The word “No”

Posted by mkhairul - September 29, 2009 at 12:09:27 am - 1 Comment

Categories: rants

Nice article. I’m still too lenient to use the word straight on. Usually a trigger of pain from experiences makes the word ‘no’ easier to be said.

That’s why the more experienced people usually says it easier and young college grads use its antonym instead.

Google gives up on debugging IE for wave

Posted by mkhairul - September 24, 2009 at 07:09:16 am - No Comments

Categories: blog

A well thought out solution for a problem that could drive an engineer insane (or maybe just bald) trying to fix the quirks on these browsers (IE6, IE7, IE8), but is wrapped around words that doesn’t offend anyone.

Good thinking.
Google Wave in Internet Explorer

Having a clear development process

Posted by mkhairul - September 23, 2009 at 09:09:27 am - No Comments

Categories: blog

Not many company have this (at least not the one that I worked for). Usually the process is just hearsay that most of the time changed into something else everytime its passed around and its not the same thing coming from everyone.

There was one time, where theres an ISO document for the development process, after it has been reviewed by the ISO department it was kept and never to be seen again (that’s what usually happens when its too formal and nobody wants anything to do with it, oh yeah, and no enforcement).

I agree that, having a clear development process is on of the aspects to deliver great software (short-term and long-term), but how?

It shouldn’t be long, one or two page of text explaining with simple yet casual language. It all depends on the environment that you’re on and incrementally improve on it.

An example from my observation,
- make changes based on the current task and project (duh)
- compare the changes that I made with the one on the server
- merge it
- overwrite it
- inform everyone involved in the project of the changes made using the developer mailing list
- at the end of the week, present what I have done to the management (heh)

If you noticed, the process is full of pitfalls. To understand why it is the way it is, you’d have to understand its context (which I wouldn’t explain it here). Even though the process is flawed, it is still good to have it clearly for everyone to see instead of passing it through word of mouth.

So, if you or anyone else go to a company and the process is still passed with word of mouth, write it down and see if it makes sense (or just pry it out of your colleague’s/boss brain, ref cartoon).

Writing a To-Do List for my future self

Posted by mkhairul - September 22, 2009 at 12:09:21 pm - No Comments

Categories: Tips, management

Its hard to keep a consistent writing style and mindset when life throws a curveball thats spins in loops. Even more when I have not mastered it yet. It usually throws me off course making which makes me struggle back to get on course.

It is suggested that, it helps to write down tasks as though you’re delegating them to someone you know in order to write succinct but complete tasks.

The secret to all this is that, when you are writing down your deferred tasks “normally,” in truth you’re actually delegating but you just don’t realize it. You are simply delegating to your future self. The problem is that, in our present-self state of mind when planning tasks, we are filling in the gaps in our writing with present-knowledge.
This knowledge fades quickly and by the time our future-self picks up the work, the mortar of that transient information has dissolved, turning what seemed to be a solid, actionable task into an unclear jumble of words.

So, I guess, instead of “Do this..”, I should write “Do this … so that .. etc”.

Source
Write Specific Yet Concise To-Dos for Your Future Self

Long-term memory

Posted by mkhairul - September 15, 2009 at 08:09:10 am - 1 Comment

Categories: Tips, rants

An article about SuperMemo and the story behind it, Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm. Quite an interesting read.

One of the interesting thing is about long-term memory can be characterized by two components, storage strength and retrieval strength.

• Retrieval strength measures how likely you are to recall something right now, how close it is to the surface of your mind.
• Storage strength measures how deeply the memory is rooted.

Some memories may have high storage strength but low retrieval strength.
Take an old address or phone number. Try to think of it; you may feel that it’s gone. But a single reminder could be enough to restore it for months or years.

Conversely, some memories have high retrieval strength but low storage strength.
Perhaps you’ve recently been told the names of the children of a new acquaintance. At this moment they may be easily accessible, but they are likely to be utterly forgotten in a few days, and a single repetition a month from now won’t do much to strengthen them at all.

For this, I’m going to give SpicyElephant a try (I went there before and couldn’t understand what its suppose to do, now I got the picture) and see how it goes.

Refresh Desktop without restarting windows

Posted by mkhairul - September 12, 2009 at 06:09:18 am - No Comments

Categories: Tips, Troubleshoot, blog

I’ve been having this problem lately, when I leave my applications open too long (IDE, Browsers, etc) or open too many applications, my desktop starts to go insane. The icons are messed up, when I open explorer it doesn’t automatically display the left pane.

I need to refresh my desktop. Open up task manager, go to the processes tab, search for ‘explorer’ and end it. After the desktop is blank, no icons, just the wallpaper and the task manager, click on the File menu, new task (Run) and type in explorer.

And the desktop is restored!

Why can’t this thing run? Why is it so hard?

Posted by mkhairul - September 11, 2009 at 03:09:40 am - No Comments

Categories: rants

I spent like 3-4 hours just trying to configure the application at work today. Assisted by a colleague, and after two hours, assisted by another colleague. A total of 3 people on a supposedly initial setup of the main company’s product. It still ain’t running. Hopefully tomorrow I can make it to run.

This is what happens when there’s nobody dedicated to address this sort of thing, look at the process and improve it incrementally, starting with the setup process, version control, code review, all the quality control stuffs, etc.

It was one of my objective to do it about 4 years ago, to streamline the process, from setup (one click install, or maybe multiple clicks) to development to handling issues. After I left, my plan was abandoned.

This also happens when everyone is too focused on getting projects without allocating time for research & development. The application is still running on outdated technologies and any attempt to upgrade a part of its components to use a newer technology, we’re stuck with the errors that it spews out.

Technical debt is catching up and the interest is SKY HIGH.

Project Level and Task Level

Posted by mkhairul - September 9, 2009 at 06:09:35 am - No Comments

Categories: blog

I showed projectlog (a simple task management for projects) to my friends (well, they insisted) and received some great reception. But it was short lived, they went on to another project management called dotproject.

I am not really into dotproject, sure it got all the bells and whistles to do awesome stuffs but its not what I need.

Project level involves scheduling, resource allocation, team coordination, and planning.

dotproject is more complicated as it tries to deliver a project management solution. The learning curve and the UI is not to my liking (hey, everyone have their preferences and I’m more of a minimalistic kind of guy) but makes a great selling point.

Projectlog is more simplistic as it records the tasks and just gives an overview of the progress of the project using a dashboard. So I’m gonna try and continue on developing projectlog and see if there’s any audience for it.

Here’s a list of screenshots for projectlog.

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