ScheyenIAm

How-to: Use an external display with an iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch

2012-01-26T12:44:00.000-05:00

Quick Bite: Apple provides a number of ways to export iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch video, audio and graphics to external displays like a television or projector. Full user interface mirroring is only possible using iPad 2 and iPhone 4S devices. Mobile warriors generally will invest in an Apple TV 2 or an inexpensive remote control app. Two major caveats: Full mirroring presents a security challenge as your password will be presented on the external display. And Apple TV 2 may not support the type of wifi security you use in a typical campus or office setting.

Being the head of IT for a major business school, I often get asked by professors and instructors how they can make use of their iPad to display classroom content on a projector or screen. Unless you're trapped behind a lectern or podium you need a lightweight, portable tool for displaying presentation materials. Tablet computers like Apple's iPad are ideally suited for the mobile presenters providing there is a way to export the iPad display to a monitor or projector. In this article I will cover the different ways to display content from your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch (collectively known as iOS devices).

Mirroring vs Video Output

Mirrored Springboard

First, it is important to understand the differences between "mirroring" and "video-enabled apps". Mirroring refers to the ability to display the entire iOS interface on an external display. This includes not only the output of apps like Keynote or Videos but also Email, iCal, websites and even the app springboard itself (as illustrated here on the right). Mirroring is supported only with the iPad 2 and iPhone 4S. These devices output up to 1080p resolution and 720p for video. Please note that when mirroring ALL of the user interface is displayed to the screen including the virtual keyboard and the keys you are pressing even if those keys are typing out your password. If you are going to enter a password then turn off mirroring first by using one of the methods described below.

All other iOS devices, including the original iPad, iPod Touch (2nd gen and up), and iPhone 3GS and up support video output only for video-enabled apps. Video-enabled apps are apps that have been specifically designed to output to an external display. The built-in Videos and YouTube apps, for example, can output video and audio. The iOS version of Keynote supports exporting its presentation display (it exports nothing while editing). These older iOS devices will output up to 720p (which is the resolution used in the new building classrooms). Even older devices like the original iPhone and earlier iPods can output video and audio only using a Composite Video Adaptor.

Video Adaptors

Apple and 3rd party vendors produce an array of adaptors that can be used to output iOS device displays. These adaptors all feature a standard Apple 30-pin doc connector on one end and a standard video connector on the other allowing you to connect video cables to your iOS device.

Digital Display Adaptor

Digital Display (HDMI) Adaptor

If you can guarantee that the displays or projectors you will be using support HDMI then this is definitely the adaptor to purchase. It supports full mirroring for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S devices and supports output for video-enabled apps on older devices. The one connector will carry both video and audio from the iOS device to the display.

VGA Adaptor

VGA Adaptor

If you can't guarantee that you'll always have an HDMI capable display then I recommend getting a VGA adaptor instead. VGA has been around far longer than HDMI and is almost always supported. You can still mirror your iPad 2 and iPhone 4S user interfaces and output the display for video-enabled apps on other devices. You'll need to use a stereo audio cable if audio is required.

Component/Composite Adaptor

You can also purchase adaptors for more traditional television displays including composite and analog HD component video. Almost all Apple devices, including legacy devices like the iPod Nano, are supported but you can only export audio, video and picture slideshows using this adaptor.

Regardless of the adaptor used, if you are expecting to wander freely around the classroom or boardroom projecting content from your iPad then none of the above solutions are for you. All of these solutions leave your device tethered to a video cable. In the next section I'll describe two options for untethered presentation of content.

Remote Control Apps

If your iOS device needs to be tethered why not control it via a remote control app on your iPhone or iPod Touch. This method can be used to control an iPad or a Mac. It's not the most elegant solution and remote control apps are usually limited to controlling only one kind of application. For instance, the Apple Remote app can be used to control iTunes for playback of audio or video (Tango Remote is similar). Apple Keynote Remote can be used to control Keynote on a Mac or iOS device. 2Screens has its own remote. And so on... A more general way to control a Mac or PC is via a VNC app running on your iOS device but that is beyond the scope of this article.

Apple TV 2

By far the most elegant solution for displaying your iOS device content is using an Apple TV 2 device. Or it would be the most attractive if not for one frustrating flaw that Apple has not yet addressed (more on that in a moment).

Along with the introduction of the $99 (CDN$120) Apple TV 2 in September 2010, Apple introduced a feature called AirPlay which enabled the Apple TV 2 to serve as an output display for an iPad 2 or an iPhone 4S without any video or audio cables. This enabled device mirroring as if a digital display adaptor is connected to your device.

To use AirPlay ensure that your Apple TV and iOS devices have the latest versions of software. You'll need iOS 4.3 or later on your iPad (1 or 2), iPhone 3GS or later, or iPod Touch 2nd gen or later. You'll also need Apple TV 4.2 or later on your Apple TV. If you routinely install updates when notified by Apple then you will be fine.

Once you are set up and on the same wifi network, your iOS devices will automatically detect the presence of an available Apple TV. Video-enabled apps like Videos and YouTube will display an AirPlay icon (see right) when an Apple TV device is detected. Touch the icon and select the Apple TV device from the list to export the iOS display to the Apple TV. The AirPlay icon will then turn blue. Touch the AirPlay icon again to disable the external display (say, if you want to enter a password). This method works for any iOS device that supports video-enabled apps or full mirroring.

The other AirPlay method, available only for iPad 2 and iPhone 4S devices, enables full device mirroring. To do this, double-press the home button to display the multi-tasking bar and then swipe right. You should see something similar to the illustration below. The AirPlay icon will be displayed whenever an Apple TV 2 device is detected. Touch the AirPlay icon to enable full mirroring of the iPad 2 or iPhone 4S display. This will mirror all aspects of the display to the Apple TV device regardless of whether or not the app is video-enabled.

Enabling Mirroring

Note that the iOS device and the Apple TV 2 need to be on the same wifi network for this to work. This is where it all breaks down for use in many corporate or campus settings. At this time Apple TV 2 does not support WPA2 Enterprise encryption. Most well run corporate and campus wireless networks use this more robust type of wireless encryption. If you run a small, single subnet network (like a home network) then you might be ok. Regardless, lack of WPA2 Enterprise support on Apple TV is a huge oversight by Apple. Especially considering that Apple TV 2 runs iOS and all other iOS devices support this encryption method.

I hate to end on a bummer note but that's it. I've contacted Apple about this but they are characteristically tight lipped about when or even if this will be addressed. Given Apple's recent embrace of education technology I'm hoping that they fill this easy-to-fix hole.

Agile Reading List

2012-01-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

Tonight I will be giving a whole to our local PMI chapter about what it takes to succeed in Agile. This gave me an opportunity to gather and hone some of my thoughts regarding what I've been referring to as "Whole Agile". Below is a list of reading materials that I think together reflect all of the aspects (and not just practices) of what it takes to succeed at Agile. This is by no means an exhaustive list of books on Agile Methodology that I recommend but rather it is mean to cover all aspects of Whole Agile.

Augustine, Sanjiv and Cuellar, Roland. "The Lean-Agile PMO", Cutter Consortium Executive Report, Vol. 7, No. 10, 2006.
Cockburn, Alistair. Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2006.
Cohn, Mike. Agile Estimating and Planning, Prentice Hall, 2005.
Highsmith, Jim. Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2009.
Martin, Angela, Noble, James and Biddle, Robert. "Programmers are from Mars, Customers are from Venus: A practical guide for customers on XP Projects", 2006.
Poppendieck, Mary and Poppendieck, Tom. Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, Addison-Wesley Professional, 2003
Rooney, Dave. "An Organizational Structure for Agile Projects", Cutter Consortium Executive Report, Vol. 8, No. 5, 2007.

How to revive Mac App Store when its stuck forever waiting...

2011-08-09T13:55:00.000-04:00

I recently went to the App Store application on my Mac to download the Lion version of Apple's Xcode development tools. I was prompted for my Apple ID and password (which I provided) and then I left the App Store app on its own to complete the download and install. After about 30 minutes I went to check in on its progress and saw that it had downloaded exactly 0 bytes. The status on the Purchased page was Waiting...

Waiting for Godot

...and waiting and waiting. I quit and restarted App Store and still my downloads were stuck waiting. I dug around a little and it turns out this is not an uncommon problem but the remedies suggested were all over the place. Everything from installing updates and deleting caches (both good ideas) to deleting your Library folder (not a good idea). I like to attack problems like this by starting with the easiest and least invasive measures.

I should state right off the bat that these solutions are meant to incur as little disruption as possible but do require the use of some programs that might not be in your usual repertoire: Activity Monitor and Terminal. If you are at all uncomfortable using these tools you can always use that old Windows chestnut... reboot. Yes, rebooting your Mac should have the same affect as solution 1 at least. But if you don't want the hassle of rebooting then read on.

Solution 1: Kill the Zombie

The App Store uses a process called "storeagent" that runs continuously in the background. It seems that sometimes this process can go a little wonky and fail to respond to requests to download app purchases. What we want to do is kill this zombie process (it will start up again automatically).

Start Activity Monitor

First, quit the App Store application (e.g. by selecting "App Store->Quit App Store" or pressing Cmd-Q or click the red dot in the top left corner of the window). Start up Activity Monitor (you'll find it on Lion's launchpad in the Utilities collection or using Finder in Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor. Activity monitor is used to display the processes running on your Mac. You could go hunt around for the process called "storeagent" but an easier method is to enter "storeagent" in the Activity Monitor filter box as illustrated below (some of the numbers will be different). Highlight the "storeagent" process by clicking on it. The "Quit Process" stop sign should become available. Go ahead and click on Quit Process to kill "storeagent". You'll be asked if you really want to quit the process. Confirm by clicking "Quit". Normally this should do the trick and the process will disappear immediately and be replaced a little while later by a new process (with a different number in the PID column). However, if the process is a deep zombie, you will need to click "Force Quit" in the confirmation dialog. Do this only as a last resort as it is possible to damage system files by using Force Quit too often.

Activity Monitor Filtered for "storeagent". Note the "Quit Process" stop sign is now clickable.

Now go ahead and restart the App Store application. Click on Purchased, find your purchase and select Resume. After you enter your Apple ID and password your purchase should start downloading. However, if the App Store is still stuck in Waiting move on to Solution 2.

Solution 2 - Purge the Caches

Solution 1 has always worked for me but I've heard of cases where more intervention is required. If this fits your situation then go ahead and quit the App Store application again. Now we do some typing into Terminal. You can find Terminal in the same Utilities folder that you found Activity Monitor. When you start it, it should look something like below.

At the Terminal prompt

What we're going to do is use some commands to delete App Store caches. You do not need to worry about deleting these files since, by definition, they are a copy of what is already stored on the Apple servers and will automatically be restored. Type of the following commands exactly as you see below (in fact, go ahead and copy and paste them into Terminal).

rm -r ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.appstore
rm -r ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.storeagent
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.appstore.plist
rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.storeagent.plist
rm ~/Library/Cookies/com.apple.appstore.plist

Now go and do the steps in Solution 1 again. Once you're done that, start up App Store, go to Purchases, and select Resume on your download. Enter your Apple ID and password and you're off to the races.

Ruby Koan for Dice Scoring (Greed) - Solution #2

2011-08-07T08:19:00.000-04:00

It's interesting what some sleep and exercise can do. The next day while approaching the "big hill" part of my run I came up with a new solution to the Greed Ruby Koan. This solution is shorter and is more Rubyesque (I think). It also includes a reasonable amount of error checking (nil parameter and valid dice values). Again, I'd love to hear from Ruby enthusiasts to comment on style and other approaches.

def score(dice)

  return 0 if dice == nil

  score  = 0
  counts = [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
  dice.each { |roll| counts[roll-1] += 1 if (1..6) === roll } # Count valid rolls

  (1..6).each { |i| score += (i == 1) ? 1000 : i * 100 if counts[i-1] >= 3 } # Score triples

  # Score the rest
  score += counts[0] % 3 * 100
  score += counts[4] % 3 * 50

  return score
end

Ruby Koan for Dice Scoring (Greed) - Solution #1

2011-08-05T21:02:00.000-04:00

Recently I've started teaching myself Ruby and as part of my quest I discovered the amazing Ruby Koan site by EdgeCase. The concept of a koan dates back to the foundations of Zen Buddhism. You might recognize the question "what is the sound of one hand clapping". This is actually part of a Zen koan. A koan is a question or story that serves as a fundamental teaching tool. A traditional Zen koan cannot be understood via rational thought but rather through intuition leading to an "Aha!" moment.

Ruby Koans, as developed by EdgeCase, consist of 274 test cases and incomplete Ruby code. Your task is to implement the code in order to make all the tests pass in classic TDD style. For those unfamiliar with the term, TDD means Test Driven Development. TDD follows the pattern of red, green, refactor. When implementing a new section of code you start with its tests which will all fail (be 'red') initially. Then you implement the code turning all of the tests green. Finally, and over time, you go forth with confidence and refactor the code to higher and higher levels of quality (keeping it green).

Many of the Ruby Koan tests are fairly simple to make pass. Some of the more esoteric Ruby features were more difficult to master (I thought Array.inject and blocks/yield would drive me to murder). However, one of the most interesting koan related to scoring dice throws in a fictional game called Greed. This koan is quite different than the others and is more like a Kata (a martial arts term referring to a repetitive exercise meant to hone skill -- I'll save Kata for another post). Briefly, the koan asks you to implement a class that conforms to the following requirements:

# A greed roll is scored as follows [for a roll of up to 5 dice]:
#
# * A set of three ones is 1000 points
#
# * A set of three numbers (other than ones) is worth 100 times the
#   number. (e.g. three fives is 500 points).
#
# * A one (that is not part of a set of three) is worth 100 points.
#
# * A five (that is not part of a set of three) is worth 50 points.
#
# * Everything else is worth 0 points.
#
# Examples:
#
# score([1,1,1,5,1]) => 1150 points
# score([2,3,4,6,2]) => 0 points
# score([3,4,5,3,3]) => 350 points
# score([1,5,1,2,4]) => 250 points

This particular koan consists of 13 (initially failing) tests. Your implementation of the scoring method must make them all pass. Ruby, by its nature, provides a multitude of ways (more than any other language I think) to solve this problem. What follows is my first attempt. It should be noted that error checking was excluded from the requirements nor did any of the tests include input error tests (like dice rolls outside 1..6, strings, etc.).

As a student of Ruby I am keen for feedback (particularly from the Ruby masters) as this solution seems a little... wordy.

def score(dice)
  score = 0
  sorted_dice = dice.sort # Sort the rolls

  while sorted_dice.length > 0
    val = sorted_dice.shift
    if sorted_dice.length >= 2 && val == sorted_dice[0] && val == sorted_dice[1]  # a triple!
      score += val == 1 ? 1000 : val * 100
      sorted_dice.shift(2)
    else
      score += 100 if val == 1
      score += 50  if val == 5
    end
  end

  return score
end

Agile Software Development - Why?

2011-07-28T14:03:00.000-04:00

I recently guest-published an article on the blog hosted by Big Blue Bubble, the award developer of handheld video games. If you're interested in learning about why Agile software development is valuable and what benefits you might derive from it, head over to Big Blue Bubble's Out of the Blue.

Mac OS/X Lion, "Reverse" Scrolling, and Chrome

2011-07-21T16:15:00.000-04:00

Up until yesterday's release of Mac OS/X Lion, the user interface metaphor for scrolling was that you manipulated the scrollbar on the side or bottom of your content (say a webpage). So in order to scroll content upwards you swiped, wheeled, or otherwise moved down. To scroll your content downwards you moved up. This is a very computer-sciency method of scrolling in that the container had a dohicky (the scrollbar) that you touched to scroll.

Tablets and smartphones have flipped the metaphor on its head. With a modern touch interface you manipulate the content directly. If you want the content to scroll up off the top of your tablet you swipe it up. To scroll the content down off the bottom of your tablet you swipe down. All very natural.

One of the major themes of Apple's Lion release is the harmonizing of the touch and desktop interfaces including a change to how desktop scrolling works. This change is immediately apparent when you load content in Safari. First, there are no scrollbars. Second, you swipe, wheel or otherwise move up in order to move your content up. Apple calls this "natural scrolling". This is initially disconcerting for most users since they've spent most of their computer lives doing the opposite. You can configure Lion to do it "the old way" but I really encourage you to give it a chance. In about 10 minutes (or nearly instantly if you're using a trackpad) your brain accepts the change and things settle down to normal. Natural scrolling really feels natural.

In order for applications to behave correctly in Lion they do need to be updated. This will take some time depending on the application's complexity and the ability of its owner to turn around change. Google, for example, is actively modifying Chrome in order to provide the best Lion experience. However, until they do, Chrome will act a little odd in Lion. For example, it enters full screen mode quite nicely but it isn't immediately apparent how to exit it (see "How to exit full screen mode in Mac OS/X Lion (when you're stuck)" for more on this topic).

Another inconsistency is that the scrollbars are persistent rather than Lion transient. Rather than waiting for Google to release a new version of Chrome for Lion you can get rid of those pesky, pixel hogging scrollbars now by using one of the scrollbar-remover extensions available on the Chrome web store. I'm currently testing Scrollbar Hide by Saúl Pilatowsky. By default it only hides the vertical scrollbar but you can configure it to hide both. You can also configure it such that the scrollbars are either permanently disabled or appear "when needed" (basically when the mouse pointer roams close to the right or bottom edges). Another option is No Scrollbar by Bestrafer which simply hides the vertical scrollbar. For both extensions you may need to restart Chrome for the scroll bars to stay gone. After that, you can take a tiny step closer to the full Lion experience.

How to exit full screen mode in Mac OSX Lion (when you're stuck)

2011-07-20T23:19:00.000-04:00

I've been playing around with Lion, Apple's new version of Mac OS/X. In general I really like the new features and will very soon be purchasing a Magic Trackpad to go with my iMac.

One feature that I can see myself using (if only to help me focus) is full screen applications. Apple added a little icon in the top right corner to all windows that allows you to make the app full screen. For applications that are full screen aware (like the new version of Mail) you just hit Escape or CMD-Shift-F and you go back to the windowed mode. However, for some reason, once you put Terminal in full screen mode it stays there for good. Even after you exit and unload the app (e.g. with CMD-q) and then restart. Neither Escape nor CMD-Shift-F seem to work to reverse the full screen process. Eventually I stumbled on the fact that when you move the mouse pointer up past the top of the screen, the menu bar appears (it may take a second). The menu bar now includes a new icon for reversing full screen mode. Hurray!

What's on your Pod (Update)

2011-07-01T13:59:00.000-04:00

Recently I completed an intense three week management course called the Ivey Executive Program (small plug for my employer) where I met many amazingly talented people. During the first week of the course my iPad was a source of interest for many that had never used one before. By the second week at least four shiny new iPad 2s were in class with more on order. I found myself making app suggestions daily and pointing people to my blog where, about a year ago, I posted What's on your Pod? Since the time of the original article I have, naturally, discovered many other apps that I use weekly and even daily. It's high time for an update.

As with the last article, I've divided the apps up into three categories: apps on my iPad, apps on my iPhone, and apps that I use on both. Let's start with the apps I use on both my iPhone and my iPad.

Both (iPhone and iPad)

Twitter (Free) - I still use this app to view my Twitter feed but Flipboard (keep reading) has become my app of choice of consuming nearly all of my social and news feeds.
Tumblr (Free) - You might think Tumblr is just another blog site like Blogger/Blogspot and you wouldn't be wrong. However, Tumblr kills as a photo blog and that's exactly what I use it for. All the blogs I follow on Tumblr are photo blogs (including my daughter's).
Instapaper (Free) - Have you ever been in the situation where you just discovered a really interesting article but you just doing have the time to read it right now? Services like Instapaper and Read It Later solve this by installing a small script in your browser that you can click to "read it later". Then use the iOS app to read the article at your leisure (even when offline).
1Password ($9.99) - I commented on 1Password in What's on your Mac. The $10 cost for the iOS app is well worth the convenience of having your usernames and passwords accessible from your devices.
Netflix (Free) - If you're a Netflix subscriber then get this app. You know what to do with it.

iPad

Flipboard (Free) - Flipboard is well known to all but new iOS users. Basically Flipboard incorporates your news feeds (like Google Reader), social media (like Facebook and Twitter feeds), and curated news content and presents it in a book-like interface. Next to Mail, Flipboard may very well be the second most frequently used app that I own. It even integrates with Instapaper for those times when you've found something interesting but don't have time to read it just now. What it really needs next is support for Tumblr!
Keynote ($9.99) - Apple's presentation app. I find making presentations is easier on the iPad than on a desktop. The forthcoming iCloud integration will iron out the one remaining wrinkle of getting content to and from your iPad.
Numbers ($9.99) - Apple's spreadsheet app thoughtfully designed for touch interfaces. This isn't just a port of a desktop app. The user interface has been redone in every detail to take into account touch interfaces.
iAnnotate PDF ($9.99) - I'm not sure this one is worth $10 but it is a good application for not only reading PDFs (many apps do that) but also for making complex annotations like highlighting, notes, underlining, tabs and bookmarks and more. I used this app during the Executive Program to read my cases.
ComicBookLover (Free) - I had previously loaded the Marvel and DC comic book readers but each is limited to just those publishers. CBR (and CBZ) are now the standard formats for distributing comics so why not just use a generic reader like ComicBookLover.
Epicurious (Free) - Recipe viewer and search tool with a beautiful user interface.
GarageBand ($4.99) - This is a fun one but I don't know if anyone is going to make any serious music with it. My youngest loves just tooling around in the app and making cool sounding song snippets.

iPhone/iPod

Skype (Free) - It's unclear what Microsoft is going to do with Skype but for now it is a great way of making free phone calls.
Samsung Remote (Free) - If you have a Samsung TV with a wifi or internet connection then you might want to try this remote.
Groupon (Free) - If you are a Groupon user then get this app and stop printing your Groupon receipts.
JotNot Scanner Pro ($1.99) - Anyone who works in an office environment has learned that the best way to take notes is to snap photos of the whiteboard, flipchart, etc. JotNot not only snaps the photo but crops out the irrelevant edges and then increases the contrast to make the photo much more readable. Well worth the $2 cost.
Hipstamatic ($1.99) - Cool retro photos using interchangeable vintage lenses, flashes, and film.

Cases

I thought I'd throw in a special mention for some iPad cases that I've taken a shining to as well. First is the DODOcase that I have for my original iPad. Thanks to Ken Drouillard for giving me this hand-me-down after he upgraded to an iPad 2. This case never fails to get commented on once people realize that there's an iPad inside what looks like a regular black hardcover notebook. The bamboo construction is light, sturdy, beautiful and pro-eco.

DODOcase (closed)

DODOcase (open)

The second case I'll mention is a wooden iPad 2 case by Miniot. This gorgeous cover uses the same magnetic mechanism used by Apple's smart covers. The instant-on feature even works with it. When I eventually move on to an iPad 2 (or 3) this will likely be the cover I get. Again, a big thanks to Ken for discovering this one.

As always, if you have apps that you think are fantastic I really want to know about them. Please comment!

25 Random Things About Me

2011-03-29T22:31:00.001-04:00

Twice in one day I've come across this popular meme. So I thought I'd give it a whirl and offer you 25 random things about me.

I am husband to Annette and father to G, N, and A. They are the driving forces in my life.
Professionally, I spend my time managing software development and technical organizations. I have a secret desire to one day return to my software developer roots.
One day I would like to write a book. Fiction or non-fiction - it doesn't matter to me.
I am a wild fan of Prince and own just about everything he's ever released plus a bunch of stuff he's never officially released. I feel vaguely embarrassed by this.
I take to heart my mother's lesson that there is always at least one other way to look at every situation. And often more than one.
I'm a Mac.
I am a born again naturalist with Roman Catholic roots.
For over 25 years now I have had recurring visions of dying in a large explosion. This doesn't frighten me but it does get rather repetitive.
I have an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Western Ontario. I also have a minor in Psychology.
The Liberal Party is for me.
My brother is developmentally handicapped and lives at home with my parents. Every time I'm with him he makes me feel like we're kids again. I love it!
I am the prototypical geek: science fiction, comic books, table top games, gadgets, computers, toys, action figures, ...
I think Cormac McCarthy is America's greatest gift to the world.
I grew up with a card playing extended family. I get a rich feeling of nostalgia now whenever I play a game of cards.
My sister flies on wings of freedom and currently seeks her fortune in PEI. I admire her so much more than she knows.
I have a distant cousin who is an accomplished opera singer in Holland. Isn't that weird?
Starbuck's Caffe Verona is the best way to start a day.
I'm very proud of my kids and their diverse interests: photography and visual arts, computers, hockey, reading, film, history, fashion, ancient weaponry, chess, ...
Charles Stross' idea of a "venture altruist" really appeals to me. If only we could pull it off for real!
I am the author and curator of the Infocom Fan Site (in continuous operation since 1995 -- thank you UWO!).
My father is the hardest working person I know. Why is it that our fathers always seem to work so much harder than we do? If my kids work less than me they're in big trouble!
Philosophy and science of the human mind fascinate me.
I'm a genius at starting projects but mostly don't follow through. This troubles me greatly.
Single malt scotch and dark chocolate make the best bed time snack.
I'm afraid that I'll never amount to anything important when I grow up.

Technical Resumes

2011-01-03T11:46:00.000-05:00

I recently wrote a short series of posts on the advice I typically give when writing resumes for technical and technology leadership positions. This post serves simply as a Table of Contents.

Part 1: Overall vision and structure
Part 2: The Overview (aka "The most important section not to screw up")
Part 3: The Meat and Potatoes
Part 4: The Cover Letter

Technical Resumes: Part 4 (Cover Letter)

2011-01-03T11:41:00.000-05:00

In the previous post I completed the description of the advice I typically give when I'm asked to review a resume. In this post, I cover a related topic: the cover letter. I was going to cover LinkedIn as well but that's a larger topic that deserves it's own space.

Cover Letter

Some people spend considerable effort writing their cover letter. Having read thousands of resumes (many with cover letters attached) I'm less convinced of their value. If you've done your homework writing a concise resume with relevant content and a good Overview then a long cover letter is unnecessary. Many resume reviewers don't even open the cover letter or they shuffle it behind the resume. That said, there can be some value in a cover letter but just don't agonize over it. Spend your time on your resume and customizing the Overview.

Like the resume itself, the format of your cover letter is a matter of personal style. As always, I'm a fan of "less is more" and prefer a simple, traditional business letter layout. Let your word processing package help you with a format that appeals to you. I often use a separate font and colour for my name and contact information but everything else is in a simple, sans serif font in black "ink".

I stick to a three paragraph format. The first and last paragraphs are extremely short. The first simply states that position or positions I am applying for. The last paragraph thanks the reader for taking the time to review my qualifications and offers to meet with them to explore the possibility of a mutual fit (don't forget that you're looking for a good employer as much as they are looking for a good employee).

The middle paragraph is a little longer but I still try to keep it to maybe three sentences. I use this paragraph to draw links between the advertised position(s) and the my experience. My goal is to peak interest in my experience and maybe offer a hint at my personality. Unlike the resume, the cover letter gives you an opportunity to put on a personal face. Address the reader by name (if you know the name of the hiring manager). Use pronouns like "I". Express your excitement at the opportunity.

Finally, if you are sending a paper cover letter then always sign the paper with your signature. I prefer blue ink to set the signature apart from the black text.

Technical Resumes: Part 3 (The Meat and Potatoes)

2010-12-23T11:34:00.002-05:00

In the previous post I discussed the importance of a well-written, concise, relevant Overview in order to entice resume reviewers to spend more time on looking over your full credentials. In this post I make some suggestions on how to present the main body of your resume.

Recall that I recommend a four part structure for most resumes: Overview, Professional Experience, Personal Growth, and Education. Those just entering the job market might want to swap the order between Experience and Education. Those applying for very technical positions (like software developer) may want to include a fifth section summarizing their Technical Experience.

Experience

If you've done a good job at creating a brief, cleanly formatted resume with a relevant, focused Overview then the reviewer should now be eager to dig into the details of your professional experience. The purpose of this section is to describe the most relevant portions of your experience. This is not meant to be an exhaustive database of all your activities and projects. All previous comments regarding relevancy and brevity still apply.

As I mentioned in Part 1, I recommend using present tense ("deliver quality widgets") for your current position and past tense ("delivered quality widgets") for previous positions. Mixing tenses distracts the reader and interrupts flow. I also recommend avoiding the use of any pronouns. "Delivered quality widgets" rather than "I delivered..." or "we delivered...". This has a number of advantages. It sounds professional, makes the resume ever so slightly shorter, and it gives the prose a quicker pace.

The usual order to list your professional experience starts with your most recent or current position and moves backward in time. The format used is a matter of personal preference but I include the company name and position title left justified and the dates of employment right justified. I keep bullets small, monochromatic, and unobtrusive. I try to keep individual bullets to a single line of text.

Following the position heading, I usually suggest adding a single sentence that describes the position in the company (which helps in cases where non-standard titles might have been used). Following this sentence is your (typically bulleted) list of what you feel were the most important responsibilities and accomplishments in this position. Avoid all irrelevant and obvious details. For instance, if your job title was "Software Developer" then don't bother adding a bullet that states that you developed software.

Some people (even some organizations!) confuse activity with value. It might be the case that you diligently attended weekly status meetings don't include that in your resume. You want to focus on the ways you created value for the company you worked for. This means describing what you delivered and not the actions you took to deliver it. For technical positions this could mean describing the products that you contributed to building. For leaders this might mean describing the products that your team delivered. Avoid activity-centric words and phrases like "attended", "discussed", "met with", "worked on" and favour more results-oriented words like "delivered", "resolved", "created", "invented".

Newer leaders can sometimes get stuck because they still cling to definitions of value from their single contributor days. For instance, some newer leaders go through a period where they don't see their new responsibilities of leadership and organization as being as valuable as building or testing software. Remember that as a leader your sphere of influence is wider and it is quite acceptable to talk about your team's accomplishments as well as your own direct accomplishments. Maintain results-oriented language though and avoid descriptions like "Oversaw the creation of comprehensive security standards...". Hiring managers know that leaders lead teams of people that deliver different portions of a result. You don't need to include the fact that you oversaw the work. Rather focus on the deliverable: "Created comprehensive security standards...".

Finally, here are a few other common missteps that I've seen.

Using internal project and product names and acronyms as if the reader should just know what they mean ("I worked on the XH25 component of Project Blinko").
Describe what the company does rather than what you did.
Include a comprehensive list of all responsibilities, accomplishments, deliverables, and activities in a long 20 bullet list. Edit!
Put the most significant accomplishment at the end or randomly in the middle of the list. If your most significant and relevant accomplishment was the invention of a new product feature that increased sales 20% then make that the first bullet!
Not being specific about accomplishments. "Led a team delivering client-server software" rather than "Led a team delivering 6 major software releases and 12 patch releases over a period of 18 months".
Going into too much detail for positions in the distant pace. Focus your time on the more recent and relevant positions. Limit the descriptions to a couple bullets for the distant past and positions that are of a different nature than the one you are applying for.

Personal Growth

It is important to include a section on personal growth because it demonstrates that you are a life-long learner and have depth that goes beyond just what your work experience suggests. Personal growth accomplishments might include any of the following:

Courses taken and completed
Certifications
Volunteer roles
Sports-related roles (coaching, captain of a team, team in a competitive league)
Speaking engagements
Publications (although these might be attached to specific roles as well)
Relevant hobbies ("Created and maintain the Infocom website" is relevant. "Table top gaming" is, likely, not)
Your blog (unless your subject matter is of the nature of "nice pairs that I've seen")

Technical Experience

If you are applying for a leadership position it is less relevant what computer languages you are fluent in and what software frameworks you've used. This doesn't mean you should exclude them in your work experience but there really isn't any need to have a specific technical experience section in your resume. Spend a little more time on describing how your leadership and communication skills delivered results.

However, for technical positions you really should include technical experience. Search engines will pick up on keywords like Java, C#, and Maven. Also, the technical experience section is often used, like the overview section, to quickly filter resumes. If I'm looking for software developers with Ruby experience I'm going to want to see Ruby somewhere on the resume before I dig into the finer details. Keep the section short and neatly formated.

Recall my note regarding honesty. You want to focus on the technologies, languages, platforms, frameworks that you have real experience using. If all you know about Javascript is it's definition and what it is typically used for but you don't have any experience actually using it, then don't include it. You'll just embarrass yourself later in the interview when it becomes obvious that you've never actually worked with it.

Education

By "education" I mean formal, multi-year, focused study on a subject resulting in some kind of degree or diploma. Microsoft Certification does not qualify as education. It's training and should go in your personal growth section.

Different companies place different emphasis on education. Google, for example, places a very strong emphasis on education even if you got your degree 20 years ago. My philosophy has always been that your education demonstrates your intelligence and commitment early in your career but soon gets overshadowed by your continuous learning and professional experience. Unless you are new to the workforce, or your education ties directly into the job you are applying for, or the company to which you are applying places a high importance on education then I recommend including this section at the end of your resume.

Obviously include the school names and degree levels achieved. If you did a thesis then include its title and link to it if it is available online. Include the titles of (and links to) other academic publications you achieved in your studies.

I'm hesitant to recommend including education that was started but not completed. It suggests a lack of discipline or capability. If you started a degree but had good reason to not complete it (perhaps a business or job opportunity came up) then by all means include the fact that you did 3 years of a 4 year degree but then also include your reason for not completing.

So that basically covers that I typically advise when people ask me to review their resume. I'm going write one more post tomorrow that covers the related topic of the Cover Letter ~~and I might include a couple of thoughts on LinkedIn~~.

Technical Resumes: Part 2 (The Overview)

2010-12-22T10:56:00.001-05:00

In yesterday's post I kicked off my resume writing advice for technical and technology leadership positions. Today's post continues on that theme and I cover what I consider to be the most critical and most overlooked part of the resume: The Overview.

Overview is to Resume as Resume is to Interview. Hiring managers have many constraints on their time and are not waiting around for your resume to hit their desk. It is not unusual for hiring managers to blast through a 12 inch thick stack of resumes in 60 to 90 minutes making gut reaction decisions on which candidates seem the most promising. When I sort resumes I create two piles: Interested and TBNT (Thanks, But No Thanks). After my initial sort the Interested pile is typically about 10% of the original stack size. This is the pile that I spend my time on and really consider who I would like to interview.

Spending 30 seconds on one resume while doing this initial sort is the absolute maximum. Typically a decision is made in less than 10 seconds. There are a handful of surface factors that cause resumes to be dumped into TBNT: excessive length, obvious spelling errors, or anything that makes the resume look like it will be difficult to work through (poor layout, goofy font choices, dark paper -- why print black text on dark coloured paper?). However, most of the filtering comes from the Overview section of a resume. The primary goal of the Overview section is to convince the reviewer that they should continue to read the rest of your resume, search for you on LinkedIn and otherwise spend timing learning about you.

I've seen resumes include an Objectives section (rather than an Overview) where the candidate describes what their career objectives are. To be honest, I don't know you and I don't yet care what your objectives are -- TBNT (or at least ignore this section). I've read other resumes that include a mini-resume in their Overview. This kind of Overview doesn't say anything new or interesting that I can't get from the rest of the resume and is typically consists of long lists of comma separated skills and technologies. Way too long and boring to hold my attention -- TBNT. Still others include all boiler-plate. Let me fill you in on a secret, there are literally thousands of people who "have excellent communication skills" and "are dynamic leaders" and "put great attention to detail" -- TBNT. Still others don't include an Overview section at all. The reviewers challenge then becomes figuring out where to cast their eyes for the next 10-30 seconds in order to determine if there is enough value in doing a deeper read. Couple this with an overly long resume and you're on the top of the TBNT pile.

Imagine you have 30 seconds to convince The Donald that you have a compelling business idea or Brian Eno that U2 should be opening for your band or Spielberg that you've written a blockbuster. In all these cases you need to know what Trump/Eno/Spielberg are interested in and what they find valuable. The same goes for your Overview. If you have a boilerplate Overview that doesn't take into account the specific position let alone the specific company then you're 10 seconds away from TBNT.

You mean I have to write an Overview for every job that I'm applying for? Yes, but it's not as bad as it sounds. Chances are you have a core set of skills and interests and you are applying for similar positions at companies in related industries. Still, there is a huge difference between what is required for a Senior Software Designer vs a Software Team Leader.

To start off I recommend writing a longer and broader Overview that captures many of your technical and non-technical skills, experiences and traits. This might sound counter to everything I've written so far but you will NOT use this version on any actual resume. Think of this as your diamond mine out of which you will extract gems for each resume. You will edit this über-Overview down to just what is needed for each position/company to which you are applying. Editing down is much easier than trying to come up with new material for each resume.

Once you are ready to write an Overview for a particular resume put yourself in the shoes of the business owner or hiring manager for that company and think about how you would fill that position. Imagine that you have dozens or hundreds of highly skilled candidates to choose from so you can be picky. What experience, skills, knowledge would you be looking for to fill the position? What would your dream candidate look like? If you're having trouble do a little research on the web. Google and LinkedIn can be great resources to get to know more about a company or about a type of position. Now consider your experience, skills and knowledge and pick out a couple of experiences or unique skills that you think best match your vision for this position. Be specific and call out (briefly!) experiences that you think would make you the top candidate for this position.

Once you have a draft Overview consisting of maybe 3 to 5 sentences (no more than 6 to 8 lines of text) read it over again deleting everything that you feel takes away from the core message you are trying to deliver. Be brutal in your editing. Slash irrelevant details, boilerplate, and duplication. Even eradicate unnecessary words (particularly adjectives) and superfluous punctuation. Get this section down to its very essence in order to minimize the time it takes a reviewer to decide to give your resume a deeper read. This is your first impression and you want it to be positive. Keep it relevant, keep it specific, keep it brief. Your goal is to illicit a reaction like "hey that's cool" or even "hmmm, that's interesting". All you want at this point is for the reviewer to be compelled to invest time in the rest of your resume.

A word about honesty. Sometimes getting into the mind of the hiring manager gets your creative juices flowing and after you've written your Overview you realize that you've described someone else. At that point you need to either rewrite the section using your actual experience (maybe you're 80% qualified for the position) or admit that maybe you're not the right person for this position after all. Nothing will irk a hiring manager more than being lied to and having their time wasted. At best you'll be on permanent TBNT from that department but you might also end up on the black list for the whole company or even a whole industry.

Next Up: The Meat and Potatoes

Technical Resumes: Part 1

2010-12-21T14:14:00.001-05:00

Over the years in my roles as manager, director, and technical executive I frequently had to review resumes and qualifications of candidates applying for technical and leadership positions. I also get asked fairly frequently (maybe once a month) to cast a critical eye on the resumes of coworkers, former coworkers, friends of coworkers, etc. While I enjoy doing this it does take some time to do well. What I've included in this post and in the upcoming posts is the core set of principles that I use to guide my review of resumes for technical and technology leadership positions.

The Goal

Ask yourself why you are writing a resume at all. If your answer was "to summarize my experience" or even "to get a job" then think again. Your resume has exactly one purpose -- to get you an interview with an employer that you are interested in working for.

Some people think of their resume as a database or catalog of their experiences. They feel that a short resume reflects a lack of experience and so they make it as long and detailed as possible. Others think of their resume as some kind of sounding board for their opinions and ideas. These resumes are like that guy at the party who doesn't clue in that people don't care about his latest World of Warcraft exploits. Others think of their resume only as a compliance activity that needs to be checked off the list in order to say that you've applied for a position. These people send identical copies of their resume to hundreds of potential employers hoping that one of them will notice something valuable to them.

So if the goal of your resume is to get yourself an interview then what you need to be focused on is how to catch the attention of the person or persons who are sifting through hundreds of resumes of people with similar qualifications to your own. Think of your resume as a marketing teaser. You've got one chance to get a hiring manager or recruiter to want to get you in for an interview. You want your resume placed in the To Interview pile and not in the TBNT ("Thanks, But No Thanks") pile.

Overall Structure

Keep it short (yes, you've heard this before but I really mean it this time). It should fit on one double-sided sheet of 8.5x11" paper (although I recommend using two single-sided sheets if you really need to print it out). The problem with the "resume-as-database" folks is that the length of the resume becomes too daunting for reviewers and usually hits the TBNT pile.

The actual format of the header information at the top is a matter of subjective choice and can reflect your own design sensibility -- but keep it simple and to the point. Your name and how to contact you. Both via email and telephone -- for now keep your social media off your resume unless it is relevant to the position.

For senior or leadership positions I typically recommend a four part structure: Overview, Experience, Growth, Education (in that order). If you're a new grad then put the Education section second after the Overview. For technical positions, include a fifth section that summarizes the technologies that you feel you have expert experience in (and no, Word and Excel does not constitute "technical").

Appearance

Like the header, the layout of the resume is largely subjective. I do suggest that you resist any urge to experiment with all those fonts that you never get a chance to use. Sans Serif fonts like Helvetica, Arial, and Futura were designed to ease eye strain. Furthermore, you don't want your font choice to become your message -- you want your qualifications to be your message.

Bullet points are another area that some people feel necessary to "accessorize". Small, round, monotone bullets in the same colour as your text are quite sufficient. And don't go crazy with the bullets. I've seen entire resumes formatted in bullet form. They read like the parts list in an appendix of the Owner's Manual for my car. TBNT.

Spelling and Grammar

It would amaze you, gentle reader, to learn how many resumes in this day and age still contain spelling errors. It's not enough that every word processor includes a spell check function but most of them will even underline the misspellings in red as you type them. Nothing says, "low effort compliance activity" than a resume with spelling errors. TBNT.

Obviously grammatically correct sentences are just as important as correctly spelled words. Prefer the active voice ("delivered the project") over passive ("the project was delivered"). Microsoft Word has a hate-on for passive voice so it should prove a useful ally.

One area that I find very often gets overlooked is verb tense. I've read present progressive, past tense, and present tense all in a single resume. Changing tenses interrupts flow and distracts the reviewer. If I'm describing my current position I use plain old present tense: "Lead a team", "deliver solutions", "work with". For past positions and experience I use plain old past tense: "Led a team", "delivered solutions", "worked with". You may choose to use all past tense but whatever you decide stay consistent.

Remember Your Reader

While you might consider the Frobozz System that you helped build while at GrueTech, Inc. to be of earth-shattering importance it is very likely that the reviewers of your resume will have never heard of it. Put yourself in the shoes of someone who has never worked where you worked and then read your resume. How many assumptions did you build into it? Unless your customer base was counted in the tens of millions or higher, don't assume that the products, services and processes of your former employers are self-evident. Spell out company-specific acronyms, define custom terms, and include hyperlinks to relevant content should the reviewer wish to dig deeper.

Next Up: The Most Important Section of Any Resume

Review: Watts

2010-10-09T19:10:00.001-04:00

Recently, I asked "What's On Your Mac?". To extend my list, let me introduce you to Watts, a terrific little battery meter for the menu bar. To say that Watts is a more attractive menu meter than the one built into Snow Leopard is to just scratch the surface. In addition to doing the obvious, Watts includes some other essential features that, frankly, OS/X really should provide as part of good battery maintenance.

One feature that I really like is that Watts will keep track of how often you calibrate your battery. Macbook batteries are great and you will get even better performance out of them if you periodically calibrate them. This involves fully charging, discharging, and recharing the battery. You can google "macbook battery calibrate" and find the instructions to do so. It takes about a half day to run the half dozen calibration steps but I often find that I get so busy that I forget about continuing the calibration steps and have to start again. Watts will step you through the process and remind you when it is time to move on to the next step. Another cool and related feature is that Watts will remind you to periodically unplug your laptop (which is also good healthy practice for your battery). These features plus the useful notification options and battery health information screens make this little application well worth the $8. Check it out.

Update: Breaking Free

2010-10-09T18:55:00.001-04:00

Recently I wrote about breaking free of MobileMe and of Firefox (which has been seriously lagging in performance and features). Well, I've managed to do both.

First off, the iOS 4.2 Beta2 has released me from the grips of MobileMe. I can now have multiple Exchange calendars (the last thing holding me back). True, I am missing the ability to locate my iPhone, iPod, iPad using MobileMe but, frankly, that's $119 worth of insurance that I don't need. Everything other feature of MobileMe can be found on Google and other similar services. Until Apple either makes MobileMe more compelling or cheaper (i.e. free) I can't see myself heading back into Apple's warm embrace (at least not for cloud services).

Second off, I'm now 100% Chrome instead of Firefox. I've found extensions for 1Password (beta), AdBlock, Evernote Clipper, Forecastfox Weather (which takes up less interface space than on Firefox). I've given up on mouse gestures primarily because I do most of my browsing on my iPad or Macbook anyway. I'm really enjoying the speed and reliability of Chrome. Nothing comes close.

Breaking Free from MobileMe

2010-09-07T17:10:00.000-04:00

Formerly known as .Mac, MobileMe is Apple's collection of cloud services and includes online applications for email, contacts, calendars, picture organization, and cloud storage. It even has a tool to locate your lost iPhone and disable it if need be. As you would expect from Apple, all of these online applications adhere to the same usability and design standards as Apple's standalone applications. Something that the Googles and Microsofts of the world would do well to learn from.

While all this attention to design detail is compelling, the functional features offered in MobileMe are not particularly unique. To tell you the truth, a year into my $100/year MobileMe subscription, I don't think I've ever seriously used any of the online services directly. Rather I use MobileMe, along with a couple other services, to link together my data across the various computers and connected devices in my life. Recently, I wondered if I could get the same synchronization experience using free services that I do with MobileMe. This article describes my setup both before and after.

My connected life consists of sharing data across a home iMac, a home Macbook Pro, a work Macbook Pro, an iPhone, and an iPad. The iPhone and iPad do double duty as both work tools and home toys. In addition, wife-Annette and I use an online calendar to stay in sync (although this is more of an adaptation for her as she is quite efficient using only the paper calendar on the inside of our pantry door). Prior to my investigation I had the following setup:

Microsoft Exchange Server (work): synchronize my Work Calendar/Contacts between my work Mac, iPhone and iPad
MobileMe: synchronize the Family Calendar and my Contacts between my home Macs, work Mac, iPhone and iPad
MobileMe (iDisk): synchronize documents and files between my home Macs, work Mac and provide access to these files on my iPhone and iPad. Synchronize my OmniFocus library across all computers and devices (very necessary to keep me organized)
Google and Calgoo Connect: synchronize the Family Calendar between wife-Annette and I

A bit of a Rube Goldberg set up (particularly the Calgoo bit) but it has worked for a year now. At first the synchronization between OmniFocus and iDisk was painfully slow but fixes between Apple and Omni Group improved things immensely.

Before designing a free service solution I leveraged some research and experimentation that I had done for work. This included looking into services from Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, Box.net. So it didn't tame me very long to design something that would work just as seamlessly as the MobileMe integration. Here's what I'm testing today.

Microsoft Exchange Server (work): synchronize my Work Calendar/Contacts between my work Mac, iPhone and iPad (no change)
Google: synchronize the Family Calendar and my Contacts between my home Macs, work Mac, and iPhone
Google: synchronize the Family Calendar between Annette and I using shared calendars
Dropbox: synchronize documents and files between my home Macs, work Mac and provide access to these files on my iPhone and iPad. Limited to 2G (MobileMe was 10G). If I overrun my 2G I can either pay $10/mo for more or use Box.net or similar services to cover additional data.
MyDrive: like Dropbox and Box.net, MyDrive.ch is a cloud service hosted in Switzerland. What makes it different is that it provides the WebDav interface that OmniFocus needs for synchronization. This also makes it mountable in Finder so that I can access an additional 2G of storage.

The astute reader will see that while I am now free from MobileMe I seem to have lost my ability to synchronize my personal calendar and contacts with the iPad. This is due to a limitation in iOS 3.x which only supports a single Exchange account (in this case, my work account). Google synchronization of calendars and contacts uses the Exchange protocol (which makes for dead simple setup and seamless synchronization). The forthcoming iOS 4.2 will remove this limitation and I will once again be fully synchronized.

What's on your Browser?

2010-09-03T17:59:00.000-04:00

Continuing the theme started with What's on your Pod? and What's on your Mac? I humbly submit this list of browser add-ons that I use. For those not familiar with the technology, a browser add-on (or plugin or extension) is a small piece of software that works within the framework of the underlying platform (a web browser in this case) to provide some piece of additional functionality or change the way part of the browser looks or feels. By their nature, add-ons are typically small in size and single purpose. In fact the best add-ons, in my opinion, do only one thing and do it well.

It wasn't long ago that if you wanted to plug extra functionality into your browser your only option was Firefox. In fact, I'm still primarily a Firefox user today because of the richness of the add-ons available for this platform. I really like Safari (especially its Reader function) and I like Chrome's speed and skins. Both have outstanding HTML5 support as well. However, unlike recently, neither of them supported add-ons (although both do now). The moment I can get equivalent add-ons (extensions) for Safari to those below I will likely make a permanent browser switch.

The list below is simply the list of Firefox add-ons that I use or have used recently. It is by no means an exhaustive list of the popular add-ons available. For that, you'll have to go take a look for yourself. Before I start the list, you might be curious whether or not you are running any add-ons. In Firefox, pull down the Tools menu and select "Add-ons". This will pop up a window where you can see the list of Extensions (add-ons that provide new features), Themes (add-ons that change how your browser looks and feels), Personas (add-ons that make the browser pretty), and Plugins (add-ons that provide additional content support such as video formats). I'm going to list my favourite Extensions.

1Password - This browser extension goes hand-in-hand with the excellent 1Password application that I use on my Macs. Go to a site and 1Password will fill in the username and password for you. Supported on all major browsers.

AdBlock Plus - Essential extension that seamless scrubs out banner ads. AdBlock maintains its own database which you can extend as you go.

Canadian English Dictionary - I need the letter u in all my favourite, colourful, neighbourhood words.

Download Statusbar - This is one of the first extensions I installed way back. I've tried other download enhancers but I keep coming back to Download Statusbar. It does its one job and it does it well.

Evernote Web Clipper - This is another extension that goes hand-in-hand with an essential desktop application. In this case it is Evernote, the essential brain extension.

Firebug - If you do any web development Firebug is an essential debugging tool. Also allows editing and viewing of CSS, HTML, Javascript, etc.

Firefox Sync - Powerful search engines like Google and Bing have nearly obviated the need for bookmarks. However, I do have a small set that represent the most frequently visited sites that I go to. Firefox Sync (formerly Weave) does a decent job ensuring that no matter what machine I'm not, the instance of Firefox there will have my usual set of bookmarks. It also syncs passwords, preferences, and tabs. The latter is a little clunky though IMO.

FireGestures - FireGestures enables you to navigate your browser and web pages using swipes and other mouse gestures rather than clicking on different parts of the browser. To be honest my Macbook Pro's multitouch trackpad with jitouch installed removes the need for FireGestures. However, I still find it useful on my iMac. Windows and Linux users will love it as well.

Forecastfox Weather - This extension puts some discrete weather icons in the bottom right corner if your browser window. Over time my eyes have been trained to respond to the word/thought "weather" by glancing to the bottom right corner of my browser window. This is one of the reasons why it is jarring for me to use another browser.

Tab Mix Plus - If I was stranded on a desert island and could only take one Firefox extension with me it would be Tab Mix Plus. Sure, all browsers now support tabs but Tab Mix Plus provides many more configuration options and has excellent save/restore functions.

FireTitle (MIA) - FireTitle is one extension that went away after the Firefox 3.6 upgrade and I really wish it would come back. It allowed the user to set the window title text rather than using the default page title. I like to group similar tabs in different browser windows each with a topic title.

That's my list. What about yours? Do you know of equivalent extensions for Chrome or Safari? If so, I'd love to have some links.

How to create an HTML signature for Mac Mail

2010-08-31T13:18:00.001-04:00

I recently updated my green signature and have had some questions about how I coaxed Mac Mail to do what I want. My old green signature looked something like below.

This signature gets the job done but is a little wordy and too tall for my liking. So I went into Mac Mail's signature editor and was horrified to find just how bad it is for editing anything other than simple text. Undaunted, I did a little research and found that the signature in a Mac Mail message is nothing more than a snippet of HTML. Without too many Unnatural Acts it is possible to use any HTML snippet for your signature. My current signature looks like this.

I like the clean look and the familiar icons link you to exactly where you think they should. As an added bit of bling the green message changes colour and size when moused over.

When the user clicks on the link they are connected to my original "Keep it green" blog entry. So how did I coax Mac Mail to use this signature? Follow the steps below which I've cobbled together from multiple sources but most heavily from Wess Daniel's blog.

Create your sexy signature using the HTML editor of your choice (I use VI. You, quite likely, do not). Feel free to use CSS and scripts since most email readers include full HTML browser capabilities. Here is a sample HTML file based on my signature above. Any images or linked content must reside on a publicly accessible location since only the URLs (and not the images themselves) are transmitted in your email message. You'll notice from my sample that I use a Dropbox Public folder to store the images for my signature (all icons courtesy of IconDock.com).
Once your signature looks the way you want load its HTML file in Safari. Safari has the capability to store your signature as a webarchive. Most other browsers and operating systems use MHTML to accomplish the same thing but Apple is Apple. So pull down the File menu in Safari and Save As a webarchive. Let's call it Sexy.webarchive for now.
In Mac Mail, open Preferences (Cmd-, or Preferences in the Mail menu) and select the Signatures icon. Create a new signature and give it a name. This will create a temporary webarchive to hold your signature. You will replace this file shortly. [NOTE: Technically you don't have to create a new signature but this is the easiest way to identify the new signature for the next steps. You can reuse an existing signature and look in the plist file to figure out which one it is.]
Drag the new signature to the mail accounts for which you'd like to use it and then quit Mac Mail.
In Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/Signatures. You will see one or more files with names that look something like FA158A16-3D64-4B25-8C2C-5CCF1D7B85CD.webarchive. The webarchive with the most recent date and time is the temporary signature you just created.
In Finder, locate Sexy.webarchive and rename it to match the long filename of your temporary signature. Then copy or move your renamed signature file on top of the temporary signature.
Restart Mail. Now you should see your new sexy signature when you compose new messages. If you're not seeing your new signature it could be that the signature is not associated with the mail account you are using (see step 4). It could be that you have more than one signature associated with your mail account and you need to select your new signature (use the Signature pull down menu on the right side of the composition window).

I hope that helps and keep spreading the green!

What's on your Mac?

2010-08-30T21:39:00.001-04:00

Within the span of a week, two good friends of mine decided that it was time to switch from PC to Mac. I promised both of them a list of the Mac utilities and applications that I have found useful or interesting or fun on my Macs over the years. Before I start I need to give props to my buddy Scott Corscadden who took the time to school me in the Way of Mac when I made my switch some years ago.

1Password ($39.95) - This great utility keeps track of your passwords, log in ids, and form settings. It can also generate strong passwords which you access with your 1Password password. Integrates with all browsers. You can even store your encrypted 1Password file on a file sharing service like Dropbox so that all your Macs, iPhones, iPads can access the same passwords.

Adium (Free) - Are you an iChat or an MSN? An AOL or a GTalk? What about all your contacts? Do they all use the same instant message service that you do? With a product like Adium, it doesn't matter. Use Adium to log into multiple IM services at the same time in the same interface.

AppTrap (Free) - Uninstalling an application on a Mac is as simple as dragging it from Finder to your Trash bin. While this does uninstall the application it has a side-effect of leaving behind application support files such as configuration files, caches, databases. AppTrap will automatically detect an uninstall and, after prompting you for permission, delete all the support files for a clean uninstall. CAUTION: Some application upgrade processes consist of uninstalling the old version and reinstalling the new version. When doing an upgrade, select "Leave files" rather than "Move files".

Dropbox (Free) - There are a few cloud storage services out there (including iDisk from Apple). None are as seamless as Dropbox. Configure a directory to be your Dropbox and any file you put in there will automatically be synchronized on the server and with any other client you have pointing to your account. Share files seamlessly between your Macs, PCs, iPhones, iPads, Android phones, etc. The first 2 gig is free. 50 gig costs $9.99/month.

Evernote (Free) - One of my all time favorites. At first glance, Evernote seems like a regular text note taking tool. But you can also take photo notes (with OCR) and audio notes. Oh, and they're all seamlessly synchronized to the cloud. And searchable. Oh, and you can get clients for Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Palm Pre, and Windows Mobile. Awesome.

Firefox (Free) - Safari is a damn fine browser. In many respects it is superior to Firefox. The killer Firefox feature for me is its plugins which I make heavy use of (perhaps a topic for another post). True, Safari and Chrome both now support plugins but so far neither of them have as rich a set as Firefox. The moment I can get all or even most of my plugins for Safari I will likely drop Firefox from my list.

gfxCardStatus (Free) - Macbook Pros enjoy not one but two graphics processors. An integrated processor which is light on features and easy on the battery and a discreet graphics processor stacked with features but can run your tank to empty in no time. Apple's method of switching graphics processors is to change the setting in System Preferences and then reboot (Holy Microsoft Usability Batman!). This utility will install a menu icon that not only tells you which card you're currently using but lets you switch back and forth between the two without rebooting. Sweet.

Growl (Free) - Growl is a simple notification platform. Many other applications integrate with growl to inform you of updates, alerts and other information. One interface for notifications.

HandBrake (Free) - HandBrake converts to and from a multitude of audio and video formats. Perfect for converting the format of the video your brother-in-law sent you to a format your television actually recognizes.

Hula Girl (Free) - I don't know why I like this dashboard widget but I do.

iStat Nano (Free) - This Dashboard widget gives you at-a-glance status information about various hardware and software components running on your Mac.

iWork ($79.00) -This is Apple's office productivity suite consisting of Numbers spreadsheet, Pages word processor, and Keynote presentation software. If you must work in a Microsoft Office environment then go get Office for Mac 2008 (2011 coming soon!). If you don't, then get iWork. It's much cheaper, has all the features that you're likely to need and Keynote kicks Powerpoint's ass simply by lifting its right eyebrow only.

jitouch ($6.99) - Once you use the multitouch features of the Mac trackpad you will very rapidly learn to depend on it. Using non-Mac trackpads becomes very frustrating when you find that all it does is move the mouse pointer and nothing else. jitouch extends the multitouch capabilities with literally dozens of other gestures. Easily worth the $6.99 price tag.

MacVim (Free) - At the risk of starting a text editor flame war I'll go on record stating that I'm a VI fan and always have been. MacVim is a terrific port of VIM (VI Improved).

MenuMeters (Free) - MenuMeters puts a couple of handy indicators in your menu bar (at the top of the screen) for monitoring things like CPU, network, disk, etc.

NTFS-3G (Free) - Mac OS/X does not natively recognize NTFS partitions. If you have carved out some of your diskspace to run Windows (via Bootcamp, VirtualBox, or some other mechanism) you might want to install this NTFS read/write driver so that you can read the Windows file system from the Mac side. There is also a commercial version of NTFS-3G called Tuxera if you prefer to spend money.

OmniDiskSweeper (Free) - The Omni Group makes some really great products for Macs. DiskSweeper is a free utility for managing your drive space. With it you can find what's eating all the space.

OmniFocus ($79.95) - The price is a little steep but without OmniFocus I would be a completely disorganized mess at work. If you have read David Allen's Getting Things Done you will love the care that the Omni Group has taken in developing a product that so closely embodies the GTD principles. Purchase the iPhone version as well and access your

OmniGraffle ($99.95) -Another pricey-but-worth-it package, OmniGraffle is a sophisticated diagramming tool. Similar to Microsoft Visio but with a more intuitive interface and richer presentation features, OmniGraffle makes the process of creating complex diagrams easy. It even will output in Visio format for compatibility.

Quicksilver (Free) - "Act without doing" is the tagline from Blacktree. Their product, Quicksilver, is difficult to classify. It leverages Spotlight, Apple's advanced search engine built into Mac OS/X, to easily find and access applications, contacts, music, files, and other data. Without moving your fingers from the keyboard you can access just about anything on your Mac. Quicksilver is indispensable.

Perian (Free) - "The swiss-army knife for QuickTime". QuickTime is Apple's video viewer. It's a great app with a simple, clean interface. Just what you need if you have QuickTime video files to play. For the other 99% of videos it is useless. Enter Perian. Perian adds QuickTime plugins to QuickTime to handle a multitude of other video formats.

The Weather Network (Free) - This Dashboard widget from The Weather Network (Canadian) does a great job forecasting weather. Get the iPhone version as well.

TweetDeck (Free) - There are a handful of Twitter clients on the market but I prefer TweekDeck over them all. In one interface you can not only get your Twitter stream, mentions, and directs but also add in Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Buzz feeds. Tweet and/or update your stats in any of these social media tools all from the TweetDeck interface. Be sure to download the iPhone and iPad versions as well.

VirtualBox (Free) - VirtualBox is yet another great free product from the once might Sun Microsystems (I'm really going to miss them). Hopefully Oracle will continue to develop VirtualBox and keep it free. VirtualBox is a Virtual Machine that allows you to run Windows, Linux, or other operating systems while running Mac OS/X at the same time. For those of you that must cling to your favorite Windows programs, use VirtualBox until you kick the habit. If you want a VM but would rather pay for it then try Parallels ($79.99) or VMWare Fusion ($79.99).

VLC (Free) - "It plays everything!" If you need to play the few video formats that Perian doesn't handle then get VLC. This little video player does indeed play just about any format.

~~Adobe Reader~~ (Free) - YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It). Mac OS/X handles PDF files natively.

The moment it becomes an IT project...

2010-08-12T15:06:00.000-04:00

...you're dead in the water. Steve Laster, Harvard Business School's CIO, put forward this aphorism at Campus Technology 2010 while describing a major project to investigate, design and implement an online collaboration environment at the Harvard Business School. The statement resonated with me and speaks to the maturity of the IT culture at HBS.

Many IT organizations (and I'm not limiting myself to the education sector) would have eagerly jumped into the project. A short time later, the latest and coolest Web 2.0, social media integrated toolset would have been installed. And henceforth ignored. I attended another session at CT 2010 where the IT director described the new ePortfolio system they (i.e. IT) had researched and implemented. It had all kinds of great features that students and faculty could use. After the first semester exactly 0 (zero) students and faculty had signed up. The IT director chalked it up to a lesson learned regarding communication. Certainly communication and change management would have helped but I'd bet their results would not have been significantly better if all they changed was communication.

HBS approached the challenge of online collaboration quite differently. Right from inception, they treated the notion as a business question rather than an IT problem. Instead of jumping right in to a juicy "IT project" or allowing the school to "just let IT solve this problem" Laster pulled together a small group of key stakeholders from different departments of the business (yes, I say "business" rather than "school" although it grates on some faculty). While the HBS Collaboration group included an IT representative it was comprised of and even lead by representatives of other business units. It was that team's conclusion that an online collaboration tool was indeed needed. Furthermore, they worked together to develop requirements and explore options.

This approach had a number of immediate benefits. The technology choice had immediate buy-in due to the inclusive method of its selection. The business units had at least one, and often more than one, knowledgeable member on their team which helped in communication, change management, and rapid adoption. These knowledgeable members were trained as expert trainers which distributed education and support responsibilities. The team of experts continued to meet during and after implementation.

Would it surprise anyone that HBS is a Scrum shop? Those with a background in agile software development methodologies no doubt see the HBS arrangement as perfectly normal. The cross-functional working group was, in essence, a product owner / customer proxy. Wouldn't it be great of more IT organizations thought of their projects and potential projects as being owned by the business rather than by IT?

How Many Years Is An Internet Year?

2010-08-04T14:49:00.001-04:00

After 9 years and 11 months of neglect I found myself today pulling up the main page of my old Infocom website to make a few edits. It's hard to believe that 15 years have gone by. When the site was first developed it was the Wild West of the Web times. HTML 2.0 pages were edited in text editors (I'm a vi). This was an age when the word "hyperlink" sounded space-age rather than retro. I got to thinking about all the events and advancements that occurred between the time the site was first created and now. I know I'm missing more than I'm including but here's what came to my mind.

In random order:

the birth of Nathan and Avery (Gabrielle was already 3 months old when the Infocom site first came up)
the dot-com boom and eventual bust
ftp and especially gopher fade into the shadow left by http
Netscape (pronounced "Mozilla") supersedes Mosaic
Netscape wins the browser war
AOL buys Netscape and the latter becomes irrelevant
IE wins the browser war
Firefox wins the browser war
WebKit wins the browser war
Opera... is glad to be a part of it
Napster came and went and was reborn (sort of)
Apple is reborn
Java is invented!
Web 2.0 is invented along with its hefty toolbag: XHTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX, XML, DOM, Rails, etc.
Computer gaming industry realizes that millions of people are willing to pay a monthly subscription to play a game
More than a decade of "this is the year of Interactive Television"
GPS devices and location services allow us to locate ourselves and others anywhere in the world
Bandwidth availability increases and storage price decreases allow for previously unthinkable services like YouTube, Hulu, Internet Radio, Flickr, SkyDrive, Google Docs, and other cloud services
Google becomes a 900 lb gorilla
Windows 98, ME, CE, 2000, Mobile, XP, Vista and 7
Be kind rewind?
Macintosh changes CPU architectures... twice!
Wikipedia begins cataloging the world's knowledge
Social media sites as us to like, follow, connect, stalk, check-in, tweet
Cyber-bully and cyber-stalker become words
Apple invents and/or dominates new markets: all-in-one computers (ok, it did that way before 1995), MP3 players, touchscreen smartphones, trackpads, tablet computers
Old-school IRC iconography like :-) and abbreviations like l8r get co-opted as cool text-speak
We can all have a Second Life
In addition to earth's natural spheres we also have the blogosphere and twittersphere.
Texting becomes more popular than talking
We can have more computing power in our pockets (you know what I mean) than we used to have on our desks or in our server rooms
2" is considered a thick depth for a TV

And the height of cool goes from to

A Good Life

2010-07-29T22:53:00.000-04:00

On the July 4th Philosophy Bites podcast, Nigel Warburton interviews philosopher Susan Wolf as she talks about her views on meaning in life. Not to be confused with The Meaning of Life. As to that question, as wife-Annette will confirm, I believe the question is flawed. Why are we here? What's it all about? What's it all for? These questions are meaningless because their answers are unknowable. It could be that a great, benevolent being created us all at the snap of hir fingers (or least after 6 days hard work and one day in front of the TV). It could be that our universe is a science experiment run by a being from some larger "outer" universe. It could be that we live inside an extremely detailed computer simulation and consist of nothing more than data. Heck, I can't even prove any of you exist outside my mind. The point is, none of these hypotheses can be proven. These questions are the realm of religious faith, Monty Python, Descartes, The Matrix, Inception, etc.

No, the topic of the podcast was meaning in life. What gives a life meaning or value. Some may say (and I'll admit to this frame of thought in my past) that in order to have a good life all you need is to be happy. Happiness will indeed bring enjoyment to life but, as Susan Wolf points out, that doesn't mean your life will have any meaning. For example, I might absolutely adore playing Sudoku. I play it any chance I get and derive great enjoyment from it. But I think it would be hard to argue that such a life would be meaningful or have value (and yes, I am equating a "good life" with a "meaningful life").

So maybe in addition to being happy, I also lead a moral life. I adhere to the morals of my society. I live in service to my community. External observers would judge me as a Good Man. Would I then be said to have a meaningful life? Certainly leading a moral life has value but, according to Susan Wolf, it's not enough.

The argument Susan Wolf puts forward is that in order for an activity to have meaning it needs to be both subjectively meaningful (i.e. have significance or be meaningful to the person engaging in the activity) and be objectively meaningful in the society in which one lives. A simple example Susan Wolf puts forward is that of making a Halloween costume for her daughter late into the night of October 30th (the night before Halloween). This activity certainly did not give her any pleasure and she probably would have been better served with a few extra hours of sleep. Nor was the creation of the costume in any sense moral or in service to her community. However, the activity is meaningful to her because she is doing something in service of her child. Furthermore, in our society we recognize service to our loved ones as an activity that has value. Therefore, it is an activity that adds meaning to Susan's life.

Possibly the weakest aspect of the argument is around objective definition of meaning. Susan Wolf will be the first to point out that she makes no claim to any sort of objective definition of meaning or value. No set of properties by which we can neatly categorize activities into meaningful or not meaningful. In the absence of such properties or rules we're left to rely on intuition and accepted norms. This is why we believe that Sudoku is not a meaningful activity and that, say, volunteering your time at a homeless shelter is a meaningful (and moral for that matter) activity.

So with this definition in mind I humbly submit the following types of activities as meaningful: service to others, creation, invention, pursuit of excellence, pursuit of knowledge. Naturally we can't spend every minute of our lives in categorically meaningful activities. We need to engage, for example, in life essential activities as dictated by the biological rules of our bodies. Furthermore, we're only human and will likely engage in purely enjoyable but not necessarily meaningful activities (computer gaming, Sudoku and Fail blogs happen to be some of the activities that bring me pleasure but are in no way meaningful). I think the point is to try to fill as much of our time as possible, whether at home or at work, in meaningful activity in order to have a good life. This idea shines a particularly baleful light on addictions, whether physiological additions (like alcoholism) or social addictions (like gambling or pornography), which essentially fill one's time with pleasurable activities (or miserable activities in pursuit of pleasurable activities) none of which has any life meaning or value.

I'm curious what other activities people hold to be meaningful in life (remember, both subjectively as well as objectively). Leave a comment!

From Campus Technology 2010

2010-07-21T22:22:00.001-04:00

Today is Day 2 of my Campus Technology 2010 tour. While yesterday's speakers and activities had my aching to run away from the conference never to return (Janet had better luck than I did) today's speakers more than made up for the deficit. Yesterday brought me no insight nor inspired any new ideas. Today, however, my horizons were expanded and many of my assumptions were challenged. Perfect!

The Keynote

The day kicked off with an excellent Key Note by the Stephen Laster, CIO of the Harvard Business School. Stephen is a great speaker and his topic was near and dear to my heart -- factors (8, in this case) that contribute to the success of an IT organization.

Hire and mentor a great team (people first!)
Run the shop as a business (a key consideration for an internal IT organization)
Leverage planning and governance
Take smart risks
Actively measure
Capture the customer (not literally!)
Communicate, communicate, communicate (and make it someone's responsibility in IT)
Leverage trusted advisors

He didn't come out and say it in his keynote but in a talk later in the day I got the impression he had a 9th factor which would go something like "Start small and iterate quickly". It's nice to see successful organizations subscribing to the same principles as your own. They're just a little further down the path than we are at Ivey and I hope to stand on the shoulders of HBS in order to accelerate ourselves. You can get a sense for the keynote from this interview Campus Technology did back in April.

Conference Themes

I must admit that the themes I spotted at the conference were different than what I expected. I expected a major theme to be cloud computing but it was barely even mentioned. Other themes that received little or no attention: classroom A/V, eReaders, IT infrastructure, IT methodologies (ok, I'm not surprised about this one). Below are the major themes that I picked out.

Distance Learning

This one comes as no surprise as higher ed institutions try to either bring in new revenue or reduce costs of delivering courses. The industry has been working on this for some time and it looks like it'll be some time still before we can deliver a good student experience to remote learners.

Post-LMS World

The LMS (or Learning Management System) is considered a table stake technology for any educational institution. Ivey has a homegrown LMS. UWO uses WebCT (now Blackboard). Moodle and Sakai are viable open source options as are others. At the conference there seemed to be an underlying theme that the LMS as we know it today (calendars, events, forums) are outdated concepts and not in step with how students of today communicate. There was an emphasis on leveraging modern collaboration and social networking tools. A move away from "management" towards "personal collaboration".

ePortfolios

There seemed to be an explosion of ePortfolio vendors at the conference. I must admit that I wasn't familiar with the term prior to the conference but now feel sufficiently schooled to at least describe what it means. An ePortfolio is an personalized, online aggregation of a student's achievements in not only academics but also in other activities such as volunteerism, sport, clubs, etc. Think of it as a mash up between LinkedIn, Google Profile, Facebook, and Dropbox.

Mobility

The community seemed to collectively recognize that students entering higher education did more communication via handheld devices (like iPhones, Androids, and even Blackberrys) than they did on laptops and computers. A few schools were experimenting with mobile offerings but most were not even that far.

Academic Content Support

I was surprised to learn that many schools offer Academic Content Support via their IT organizations. This type of support involves aiding faculty in the creation and maintenance of the content they use for teaching. This might mean developing interactive web content to use in class. It might mean adapting a lecture for display on an interactive whiteboard. It might mean developing a mobile application. It might mean aiding in the selection of a simulation vendor. It might mean recording and/or editing video for use in a class.

The Evils of Management

2010-06-28T14:02:00.002-04:00

This post continues on the theme I started in the "Agile - An Elite Game Only?" post. This installment covers the claim that Agile "fails to address the evils of management".

Hear ye, hear ye. Let it now be known that I am one of those pointy-haired bastards. The Man. High Priced Overhead. The Management. My current position is CTO at the Richard Ivey School of Business. I've previously held positions at other companies in VP Engineering, Director Engineering, Manager, Team Leader roles. In ancient times (more than a decade ago) I was a software developer. I've led and managed teams over those years using both traditional planned methods and agile methods. In my past I have been known to quote IEEE and ISO as well as, more recently, Sutherland and Beck.

I hate to deflate your balloon right off the bat but the expectation that any software development methodology will "address the evils of management" is flawed. If we assume for the sake of argument that the use of "evil" here is a colourful metaphor meaning "incompetence" rather than actual malice it is difficult to see how any methodology would solve the problem. Methodologies might somehow stunt the impact of incompetent management but that doesn't really address the problem.

I'll steal a page from my buddy AgileMan and define "incompetence" in a very broad sense to mean "unable, for whatever reason, to perform the necessary duties of the position." This could be due to laziness or bad attitude or fear but it could also be due to lack of job knowledge, insufficient data, overwork, competing goals, or other factors.

Companies need to realize that leading agile teams requires different time and attention from them. It requires more direct interaction, more trust and empowerment, more vision and leadership. So where do leaders find time for these new responsibilities? Thankfully if you have a good teams and healthy culture, Agile requires less Management, less reporting, less approving.

What Have I Learned?

As a manager and leader coming who has worked in both preplanned and agile environments I have learned a few things. While the following lessons might not apply to every situation they are more or less all true for all the situations I've been involved with so far.

Software Development Team Leaders Need To Be Technical

I'll start off with a controversial one. I don't care what you call them... scrum masters, coaches, team leaders, development managers, etc. but the leader of a development team needs to be technical. I'm not saying the leader needs to code every day but she should be capable of and have experience in doing so. The leader needs to know that their primary responsibility is leadership and empowerment and her goals and objectives need to reflect that emphasis. Part of those goals should include ways of staying current on both the leadership and technology sides of the role.

Agile Can Make You A Better Leader -- If You Let It

Leaders and managers who see the opportunity for personal growth and for team growth can leap ahead in their careers by leveraging agile principles. Every modern business leadership book talks about empowering employees to make decisions, getting "out of the way", growing your team to achieve greatness. Agile did not not define this game, agile is just one of the newer contestants. A good leader will leverage the expectations around team performance that come with agile and do everything they can to empower their team. Empower the team with knowledge, with responsibility, and with trust. Frightened, insecure, or incompetent (in the broad sense) leaders will feel compelled to control, define, over-measure. These actions end up stifling the real behaviours that will make the team (and the leader) successful.

Teams Must Understand That Managers Have Responsibilities Too

Too often I hear team members complaining that their manager just needs to trust them. If only the manager wasn't meddling so much we could get more done. If only the manager wasn't asking for us to work on "useless" things we could get more valuable work completed. I'm here to say that Trust needs to go both ways. Teams need to trust that a manager is asking for certain things for a good reason and not just on a whim or because that's what the process tells them to ask for. Sometimes development teams are part of a much larger organization that, for reasons outside the control of the development group, finds value in artifacts that in the team's limited view seem worthless. Trust that a good leader will ask teams for non-product deliverables only if there is a good reason. Naturally teams have the right to ask questions about the deliverable including its perceived value. In the end, the leader should be trusted to make good decisions. That's her job after all.

Bad Management Repels Good People

Finally, it should be obvious that consistent bad management will cause good people to leave. If you feel that your talents are going unrecognized or that "the management" continually screws things up and cannot provide good explanations for the decisions they make then vote with your feet. Even in smaller communities like where I live there are opportunities out there for those who are motivated, energetic, and talented. Life is too short to be miserable in your job.

Coming Up "Soon" - Software Professionals

Agile: Average Developers Need Not Apply?

2010-06-28T08:42:00.001-04:00

This post continues on the theme I started in the "Agile - An Elite Game Only?" post. This installment discusses the notion (or myth, in my opinion) that agile methods are meant only for the elite or superstars of software development and that the gains promised by Agile are not attainable by the merely average.

Agile teams are expected to learn and experiment and teach and grow. All the time. The argument goes that developers of average skill just can't keep up with that and therefore agile is not for them. Further goes the argument that Agile should only be applied to small teams of superstars and more structured processes should be used to keep the developers of average skill "on track" (or, less kindly, "in line"). I've also had some developers express to me concern about "fading into the background" of a team if they are not allowed to continue as single contributors (although it's almost never a superstar who expresses this concern to me).

Over the past 8 months I've been working with a small team of 6 software developers. I don't think there is a single person on the team who would describe themselves as a superstar. Rather each of them are "just" solid performers who want to do a good job and make a living. I'm also working with a team 4 of business analysts who possess varying depths of knowledge in the various products that are needed. This team of developers and BAs has done some amazing work over the past 8 months while transitioning to agile methods. By just applying the following core principles they have enjoyed higher productivity and, from the feedback I get, much higher job satisfaction all while working on much the same software they had been working on 8 months prior.

Direct and active developer contribution to planning including requirements breakdown, estimation, risk identification
Competent business analysts who value the skills and knowledge of the development team
Daily and continuous collaboration between and among developers and business analysts
A development manager who trusts the team and inspires a culture of learning
Automated unit tests (although this has only been added in the past 4 months)

This team is readying themselves to move to the "next level" by adding in better automated builds, better source control, and better automated testing. They have developed an energy for learning and a spirit of collaboration that has elevated everyone's game. In other words, their attitude is influencing their behaviour which are both having a major positive impact on their aptitude. Superstars? We'll call one if we need one.

So What About Those Superstars?

Still, there's no question in my mind that superstars are fantastic assets. They develop at 10x (or more!) the speed of other developers, produce top quality, and generate new ideas all the time. They live and breathe their profession. They are also, unfortunately, rather rare. I've worked with maybe a half dozen directly (i.e. in my organization) and maybe a dozen indirectly (in partner organizations) over my entire career.

Whenever anyone suggests that we keep the superstars separated from the rest of the team so that they can "do their thing" I just shake my head. Why would any company want to keep all that goodness locked up away from everyone else? My experience has been that superstars bring up the game of the team they are on. They become teachers, role-models, inspirational leaders. The effect is multiplicative! Good developers become great developers when they are on teams that have a superstar. Only once have I found a superstar (in the productivity sense) that truly needed to remain an island. All other cases have resulted in higher performing teams without eroding the output or visibility or "aura" of the superstar.

In summary, teams, whether they have a coding wunderkind on the team or not, have always benefited from agile methods in my experience. What's important is that the team developers their own passion for quality and growth. Leaders can influence and inspire this attitude but it cannot be mandated. So choose your leaders carefully!

Coming Up - The Evils of Management

Agile - An Elite Game Only?

2010-06-27T11:37:00.004-04:00

I thought the following comment to my last post (Manifesto of Second Best Alternatives) was important enough to inspire a new post rather than a comment. Anonymous writes:

"Sure, Agile approaches an answer to many of the noted problems all too common in the software development world, and maybe in another decade we might improve upon it some more. But amongst the positives, it occurs to me that Agile robs us of specialization, making all developers fit a ridiculous mold that only a handful can actually aspire to fit, hence the consensus that there is some need for "less than agile" methods. It's great to be able to learn new things and do so at light speed, but that is not every developer trying to make a living. So all you do is reflect back your own smugness when you talk about these so-called "incompetent individuals." Beware that label: One day you, too, will reach age 50 and the youth getting by on 1/3 of your pay will undercut you because they are 80% as good as you.

Another observation I have about Agile gets right to the heart of why nothing attempted by the Agile community matters, and that is: Agile fails to address the evils of management. It doesn't matter how well you estimate something, management will always demand twice as much no matter how much realistic evidence you present to them. Management sees Agile only through the lens of "how can I make these assholes produce more and whip themselves in the process?" And so we have reopened the doors to the sweatshop. Information Sharecropper has a real nice ring to it, though, right?

You want a fix? How about making software development a profession equal in status to doctors and lawyers. That will solve 99% of the problems. Doctors don't let non-doctors manage them, it simply is unacceptable.

What I'm looking for is that holistic manifesto--the one that gets the job done, gets me paid, and doesn't leave me feeling completely played the way I have been for over decade now. Anything else is just blather. Smart people in America are just easy marks."

This is a great comment because it raises some very important themes. I was going to touch on them all in this post but I'm afraid that would result in a huge post that few would have time to read. So what I'll do today is list the themes and start a discussion on one. Over the course of the next few days I'll post some thoughts on the remaining themes.

First some background, over the past dozen years I've held a number of software management positions from team lead to CTO. Prior to those years I was writing software primarily in C++ and Java for client and server solutions. I've directly led small teams and also led organizations up to 100 software professionals. I've managed using both traditional, planned methods as well as agile methods.

Here are the important themes that this terrific comment touches on.

Specialization vs generalization
Agile for the elite superstars
Evils of Management
Respect for the software profession

Specialization vs Generalization

Agile teams work very closely with each other on a daily basis. Team members collaborate on problems and solutions all the time. They communicate with each other at least once daily but typically much more. Team members are expected to pick up tasks even when not directly in their field of expertise

So does agile necessarily rob us from the benefits of specialization? I think this is less of an agile issue than it is a team issue. Do you value the speed that comes from deep specialization (at the risk of damaging your company should a specialist leave) or the flexibility of generalization (at the risk of team members being jacks-of-all-trades-and-masters-of-none)? In my experience, the benefits of specialization, even on agile teams, are too great to move to total generalization. That said, agile teams do not necessarily mean a push to generalization. Software developers are not automatons. If an agile team is truly doing their own planning (and not under the thumb of a heavy-handed manager) they will naturally leverage the skills and experience that are on the team. The following quotes are representative of the meme I'm expressing here and all commonplace on the teams I've been involved with.

"Jim, you know databases better than any of us, can you take on this schema deliverable?"

"I'll do the UAT for this requirement. I'll fit right in to the framework Janet and I wrote a couple iterations back."

"I'll take on the server task. Nathan, can I get some of your time this iteration since you know the server so well?"

An additional benefit of an agile team arrangement is that the daily interactions developers have result in some specialized knowledge getting absorbed into more team members. This reduces the company risk of maintaining specialization pillars. Teams naturally drive towards becoming (and by now you've probably been wondering when I would bring up this term) generalizing specialists. There's enough written about generalizing specialists that I'll just leave you a Google link.

Coming up tomorrow - Agile: Average Developers Need Not Apply?

Manifesto of Second Best Alternatives

2010-06-23T10:32:00.001-04:00

The Yahoo! XP mailing list recently had a discussion about whether or not Agile was attainable by any team or whether it was really only for 1337 developers. There was a suggestion on the list that some in the community should collaborate on a second manifesto (or, as Bill Caputo put it with tongue in cheek, a "less-than-agile manifesto") designed for those developers of "average skill" or who are part of lower-cost, commodity labor markets (i.e. off-shore). Ron Jeffries, co-creator of XP, responded with the following "viciously sarcastic" draft which I found very entertaining. I should make it clear that Ron's angle here was humour and not attack.

A MANIFESTO OF SECOND BEST ALTERNATIVES

We intentionally hire incompetent individuals who will not stay
with us long, and organize across geography so that their
interactions are few and hampered. We try to compensate for these
irreparable errors by using Draconian processes and expensive
tools.

Our developers cannot really build software on their own, because
we hire them that way to save money. They do not stay with us long
enough to justify training them. We try to compensate for their
almost complete inability to perform, using large documents
describing, mostly in a language our workers understand only
imperfectly, how to use our massive tools and how to follow our
rigid process.

We position our incompetent developers as far as possible from the
people who know what we need. We cannot get together with them
often, because travel is expensive and no one wants to go there
anyway. Since we cannot collaborate effectively, we try to
compensate by writing strict definitions of what we need for our
incompetent developers to follow. We fail to notice that if we
knew that accurately what we want, we could just write it down in
Java and be done. In any case, our incompetent developers may not
be able to follow these strict contracts, and we will have a good
case for recovery of damages.

In the absence of competence, and with collaboration being
essentially impossible as well as undesirable, we will not be able
to accommodate many changes, despite the many mistakes that will
inevitably be made in planning and communication. Nonetheless, we
will insist on rigorously following our plans in every detail.

By doing all four of these things, each of which is at best half
as good as doing the right thing, we will guarantee that we will
be at least one-sixteenth (one-half to the fourth power) as
effective as we would be if we actually followed the Agile
Manifesto.

But this way we get a manifesto of our very own.

What's on your Pod?

2010-06-05T23:16:00.002-04:00

I recently acquired a new Apple iPad as part of an experiment we're running at work. In addition to my iPhone, I now have a couple of connected devices that are meant to make my life better. I've been taking a look at the dizzying number of applications available for both devices and it got me wondering what applications do the folks I know have on their devices.

In addition to the built in applications for email, browsing, contacts, calendars, photos, and tunes here's how my devices are kitted out.

On Both

I think it's pretty well known that iPads can run iPhone applications. Some applications are written to be resolution independent and look stunning on either device (yay!). Others are meant strictly for the lower resolution of an iPhone (or iPod Touch). They are functional on an iPad but look pretty bad when pixel doubled (anyone working at my old company can attest to the poor visual results of pixel doubling).

Evernote (Free) - essential for anyone like me who needs their brain backed up and/or extended. Evernote syncs your notes seamlessly between all your devices and computers.
OmniFocus ($24.99) - the best Getting Things Done (google "David Allen GTD") application I've come across. Synchronizes your todo information across all devices and computers. No iPad version yet though (pixel doubling -- puke).
Tweetdeck (Free) - by no means am I a media socialite but Tweetdeck does a great job at presenting your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, foursquare (and other) feeds in one UI
Dropbox (Free) - the more computers and connected devices we get the more important it is to have access to your important files no matter where you are in the meatsphere. Dropbox seamlessly synchronizes your files across all computers and provides access to your files on mobile devices. Comes with 3G storage for free. (Oh Apple, why the $99 charge for MobileMe?)
Net Portal ($1.99) - I don't really know why I bought this app. It lets you access the files on your computers from your iPhone or iPad. But if my important files are in DropBox why do I need to get at my computer you ask? Good question. Don't buy this app.
Remote (Free) - Apple's remote control allows you to control your iTunes library or Apple TV
Skype (Free) - 'nough said
Flixter (Free) - Movie reviews no matter where you are
Urbanspoon (Free) - Restaurant reviews and recommendations no matter where you are
IM+ Lite (Free) - Nice multi-IM client with support for MSN, AIM, GTalk, Yahoo, and others. Supported by ads unless you purchased the paid version.
Mocha VNC Lite (Free) - Control your computers from your iPad or phone (although the phone resolution is a bit tiny for this to be practical).

On iPad

iBooks (Free) - Apple's book reader. Fantastic.
Noterize ($2.99) - Note taking ala the built in Notes application but with many more features including the ability to do freehand annotations, and load PDF and PPT files.
Marvel (Free) - Marvel's comic book reader. Does a great job at providing the comic book experience in electronic form (don't tell kimota94 though).
Adobe Ideas (Free) - freehand sketch tool from Adobe. Works better with a stylus such as the Pogo Sketch.

On iPhone

My iPhone apps tend to be applications take either deal with photography (the iPad doesn't yet have a camera) or that leverage the high mobility of a phone over the iPad.

PS Mobile (Free) - Adobe Photoshop Mobile. Simple photo touch ups right on your phone.
FX Photo Studio ($0.99) - Photo effects on your phone.
Stanza (Free) - A free ebook reader. Before the iPad and iBooks I read books on my phone using Stanza.
Momentile ($4.99) - Momentile is a social media site that, as far as I can tell, really hasn't taken off but I like it. The idea is that you take a photo every day (or as near to every day as you can) and upload it to your Momentile site as a kind of photo diary. The iPhone client lets you upload from your phone (which is really essential given that you are trying to capture an image every single day and in unpredictable situations).
foursquare (Free) - Ok, so I foursquare. Shut up.

So iPhone, iTouch, and iPad compadres... what's on your pod?

The Singularity

2010-05-26T08:19:00.009-04:00

I recently subscribed to the Philosophy Bites podcast available on iTunes. This podcast consists of two writers, Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds, interviewing top thinkers and philosophers from around the world in 15 to 30 minute segments (i.e. just long enough for me to get through one on my walk to or from work).

This morning I listened to their interview with David Chalmers, a philosopher at the Australian National University (I guess not all Australian philosophers are named Bruce after all) regarding the Singularity. The Singularity is a term most often attributed to Ray Kurzweil and refers to a period of time in the future when machine intelligence reaches a point where it outstrips human intelligence. That that point, such machines will then be capable of creating software and other machines which outstrip their intelligence and so on in a rapidly increasing intelligence explosion. A sort of AI tail recursion.

The premise is, naturally, based on the assumption that it will ever be possible to build a machine intelligence that matches human intelligence including consciousness. There is wide debate on this topic with folks like John Searle arguing it impossible (at least in pure software) to philosophers like David Chalmers arguing it is inevitable. This has been a subject of interest for me which occupied a good portion of my undergrad days. I must admit that I feel drawn to Chalmer's argument wherein he imagines a single neuron in a conscious human's brain being replaced by a silicon chip. Keep replacing neurons and inspecting the subject ("Yes, I feel fine. This apple is tasty.") and you will hit one of three possible outcomes:

At some point after replacing a neuron the subject suddenly loses consciousness (the magic neuron)
The subject will gradually lose consciousness transitioning through differing levels of reduced consciousness until a point is reached where we can no longer say she is conscious (the fadeout)
All neurons will be replaced and the subject is still conscious despite having her brain completely replaced by silicon.

If we can assume an accurate replication of the function of each and every neuron I can't help thinking that the third outcome is entirely plausible. Searle had previously addressed this type of thought experiment and at the time argued against the possibility of consciousness (or what he called Strong AI). I believe his more current arguments are around consciousness arising from physical systems as opposed to software systems so he may now agree with (or at least be willing to explore) the possibility that our silicon-brained subject is conscious. Still, I can imagine those silicon chips being replaced one by one by individual software processes that mimic their function perfectly. I would wager that our subject would continue to remain just as conscious during the silicon-to-software transition as she did for the neuron-to-silicon transition.

If you're with me so far then you can easily see the doors to possibility that open up. The concept of "uploading" our consciousness into machines would become a reality (the ethical issues around the treatment of our software doppelgangers is beyond the scope of this blog post). How about making multiple duplicates of your consciousness to increase your productivity or at least balance the workload? How about an upgrade? Immortality would then come not from biological science but rather information science.

I really love this kind of subject in science fiction which is why writers like Greg Egan grace much of my shelving. Does anyone else find this subject fascinating? Any counter arguments to Chalmer's neuron replacement thought experiment?

Keeping it green

2010-05-21T15:21:00.018-04:00

Ivey, apart from being my employer, is home to a major Canadian research center focused on Business Sustainability. As such, we take our responsibility to safeguard our environment quite seriously. We have implemented changes to our printers that have resulted in a 50% reduction in the paper used by students, our new building will be rated LEEDS Gold, we provide support for ride-sharing, plus other initiatives.

Given this spirit of sustainable business I have recently modified my email signature in order to discourage physical printing of messages that I send.

Notice the last line? It challenges the reader to think first before printing the email. I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that this makes a difference to anyone but I do know that such a message recently gave me pause. Since adding the line at the end of my signature can't hurt and might actually be beneficial I figured I'd jump on the bandwagon.

I really do encourage everyone to do the same. So how do you edit an email signature? Below is a quick synopsis on how to edit signatures using two common email readers: Microsoft Outlook and Mac Mail. Users of other mail readers can use Google for instructions on editing their signatures. Here are some links to relevant Google searches for Google GMail, Mozilla Thunderbird, Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft Entourage, Microsoft Hotmail (Microsoft must really want to get email right by trying it 15 different ways).

Microsoft Outlook

First a couple of caveats. One: I'm a Mac. Two: These instructions are for Office 2007.

Start Outlook and Select "Options" from the Tools menu. This will display a set of Options panels. Select the Mail Format tab.

Click the "Signatures" button and in the panel that pops up select New and enter a name.

Edit your signature like you would a mail message. Typically you include your name, your position, your company name, and contact information. Add an extra line at the bottom that reads "Do you really need to print this email? Keep it on the screen!". It's a nice touch to highlight that text and colour it green.

When you start a new message you should get your signature automatically.

For added bonus points add "Steal this signature!" either on an additional line or in parentheses and link to this blog post (http://scheyeniam.blogspot.com/2010/05/keeping-it-green.html).

Apple Mail

With Apple Mail in focus open the Preferences under Mail from the Menu or just press Command-,.

Choose "Signatures" from the Preferences panel.

Edit your signature like you would a normal mail message. Typically you include your name, your position, your company name, and contact information. Add an extra line at the bottom that reads "Do you really need to print this email? Keep it on the screen!". It's a nice touch to highlight that text and colour it green (press Command-Shift-C and select the Green of your choice). For added bonus points add "Steal this signature!" either on an additional line or in parentheses and link (by highlighting the text and pressing Command-k) to this blog post (http://scheyeniam.blogspot.com/2010/05/keeping-it-green.html).

Now when you edit a new message or reply to an existing message your signature will be included automatically. You may want to create multiple signatures for different recipients. Mail makes it easy to select between different signatures while you are composing your message.

Commercialization of the home..

2010-04-26T20:31:00.008-04:00

This weekend saw a strange event unfolding in our kitchen as Gabrielle slowly transformed it into a 12'x8'x4' light box. Ok, it was a poor-man's light box. White bed sheets formed the walls. A combination of natural and artificial lights supplied illumination. A USB microphone hung precariously from our overhead kitchen light. So what was she up to? She was filming a commercial for her Communication Tech class.

For those who know Gabby this should not be too surprising. Gabby has been interested for some time now in photography. If you happen to be one of her 21,000 thousand Facebook friends you can check out her portfolio. I find her work enthralling. I've included a couple random samples (it's too difficult to choose favorites) so you can see what I mean (all photos Copyright (C) 2008-2010 Gabrielle Scheyen).

She recently added video to her set of interests and passions. The subject of the weekend was a remake of a classic Buy a Mac commercial from 2006. After scoping out the house she decided the only place large enough to record the shots for the commercial was the kitchen. So we moved everything out. The Buy a Mac commercials, you may recall, consist of an infinite white backdrop and feature Mac (played by Justin Long) and PC (played by John Hodgman). Since our kitchen is a pale yellow and not pure white, we tacked up a 12'x8' white painters drop sheet and a couple of pure white bed sheets on either side. Thankfully it was an overcast day on Sunday so the sunlight through the screen door was muted and shadows weren't too much of a problem. Once she fiddled with various lights (overheads, lamps, and even a worklight of mine that Annette held up while on a step ladder) the set was ready.

Mac was played by Nathan who sort of has the same laid back hipster look that Justin Long pulls off with ease. Gabrielle was PC-in-disguise complete with trenchcoat and fake mustache. The image here is a test shot for one of the shots. Gabby had all the shots worked out in advance (it never occurred to me that a simple 30 second commercial of two guys talking would have 6 different shots). I was camera man which meant that I pressed record when needed. Annette, as I mentioned, handled being a light post. Avery worked the improvised clap boards to mark the shots.

As director, Gabrielle was in command. Each shot had about 4 to 8 different takes. We did have to reshoot two shots due to equipment problems (ehm, cameraman). Although her original vision was a much higher standard than we could mete out with our stone tools and bear skins she kept us at it until she got the shots she wanted. She and Nathan did a great job remembering their lines and acting our their parts.

The entire shoot from soundstage setup to clean up took about 6 hours. That was the easy part. The project is now in post-production so we won't see the final product for some time. I'm eager to see it though. If it's anything like her other work it'll impress.

CSM

2010-03-30T05:55:00.002-04:00

I took a little flack in the Twittersphere yesterday for linking to an article published by the Christian Science Monitor (CSM). The griefing came not from the content of the article but rather because it was published by CSM.

For those who don't know, the Christian Science Monitor is an international news organization. It publishes a weekly magazine and a news website covering not only U.S. news but also world news. It also happens to be owned by the Church of Christian Science. These are the folks who believe in the healing power of prayer and refuse necessary medical treatment. Not to be confused with Scientology, which is another cult founded by Science Fiction author L. Ron Hubbard and boasts actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta as prominent figures (what a strange world we live in).

Christian Science founder Mary Baker Eddy founded the Christian Science Monitor in the early 1900s (what did we do before Wikipedia?) as a non-religious news agency. The stated CSM principles include a rejection of sensationalism, unbiased fairness, and the idea that news should "bless" and not "injure". The paper is known for its even-handed reporting of major, divisive conflicts such as the Iraq war.

It's this even-handedness that I enjoy most when reading CSM. I find it very difficult to watch CNN and Fox News, for example, because of their pro-American, if-you're-not-with-us, republican biases. Despite being an American news agency, CSM reports on all sides of a story in an unbiased fashion. And that's why it is right under Reuters and CBC in my RSS feed ;-)

Clarifying Life Change

2010-03-26T08:45:00.004-04:00

After sleeping on it I realized the term "yearning" (in my last post) was a little vague. Dreaming, hoping, wishing, pining (for the Fjords!), self-pity are all signs of dissatisfaction. They don't even count as envisioning a change let alone yearning for one. I believe that if you want to manifest change in your life you need to see that alternative future like it's already the present. Not only will that make you open to new opportunity (as I stated in my last post) but it will also change your behaviours (sometimes in ways you don't even realize). Except for my last position change (which was one of those "external events") every promotion I've had started out with me envisioning and then living in that future state. Some changes took longer to occur than others but staying in that target state was key.

Life Change

2010-03-25T22:02:00.004-04:00

I'm really enjoying walking to and from work nowadays. There are many reasons for this including the most significant reason. It provides me with 30 minutes (x2 daily) to just think and not do. That one hour a day split in two segments is among my most creative (maybe I should find a longer route?). On Wednesday afternoon, on the way home, I was thinking about life changes and how difficult they are to achieve. I'm talking about things like going back to school after working for years, changing marital status, starting to have kids, and changing jobs or even careers.

I used to think that life change typically happened for one of two reasons: a significant external event (like getting fired or waking up pregnant) or being somehow unhappy with a situation. The first reason is probably a good case for life change but it is out of your control. The latter case, dissatisfaction, seems like a perfectly reasonable reason to act. But my experience is that dissatisfaction just isn't enough to cause any real change. The brain (at least my brain) plays tricks: Make do. The grass is no greener. You're over-reacting. It really isn't that bad. It'll get better. Lucy couldn't possibly pull the football away again.

These are exactly the thoughts that ran through my head for a long time before I left my last job (it also didn't help that the people I worked with were fabulous). Dissatisfaction was not enough to motivate me to make a life change. In fact, my personality type deals with dissatisfaction by looking for ways to improve the local situation and to remain optimistic that the situation can be improved.

At some point, however, I started to envision what a life change (a job change in this case) might be like. At first it was only an occasional thought. A guilty pleasure. Over time however, the vision of what might be became richer and more detailed. Finally at some point I flipped from imaging a change to yearning for it. At that point, change was no longer an option. It was inevitable.

Not to get all metaphysical here but I am a firm believer in the human ability to create our own reality by envisioning outcomes in advance. I think it pre-wires the brain to be more attuned and receptive to events and subconscious thoughts that lead you to where you want to go. This is why continuously envisioning life changes or goals in richer and richer detail is so important to making real change. And I'm not simply talking about the "Power of Positive Thinking". Obsessively fixating on negative thoughts can also manifest change in your life (but not the good kind). It is also why rejecting negative self-talk is to critical.

So one might argue that envisioning a job change in greater and greater detail motivated me to go find another job. I argue that envisioning that job change in greater and greater detail caused me to change jobs. There's a big difference between the two.

Mardi Gras 2010 - Lundi

2010-03-01T11:20:00.014-05:00

I promised myself that I'd use our recent trip to New Orleans as a topic for a blog post but unfortunately it has taken me some time to get around to writing. Anyway, here is Day 1.

Annette wanted to celebrate her recent "milestone" birthday with a party. What bigger party could there possibly be than Mardi Gras? And not just any Mardi Gras but a Mardi Gras after the Saints' Superbowl win.

As we approached the Louis Armstrong airport I couldn't help but marvel at the flatness of the land and the nearness to the water. We've all heard about the flooding after Katrina in 2005 but it isn't until you see the landscape that you understand just how close to disaster the people of New Orleans are constantly. The first glimpses you get during landing are of a treeless landscape painted a thin brown on a blue-grey canvas.

Later that evening we decided to take in our first Mardi Gras parade. For those not familiar with Carnival traditions, the days leading up to Mardi Gras (or Fat Tuesday) are peppered with parties, parades, and other celebrations. The idea is to get out all your bad habits and large living before Ash Wednesday, or the start of Lent and six weeks of fasting and abstinence. Many places around the world (including Quebec, Brazil, Venice) have similar Mardi Gras or Carnival traditions.

In New Orleans, one of the hallmarks are the parades. Parades are put on by Krewes and can range from modest homemade floats to extravagant professionally built floats. It all depends on the means of the various Krewes. Monday evening was the Krewe of Orpheus. Very impressive, elaborate floats. Unfortunately it was miserably cold (around freezing), we hadn't eaten yet, and we had chosen the absolute worst spot to watch the parade -- near the end but not at the end. This meant the parade members were tired and cold but not yet ready to give up the last of their throws. Throws are essential elements of enjoying Mardi Gras parades. Throws can take the form of stuffed toys, plastic doubloons, cups, or beaded necklaces. Beads are the showcase throw that everyone thinks of and parades are definitely one way to acquire them.

Cold, disappointed and near despair, we grabbed a bite to eat (I don't even remember where). Once we had some food and beverages in us the night no longer felt so cold. We went down a block from our hotel and there we found the absolute end of the Orpheus parade route. As my sister Michelle had once told us, the end of a parade route can be a magical place for acquiring throws. It's at the end of the route that the parade members toss their remaining throws off the side of their floats by the handful just to get rid of them. Whole bags of beads went flying past my head. It seems like an odd thing but you get a wonderful sense of inclusion and community getting your first beads (even if they were cheapo, plain plastic beads and not the higher quality types).

After the parade ended we took a walk down Bourbon Street through the heart

of the French Quarter. It was on this evening that Annette discovered the Han dgrenade - a strong drink consisting of rum, gin, vodka, grain

alcohol, and melon liquor served over crushed ice and garnished with mint delivered in a long tube shaped plastic glass with a base shaped like a smiling Allied hand-grenade. They're sold at four locations on Bourbon Street and nowhere else in the world.

Bourbon Street's tenants span a wide spectrum. From upscale hotels and fine restaurants to strip clubs and adult toy stores; and often all in row. Even in the cold that night, Bourbon St. was packed. Music, clubs, people everywhere. The police were also on hand strolling on horseback through the crowds. If people were not in clubs they were in the streets.

And it was on this first night that we learned of the other ways to attract throws (e.g. beads). Whether you were walking the street or waving to the crowd from a balcony, everyone seemed to be in the mood to share their beads. In hindsight it seems quite odd the lengths that some people go to get a bunch of plastic beads. But like many things, I think it's in the acquiring and not necessarily the owning, that attracts.

By about 2am we were pretty tired so we lugged our load of beads back to the hotel. It was amazing to think that we'd only arrived earlier that evening. It was a fantastic feeling to end the day on a high note especially after our rocky start.

Next post... Day 2 (Mardi Gras)

Welcome Harold

2010-02-10T16:06:00.002-05:00

I thought it might be nice to kick off my blog by welcoming new life to our family. Sometime during the night before last, Avery welcomed Harold and his siblings to our family. Harold and siblings (who are, incidentally, also named Harold) are newly hatched Triops. Triops are small, three-eyed, many-legged crustaceans who have been around on earth for a couple of hundred million years in their current form. If you're around my age you may also know them as Sea Monkeys.

The Harolds currently resemble pale specks of dust with tails but will eventually reach 6cm in size and form a nice hard shell. They look a bit like a horseshoe crab. I haven't told my mother about them yet but I'm sure she won't mind when she's up next week to look after the kids while Annette and I are away.