Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Disappointed

After a while working on eclipse Ganymede, I am back using the Visual Studio Express 2008 C++ for some windows related tasks.

First thing I noticed, you can not stop the compilation on the first error. It has to build everything only to find out that there was a problem somewhere in the very beginning and then you have to scroll a hundred lines just to find it.

Very annoying.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Live well and then, well... leave

Sad moment. Randy Paush, author of "The Last Lecture", has died. What he did was so powerful and touching. And very hard to deal with. Frankly, the best presentation I have seen in my life. Check this link to digg, for the summary.

Wikipedia is the ultimate truth

The term "truth" has no single definition and lies as a cornerstone of many philosophical discussions. One would agree, however, that a commonly recognized statement is as close to truth as the number of people that recognize it, for all practical purposes within a given cultural context. This means, that the more people agree on a certain issue the closer to "truth" it becomes, at least in a simplistic meaning we commonly assign to it on a day to day basis.

The above is exactly the definition of Wikipedia, which has the power of accumulation of everyone's knowledge, constantly updated and corrected to reflect the most current reality. Taken at the limit, the Wikipedia represents the ultimate truth as we know it.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Why is that?

You buy a Nokia phone, say, in my case, a 3110c. Then you try to sync it with your Mac, and you discover that this phone is not in the list of supported phones. Then you go to Google and in ten minutes find some modified conduit that does the job. Why is that?

Why can't Nokia either provide the plugin for all phones, if it is not that hard, or at least provide a centralized community page to organize the effort. Maybe test and autorize some of the plugins, to ensure their quality. Don't they care?

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Worried for your culture?

Some time ago, the papers reported that Europeans are upset with the tactics used by MPAA and the US government in general for spreading the Hollywood production around the globe. They said it violates some conventions against forcing "cultural goods and services" on other nations, conventions which should provide "a crucial defense of national cultures against the onslaught of "global mono-culture" (especially Hollywood films)."

Americans said: Culture? What culture? Hollywood films ain't no culture. They are business. Our business. Our global million trillion dollar business. So would you please be so kind to take your cultures and stay out of our way.

In my opinion this point is rather interesting and not entirely trivial, that is - can Hollywood films be considered an American cultural export? At first it might seem like they certainly are. They picture the American way of life and American values, laugh on American stupidity and shed tears on American love stories. People in those movies speak American English, play American sports, shoot American weapons and eat American food. They also laugh on other nations, especially French.

On the other hand, those movies, with some rare exceptions, are much more likely to be categorized as entertainment, rather then cultural artifacts. One can not ignore the fact that Hollywood is number one provider of movies in the world, exactly because of the fact that it is a multi billion dollar entertainment machine that holds profitability above all and especially above quality and cultural complexity. Using money and status, it attracts the best actors and directors it can get, just like the NBA and the NHL attract the best players from around the world. What can you say, for those guys it is as good as it gets.

Occasionally, these people, being after all creative and talented, produce true cultural masterpieces, great movies like Apocalypse Now, Shawshank Redemption or Godfather. Occasionally they produce really good, kind and touching movies like Smoke, K - Pax or Pump Up the Volume. Sometmes they produce cult movies like Pulp Fiction, Big Lebowski or Blade Runner.

But mostly they produce crap. Pure entertainment, mindless and fluent. You go in, you pay the money, you enjoy it (or not) and you are gone. Hardly a cultural experience. So the question of whether or not Hollywood production has anything to do with culture is not idle nor is it easlily decidable. Most movies represent American culture no more then any other globally available product from McDonald's hamburger or Nike shoes.

Besides, it will be over soon becauase they are running out of superheroes to recycle :)

Friday, July 4, 2008

Present and Represent

I guess nobody sees as many bad Power Point presentations as the high tech workers, especially in large corporations. There is hardly a position in which you would not be expected at some point to give a presentation of some kind, from Marketing up to the last Developer. Here are few general presentation ideas, we came up with together with Amir Kirsh. Use comments below to add your own.

Make your point

Wait, do you even have a point? Or are you just doing this because your boss asked you to prepare a report on testing status. Even then, you should make sure that every last one of your attendees is able to say in one sentence what you have been taking about when describing your speech to his collegue who missed it. It would be better if he said "John talked about lack of right equipment which affects our testing" than "Well, he was talking about bunch of stuff" or "He said our testing is bad".

I personally find great inspiration in watching TED talks, I find them fascinating. I will be going back to them quite a lot in this post, but there is one that I would give here as an exceptional example of making a good point. Once, you see it, you will never forget the point he makes, see for yourself. You may agree or disagree, but you will never ever be able to say, "I don't know what this guy was talking about".

Talk short, finish early

One thing I really like about the TED talks format is that they are short. Turns out, fifteen minutes are enough to communicate even the greatest of ideas to the point from which the audience can follow and expand it further using the almighty Internet, if it finds it worthy. Fitting into the tight frame makes you drop the inconsequential and focus, focus, focus on the very essence of your work. It also makes controlling the public attention much easier. So next time they tell you that you have only twenty minutes to speak, don't be mad, be thankful.

Even if you have time, it makes sense to prepare less material and finish early. People like that. No offense, but in most cases whatever you are saying up there, means less to those people than having a good hot cup of coffee over discussing the latest "Survivor", unless you are just handling them the Tablets, and even then they would prefer you do that quickly. You would not believe the gratitude people would feel for those extra ten minutes of their lives that you rewarded them with. Of course, running out of time is completely out of the question.

Use less slides

Once you have prepared the first draft of the presentation, you will most likely notice that some of your slides are better than others. Be it because you have found a really good picture to match your point or that you have produced a very convincing graph, you will distinguish those slides from other boring, bulleted, unreadable lists, we see way too often. One idea to handle it is to just drop, completely drop all but the best slides. Could this work?

Once again, in TED it works. If you watch enough presentations, and I strongly recommend that you do, you will see that some speakers only use four or five good slides through the entire talk. You see, once you manage to stop using the presentation as the kind of cheat sheet you use to memorize how your speech going, you will find out that the slides actually divert the attention of the audience from one important part of the presentation. You. The speaker. Unless of course, those slides really help you to make your point.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Yes, but a good picture used at the right time is priceless. Using high quality pictures to illustrate your ideas, can really boost your presentation. It is best of you took the picture yourself. Here is an example.

Amir took this picture himself and used it in a slide that urges developers to take ownership and proudly put their name on their code. "Look at this building" he said, "this guy must have been really proud of it. It may not be the prettiest building in the world, but at least you know who you should complain to".

Don't use low quality pics from the Internet, especially avoid beaten up photos and cliches. When using documentary photography, try to watch the context to avoid unwanted connotations.

I guess this is long enough for one post. Enjoy your presentations.