Around the Internet

Programming

All I Need to Be a Better Programmer I Learned in Kindergarten Sometimes the basics can be boiled down to just a few sentences. Sometimes I think I knew more when I was five than I do now. Of course, that’s a lie, but it’s worth thinking about.

Code Fearlessly I think version control is amazing. I’ve been using Git for a few years now (Subversion before then) and I keep all my writing as well as my code in repositories, backed up to Amazon and a VPS. The great thing about version control is how it lets you make mistakes and try out wild ideas without worrying about how you’ll get back to a working state if you break something.

Health and Fitness

The Creative Brain on Exercise I know, I know. Exercise doesn’t come naturally to most of us spending our days in front of our screens. But given how much of our work is creative in nature, it makes sense to take care of our engines of creation. I think the time spent in exercise will more than pay itself back over the years (in saved medical bills and lost work time if nothing else).

How Getting Buff Can Make You a Better Rubyist. In case you’re wondering about whether any of this exercise and diet stuff actually works or not, here’s some evidence straight from the source. This is worth watching even if you’re not a programmer, but just someone who has a normally sedentary work life.

Tim Ferriss on the 4-Hour Body at the NEXT conference I know that so-called “extreme” advice such as provided by Tim in his book always earns a skeptical look, but I find his idea of minimum effective dose quite interesting. If you’re looking for the most efficient ways to change your body for the better, this is a must-watch.

Eat to Live If you’d rather have advice from a medical doctor who’s also changed the lives of dozens (if not hundreds) of people, this book is your best bet. I tend to think of it as more of a primer on nutrition and health in general rather than just a diet or fitness book. It might take you some time to get through it (though it’s a small book) but again, the investment is definitely worth it.

No, my current dilemma is far less technical. There are two books I really want to buy right now: Seth Godin’s Poke the Box and the just-released Anything You
Want by Derek Sivers. Both of them are available on Amazon in Kindle and hardcover, dead-tree form. The problem is that for both of them the ebook version is just about a dollar less than the hardcover version. For the Poke the Box, it’s just 30c.

From an author’s or publisher’s perspective I can understand why you’d want that kind of pricing. Perhaps you don’t want readers to feel like either version is a
second-class citizen. Perhaps you don’t want readers without a Kindle to be put off buying. Perhaps you want to tell your readers that either choice is fine and you, as publisher, are ambivalent on the subject of print versus digital. I think all of them are perfectly valid decisions. But as someone who isn’t pre-decided one way or the other, it makes the decision harder, not easier.

Here’s a (probably incomplete list) of all the things that I’ve been thinking about over the past few days regarding my choices, not in strict order: Oooh.. look Kindle versions! Now I can take them with wherever I go. But wait, the hardcover is less than a dollar more. If I get the hardcover I’ll have something nice and physical and DRM-free to keep on my bookshelf. And I don’t randomly start reading on my Kindle so I could probably just plan ahead and carry the book when I think I’ll read it. But the hardcover is probably going to be heavy and I have to move on a fairly regular basis. I don’t want to move too much heavy stuff, but then again I move once a year at most. The rest of the time it’ll sit on my bookshelf and I do like the look of a well-filled bookshelf. And if it’s in plain view instead of tucked inside the Kindle I’ll
probably reread it again at some point. But paper books are so last century and the Kindle is just gorgeous.

So on and so forth. You get the point.

In general I agree with Craig Mod: the future of books is digital and paper books will move closer and closer towards Collectors Item status. Instead of being cheap, mass produced blocks of paper, they’ll become careful, hand-crafted works of art. And I for one am quite happy with that. The problem is that there is this awkward growing-up phase as digital book technology matures. That phase is now. One of the results of that awkwardness is the indecision I’m currently facing. If these were mass market paperbacks that I’m going to read on a plane flight and never again I would get the Kindle versions in a heartback. But they’re not. They’re both books I think I’ll like, would want to keep and can see myself rereading. If the reading experience on the Kindle wasn’t as top-notch as it is, I would get the hardcovers. But the argument in favor of ebooks and ereaders has gotten good enough that the choice between the two is not an easy one by any measure.

For me the idea of books is intimately connected with the idea of libraries. I don’t just want to read the books and absorb them, I want to have a growing library of my reading as well. And though I could make some kind of digital ”have read” list, there is something about a physical library that tugs at my heartstrings. It’s the idea of having a set of books that in some way is a reflection of myself. They contain words and ideas that are now a part of me. Not all books I read would go into this library (most textbooks would not make the cut), but hopefully anything that I willimingly buy would. In an ideal world I’d be able to “rent” the ebook version for an absurdly low price (say 50c a day). Then I could read it and if I decided it was a “keeper” I would buy the dead-tree version for my library.

At this point I officially hand this question to the wisdom of the Internets. For a $1 difference, which version would you buy and why?

(And no, I am not going to scrounge around for a “free” PDF copy. That defeats the point of everything I just said. I want to give the authors my money, but I want to make a good investment myself as well. The two purposes can be aligned, I’m just not sure how.)

Around the Internet

Is sitting a lethal activity? I’ve always had an interest in ergonomics and good work places, but I’ve started to hear more and more about how sitting is downright dangerous even if you have an ergonomic chair. I’ve personally been trying to do more of my work standing up, but it’s not easy considering that there is about one place in the whole school where I can stand and work in reasonable comfort.

Principle of Least Software For most of my work, I can just use three programs — Firefox, Emacs and a Terminal. When I’m on my Mac the list lengthens a little to include OmniFocus and iTunes. I try to use the bare minimum amount of software and though there’s little desktop software I need, I do use a lot of webapps and services. I wish I could use less.

From the Bookshelf

Talent is Overrated Continuing my readings on peak performance and top performers, I decided to reread this book (which I bought along with Outliers). The writing isn’t as good as Gladwell’s (and there’s a whole chapter on what businesses can go, which I don’t care about). But it’s still packed full of interesting examples and useful information.

Software

Quotebook It’s a nifty little iOS app to store quotes. It doesn’t come with thousands of built-in quotes but rather lets you collect and curate your own collection.  It’s a bit limited without an accompanying web or desktop app because I don’t fancy typing in or copying large amounts of text on iOS, but I think something like that is in the works.

How to get a real education in College I’m going to be finishing classes in about a month. On the whole, I’ve had a good college experience and certainly learned a lot. However, there are a lot of things which are clearer in retrospect and I do wish I had more things of an organizational nature. If you’re interested in an unusual college experience to set the tone for a life of entrepreneurship, Scott Adams has some really good pointers.

C is a desert island language I like the C programming language. It’s small, tight language; austere would be a good description. It puts you in close touch with the machine and expects you know what you’re doing. It can be rather liberating if you’re used to programming in Java or some other managed, batteries-included language. This is the introduction of a long series of discussions and commentary surrounding C and its relationship to other languages.

Tron:Legacy Computer Art If you’ve seen the movie you’re familiar with the large numbers of dazzling special effects as well as the scenes of programmers interacting with computers (which are actually believable for once). Here’s a behind-the-scenes guide of how all those beautiful images were created.

From the Library

Outliers: The Story of Success I’ve had this book for about a year and I know read the first half, but I couldn’t remember if I actually finished it. So over the last few days I sat down and just read it cover to cover. Malcolm Gladwell is a really good writer and it’s a pleasure to follow his explanations and trains of thought. He provides some really compelling arguments for why success is a combination of personal character, upbringing, opportunities and cultural context. It is a bit disheartening to find out that there probably isn’t much by the way of what we consider “true genius” but it’s also uplifting to learn that hard work and dedication can have amazing payoffs — “no one who can rise before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich”.

Software

Simplenote I’m a fan on hacker-oriented, infinitely customizable tools (like Emacs) but sometimes you just want to reach for the closest tool at hand. Simplenote is a text-based simple note taking service. It’s available as a webapp as well as native apps for various platforms. Furthermore there are a growing number of third-party text editors and lists managers that are using Simplenote as a backend. I personally use the iOS app and the third-party nvALT application on my mac.

Around the Internet

Why I Chose Typekit Businesses, business models and the psychology and ethics behind it all continue to interest me. This is one designer’s description of why he chooses Typekit over the other web-based type delivery services. There aren’t any long charts or big numbers, it’s more personal and honest.

The Holy Trinity In the process of making plans for actually going to graduate school, I’ve been spending some thinking about what I want to research and what motivations and goals are. Apart from the technical things I’m interested in, I’m starting to believe that what we need more than ever is a “philosophy of computation” — ideas and concepts that define computation and our relationship to it at a higher level. Robert Harper’s recent blog post is a milestone on that journey.

This Hack was Not Planned Another gem from the man, the legend, the hacker _why the luck stiff. Not matter how much we talk about agile processes and software development methodologies, sometimes we just need to sit down and churn out a neat hack. This one is for the knife-edge hacker in all of us.

From the Bookshelf

Rework When I read and reviewed this book almost exactly a year I was perhaps less than charitable. I stick by my point that it is largely the best material pulled from their blog, but after a year I’m seeing it from the eyes of someone who hasn’t recently been drinking the 37signals kool-aid non-stop. There are powerful and useful ideas distilled into a very potent form. If you’re looking to start a business (or even just a new project) but are unsure how set yourself apart from the Jones’ this book should give you some really good ideas.

Software

Pinboard.in My reading has gone up a lot in the last few months and I’ve been making a conscious effort to track everything I read. Since most of my reading is online, I’ve been using an excellent bookmarking service called Pinboard. It’s not free and it’s not overflowing with social features, but it stores and organizes your bookmarks and does it well. If you’re someone who reads a lot online and you want to keep track of what you’re reading, the $9.29 signup fee is a small fee to pay. (The price goes up based on the number of people who sign up, so hurry. It was a bit over $6 when I joined.)

iPad 2 is not revolutionary, but it is great I’ve been lusting after an iPad for a while now and with this refresh I think I’m going to finally crack and get one. This review is worth a read if you’re considering getting one (or wondering what all the fuss is about). It explains why the iPad is likely to be the best tablet on the market for a while (even when all the others stop being vaporware).

How Kickstarter Became a Lab for Daring Prototypes and Ingenious Products I haven’t invested in any Kickstarter projects (starving college student + I’m on a minimalism kick) but I think it’s a great idea that is doing some measurable good in the world. And helping create some beautiful products in the process. Required reading for anyone starting a business or service organization.

The Einstein Principle: Accomplish More By Doing Less This is an older article to offset the other two. I’ve been thinking a lot about focus and concentration, both in terms of mentally energy and actual physical doing-stuff. There’s no big secret revealed here and we’ve probably heard the facts already. But every now and then we need to calm down, take a breath and be reminded to focus on what’s important.

From the bookshelf

Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience While digesting the wisdom of the Internet is definitely fun and worthwhile, sometimes you have to go back to basics. This book gets cited a lot in articles on productivity, focus and time management. It’s the distilled wisdom of one man’s journey to understand what makes life worth living from a spiritual and scientific viewpoint. If you’re only going to read one book on self-improvement or time management, this is it.

Software

Instapaper and Readability After my last tribute to the resurgence of web reading how could I not recommend these two wonderful pieces of software? Part web service, part mobile app, these two will definitely make reading on the Internet a much better experience.

The Book Itself

First off, the book was really hyped in the time before and just after it’s release. It got glowing reviews from a number of important people including Seth Godin. I didn’t really buy into the hype and decided to let things calm down a little until I bought and read it.

Being someone who regularly reads their blog and has read Getting Real I didn’t expect to get anything earth shattering. And that was exactly what happened. I could easily recognized large sections of the book that I had read before (mostly on their blog) and I feel that if I cared to look hard enough, I’d find that a lot of the book is actually on their blog in one form or another. If you’re someone who has never heard of 37signals, or don’t know about the way they do business then you’ll learn a lot from it (and may not like everything you read). But if you already know about them and read their blog your reaction will be more along the lines of “meh”.

I also found the general organization and style of the book rather disappointing. It’s set up as groups of “essays” under certain headings. The groupings are fairly accurate, but the essays seem disconnected and aloof from each other. There is no gentle introduction and no conclusion to tie things together. You feel like you’re constantly being hit with 1-2 page snippets of what you should or should not do without a larger structure to place it into. I agree with the Management Today review in that the style of writing lacks grace and charm and often seems unnecessarily confrontational. In contrast to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, another book that changes the way you live your daily life, this book seems pretty shoddy.

I can’t help but feel that Jason and David were just out to take the best parts of their blog and put them into print rather than sit down and write a proper book. Having 200-500 word articles on a blog is fine, but when I read a book I expect some form of continuity and cohesion. In the end, my reaction to this book is probably that it’s not worth the money for the content. The ideas are powerful and I admire 37signals for doing the business the way they do, but Rework is not one of their better.

The Artwork, Look and Feel

In contrast to how unpolished the writing feels, the physical appearance and feel of the book is very different. It’s hardcover and the jacket feels and looks great with a great choice of black, red and greys for the text. The cover features a picture of a crumpled piece of picture in some kind of glossy paper. It’s obvious that someone took care to think this through.

The illustrations and section titles were done by Mike Rohde and I personally really like them. They’re not very artsy or intricate, but they have a sort of casual beauty to them. They’re simple, but well thought out, each one fitting in well with the essay it accompanies. I would actually be willing to spend money just for the artwork (maybe not a lot, but some reasonable amount). You can learn about the process and see all the pieces together as a Flickr set.

In conclusion

Rework is not a great book or 37signal’s best product by any stretch of the imagination. If it weren’t for the good design and artwork I would tell you to just of read their blog and their last book instead. But this book only if you either really like 37signals or have never heard of them and want to know what all the fuss is about. They make great software and they do good business, but the next time they want to write a book, they should really sit down and write a book instead of seeing how much of their blog they can recycle.

Writing daily: quantity over quality

I already write a fair amount, mostly in the form of blog posts and email. But I’m also prone to slacking off terribly. I’ve gone for a week at a time without writing anything substantial. Writing isn’t a day job for me, but it is something I enjoy, something I value and something I want to improve on. So I’m going to try a bit every day.

I’ve thought about doing this at various points in the past, but I’ve always agonized about the process. I would like to sit down at any computer and just write for a few minutes. But I could never decide how exactly to do it without having writing scattered all over the place. And I always knew in the back of my head that I needed to start down for an hour or so to actually write something of value.

I’ve always been a fan of quality over quantity, but for once I’m going to give it a rest. I’m going to write everyday in the hopes that the much increased throughput will produce a greater number of good works in the long run and it will also develop my writing skills (especially in terms of avoiding writer’s block and being able to switch into writing mode at the drop of a hat). When I have an extended period of time (an hour at least) I’ll write techie articles for this blog and when I have shorter snippets I’ll just dump them into documents on Google Docs.

Reading: everywhere, anytime

While I like to write, I like to read too. Unfortunately I don’t often have the time to sit down and read for a few hours at a time. On the other hand I have short bursts of time every now and then (5-10 minutes) and instead of just sitting right or looking at funny videos of cats, I want to spend that time reading. I’ve already read one book on my iPod Touch using little snippets of time here and there. Though I don’t think I’ll want to do that with all forms of literature, I can certainly do it for short pieces. I’m considering getting the Instapaper Pro app (which lets you save stuff you want to read) and offers some features like text extraction and font customization that I think will come in pretty handy.

Using both brain hemispheres

I’m going to be graduating in just over a year with two degrees: computer engineering. So yes, my left brain is going to be very well exercised. But I want my right brain to get some training too. In retrospect it might have been a good idea to pick up a studio art major, but I like what I have know.

In order to exercise my right hemisphere I’ve taken to looking at art and design. I don’t really study anything formally (though I among going to Italy over summer to study Renaissance Art) but I do observe and absorb. In particular I’ve been looking at data presentation and web design. I plan on spending some time building “blogazine“-like content on my website, probably centered about poetry and stories I’ve written before. I might even dabble in some hand-drawing (which I haven’t seriously done in years). Of course everything I do will be free for everyone to see and reuse.

Measuring my time usage

I often have days where I feel like I did a lot and didn’t really waste time, but didn’t quite accomplish much. I tried to apply the principle of “what you measure improves” by tracing all my time usage for a day. It turned out to be rather clumsy because I wanted a system where I could write things quickly and still get fairly good analytics on how I spent my time. Unfortunately paper is great for recording, but it sucks for analytics and most time tracking solutions I found were too heavy and expensive.

A few days ago I stumbled across a new webapp called Freckle which seems to hit the sweet spot between features and usability. All you do is enter a time (or use their timer bookmarklet), what project it was for and a bunch of tags and it gives you a set of fairly decent analytics. You have to pay for it and I just started a free month long trial. If I find that it actually works well, that I use it and that I’m getting more stuff done, then it’s a keeper and I’ll gladly fork over the $12 a month and wish them well.

Agile daily productivity

The agile development methodology eschews large complicated schedules and project plans in favor of smaller chunks of work, quicker feedback and review and greater flexibility. I’ve been an applying a similar system to my own daily workloads and it seems to be working, but I’ll be enforcing it better. Being a college student it makes absolutely no sense for me to have long schedules because every day brings new challenges (homework, tests, projects, random coffee drinking sessions) and any long-term plan would be shattered in a day. Instead I’m using a dual system: due dates to make sure I’m on track with my long term goals and shorter lists of daily and weekly tasks that need to be done. I’ll try to set aside large blocks of time for things like homework sets and fill in shorter blocks with reading and writing. I’m also consider doing weekly reviews but I’m not sure how much of a value that will provide to me right now.

In 30 days my free trial of Freckle will run out and that’s also when I’ll sit down, take a deep breath and see if all this actually worked or not. If it doesn’t work, I’ll try to see what it failed and see if I can fix it. Even if it didn’t work, I’m sure there will be places to tweak and improve. And though I’m tired from having written this (and from everything else I’ve done and need to) I feel pretty excited for this month.

For starters, technology, especially computer technology has permeated every aspect of our lives. And along with the computer has come the network. Within the next decade mobile broadband will become ubiquitous (at least in urban areas) meaning that we will always be connected to the full knowledge and collective intelligence of the internet. As a direct result we are all gradually becoming cyborgs: our machines, especially in the form of mobile network connected devices are becoming an inseparable part of us. Sure, we may not be jacking in with our brains as a part of the regular morning routine, but connecting to the global network of computers (and hence indirectly to everyone else using those computers) is already a routine occurrence which we don’t give a second thought.

A recent Wired article talks about how average chess players combined with the right machine assistance can beat out better human players as well as other players with better software. The key is in the human’s ability to make the most of their machine assistants: figuring out which machine results to accept, which to reject and how to ask the right questions. Our currently technology is in exactly the same position. The talent of the person using a computer or the computational power of the machine is less important than being able to combine the two properly.

Leaving chess aside, there are more practical areas where this combination of man and machine is producing great payoffs. Successful blogger and author Tim Ferriss makes no secret of the fact that he uses analytics extensively to fine-tune how his website operates and is viewed in order to maximize his earnings. In earlier days, Paul Graham created effectively the world’s first web application, Viaweb and successfully beat out better funded competitors by placing powerful tools (Common Lisp) in the hands of experienced users (himself and his team).

People my age and younger have never lived in a world when we couldn’t connect with people across the globe at the click of a mouse. All that has ever stood before us and the vast stores of information on the Internet has been a single text box with a button titled some variation of “Search”. We’re cyborgs in the sense that the use of our machines is natural and reflexive, requiring little explicit mental bandwidth. Who needs a port in the back of the skull when you have a copy of Google Hacks tucked into your brain?

Of course, not all cyborgs are made equal. Even among people my age there are both those who revel in technology and its gifts and those who would prefer to keep it at arm’s lengths. And I’m not talking about the difference between computer science graduate students and theater majors. I’m talking about the people who are content to use the Microsoft Word’s default font and paragraph spacing and those who spent hours tinkering with their websites to get things looking just right. I’m talking about the people who tweet a dozen times a day and those who log in to Facebook once a week. I’m talking about those who have three different emails and those who pull all their email into Gmail. I’m talking about… you get the point.

On the flip side there’s a careful balance between using technology to achieve a further goal (Tim Ferriss’ website tweaks) and technology for technology’s sake (the hours spent tweaking the CSS on a blog only your mum reads). The Wired article says that there is a difference between people who use technology productively and hence feel smarter and more focused and the people who seem lost and intimated by online life. I would add a third category: those who feel smarter, but really aren’t better than the baseline. Cyborgization may be becoming ubiquitous, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy.

The growing cyborgization of our society is also the reason why I’m excited about the second coming of tablet computers: the iPad and whatever Chrome-based offering Google throws its weight behind. Take a few minutes to check out the new guided tours of the iPad and you might get a hint of what I feel. The interface is completely different from how we use computers today and I think that’s a great idea. Let’s face it: most people today don’t really need a real computer. They need basically two devices: a internet connection device and some sort of glorified typewriter/calculator for writing reports and spreadsheets. Of course the iPad doesn’t excite those of us who type hundreds of words a minute or write code for a living. That’s because we’ve already crossed the line of cyborgization: we know (or are at least trying to find out) what we can do with our machines. The iPad is for the people on the other side, those who couldn’t care less about how many cores or how much RAM they have. It’s for people who are more than willing to trade their freedom (and their wallets) for a computing experience that they can relate to better and easier. It’s for the mum who wants to snuggle up in bed with her kid and Winnie the Pooh. It’s for the people who still consider reading a newspaper in the morning a holy rite. It’s for the people who have by and large been on the outskirts of the computer technology revolutions of the last few decades. It’s for a new generation of cyborgs who stop thinking of their machines as computers and rather view them as constant, unobtrusive, electronic companions.

With some luck, my children will be growing up in a world where they are surrounded from birth by the warm embrace of the internet. For them, actually sitting down in front of a computer will be quaint and outmoded in the same way we don’t go to a landline phone to talk to someone anymore. And it will be devices like the iPad connecting remotely to powerful servers running recommendation engines and personalized search databases that will be their first connection to the world of computation. As Pranav Mistry says, people don’t really care about computation, they care about knowledge and information. We’ve been able to bring people closer to information by erasing it’s physicality and making everything available remotely. Our children will be getting that information without the burden of thinking about a browser or keyboard or URLs. For them, all sorts of data will be all around them accessible at the tap of a touchscreen (or hopefully without requiring even that).

Here’s looking forward to the Age of Cyborgs, of which we are the heralds and first citizens. We live in exciting times.