Thomas Williams

Goodbye DNJ

After 4 years, nearly 200-odd posts, dozens of helpful comments and plenty of fun times, I'm leaving this DotNetJunkies blog.

Don't worry - my high-quality, Australian-influenced, caffeine-fueled blogging will continue at my new home on TheRuntime. Jay Kimble got me all set up and has been great all round (hi Jay!)

My new feed is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/thomasswilliams-tech

I'm leaving because in the end, the blogging side of DNJ was not kept up-to-date, e-mails to the admins went unanswered, and generally the blogs fell into disrepair IMHO.

Goodbye DNJ.

Tags: goodbye, theruntime, blogging

Remote Controls and Design

I'm the proud owner of a Logitech "Harmony" remote that controls the TV, DVD, and sound system in my lounge room. I'm not surprised at a recent (Logitech-sponsored) European survey that I read about at Jasper van Kuijk's blog which points out:

• in 25% of homes, there is only 1 person who knows how to operate all the technology
• 87% of homes have three or more remote controls
• 49% of homes have five or more remote controls

I can openly say that my Logitech remote was one of the best tech buys I've ever made. It's key feature is that it groups commands around "activities". Click the "Watch a DVD" button and it switches on the DVD player, sets the sound system to input from DVD, and switches the TV on to the right input. Click on the "Watch TV" activity and the TV and sound system are set up correctly. And best of all, click "Off" and whatever is switched on, gets switched off. So easy even the kids can use it!

Tags: design, remote control, logitech

OT: Comment Spam!

Anyone else on DNJ feeling the pain of comment spam?

Maybe I'll take some freerolls or tramadyne or applesauce :-)

Anonymous comments are turned off for now. Use the contact form instead, please.

And can someone at the top fix this?

Tags: comment spam, DotNetJunkies

A Short Rant on One Example of Why Over-Engineering Stuff is a Problem

We've got a boiling water unit in the tea room that I pass by every day, that is over-engineered. I feel a short rant coming on...

This boiling water unit's primary function is to deliver boiling water, so people can make their instant coffee or tea. It does this well - there's a big black button that, when pushed, runs boiling water from a nozzle directly underneath the button. So far, so good.

If the boiling water unit was limited to this functionality, it could be regarded as a success. However, it also has:

• an screen with the time and day of the week
• four nameless touch-sensitive buttons (which are very cool - all you have to do is hover your finger near them and they flash red...but what do they do?)
• a red "lock" LED
• a switch that has a label "Lock", that is miles away from the LED

Why this over-engineering is a problem is that because no-one needs the time or day of week, no-one has set it. So now it's wrong. Further, there's no clear way to set it (unless you can find the manual). Why have the touch-sensitive buttons if they don't do anything? And why not have the "lock" switch in a visible location, and ditch the LED altogether?

Whoever made the boiling water unit could simplify it by removing the cruft, and so actually improve it. End rant :-)

Tags: design, water, engineer

Why I Finally Switched From Bloglines

 Bloglines was my RSS reader of choice for almost 4 years. I loved using it because it was web-based, easy to use, fast, dependable, full-featured (in 2004), and free.

Unfortunately Bloglines was ignored for a couple of years by the developers, during which time I stuck with it doggedly anyway. It got slightly less dependable (i.e. the notorious "Bloglines plumber"), and other readers overtook it in terms of functionality. Surprisingly, it was the new beta version which eventually drove me away - it was a case of too little, too late - and worryingly, the beta initially didn't work properly for IE which made me go back to the "classic"/2004 version.

Soon after, I decided to go looking at the various free readers on the market.

Google Reader is web-based, easy to use, fast, free, and has plenty of features to boot. It's even better than the Bloglines beta, and there's little worry about Google suspending development. My OPML imported easily, and I started reading feeds straight away...using it is almost enjoyable.

Some features that stand out on Google Reader are the speed, the ability to find new blogs which is almost too simple, offline viewing (IE only at the moment), and editing feeds and re-ordering them is a cinch.

YMMV - I need free and web-based, I'm not fussed by Digg or any "social" features, and the reader absolutely must work with IE and Flock. A good round-up of feed reader alternatives can be found at Wikipedia.

Goodbye Bloglines, may you live a long and healthy life, and perhaps we shall meet again.

UPDATE: Matt tells me that offline viewing works fine in Firefox. Fixed (thanks Matt)!

Tags: reader, rss, bloglines, google reader, switch

OT: Merry Christmas and Blog Stats 2007 Edition

Merry Christmas to all my reader(s). I hope you have a great Christmas and New Year, and I’ll see you in January!

I thought it would be fitting to wrap up 2007 with a quick summary of my blog statistics, below.

Tags: christmas, statistics, blog

Flock, 'the Social web browser'

Flock might just be the package to make me switch browsers from IE/Maxthon for my home computer time.

Flock is billed as "the social web browser" and integrates data from sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Delicious, listing all your friends in the one place along with the last time they updated something. It is open source, has a built-in photo uploader for Flickr, and works with the majority of Firefox extensions (it's actually built on top of Mozilla), among other things.

I've tried Firefox in the past but just didn't see how it was any better than Maxthon, which basically wraps and enhances Internet Explorer in more ways than I could mention. Of course I'm still using Maxthon at work; it's just that Flock aggregates many of the sites I visit after hours anyway.

I've yet to try the built-in feed reader and I honestly have to say that I don't have any friends on Flickr or whatever apart from my Facebook dabbling (I'm what's known as a "Scott"..."'s Got No Friends"). However the Facebook integration is pretty good. And using Flock did convince me of the value of signing up for Delicious - which looks like a useful service.

Has anyone else had any experience of Flock, or any tips for using it?

Tags: flock, browser, social, web, facebook

Book Review: Getting Real by 37signals

Over several weeks I've been reading 37signals' (makers of web apps Basecamp and Highrise) book Getting Real. The whole book can be read online at http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php.

The book describes 37signals' design and operating philosophy, based on their experience working in small teams to design software. The book is easy to read: there's no code, each chapter is divided into bite-size essays, the book is well-written and a lot of the advice really makes sense, especially if you have read anything about "agile" processes previously.

37signals has well-deserved credibility, as their apps are fairly successful and can be used as prime examples of "web 2.0" (whatever your definition of that is).

Some of the book's advice perhaps directed at managing teams and influencing processes assumes that you have some level of control over your environment. For me, that isn't always the case, however, if I was in a small startup or consulting I might be able to apply more of the book's practices. Having said that, there is still plenty of practical advice that obviously comes from experience here.

Getting Real is worth a read or at least a skim, and won't cost you anything if you don't mind reading from a computer screen. As a bonus, you can download a PDF ($) version or buy a printed version too.

Tags: getting real, 37signals, book, review

Jason Franks' Dev.Culture

I've been following Jason Franks' blog on GeeksWithBlogs and his recent theories on developers and big companies in "Dev.Culture" got me thinking.

Here's two of the bits that stand out in his post:

We want to build new things, we want to make an impact...and we don't _need_ tens of millions of dollars to accomplish anything. In software, we can built anything we imagine from nothing but keywords and logic...

The story of the hero developer is never about a dude who joined a big company and worked his way up from the mailroom; it's about the guy who founded a company that grew into a behemoth, the visionary who built something that one of the big boys him or her paid millions for because their own internal, hidebound, reactionary, shareholder-accountable structures didn't think of it or failed to deliver it.

Interesting stuff, and well worth the read (well done Jason).

My current job is my second out of Uni and I can honestly say I haven't experienced a normal developer's life, so it's enlightening hearing from others in similar positions, often with vastly different backgrounds.

I'm especially inexperienced when it comes to politics (I didn't even think office politics were real until recently!) so people like Jason, Phil Factor, some of the CodeBetter bloggers, Dilbert and Basic Instructions are getting to be required reading :-)

Tags: developers, career, office politics

OT: What do I press?

I was mucking around with installing SQL Server 2005 workstation tools, and came to a situation where I had to uninstall the free Management Studio Express to install the developer edition (yes, it sounds confusing).

In the process of removing Management Studio Express, I got the following dialog:

What do I press?

Tags: funny, error message

OT: My Start Menu as at April 2006

Scott Kuhl has put out the challenge to "Show us your Start Menu".

Mine is below. It's horribly mis-representative of what I run because a) I've used TweakUI to ensure that some programs never make it to the frequently used list, and b) because I'm training myself to use Launchy to run things from the keyboard rather than the mouse and Start Menu (I don't think running a program using Launchy makes it appear on the frequently-used programs list, but I'm not 100% sure).

Here's some points of interest from looking at my Start Menu screenshot:

• I'm running Windows XP (I don't believe there's even a timeframe for implementing Vista within the organisation I work in) with the Royale skin.
• I've opted for small icons on the Start Menu and a maximum of 14 program shortcuts, because I like to see more, and don't really care about nice 48x48 icons (especially since some of the programs I used didn't have 48x48 icons anyway).
• I run Maxthon  - and have since MyIE days -  but am looking at FireFox.
• I should probably remove "Photo Editor" from the pinned programs, I use Paint.NET for image editing now.
• I like having the Control Panel display as a menu.
• I don't like all the "My" shortcuts that normally inhabit the top-right section - I can get to the folders pointed to be these easily anyway as I always have at least one Windows Explorer instance open. In fact I have cleaned out most of the defaults on the right-hand side...how many times will I ever use "Set Program Access and Defaults"?

Looking at Scott's and my Start menu, I have a few questions that have never occured before. Why can't I make the whole thing wider (or at least the left pane)? Why doesn't text for long items wrap (when showing small icons)? And why can't I have a login picture, even though I'm on a domain?

Lastly, Scott, I'm jealous of your XP skin :-)

Tags: windows, start menu, programs

OT: 5 Meme

Adam Cogan tagged me in the "5 things that most people don't know about me" meme that's going around - thanks Adam...I was feeling left out :-(

So here is 5 random things that most people would not know about me:

• I wanted to be an Air Force pilot when I was a kid - an eye test when I was 12 pretty much killed that idea (I remember hearing from a career counsellor "You could still be a navigator", and almost crying again). After that, I had no idea what I wanted to do, right up to starting Uni.
• I have an Education degree from Monash - it's always been one of my plans to teach computing at high school, TAFE and eventually university level. I just want to make sure I've got something to teach first! I really only applied for teaching because one of my Year 12 teachers made an offhand comment that I'd make a good teacher.
• I am *not* the Tom Williams that won "Dancing With The Stars" (a TV show on Channel 7 here in Australia) two years ago - just in case you were wondering :-)
• I'm the oldest of 4 boys - my Mum still claims to this day that she always wanted 4 sons (well, she got 'em). Since I never had a sister, there's still a lot I don't know about girls! (Maybe *that's* the little known fact I should publish)
• The most boring job I ever had was working on a computer help desk - my job description was "sit and wait until someone needs help", which left a lot of time for officially sanctioned & approved web surfing; however, even that got boring and in the end I'd take in a book to read while I was at work.

Here's 5 people I'd like to know more about (whether or not they tell me is up to them!):

Darren Gosbell at Random Procrastination
Karl Kopp at Karls Blog
Tejas Patel at Software and Tools
Nirav Patel at CodeLake
Greg Linwood at Transaction Blog

Tags: 5 meme

OT: Merry Christmas 2006, and the year's blog statistics for Thomas Williams

I just want to take this opportunity to say Merry Christmas to all my reader(s). I'm going on leave this week so there'll be no new posts from me until January. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Christmas and New Year.

As a quick review of the past year in blogging (which was pretty light on posts), here's some stats I gathered:

I'm still enjoying blogging and the statistics above are actually encouraging to me. I hope to post more next year, but at the same time it's often hard to find code that can be packaged and sanitised for general consumption. Oh well :-)

OT: Networking for Introverts

It won't surprise people that know me that when Jason Haley points to an article titled "How To Network: For Introverts", I am of course going to read it. By almost anyone's scale, I am an introvert, and "networking" is one of the single hardest things for me to do.

A typical schedule for the SQL Server User Group meeting that I attend in Melbourne will go something like "5:30-6:00 Networking and Pizza; 6:00-7:30 Presentation". My brain translates this as "5:30-6:00 stand around, look out the window, browse a book and eat a couple of slices of pizza, 6:00-7:30 the important time". Of course I'll say hello to people I know, and I've generally got a pretty good memory for names, but more often than not I'll grab something to eat and sit in the presentation room to wait for the start of the speaker's talk.

The article highlights something I didn't know but probably guessed: that introverts would want other people to give them respect/value based on their ideas, not necessarily what they do:

Yes, I realize you would rather be accepted for what you think and know, but the truth is that the world measures you by what you do.

I'm very hesitant to talk about the exact technical things I do because to me they're a) not that interesting and b) not in line with the cool stuff I read about and am trying to get to eventually (insert cool technology here: DDD, XP, Scrum, Continuous Integration, etc.) One of the most painful discussions I have ever had was when I was talking to a guy I hadn't seen for some years (but I knew he was a successful developer) and found myself downplaying the work I did and skills I had to the point where I was almost apologising for what I did. Urk.

Anyway, there is hope. I always thought I had some sort of problem in that social engagements were (and still are) a frightening thing, but the more I read the more I realise that there's other people in the same boat, and there's ways for me to feel more comfortable in those situations.

Tags: personal, networking, social, introvert

OT: Tho