Igor's Computer Blog

Software links worth remembering

2017-09-19T18:06:00.001-07:00

I tend to quote software trivia - starting a list for my future reference:

Igor's Laws Of Programming

1. No duplicate code

2. Trust Tests not experts

3. Create Issue then whine

Design Patterns

Gang of Four - The original patterns that kicked it off.
Cloud Design Patterns - MS guide to making great cloud services
Enterprise Design Patterns - How to make enterprise apps.

Stats

Bugs solved by using a static type system 15%.
Bugs per KLOC is a language independent constant @ 15-50/1000 .

Reading to be a great programmer

Pragmatic Programmer - How to be a great programmer

Reading to make great software:

Clean Architecture - How to design a large scale system.
Agile Principles And Practices - How to design components.
Code Complete 2 - How to write code
C# in a nutshell - The c# book worth owning
Fluent Python - Writing great python code
Programming in Scala - Learn about language design in an awesome language (honestly I didn't get through it, but what I read was enlightening.
Fallacies of distributed computing - Assumptions that you can't make.

Optimaling vs Maximizing

2017-09-16T13:11:00.000-07:00

Copied from Seth Godin as I've always tried to articulate this, but was never able to so I'll copy swaths of his post:

I can run a comfortable 6 miles per hour, but I can also run 10 miles an hour at full speed. But, turns out I can only run 10 miles an hour for 5 minutes, while I can run 6 miles per hour for hours.

Ten miles an hour is maximum speed, but it isn't optimum.

Systems have an optimum level of performance. It's the output that permits the elements (including the humans) to do their best work, to persist at it, to avoid disasters, bad decisions and burnout.

One definition of maximization is: A short-term output level of high stress, where parts degrade but short-term performance is high.

Capitalism sometimes seeks competitive maximization instead. Who cares if you burn out, I'll just replace the part...

That's not a good way to treat people we care about, or systems that we rely on.

As a valuable contributor seeking to build a career, you benefit when you develop a unique asset, because that asset gives you the leverage to choose a niche in a system that respects optimization instead.

It's all about the 43" 4K Monitor

2017-09-16T11:18:00.002-07:00

You might say I have a monitor obsession. I'd not disagree, but I would argue I spend 8 hours a day on my monitor, so having the best monitor I can is worth it. I'd also argue, monitors last forever, so you might as well get them as soon as they meet your needs.

Speaking of, I now have a 43" 3840x2160 monitor. It lows my 34" ultra wide out of the water, and I'm now getting rid of my 27" and 30" monitors. There's a few things you'll need to know when getting this monitor.

1) The left and rightmost 1/2" are in shadow when you're close.

This is a weird effect, described here. According to the author of the review it happens on all the current 43" monitors. When you move your head to see the left most edge, you can't see the right edge because it's in shadow, and vice versa. Most windows have a margin so you won't notice. The place I have noticed it is in terminals (conemu and iterm).

2) Not everything can drive the 4K resolution @ 60 HZ.

At 30 HZ, I get headaches, so I need to get up to 60 HZ. You can see the resolution you're running at here.

For my desktop, I had to buy a new HDMI 2.0 video card,
For my 2015 Macbook Pro I needed to buy res-x and use special settings.
For my Surface Pro 3 - install updated intel drivers manually and then add a custom resolution to get to 50 hz.

3) When using a monitor arm, you need a beefy one with a VESA 200x200 mount.
Or, you can use a not beefy one, and reinforce it with coke cans.

Even with these issue, I still highly recommend it.

StartupVille: Not a unicorn? Consider being a zebra!

2017-03-12T12:02:00.002-07:00

When I worked on Smile, I struggled because I wasn't interested in profit, but interested in making the world a better place. To achieve this, I'd need a sustainable business, not an exponential one. However, investors want exponential, not sustainable businesses. This table comparnies unicorns and Zebras is from a great article on the topic.

I love my 34" ultra wide monitor

2016-10-30T13:55:00.002-07:00

I love monitors. I already have a 27" monitor and a 30" monitors, and now I've added the dell 34". It's huge, elegant, and has all the ports a geek could dream of.

Ultra wide are sold as being amazing for productivity and movie watching. I don't disagree, but there are a few gotchas you should know about.

For productivity ultra wides are extolled as the equivalent of two monitors side by side. For me, the width of the ultra wide is a bit shy of what I'd like for two windows side by side. Don't get me wrong, it's doable, but with my old eyes and jacked up font sized, half a 34" monitor wide is too skinny a window. I usually end up make one window take up 2/3s of the screen and another window take up 1/3. It's too bad the windows snap feature doesn't allow you to do this automatically. If you have a good software solution for this holler.

For movies, especially ones available in 21:9 the 34" ultra wide monitor is INCREDIBLE. The only problem with watching movies on the monitor is it's so big, you need to actually back away from the screen. There is one gotchya on 21:9 content it's hard to find. Most of you tube is 16x9, and netflix only encodes in 16x10.

Luckily for Netflix there is a browser extension you can get called called ultrawide display aspect ratio which removes the letter boxing.

Emotional Intelligence, Strategy, and how Igor Ticks @ idvorkin.github.io

2016-02-10T07:01:00.001-08:00

If you're interested in learning more about How Igor ticks, Emotional Intelligence and Strategy, check out my alpha "blog" @

idvorkin.github.io

It's currently very rough but has a few interesting properties:

From a content perspective, it's focused on less technical topics - book reviews, strategy, emotional intelligence, and my own self discovery.

From a technical perspective, it's a jekyll static markdown blog, something I've always wanted to try because I can use powerful editing tools, keep the content under source control, and never need to worry about being at the mercy of my service provider.

Cool Tools: Remote Tech Support

2015-12-01T21:24:00.001-08:00

We all have to support our friends and families on their broken computers. Recently I was introduced to teamviewer. It's a remote support application that free for non commercial use, and works perfectly. May your next "mom's computer doesn't work" incident be less stressful.

Monitor Sizes And Ratios

2015-11-29T09:57:00.002-08:00

Computer folks spend LOTS of time on monitors, so getting the right ones matters. Monitor dimensions are incredibly important, so here's the dimension table for the high resolution monitors

Diagonal	Ratio	Size
27"	(2560x1440) 1.77	(13.2, 23.4)
30"	(2560x1600) 1.6	(15.8, 23.7)
34"	(3440x1440) 2.3	(13.5, 31.1)

In case I need to do this again, here's the computation in R

Soft Skills:Principles vs Values

2015-11-08T10:07:00.001-08:00

TL;DR: Principles are unchangeable objective truths, values are your subjective prioritization. The better you can align your values and actions with principles, the easier your life will be.

Differentiating principles and values sounds pedantic, but it's important to differentiate the concepts. You choose your values, but your values have no impact on principles. Conversely, principles, can have a huge impact on your ability to live life according to your values. When your values and principles are out of alignment, you're bound for some suffering.

Stephen Covey differentiating principles and values:

Principles apply at all time in all places. They surface in the form of values, ideas, norms, and teachings that uplift, ennoble, fulfill, empower, and inspire people. The lesson of history is that to the degree people and civilizations have operated in harmony with correct principles, they have prospered. Correct principles are like compasses: they are always pointing the way. And if we know how to read them, we won’t get lost, confused, or fooled by conflicting voices and values

Principles, unlike values, are objective and external. They operate in obedience to natural laws, regardless of conditions. Values are subjective and internal. Values are like maps. Maps are not the territories; they are only subjective attempts to describe or represent the territory. The more closely our values or maps are aligned with correct principles—with the realities of the territory, with things as they really are—the more accurate and useful they will be.

Soft Skills: Igor's personal mission infographic

2015-11-02T05:36:00.001-08:00

It's important to uncover "how you want to live your life", and to review it frequently. Much of how I want to live my life is based on the 7 habits of highly effective people, and I've created a handy infographic to help inspire, remind, and encourage me.

ps. If you're curious how often I review this infographic, I'll tell you a story. Turns out I drew this infographic in December 2013 while on vacation, and promptly forgot about it. A few days ago, I was rummaging through an old sketch book, found the infographic and decided it was perfect. To avoid forgetting it again, I'm adding it to my blog, and am setting a weekly reminder to review it :)

Startupville: Start with a skate board.

2015-10-07T07:24:00.002-07:00

Imagine a Fortune 500 company trying to build a car.

Because the company has lots of resources, they likely have a customer research team dedicated to understanding what the customer wants. They have lots of engineering experts each of which is able to produce products of technical complexity. Finally, and probably most importantly they have a culture which rewards accomplishing big things, often before they hit the market. As a consequence, at a large company a car would probably be developed one functional component at at time. However, the risk here is that the customer never wanted a car, and you build the wrong thing.

By contrast a startup has almost no resources, and is usually evaluated by customer growth rate. This has the virtuous side effect that product is constantly being guided by customer need. In Startupville it's essential you are always building something the user wants to achieve their goals, in the car analogy, you'd progress by building a skateboard, then a scooter, etc.

Building skateboards is a no brainier at a startup, but may also be the optimum solution for your project at a fortune 500 company.

Startupville: Staying motivated as a solopreneur

2015-09-13T08:02:00.002-07:00

TLDR: When you're disheartened, do something that you can control and succeed at. Succeeding recharges your motivation and lets you take another run at your most important problems.

Staying motivated is easy when you're having wins, or executing again a plan you believe will succeed. Unfortunately, there will be long stretches where you won't have wins, and the longer it has been since a win, the farther you will be from believing your plan will succeed.

When it's been too long since I've had a win, my motivation will tank, and I'll find you stop doing much of anything.

For me to get back on track, I need to start working on things I can control and succeed at. Often that means working on things that are less important then the things that have me disheartened. Except that's a fallacy. See, the thing that's most important when I'm disheartened is finding my mojo.

So, when you're disheartened, do something that you can control and succeed at. Succeeding recharges your motivation and lets you take another run at your most important problems.

Time.Ltd:Mortality Software

2015-08-22T12:47:00.005-07:00

*This post is a work in progress, in the madman/architect phase, if you'd like to help flesh it out, I'd love the help. please add comments or ping me.*

Why mortality software?

To be satisfied we need to live in accordance with the person we want to be.

Unless we know who we want to be, and act deliberately to achieve it, our satisfaction will be infrequent, and often accidental.

Mortality software helps you understand who you want to be, and supports you in being that person. In a nutshell, making your satisfied.

The first step for mortality software is helping you figure out the person you want to be and your values.

Who do you want to be? What are your values?

To figure out who you want to be, write your eulogy. To make it easier, figure out the roles in your life. Imagine the person who would speak to each role of your life during your funeral. What would you want each person to say? That eulogy is the person you want to be.

Now imagine how you'd want people to remember the way you acted, especially during ambiguity, challenges and crisis. Those behaviors are your values.

Your roles, how you balance your between them, and your values are the person you want to be, your north star.

Most people who have gone through the eulogy process have found it incredibly difficult. Morality software will make the eulogy process easier.

Many people find this hard to imagine, so here's as a simple example. The eulogy module can start by presenting you different people and their values. Based on how much those people and values resonate with you, mortality software can suggest values that might appeal to you.

What else should mortality software do?

Becoming the person you want to be starts, by figuring out who that person is. Next it decomposes becoming that person into at different levels of abstraction and time scales. Here's an example:

Time Horizon	What	How
Life	Eulogy and Roles	Values
Two year	Supporting Projects/Accomplishments	Supporting Behaviors/Habits
Quarter -> Month	Decompose above into reasonable chunk How to allocate time between roles	Decompose above into reasonable chunks How to allocate time between habits/behaviors
Month -> Week	Milestones	Habits
Week -> Day	Tasks	Skill/Habit Practice Schedule

Mortality software will be both forward and backwards facing. By this I mean it will help you plan what you need to do to achieve your eulogy, and also help evaluate how effectively you are achieving your goals. It will help you reflect, often helping you realize your initial eulogy requires change, or your behaviors require change.

Why call it Time.Ltd?

I conceived of mortality software when I realized my life is finite, and thus limited. I initially named my future mortality software package Life.ltd, but that did not feel actionable. Instead of thinking our life is limited, we should think our time is limited, and thus we should make sure we are using it
well. Thus, I renamed my future mortality software Time.Ltd.

A richer model of happiness - Pleasure/Flow/Satisfaction

2015-07-23T19:46:00.005-07:00

Happiness is a coarse term, and often leads to cumbersome discussion and confusion. Martin Seligman provides a more granular model of happiness: pleasure, flow and satisfaction. This model will be useful as we discuss positive computing.

Pleasure is the happiness of doing what feels good in the moment. It's the happiness of consumption. Eating, drinking, buying something. Pleasure is easy to achieve, but the happiness is lost within minutes.

Flow is the happiness of being engrossed in a a challenging, enjoyable task. It's the happiness of production. Making art, baking cookies, working on a project. Flow takes effort to get started, but the happiness last the length of the task, often lasting hours.

Satisfaction is the happiness of being the person you want to be. It's the happiness of identity. This happiness is deeply personal, for me it's being a deliberate person who can put a smile on a strangers face. Satisfaction takes significant effort, but the happiness can be unshakable and permeate your being.

Positive computing will need to address each of these aspects of happiness to best serve our users.

Soft Skills: Writing as Madman, Architect, Carpenter and Judge

2015-07-06T06:27:00.002-07:00

Writing breaks down into 4 distinct phases: brainstorming, organization, writing and editing. To reinforce the distinctness of these phases, think of writing as four distinct jobs: Madman, Architect, Carpenter and Judge. Maximize your efficiency by doing each job, distinctly, deliberately and serially.

Each job has a specific goal, and that goal should be your sole focus during while doing that job. Do not do the next job, and do not go back to previous jobs. To reinforce the distinctness of each job, consider using a different tool, and physical reminders of each job.

As madman, your job is brainstorming. Take your brain's musings and get them down on paper. Maximize creativity, find as many interesting ideas as possible. As madman don't waste time "arguing" or "revising" what you're spitting out. Personally, I use pen and paper when I'm the mad man to prevent myself from revising, editing, or organizing my thoughts.

As architect, your job is organizing. Take the madman's ramblings and distill them into an outline. Decide what you want to say, who your audience is then, produce a model and outline via aggressive triaging. As architect don't waste time on "how it sounds" or "how it looks". Personally, I use point form lists in OneNote when I'm the Architect as it allow me to easily see and organize the structure of my writing.

As carpenter, your job is writing the paragraphs, sentences and words. Take the architects outline and turn it into to paragraphs and sentences. Decide the tone, the examples, and start writing. As carpenter don't waste time on spelling, grammar, or excessive rewriting. Personally, I turn off the spell checker when I'm the Carpenter as to prevent me from fixing typos that I'll likely rewrite anyway.

As judge, your job is editing. Take the carpenters masterpiece and make it consistent, and error free. Make sure everything is correct and be critical. Personally, I turn the spell check on at this phase, but I'm terrible at judge, and usually enlist the help of others when doing this job.

By splitting out the different jobs of writing, your writing should get clear, faster, and more rewarding.

Startupville: Reading list

2015-06-02T09:02:00.001-07:00

Books I recommend:

Start small stay small - How to build a realistic software business.

Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition design - Value prop, and business is king. This book is a must read. Be sure to by the print book as it's full of pictures and diagrams.

V is for vulnerable - A cute book on the attitude you need to survive as an entrepreneur.

Lean startup - The book that kicked off how to run a startup

Traction - A treatise on customer aquistion strategies or how to get traction.

Books I'm reading now:

Zero to one - In progress looks great.

Blogs/Articles

In progress

Paul Graham - Paul is the founder of y-combinator and his writings defined the startup industry.

Brad Feld - One of the other best loves VC's. Often talks about funding, very interesting.

We don't sell saddles here - A treatise from the founder of Slack.

How to think about MVPs - A classic picture of how to build an MVP of a car.

Commonly recommended books I could not finish:

Startup Owners Manual - Steve Blank - Steve is a smart guy (Mentor of Lean Startup Guy) and arguably the inventor of customer development,. However, I find his writing and this book meandering. I wanted to read this book but could not finish.

Soft Skills: How to communicate effectively

2015-05-29T09:11:00.000-07:00

To be successful, you must communicate your ideas. The heart of communication is a story which must be written. Emma Coats wrote stories for Pixar, and tweeted a series of “story basics”. Most of these are applicable to communicating, and I’m posting them here to remind myself how to communicate better.

What do you want to say?

Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.

How you want to say it?

You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

How do you stay motivated as a writer?

Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. The material to get you unstuck often shows up.
No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.
You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, it testing not optimizing.

How to become a better writer:

Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize to use it.
Take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?

What positive computing approach are you taking in your designs?

2015-05-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

The positive computing book lays out a simple model for the approach your designs can be taking, I summarize it here:

Approach	Description	Example
None	Happiness ignored	Most applications today - no attempt to make users happy
Passive (reactive)	As issues are found which effect happiness, features are redesigned	Comment systems allowing anonymous comments. As anonymous comments filled with negativity, comment systems evolved to allow enforcing a user identity, and to block "bad" users. [TBD: Get a better example]
Active	Augmenting existing features to make users happier	Bing home page - displaying beautiful images that makes users happy.
Deliberate	The goal of the feature is user happiness exclusively	Happify- a tool to train users ot be happier

Measuring In the moment happiness (InMoHap) with moodles (Mu)

2015-05-23T12:22:00.003-07:00

This post is in progress to help me flesh out my progress -- feedback please!

TL;DR: Moodles, abbreviated Mu, is a measure of in the moment happiness" (InMoHap), which is extremely helpful when exploring positive computing.

The case for moodles.

The goal of positive computing is to make users happier, which means we need to measure happiness to tell if users are happier. The current methods to measure happiness have limitations (details on request) , so we'll define a new ideal unit for in the moment happiness (InMoHap) called the moodle, abbreviated Mu.

The properties of the Mu is it can be objectively measured at any moment of time with minimal user interruption. For example, just as a fit bit can transparently count your steps through the day, a Moodle-O-Meter can measure your InMoHap throughout the day.

Examples of using moodles.
To get a good understanding of InMoHap and moodles the following graphs show some typical events through the day -- I'll flesh the below out with InMoHap graphs

Example #1: going through your day and getting triggered when you get a nasty gram from your Ex wife

Example #2: going through a normally grinding day

Example #3: Getting a surprise love letter from your partner.

The things that make InMoHap confusing:
Even though moodles are a step up from our current measures, they have a few confusing properties:

First, the relationship between moodles and satisfaction is complicated (details on request). For example, you might spend an entire vacation doing nothing but being drunk, this may high moodles, but does not improve satisfaction.

Second, moodles are the measure of an experience at a point in time. The moodles a situation produces for the experiencing self, may be different from the moodles as experienced by the remembering self. The remembering self uses the peak end rule

For example, imagine today at 5pm Bob is running and in pain, having a low Mu. Tomorrow when Bob remembers the run as a great experience and remembering the experience of running he has a high moodle count.

Approximating Moodles with existing tools and measures
Sadly, moodles don't yet exist. However we have some ability to measure happiness which I'll describe here.

StartupVille: Testing vs Optimizing

2015-05-22T15:56:00.002-07:00

TL;DR - Optimizing, is figuring out how to do make a result better. Testing is checking if something is so good it doesn’t need to be optimized, or so bad you're better off doing something different.

Founders spend a significant portion of their time comparing alternative to see which is better and why. For example how to make a landing page more appealing, or what price they should set for a product. This process is incredibly important and called optimizing.

Optimizing is often expensive so before you start optimizing, test to see if something has so little traction it's not worth starting to optimize, or has so much traction there's no need to optimize.

For example, imagine you have a customer acquisition cost (CAC) budget of 5$ and you run some search ads and get a 0% click through rate. In that case, instead of trying to optimize search ads, you are probably better off trying a different channel like social network ads. Now, imagine when you try social network ads you find your CAC is only 2$, in that case, you can skip optimizing completely as you’ve already achieved your goals.

A few final thoughts on the topic:
• Testing is essentially optimizing relative to the null hypothesis
• A side effect of optimizing rigorously is you describe why a change is important.
• You can always optimize after testing, in fact if it's important you certainly will.
• If it's trivial to do some optimizing while testing, go for it.

Soft Skills: How to suck less

2015-05-22T11:42:00.002-07:00

Ira Glass describes the problem of sucking with the eloquence of the master story teller that he is.

Jeff Atwood has the solution:

1) Embrace the suck - you'll keep sucking until you don't.
2) Do it in public - that way you can get feedback and learn how to suck less faster
3) Pick stuff that matters - the more important it is, the more motivation you have, and feedback you'll get.

Positive Computing: Technology making us happier

2015-05-22T10:45:00.001-07:00

TL; DR: Positive Computing is understanding how computing can make normal people happier.

Psychology started life as a science dedicated to helping people reduce mental illness. Recently some psychologists wondered how their craft could help normal people be happier. This new branch of psychology is called positive physiology.

Similarly computing started life dedicated to making people be more productive. Many early computer engineers expected the increase in productivity to increase happiness. But, while productivity soared, happiness remained flat. Recently some computer engineers wondered how their craft could help normal people be happier. This new branch of computing is called positive computing.

Positive computing is a brand new field, and I look forward to investing in it heavily. If you want to go deep into positive computing, there are some resources below:

A slide deck on positive computing
The book on positive computing
A pintreset board on positive computing

Typeform: Surveys and data gathering

2015-05-02T09:25:00.005-07:00

As an entrepreneur, figuring out what your customers need is your top priority. When you have lots of customers, surveys are a great way of doing this.

If you're doing surveys I strongly recommend typeform. It's simple to setup, and produces beautiful ux on phones and desktops for data gathering.

When you're thinking of using typeform, don't limit yourself to surveys. For example, I use typeform for sign up forms. This saved me several hours of initial development, and even more hours when I made changes to my sign up process.

Startupville: Would you tell a single dad he needs a mom for his kid?

2015-04-10T15:18:00.000-07:00

If you would, I've got news for you, he already knows, and what you said was futile.

Just as the single father already knows his child would benefit from a Mom and telling him won't help, it's not helpful to tell a founder he needs a partner.

Like a single father, a Solopreneur knows the benefits of a partner are huge, but is wary of settling on the wrong partner.

Having a partner who wouldn't cherish their baby through thick and thin, is far worse then going through the same think and thin alone.

Startupville: The three founders - Hustlers, Hackers and Hookers

2015-04-10T08:43:00.004-07:00

To run a startup you need three personas represented by your founders:Hustlers, Hackers and Hookers.

The hustler is the founder who can breaks down doors, she unlocks segments, captures funding, she's makes sure the startup engine never stalls for lack of leads or funding.

The hacker is the founder who builds it. She is a McGyver and can build anything quickly. When there's a technical problem she can get it duct taped and bubbled gummed back up in giffy to keep the technical side of the business running.

The hooker, often called a designer, is the least known of the founder personas, but possibly the most valuable. His job is to love the customers. He listens to the customers emphatically and deeply understands what customers need, even when the customer can't describe it. This founder figures what should be built, how it should work. what it should look like, all within the constrains of the business model and technology.

Often startups don't have dedicated people for each of these roles, but the personas need to covered by the founders to achieve success.