Stu Andrews

Late To The i-Party

Stu — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 13:12:20 +0000

It’s as big a leap in technology as I’ve experienced.

Perhaps I’m a little late to the party, but as of a few days ago my tech world has been forever changed.

What is this that you speak of? I hear you think across the interwebs.

iPhone.

It’ll change things. And if it doesn’t, then that’s sad.

The ability to do many tasks remotely. Apps that because of the smallness, the restrictions, the perceptions, actually work better on an iPhone than my pc.

Examples?

I’ve used Facebook more in the last couple of days than ever before. And that’s a big deal. I don’t like Facebook. But the iPhone has caused a deep shift within my patterns of tech discipline.

I discovered a time keeping app which is perfect for my contract work. It keeps tracks of my hours while I work on my laptop.

Even the seamless compact methods of Google use (Email, Reader,Talk) is fast growing on me.

I leave you with some of the photos my 5 year old took this afternoon. Oh, and this post was sent from my little tool of awesomeness (iPhone).

No related posts.

PayPal Noticed Me

Stu — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:32:11 +0000

Increasingly I find myself building and advising on web systems as opposed to desktop.

This doesn’t diminish the importance of Desktop development in my books, it just reflects the (not passing) trend of business on the web. It makes sense. And really, it’s all just Development.

A big part of business is making money.

That was some wisdom I dropped on you right there wasn’t it. Don’t clap just yet, the talk isn’t over. Heh heh.

PayPal have been around for quite a while. They are, well, big. Chances are if you’ve bought something online you’ve interacted with Paypal. And if you’ve used them, chances are they’ve helped your business make money.

But regardless of their pedigree, regardless of their massive sway and power, regardless of the fact that chocolate + vanilla icecream is just awesome .. There is a simple reason why I’m writing this post.

PayPal noticed me.

This is a very important point. Not because of me, substitute other names in there. What’s important is that they have gotten smart about today’s web.

In preparing for Barcamp I noticed a Twitter account for PayPal. Strangely, it wasn’t spouting corporate shillage-speak. Whoever sat behind that Twitter Account was actually interacting with people.

And they talked to me. Before Barcamp (where I fooled everyone into thinking I could sing). And afterwards.

They invited me along to their Australian Developer Days, and I said yes. Signed up today, applied for leave, and had an excellent email conversation with them.

Let me tell you why this is important, although you might’ve already guessed.

PayPal is no longer faceless. They talked to me like a real person. Possibly laughed at me singing a song. Looked at my blog, made reference to a completely different post that needed some searching to find.

This is good PR, good people skills. This wins people over. At the very least, it’s won me over.

I’m going to the Developer Day mostly as a Developer keen to see what other folk are doing, and to talk about implementation of payment gateways, coding of them, that kind of thing.

One thing I’m interested to find out more about is their API, and using it from a Desktop system, as opposed to a web site/service/system.

But also, I’m going along with the expectation of furthering the relationship I’ve already begun online. Saying g’day, shaking hands, laughing about something or other.

Kudos to PayPal. Thumbs up Sirs + Dames.

So to you humble reader, if you are a Developer, or interested in becoming a Developer, you should look deep within yourself and assign yourself a number based on your .. Urg, wait, that’s Homer spouting out.

The PayPal Developer Days 2009 are being hosted in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth. The Sydney day is the 20th of July (2009) and the others follow on from there.

Let’s not forget a big huge and massive reason why you, as a fellow Developer, should be attending:

The Developer Days are FREE*! Absolutely without reservation free to attend. No fees.

* This does not include freedom of time or of your brain activity.

Signup Here And Be Excellent.

To everyone reading this post who’s not a Developer (Mum, Visitor #2), I heartily apologise for it’s unashamed geek-factor.

A Weekend Full Of Adventure

Stu — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 11:45:23 +0000

This weekend was one of the most disparately eventful times in my life.

Saturday morning was taken up with a Client meeting. Impressive I hear you say.

Saturday afternoon I moseyed on down to Barcamp Sydney 5. It was a great time. I met folk, attended some seminars/presentations, and gave a talk right at the dying stages of the day that was disjointed, had people packing up all around me, and was cut short.

Narky much? No, not at all! Seriously, read on. This whole thing worked far better than I could have hoped.

I was so filled with unbridled stu-thusiasm that I took my guitar and burst forth in song in front of the entire population gathered for the final segment.

“Super Powered Geek” was a song I wrote in two days. Thursday night I wrote the first verse and chorus, Friday night the second verse.

The live performance was, well, interesting. Totally unexpected. The plan was for the 8th and final point of my talk, A Super Heroes Guide To Development, to be titled “A Little Splash of Crazy”. The point being that we need to, in our development, be willing to inject a bit of the crazy.

However, because it was the end of the day, and let’s be honest, everyone’s pretty beat and tired by that stage, I didn’t have a hope of getting through the talk.

Everybody was heading towards the Big Room, so putting the 8th Point (yes, capitalised, because that’s how I roll) into practice, I begged Ajay (@funkycoda) to let me give my last point to everybody.

Of course, Ajay looked at me like I was crazy and said, “What the? No way I’m letting a big hairy ape-like creature with a leprechaun t-shirt talk to my people?” (paraphrased)

A couple of Chuck Norris round-house kicks to the head and Ajay came around to my point of view. From the Ambulance bed he gave me the thumbs up. At least, I think it was a thumbs up.

So, without further violence I raced into the Big Room, down the front, and proceeded to serenade the crowd of folk with “Super Powered Geek”.

The guitar and my dulcid tones were both out of tune. My strumming was terrible. I missed a couple of lines of the song, and got the rhythm mixed up.

But you know, it didn’t matter. Because when you splash around a little bit of crazy, it’s about throwing together something far more than the sum of it’s parts. It’s about being willing to hold to a singular vision (mine being to tell people to wear their undies on the outside, point #6 in the talk). And it’s about getting out there.

If it wasn’t for me misunderstanding how the “card” system worked for putting your presentation on the timesheet; If it wasn’t for me waiting too long to start my talk; If it wasn’t for throwing caution to the wind, laughing at the fear which rises in the gullet; Then I wouldn’t have been able to enjoy Barcamp as much as I did.

And man alive I REALLY enjoyed it. So many geeks. So much fun.

A special shout out to the Youngin’s I made paper airplanes for. You guys rock!

Anyway, a big THANKYOU to all the Folk at Barcamp Sydney 5. It was great to get to know some of you, great to make a fool out of myself in front of all of you, and great to get some Microsoft paraphernalia for being “Most Entertaining Geek Of The Day” (again, I paraphrase).

Cheers to @halans for putting a recording of the song up on Youtube.

Saturday night my eldest and I went to the Rugby. We had a blast! Although the game wasn’t an exciting try-fest, it was still enjoyable. We nicknamed the France full-back “Softie”, and I’m sure I didn’t embarrass my son by screaming out “IT’S NOT SOCCER!”.

Sunday is a private day for us. I don’t talk about it much. We go to Church, we have fellowship with our friends, and we spend time as a family. But believe me, today (Sunday) had it’s interesting moments. Interesting enough that it will be a long time until I forget what happened at Church today.

So that was my weekend.

Kudos for reading this far.

I’m excited to really commit to attending more conferences like Barcamp. There’s a lot to be excited about in the world of Development (and general Geek-dom), and I’ve got a lot of excitement to transfer.

Busy Evening: Podcasts, iTunes, New Chapters

Stu — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:28:10 +0000

Phew. It’s almost 2:30am and I’m still roaring along.

Tonight I’ve added Chapter Four of Awakening onto the Taels website.

GO VISIT NOW.

Why? Well, because you can now subscribe to the iTunes feed of Taels Online.

That means you’ll be able to keep up to date with all the story podcasts.

Story Podcasts?

Yup, that’s right. I’ve recorded podcasts of each of the Chapters and the Short Story.

So have a listen, or a read, or do both.

Introducing “PaidNotes”, A Simple Accounting System

Stu — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:52:58 +0000

Ages pass, wheels turn, stars wink and fade into blackness.

That’s how long ago it was that I wrote a little accounting application to take care of the small number of Invoices and Bills my business deals with.

A couple of weeks back I took a look at the code. After the whimpering had stopped and I’d extracted myself from the foetal position in the corner, I decided to do a rewrite.

Yes, the dreaded rewrite.

Thankfully, two reasons gave me hope that I was doing the right thing.

The codebase is incredibly small.
I had seriously –ve idea about coding back then. No ID fields, bad methodologies, insane functionality decisions.

So I give you a teaser image. PaidNotes:

Show Vs Book (I)

Stu — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:48:53 +0000

There is little doubt in my mind that television shows have as much power of story-telling as books.

And yet there is such a black hole of difference in how they are treated.

When does an author get dropped before finishing the story? Not often.

When does a television show get dropped before finishing the story? All the time.

Sure, there’s the makeup. A handful of people (the Author, Editors and others) versus a small army (Writers, Producers, Directors, Show-Runners, and many more).

There is cost. While making a run of books is expensive, I would imagine it pales when stacked up against the money required for the ensemble of humanoids needed to put together a television show. Happy to be wrong though.

Given that I’ve not done either (written books or created a television series), I’m only fishing around in what I _think_ might be the differences. There’d have to be lots more.

There’s one difference which seems to matter more than anything (or before anything) else.

Advertising.

It clouds the vision. It creates imbalance. It sullies the story.

Stories told through the medium of television would be a lot better off without advertising.

Course, without advertising they wouldn’t get told.

So what’s left? Do the best with what you have. Here’s the linkage between my thoughts and experience. That’s what Castle taught me tonight. We watched an episode where Castle’s book went on sale. His pulp fiction book. And this is what I got out of it. Whatever the medium,

You can write good pulp.

Does (Software) Pulp Sell?

Stu — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:27:51 +0000

In the world of fiction writing, good pulp will sell. It appeals to a broad range of reader. It can be disguised a little to sway up and down the high/low-brow scale, but it’s still pulp.

Is this true for software?

Can you write good pulp software? And, does it sell?

Do You Need Custom Web Development Work Done?

Stu — Fri, 29 May 2009 00:04:21 +0000

It has been a very busy time. I’ve had a lot of night meetings for Church, injured my knee a few weeks back playing rugby, re-started Taels, and started/worked-on other little projects too numerous and beligerant to mention.

One element of the previous weeks that is of special interest is the Contract work that has dropped itself in my lap.

A fellow Clarion user from Europe was referred to me for custom web system work. That is, he needed some Nettalk Webserver work done quick smart, and I got the job.

A Graphic Designer bro asked me to help him get the technical aspects of a blog done. One Wordpress install later, with some work customising the fantastic Thesis theme, and the design was ported fine and dandy.

My confidence is high. With every new task I’m learning all the time. I throw myself into this work with a ferocity and tenacity that is kind of surprising.

What amazes me (because I’m not so big on being big-headed, and never thought I’d be technically competent), is that I’m good at this stuff.

Do you need custom web development done?

I’m your worker bee.

What Is A GUID And Do You Need One?

Stu — Fri, 08 May 2009 07:06:58 +0000

When you’re writing software you’re most often working with data. Sticking data on the screen in a way that benefits the user.

Mostly, data is made up of records. There are six people in my family. So if “Family” is the TABLE, then it has six RECORDS.

One of the most important elements of creating and manipulating data is the Unique Identifier. More simply, you want every record in the table to have a Unique ID field.

Keep going. This post isn’t really about programming. At least, not software programming :)

A Unique ID field says:

“I am unique. There is no other record in this table like me.”

Going further, if you have a bunch of tables within the software, it’s sometimes good to add a Globally Unique Identifier. This is a field that has a value which is unique across the ENTIRE DATABASE.

“I am unique. There is no other record in the entire program like me.”

Uniqueness is a concept that is found in everything. We make standards and rules so that experiments and environments will remain “the same” to a given degree, but in reality, every single thing is unique. Whether that is an experiment in first year Chem, or running the same five miles day in and out, every single experience you have will be unique for yourself and compared to others.

However, as pointed out, we round out our experiences. It’s a good thing to have similar experiences.

I went through a hard time at school. Does that make me unique?

Of course not. My GUID is definitely not the “hard time at school” field.

I did have an experience at school that noone else has ever had, or will ever had. And this is the same for every other person who’s been to school. Ever. In the entire history of the human race. And maybe the Martians too, if they have school.

If the Parent is not unique (I had a hard time at school), then is it relevant to go deeper until we do have uniqueness? Of the fifth of March in that year I stepped out of this door and tripped on that rock and cut myself here. Sure, that’s unique, but does it make me unique?

Are we unique at birth? If so, then Experience is moo(t). And also, out of our control (you could argue that we have some control over our experiences).

For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going to say that, YES, we are unique from birth. There is something about our makeup, about us, that is globally (or universe-ally) unique.

Do you care about your GUID?

Some people are quite secure in their uniqueness within a small sphere. It could be a Family circle. Immediate. Perhaps further out into the depths of Extended Family.

Others find that they are comfortably unique within the sphere of their close Friends. This is enough.

There are people who are driven to be recognisably unique on a larger scale. Perhaps it’s becoming President or Prime Minister.

And we’ve switched from what IS (born unique) to what is WANTED (being unique).

Everyone (past and present) has a GUID. From birth, we are unique amongst creation. Both as a segment, a race, of that creation, and as individuals.

Should you care about having a GUID?

I guess it’s a matter of scale.

Your GUID only matters within the sphere of what, or who, you care about.

Circle of friends. Family. Adoring fans. World of Warcraft Guild Buddies.

What’s the point of caring about your uniqueness in all of creation?

For me, the answer to that question is easy. My friends and family, my legions of adoring fans (oh, now i made myself cry a little on the inside), they can’t help me out with that little bump at the end of life.

I want to have a personal, a unique relationship, with whoever is going to help me out.

God is the biggest of scale. He gives the GUID a proper sphere of understanding. And He offers a relationship with each individual GUID, through Christ.

Get yourself a unique relationship with the Developer of Creation.

“So Say We All” – The BSG Boardgame

Stu — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 12:41:46 +0000

This afternoon Vaughan and Allie came over and we had a few hours excellent time with the BSG Boardgame.

It was a lot of fun. At the halfway point, the accusations of who was a Cylon started firing. Bada-BING, bada-BOOM!

There was a good deal of depth to the game. Probability plays a part, but not too much. Same with decision making.

All in all, a great time was had. Kudos to Vaughan for persisting in the teaching, and for being a gracious Cylon loser :)

No related posts.

Holidays Are For What?

Stu — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:33:00 +0000

Holidays remind me of something important.

A holiday is not for getting “all those things” done that you’ve been putting off or haven’t had the time to do in normal work life.

A holiday is about removing those stresses and focusing on joy and happiness. It’s a holiday. A break away from normal (important) life.

I find that hard to do. Very hard. But this past week has been a true blessing.

Awesome.

Puff Daddy – Getting Better Than I Was

Stu — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:50:48 +0000

Yesterday something important happened.

I’ve been running home, 5kms give or take, for a few months now. I average three, four times a week. Sometimes I meet Mrs Stu and the Kids halfway at the park.

This body of mine is not built to run. I’m a prop. Big. Heavy.

Yesterday I ran home, the original track along the roads, 5.1 kms according to Google Maps (heh heh), in the SUB 30 MINUTES bracket.

This is a big deal, HUGE, for me.

It’s not fast for most people who actually run. But for me, I’m getting better than I was. And being over 30 in chronological terms, over 110 in “well covered” terms, I’m stoked to be running a sub 30 minute 5kms.

Course, today I took it easy, ran light, didn’t push.

But my brain now knows I can do it. Push harder.

I might be a puffing Dad, but for a while I’m a better runner than I used to be.

Creating Like A Child

Stu — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:31:16 +0000

Over the last few years, the walls of my office have slowly become covered in pictures drawn by my kids.

There’s Aliens, Spiderman, Mario, Star Wars, T-Rex’s, Dragons, Dogs, Roads, Cars, Parents and Kids, Frogs, Knights, Snowmen, Horses, Airplanes, Castles, Futurama Characters, Houses and more.

One picture has a Dragon flying underneath Lightning Clouds and above two wizards dueling it out. Another has a Dragon breathing fire above Alien Spaceships beaming Aliens down to the ground, and the people are running away scared. Still another has a Frog Prince on a lily pad.

Kids minds are okay with crazy. If you throw together a Dragon and an Alien in a computer game, or a story, they’re not going to worry so long as it’s fun. So long as you let them play, let them imagine.

What’s the point?

In a Game or a Story, don’t be afraid to draw together elements that have no obvious connection.

Put all the ideas in a crazy mashed-up puzzle, and then work out where the bits fit.

5 Rules For A Twitter Addict

Mentions From The Outer World

Stu — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 00:40:16 +0000

It’s old, but Rock Paper Shotgun posted about Space Office Fight back on the 17th of March. I was giddy and grinning like a fool and hysterical for the rest of that week.

My second short story with Every Day Fiction is being published on the 16th of April. Super excited about that. Lots more stories to tell.

Lastly, Ruggamatrix mentioned The Rugby Man in this episode.

Software Development Is Like Writing A Story

Stu — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:15:27 +0000

See the previous post in this series for togetherness.

The reality is that people do write stories with perfect characters. While the situations in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ books were broken and brought about by despicable (not many shades of gray) men and beautiful but damaged women, John Clayton (or John Carter) was pretty much perfect.

When writing software, you almost never have a perfect feature. There are so many different possibilities that somewhere, in some place, at some time, your feature would be rendered imperfect.

Gemmell might not stand against literary giants, but I’ll read him once a year at least.

Gmail doesn’t do exactly what Outlook does, but I’m not going back.

So what do we do?

We write stories and software to be more than the sum of their parts.