New Setup for the Training Room

I'm not sure you can tell from this video, but that monitor on the right is very large.  I realized while I was at Dan'l's house today that he basically had a television hooked to his computer.  Why this didn't occur to me before, I don't know, because we certainly hooked Eryn's Raspberry Pi up to the television.  And upstairs, I had a television that was out of warranty where the sound would crank up to maximum no matter what we did.  You can't really watch it that way without upsetting the neighbors. A scouring of the web indicated this was a common problem with the television and not fixable without removing the board and messing with it.  Something I had no desire to do.  However, if you hook the same television up to the computer via HDMI, then absolutely no sound is needed whatsoever.  You can just leave it on mute.  End result, The Pacific (which Ming and Kyle wouldn't loan me) absolutely huge while I ride my trainer and my wife gets my old wide screen as an extender for her work.  Win all the way around.

Spinning the Oldies

Kyle recently brought over some speakers to accompany the record player he brought over so I can play the records I bought at Goodwill.  It occurs to me that I should edit these photos to ignore the table cloth and take advantage of the nice square nature of the album covers.  Then it occurs to me I did, but the iPhone seems to ignore my cropping when it uploads my pictures.  So perhaps I need to do the cropping within Flickr (creating fewer copies lying around because my phone dumps straight to Flickr).  In addition to the Sudden Lovelys albums we already had, these are my first four acquisitions:

The Obernkirchen Children's Choir.  My wife mocked this one, and then admitted it was pretty after hearing it play.


Here they are on YouTube singing for the Mickey Mouse Club.

And here they are in 2011, still in existence, singing Rossini.  This video will go along nicely with any pictures from Epcot I post later.

The Roger Wagner Chorale Folk Songs of the Old World.  What got me to buy it was Vol. 1 British Isles in the corner.  However, not nearly as exciting as I'd hoped despite the happy troubadour on the cover.


Also plenty alive on YouTube if you search.


My favorite find of the trip, Dueling Banjos from Deliverance.  I like the record impression visible within the album cover.


You can watch the video on YouTube which is cool. Sorry about the commercial.

And The Dean Martin Christmas Album, which will hopefully replace some of the Christmas music I'm subjected to during the holiday season.  I like Dean Martin's Christmas music.  Always have.  It's very relaxing.


On this particular YouTube video, you're not allowed to relax, because there are all sorts of sexy pictures of Scarlett Johansson.  Scarlett Johansson did not come with my Goodwill album.

iPad

No time to blog, the new iPad is here. Although currently it's not in my hands because it's being used for Carcasonne by Eryn, Pooteewheet, and Kit, the new American Girl doll.

Excellent Tech Graph

I think this graph from Gartner via ReadWriteWeb is fascinating. I work in a technology environment, and as a former developer I always found myself wondering why companies didn't adopt certain tech faster. Well, according to Gartner, if your company is implementing SOA in the next 2-5 years they're on the appropriate slope of enlightenment - i.e. they're not on the bleeding edge, they're right about where they should be if they're waiting for a technology to prove itself before adopting. Ditto for wikis, which are still in the trough of disillusionment. So if, like me, you thought wikis were a cool idea several years ago and you're wondering why they aren't a.) more stable in internal environments, b.) more stable in a corporate external environment, c.) more standardized instead of different strokes for different folks, sometimes across cube walls if they're in different departments, d.) why everyone likes Sharepoint, which isn't a wiki, and seems to have some serious issues (among them, it's wikiability, which may be resolved now that they're going to incorporate Confluence, a very nice wiki), and e.) why search, particularly within specified categories/boundaries is so painful compared to other web tools (and I include Sharepoint in that analysis) - well, welcome to the trough. You have a few more years until the slope of enlightenment is achieved. I won't even disagree with Web 2.0 being in that same vicinity, just with more forward velocity. You can almost smell how it's not necessarily living up to all the expectations that had been heaped at its feet. Here and there you can see how people are stripping off some of the hype and pulling out the kernel that has true business value.

Boob Couch

Before I get started, I'm not sure how I missed this, but I'm pretty sure it was written by Mean Mr. Mustard: Alyson Hannigan and the FCC's Policy on Nudity (via the Onion).

So recently I decided I should take a tour of Second Life. Not because I have any need to experience my corporation in a virtual reality instead of a primary reality, and not out of any need for cybersex. What I really wanted was to be able to complain about it knowledgably instead of second hand. While I was at the MHTA Spring Conference, the folks at MnSCU were pointing at second life and virtual realities as innovative and edgy. The Harvard Business Review notes that they're a breeding ground for leaders. I disagree. They're not all that edgy. They're not very innovative. And I don't want to be put under a manager whose primary qualification is that he led an ad hoc party of 20 to dispatch Twytch Wrympants the Fearsome Dragon Lord.

In addition, virtual realities, the kind like Second Life...they're pretty much old hat. I remember a developer I interviewed over seven years ago who showed me the virtual house he'd created to train housing inspectors. It looked pretty much like Second Life looks now. I can't speak with authority to World of Warcraft. With 20 million users and a newer interface, that's probably a very different experience, although I don't see myself doing it. But with only 38,000 people on at any one time and a clunky interface, Second Life is rather painful between trying to learn how the controls work and determining where the hell everyone is hanging out. As near as I can tell, Second Life consists of: 1.) big empty areas devoid of people, 2.) wanderers, lost in the big empty areas devoid of people and wondering where everyone went, 3.) self-absorbed individuals doing a bit of ad hoc world building behind red do-not-disturb police tape, 4.) people sitting around with their accounts on line, in idle, earning Linden Bucks by starring as window dressing to make a place look busy, 5.) Role players who have characters on line and dice off line (but are very nice - one of them was the first person to talk to me), and 6.) dancers - there are so many places where there are groups of people on a stage doing strange jerky dancing with each other.

After several hours, the highlights of my tour included the following. Checking out the ThomsonReuters Pavillion, devoid of people, yet sporting virtual screens that allowed me to kick up my browser in the background and access the company's news feed and job board. I can do this with my shortcut on my desktop rather than logging in, teleporting, then walking or flying the remaining distance, clicking on the virtual screen, and opening my real browser. Browsers within browsers. It was sort of like Hamlet. Somewhere there has to be a virtual browser that syncs into where you are in second life and another virtual browser you can access like you're playing Second Life. Sort of like when they watch the prerelease of Spaceballs on Spaceballs. I learned to ride a spider chariot, or car, or throne...it was a spider and it moved, and I figured out how to sit in it and rode it 20 virtual feet across a small stream. No one was around to applaud, but for a moment I felt something that was like pride, but distinctly was not, but was also not quite shame at whatever proto-pride I was feeling. And I found a boob couch and laid on it. There was another couch nearby, but I figure if you find a boob couch, you should use the boob couch. Never knowing when you'll find another, and it might just be really comfortable.

So here I am. Very relaxed, on the boob sofa, next to a fire. Idyllic. Without tactile gloves, I couldn't tell if the nipples were soft or poking me in the chest and balls (more like knees if you examine the picture). I could assert they were plush, like pillows, but that would be completely in my head and might give away my nipple preference, which is probably a secret I can save for a future post.

Mission and Permission

This is why Rick King is way up the corporate chain and I'm down where I am. I've spent all sorts of time trying to explain to Erik one of my pet passions about engaging developers, that it's not just telling them they can steal time to work on new technologies and patterns, that it's not just telling them here are two dozen ways to get kick started, and if they can't think of one on your own, pick one of these and I'll even provide a sample app and test data, that it's not enough to tell them you expect them to try something new and you support them and will make sure they get the resources and the confidence that failing is an acceptable outcome, you also have to give them a sense of purpose, a belief that whatever it is they're doing aligns with bigger objectives, not just project objectives, but corporate objectives, and that it's part of the grand design. If you work at a cube farm, you don't want to code Ajax, or REST, or new web services, or semantics just because it's new. You want to do it because you see it as fitting into the big picture and contributing to a vision the CEO and Board have that's usually opaque from where you sit. Fun is fun, but without that big picture, it's just a hobby. You need more than just permission.

So, I attend the MHTA Spring Conference, and Rick King says "Mission and Permission". He states, there's the goal. I don't care what sort of boat, plane, car, trike or transporter you use to get there - I expect you to use creative transportation. Two words if you throw out the noise, and he sums up all my rambling dribble.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, a politician at the end of the conference noted that we should have more erector sets and fewer Nintendos. Is that what it's like to be old? Or is that what it's like to be a politician? It's a conference on innovation. Does he not see that Nintendos can be a substitute for erector sets? That they can be a step forward and that if they're not, it's a lack of innovation on the part of a programmer, not a deficiency in the technology? If you have a Wii, and it has an erector set program, you simply slam two Wii remotes together like you're building an erector set. You never run out of pieces. You never have to throw away rusty pieces or bent plastic. If you need a motor to make the erector set kinetic, you draw one with the remote and power up your contraption. If you want to share your construction project with Ashan on the other side of the planet, it's possible. If you feel it requires six more experts, some of them college students in architecture and engineering, that may be an option. If things are set up as they should be, you have a few dozen erector pieces that are Wii capable, and interact with the programmatic portion, blending virtual and real. Go a step further and teach your program the mechanics of erector pieces, and allow the computer to seamlessly blend them across a virtual world so that you can manipulate everything like it's an erector set. It surprises me when I realize people can't imagine this sort of world. It's not something in the distant future. It's immanent reality. There are already specialities in vibration - products that monitor their own state down to the sound wave and compenstate and report their status to both humans who can intervene and machines that can correlate and offer more precise ways to resolve issues human-free in the future. Great big tinker toy systems that are self-monitoring. Try modeling that with a few bits of metal.

I'm not denying the power of imagination. But imagination also benefits from innovation, and throwing out trite quotes about how we'd all be better off with blocks and metal bits because that's how you envisioned the future makes you a prisoner of the past. You certainly shouldn't be speaking at an innovation conference.

Ambient Coffee Cup

One of the VPs at work noted to me the other day, as he veered away from the coffee line, that it was the third time that day he'd skipped the line because it was so long. I feel this screams out for an invention that would save considerable time and money at my place of employment, an ambient coffee cup. Just mount a camera near the corporate Caribou that's capable of recognizing individuals in a line and tie it to a web service that delivers the count. Have a coffee cup capable of hooking into the local network to retrieve the results, and the ability to fine tune the thresholds on line to your own personal preferences. Finally give the cup a light, just like an ambient orb, and problem solved. Never go near Cafe.com again if you cup is showing anything other than a healthy green (or perhaps the cup only lights up if the line is long - that would save the battery charge).

If you think I'm crazy, check out the Yuno PC or The Cup (with truly atrocious design details - echoism?) in the Next Gen PC Design competition, endorsed by Microsoft. If you can put a whole iPhone style interface on a coffee cup, simply giving it an ambient wrapper should be simple beans.

I didn't even realize I had a limited allowance

I think eventually, this will cause untold number of literal headaches.

Networking and Mingling, Developer Style

A coworker (further up the corporate chain than me) emailed me a statement/question today noting that some of her developers were feeling isolated from the rest of the company because their project didn't intertwingle (courtesy of Peter Morville - see my post on Ambient Findability) with other projects at the company, particularly outside their department, so they were feeling sort of on their own and isolated. I think this coworker asked me because I've never really seemed to have that problem. If someone has technology or theory, and I can figure out how to get them alone for a few minutes, then I can figure out how to insert myself into at least enough of a discussion to learn the outline of what it is they have and how I might apply it to what I'm doing, now, or in the foggy future. If it's of no use to me whatsoever, then I file it away until such time as I can give it to someone who can use it. It's not trading, it's not networking for the sake of networking or promotion, I just really like talking technology when someone gives me a chance, and I'm very aware that there are a million things I don't know, and any single one of them is likely to make what I'm working on better, or give me a foot in the door at some point to find that piece of information that makes my project and/or code better, or at least more interesting. And that piece of knowledge may be code, or it may be domain-related. To that end, I always try to make myself available to other programmers and coworkers if they can use what I know, even if it means a little bit of extra time beyond my normal 8-9, because that knowledge sharing isn't part of my current project.

So I'll post what I told the coworker, and I'm interested in what other people do if they're willing to share. I don't claim these all work, or that any of them work in all cases, and I absolutely don't claim that I do all of this in some sort of calculated manner. I'm too lazy to be calculating, which might surprise people who know my puritanical attitude to work, but in a sort of spiritual way. I don't have the time to calculate--I do things because I like people and I like tech and I like having fun. If I had to work at it, I wouldn't do it. Truth is, I like talking technology, and I like talking about technology over beer and coffee the best.

1.) Talk to someone with more experience or at a higher level (technology position wise) when you have a good question. They're not as busy as you think they are (or if they are, they'll still talk to you if they perceive you're interested and paying close attention), and most of them really like to talk about what it is they're working on, what frustrates them, and what they'd do differently if they could. They're a gold mine of information, and churn up a lot of contact names for things you might be working on. Conversely, they'll often learn something from you, particularly if you work in a group that's outside their normal stomping grounds.

2.) Apply #1 to selected tech and project leads from other groups, the ones you think are competent and laid back (even fast talkers will generally let you ask questions and get clarification, but some people will not, they just like to hear themselves talk and won't even give you a chance to steer them towards mutually useful information - stay away from them). Get 'em a cup of coffee if necessary - if your tech people are stingy, and you're the lead or manager, give them a coffee card or two and tell them it's for networking purposes and you expect them to buy two cups at a time. Ask those leads what they're working on, technologies, etc. If your people are uncomfortable "cold calling", then figure out where the corporate wikis are, read a few pages so you have some base knowledge, and then go out to coffee. Leads like to talk. They like to talk about leading they like to talk about technology. If you don't feel you have something to talk about, ask them about their favorite blogs, their favorite sites, what kinds of training they like and from where, what specific conferences, "how do I get my boss to let me go to that when s/he says there's no training budget", what works best for them. Read a book on what you think is their area of interest (like leading geeks or ambient findability) so you have information.

3.) #1 and #2 lead to more opportunities - people sharing what they have, etc. You just have to touch base now and then, not all the time, and everything keeps cycling and everyone is happy. You don't want it to become a job, or to take up all the time on your job, you want it to be those extra 15 minutes during the day, and you want it to be fun for you and for them.

4.) Make some opportunities for #1 and #2. Find a developer and invite them to coffee. Walk with them to some place they like to frequent - coffee at the other end of the building, afternoon walk, water upstairs, anything. Some developers have their own happy hours (drinking alcohol isn't a necessity, but allowing others to is - no one cares if you don't drink, that's why happy hours have appetizers and meals), and you can be certain that there are never enough people and that they're interested in a new brain. They're always happy to add a person or two that seems like a good fit (i.e. don't be irritable because you're a low-level programmer and you're not invited - sometimes leads and up meet and take information back to their group. If that's the case, create your own happy hour at a different level, and find people on the liminal of moving up that will bring down the things you need from those other areas). Send out a general request to your contacts to see if they're going to a particular tech event, or even a non-tech event if you've talked enough to identify their hobbies. Invite a group of people to lunch - if it's a big enough group, enough of them are moving between jobs over the years that it will stay fresh. You always talk shop with coworkers, it doesn't matter where you are.

5.) Per the drinking advice in #4, information flows down; follow the cohort system. If you get your leads engaged with other leads and architects and finding information, they'll generally bring it back to their best developers, who in turn will disperse the ideas to the group. While that doesn't seem like engaging your lower-level developers, it is, as long as you let them know that information is reaching them from other groups and other people in other groups. You don't have to say "Jim Smith the Architect said...", but you can say, "Information Architecture is working on this", "The Large Database group recommended this", "This other group is doing this, and their lead is really interested in this aspect of it..." If you're not specific about who it is, no foul. You've still told them that their project is reaching beyond the boundaries of the group. If any of your programmers seem to be reaching for more, you've developed a network that allows you to hook them up with someone that's a good fit and you've created an mentoring network. That's just identifying talent - flow with it.

6.) Again, ask for help. Find an infrastructure bit that needs to be improved and send someone out to canvas for what's out there. For instance, if you're not fond of your automated build process, pick someone and tell them to ask around. If you know a starting point, so much the better. What you're looking at doesn't even have to be a build process in your technology area - there's something to learn in Java from looking at a .NET build process or a Team Services installation (and vice versa). Even if it's an area where you're sure your implementation is cool beans, where it's the end all of solutions, it doesn't hurt to go ask for alternatives. Web 2.0 isn't just SOA, it's innovation and new models and a changing paradigm of how to do things - you don't learn those things without other people.

7.) Have some of your group do an interview or two. That's scary - and you could lose an employee to a different group, so that's not really one you may want to follow if you're a manager. But the individuals who interview will learn volumes about other groups and their ideas. If someone does leave, and it's on good terms, get them to report back about what they're doing. Not some surreptitious maneuver. Put a programmer on them to talk to them about what they're doing over an event or coffee or whatever. Blatant is fine - let them know you want information, it's flattering. Those first 3-6 months someone is in a new position, they're excited about what they're doing, particularly around the 3 month mark when they've gotten over the paranoia that they don't know what they're doing and they're in over their head and get a real idea of what's in front of them and how they can make a difference. Tap that energy and expose your developers to it so they can cycle it in their own position.

8.) Last one, although there are more, but I'm wearing out. Teach your developers to mingle. Not crappy mingling like in the mingling book I read which warned against work-related topical mingling, but work-related, developer-related, mingling. At work - learn to recognize the other developers by sight, even if you don't know them or work with them, and take some time to sit down with them at lunch, or say "hello" to them in the coffee line if they're alone. Ask them about REST and microformats and their current project. If you talk to 1/6 of them, you'll always know someone the other 5/6 know, so you'll have conversation fodder. If you talk to 1/12 of them, find the next 1/12 that know the first 1/12, and then you have access to the other 5/6. You have to start somewhere, it doesn't matter how small. Do the same thing at the coffee shop - the non-work coffee shop. If you see developers working on their laptops and they're not engrossed (don't interrupt - rude, and it takes an effort to snap out of code brain), talk to them about their technology focus, who they work for (not what they're working on, that can be sensitive), and offer details about yourself first so they know what the boundaries are. The more you talk to other techies, particularly the ones you're not comfortable with from your own close-knit group, the better you get.

Freudian Thought

When I first read this, "instant messaging for daily microcoordination at one's workplace", I read "microindoctrination" instead of "microcoordination"...a Freudian brain slip perhaps? I'm surprised, my company is very good about letting me think whatever I like. I'm guessing it's all those dystopic novels and commentary I read (I have commentary on Brave New World sitting on the table upstairs right now). After a while, everything is newspeak and indoctrination. I should probably copyright microindoctrination. I bet it's a new word.

The source of the quote is from some social computing and social networking articles I was rereading on Wikipedia today. Good stuff. I think social computing is fascinating, particularly as you can almost see it after a while if you work with the same sets of data day to day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_computing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network

Ambient Findability (UX/IA)

Peter Morville's Ambient Findability was a happy find from the corporate library. Some of the Amazon reviews note that it's rambling, bloggish, and tackles technology at such a high level that it doesn't have solid focus, but this is what made it such an enjoyable book. Rather than try to point at specific web 2.0 technologies (which are really more than just SOA - there's javascript technologies that aren't hooked into services - i.e. prototype extensions -, RDF [which is really about metadata] and RSS and Atom [which look like SOA, but offer accessible versions of RDF], piles of new usability features, particularly client-side, mash ups [and not just the SOA and APIs behind them, the very act of creating them], the extension into ubiquitous hardware [so many phones, so many iPods, so many Blackberries and handhelds, so many bluetooth ear pieces, so many people with wireless laptops...just consider how it looked three years ago, there's a difference], microformats, and new ideas about how to extend all of that stuff into the lives of consumers), he tackles the changes in technology from a holistic perspective. What does it mean to live in the age of information? How do we find things? How is the way we find things changing, and how is it still similar to the way it has always been? What is it like to spend almost all our time in a built environment? What are the consequences for those who don't know the appropriate ways to find data, or don't have access to systems that are evolving to deliver data in better ways? How is information becoming even more accessible - including what we can access? Will we eventually be able to find the history of any object and the history of all objects that have tangentially impacted that object? Not can we track a can of soda, but can we track that can of soda, who drank it, and which other cans of soda they drank?

Toward that end, Morville tackles RFID chips, search engine optimization (SEO - now making its way into the hands of those who create the sites, rather than residing with consulting companies), large search engine theory and search engine advertising (p. 112 - most users don't go past the first two pages of results, a user is five times as likely to buy an item after searching through a web site than by clicking in banner ads), sociosemantics, push, pull, precision, recall, decision-making traps, pattern recognition and, the favorite topic at Computer Assisted Legal Instruction conferences, taxonomies and folksonomies.

His book isn't perfect, and the field is changing too fast for it to be completely current, even though it was published in September 2005, but if you've never taken a good look at the direction things could be going, Morville's book can give you a big picture, a wide swath, of what may lay ahead in the immediate future.

If you're interested in findability and user experience (UX) and information architecture, Morville has both a findability site, where he blogs, and some information at his Semantic Studios site. He'll be coming to town (Minneapolis, St. Paul) for a Thomson Dialog conference and one other conference in mid-March and April if you scan the right column at the findability site.

Locally, visit MNteractive (who writes MNteractive), which posts a pile of material about the local UX/IA (interface design) scene, with frequent complaints about using Flash on your website, the direction of Groovy and JRuby, notes about local mashups, etc.

Webcam is live...

The Scooter family had a Best Buy gift certificate on hand from our high speed internet set up, so I made an executive decision and included a cheap webcam in my holiday shopping purchases so that Eryn can talk to Grandpa and Grandma and her cousin over the computer. Here you may enjoy the fruits of my shopping.