at a time. They might be good devices for focus ... until iPhone OS 4.0 is released and they get multi-tasking.
Friday 9 April 2010
Balls!
Balls, managed to miss the blog duel deadline today.
In fairness i have been rather distracted by my dad starting a business. I spent the morning designing a logo, business cards and letterhead. Not being a graphic designer, the process was rather time consuming, at times frustrating, but ultimately quite satisfying. The logo isn't anything fancy, but trying to get everything pixel perfect in vector format was a challenge:
A large part of the afternoon was spent arguing accounting terms, styles and requirements with my mum, then prototyping various spreadsheets that will be required for cashflow, mileage and invoicing. Again time consuming and at times frustrating, but i think we have come up with a pretty good system.
Tomorrow i need to actually create the final versions of the spreadsheets and then design a really basic single page website. After all that is sorted, he should be good to go. I may have done hee-haw so far with my own business, but at least my training and research hasn't gone to waste ;-)
In other news, the votes are in and my blog posts will be a maximum of 750 words from now on. Hopefully it should be sufficiently challenging for some of the longer posts i have planned.
Seeing as i missed the deadline and this is a bit of a non-post, i will do 2 proper, real, hopefully interesting posts this week.
In fairness i have been rather distracted by my dad starting a business. I spent the morning designing a logo, business cards and letterhead. Not being a graphic designer, the process was rather time consuming, at times frustrating, but ultimately quite satisfying. The logo isn't anything fancy, but trying to get everything pixel perfect in vector format was a challenge:
A large part of the afternoon was spent arguing accounting terms, styles and requirements with my mum, then prototyping various spreadsheets that will be required for cashflow, mileage and invoicing. Again time consuming and at times frustrating, but i think we have come up with a pretty good system.
Tomorrow i need to actually create the final versions of the spreadsheets and then design a really basic single page website. After all that is sorted, he should be good to go. I may have done hee-haw so far with my own business, but at least my training and research hasn't gone to waste ;-)
In other news, the votes are in and my blog posts will be a maximum of 750 words from now on. Hopefully it should be sufficiently challenging for some of the longer posts i have planned.
Seeing as i missed the deadline and this is a bit of a non-post, i will do 2 proper, real, hopefully interesting posts this week.
Friday 2 April 2010
Blog Post Word Limit?
One thing i really enjoy about Twitter is that the limit of 140 characters really forces you to refine exactly what you want to get across in a tweet. You have to cut out all of the superfluous crap, be concise and often have to rethink how to write what you want to say.
I find that often my longer blogs posts are rather rambling and i indulge in as many words as i think i need to get my point across. One of the things @37Signals are always saying is; 'embrace constraints', so i suspect my posts would be better if i imposed a word limit on the length of any individual post.
My gut feel at the moment is to limit to 1000 words, but i am concerned that this might still be too long. I think my longest post was around 1400 words and the average is less than 1000, so it wouldn't really be a substantial cut.
I have put a poll at the top left of this page and will abide by whatever length gets the most votes.
I find that often my longer blogs posts are rather rambling and i indulge in as many words as i think i need to get my point across. One of the things @37Signals are always saying is; 'embrace constraints', so i suspect my posts would be better if i imposed a word limit on the length of any individual post.
My gut feel at the moment is to limit to 1000 words, but i am concerned that this might still be too long. I think my longest post was around 1400 words and the average is less than 1000, so it wouldn't really be a substantial cut.
I have put a poll at the top left of this page and will abide by whatever length gets the most votes.
Thursday 1 April 2010
2010 Reading List - Quarter 1 Update
This is just a quick summary of my progress towards one of my Arbitrary Dividing Point In Time Resolutions. Some of you may have noticed the 2010 Reading List in the sidebar of the blog, i'm using this to keep track of what I have been reading each week.
In the first quarter of the year, most of the books i was reading were inspirational for what i want to achieve in business. Some books were successful at inspiring me; The War Of Art, The Art Of The Start and Rework. Some ended up being downright depressing (The Management Myth) but all were interesting. After i noticed this pattern i decided to to finish the quarter with the book that originally inspired my interest in business improvement; Maverick. While i now know a lot more about manufacturing and business, it is still as relevant and inspirational as it was 5 years ago.
I haven't been quite as consistent in this resolution as i would have liked, a couple of times i was more than a week ahead and at least once i was a couple of weeks behind. Though overall i have averaged a book a week this quarter. Why quarterly updates? Well monthly seems like too frequent, at most there would be 4 or 5 books and it would be quite likely I would be ahead or behind where i should be. Also around the middle of March I was looking at my reading so far this year and i noticed a pattern in what i was reading.
I have decided that the theme for my next reading (though it might not last a whole quarter) is going to be; influencing, marketing and sales. It fits in with what i need to do with my business and is an area that i am currently not very well versed in. I will continue to update the reading list in the sidebar and am considering doing a summary of each book as i go.
Overall i could have read more, but i'm happy that i managed to squeeze in a bonus book this quarter, as my fiction/non-fiction ratio was getting a little skewed.
Other Arbitrary Dividing Point updates:
1. Business - No progress other than starting company.
2. Business - No progress other than starting company.
3. Travel - No progress, but expected it to be back-weighted in the year.
4. Reading - See Post Above.
5. Writing - Missed quite a few days when i got back from Australia, but managed every day in March.
6. Watching - I have cut down my TV viewing a lot, but still watching 2 or 3 shows every day. This should come down over the summer.
7. Blog At Least Once A Week - Although not originally on the list, in light of the Blog Duel it seems logical to include it. I've had a few crap cop-out/short posts, but also had a pretty epic series too. I'm aiming to be more regular, more consistent and better crafted going forward.
Thursday 25 March 2010
(un)Employed For 3 Months
Well i have now been - while technically not unemployed - not working for 3 months.
It hasn't felt like a holiday, it hasn't felt like work, it has just seemed empty. I haven't accomplished a lot and despite having nothing major to do i haven't breezed through nearly as many books as you might expect.
Upsides: I have cultivated quite a healthy beard and a hermit-like lifestyle.
Downsides: I haven't really made any progress towards making money or working out what to do.
Part of me thinks this is a bad thing, i could have been working and earning and suchlike for 3 months. Heck even if i hadn't been doing anything financially beneficial i could have been doing something more traditionally 'constructive'. On the other hand i have spent a lot of time thinking about some important issues that would have come up sooner or later (a future post perhaps), so the time hasn't been totally wasted.
It hasn't felt like a holiday, it hasn't felt like work, it has just seemed empty. I haven't accomplished a lot and despite having nothing major to do i haven't breezed through nearly as many books as you might expect.
Upsides: I have cultivated quite a healthy beard and a hermit-like lifestyle.
Downsides: I haven't really made any progress towards making money or working out what to do.
Part of me thinks this is a bad thing, i could have been working and earning and suchlike for 3 months. Heck even if i hadn't been doing anything financially beneficial i could have been doing something more traditionally 'constructive'. On the other hand i have spent a lot of time thinking about some important issues that would have come up sooner or later (a future post perhaps), so the time hasn't been totally wasted.
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