whoisjoe

ToDo Lists and Being Proud of your Accomplishments

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 20:24:00 +0000

A great way to make sure you don’t get distracted from the tasks that are most important is to keep a todo list. I used to keep three todo lists, one for today, one for this week and one for “someday.” My technique goes something like this:

The Technique
At the beginning of the week I outline all the accomplishments I want to make for the week then I prioritize them and put the most important (ranked by impact) at the top, and least important at the bottom.

At the beginning of each day I select the number of items off that list (and sometime break them up into subtasks) that I think I can accomplish during that day. As my day goes along I can refer back to this list to know the next thing I need to accomplish. I never have to question whether or not I’m working on the most important thing because I’ve already prioritized my tasks at the beginning of the day.

At the end of the day or at the beginning of the next day I look at my list and if I haven’t checked each task off I try to figure out why and what I could change to ensure I get better results the next day. Reasons may include: I under estimated the amount of work each task was going to require; I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t have the amount of energy I thought I would have; I got distracted by another task.

If the issue was that I under estimated the amount of work each task was going to take I try to learn from that mistake so my estimation can be better for tomorrow or next time.

I understand that some days I will be more focused or have more energy than others, and that’s OK. If it becomes a chronic issue though, there may be something else to blame. Am I lacking the inspiration I need to be excited about this task? Are there other external factors at play (sleep, stress, summer sunshine, winter powder)? If I lack the inspiration I try to find my “why.” If it’s an external distraction that’s keeping me from focusing I try to reset my focus by carving out time to dedicate to those things.

The last reason I don’t get everything done I want to is usually the most common. I got distracted by another task. If I see that I didn’t accomplish everything I wanted to accomplish that day because I was distracted by some other task I have to ask myself if that was the correct decision. Was that task more important than the thing that I didn’t get to? If I can honestly answer yes, then it was the right choice, and I did what I should have done. If it was less important than what was dropped I reassess my prioritization and make sure the task gets done the next day.

I use a similar technique to ensure that I’m staying on tasks at the beginning and end of each week. Assess what I accomplished (either on the list or not on the list) and analyze what I did not accomplish.

The Tools
In order to use this technique you must be absolutely diligent about keeping track of your tasks and results. This means that if you do something that’s not on your list make sure you write it down for later assessment.

I started this technique with a basic pen and paper approach. My office mates would often laugh at my notebooks that had lists and lists written all over them each item scribbled in and crossed out. I get great pleasure out of crossing items off my list, but keeping my list in order is very difficult, and usually requires rewriting the list or keeping the list double spaced so you can squeeze items between. Additionally I’m a nerd, by any measure, so I seek digital solutions that will give me the most efficiency, so this is clearly not the ideal solution.

I burned through many task list applications, web sites all met with greater or lesser success. I’ve tried Remember the Milk, Evernote, and Google Tasks Lists. I liked Google Tasks the best because of its blazing speed and ease of use. Remember, for a todo list to be useful it has to be nearly transparent to your daily work, or you won’t use it.

My wife turned me on to teuxdeux which I really like. It’s fast and easy to use, but it adds the ability to add tasks to different days of the week. This lets me plan a little better and lets me offload tasks that have specific deadlines early so I don’t have to think about them before they’re done.

No matter which tool you end up using the important part is to assess your progress through the tasks you outline for yourself and to write down every task you accomplish during the day. The great thing about writing down everything you do and crossing it off is that you have a beautiful list of accomplishments. Exactly what I need after a long day at work!

When is it OK to build up Technical Debt?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 00:34:00 +0000

As I previously mentioned I’ve been writing a bit of Ruby on Rails. I’m surprised at how quickly I can slap something together and get results, especially prototypes, up and running quickly.

Technical Debt is generally defined as the eventual consequence of building software in a quick and dirty way. This most commonly occurs when a developer jumps directly into writing code without architecting or thinking through the solution. Usually a solution is spit out prematurely and will quickly fall over under heavy load or stringent testing.

The opposite of this would be to slowly build skills, tooling, requirements, specifications, tests, libraries, etc. until the problem is well defined and it’s just a matter of converting requirements and specifications into code. The problem with this is it is SLOW.

Other development techniques have been developed to bridge this gap. To provide the right amount of guidance when it’s necessary, but not so much that we develop requirement paralysis. TDD and Agile are two techniques that come to mind, but other technological solutions such as Object Oriented Programming, fantastic libraries and frameworks also help us get results and make headway quickly.

Still there will come a time, even with TDD, Agile, OOP, and a framework that makes you happy, when you have to decide between the right way, and the right-now way. At these times it’s important to know how to weigh those decisions properly. Here are some questions that might help you decide whether to build up technical debt or to build your software in a more measured way.

How long until the next version? – if this is a quick demo version that will be completely replaced it makes more sense to build it quickly leveraging anything you can get your hands on, using the skills you have now, rather than trying to learn a new tool. However, if this version has to stand on its own for an extended period of time, real customers will use it or if it will have to stand up to heavy live testing or load then you may not be able to cut corners.

How many customers are likely to become dependent on this? – Don’t forget that you may not just building up technical debt for yourself, but also for your customers who rely on stable software to build their solutions on. Changing large amounts of the software under existing customers can be difficult, you may even lose some of them to a competitor. Preserving perfect backwards compatibility makes it easier for your customers but forces you to shoulder the whole burden of your technical debt. Making this decision too many times can cause you to lose revenue to support and maintenance staff.

Is there an easy way out? - Using layers of abstraction to firewall the well architected pieces from the “quick and dirty” pieces is a good way to be able to componentize pieces that need to be replaced later. Before laying down thousands of lines of code ask yourself “How easy will it be to replace the technical debt pieces?” and if it’s going to be easy or there’s a way to make it easier on yourself then you might have the right decision. If your technical debt is taking a large dependency (for example a framework that is not well supported and will need to be replaced) then it may not make sense.

How likely will it be that you’ll have time to pay down your technical debt? – If you work at a company like most of the people I talk to you probably have a stack of todo items five feet tall and the only way anything ever gets done is if it is figuratively and sometimes literally on fire. If that’s the case then paying down the technical debt when you have a chance so you do it right the first time makes the most sense which will reduce future headaches. However if you need to release something right away and you know you can schedule time to return to the pieces that need attention you may be able to take on some debt without too much risk.

What kind of load will your application be under in this version? – If you’re anticipating very heavy load immediately upon release performance needs to be in the forefront of your decision making. One of the best examples of this is twitter; they were able to slide by on a shaky ruby-on-rails application until they grew to be one of the most visited sites on the internet. When they were in the throes of their growth pains we saw the fail whale often. They’ve had to quickly pay down their technical debt by replacing most of the backend of twitter with scala, memcache and starling, erlang, MySQL, Mongrel and more.

How much (real) market pressure is there to release a solution immediately? – Sometimes we feel every day we don’t release is another day people are filling the terrible hole in their lives with some other product. Unfortunately or fortunately this is often not the case. If we look at many examples of current market leaders they weren’t the first to market, but the best. The first mp3 player wasn’t the iPod, the first windowed GUI operating system wasn’t Windows, the first (nor the last) social media site was facebook. If you’ve promised a customer or client a solution it’s good to be on time, but if you don’t have customers shipping a half-baked product may give any potential customers such a bad taste in their mouth they won’t reconsider when you’ve had a chance to repay that technical debt you built up.

Many times it’s more important to get something out to get traction. As I mentioned in my “Let the pedestrians define the walkways” blog sometimes it’s better to get traction and feedback with people now and build up a little technical debt than to build a perfect solution that nobody can use.

Remember until you release nobody cares how fast, well architected, well commented or beautiful your software is.

Fake ‘Savoir Faire’ with ‘Mise en Place’

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 19:29:00 +0000

I recently went home to see my parents for Thanksgiving. NPR was playing in the car and a short story came on that struck close to my heart in two ways. It was about how to pull off a seemingly effortless multi-course meal by effectively front-loading most of your heavy cooking to prep work so that all you have to do when your guests arrive is to ‘finish’ each dish. This means that absolutely everything that can be is chopped, blanched, steamed, mixed or even completely ready to serve (in the case of many deserts) before your first guest arrives.

When you do this it makes the cooking look like magic.

As we were driving down the road I realized this is a great thing to strive for in software development and professional interactions as well. I’ve noticed the more preparation I can do before a meeting the better it goes. Some people have the ability to make this all look effortless, those people have “Savoir Faire,” but it always catches up to them. There will be a time when they’ll get burned by their lack of preparation.

Here are a few tips on how to prepare for a meeting or delivery of a final project.

Ask the tough questions – Make a list of the top 15-20 questions you don’t want to hear in a meeting. Answer those questions to the best of your ability. Often we go into the meeting expecting our best case scenario, but everybody else in that meeting is there to understand your proposition deeply. Help them understand, and cover all your bases.

Think about your backup plan – What do you need in order to deliver your presentation? What if those things aren’t there, break down, or you forget them? Computers are notorious for not connecting to projectors when you want them to. Thumb drives fail, projectors overheat, networks aren’t always available, dry erase markers dry up, and audio equipment fails. Think about each thing you need in your meeting and think about how you can continue when the failures occur.

Run through your presentation exactly once – Make sure you run through your presentation end to end once before you are in front of people, but don’t memorize a script or demo. Memorization will come off as such, and you’ll have a hard time engaging the people in the meeting. You need to be dynamic, but well prepared. As mentioned above, lots can go wrong, if you memorize how you want everything to happen, you’ll have a hard time thinking on your feet when unpredicted things come up.

Relax – Most of the ways that you can recognize being nervous are not visible externally. Nobody else can hear your heart beating in your ears, they can’t see the sweat in your palms, and they’re probably not paying attention to your face becoming flushed. 30 min before the meeting review your talking points quickly, then put them away until the meeting. Take a walk 15 min before, have a small glass of water and take a deep breath. During the meeting remember to breathe and if you’re standing up feel free to move a bit, walking around the room can make the delivery seem more natural. Finally remember you don’t need to fill up every moment with talking, you can stop to take a breath, to walk across the room for emphasis, or to wait for feedback.

Let pedestrians define the walkways

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:59:00 +0000

I like to post my own thoughts here, but I just read a short blog on Derek Sivers' blog that really hit home for me. He tells the story:

A new green college campus was built, but one thing was still debated:

Where in the grass should we put the paved walkways?

Some felt the walkways should be around the edges, to leave the center green and untouched.

Some felt the walkways should cut diagonal, connecting all buildings to all buildings.

One professor had the winning idea: Don't make any walkways this year. At the end of the year, look at where the grass is worn away, showing us where the students are walking. Then just pave those paths.

I love it! I've seen so many places that have beautifully planned out landscaping that is marred by efficient pedestrians that know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

He goes on to say how we can model our business after this plan. This follows the use of rapid iteration model of software development.

Listen -> Build -> Release

Listen to what people need, listen to their pain points. Build something lightweight that you think people will love and that will remove their pain, build it quickly. Release it before you think it's done. Go back to listening, listen to what they like, what they don't like, and what they want. Go back to building, build what they want. This reduces the amount of time you spend concocting crazy use cases or user models that may or may not exist or spending too much time building something that nobody wants and let's you leverage the wisdom of the crowds. When you're done building you know that you have something that people want to use because they helped you decide on the features.

One example of a company that doesn't seem to do this is of course Apple. Apple (an to an extent Google) has an incredible ability to anticipate what consumers want before they know they want it. To be a true market leader and leap over the competition risks like these are not only desirable but necessary. There is often a time when a consumer doesn't know what they want or need, they just know they don't like what's out there. What was wrong with the Philips GoGear? Before the iPod Touch came out I don't know if I could have put my finger on it. It took Apple's leap of design and development before I realized how many features were missing. This model is significantly riskier, but like all things with risk comes the potential of reward.

iCal Lost My Calendars

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 20:04:00 +0000

I recently made the switch from Windows to Mac. Don't panic, I still use bootcamp to boot into Windows regularly for development work, but I'm really making an effort to "be a Mac," at least for a little while.

I just tried to add my Google Calendar as a caldav calendar. My first issue was that you can't use the "Automatic" account type, or even the "Google" account type, you should follow the instructions very carefully on the google calendar help page. Once I followed the instructions carefully my calendar seemed to start to sync.

I use Google Calendar quite a bit, so I'm sure there were quite a few items in there, but after about a minute I became impatient and closed iCal. When I restarted it all my calendars were gone, imagine my surprise :)

I started digging around on the internet, but found nothing that addressed my specific issue. Many crashing iCal issues, but nothing that mentioned iCal simply deleting or not loading the calendars that were there.

I deleted the iCal preferences files found in my ~library/Preferences/ directory (anything that starts with com.apple.iCal) but that didn't help.

The final solution was to go to ~Library/Calendars and move the newly added google calendar to the trash. It seems this got corrupted when it was trying to pull down the data from Google. Once the file was corrupted iCal simply stopped loading any calendars, and displayed a completely blank calendar.

Of course if I were going to recommend a solution to Apple, I would say to alert the user of the corrupted file, ask them if they'd like to keep or delete the file and where it lives on the disk, then (gasp) continue loading all uncorrupted calendars.

Joe

Three Bookmarklets I need

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:47:00 +0000

Since becoming a full time chrome user I've begun to see the power of using bookmarklets. A Bookmarklet is a small bit of javascript that you can put in your toolbar to perform some task on the current page your looking at.

InstaPaper
InstaPaper let's you quickly save and read articles that you want to read later but don't have time to right now. It does more than bookmarking the site because it tracks what you've read and syncs it on all your computers and devices. There's an iPhone app that lets you read the articles you've read. Once you've read an article InsaPaper archives the link so you have it for future reference while keeping your current queue uncluttered.

The bookmarklet lets you quickly save an article for future reading, without having to leave the page. This is super useful if something looks interesting but turns out to be a lot longer than you were anticipating.

Bookmark on Delicious
I've started to bookmark interesting links on delicious. This is a nice way to organize and share links with people. Without tagging I tend create a huge, flat list of bookmarks on each browser I use, on each computer I use. Since my alter ego is a web developer I tend to use a lot of browsers on all my computers on all the different VMs, so this can quickly fail to scale properly.

This bookmarklet lets me quickly save a page to delicious without having to leave the interesting page I'm currently on.

Readability
When I do get around to reading the articles I want to read Readability makes it much easier on the eyes. This reduces clutter on the page by doing a very nice job of removing the ads, images and making the text uniform. You can configure what it looks like to suit your preferences.

Goals, Results and Activities - defining your productivity

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 22:06:00 +0000

I think that it is important to properly define the terms that we use when talking about productivity. Since these words are somewhat subjective it matters more that you have a specific definition that you can refer to periodically than to agree with everybody else on the specific terms and definitions.

I use the words Goals, Results and Activities.

A quick definition might be that a Goal is a long-range target. A result helps you, your company or your team succeed. Activities are the smallest unit of work that helps accomplish a result or goal.

You can think of an activity as a single step in a journey. It always takes work to make a step, but the step does not always get you closer to your goal. Of course the lesson is to check your compass and map periodically to make sure you’re always going in the right direction.

Goals
Goals are long ranging strategic targets. They can be self created or defined by your manager or company. An example of a strategic company or team goal might be "Be profitable in Q3" or "Ship Version 3.5 of our Product." We define goals so that each individual to look up from their daily tasks and see how it fits in with the goal. This helps people know when they’re on track and helps them feel like their making a difference and not just a "cog in a wheel."

Personal Goals are a very important piece of my happiness. When I can accomplish a personal goal or can see myself making progress on a personal goal it gives me great satisfaction. Personal goals don’t have to be anything more than something you’d like to do. I can give examples of personal goals, but it is important for you to find your own passion. For me it is to Run a Marathon, Compete in an Olympic distance Triathlon and help my non-profit, Technically Learning, meet our donation goal this year.

Results
Results are all about impact. The best results have the highest impact. Impact can be defined by how much closer completing that result will get you to the goal. I’d like to dedicate an entire blog entry to getting results, but for now let’s move on to tasks.

Tasks
We define our tasks by splitting up larger blocks of work. We can then prioritize those tasks by what will give us the best results and the greatest impact. It is important to reflect daily on your task list to make sure the tasks you are completing still align with getting the best results and align with the overall goal. Don’t get so focused on the individual tasks that you lose site of the goal. Tasks are meaningless if they don’t get the results.

Have you ever known anybody that seems to be constantly busy or overwhelmed but never seems to accomplish anything? They may be simply choosing the wrong tasks and by the time they’ve completed their task list, the goal has changed and their work is lost.

Remember: high activity does not necessarily imply high impact.

10/GUI User Interface re-imagined

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 17:50:00 +0000

I just came across this video of a new multi-touch OS that I think is pretty interesting. It's called 10/GUI. The designers tried to imagine what the Operating System would look like if designed for ten points of input instead of a single mouse pointer. What they came up with is a type of window manager that puts each window side by side, in a long strip. Using gestures you can zoom in and out as well as reorganize the windows.

I find this sort if thought experiment intriguing, but I'm not convinced they've landed on the right solution yet. This works well for a small screen, such as you'd find on a laptop, but I can't imagine it on my 26 inch monitor. I like to organize my windows in a horizontal and vertical tiling layout. I also switch between multiple windows or have multiple windows up at the same time, I think this may be confusing if switching between more than a couple windows. Finally, what about multi-monitor setups? In my office I use between two and four monitors at any time. Would you have a single strip that would link all the monitors together?

Here's the video, I think it's an incredibly interesting idea. I also like that they didn't replace the keyboard with a surface, yet.

10/GUI from C. Miller on Vimeo.

I Code in my Freetime

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:23:00 +0000

I just read Ted Dziuba’s blog on not programming on his spare time. His point is interesting, but I don’t think he expressed it very well. For any readers out there, I think I should first put this entry in a bit of context. I program all the time. I am constantly writing little tools, websites, learning new technologies (my blog entry on Ruby on Rails was posted at near midnight), and getting excited about the next new thing. Just ask my wife, while she’s checking Perez Hilton; I’m reading a programming guide.

I deeply believe there is a balance in work and life. I believe a person should do as much of what makes them happy as possible. I’m writing this in between a run and a bike ride to a climbing gym, for example. However, people tend to do things that they enjoy and that makes them happy in their free time.

What makes me happy? Learning things.

I’ve known for quite some time that my biggest hurdle wasn’t discovering what I found interesting so I could pursue that as a career, but rather focusing my energies on something that I could really make a difference in and that was really inspiring to me. The things that I gravitate toward are usually challenging and represent a huge learning curve. I attribute my attraction to this somewhat to our natural tendency for seeking.

I don’t know Ted, and I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think what Ted was trying to say is that it’s important to balance your outside work activities and understand when others have different habits than you.

Would I hire somebody that doesn’t program outside of work? Absolutely.
Would I ask in an interview what they like to do with their free time? Of course I would.

Part of working for my company, Security Innovation, is fitting in with our company culture, and part of that is sharing common interests. We tend to work long hours and I wouldn’t want to spend 10-14 hours per day with somebody I didn’t have anything in common with. I also want to know that they’re interested in what they’re doing and that they are doing what they love. These people tend to work harder, learn faster and do better work than people that don’t enjoy what they do, in my experience.

So I guess my big lesson from all of this is just take all things in balance. Just because somebody programs with all their time, or knows every bit of security knowledge doesn’t make them a good hire. Conversely, though, being excited about what you do with the majority of your life is a very important thing.

Stuffed Grilled Pork Chop

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 06:18:00 +0000

Tonight I had a couple of friends over for dinner, which I love, since it gives me a chance to cook more elaborate things than I'd usually cook for myself.

We started out with bruscetta. I sliced a baguette drizzled olive oil on each slice and broiled them until brown. I topped each one with a red and yellow pepper tapenade.

For the main course I served sauteed carrots with rosemary, stuffed grilled pork chop and carbonara pasta.

Sauteed Rosemary Carrots
The carrots were delicious; they were from our CSA and since it's harvest time they were perfectly ripe and flavorful. I sliced quartered them and sauteed them over high heat for a few minutes with olive oil, salt and rosemary.

Stuffed Grilled Pork Chop
To cook these start with the following:

Four thick cut boneless pork chops
2 oz. thinly sliced pancetta
4 oz. provolone cheese

Heat a heavy cast iron grill pan to medium-high heat. Place two grill presses in the pan to heat them. Meanwhile slice each pork chop almost in half lengthwise and layer two slices of pancetta between the slices of pork and one slice of provolone cheese. When the pan is hot lay each stuffed pork chop in the pan and set the grill presses on top. Cook the pork chop until done, but be careful not to overcook. If your cheese runs out completely it's too warm. Don't be afraid of a little pink in your pork. If you overcook it the pork will be dry, tough and flavorless.

Pasta Carbonara

I didn't make up the Carbonara recipe, I got it out of one of my Italian cookbooks, but Giada De Laurentiis seems to have a good recipe for it. Take a look, if you have luck with the recipe let me know.

Time Management with the Pomodoro Technique

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:21:00 +0000

About 6 months ago it seemed like the internet was infatuated with a new time management technique called "Pomodoro." Developed by Francesco Cirillo, The Pomodoro Technique is a good way to increase focus, manage time and improve time estimations. If you're curious, the term "Pomodoro" comes from the Italian word for tomato, which is the type of kitchen timer the author of the technique used to time his sessions, more on this later.

The Pomodoro technique taps into a few important principles to help increase focus and results:

We can attain a laser-like focus for a short period of time, after that time focus deteriorates and results diminish
Minimizing distractions is paramount for finding a flow state
Taking short breaks can help increase focus
Using a prioritized task list helps minimize downtime due to task selection between tasks

The author did some experimentation to find out how long a person can focus on a single task and discovered that it's generally about 25 minutes. After which point the person becomes increasingly distracted by other things.

The cycle of the pomodoro technique goes like this.

Create a Priority weighted task list.
Select the first task, set a timer for 25 minutes, and begin working on it.

Turn off all distractions. No phone, e-mail, IM. Close your door and focus.

At the end of 25 minutes stop working completely. Pencils down; like at the end of a gradeschool test

Walk away from the task and do something else unrelated and calming for 5 minutes
This means no checking e-mail, phones, etc. Go play with the dog, or get a glass of water.

At the end of the 5 minutes,

Return to your desk
Place a checkmark next to the task you were working on, on your task list
Set your timer for 25 minutes

Return to your task and continue working with laser like focus for 25 minutes
If you complete a task draw a line through the entire task on your sheet

If you complete a task before the 25 minutes are up, use the last few minutes of the "pomodoro" to review your work and improve it, or learn from your experience so you can do it better next time. If you complete a task, but you've used fewer than 10 minutes of your pomodoro, consider that part of the previous pomodoro and move on to your next task immediately.

Does this really work? I've found that this works well for me when working on certain types of tasks, but like almost any time management technique I've had to modify it for my own uses.

It works when I am writing, testing or reviewing. I think it works with these classes of problems because I don't need to hold enormous amounts of information in my memory, and taking short breaks periodically allows me to step back and reframe the issue I'm working on for added clarity.

When I have a task that I estimate should take an hour I will sometimes use a single pomodoro to complete the task in half the time. I've found when all distractions are removed that this 50% estimation is fairly accurate.

I've found this can be very distracting when I find myself solving large problems, while programming complex systems, or need to keep a large amount of information in my head. All this thrashing every 25 minutes only serves to defocus me. Stopping every 25 minutes makes it nearly impossible to enter into a "flow state" which can increase productivity significantly. If I find myself in that kind of a state, and I'm feeling good I won't take a Pomodoro break. I'll pop my head up four or five hours later to discover I've made significant headway on all my tasks.

Just think how well you work when right at the end of a major deadline. The Pomodoro Technique attempts to tap into that focus (or frenzy) and allow you to harness it all day. Give it a shot for a few days, maybe you'll find a source of energy and focus you never knew you had.

Musings on a ComboBox

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:12:00 +0000

I just spent a good half an hour debugging a control I thought I had a pretty good handle on, the ComboBox.

In .NET 3.5 we have a really neat control called the ComboBox, it's a bit of a textbox, and a bit of a dropdown list box. However the eventing seems a little wonky.

I had the following code:

private void MyComboBox_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(TargetBox.Text))
    {
        if (MessageBox.Show("There is text in the request textbox, do you want to replace this?",
            "Replace Text?", MessageBoxButtons.YesNo, MessageBoxIcon.Question) ==
            DialogResult.Yes)
        {
            TargetBox.Text = File.ReadAllText(MyComboBox.SelectedText);
        }
    }
    else
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(MyComboBox.SelectedText))
            TargetBox.Text = File.ReadAllText(MyComboBox.SelectedText);
}

Seems simple enough, right? I'm just grabbing whatever the user just selected out of the dropdown (which happens to be a file in my case) and read that file and populate a textbox with the new value. When there was already text in the text box I'd display up a MessageBox warning the user I'm about to blow away the existing text.

Here's the interesting part, when there was text in the TextBox already (so I displayed the MessageBox) everything worked as expected. However, when there was no text in the TextBox I always got the previous value of the ComboBox, as if the ComboBox hadn't updated its state yet. This occurred if I removed all the MessageBox code and just tried to set read the filetext directly.

The fix? Get the newly SelectedIndex of the ComboBox directly, lookup the value of the item that's selected from the Items list, store that value in a string and reference that throughout.

Final Code:

private void MyComboBox_SelectedIndexChanged(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
    string selectedFile = MyComboBox.Items[MyComboBox.SelectedIndex].ToString();
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(TargetBox.Text))
    {
        if (MessageBox.Show("There is text in the request textbox, do you want to replace this?",
            "Replace Text?", MessageBoxButtons.YesNo, MessageBoxIcon.Question) ==
            DialogResult.Yes)
        {
            TargetBox.Text = File.ReadAllText(selectedFile);
        }
    }
    else
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(selectedFile))
            TargetBox.Text = File.ReadAllText(selectedFile);

If you see something I missed, please let me know in the comments. I am a firm believer in clean code and would love to learn how to make this better.

Manage Energy, not Time

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:43:00 +0000

Recently I was forced to work only 6 hours per day. On the surface this seems great, I immediately started filling my time with other things that I've wanted to get around to, but never felt I had the time for because of my busy 10-12 hour per day work schedule. That excitement quickly moved way to fear, fear not getting as much done, fear of losing clients or projects due simply to not having enough hours to work in a day.

Nevertheless as I mentioned earlier, this wasn't necessarily my choice, so the experiment began.

Week one went by, no apparent loss of productivity.

Week two, again, no apparent loss of productivity.

What's going on?
After a few weeks I decided to look into what was really happening. I found myself focusing much more acutely on my tasks at hand. I pushed out any non-work related distractions from my mind and more importantly inbox and really focused on what I needed to complete by the end of the day.

I also tapped into the natural ebb and flow of my daily energy cycles. I realize that sounds like some kind of new age crystal energy management technique, but it's really not. I discovered that I found myself most productive in the mornings, between 8:30 AM and lunch, generally right after I have my coffee. I feel like I can accomplish anything during those hours. I could review the most boring document, find and fix pedantic bugs, deploy to a server, or slog through hundreds of XML log files looking for a potential vulnerability. I can do all of this and stay focused, and stay sharp because this is the time when my mind is most active.

After lunch however I've found that I have a far harder time focusing on a task, especially if it is one that I don't find particularly interesting. After lunch it's much harder to find my "flow" and get things done. (side note: my wife has recently started a partial raw foods diet. I've found eating raw for lunch significantly increases my ability to focus after lunch. More on that in a later blog post.)

What was really happening when I was working 10 hours per day was that I tapped into my early morning ultra-productivity cycle, but then as the day went on I increased hours while drastically decreasing results. We've all heard of the Law of Diminishing Returns.

Of course these times and energy levels will be different for everybody, so I recommend spending a few days or weeks keeping an hourly journal to track how you feel. Get a notebook and on each line write each hour of the day, then in the next columns rate yourself on metrics you are interested in. In this case I would rate myself on: productivity, alertness, focus, and flow.

What to do?
Now that we know when we're most productive we can apply this to our daily work habits.

Choose to accomplish tasks that you find less fun, exciting or interesting when you have the most energy. I've found that doing something a little boring is doable if I do it first thing, when I'm focused and am excited to be productive for the day. You'll fly through your boring tasks quickly especially if you leave some fun and exciting tasks that you can only start on after you're done, just like your mom used to make you eat your peas before you could have ice cream.

In the times when you are less productive choose to do your fun and exciting projects. In my experience the excitement of the task helps me quickly find my "flow" state and get lots of stuff done.

If I do these two things and minimize distractions I can get the results of 10 hours worth of work done in 6 hours, which of course is an amazing increase.

Another principle I'd like to talk about soon is finding your pace. I'll leave that for a future blog entry too (yikes, I'm already adding to the future pile blogs to write!), but I'll mention a couple of quick principles. Just like running a race it's important to know and stick to your pace. Perhaps you can work 10 hours per day for 5 days straight, but if you push beyond that you'll run the risk of burning out, getting sick, or losing productivity. If you find your pace you can do as much work as you can, predictably, which in the long run will help increase productivity, results and make you happier.

Ruby on Rails

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 06:56:00 +0000

I realize I'm late coming to the Ruby on Rails party, but wow, just wow.

I would classify myself as an asp.net C# developer, Java before that, C/C++ before that then there was basic and Ada (yes, Ada). All things considered I'm very comfortable with knowing what's going on behind the scenes and generally pretty excited about new technologies. I was excited to start using the MVC stuff for ASP.NET when it came out.

All I can say about Ruby on Rails is wow, it's really magic.

After developing with it for just a few days I can see how much work and thought was put into making it a really usable fun language that does a lot of the pedantic work for you. Their MVC paradigm isn't forced, but rather feels like the entire language and framework were built around it. The language is comfortable even though it's new. All in all, if you've been thinking about trying out ruby on rails, give it a shot, and be amazed.

Will I start writing every little thing in ruby? No. I still love C#, but being a technophile I'm always interested in the next thing that's going to make me smarter or make my life easier. Learning Ruby has done that. I'll keep it up and check back here.

Let's try this again

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 03:31:00 +0000

I'm not sure why I stopped blogging, but recently I've felt increasingly like I have something to share, perhaps this is solely narcissistic thinking but on these pages you will likely find me rambling about whatever strikes my fancy. Additionally I'm going to try to keep any sort of "audience" out of my mind and post commentary that I enjoy and know about.

That said, enough about me, on to the first blog post in more than two years.

One of the things that I find really interesting is personal productivity. I'm constantly trying new things out and assessing whether or not that's making me better at what I do, whatever that is.

Of course this is a big topic, entire blogs, books, and speakers are dedicated to this. I'm going to write about it as I find time, and about small topics that will give big impact and great results.

Impact and results, there's a great place to start.

When I think about getting things done I try to frame my activities and goals in Impact and Results. I ask myself "does this particular activity provide the greatest impact? Will it provide the greatest results?" If yes, then I know it's the most important thing to do at that time. If not, I have to assess if there's something better to do right now, if this is the right thing to focus on, but the activity needs to be revised to give better impact and results, or if the activity in question isn't worth doing at all.

I just gave a one hour presentation to my company about personal productivity and I framed this in an analogy. I like to climb mountains. In mountaineering the goal is very clear, summit the mountain and return safely. It's the route that causes problems and discussions along the way. North slope, or south? Attempt to cross a crevasse, or hike around? With each decision we either get closer to our goal or farther away, a good leader can predict the outcome of the decision and will choose wisely.

A good leader will also be able to course correct when it makes sense. The path that looked so clear and perfect may be completely incorrect as we get nearer. Many times we will layout a set of activities to complete a goal and blindly complete those activities throughout the day or week. When the activities are completed and the goal has moved we feel as though we've been spinning our wheels without getting anywhere, and indeed we have. It's important to look up and make sure that the goals and activities still make sense and that they are the best we can do. Constantly assess the activities and goals you're working on to ensure they are ideal.

Completing activities is meaningless if they aren't the right activities.

When deciding which activity to do ask yourself, will this activity get me closer to reaching my goal? Does this activity have the most impact? Will it provide the best results? With each decision and each activity make sure you're always getting closer to the goal.

That's enough for now. In my next blog I hope to talk about a couple of techniques I use to stay on task and complete the activities I've chosen for the day and week.

Amazing Typography

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 16:36:00 +0000

I don't know if these are all done by the same artist or not, but I can say that a lot of these are really cool and imaginative. Check out this one about the funniest thing in the world "Who's on first":

http://yuxt.com/artist/Typography

You want choice? Move.

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 01:20:00 +0000

I just saw this article from CrooksandLiars.com that show where our political candidates stand on the "Political Compass." I always knew that it was dangerous to really state your opinion as a candidate but this is insane. As you can see below all but two of our candidates fall into the same quarter.

Here's my dot :-)

This is scary to me, because I took the test and I’m not in the quarter. I suggest you take the test and see where you fall. Be careful on the test, because there are a number of questions that are oddly worded, so be sure to read carefully.

On the radio

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 21:41:00 +0000

I was interviewed for a short spot on the radio about hackers that can destroy your life for as little as $20 per month. If you want to listen to the show, you can check it out on the Kiro website.

Change IE's Window Title

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:17:00 +0000

I just got a new Dell computer, and one of the things that really pisses me off about these machines is all the crapware they install on the new computers. They seem to reinvent every little tool that is already provided by the OS, but do it so poorly that the tool can bearly hobble along. It slows my computer down, makes configurations difficult, and is generally intrusive.

Dell, if you're listening, stop it.

I've gone back and forth over the years, trying to decide if it's better and faster to try to uninstall all the crapware they put on my new machine, or to just format the thing and start over from scratch. This time I decided to try to reverse the damage that Dell has done. I've done it with viruses, why can't I do it with Dell. Oh yea, Dell's sneakier.

They even went so far as to rename IE. Now this is not a new hack, the functionality has been around for years (not sure, how many. if you do know, post it to a comment). There's a Registry key that lets you change the title of IE. Dell chooses to rename IE to "Internet Explorer provided by Dell," Thanks, Dell, for going out and finding and installing a free browser, I can see you're really looking out for me.

In any case I decided to take back my IE, and while I was at it, rename it to something a little shorter, "IE."

To change the name of IE follow these steps:

Open Regedit (start -> run -> type "regedit" -> hit enter)
Browse to Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
Double click the Key Value "Window Title" to whatever you want.

Be very, very, very careful with your registry. It is a fickel wench, and will hose your computer three ways to tuesday if you screw something up. Additionally backing it up and reverting to a saved state is not straightforward. That said, this is a pretty easy edit, that anybody that has played with the registy before can do.

Do not e-mail me saying that Windows won't start or nothing looks that same, I warned you :-)

Happy Regediting.

AT&T Censors Pearl Jam

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:02:00 +0000

Perl Jam has this troubling message that AT&T consciously or not censored their performance of Daughter when Eddie Vedder sung the lyrics "George Bush, leave this world alone." and "George Bush find yourself another home." To the tune of Pink Floyd’s “Another brick in the wall”

The thing that I find mind boggling about these attempts to censor artists that big media never seems to understand is that, it will be discovered and when it is, it will be blown to huge proportions. If AT&T would have simply let them sing their song it would have been heard, but not remembered by thousands of people. By censoring it the bloggers, podcasters, and little media of the world jump on the opportunity to point the finger and people will listen and remember this as one of the many times that big media tried to control what people are saying.

For more information search in google news for "Perl Jam"

The Idols Of Environmentalism

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:57:00 +0000

I read the article The Idols Of Environmentalism in a Harper's Magazine that I just bought because of another article on Giuliani. This article is very interesting, it talks about the decisions we make as "environmentalists" and how we hide behind our science and language to paint a picture of the perfect earth where we give our world exactly the minimum it needs to survive. Contrast this with a true harmony with the earth, not one that we are at odds with, but one that we have a reverence for, simply because they are. It's quite a powerful read and I suggest you give it some time in a quite space.

From the article:

Environmental destruction proceeds apace in spite of all the 501(c)(3) organizations with their memberships in the millions, the poll results, and the martyrs perched high in the branches of sequoias or shot dead in the Amazon. This is so not because of a power that we must resist. It is because we are weak and fearful. Only a weak and fearful society could invest so much desperate energy in protecting activities that are the equivalent of suicide.

Exercise, Caffeine Fight Cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 16:29:00 +0000

The Discovery Chanel website has an article on new research being conducted into the skin cancer battling effects of exercise and caffeine. It seems that mice that drink caffeine show a 95% increase in the destruction of precancerous cells (apoptosis). Mice that were regular exercisers showed an increase of about 120%. Those who did both increased their apoptosis to more than 400%!

I was just remarking to a friend that I love these studies. On my list of good things to eat and drink that will help extend my life are:

Chocolate (only the good stuff, dark)
Wine (Red's better, but white's good too)
Coffee (freshly brewed and caffeinated)
Black Tea (without milk)
Green Tea (without milk)
Olive Oil

Couple those foods with some good exercise and I'll live to be 150!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 17:22:00 +0000

I heard this song this morning on KEXP and it totally rocks. I thought it was The Streets, but they haven't come out with anything new in the last 6 months or so. Anyway, the song is called "Thou Shall Always Kill" and it's by dan le sac.

Aspartame causes cancer

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 15:15:00 +0000

The following article shows that aspartame causes:
a) an increased incidence of malignant-tumor-bearing animals with a positive significant trend
b) an increase in lymphomas and leukemias with a positive significant trend
c) a statistically significant increased incidence, with a positive significant trend
d) an increased incidence of malignant schwannomas of peripheral nerves with a positive trend

For more information see:
First experimental demonstration of the multipotential carcinogenic effects of aspartame administered in the feed to Sprague-Dawley rats.

Lumosity

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Basirico) — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:46:00 +0000

I’ve been playing with Lumosity, which (from their site) “is the brain fitness program designed by neuroscientists that is scientifically demonstrated to improve your memory, attention and processing speed.”

http://www.lumosity.com/

It’s free and actually really fun. I’m on task 4 of 30 and “improving” but I expect to be able to move solid objects with my mind by the end :-)