He hacks. He blogs.

High fidelity

2012-05-01T06:58:15-07:00

Years of my life have been spent pursuing high fidelity home audio. Before leaving college I added $1500 of audio equipment to my debt load. Securing a decent job was a big help in never regretting that decision, but I never regretted that decision. I pushed those MB Quart speakers hard for the five years between buying the system and having kids. Now it gets abused less for Kind of Blue than “Despicable Me.”

In the past year I realized that I spend a majority of my day in a home office, working and listening to music. The task was again at hand to higher-fidelity my audio. This time I got into more classic components. Still spending a non-trivial stack of money, I sought out ADS speakers from the early 80’s and a turntable to match. It was great fun to build this office system. Countless improvements no doubt remain. It sounds damn fine. Damn fine.

Our family camera is the now classic Nikon D40. I’m not going to call this a prosumer camera, but it is definitely nice. With this camera it is much easier to snap children who always seem to be at a thirty frames per second to our twenty-four.

At work we are pretty adamant about quality over quantity. I think the term “quality” can be confused. My pursuance of high-performing media equipment is not the most important aspect of quality. There is value in the accurate reproduction of a performance. It is minuscule compared to the value of the original performance itself.

While I love to hear James Spaulding harmonize with Freddie Hubbard in as pure a way as possible, I do not begrudge the bewhited iPod listener his musical experience. Photo snobs go on about Instagram being a place only wannabes enjoy, but this is far from true. Any Hefe-izing or hyper-focusing is not going to change the fact that the best photos capture a moment in time for eternity.

The essence of software quality is also not about the correctness of reproduction. Quality is not applying design patterns liberally to your code, but creating tight and streamlined features. The new hotness has no place in a quality system - unless it does. There is no objective quality checklist, but rather solving problems in as straightforward a way as you can muster.

New browsers and new web standards will not save your software. You must now, as always, capture an idea in code. Do not lament your lack of experience. You may not deliver that Nikon D7000 photorealism, but to start a simple cellphone camera shot will do. The joy of software is that once a quality idea is captured it can be recaptured again and again until the beauty becomes magnificent.

Improvise

2012-04-24T08:36:14-07:00

Improvisation as a business strategy has gained more and more traction over the years. The improv theaters in every major city offer consulting and team building exercises. The last two conferences I attended began with an improv session.

The best idea we can borrow from the improvisation world is the concept of “YES, AND.” From “Bossypants” by Tina Fey:

As an improviser, I always find it jarring when I meet someone in real life whose first answer is no. “No, we can’t do that.” “No, that’s not in the budget.” “No, I will not hold your hand for a dollar.” What kind of way is that to live?

Spending your time disagreeing is often a slow, frustrating path to indecision. Even if your goal is to get to a different place than your colleague is currently occupying, it’s likely faster to get there together. This does not mean suppressing your ideas:

To me YES, AND means don’t be afraid to contribute. It’s your responsibility to contribute. The next rule is MAKE STATEMENTS. This is a positive way of saying “Don’t ask questions all the time.” In other words: Whatever the problem, be part of the solution. Don’t just sit around raising questions and pointing out obstacles.

YES, AND is a powerful way to work together. You will come to a discussion with your own ideas. Make statements, but don’t let your ideas drown out the ideas of those around you.

Listen, consider, adjust. Together.

Published on the Harvest blog.

Mise en place

2012-04-19T06:36:02-07:00

Previously I compared cooking with software development. Time to stretch that analogy further with more discussion of “Kitchen Confidential.”

Mise en place is the religion of all good line cooks. Do not fuck with a line cook’s “meez” – meaning their set-up, their carefully arranged supplies of sea salt, rough-cracked pepper, softened butter, cooking oil, wine, back-ups and so on.

The difference between a line cook on her feet for four straight hours serving 100’s of meals in tight sychronicity and a programmer jotting off 100’s of lines of code at her desk is pretty stark. Each is a craft, however. Organization is a factor in the success of a craftsman. Not some sort of organization edict, but a unique understanding of how she works. Organization is not only where the tools are, but what they are and how they are configured.

A great developer will not take kindly to forced diversions from her preferred toolset. A great developer loves to see how others work. A great developer devours new techniques, increasing her kinetic energy in relation to mere mortals.

Working clean, constantly wiping and cleaning, is a desireable state of affairs for the conscientious line cook.

Organization means different things to different people. My idea of clean may be stomach turning to you. I am convinced those who embrace disruptive open office settings and constant Twitter pings on their computer are not being honest with themselves. Experimentation with a calmer, cleaner environment would lead to greater success in most cases.

One who has put her tools in place is likely of an organized and focused mind. She knows her tools, all within her reach. Right as they are needed.

Do not fuck with her meez.

Craftsmen

2012-04-12T20:20:01-07:00

On vacation I read “Kitchen Confidential” by Anthony Bourdain. Aside from being an incredibly entertaining book there were also some intriguing parallels between cooking and software development.

Cooking is a craft, I like to think, and a good cook is a craftsman – not an artist. There’s nothing wrong with that: the great cathedrals of Europe were built by crafstmen – though not designed by them.

“Design” becomes a tricky word when talking about software development. There is process to software design. Problem solving and planning. Putting together the pieces based on research and years of experience. The overarching vision of the end software product is not necessarily part of the “software design” process.

Some have a knack for the craft of software. Others a knack for the art of software. Some are capable of standing on both sides of the line effectively. Few are able to hold this stance for long. The focus at various times is on craft or art, but rarely both at once.

I’ll generally take a standup mercenary who takes pride in his professionalism over an artist any day. When I hear “artist”, I think of someone who doesn’t think it necessary to show up at work on time. More often than not their efforts, convinced as they are of their own genius, are geared more to giving themselves a hard-on than satisfying the great majority of dinner customers.

The art of software can get out of hand at times, losing focus due to the necessary and unnecessary experimentation on the path it follows. The ever-growing demand for software requires a great deal more craftsmen than artists. Great craftsmen are a valuable commodity. Those able to mentor the less experienced are indespensible.

Quick alert

2012-02-09T15:03:53-08:00

I frequently have the need jot off a reminder to myself. Pick up The Kid from school in two hours. Don’t forget to drop tax paperwork off at lunch. My desire was for a natural-language way to create these alerts quickly without interrupting my workflow.

You’re thinking “just make an event on your phone.” That is interruptive and slow. You say “don’t you have Siri?!” No, and where’d I set my phone again?

My first thought was to build a Ruby gem that allowed me to type into my console and schedule a text message to my phone. Alternatively it would schedule emails and even phone calls. I built the basics of the gem. Syntax:

> alert remember lunch in 30 days

Using chronic and a few tricks, that worked. Ah, but I needed a web service to receive the reminder, schedule it, and intermittently run jobs to notify me. I could share this with the world! And the world could share its requests, not to mention its downtime, with me!

Then I remembered iCloud exists. I dug around for a short time trying to figure out how to get my library to talk to iCal. That was frustrating. That’s when I found Fantastical and for $20 my workflow is now:

Create an “alerts” calendar in iCal
Make sure your calendar is syncing to your phone
Set Fantastical to default to “alerts” calendar
Set Fantastical to default alert “Message with Sound” 0 minutes before event
Hit ctrl-option-space and type “remember lunch in 30 minutes”

Much better. Fantastical’s exceptional natural language processing takes over, iCloud gets the alert to my phone, and I’m back to work.

Years on

2012-02-04T14:32:29-08:00

Recently I shuttered my first Ruby on Rails app, Scrawlers. Scrawlers launched nearly five years ago. The goal was to bring consistent writing to the people in the form of 100-word stories. The long term goal was to bring the writing workshop to the web. That goal was never achieved.

In the process of building Scrawlers I also killed my prior career as an enterprise programmer. Scrawlers was, even more than a platform for writing, a way for me to get familiar with Rails. It was a link I could put in my cover letter. It was damn fun.

Shortly after swinging open the doors to Scrawlers, inviting the first outsiders in, I also started working with these guys. Ten days into my relationship with Harvest, I blogged: “It’s been a blast doing work that interests me to the point of addiction.” It has been a wild ride, from being the fourth person on the team to today’s 19-member team.

Scrawlers eventually withered on the vine. A four-year-old project with little uptake feels more like a chore than a pleasure. The lack of success for Scrawlers does not mean it was a failure. Beyond simply allowing me a playground to learn Ruby and Rails, it played a vital role in catching the eye of my current employer. Dinking with a project is often a joy. Releasing it to the world is a pain. It separates the men from the boys. (Sorry, but that’s the cliché.)

When looking to change lanes in your career, coming to your desired employer with a passion for their products and your work is a must. It gets your foot in the door. Proving you are not too timid to launch, not too distracted to finish, gets you over the mantle and shaking hands with your new teammates.

Books read 2011

2012-01-23T11:56:13-08:00

My goal when making this list last year was to read more books in 2011. While I did a fair bit of online reading in 2011, I was able to cut back and really up my time with books. I’m a bit sad that only one technical book made the list, and it was only half-read. I’m in the middle of several technical, or “deep,” books. When I make the list for 2012 it will probably appear that I was a heavy technical reader. In reality it will have just taken me a couple years to get through them.

To the list…

The Call of the Wild, Jack London

For some reason I had never read this before. It was fantastic and I plan to read more Jack London. Once I got to the middle of the book the chapters started flying by. I grew up with dogs, but haven’t been a dog person as an adult. This book definitely brought back some memories for me. I was surprised how attached I became to a non-anthropomorphized animal character.

The Passionate Programmer, Chad Fowler

I was a bit surprised by how much corporate advice is in this book, though I probably shouldn’t have been. I guess I just wasn’t familiar with the details of Fowler’s background. This is an excellent book for anyone in the corporate programming/IT gig. Even for me, I highlighted a ton of text.

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L’Engle

I definitely read this 20 (or more) years too late. The characters are such symbols that they have hardly a mite of backstory. The great themes feel a little overwrought given the shallow development of the characters. I’m guessing I would have liked this alright in fifth grade or so, but reading it today was an exercise in filling up my nerd stats sheet.

Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell

I found the book interesting, but not entirely convincing. The examples are hand-picked and not as universal as portrayed. Having children, I really did find it interesting how older children are generally treated as “advanced” in school and sports, leading to a sort of repression of skills for those that happened to be born later in the school year.

Classic Baseball, Walter Iooss Jr.

This is kind of cheating as Classic Baseball is by-in-large a book of photography. But if you’re a baseball fan you’ll just drool over these photos. Great action shots, great moments.

Poke the Box, Seth Godin

A nearly empty book of 84 pages. Godin comes up with an obtuse metaphor for starting (Poke the Box!) and then twists it 15 different ways. He never settles on a solid thesis. Along the way he mangles the language, puts way too much emphasis on failure and way too little emphasis on quality. I’ve liked Godin books in the past, but this one read like a rushed series of blog posts mashed together. Some fault falls on the editing since ideas contradict each other within a few pages. Laying out the contradictions 20-30 pages apart would have pulled the wool over the eyes a lot more effectively.

To get my full review, find the book I wrote in as part of The Domino Project. A simple review does no justice to my dislike of this book. My inline comments capture the mood as I was reading it.

Baseball Bafflers, Fastball Makov

Another one of those baseball trivia books. How many of these have I read? I can’t count. It was a gift, so I read it.

Lonely Avenue, Nick Hornby

Four short stories by Nick Hornby were included in this deluxe edition of the collaborative album by Hornby and Ben Folds. Each short story is outstanding. It’s amazing to me that I’ve never read a Hornby book before. I’ll be sure to remedy that soon.

The Power of Less, Leo Babauta

This book reads like a book written by a blog author using a lot of his existing blog content to fill the pages. You know the drill. Odd repetition of ideas across chapters is a sure sign. At least he didn’t outright contradict himself like some books I know. Anyway, it was to be expected since Babauta writes the popular blog zen habits.

To me it read like a calmer version of Getting Things Done. A lot of the same ideas are included, but in a less pragmatic and more holistic way. I do wonder what the relationship is between Babauta and Getting Things Done. It wouldn’t surprise me if that was where he started his journey.

I particularly liked his angle on nutrition, exercise and forming habits. It’s a powerful idea to start forming habits with activities that are so simple it’s almost funny. For instance, exercise 5 minutes per day for a week, then add 5 minutes each week until a month has passed. You should have a habit by then, even though you’re just getting to 20 minutes of exercise per day. I like it.

The Lost Symbol, Dan Brown

One more Dan Brown book, “read” over 6 months via the car stereo. This is really the perfect format for Brown books. You don’t think too hard about it and just let the craziness wash over you. My wife and I kind of rolled our eyes at times through the book, but we were reasonably entertained. Seventeen hours of entertainment.

Fantasyland, Sam Walker

I just started playing rotisserie baseball in 2011 after having played fantasy football for years. A few years ago I gave up fantasy football because I spent too much time on the game. I also kind of dislike football on general principle. I love baseball, however, and anything that adds to my enjoyment of the game seems worthwhile to me. In moderation.

Moderation is not the story in Fantasyland. Sam Walker spends tens of thousands of dollars trying to crack the nut that is Tout Wars, an invite-only, expert rotisserie league. The story starts slowly, but as a rotisserie player myself I was pretty engrossed by the middle and read quickly to the end. Great book for anyone with a strong interest in rotisserie baseball.

The Man Who Killed His Brother, Stephen R. Donaldson

My favorite fantasy-turned-sci-fi-turned-fantasy author is Stephen R. Donaldson. Years ago when I learned he wrote some hard-boiled detective novels under a pseudonym, of course I bought them. Set them on my self.

I finally read the first book in the series and it was pretty decent. This book was written in 1980. Donaldson is not as skilled at building a world of human mystery as he is at building an entirely new world out of nothing. The mystery has been done better by many an author. But I’m encouraged that he figures it out in the later books. Character development is outstanding as always with Donaldson. His depiction of Mick Axebrewder, a drunk coming off the sauce, is what I imagine to be spot on.

The Greedy Bastard Diary, Eric Idle

Back when Eric Idle came through Minneapolis on his last tour, a friend of mine worked as an usher at Pantages Theater. As a massive Python fan since childhood, he was excited as could be. So when I saw this book, a memoir written while on the road on that same tour, for $2 at a library sale I had to gobble it up.

It’s a fast, surprisingly touching read. Idle does his share of name dropping, but I still got the sense that he is a decent, down-to-earth sort of guy. He shared some spectacular details about his marriage and his deep friendship with George Harrison. Yes, that George Harrison.

Still, you gotta be a pretty big Python fan to enjoy this. I did. And then I passed it on to my friend.

Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

What can I say? Just a spectacular book. Full of the imagery, depth of character, and themes that you might expect from this Nobel Prize winner. The story is complicated yet down-home and it just barrels on until the end. Beautifully written.

Masters of Doom, David Kushner

For someone who grew up gaming around the time of the Doom arrival, this book was greatly interesting. The development of Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake was a roller coaster ride of can-do, pizza and Ferraris. The insights into business and technology innovation were nice, though not extremely frequent.

The Pleasure of My Company, Steve Martin

I thought the main character and his mental … hurdles were consistent. Really, Martin wrote quite well here. Yet I wasn’t ever fully invested or interested in the main character. Kind of similar to my reaction to ho-hum character study movies. The small bits of humor didn’t translate for me. I liked the book, but didn’t love it.

Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman

I think you can gauge my response here.

Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson

This is my first Neal Stephenson (listened on audio). I quite enjoyed it, though perhaps not to the degree I expected. The general idea and the intriguing near-future sci-fi predictive nature of the book was pretty awesome. Most of the action was well described. I enjoyed visualizing it.

I tend to like historical philosophical connections made in a book, but I do prefer the connections to be light. This tome got a bit deep into the philosophical side, interrupting the overall flow of the book. But overall, I very much liked it.

The Android’s Dream, John Scalzi

This was a good Scalzi. I didn’t love it, but a quick read and great for a vacation. Humor abounds right from the get-go as a murder-by-fart is planned. Seriously. You know you’re not in for a high-minded adventure, and you’re fine with it.

Switch, Chip & Dan Heath

Lots of interesting anecdotes. The charts in the back of the book could be useful as reminders. I don’t think this is a world-changer, but might be a good skim when looking to make some big changes.

Home Game, Michael Lewis

The stories were spot on given my experience at fatherhood, which mirrors Lewis’s: three kids, same ages, first two daughters, etc. Father territory only, however.

Paul Rand, Steven Heller

I was reminded of being back in school reading this book. The representations of Rand’s work were quite good. I really enjoyed looking at all he accomplished. But the reading side of this book really was a trudge. I don’t think I wrote down a single note from the entire text.

Agent to the Stars, John Scalzi

I’m lazy and I like a good pulp science fiction book. Scalzi is my go-to guy for this genre. This was his first book, edited a bit from the original manuscript. I think it shows that it is his first book, but the wit and science (but not too much science) is there. Ultimately each of his books feel like adaptations from a screenplay. It would really surprise me if a bevy of them are not eventually found onscreen.

Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, Why the Lucky Stiff

I don’t know if I should mark this as read. I’ve gotten half way through the book and I’ve given up. It’s just not my cup of tea. I’m not a Ruby beginner, so nothing to gain there. (I do hope no one has considered the examples to be good form. Some are very poor.) The “story” is completely impossible for me to follow. I’ve enjoyed my share of absurd, dark humor, but this one didn’t work for me. I’m taking a risk because perhaps it all makes sense in the end.

Taking nothing away from Why. He is much respected and my silly opinion on this one bit of his legacy should not diminish others’ thoughts on him in any way.

Books read with children

The kids are getting older and the book reading is getting more interesting. So I include them here in list form.

Ginger Pye, Eleanor Estes
Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White
The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner
A Coyote’s in the House, Elmore Leonard
The Tale of Desperaux, Kate DiCamillo
A Series of Unfortunate Events (books 1-6), Lemony Snicket

Drawing dots

2012-01-07T19:00:09-08:00

Kim Ku, Harvest designer, has been blogging about her 2012 ideas. Quite inspiring. Today:

As a kid, I drew lots of random dots on pieces of paper and challenged myself to make drawings using all of them. It became more of an exercise of making the best of the circumstances/materials you have.

I have spent a lot of time over the past few years figuring out the best tools to do my work. From a fancy Mac for coding to a spiffy notebook for scribbling mockups. I am not going to argue against picking the best tools for the job. A snappy computer makes a huge difference.

Unwrapping the books and pens is satisfying, but I sometimes find them too nice. Paying three or four times the market rate for a notebook makes me think twice about using it. It is good to be reminded that even the simplest tools allow me to draw dots.

User Groups

2011-12-14T20:53:40-08:00

The Minnesota Ruby users group has been a giant influence on my career. I have never spoken at the group. I rarely speak up during Q&A. Funny thing is that hardly matters when it comes to meeting people, being recognized as a serious programmer, and building the connections that make a career.

I did not actually talk to anyone at the first few meetings I attended in 2007. Well, the organizer stopped by to say hello to the new face. That’s it. It turns out being there is well over half the battle.

Being there makes your face recognizable. Being there means eventually you will talk to someone. Being there means you will recognize other new faces and become the person who first welcomed them to the group. Being there shows other frequent attendees that you are serious about programming.

Presenting is a valuable exercise. I definitely encourage you to seek out that opportunity. The starting point is just being there – making it a habit. You will meet people that expand your mind on various topics you thought you knew before. You might meet someone you will work with in the future, whether on a side project or a paying gig.

Have local langauge/software development events? Attend. Please attend. It is an outstanding way to keep your career fields fertile.

Feynman

2011-06-17T11:29:33-07:00

At long last I finally read Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! It’s a wonderful look inside the life of the quirky physicist, Richard Feynman. The man experienced life like few others, and his writing is surprisingly open and accessible.

A few passages really hit me. Early on he describes various jobs he had as a youth. He was always trying improve how things worked, from cutting beans to manning a switchboard. The lesson: “I learned there that innovation is a very difficult thing in the real world.” Innovation should not be taken lightly. It’s very hard.

As a teenager Feynman taught himself a lot about math. He developed many skills outside the traditional education system. “A different box of tools” is his description of it. In grad school he became known as a sort of integral guru: “I got a great reputation for doing integrals, only because my box of tools was different from everybody else’s.” Diverse experience is of great benefit, even in the seemingly restricted world of mathematics.

Feynman was involved in the Manhattan Project. As work ramped up, there were all kinds of questions outside of physics that needed answered. Securing information from enemy spies was a bit of a passion for Feynman - he was very interested in lock picking. He was constantly breaching security in order to prove that paperwork wasn’t stored safely enough. “Los Alamos was a very co-operative place, and we felt it our responsibility to point out things that should be improved.”

The California State Board of Education asked Feynman to sit on a panel judging math and science books. This panel would help determine which books were in the curriculum. He got in a bit of a fight over expense reimbursements. He did not understand how the Board could trust him with the education of future generations, but would not trust him when he said he took a flight to San Francisco and it cost $X. “I feel that human beings should treat human beings like human beings.” Obviously.

After winning the Nobel Prize, Feynman speaking engagements were in high demand. He did not enjoy speaking to crowds with varying levels of knowledge. “My problem is, I like to please the people who come to hear me, and I can’t do it if everybody and his brother wants to hear: I don’t know my audience.” He preferred to speak to a niche. A niche he could understand and to whom he could provide value.

My favorite lesson of the entire book was what I’ll call Feynman’s Law of Play. This page covers it nicely. Feynman found an interesting problem, he studied it, he explained it. It wasn’t directly important at all. But it led to something. It was interesting to him and it led to bigger, more profound discoveries. Nobel Prize-worthy discoveries.

Habit

2011-05-04T14:56:21-07:00

Through my teenage years I spent a lot of time having fictional conversations with my brother using a high-pitched British accent. The characters of these conversations were female − usually our mother, grandmother, or sister. Through no planning us brothers developed a habit of representing women in our conversation with the feminine voice of Monty Python. The habit stuck for decades, annoying all of the beloved women in our lives.

Habits can be bad even when the general activities involved are good. Twitter has been a part of my daily life for the past four years. As a physically isolated developer of websites, it gives me a great opportunity to communicate with people I’ve met along the way as well as with people I wish to meet in the future. Damn if it isn’t addicting though.

Improving my relationship with Twitter over the past few months took incremental steps. First I used the concept of habit fields to address the muscle memory I had developed while working on my computer. Any lag in my work or even my thought process was an opportunity to see what the river of tweets had to offer. I finally blocked Twitter on my computer, making the activity entirely phone-bound. To build a true habit field, I began only checking Twitter from a comfy chair in my office. I started developing a location tied to my habit and it worked well.

As the habit field did its work, I took another week off the grid in March. Giving up the constant distractions was much easier this time. I was looking forward to it leading up to the week away. Two weeks off the grid, a habit field, and three months later I am now able to check Twitter only once every day or two. I don’t read unto completion, choosing to check my mentions and read ten or twenty recent tweets before dropping away. My time commitment to Twitter has been reduced by an order of magnitude.

A side effect of this is a drastic reduction in the number of articles being fed to Instapaper by way of my Twitter feed. There was value in the articles I was reading prior, but a man has only so much time to read. With the time saved I have read nearly as many books in the first quarter of 2011 as I had in all of 2010. Rediscovering long-form reading has been a joy.

Habit is a powerful behavior. It can make fine things for moderation become obsession. It can also help bring important activities to your daily schedule. Whether your habit is just annoying like the put-on voice of an English matron or actively intrusive to your precious time, the key is being aware of the habit. Then decide how you are going to hone it into healthy behavior.

30 days of exercise

2011-04-08T21:09:20-07:00

Recently I read The Power of Less. The biggest take away for me was the techniques the author uses to develop habits. Form habits with the smallest, simplest activity that could reasonably be considered useful. Keep the activity up for 30 days. Thereafter slowly build on the newly formed habit.

A prime example is exercise. I am terrible at keeping up with exercise. It is not a habit that comes easy to me. I like exercise that goes with an activity like basketball. Yet the injury risk of team sports does not appeal to me.

I am beginning a 30-day challenge. It starts simple: 5 minutes of exercise every day for a week. I’ll add 5 minutes to the daily allotment the following week and so on until exercising 20 minutes per day the last week of the month. If that doesn’t form a habit, I’m not sure what will.

Care to join me with your own 30-day challenge? I plan to keep things public on Twitter. If Twitter’s not your thing, feel free to email me via the link in the footer. I’m accessible!

Dive deep

2011-03-25T20:48:23-07:00

I did not get into buying music until the CD age, when I was a teenager. I bought a few discs over those initial months. Most were embarrassing, but I loved spinning them. It was that time in my life when I really started discovering things for myself. I listened the crap out of those albums.

A friend was over and we were listening to one of the contractual-obligation Prince albums. I wondered aloud why anyone would ever buy a new album for his collection before he had fully experienced all of the existing albums he owned. I really felt it was an obligation for a consumer. Give that album a chance. Know which track number goes with which title. Heck, know all the titles. In fact, know all the lyrics, too!

Jump to the 21st century and you find me a collector. Over the past decade I’ve collected CDs, DVDs, books and magazines. You name a consumable and I’ve probably overbought it. As the decade rolled to a close, I figured out how to curb my habit of buying “stuff,” but that did not stop me from continuing to collect.

My new collection was trivial knowledge. Yeah, I’ve heard that band. Granted, only one time on Rdio and I remember nothing beyond the band’s name. Sure, I know about optimistic locking in Rails. Come to think of it, I know that it is a thing, but I haven’t done even cursory reading about it. Yes I’ve heard of books. No I don’t read them. I’m too busy on Twitter and reading blog posts.

Welcome 2011, home of my new goal to spend more time diving deep. A breadth of trivial knowledge is great, but it doesn’t take commitment. It doesn’t take depth of thought. It takes skimming. There are deeply considered blog posts out there, but I don’t think I deeply consider them while reading the information.

I now spend most of my time on Rdio listening to an album a few times. It helps me realize things that I didn’t know about my musical tastes. For instance, I actually do like Vampire Weekend. Entire albums of Vampire Weekend.

I’m reading books again. I’m doing more technical reading. I’m taking notes on the technical reading. I’m reading in depth about things I’ve been ignoring for years now.

It’s actually pretty awesome, breaking the cycle. The modern age is wonderful. No, I’m not going to give up Twitter or blogs or any of that stuff. Being smarter about my relationship with that information is what I need. Making it a habit to dive deep in all aspects of my life is a great way to enforce this behavior.

SXSW 2011

2011-03-08T20:22:19-08:00

For the second time I have the opportunity to attend the SXSWi conference in Austin, Texas. This trip I will be joined in attendance by a large contingent of Harvest teammates. I am most excited to see these folks again since I have not seen my colleagues in person since November.

I first attended SXSWi in 2009. It is an eye-opening event. The vast options for talks, parties, activities, and food are overwhelming. The tendency, especially for newcomers, is to overdo it early in the weekend and crash toward the end of the conference. I am not going to say “you’re doing it wrong” because you’re probably not. The thing starts on the weekend, after all. Just be safe, folks.

SXSWi stands in stark contrast with developer conferences I have attended. There are a ton more “type A” personalities at SXSWi, which is overwhelming for an introvert such as myself. In 2010 there were over 14,000 registrants for the interactive portion of the festival, which in itself is a staggering number. Given that amount of people, naturally there are millions of dollars poured into downtown Austin. Adding a lot of glitz and glam to an already stupefying display is the fact that you will probably see some recognizable entertainment personalities. See, the SXSW Film Festival is taking place at the same time as the Interactive Festival.

My favorite part of attending in 2009 was not all of the activity around the web or technology. My favorite part was not the glitz or the Benjamins being dropped. My favorite part was getting together with pockets of developers for meals, drinks or general chit-chat. Almost all of the people I’ve kept in touch with over the two years following were from these interactions.

This is the greatest challenge of SXSWi - finding a way to make connections. If you’re in marketing or a social media logorrheist blasting your message at as many people as possible, then what better place to do your online thing in meatspace? If you’re involved in any myriad of specialized “interactive” activities, whether it be UX design, user testing, programming, or whatever, be prepared to put in some work to have a meaningful experience.

Make it easy

2011-02-14T06:47:34-08:00

I do a lot of side projects. “But how do you find the time?” you ask? My trick is not one of skill, but laziness. Whenever I start moving on a side project idea I try to find any way I can to make version one easy.

Take Paste Forward (please!) - a very simple service and I wanted the software to be written in no time. Given the amount of time I have for these things, writing and supporting my own email slurper was out of the question. I noticed Heroku was running a beta with CloudMailin - a perfect fit. Then I searched around and found a well-written Pastie gem to tie things up. I was in business.

Admittedly those steps were obvious. Finding a service that does work for you for free and finding an open source library that connects to an API-less service is definitely step one. For my next obvious trick? Sinatra! I’ve used Sinatra for seven side projects, including this blog here. The cute thing is some of those side projects are hardly more than static sites. Sinatra works great for getting a static site out there on Heroku for free. Building something with a mite of complexity, but a very minimal set of page types? Look at Sinatra as a quick way to get your site running.

Sometimes I’ll build a site (or page, really) that includes a small bit of data which could change from time to time. I like to use YAML to serialize that data, making it easier to update as needed. An obvious examples is the YAML file in my simple Magic Lunch Ball open source project. Perhaps less obvious, the project data on my homepage is also stored in a YAML file. Editing my project list is easier in the YAML file than in HTML. Plus the HTML is more concise with that little bit of Ruby looping thrown in.

Hai to the Ku is just a JavaScript app. Using the Twitter API and JSONP, tweets are gathered as the page is loaded guaranteeing an always-fresh stream of tweet-zen. Back when I wrote Get Hoffed (a tragically retired site that was the source for Hoff photos and tweets on the internet), I wanted to try out one of the static site generators that were about. So I got to know StaticMatic and built a little Ruby script that would update the photo and tweet content twice daily. StaticMatic would generate the static pages which would be served to eager Hoff fanatics quick, quick.

The truth is, while lazy leads the way in these side project decisions, there is a fair bit of curiosity that goes into the tech choices as well. I first used Sinatra on Follow Cost. Sinatra was definitely something I wanted to give a spin. What a great side benefit it is to learn a new technology while building something fast. Most importantly, completing a minimum viable product rather than avoiding it for dread of “loading up the stack” is a gigantic benefit. Don’t let the size of your typical working environment be your reason not to get things done. Use laziness to your advantage.

Nesting in code

2011-01-23T06:04:41-08:00

My wife is pregnant and our third daughter will be arriving within the next few weeks. It’s an expectant time. The baby could come any day now and basically be considered full term. We’re ready for her to be here so we can get on with taking care of her every second of the day for the next year.

You could say I’m a bit of an old hand at this whole process. I’ve done it twice before and I recognize my reaction to the phases of pregnancy. Right about this time with my previous daughters, I was in full on nesting mode. For me this phase of shuffling, sorting and organizing lasts until a bit after the baby arrives.

Typically discussed is the female nesting instinct that goes along with pregnancy. This is a very practical form of nesting: get the hospital bag packed, attend to any loose ends at work, make sure there are enough baby clothes washed and suitable for wearing. It’s a pretty well-honed evolution.

Some, especially my wife, find my form of nesting to be quite the opposite of practical. Right around the time our second daughter was born, I gutted two of our closets to organize them. This included buying shelving at a hardware store, assembling and mounting said shelving, discussing the merits of putting this there or that here, and all the other stuff that goes along with a non-handy man trying to be handy. This was precisely the opposite of how I should have been helping manage a household of three-but-now-four, given the new baby and all.

I have learned my lesson. This time around I’m using that nesting energy and applying it to code. Clean a little here, organize a little there. As you can imagine, this particular type of, well, motivation is not ideal for scientific code magic. It is perfect for cleaning up all the cruft and pulling off some simple ideas. On to that buried lede…

Snapped

A couple of years ago a colleague and I were in the market for a simple photo blog. We wanted each photo to be featured on a single page. We wanted a large format like The Big Picture. We wanted administration of the photos to be a snap. We wanted to the pages to load in a snap. And we wanted installation on, say, a Dreamhost account to be simple.

So we created Pharm, and the initial results were encouraging. The design was outstanding. Admin was pretty easy. But, damn, was installation a bear. Just look at the README. Random Joe on the street ain’t getting that installed any time soon. So the project withered on the vine.

Enter Nesting in Code™. With heavy inspiration from another colleague’s photo blog, and my favorite little blogging engine Scanty as a starting point, I set about creating something simple to deploy to Heroku. Posting a photo is as easy as pasting in a Flickr link.

Snapped was created with: Sinatra, Heroku, MongoHQ, MongoMapper, and Flickraw. The basics are open sourced via Snapped at GitHub.

Portfolio

I have a backlog of blog ideas collecting dust on my Things to-do list. The more interesting items to me are those about my views on building things, working, balancing life, and so on. By no means do I feel I have an amazing depth of knowledge on the subjects. I want to write about them to discover what it is I truly believe and what still confuses me.

All this comes together giving me a renewed interest in blogging. My future posts will be more of an article format. In fact, anything posted in 2011 and on will not have comments. With this fresh look at what it means for me to blog, I iterated on my blog design to simplify it even more. Pretty soon it will be paragraphs on a page with no title, date or author!

Then I gazed upon bjhess.com with contempt. What existed there before was basically a business card on the web. I like this concept, actually. If someone met me at a conference, seeing a picture of me makes it easy to remember the connection. A friendly paragraph about myself along with a bunch of links - it’s not a terrible way to go.

Yet I noticed that finally, four years after kicking off my second programming career, I had a fair number of projects under my belt. Most of them are small, unprofitable doodads, but I did them and I’m proud of them. It was time to put them front and center. I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and all that.

Conclusion

One other thing. I open sourced more trivial software: Magic Lunch Ball. This app is used for randomizing the destination for a weekly lunch I attend. It’s the minimum that could possibly work, but often that’s all that is necessary. More on this later.

Improving that which is already there has been an effective use of my nesting energy. Maybe it is not making things that much better around the house, but at least it is not making things worse. And if I didn’t give my personal website a little TLC from time to time, it would still look like this.

A week off the grid

2011-01-16T13:51:17-08:00

Over the past year, I’ve been hoping to try an experiment. This experiment will last a year and it started on my Holiday Break. My goal is to disconnect for one week every quarter of the year, an idea espoused by Brad Feld.

My version of One Week Off the Grid differs from Feld’s in several ways. For one, I was not motivated to try this due to relationship problems, though as with anyone I could always use work on my relationships. Nor do I feel that I work with the intensity of Feld. I don’t have an acute need for a huge stress release as I do pretty well keeping my stress levels down on a day-to-day basis. Though maybe with a week to recharge I would place myself in more intensive work situations.

My motivation was to dust off all the bad habits I’ve collected. Even if I kicked these habits for a short time, a week away would be a net benefit. I find that the cmd-tab muscle memory really gets engrained. Tests running? Check Twitter. Waiting for a chat response? Check email.

My rules were not as strict as Feld’s. My phone was on and I still accepted text messages and phone calls. My life isn’t filled with a lot of phone communication. I set up an “out of pocket” message on my email to tell anyone who needed to get in touch with me to go ahead and call if necessary. My computer did remain on, mainly because it supplies music to our Sonos. I also did cheat once to check on our bank account.

Oh, and my wife did not participate. I think it would be fun to have her be part of the experiment, going without a phone for the week as well. Perhaps if we coupled it with a vacation, which is the one time she avoids phoning and texting overly much. Of course that’s up to her if she’d like to join in.

I spent the week reading, watching movies, helping out around the house and spending lots of time with the family. I didn’t read at a Feld level; he’ll read ten or more books per week. I did read a lot for me, though, finishing three books.

The greatest benefit was breaking that muscle memory. It took a couple days to stop reflexively reaching for my iPhone during any downtime. After time passed, I didn’t miss it at all. In fact, I began regretting a lot of the time I had spent with the phone in the past year. I now have a much more relaxed relationship with Twitter. Checking my personal email is only done a few times a day, rather than tens of times a day. With all those reduced inputs, the constant pressure to check Instapaper has also subsided.

The practical benefit is great. In the past sometimes I simply could not drag myself off my iPhone after work. My kids would sit there playing as my wife is cleaning up the dinner dishes and I’m looking at pictures on Twitter of someone I’ve met once in my life playing with his kids. That ain’t right. These things are crystal clear after a few days away and I felt much more empowered to correct them than ever before.

Larger moments of spare time find me more apt to continue a book rather than checking a myriad of social networking sites. The time I’m now not on Twitter collecting interesting tidbits, I can catch up on all the articles I’ve collected over the years. By-in-large, though, these hours have become a time to spend with my family and be more present and focused on them.

This has already been a very successful experiment for me. I have other stretches tentatively planned for the rest of the year. I’m sure there won’t be epiphanies at every turn, but I am pretty well sold on the concept. A week off the grid has made me a more thoughtful and efficient programmer. Even better, it helps me step out of the fog and focus on the type of person I want to be. The discovery is that the experiment does end up being about improving relationships. My family, my friends, and I will all benefit from this time off the grid.

Books read 2010

2011-01-09T18:36:16-08:00

It’s that time again: Books read 2010. I love Shane’s annual reading list, and here is my significantly shorter version. As always, connect with me on Goodreads.

I’m surprised to see that I read the exact same number of books in 2010 as in 2009. My goal is to read more in 2011 than the past few years, which might be a silly goal with child number three just about here. I have vowed to do more book reading and less online reading in 2011, so maybe in the end it will just even out.

Old Man’s War Books 1-4 by John Scalzi

The quality of the books definitely descend as the series goes along, and #4 was a painful cash grab. But I can’t complain - most of the reading was quite good. Book one, Old Man’s War is rather outstanding. The books have a very conversational feel while still remaining smart sci-fi.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

Great for anyone who has never been exposed to the beliefs of 37signals. Mostly a rehash for me, but still worth having on hand. If you aren’t familiar with 37signals, definitely give this a read. Though it might make you want to quit your job.

Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk

If you’ve never heard this guy talk about business and going places in life, it’s worth your time. Seek some videos out on the ‘net while you’re at it. This book does a decent job of translating his over-the-top personality into words.

In the Ballpark by George Gmelch

A bit dated, but certainly an interesting look at all kinds of folks who work in a ballpark and their varying back stories. For 99% of folks working in baseball passion and love of the game is required because great riches are not part of the equation.

The Joy of Keeping Score by Paul Dicks

A quick read and somewhat interesting for some of the stories and nuances about scorekeeping.

Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt

I must admit I only read half of this book before I had to return it to the library (a “rental” from afar). This is a classic of the genre, and indeed the economic discussion within was very simplified and readable for little ol’ me. It’s clearly a libertarian angle on things, but worthwhile regardless of your leanings.

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

A fast, and fairly interesting read. Some slightly veiled ideas about agile methodologies and corporate management set within an odd story of a future where the Magic Kingdom is one of the most prestigious places on earth. While not a monster of the genre, I will give Doctorow another chance.

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum

Read this to my duaghters. I can’t believe I had never read The Wizard of Oz. It was interesting, but I’m not incredibly motivated to read the sequels.

Do More Faster by Brad Feld and David Cohen

This book was a bit too startupy for me. Of course, I knew that going in. A few nice takeaways, though. Mostly the idea of taking a week “off the grid” every year as well as other tips to stay sane with desk work. I’ll be talking more later about taking a week off the grid on this blog soon.

Last Chance to See by Mark Carwardine

A beautiful picture book (also with tons of words) following up on the original Last Chance to See. Don’t get the eBook or borrow from the library - buy this one. Probably from the U.K. as I can’t find it in the states.

Don't let failures deter you

2010-09-07T06:31:18-07:00

There is a strong counter-meme, mostly pushed by the 37 Signals crew, that failure is overrated. You can learn more from success than failure. You can dissect success to determine exactly what actions were the cause of the success. You can see the forest for the trees and eliminate the actions that actually did not contribute to success. You can figure out how to repeat the successful actions.

Fred Brooks begs to differ:

You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all failure forces you to face reality.

So which is better, learning from success or failure? The real answer is that you should always be learning. When you fail, look for the primary reasons for that failure. When you succeed, don’t let confirmation bias cloud your judgement as to why you succeeded. There is no controversy.

The most important relationship you need to have with failure is well summarized by J.D. Roth:

One of the reasons I used to talk so much without acting is that I was afraid of failure. I’m not sure where I learned to be afraid of defeat, but that’s the way I was. And when I did try something but failed, I’d give up. This is no way to get stuff done. Talkers let fear of failure keep them on the sideline; Doers overcome fear and move on, and when they fail, they simply try again.

Most all who have succeeded have also failed. Learning from these failures is important. The much more salient factor is to continue doing.

In the sixth year

2010-08-21T08:07:19-07:00

Here I am, six years of blogging - on and off blogging. I took a look at the traffic report for this blog’s past year. The top 20 most popular posts are from 2007 and earlier. Perhaps I should consider giving this whole blogging thing up?

Probably not. I still occasionally run into something that I can post in hopes of helping out another person with a similar problem. I do have a list of post ideas somewhere, and maybe I’ll get to them one day. So please bear with me. Keep me in your RSS reader and maybe one day you’ll find something of interest.

Thanks for sticking with me so far. Perhaps we’ll meet again here in the blogiverse.