system.reflecti0n.net

Compelling Notes Cont'd

rocjoe — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:45:02 -0400

I remember playing music with friends on a particular night many years ago when we really hit a moment-- "in the pocket" as a drummer friend liked to call it. More than one moment was spent wondering: "am I playing the music, or is the music playing me?" After the jam session I asked everybody the same question and they all knew precisely the same moment I was thinking of.

To me, this is a kind of confirmation that there is an internal voice that, when we are open to it, we gladly follow. The places it takes us to rarely disappoint because this voice is located someplace close to our deepest-felt needs. This is why I try every creative thing possible that I can manage because I'm sure the voice and creativity sit right next to each other.

Hopefully this doesn't seem creepy. It would be very wrong to scare you off from listening to your own inner voice. That Id of yours has a lot to tell you and it's not all about personal gratification, either. The same voice that compels you to write stuff is the same voice that tells you what's the right thing to say to your girlfriend or make yourself heard in a crowd. At the right opportunities listening is the best thing you can do.

The Missing Piece: Writing With Your VOICE

rocjoe — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 22:12:53 -0400

It came to me all at once, on the way to the train station tonight. My bigger difficulty with my recent attempts at writing shorts stories was really missing something. That is, you gotta have a need to say something. When you’re only writing for writing’s sake, then it’s going to be really hard to finish anything.

So what’s your voice telling you to write? Don’t be surprised to find it’s not a heavily serious topic—there’s a ton of psychobabble out there that aggrandizes the inner voice but it’s really missing the point. Your voice isn’t there to tell you what the mysteries of the universe are, it’s there to tell you to go look for the mysteries. Writing skills only take over once you find something worth describing. Once writing skill takes over as the reason for writing, then the creative engine winds down and no work is done.

I just bet this is a topic I’ve covered a few months ago—I think I’m not paying attention to my own lessons.

Now, when I stop and look it’s pretty clear I don’t have any inner voice compelling me to write at the moment. There’s a whole lot of silence in there—silent like morning fog rolling in. I think it’s a symptom of overwork. I’ve got to pick a spot to rest—really rest. I think I’ll have some free time in May… better work on that.

The Calm Before The Storm

rocjoe — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:47:56 -0400

Today wasn’t so bad. I didn’t get pestered with questions but having five hours of meetings really makes it hard for people to seek you out for third-degree coder-training.

With a calm day like this, there’s bound to be waves coming by the end of the week… I think I’ve got a “incompetent” card or two left to play that-- if played at the right time—will prevent me from getting somebody else’s work dumped on my desk on Friday afternoon. I could work from home on Friday too, you know: “out of sight, out of mind”. These are the things I have to think about to avoid doing extra work.

The real shame is when the right people are involved in the project when it starts, “crunch time” would happen earlier, instead of 2 days before deadline. Planning is the best chance for success. We never take a chance.

Things Have Got to Get Better

rocjoe — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:40:04 -0400

I am interrupted on average about three times an hour between 9am and 5pm. Nearly all of these questions begin with “how do I…”

You know, I’m not the smartest person you’re ever going to meet—not by a longshot—but I am willing to learn… Why does everyone else get a free pass? Why do they ask me to do stuff instead of learning it themselves? I’ve been working in IT steadily for the past decade and I can definitely tell you less than half the staff I’ve ever met actually belong in IT.

Why not? Well, if you’re not motivated to learn new things on your own, software programming is not the field for you. I look around at the blogs done by other programmers and see them making really cool stuff in their spare time. These people don’t have a senior dev sitting around at home, they answer their own questions.

I’m not showing up to work every day to be at somebody else’s convenience. Really, who would want that job?

Want to talk about different approaches to improve database performance? You’ve got my full attention. Can’t figure out why a button doesn’t turn green at the right time? Please try a little harder at troubleshooting your code, we’ve all got our own job to do.

Thoughtful Programming

rocjoe — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:36:05 -0400

Today, I saw the most awful thing done with code that I have seen in a long time, maybe ever! No need to go into details, but the analogy to this blunder was like packing a Humvee in your luggage because you wanted bring a clock on your business trip.

In a manner of speaking, the developer went long way around. Then he did it in the most sloppy way forcing the app to waste resources and never clean up those resource making the app unstable to the point where it would be useless within a few minutes of use.

Doing it the hard way was one thing, but building the solution with the wrong components was just careless.

I have to say I really don’t care for showing developers the fundamentals like polymorphism or explaining the Observer pattern. On the other hand, I’m usually glad to send them in the right direction IF they come to me and demonstrate a little more thought than: “this looks difficult, I might as well ask someone else how to do it.”

In hindsight, when the developer was asking me about how to solve this particular issue, not only were they not demonstrating an interest in solving it themselves but I sent them packing back to their desk because of it.

The shame of it is I stand up for these people all the time when any manager is running them down – even the developers I didn’t get to interview personally. How can I stand up for people who do their job poorly? That’s like saying they’re allowed to be careless.

I don’t expect everybody to be cracker-jack coders, but I do expect them to do their work thoughtfully, and avoid giving me a stroke from days like these.

Twitter Fake Friends

rocjoe — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 22:56:58 -0400

Now some might find my use of Twitter a bit on the odd side. I rarely make conversation or status updates. I chose Twitter as an ideal place to dump those tiny little ideas that zip through your head while you’re doing other things.

Those ideas are probably because of doing other things. Like I know when I’ve grasped a concept tucked away in a novel because I hear it in my head. Then I dutifully report it to the Twittersphere. Mostly I don’t expect people to “get it”—they see the idea without the context. But there’s no chance of anyone getting it if I don’t post it, so I do and expect nothing in reply.

On the other hand, I really like it when people use Twitter for real updates: you’re having a tough day at work? Yeah, me too. Have an opinion on Watchmen? Hey, I want to know.

Twittermatic Friendships

Unfortunately, there are some people out these would seem to dredge their way through Twitter watching a selection of key words, then they automatically follow the sources of these key words. I can tell you I’ve watched this happen when I’ve tripped over topics like “politics”, “money” and “writing”. That first one was a very big regret, I was automatically followed by every Republican and Democratic 2008 Presidential candidate, even the ones who’d dropped out of the race months before.

I’d just like to say to the trolls out there using these tools think I’m going to pad their “Followers” count, well, you’ve got another think coming. Get lost. Get lost quickly because I read your bios, I read your last 50 tweets. Seriously, I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same before you add me to your followers, then you’d see you aren’t going to get much of anything out of me except the odd fluke comment!

Wanted: A Dose of Inspiration

rocjoe — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 20:28:39 -0400

Let’s see, I started the day with a nice hot cup of coffee and a novel (still Quicksilver—halfway through now) but that didn’t really fill my sails, so I went for a haircut and then home to get my camera and make good use of the nice weather by walking Ching Trail.

The attempts to take outdoor photos at mid-day reminded me why I found sessions at the ROM so fun—you can’t take photos in the outdoors in the early afternoon. I mean, it was wash-out city everywhere I pointed the camera. Ah, someday I’ll remember these lessons I seem to have taught myself a hundred times over. Hang on, who really wants to hear this sort of stuff?

I’m really looking forward to one of those days where I feel really inspired—they do happen but it’s not like they ever happen on schedule or anything. Until the inspiration happens everything else shows you what a rut you’re in.

Maybe the inspiration comes from breaking out of the rut. Yeah, that’s probably it. Now the question is: what does it take to break out? Do I need to save up energy to push myself over the top or should I cut in a totally a new direction, and expect the extra energy to appear just from the thrill of inspiration?

Well, I’ll go load up this afternoon’s photos and see if there are any surprises…

J'ai Fou

rocjoe — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:57:10 -0400

...I have crazy.

You see, there is this myth that we can change software anytime we like. What happens when you commit yourself to one direction of effort is you tend to stay on that branch. Change -- even for the better-- usually comes at such a high cost to your business that you're better off keeping the status quo no matter how awful and limiting it may be. The pain of working with the old crappy stuff is still cheaper than taking the hit on the new and better stuff. You can try to convince people that its worth it to change, but those that make these kind of decisions only look at the bottom line: the smallest number wins.

In the software side of the business we call this a monumental FAIL.

Today is all "fail".

One-hundred percent.

Thorough and complete.

Disappointment is too meek a notion to describe this.

Commuting With My eBook Reader

rocjoe — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 21:48:01 -0400

My first choice for properly breaking in the Sony eReader is Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson. I’ve been faithfully using my eReader for about ten days now that the weather has gone above freezing and I don’t have to fear the screen cracking from the cold. The price at the Sony bookstore was about half of the paper edition, and infinitely lighter (those of you familiar with Neal Stephenson’s recent works knows exactly what I mean!)

The page-count are higher on eBooks because the screen is smaller than a paperback book page so it seems a little daunting at first, especially on these long-play novels of Stephenson’s. Quicksilver is weighing in at almost 2,300 pages. On the bright side you’re finished reading pages in half the normal pulp-reading rate, so you feel super smart as you walk off the train having read fifty pages during the morning commute!

Quicksilver includes a few diagrams and line-drawings as well. The line drawings were very clear at normal zoom. The drawings, however, were mostly illegible and did not get clearer with zoom. They had the deft touch of JPEG artefacts from too much compression. These diagrams were of family trees and were probably rendered by the publisher as JPEGs because it was cheaper than paying somebody to reformat them for an eBook. If this eReader stuff gets to sustain itself, I hope they start updating novels like this one to replace the shaved corners with real vector art.

If you have your own eReader you’ll notice yourself that just plugging it in to your computer’s USB doesn’t guarantee a successful charge and you have to make sure the little red light by the power switch is actually on before you walk away from the device! My only disappointment came a week ago when I boarded the train and only got through one page before getting a “low battery warning” even though I had just unplugged it from my desktop thirty minutes before.

It will feel weird to return to paperbacks when I work through by backlog of unread pulp but for now I’m sticking with this gadget —I have about 40 “classics” loaded on the device as well. So combined with my pulp editions I easily have a year’s worth of reading to do. Good news is my work insurance pays for eye exams.

That’s Really Enough

rocjoe — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 21:49:41 -0400

Ok, I think I’m on some sort of a streak here—it’s been about five days since I actually had a topic for a post…

I see a kind of irony in all this. I started posting everyday because i thought I’d be building some mental muscle for writing. Yet daily posting for the past two months has left me with no brain power to write anything at all… how cruel it is to come full circle. I’d like to tell myself that the mental muscles just need a rest and I’ll come back with a refreshed set of writing skills. But it’s a catch-22… if I stop posting for even a little while I’ll likely stop posting for even longer—long enough for “skills” to grow weak again.

Sure, I could set an appointment in my calendar and promise myself to write something—but promises to myself are easily broken—I’m such a wuss.

Wuss or not, I’ll be back tomorrow with another attempt. Stick around, I’m going to look for a way to ride this low-spell out.