So, apparently I sent spam to myself.
I'm not so sure about the product I'm selling though, somehow I don't see Soft being something to associate with a product like Viagra.
Well, at least it's 70% off all January. Until the next spam at least.
So, apparently I sent spam to myself.
I'm not so sure about the product I'm selling though, somehow I don't see Soft being something to associate with a product like Viagra.
Well, at least it's 70% off all January. Until the next spam at least.
I was browsing through the blogs a while back and happened to click on a Six Apart Jobs banner. Looking through the available positions, I noticed an interesting line in their job descriptions:
Every Wednesday is a hackathon: free breakfast, lunch and dinner, no meetings, no interruptions, guaranteed--and the best hacks get shipped
I think in that one line, they show pretty clearly that they've understood something pretty crucial about the hacker ethos and what differentiates hackers from drones: the innate will and curiosity to invest time in their own ability to do things better. That reminded me of the model used by Google that I've always thought was pretty clever. As summarized by Wikipedia:
All Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time (one day per week) on projects that interest them. Some of Google's newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors.
However, when I tried to search the Google Job listings I didn't see it mentioned in any of the benefits, so I'm not sure if the 20% rule actually applies anymore. Speaking of Google's benefits, even if that isn't included it is indeed crafted to be a true hacker heaven - if you actually are a hacker, that is.
Researching this a bit further I came by an interesting article about the work-slash-home environment Google and others are creating with these perks that might suit some people while causing discomfort in others. The article defines two types of people:
I admit that I represent the integrators myself to the extent that I never felt comfortable working at a nine-to-five job at a large company, even though the work itself was pretty nice. I think it might have something to do with my parents being entrepreneurs and work being present at all times, leaving a heritage of Lutheran work ethic. Could be worse.
What's slightly alarming though is that I recognize that I can get pretty annoyed when dealing someone with more segmentor approach to life, someone that actually goes home and has an actual life. Probably hobbies too. Being always at work has always seemed like a norm to me (even when I wasn't being self employed), and it's sometimes hard to see things being any other way.
So, where I see hackers and drones, the researchers see integrators and segmentors. I'm not quite sure that the line can be drawn that directly, but there are some similarities. The whole approach of the article seems to be more company oriented, trying to examine people as a group from the perspective of the company, whereas my view is more about the individual person. The article quotes David Sirota, co-author of The Enthusiastic Employee: How Companies Profit by Giving Workers What They Want:
"The key question in organizations is not the typical one -- how do you motivate people or engage people?" he explains. "It's how do you keep management from destroying motivation?"
This quote practically begs to introduce a third management category of tormentors to the mix, but in all fairness I do agree with that quote. Companies shouldn't try too much. To me it seems that given the right mix of integrators (or hackers) the workplace has the tendency of forming that environment or atmosphere by itself, even (and sometimes especially) as a bit of a forbidden fruit. Companies can't create that atmosphere, people can. Companies can only nurture it, carefully.
But is it really even about the perks in the end? I've been in a company that had quite substantial benefits, especially for Finland (free drinks, weekly breakfast, friday bar, massages and all that) and even after those perks where taken away or reduced significantly the atmosphere was still there. Hell, even after the company went bankrupt and people scattered around the atmosphere is still there, living online.
Naturally, not all endorsed that relaxed atmosphere for different reasons and some even resented it as unprofessional. In hindsight, that might well be true for a company trying hard to be a respectable enterprise IT consultant. Then again, having a kid waiting at home does quite effectively ”segmentorize” even the most devoted integrator.
During the years, I've had the mandatory thoughts about the whole meaning of life. Pompous, I know. So far, I've mostly come to the conclusion that the meaning of life is found in learning, discovering and especially creating new things.
In a way, it could be that the whole "integrator optimized workplace" is trying to offer some kind of meaning of life (or a suitable substitute) for people that actually find it in similar things already. Learning. Discovering. Creating. I've sometimes said that it's funny that I get paid to do things that I'd do for free, and even if in reality it might be somewhat exaggerated it does have the grain of truth in it.
Wrapping up and coming back to the original concept of hackathons and 20% time, I'm not really sure how I would react to something like that. In a way it feels a bit forced, like creativity could be turned on at will every Wednesday when it's profitable for the evil overlords. I think it has to feel a bit forbidden or outside the normal environment, happen by accident instead of a quarterly plan.
It is probable that at least something usable (and indeed, profitable) will come out of that creative process, but trying to plan for it or trying to productize it is really hard - if at all possible. Then again, successful business is rarely about easy things, just ask Google.
This is a part of a collection of articles: Profit and happiness
Mandatory disclaimer: I don't have anything against design patterns in general, I just like discovering things by myself. Even if it's mostly by accident.
I've always been pretty indifferent about tattoos; I have nothing against them but I've never felt the need to get one. But if I did, I know what I'd get. The main reasons that people criticize tattoos is that they're permanent: get something too much tied to current events or people in your life and there's a good possibility it'll look dated and just plain wrong in few years. For me, that would be just the reason to get one.
There are way too few permanent reminders of our past that we carry these days. Our computers age and die in few years, digital photographs fade with hard drive crash and IKEA furniture lasts five years at best. We live in a disposable culture filled with items that have no meaning, no story to tell. In that world, tattoos still hold that value, they're still permanent reminders of the things we've done.
When I turned 30 (I promise I'll try to avoid that phrase and postings related to that but I know it will be used at least few more times) I started to think about a proper way to carry my own past with me through this life I live. I wanted something that would last but not be static, something that would change during the years, so objects like a watch or any other trinket wouldn't really work. But a tattoo would.
It's very simple, actually. Draw a grid with two columns and four rows with each cell measuring about 10 x 10 cm for example (if placed on the back, which would be the natural place for it I think). Starting in the top left corner, fill out a cell for each decade gone by choosing an icon representing the things that were important to you that time. That way it doesn't matter if it's dated since it's supposed to be. Something like this:
Yes, it's a fish. No, I wouldn't really use a fish, I just found it in some clip art collection. Now, if I was a fisherman, I would use a fish. In all cells.
As for the art itself, I'm not so sure what the icons could be. The first one would probably be something symbolizing growth and learning, second one for the teen years' seeking and third one representing work and the Internet. I know using the 'net for something like that is pretty cheesy, but considering all things it definitely has shaped my life the last decade more than anything else.
Of course the design isn't perfect or without its problems, but I like the basic concept quite a bit, especially for the dynamic and diary like nature of it. Living longer than what the grid allows icons for would require some additional cells, so the positioning would have to have some space below it to accommodate changes, though with my current lifestyle (and barring any scientific miracles) I'll be lucky to fill three rows. Now, if I could only figure out a way to implement that on a guitar...
This is a part of a collection of articles: Greatest things I never did
As an independent IT consultant, I've had the fortunate possibility of getting a peek inside the daily work at different kinds of companies, both in advertising and IT world. Small companies trying to lure in the creative elite, big companies trying to achieve predictable mediocrity and middle sized companies trying to figure out what the hell they really want to be.
Being a geek in the midst of all that can be quite challenging at times, trying to find a place to spend at least 1/3 of your daily life at. Hopefully being happy. That search for happiness and personal fulfillment through work will be the focus of my musings and rants under the "Profit and happiness" title. I'm not sure where that road will lead, but I can't wait to find out.
For those of you who don't know me personally, keep in mind that my experiences are heavily influenced by the so called IT/Digital Media scene of Finland from mid-90s to these days with some early steps in the world of advertising. That said, I don't think it differs from the same scene in other countries that much (maybe we were just a bit less out of control). But more about that and other things later.
Photo courtesy of Icon Medialab Finland Heritage Archive
This is a part of a collection of articles: Profit and happiness
I've had many ideas for T-shirt designs during the years but never got around to actually getting any printed. So, in order to preserve that short moment of inspired lunacy, I've decided to have them here as small postings. Postlets. Whatever.
AJAX window managers that enable the "real application feel" inside the web browser have become all the rage in the last few years. I've written several windowing systems on top of Javascript/DOM myself, with mixed results. Usually they've worked well enough for my own use in some particular project, but I've never had the time to build anything more refined, modular and reusable. I've also tried to use the existing UI libraries but nothing's ever been quite suitable to my needs for one simple reason: they seem to be too trusting in the environment they reside in.
Most of the Javascript UI toolkits seem to be built on the idea that there's a developer controlled environment that the custom application resides in. Things are peaceful and happy in the little land of AJAX with all things DOM neatly in order. In reality, it's almost never like that, quite the contrary. In the real world of web application development you often have seven kinds of middlewares and frameworks battling for the same flat namespaces of CSS and DOM, not to mention Javascript. Trying to debug a CSS problem that varies with the environment that the application is used in isn't fun at all. Trust me.
The common solution to this has been prefixing the hell out of everything, especially in DOM and CSS (using class="foo_window" instead of just class="window" for example). With Javascript it's also becoming popular to use the object literal notation which is pretty nice way of digging yourself a safe namespace in the battlefield, but it has its own problems with inheritance for example (more about it in some other post). Few frameworks that I've seen directly assess this problem, but some products like Liferay Portal do try to encourage sane namespacing by managing the user's Javascript and CSS files in a more modular fashion.
Now, back to window managers. Lately I've been writing yet another window manager to cope with the hostile environment that is the DOM. Since it's meant to be used in situations where the AJAX application is injected into an existing site or application with a single script tag the requirements for stealthy operation are extremely high. One good example would be an integrated WYSIWYG editor for some CMS system: the WYSIWYG editor code can't know what the environment it's embedded into will be like. So, my main design goals for the LiveTools window manager were:
Example of an FCKeditor instance running in the LiveTools window manager.
Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly) the development of the window manager has been quite slow in the last few months due to the permanent lack of free time (and natural procrastination, otherwise I wouldn't have this blog either) and aforementioned problems with inheritance and object literal notation. But well, I'm pretty sure I'll get it done eventually. What it will look like and how much of the current codebase is used, that's a whole another thing because...
Today, I saw an interesting and pretty unique solution to some aspects of the problem. Greg Houston has created a MooTools extension called MooTools Mocha UI that implements the basic window manager functionality. The twist in the story is that it uses the Canvas tag to render the windows (including the controls, gradients, shadows etc) so no images are needed simplifying the packaging quite a bit and making it more flexible in general.
It also tries to assess some of the hostile environment problems by prefixing all the elements with "mocha" but still has few bits like class="resizeHandle" that could cause problems when embedded into a larger web application utilizing several other frameworks. All in all it's quite impressive approach, too bad it's on the wrong framework. Actually, I might just have to reconsider my own design again. Damn.
Then again, it's only code - there's more where it came from.
It's no secret that Taylor Guitars has been working on "proper" solidbody electric guitars for some time now, especially given the release of the hybrid electric-acoustic T5 model back in 2005. Now the result of that work is finally public at the Taylor Electric Guitars Website and if the Guitar World review (PDF) is to be believed, they've managed to actually create something new and unique. The model is simply called "Taylor Solidbody" and it comes in three flavors: Classic, Standard and Custom with street prices ranging from $1300 to $2300 and if it actually delivers, that ain't bad at all (especially given the current exchange rates for us europeans).
I have to admit, I was a bit scared that it would be yet another (if high class given Taylor's reputation) version of PRS Custom. Instead, what we get is an intriguing blend of traditional looks and custom engineering - not exactly the reimagining of the electric guitar that Parker attempted over a decade ago, but a valiant effort nonetheless. Actually, it might've been the attitude towards the apparent "weirdness" of the Parker Fly that kept Taylor from experimenting more with the form factor, instead choosing pretty safe and even a bit retro (reminds me of Danelectro, must be the shape of the cut in Custom) singlecut look for their first proper entry into the world of electrics.
The website has lots of information about the innovations and engineering and whatnot, but to me the most interesting bit are the pickups. The claim to be using new materials and completely redesigned approach and the end result does sound very good, even if the YouTube clips aren't of the best quality. I'd love to get my hands on the new models for a try, but I guess it'll be a while until the new models arrive to Europe with the U.S. release later this week. All in all, definitely the most interesting new guitar in ages even if I still do prefer the more modern look of the Parker Fly.
When I started to think about blogging, again, I realized I've lost count how many different blogging solutions I've done from scratch during the years, probably something like 10 or so. I know I had three blogs earlier, all had some special niche or "thing" I just had to have to try and separate them from the bland masses. I wanted to be special, probably wanted to prove something too. Having access to multiple servers with all the necessary bits and pieces, databases and enough bandwidth to last a lifetime made me forget what it's all about. Not this time, I hope.
Yes, it's all about the content. I've never been much of a writer, even though I do have my moments. Usually they involve ranting of some kind, trying to find creative ways to insult something or someone. But in the end, I've neglected the actual content, the letters that form the words that form... you know how it goes. After thinking about it for some time, I've found few things that have driven me to forget the content and substitute it with clever gizmos. Kinda fitting, actually, since I do the same musically. Just forget the essence as long as it's shiny.
Pride and fear. Writing something public has always been a nightmare for me. I check try to check the grammar to my best knowledge, verify that all the nifty phrases I've lifted from cheesy TV shows are actually used (though I try to avoid "fracking" things up) and in general try to look as polished as possible. That's something that naturally affects the amount of things published severely. So this time, I'm trying to lower that limit, hence the name: untellectual. Instead of trying to write some pretentious wannabe manifesto, why wouldn't I write about things I do and like - even if I might occasionally be wrong. It's been known to happen anyway.
Selective laziness. Rolling your own blogging software does have some advantages, especially when it comes to the shiny surfaces. I did try to polish the basic TypePad layout a bit in here too, but eventually I just found it's not really worth it. But rolling your own also means you easily forget to implement all the nice stuff like integration to proper blogging software, commenting and whatnot. The stuff that actually makes blogging, well, blogging. It's a curious thing and I'm a bit puzzled, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. After all, I'm writing this in MarsEdit.
Lack of commitment. Ok, so I wasn't going to roll my own blogging software this time around, but how about just installing one on one of the available servers? Well, that was an option but in the end I thought even that would distract me from the actual mission at hand - the content. so I opted for TypePad just for the fact that it makes the whole damn thing so much easier, even if I lose some configurability. And the fact that I have to pay for it monthly should act as some kind of a motivator, at least in my idealist dreams.
So, there you have it. Or actually, there I have it. Now, let's get on with it.