I've always been a little superstitious when it comes to computers. After all, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I remember the behaviour from when I was about 7 years old, when I first started playing games on my ZX Spectrum, and 25 minutes into the load from tape I'd be muttering "please work, please work, please work" under my breath (I was used to loads failing regularly).
These days, I'm sure I do plenty of unusual things while using my computer, but I don't tend to notice them until somebody points them out to me. The thing is, like all good superstitious behaviour, the reason gets forgotten and only the ritual remains.
Occasionally I'll remember the reason why I do things in a certain way. Even more rarely, I'll see someone else doing something that I've seen myself do, and feel vindicated!
Here are some of my superstitious actions, and reasons why (where I remember them).
Left-Right click to bring up a context menu.
The normal way to open a context menu under windows is to right-click. I click left then right (like I'm drumming my fingers). Reason: Some programs interpret the first click (right or left) as a "focus" click, so a single right click doesn't always pop up a context menu.
Click-Enter instead of double click.
The normal way to navigate into folders in windows explorer with the mouse, is to double-click the folders. I use the mouse to select the folder, then press enter on the keyboard to open the folder. Reason: Sometimes double-clicks are missed by windows (if I have a poor mouse, or my finger movements are too slow). Also, after double-clicking for the hundredth time in the day, I start to feel the RSI kicking in... I've seen someone else exhibiting the exact same behaviour :)
Hyperlink click follow-up click.
After I left-click a hyperlink in a web page, I click in some white space on the page. I don't know why I do this. It may relate back to when I had a dial-up connection and I wanted to know if the page was responding. It may just be that I don't like the link being outlined. I really don't know about this one.
Mark as read, before delete.
In Microsoft Outlook I read email in the preview pane. If I don't navigate away from an email in my inbox, it stays marked as unread. If I don't need to action an email I don't just delete - I press "Mark as Read" then I press delete. Otherwise my "deleted items" folder draws attention to itself by being written in bold with a number beside it, telling me how many "new" emails I have in it.
I'll post more if I think of any.
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
Monday, 25 August 2008
Music to my ear
I first noticed it about 10 years ago. It only happens when I'm really tired, but can't sleep, and in the almost complete stillness of night. And it only happens very rarely, but when it does, it's amazing.
I was on a caravan holiday with my parents, and late one night, while I was trying to sleep, amongst all the other night time noises, I could hear a dripping sound coming from the refrigerator. The dripping was very regular, and sounded almost like it was a percussion instrument, setting the beat, setting the rhythm. And then something very strange happened. I started to hear music. Not just a simple tune, or melody, but I could hear the whole damn orchestra. I could hear the percussion. I could hear brass. I could hear strings, first playing legato, then pizzicato. I could hear woodwind. There were changing dynamics. There were melodies and counter melodies. I could hear the whole thing.
I knew it wasn't on a radio or cd player somewhere because the music was in perfect time with the dripping refrigerator. And I noticed something else about it - that I could decide where the music went. I realised that even though I was awake, it was almost as though I was dreaming, but whatever the explanation, the music was going on in my head. While it was happening, I remember feeling as though the music was just inside my ear.
At the time, I was a budding musician - and I was trying to come up with my own pieces. And when I heard this music, I felt that if I could only transfer it to paper, it would be a masterpiece. But I was also aware of the similarity between this music, and any regular dream, and knew that it would all be forgotten soon afterwards. Sure enough, after I woke up, I couldn't remember the themes, the tunes, any of what sounded so amazing at the time.
Over the years since, I've heard similar music, just inside my ear. It normally occurs when I'm really tired, but maybe after I'd been drinking alcohol, or caffeine, and I can't get my body to switch off and go to sleep.
I'd thought about looking it up on the Internet, but had no idea how to go about searching for it. "Music in my ears" seemed a daft thing to search for, so I let it be.
Just last year, I was in a bookshop, and saw a book on display called "Musicophilia - Music and the Brain" and as I was flicking through, I came across a letter to the author from a lady who had been hearing music in her ears when there was no external source of music. You can imagine my excitement when I realised I may have found something that could help me research what I was experiencing. The phrase "Musical Hallucination" was mentioned, and that was all I needed to type into Google.
The explanation that seems right to me is that tinnitus (ringing in your ears) is being picked up, not conciously, but subconciously by your inner ear, and your brain decides to interpret the ringing as music.
I've seen stories of people hearing choirs, christmas carols, and orchestras. There is advice on how to control the sounds and make them fade away - but to be honest, I actually enjoy the music. I only wish I could transcribe it as fast as I hear it!
I last heard the music a few weeks ago. I once got up in the middle of the night to sit at the piano and tried to repeat what I'd heard. I'm going to try to keep that up, and one day, who knows, I might be able to share my masterpiece with everyone else!
I was on a caravan holiday with my parents, and late one night, while I was trying to sleep, amongst all the other night time noises, I could hear a dripping sound coming from the refrigerator. The dripping was very regular, and sounded almost like it was a percussion instrument, setting the beat, setting the rhythm. And then something very strange happened. I started to hear music. Not just a simple tune, or melody, but I could hear the whole damn orchestra. I could hear the percussion. I could hear brass. I could hear strings, first playing legato, then pizzicato. I could hear woodwind. There were changing dynamics. There were melodies and counter melodies. I could hear the whole thing.
I knew it wasn't on a radio or cd player somewhere because the music was in perfect time with the dripping refrigerator. And I noticed something else about it - that I could decide where the music went. I realised that even though I was awake, it was almost as though I was dreaming, but whatever the explanation, the music was going on in my head. While it was happening, I remember feeling as though the music was just inside my ear.
At the time, I was a budding musician - and I was trying to come up with my own pieces. And when I heard this music, I felt that if I could only transfer it to paper, it would be a masterpiece. But I was also aware of the similarity between this music, and any regular dream, and knew that it would all be forgotten soon afterwards. Sure enough, after I woke up, I couldn't remember the themes, the tunes, any of what sounded so amazing at the time.
Over the years since, I've heard similar music, just inside my ear. It normally occurs when I'm really tired, but maybe after I'd been drinking alcohol, or caffeine, and I can't get my body to switch off and go to sleep.
I'd thought about looking it up on the Internet, but had no idea how to go about searching for it. "Music in my ears" seemed a daft thing to search for, so I let it be.
Just last year, I was in a bookshop, and saw a book on display called "Musicophilia - Music and the Brain" and as I was flicking through, I came across a letter to the author from a lady who had been hearing music in her ears when there was no external source of music. You can imagine my excitement when I realised I may have found something that could help me research what I was experiencing. The phrase "Musical Hallucination" was mentioned, and that was all I needed to type into Google.
The explanation that seems right to me is that tinnitus (ringing in your ears) is being picked up, not conciously, but subconciously by your inner ear, and your brain decides to interpret the ringing as music.
I've seen stories of people hearing choirs, christmas carols, and orchestras. There is advice on how to control the sounds and make them fade away - but to be honest, I actually enjoy the music. I only wish I could transcribe it as fast as I hear it!
I last heard the music a few weeks ago. I once got up in the middle of the night to sit at the piano and tried to repeat what I'd heard. I'm going to try to keep that up, and one day, who knows, I might be able to share my masterpiece with everyone else!
Sunday, 24 August 2008
Depth First Coding and Spirograph
Various analogies come to mind when I'm coding. Recently, the terms "Depth First Coding" and "Spirograph" have come to mind.
I'll explain.
When writing software, there's so much that needs to be done. But of all the items on the todo list, we coders prefer to work on new features than the other things like fixing bugs, dealing with security issues, general code "housekeeping" and basically doing what we know we ought to, but never quite finding the motivation for it. I know I certainly want to get to a stage where I can see the whole process of using my software from start to finish.
I think it's good practice to get a proof of concept up and running as soon as possible. As well as making sure you're not wasting your time with a project, you can get feedback right from the start, you can adjust your plan based on what you see, and let's face it - it's more fun - it can keep you motivated through the more mundane tasks.
To me, this feels like depth first programming - get the skeleton of the app complete, from top to bottom, then go back later and fill in the breadth - the bugfixes, the tidying up, the refactoring - the meat.
A breadth first approach would be to get all of the minutiae sorted - making sure each function was written as efficiently as possible, making sure the variable and function names were as descriptive as possible, commenting anything that wasn't clear, and basically trying to make each component as near to perfect as possible.
My problem with this approach is summed up in the phrase "Premature Optimization." Here we are going for perfect first time round, but at a cost. Then, if it turns out that the routine that we just spent the last day working on is no longer needed, then that's a day that's been wasted.
The way that a program grows, almost organically, reminds me of Spirograph. After the first iteration, a very basic, bare bones implementation is produced. After several more iterations a pattern starts to appear. After hundreds of iterations, the final picture is revealed. The pen traces a path around the spirograph, never lingering in one area for long.
This is how I see code growing organically. On top of the initial foundation, the coder grows the program piece by piece, often moving from one area to another. By jumping around the project, the coder doesn't get bored with the area they are working on.
But it's also worth noting that no matter how many times you go around a spirograph, and no matter how many different places you choose to start from, the pen doesn't touch every part of the paper - there are always some holes.
I wonder how the holes fit into my analogy...
I'll explain.
When writing software, there's so much that needs to be done. But of all the items on the todo list, we coders prefer to work on new features than the other things like fixing bugs, dealing with security issues, general code "housekeeping" and basically doing what we know we ought to, but never quite finding the motivation for it. I know I certainly want to get to a stage where I can see the whole process of using my software from start to finish.
I think it's good practice to get a proof of concept up and running as soon as possible. As well as making sure you're not wasting your time with a project, you can get feedback right from the start, you can adjust your plan based on what you see, and let's face it - it's more fun - it can keep you motivated through the more mundane tasks.
To me, this feels like depth first programming - get the skeleton of the app complete, from top to bottom, then go back later and fill in the breadth - the bugfixes, the tidying up, the refactoring - the meat.
A breadth first approach would be to get all of the minutiae sorted - making sure each function was written as efficiently as possible, making sure the variable and function names were as descriptive as possible, commenting anything that wasn't clear, and basically trying to make each component as near to perfect as possible.
My problem with this approach is summed up in the phrase "Premature Optimization." Here we are going for perfect first time round, but at a cost. Then, if it turns out that the routine that we just spent the last day working on is no longer needed, then that's a day that's been wasted.
The way that a program grows, almost organically, reminds me of Spirograph. After the first iteration, a very basic, bare bones implementation is produced. After several more iterations a pattern starts to appear. After hundreds of iterations, the final picture is revealed. The pen traces a path around the spirograph, never lingering in one area for long.
This is how I see code growing organically. On top of the initial foundation, the coder grows the program piece by piece, often moving from one area to another. By jumping around the project, the coder doesn't get bored with the area they are working on.
But it's also worth noting that no matter how many times you go around a spirograph, and no matter how many different places you choose to start from, the pen doesn't touch every part of the paper - there are always some holes.
I wonder how the holes fit into my analogy...
Saturday, 23 August 2008
CloudLauncher
Every time I press Windows-D (show desktop), I think "FAIL".
I've laid out my shortcuts on my desktop. The shortcuts are there because they are the quickest way still available of getting to what I'm after. I say "still available" because the absolute quickest way, in my experience, is a WinKey shortcut, but there are only so many apps you can assign to obvious keys before you start having collisions.
Now for better or for worse, the layout of the stack of windows on my desktop, usually ties closely with the stack of tasks I have in my head. If I have 10 windows stacked on top of one another, chances are the topmost is what I was most recently using, the next is the next most recent, the one after that is the next most recent, and so on.
Ok, admittedly, 10 windows is a bit excessive, and I'll probably only remember two or three things that I was doing. But at work I use three monitors, so with plenty of screen real estate, spatial location of windows can also help me with remembering what I was working on and where it is in my mental stack.
Unfortunately, undoing "Show Desktop" doesn't work. The window stack is all messed up, and so now I have to spend time working out where I was. It may have only been for a few seconds, but if I was concentrating on something it could take a while to pick up all my trains of thought. If I'm frequently running the various shortcuts from my desktop, that's a lot of shoving my brain in and out of context. This is why I think of a "Show Desktop" as a FAIL.
I want to run my target app as quickly and seamlessly as possible. From this thought comes the seed of my idea for CloudLauncher.
As I've already mentioned, the most efficient way of doing something depends on your context. If I'm sat back in my chair, with a cup of coffee in one hand and the mouse in the other, there's no way I'm going to start typing a command to run an app. Similarly, if I'm in touch typing mode with both hands on the keyboard, it's going to slow me down to reach out for the mouse to click on a shortcut icon. Depending on context, Winkey, Quick Launch, or even the Start Menu may turn out to be the quickest way to achieve my goal. And when I happen to be in keyboard and mouse mode, Windows-D to show desktop, followed by a double click on an icon on my desktop is usually the quickest.
However, since showing the desktop (or hiding everything, as I like to think of it) has fallen out of favour with me, I'd like to write an app that can fill the gap - so a keyboard shortcut to launch my launcher app, then a click (or double click) to launch my target app.
I experimented with Skil, which almost does what I want, but it looks like you're constrained to an auto-arranged grid, whereas with the desktop you can place your shortcuts wherever you want.
Various ideas went through my head, such as a radial menu, where you group items at one level, then when you move through the group name it expands into another level of groups and shortcuts.
To save on desktop real-estate, the items could move relative to the mouse, similar to apple's dock.
Some shortcuts are useful when you first set them up, but become less useful over time. Laziness usually keeps me from cleaning up unused shortcuts. So I was thinking that shortcuts could gradually migrate towards the edge of the screen until they drifted off completely. (This is where the name Cloud Launcher came from).
But then I decided all of these can wait until version 2! You can fit a heck of a lot of shortcuts on one screen. Let's think about saving screen space when it actually needs saving!
I'll post more on how I'm getting on.
I've laid out my shortcuts on my desktop. The shortcuts are there because they are the quickest way still available of getting to what I'm after. I say "still available" because the absolute quickest way, in my experience, is a WinKey shortcut, but there are only so many apps you can assign to obvious keys before you start having collisions.
Now for better or for worse, the layout of the stack of windows on my desktop, usually ties closely with the stack of tasks I have in my head. If I have 10 windows stacked on top of one another, chances are the topmost is what I was most recently using, the next is the next most recent, the one after that is the next most recent, and so on.
Ok, admittedly, 10 windows is a bit excessive, and I'll probably only remember two or three things that I was doing. But at work I use three monitors, so with plenty of screen real estate, spatial location of windows can also help me with remembering what I was working on and where it is in my mental stack.
Unfortunately, undoing "Show Desktop" doesn't work. The window stack is all messed up, and so now I have to spend time working out where I was. It may have only been for a few seconds, but if I was concentrating on something it could take a while to pick up all my trains of thought. If I'm frequently running the various shortcuts from my desktop, that's a lot of shoving my brain in and out of context. This is why I think of a "Show Desktop" as a FAIL.
I want to run my target app as quickly and seamlessly as possible. From this thought comes the seed of my idea for CloudLauncher.
As I've already mentioned, the most efficient way of doing something depends on your context. If I'm sat back in my chair, with a cup of coffee in one hand and the mouse in the other, there's no way I'm going to start typing a command to run an app. Similarly, if I'm in touch typing mode with both hands on the keyboard, it's going to slow me down to reach out for the mouse to click on a shortcut icon. Depending on context, Winkey, Quick Launch, or even the Start Menu may turn out to be the quickest way to achieve my goal. And when I happen to be in keyboard and mouse mode, Windows-D to show desktop, followed by a double click on an icon on my desktop is usually the quickest.
However, since showing the desktop (or hiding everything, as I like to think of it) has fallen out of favour with me, I'd like to write an app that can fill the gap - so a keyboard shortcut to launch my launcher app, then a click (or double click) to launch my target app.
I experimented with Skil, which almost does what I want, but it looks like you're constrained to an auto-arranged grid, whereas with the desktop you can place your shortcuts wherever you want.
Various ideas went through my head, such as a radial menu, where you group items at one level, then when you move through the group name it expands into another level of groups and shortcuts.
To save on desktop real-estate, the items could move relative to the mouse, similar to apple's dock.
Some shortcuts are useful when you first set them up, but become less useful over time. Laziness usually keeps me from cleaning up unused shortcuts. So I was thinking that shortcuts could gradually migrate towards the edge of the screen until they drifted off completely. (This is where the name Cloud Launcher came from).
But then I decided all of these can wait until version 2! You can fit a heck of a lot of shortcuts on one screen. Let's think about saving screen space when it actually needs saving!
I'll post more on how I'm getting on.
Friday, 22 August 2008
Recycling
If I save up all my cardboard and all my cans and all my jars, in order to recycle them, then I drive to the recycling depot in order to recycle them, how much recycling do I have to do in order to "break even" where the benefit of recycling outweighs the "damage" caused by me driving there? (By damage I mean using fuel in my car).
Thursday, 21 August 2008
Wizards
The wizards I see on a day to day basis don't go to Hogwarts. They live on my computer, and do things like installing applications.
Once upon a time, I used to carefully check every option on each wizard - the option wouldn't be there if it wasn't important, right?
So I'd agonize over which help files to include with spybot, and worry about whether I'd be missing out if I didn't include additional skins for winamp.
But after a while, the wizards start to get in the way. So what if German help files are installed on my computer and I don't speak German? Winamp in it's entirety is only a few megs - what am I saving if I carefully untick the "additional skins" checkbox?
So how about instead of presenting me with lots of options to tweak and adjust to my liking, why not just install with the defaults, and hide the optional extras out of the way for power users to dig out for themselves?
These days, I tend to click-click-click the next button until it does what I want it to do.
It doesn't work for the Zip extraction wizard in Windows XP though. When I tell a file to extract, first it tells me it's an extraction wizard (well duh!), then it asks me where I want to extract to (defaulting to the folder that contains the zip file - that's good enough for me), then it starts extracting. But the next button is still enabled. Which means I can start extracting into the same location again and again. But that upsets the wizard because he doesn't want to overwrite the files he's already written.
So I have to be careful when I play with the extraction wizard.
I'm sure there's a moral to the tale in there somewhere...
Once upon a time, I used to carefully check every option on each wizard - the option wouldn't be there if it wasn't important, right?
So I'd agonize over which help files to include with spybot, and worry about whether I'd be missing out if I didn't include additional skins for winamp.
But after a while, the wizards start to get in the way. So what if German help files are installed on my computer and I don't speak German? Winamp in it's entirety is only a few megs - what am I saving if I carefully untick the "additional skins" checkbox?
So how about instead of presenting me with lots of options to tweak and adjust to my liking, why not just install with the defaults, and hide the optional extras out of the way for power users to dig out for themselves?
These days, I tend to click-click-click the next button until it does what I want it to do.
It doesn't work for the Zip extraction wizard in Windows XP though. When I tell a file to extract, first it tells me it's an extraction wizard (well duh!), then it asks me where I want to extract to (defaulting to the folder that contains the zip file - that's good enough for me), then it starts extracting. But the next button is still enabled. Which means I can start extracting into the same location again and again. But that upsets the wizard because he doesn't want to overwrite the files he's already written.
So I have to be careful when I play with the extraction wizard.
I'm sure there's a moral to the tale in there somewhere...
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
Cutting Edge
When working on a team project, how often should you update from source control?
Broken builds can take hours or even days to fix. On several occasions I have updated source code (sometimes even by accident) only to find that the build was broken. I would then spend the rest of the day trying (and failing) to fix the bug, go home frustrated, come in the next day, update my source code, and the bug had been fixed. On those occasions I felt like I could have just gone home when I found the build was broken and not come back until it was fixed, and that my time would have been better spent.
Of course, sometimes I'm the one who fixes the broken build - somebody has to do it. Which, if I'm honest, means I can't really justify the go-home-when-it-breaks approach.
Back to the question of "how often should I update?"
On the one hand, you could adopt the attitude of "I'm only interested on sub-component X. Therefore I'm not going to update the entire codebase unless I really have to." It's a sensible approach. It means you don't risk killing your productivity every time you update.
The trouble I've had with that approach is, whenever I found a bug in a section of the code, and asked the owner of that code about it, the first thing they would ask is "have you updated?".
On the other hand, you could get the latest code whenever it becomes available. The trouble with staying cutting edge is that not only do you get cutting-edge bugfixes - you also get cutting-edge bugs!
I guess like a lot of development issues, there is no right or wrong answer...
Broken builds can take hours or even days to fix. On several occasions I have updated source code (sometimes even by accident) only to find that the build was broken. I would then spend the rest of the day trying (and failing) to fix the bug, go home frustrated, come in the next day, update my source code, and the bug had been fixed. On those occasions I felt like I could have just gone home when I found the build was broken and not come back until it was fixed, and that my time would have been better spent.
Of course, sometimes I'm the one who fixes the broken build - somebody has to do it. Which, if I'm honest, means I can't really justify the go-home-when-it-breaks approach.
Back to the question of "how often should I update?"
On the one hand, you could adopt the attitude of "I'm only interested on sub-component X. Therefore I'm not going to update the entire codebase unless I really have to." It's a sensible approach. It means you don't risk killing your productivity every time you update.
The trouble I've had with that approach is, whenever I found a bug in a section of the code, and asked the owner of that code about it, the first thing they would ask is "have you updated?".
On the other hand, you could get the latest code whenever it becomes available. The trouble with staying cutting edge is that not only do you get cutting-edge bugfixes - you also get cutting-edge bugs!
I guess like a lot of development issues, there is no right or wrong answer...
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