BrianNipper

Good Shoes and Microsoft Outlook

2012-02-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

I think I've found my favorite pair of shoes in the latest black slip-on Florsheim shoes that my wife picked up for me a few weeks ago. At this point they are still not broken in and rub my ankles raw if I have them on for any length of time, based on past experience I'd estimate I have a good 4 weeks before they are "comfortable" enough that my feet won't hurt after wearing them. So you may be asking yourself, why is this guy think these new shoes are so great? Because they look awesome, mind you I'm not saying they make ME look awesome. They are simple with clean lines, they have a nice shine, and I really like the way they look. The reason I like the way they look is because I like anything that has a minimalist feel. I enjoy pieces that don't attempt to look good by having tons of extra "stuff" that just isn't needed. This is also something I've found very appealing in the UI for the 2010 version of Microsoft Outlook. In particular to be able to shape the UI so that you only need what is necessary while performing various tasks.

Below are the two views I switch back and forth between while using Microsoft Outlook. Since using e-mail at work is synonymous with breathing it goes without saying that I spend a substantial amount of time using outlook; however, I would guess (meaning I haven't done any actual measurement/testing) that I spend far less time looking at my e-mail. The reason I believe this to be true is because I do not fear my inbox. It is NOT a source of stress for me.

Default view with menus expanded

Reading view with menus collapsed

One way I accomplish "conquering my inbox" is by switching to the "reading view" (as the name implies) when I need to focus on responding to messages. This view allows me to focus on reading my e-mail and responding as needed. When I to organize, archive, setup tasks, manage my calendar, etc. I switch to the default view. However as a rule I DO NOT leave outlook in the default view, so as to encourage focusing on messages as they arrive and not the other tasks as listed previously. This often results in my being able to read and absorb more information from my e-mails.

Just as with code, if the viewing area for displaying lines of code is larger you tend to get a better "overview" of what the code is attempting to do. The same holds true (at least in my case) of the reading pane in Outlook. If you can see more of the e-mail thread at one time you tend to absorb more of what has transpired, this is often helpful when you are looped into a discussion after it has been initiated.

Reading and default view in MS Outlook

To toggle between the two views there are two tiny icons located in the bottom right corner of the window next to the scale slider as depicted in the image here.

Don't leave your users hanging

2012-02-09T19:09:00.000-08:00

command prompt can show actions as they are taken

If you create software one of the worst experiences you can create for your users is the "hanging" dialog. Recently I obtained a somewhat older MP3 player; to be specific it is a SanDisk Sansa Express 2GB. The device itself is on pair with most MP3 players that are not an iPod. One interesting feature is that you can record from the radio and it just so happen that the weekend past I had a need to record some audio from an FM station being used to broadcast at an assembly I was attending. To skip to the interesting point I found myself attempting to install new firmware to make it possible to listed to the WAV files created from the recording. After installing something to install something else (can you say inception) I found myself in a state of frustration because it "seemed" like the firmware update was going through just fine; however, the dialog box which indicates the progress had been "seemingly" stuck for quite a bit of time. So as any rational person would do I ignored all the warnings on the screen telling me NOT to remove the device while it is being updated, I yanked the cord out of the plug and started over, after turning my computer on and off again at least twice as any good technician will tell you is critical after just about any action you take. After attempting to install the firmware the "easy" way (using other software from the vendor) I again got "stuck" and gave up. At this point I believed I could overcome the problem by "manually" installing the firmware.

Sansa Updater dialog without any progress (in oh so many ways)
Sansa Express - SanDisk (c) 2006-2008

After jumping through the seemingly random steps of extracting the various ZIP files and installing different drivers and ensuring I held down the "volume down button" (a.k.a. -) while plugging in the device I managed to get back to the same install screen that had haunted me before. Oh, and somewhere along the way I had to format the drive to continue so I lost the file I was attempting to use in the first place.

While weaving through the various steps I realized that I may have cause myself a great deal of frustration simply because I was impatient, but is that really my fault? Well in some small way yes, after all patience is a virtue. However, I tend to think most of the blame rests with the software developers who created such an uninformative update process. If this had just been a command dialog via dos and they just listed of each file being impacted or perhaps a list of actions being taken I may have been more patient. Now to be fair this is a simple firmware update for a seemingly simply MP3 player and so the thought put into making sure a progress bar was accurately capturing the progress of the installation may have been a lower priority, but if there is nothing moving, no blinking indicator that something is still happening it is easy to expect that a user will abandon the cause and move on to something more shiny.

So don't leave your users hanging. Give them the ability to peer into the goings on and inform them of what to expect in terms of responsiveness.

UPDATE: After 10 minutes after writing this post I came across additional information that outlined that the underlying issue with updating the firmware was it had to be done using a windows XP machine. Fortunatlly I have an old laptop with the legacy OS (along with various versions of Ubuntu) so I was able to get everything working and update the firmware, I did mange to lose a recording that I didn't have a back-up of, but such is life.

Why we have to "Ask Why"

2012-02-07T22:06:00.000-08:00

I'm always interested to find personality traits that seem to be common to "smart" people. When I use the term "smart" I don't mean to imply that they have some knowledge that is unattainable by others, also I don't mean to imply that they are more intelligent than the average person (although I suspect that if we were going off IQ that could be true). To be clear, I don't typically include myself in the "smart" category, I tend to think that I just happen to have a good memory which gives the impression of being smart, as well as being prone to asking the question why, which I have observed as being a trait of "smart" people.

When people passively accept information that is given them without asking the question why, the result is often that the person receiving the information winds up with only a cursory understanding of the subject matter. In some cases I would completely agree that the "right approach" is to only obtain the cursory overview so as to be able to quickly dive into whatever task prompted obtaining the needed information in the first place. However, it seems to be that too often this cursory understanding becomes the default level for most persons even after the use of the information becomes more critical. To put it another way, after a person gets the "minimum" information to accomplish a given task there is no further effort put into obtaining a better understanding of why "things work the way they do".

In a large enterprise (such as the one I spend my days currently) the end result of NOT asking why is that people go about their jobs doing completely unnecessary tasks simply because the default understanding is to "do it the way the person before me did it". I'll admit that this is probably easier in terms of the mental energy needed to have someone learn a set of tasks; however, I'd argue that anyone who has to complete a particular task repeatedly over the course of many months and perhaps years would benefit from a deeper understanding of what is attempting to be accomplished.

In the case of a developer the need to ask the question why, IMHO, is NOT optional. If you are a developer and you DO NOT ask "why" at least once a day there is a good chance that you are NOT a good developer. It is easy to fall into the snare of believing that getting a good requirement document means that the "why" question has already been asked and answered and you simply need to implement the technical aspects of the requirement; however, this is almost never the case (except perhaps in the most fundamental of features).

At every level of the development process all parties involved will be benefited by having a deeper understanding of asking the question why at each step along the way. In fact there is even a "method" called the 5 whys which shows how asking the question 5 successively (at least 5 times) will help to uncover the root cause. It would be good to note that as quoted by Jeff Atwood (of Coding Horror fame) if you ask why too many times the answer winds up "because there are people on the earth" which is a good indication that you may have dived too deep.

So if you are a developer don't forget to ask why, in fact in life in general it's probably a good idea to remember to ask why, just to keep things interesting.

Perspective and Puzzles

2012-02-02T20:54:00.001-08:00

Reversible figures and vase. From Wikimedia Commons

I recently remembered a ted talk from a while back about optical illusions and how our eyes can be heavily influenced by the context of what they see, or as mentioned in the talk, "the light that hits our eyes is not what is important, rather it is what we do with the information once it hits our brain that matters." To help illustrate this point the image here shows a famous "illusion" in that depending on your perspective the black area is the silhouette of two faces, or the white area forms a vase, in reality both are true and it is a mater of perspective on which view is "correct". FYI, I believe depending on how my day is going one or the other is true. :)

I've also been rediscovering the fun I have playing Sudoku. It's interesting how organizing numbers into patterns according to rules fosters a sense of accomplishment. Probably informs my career choice of "professional geek" (a.k.a. programmer).

Sudoku Puzzle. From Wikimedia Commons

That's not to say that enjoying puzzle games and being a good programmer are inextricably linked, in fact I'd dare say that in some sense, being fascinated with solving puzzles can be a detriment to being a good programmer. For example, solving a sudoku puzzle requires a very strong adherence to the rules of the game so that you can "predictive" the combination of numbers in the correct sequence to solve the puzzle. This same strict adherence to the "rules" of programming will result in the idea that given a particular situation there is only one solution which will work; however, as has been proven time and time again in the world of software there are plenty of choices to solve any given problem and often the "right" choice is more influenced by perspective.

I often find that at one level a programmer is a plummer. You connect the pipes and/or tubes if you will. (You didn't know that the internet is a series of tubes?) Then turn on the information faucet and have the data flow from point a to point b and then it all goes down the drain. From this vantage point programming would seem like it's just a puzzle, if only all problems could be that simple. The reality is that the issue is not moving information through tubes, the issue is figuring out if you even have the right information in the first place.

This is where perspective comes into play. You have to be able to obtain the context of a problem and appreciate the subtle shades of gray that come into the black and white world of programming. Who are your users? What are their objectives? How do you want them to feel after they use your software? And a hundred other questions that even make me cringe when I think about attempting to answer these questions for all but the simplest of problems.

If you do figure out what the right "perspective" is then you can dive into the "fun stuff", where you get to enjoy the straightforward challenge of programming and relish the sense of "solving the puzzle, the right way".

People are dumb (like me)... A person is smart (like me).

2010-09-20T19:26:00.001-07:00

In the 1997 summer blockbuster "Men in Black" the two main characters, played by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, discussed the capabilities of groups of people and individuals.

Will Smith's character suggested that it would be safe to tell the entire earth about Aliens, saying "people are smart..." they can handle it. Tommy Lee's character responds "a person is smart, people are dumb..." which implies that while a person is capable, but as a whole people are not.

In general I tend to disagree with the idea that the majority of people are dumb, stupid or some other negative quality. I strongly believe that the vast majority of people are very capable and given the right circumstance they are able to surprise, delight and in general exceed most expectations. However, keeping in mind that the "squeaky wheel gets the oil" or in other words the most vocal people get the attention, it seems for some reason that the most vocal people also tend to be the "less" capable.

I've noticed in my day job that often, with respect to software development, users who complain/list issues the most are often the lest capable of diagnosing an actual problem versus "user error" (a.ka. "it's their own fault).

In my mind it would be simple to resolve this issue if I could simple get all users to learn the one principle that I always turn to when troubleshooting problems. "It's my fault" (meaning I probably caused this issue myself and not some other person/thing).

Often when resolving problems in my software I first assume that it's something I did. Unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, I'm typically correct. I might fat finger an entry, produce an off-by-one error, or some other trivial mistake. Because this seems to be the case so often with developers they have devised a brilliant process to resolve these issues, it's called TESTING. This amazing, revolutionary and ground breaking process helps to eliminate most bugs/issues. So when a user (of an already TESTED system) reports a bug, most troubleshooting begins with attempting to recreate the issue reported, when this can't be accomplished it can indicate that the user who reported the bug/issue did something "different" than expected. While this could be considered an edge case (a topic for a different post) most often it comes down to basic user error.

If only all users could be taught how first think "it's my fault" but then, people are dumb.

K.I.S.S.

2010-09-17T19:08:00.000-07:00

One principle in development that can NEVER be stated enough is "Keep It Stupid Simple" (or Keep It Simple Stupid or Keep It Super Simple). In any case, this development principle can be used in many aspects of life, but obviously it can be used when working with every day computer tasks.

One task that most people perform is keeping notes about various "things". Sometimes when people start to get lots of notes they think they should try and get some fancy program or a spreadsheet or even specialized software for keeping track of all these notes.

However, I've found that the simplest solution is still the best, Notepad.

Notepad has been around since the days of Windows 3.x and I'm sure that even in the DOS days people would keep notes using EDIT (a dos command to edit a file). Even as I being moving more and more of my electronic tasks onto my smartphone I've found that the simple "notepad" like app that came with my phone has become extremely valuable.

Some might say that notepad lacks features; however, the "lack of features" ensures that you stay on task. Instead of spending a lot of time formatting and inserting clip art you have to capture the important information with... TEXT.

At first a simple text app might seem "too simple" but with a few tips and ticks you can capture and convey a lot with these simple little notes.

A few tips I've found helpful:

- A healthy amount of white space will ensure that various sections stand apart.

- You can use any NONE alpha numeric character to indicate bullet/lists.

- You can "underline" with the use of the underscore.

(i.e. this is a title)

------------

- You can "double underline" with the use of the equal sign.

(i.e. this is important)

============

- You can use a tab space to create a point, sub-point.

Main Point One

Sub-Point One

Sub-Point Two

Main Point Two

Sub-Point One

After you start to use simple text notes, you'll also enjoy the fact that almost without exception they are transferable to almost any device with a modern OS, including many smart phones.

So as I've learned, KISS as much as possible.

The "Really Big" problem

2010-09-01T19:34:00.000-07:00

I had the opportunity to attend a meeting wherein the presenter discussed all of the amazing ways that SharePoint 2010 was going to solve all the problems of the company I work for.

I work at a company that is made up of 1,000s of employees across most of the globe, and as I listed to how facet search and managed metadata where going to resolve communication and collaboration problems I begin asking myself what is the underlying problem that plagues the company I work at and how is SharePoint going to resolve this problem.

Thinking of how most problems boil down to communication issues I realized that while the company I work at (a middle of the road financial institution) is not the "biggest" company by any means it does the the "big" problem, that is, the company is made up of a lot of people.

When ever you have an organization, be it government, company or even a family, as the organization grows the issues it faces in keeping everyone in the group "on the same page" also grows.

This can actually be expressed mathematically (n²-n)/2. This equation, which I discovered from Joel Spolsky's article in Inc. Magazine (http://www.inc.com/magazine/20100201/a-little-less-conversation.html) shows how every time you add another person to a group it becomes harder to keep the entire group on the same page. The table below (also borrowed from the Inc. Magazine article) helps to illustrate this very well.

People	Connections
1	0
2	1
3	3
4	6
5	10
6	15
7	21
8	28
9	36
10	45

As it shows once you get to around 5 people the issue of keeping everyone up to speed get's very complicated. You might be inclined to think that if only one person makes any decisions that this helps limit the issue; however, would you want to work at a place where out of 5 people only 1 person has any real input? I know I wouldn't part of the reason to work in a group is so you can benefit from other people's ideas.

So how does SharePoint 2010 plan on solving this issue? Well it doesn't SharePoint 2010 is a tool just like any other tool and will only be as useful as the craftsmen who use it.

Hopefully as the rollout of SharePoint 2010 continues the "really big" problem will be on more people's mind and a focus on it will grow and less emphasis will be placed on the tools used to resolve it.

Why I HAD to install Linux

2010-08-16T19:24:00.000-07:00

Recently I've decided to pick up a new programming language. My reasons are mostly not wanting to be hacking away at legacy code for another 5 years. I've already started to realize that in my young programming career I'm already getting behind the curve in the programming world.

In any case I decided to work with a few colleagues on a side project, not that we have a project per se, just a few general ideas and a desire to make things. Part of our goal with this project is to learn various aspects of newer technologies, Pearl, Python, GIT, Tornado, etc.

At first I was under the impression that learning these various language/technologies would not require me to change my default OS Windows (currently split between windows 7 on my desktop and windows XP on my laptop). However, even being comfortable with the command line on windows I was finding that as I read various sites discussing approach and technique for these newer tools I was feeling like a second class citizen.

When I've been searching around the inter-webs looking for various pieces of information on technologies associated with Windows I would come across mentions of "If you're looking for Linux support please see..." and there would be a paragraph or two, perhaps a page, but not really a lot of in-depth information. Meanwhile I was weeding through pages and pages of information on the WIN32 side of things.

Now as I begin learning about these amazing new tools, I'm faced with being the class of user who really isn't the primary audience. The amount of information out there for users working on a windows OS and working with Linux tools is small, very small.

At first I was thinking "what is with this community, why are they snubbing such a large group of users who could expand there market share so much?" Then I decided "No, I want to learn this stuff so I'm just going to stick with it." What I realized was Windows is NOT primarily a programming OS but Linux feels like it was "made for programmers by programmers".

Yes, you can program on a windows box and yes there are even some awesome tools (even free ones) from MS, for example Visual Web Developer 2010 (http://www.microsoft.com/express/downloads/) which provides a very nice feature of intellisense/autocomplete for JavaScript, including functions you write yourself but, it's still an OS for the masses. As I begin my dive into the Linux world I'm seeing that even with the most "user friendly" flavor (Ubuntu, which is what I'm currently experimenting/learning with) it is really "nice" for programming on.

Right from the beginning I can see how many of the tools I need are at my fingertips ready to go out of the box. Python - installed and ready to go. SSH- installed and ready to go. VIM - installed and ready to go. Even the terminal seems to lend itself to hacking. I'm not usually one to be a fan-boy right out of the gate, but I think I might be turning into one.

It's refreshing to be expanding my horizons and finding a new reason to get excited about my computer.

Cisco Valet - Nice, very nice

2010-08-07T19:01:00.000-07:00

I just purchased the Cisco Valet and I have to say I love it.

It took about 10 minutes to turn off my computer, unhook my current router and cable modem and then place the valet into the loop. After getting everything booted up... I was done.

The valet earns it's name. It auto-assigned a unique name (at least unique to my area) and a random password (probably not something that couldn't be determined, but unique enough). As an added bonus it includes a segment for guests.

Another added bonus is the nice little auto-config USB key that provides instant setup for any devices which you wish to connect to the non-guest segment of the wireless network. For instance the somewhat "old" laptop that I'm writing this post on (Dell Latitude D510) which has built in WiFi was connected within just a few minutes.

All in all an excellent $90 at Target and a product that I would recommend.

My "great white open page" problem

2010-04-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

As I begin taking up writing again, for the third time (sighing a little to myself)... I've realized something about the way my head works.

When presented with a specific task my mind will race to form a solution. When I'm present with a problem I can't seem to stop coming up with ways to solve it.

When I'm given a problem at work more often than not the problem has a very small scope, often the scope of the problem at work is along the lines of accepting information/data in one area, processing/modifying said data and then saving/sending data to another area. Now when presented with a problem that can be defined with such narrow terms it is easy for me to think of quite a few different wasy of solving the problem, then when going through these various options there are often inherit sets of advantages and limitations for each solution and it becomes a simple matter of disscusing the these pros and cons with the interested parties and refining the requirements of the solution to isolate which option is best suited.

So the cycle is often:

Describe a problem,
"scope out" the problem,
define solutions,
filter solutions based on "scope"
execute remaining solution.

I'll complete this cycle a few times every few months depending on the various levels of complexity which range from isolated problems that impact a few dozen users to something that has the potential to impact a few thousand users; however, event with the potential of impacting ten thousand users (which is never going to happen at the company I work for) it still doesn't seem that overwhelming.

Given this type of daily gring one would assume that solving my own problems would be easier, but there in lies the issue, the "Great White Open Page" problem.

I know I need to write on a regular basis to become a better communicator as well as to improve my skills at work (which as a programmer I feel one of the most important skills is communcation). However, when I set down to write I often find that I'm just staring at a blank page and NOTHING is coming to mind.

So as I come and stair at my computer screen I hope over the next few weeks or perhaps even months to formulate some type of structure that will narrow the scope of my problem so I can at least try to solve the "great white open page" problem.