Chris Charabaruk

Good Enough versus Perfect

Chris Charabaruk — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:11:39 -0700

Image by AUSTIN_O via Flickr

The perfect is the enemy of the good. – Voltaire

Motivation to perform to perfection is a strong force in western society. The attitude that we have to be better than anyone else at something, to achieve perfection in our activities, has been a strong force throughout modern history, from the world's nations down to the individuals which form their bases. And it's seen every day in projects of all scopes and sizes.

But Voltaire left a message that should be listened to, by everyone on every project – one that is unfortunately ignored by many, to their detriment.

It's a somewhat heretical thought: What if we don't have to be perfect? What if we just do good enough to pass? What will that offer us instead of striving to be the best? Well, what it offers is the ability to work more efficiently and still do a proper job of it.

What is good enough?

It's actually pretty simple. Being good enough is about meeting the needs of the project, rather than the ideals. Some might think it means lacking quality, but it's really more about balancing quality against the work that actually needs to be accomplished.

For an example of something good enough, one need only recall the 1980s and early 90s, to VHS. In the late 70s and early 80s, it competed against the Betamax standard for home video. However, it won the competition in the end because it was good enough for the average consumer. It was cheap, had acceptable video and audio quality, and was readily available. In contrast, Sony's Betamax standard, while better quality than VHS, was more expensive and harder to get a hold of. The focus of having a perfect format paradoxically resulted in a product that couldn't cut it against VHS.

What's wrong with perfection?

First of all, perfectionism is procrastination. Say it out loud: perfectionism is procrastination. When you try to be perfect, you get little, if anything, actually accomplished. Planning for perfection leads to a project terminal state known as analysis paralysis – you get so bogged down in the details of what could happen, what could be needed, etc. that you never actually get started at all. And for a project that is in development, perfectionism can lead to endless wanking on a few particular pet tasks of the developers, as they keep trying to make those parts they're working on better and better. At first it may look like progress, but at some point, those constant attempts at improvement return no value at all.

On the other hand, aiming for Good Enough just gets the job done. In planning, you focus on what the requirements are, no more, no less, and how to meet them simply and efficiently. No worrying about edge cases or making things bulletproof or endlessly customizable – meet the core needs and be done with it. As for development, it should be simple enough to test against the plan to see if a task is met. Once it is, you move on to the next one, and stop worrying about the one you just finished. The work goes by faster, and you accomplish more.

Another issue with perfection is that not everyone agrees on what perfect means, in the context of the project. It's very easy to end up with a camel, when what you want is a horse, because everyone thinks that the perfect quadruped needs this or that or the other thing. It's a very subjective concept, as opposed to achieving good enough. Not to say that good enough isn't subjective itself, but it's a much easier target to hit and reach consensus on, and if you plan well, it can be objectively determined whether or not something is Good Enough based on project goals, client needs, and metrics collected during the planning and development stages of a project.

Determining what is good enough

There are three simple questions you can ask:

Is it simple? That is to say, is the design simple and can be picked up by the developers without much work? If the design and implementation is simple, it's easier to make any needed changes later, while still fulfilling the current requirements now.

Does it work acceptably well? If it's easy for the end user to figure out, and does the job without raising problems the user can't handle, it's good.

Does it cover all the bases? It should meet the project requirements, with a minimum of additional features tacked on. Wherever additional things are added, it should either be because of (legitimately) changing requirements, or because those features are required by the features which do meet project requirements.

Conclusion

There are some clear advantages to aiming for good enough rather than for perfection. You'll be more efficient while still providing a proper job well done. It's not necessary to provide all the bells and whistles so long as you meet the goals of your project, so don't try for it! Success comes from getting the job done right, not done perfect. And good enough is doing it right.

The greatest enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan. – Karl von Clausewitz

Initial impressions on the Windows Live Essentials wave 4 beta

Chris Charabaruk — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 20:55:02 -0700

Windows Live Essentials wave 4 came out in beta last week, but I’ve just gotten it installed today. I’ve been toying around with it a bit, and I’d like to share some of my first impressions on the betas.

Windows Live Messenger

With the new Live Messenger, Microsoft’s introduced a social timeline to the client, which apparently can tie in to Facebook and MySpace. By default it’s tied into Live’s own social networking/profile system. I prefer the classic UI, which the new version retains (although it’ll give you the social view by default) but if I had more screen space, I’d probably make use of the new view. It’s actually pretty neat, and it’ll probably integrate more services as time goes on, making it more useful to people.

Windows Live Writer

With the new version of Windows Live Writer, we have ourselves a ribbon. That’s right, the much touted ribbon that was introduced in Office 2007 and refined in WordPad and Paint on Windows 7 shows up now in Live Essentials. As part of the UI change, the sidebar that once offered a list of things to insert into blog posts is no longer there. Instead, an Insert tab on the ribbon provides those same items, putting those provided by add-ons into a ribbon gallery.

Unfortunately, Zemanta (a blogging assistant that has been my favourite add-on for WLW) doesn’t work with the beta just yet, but hopefully that’ll change soon. However, fitting it in might be a bit of a hassle. Meanwhile, other add-ons that I’ve used in the past I haven’t installed on this system, so I can’t say whether they work or not. Here’s hoping that they do, however!

Windows Live Photo Gallery

Unfortunately, I haven’t much good to say about the new version of Live Photo Gallery. While the past versions were great for managing my pictures, the new version removed the tag trees from the left-hand navigation pane. And there appears to be no option to restore them.

It’s because of those tag trees that I bothered with WLPG in the first place. I have many, many images on this computer and others, and being able to organize them and navigate through them by tag made it easy and quick to find whatever picture I was looking for. The new ribbon makes it easy to find pictures based on who’s in them, but for general tags, it’s not so easy. Not only that, but managing the tags themselves has become much more of a hassle, now that the list of them is not easily accessible. The result is a lot of empty space in that navigation pane, and a worse user experience.

Sorry, Microsoft, but if the general and people tag trees aren’t restored in the RTW for wave 4, I’m dropping WLPG for something, anything, that actually provides me with real tag navigation. For me, this is a serious deal-breaker.

Windows Live Sync

Live Sync actually has a UI now, rather than just a login dialog and simple options dialog. Rather than simply provide a way of accessing all the files on your computer through a Live.com subdomain, it lets you synchronize particular folders with the cloud. However, all I’ve used Live Sync for is to access files on my desktop when I’m on the road – something that this version retains, so long as you enable it first.

However, accessing files is different now, through the Live Devices site. And if you’re not running the beta, your system doesn’t show up there. This can lead to a tricky configuration issue if you’re not running the beta on all your systems. You can still use the old Live Sync, but not concurrently with the wave 4 beta. It’s still there after you install the beta, but the beta Live Sync just won’t run at the same time as the older version. Pay attention to that fact if you’re using it for anything.

One thing to note as well about Live Devices – if you have a cell phone, you can have it show up on there, too. However, don’t expect to be able to do anything with it just yet, and certainly not if you’re running anything other than Windows Mobile 6.5 on it. Although even then, money’s out on whether it’ll only be useful for Windows Phone 7 anyway.

Bing Bar

I haven’t really played around with this, but if you’ve installed the beta and run Firefox, you’ve probably noticed your shiny new toolbar. That’s right, the replacement for the Windows Live Toolbar supports Firefox now. Given the fuss that Microsoft has gotten into in the past for adding plugins and extensions to Firefox, you’d think they’d avoid tossing it in without any mention. On the other hand, if you check that box to install it…

Personally, I preferred the old Live Toolbar, as it at least blended in better with the look of Internet Explorer. Whether you’re using IE or Firefox, the Bing Bar sticks out like a sore thumb, and while it may be just as useful as the Live Toolbar was, it feels a lot more annoying.

The Rest

There’s a Live Messenger social connector available now for Outlook Connector. If you’ve been using that to keep connected to LinkedIn, you’ll now find that Outlook will keep you connected to the social features in Live, too. Not played with that yet, but interested to see how it’ll turn out.

I don’t use Family Security, and never bother installing it. I don’t need it, so no opinion there.

Likewise, while I do install Live Movie Maker, I almost never use it other than to play around. I haven’t actually ever made anything with it. As for what wave 4 offers, I haven’t even launched it to see.

So that’s about it for my initial impressions. Very neat (but screen-wasting) social features in Live Messenger, nice new ribbon in Live Writer, a more useful Live Sync, a gaudy Bing Bar, and a disappointing Live Photo Gallery.

Moving the site to a new location

Chris Charabaruk — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:47:20 -0700

So, you might notice that coldacid.net is now chris.charabaruk.com. Do not be alarmed. I’m rearranging things to repurpose my coldacid handle, with a new coldacid.net site to come around in the near future – one that will not be just my personal stuff, but rather for doing contact programming, various projects, etc.

For now, the domain will lay fallow, passively redirecting people to chris.charabaruk.com, but in late July/early August, the new coldacid development site will appear, and I will start offering services through it. Meanwhile, I hope to get back on the blogging horse here, including posting stuff I was reticent to post when coldacid.net served as the professional and personal site for me.

By the way, anyone out there a decent vector artist and willing to turn some sketches into a proper, vectorized logo for free (or very, very cheap)? Let me know, thanks.

Taskerrific is gone; what next?

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 08 May 2010 05:55:51 -0700

Well, it’s not really gone, but I’ve shut down the Taskerrific beta and put the site on reserve, as I have neither the time to maintain it nor the money to have the service hosted properly. It sucks having to do that, but right now, I need to make money, not spend it. So Taskerrific is down and I am back on the job hunt.

I have some plans for reviving Taskerrific at a later point, but right now my focus outside of looking for employment is on my writing. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m currently working on a visual novel, and in addition to that, I’ve got speeches to write for Toastmasters, and story ideas I want to convert into actual stories. I’m keeping up on my programming as well – perhaps not to the extent I was coding in my Taskerrific days, but still making sure that I’m up to date on what’s going on in the field. Considering my plans for Taskerrific’s revival, well…

I’m going to try writing on here more often. I’ve created a repeating task to remind me to actually blog something at least once a week, and while it probably won’t always be technology-related, hopefully it’ll be something of interest to someone. As usual, though, most content will be through Twitter, FriendFeed, and Reddit.

And again, if you’re looking for someone who can help you out, contact me. But please, only if you actually have an actual offer. I need actual work, not a “we might be interested” line. (Sorry if that sounds angry or rude, but the stress of this job search is really weighing on me.)

Where have I been these past few months?

Chris Charabaruk — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 08:12:38 -0700

It's been about three months since my last blog post here, although if you've been following me on Twitter, FriendFeed or Reddit, you'll know I haven't died or anything. To sum it all up, there were personal matters I had to deal with. And I'm still dealing with them.

Outside of my personal life, I'm still trying to get things done with Taskerrific. There are technical issues that have been quite jarring to work through (some of which are still in my way), but more importantly, there is a funding issue that needs to be resolved for Taskerrific's continued survival.

Right now, Taskerrific is hosted by Applied Innovations, on a plan that costs about $50 USD a month. Unfortunately, I haven't that kind of money, and so if the service is to remain up without a long hiatus for redeveloping on another platform, well… I like Applied Innovations, and they have good rates for ASP.NET hosting, but even so, it's not inexpensive, unlike Linux/BSD hosts.

There's also the matter of my ongoing search for a 9-to-5 (or equivalent) job to keep me fed and sheltered. Put simply: If you need a .NET programmer, or just a warm body somewhere, let me know. I'm not picky. Let's chat.

Lastly, I've started dipping my toes back into the game development waters. A friend of mine is helping me create a visual novel called Painter Story, about a boy who creates a painting that comes to life (more or less). I'm doing most of the writing, rather than the programming, this time. Not to say that I'm doing no coding, but writing fiction can be more difficult than code, so I'd rather not do both. As it is, we're using Ren'Py so there's not much coding anyway.

Anyway, starting with next week, I'll hopefully be back to my usual productive self. I need to get these months of trouble and lethargy behind me.

Radio Alarm Clock 0.10.2

Chris Charabaruk — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 07:29:12 -0800

Changes in 0.10.2:

FIX: Snooze button wasn't turning off sleep radio.

Don't always go for the big stuff; there are smaller challenges which are just as important

Chris Charabaruk — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 20:36:07 -0800

I just read an interesting blog post by a Googler named David Wurtz. Summed up, he says that smart people should do stupid stuff. The point is that you don't have to tackle the biggest challenges to be successful; you can find something more down-to-earth and find lots of success working with that instead. A quote:

Although I endorse those who attempt to spend their time defying gravity (the world needs these people), I simply think students simply forget that the real world is not graded by professors with untamed beards. Students are largely unaware that they could realize just as much success, or perhaps even more success, if they point their incisive intellect at simpler, "stupider" problems. So why don't they?

The thing is, while there's always a place for another scientist hunting for the Higgs boson, or diplomats striving for world peace, we can't neglect those things that are closer to home for all of us. And ultimately, it's those simpler, more local, "stupider" problems that affect us most directly.

You don't need the fame and fortune of solving a big hairy problem to be a success; you just need to solve any problem we all face in the real world.

I've probably not done the post any justice with this write-up; go read for yourself.

DemoCamp Toronto 24 recap

Chris Charabaruk — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 10:11:55 -0800

Cover via Amazon

Last night, I attended DemoCamp Toronto 24, my first ever DemoCamp event. Shocking, I know, that it took so long for me to attend one. The night started off with an interview of Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv about his experiences, as part of the tour for his new book, Crush It! (which, by the way, was being given for free to attendees.) After Gary's interview, we had a break for pizza and networking, after which there were six demos, spanning from GridCentric through to Cadmus.

I'll put down my notes from Gary's interview later on, but let's start off with the demos.

Like I mentioned, GridCentric opened up the demo part of the night. They demonstrated their product, a hypervisor for clusters, which could be summed up as "fork in a cloud". And when I say fork, I mean in the UNIX way; you can quite literally fork new virtual servers/clusters like you can in UNIX with processes. Very interesting.

This was followed up by dataTO, a community site where people can suggest new data sources for the City of Toronto to provide as part of its open data initiative. It's kind of a cross between Stack Overflow and Reddit self-posts. The people behind the site aren't just getting things running and building connections with the city, though: they are looking at ways of making the code behind the site usable by groups in other cities as well.

The third demo of the night was 5 Blocks Out. This is a service with a lot of potential, for people who aren't just looking at virtual communities but their own local, physical ones too. You can meet new people, and find out where to go for anything in the city (and your own neighbourhood). Right now, it's mostly restricted to about 200 neighbourhoods in central and west Toronto, but the duo behind it are looking at expanding the service as quality permits.

The next demo was for Datamartist, a great tool for quickly and easily transforming and managing data from various sources. It's a GUI based tool that serves as a "data scratchpad", making life easier for the IT people who have to get the proper data to the proper people, and take other data and stick it in the appropriate slots. It's pretty pricy for individuals, but at $750 per license, it's still a lot less expensive than its 6-figure competitors from Microsoft, SAP, et al.

Following that up was Eqentia. This is a news aggregation service that deals with semantic matches and topic based aggregation, rather than the simple matches and feed/service based aggregation we've been dealing with in the past.

Last but not least was Cadmus. Their service provides a way to find what's trending amongst your friends. They primarily handle Twitter sources, but FriendFeed and RSS are also supported.

My favourite demos were 5 Blocks Out and Cadmus. The 5 Blocks Out service shows an incredible amount of potential, and looks to be a great way of becoming engaged with your neighbourhood. I can't wait for them to expand out into Durham Region so I can make good use of it. As for Cadmus, well, I follow over 600 people on Twitter now, and it can be pretty hectic trying to figure out what the top stories are amongst those people.

Now, for the notes I wrote during Gary's interview:

We are ahead of the game and don't know it
What is my motivation?
Don't read about it -- do it!
Analytics, SEO, etc. = bullshit. Good feelings = THE GOAL
We underestimate the ability to appreciate effort
Always try
Need to be/own yourself -- don't have to be someone else.
"The big game is patience."
Passion is required to have patience
Problem is people chasing cash, rather than their passions
Motivation: Desperation trumps innovation
Always a lot to learn
Don't be scared of having multiple passions
"Create tunnels" to connect with others -- share more interests than just the primary
Cost of entry nowadays is sweat equity, not money
"The long tail is longer than you think" -- wider space means more winners
Don't sweat what you can't change, but monitor it anyway
"Five year plans are impossible" -- things change, you have to be able to adapt immediately
Key to stickiness: Quality content and great customer/consumer service
Caring is MORE IMPORTANT than cost
"We're going back to small-town rules"
Word-of-mouth drives caring & consumer expectation
Expectations change, we adapt fast
Massive culture shift re brands & caring

All in all, it was a great and informative evening. Many thanks to Gary for speaking to us, to David Crow and Saul Colt for organizing the night, and to Rogers Ventures and StartupNorth for sponsoring the event.

The next DemoCamp Toronto happens on January 26, 2010, and you can bet that I'll be there.

Oshawa Coffee and Code redux

Chris Charabaruk — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:59:54 -0800

Image via Wikipedia

Something I wanted to do last year was get a Coffee and Code group up and running in Oshawa. Nothing much came of it, unfortunately, thanks to a lack of viable venues. However, a lot can change in eight months, and I'm again evaluating places which could host such an event.

I'm giving myself all of next month and half of January to figure out a good location. I've a couple candidates in mind, but nothing is absolute. No set date, no finalized details, nothing until I've figured out a good place for hosting a Coffee and Code out here in Durham Region. I've learnt my lesson.

Business cards are a great way to invite users to your service, aren't they?

Chris Charabaruk — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:06:38 -0800

A few months ago, I got the idea to use my Taskerrific business cards as a way to invite people to use the service while still in private beta. It was pretty simple... Set up an invite code for an event, prepare a bunch of label stickers with the invite code on them, and then put those labels on the back of the cards I'd hand out at the event. Pretty simple.

Unfortunately, I've not seen any real uptake of this. I'd point out the invite code after telling people about Taskerrific, let them know to use it when signing up. But very few people actually bothered signing up, and then most of them didn't bother using the invite code I gave them on the card. Instead, they went through the dialog for getting an invite code in the first place. Kind of disappointing.

I wonder if the problem is poor execution, or if the idea itself just doesn't cut it. The labels include the line "Invite code:" but besides that and the code itself, there's nothing else. If it weren't for the fact I write out the labels by hand, I'd include a short link to Taskerrific's sign up page. (Perhaps that's the problem).

I think that this is a great idea for services still in private beta, but looking for testers. If you're in this position, give it a try and let me know if it works for you.