Spread Firefox

Anyways, this is a fantastic video on the topic of “Humane Computing” and I think it’s well worth your time to sit down and watch it all the way through.

Away with applications, the death of the desktop

I’ve never used the Slick Edit product but I’ve got lot’s of experience using Atlassian products (Jira and confluence) and would love to get my grubby mitts on a copy of bamboo since I am a huge fan of the other Atlassian products I’ve used.

So head on over and find out how you can win some of this software (hint, writing a blog post about it get’s you 25 tickets in this raffle style give away)

The longer you wait, the more painful it will be
Kinda like ignoring that aching tooth, or that tweak in your back, it can wait it’s not that serious right now is it? I’ve seen much of the same attitude when it comes to working with source control systems. Developers will work on a task and not check in any of there changes for sometimes weeks. This often time’s leads to code conflicts and merging tasks because the developer waited so long to check in.

Check in early, check in often
The project I am working on at the moment is a small wrapper for the 37 Signals backpack api. It’s just me working on it right now so conflicts are unlikely, but i still check in any work that i have done when I leave the application in a valid state, even if the complete task isn’t done. For me it feels like the right thing to do, I can be sure that the repository is always in a state that works (if someone else ever felt like contributing) and it also helps me sleep at night knowing that if for some reason my laptop decided to off itself during the night, my project is still there ready and waiting for me.

To cut to the point, I was promoting some changes for a client last night. It was an update to part of our product that allows our customers to send automated and one off emails to lists of subscribers. I had done promotions similar to this in the past (in fact i’ve probably done the same thing maybe 100 times). But somehow, someway I managed to screw up. Not a small screw up either, I accidentally sent a test email message to the subscribers of one of the clients email lists.

That doesn’t sound so bad?
Sure it might not seem like a big deal, in fact I wasn’t even aware of it until the client pointed it out to me (there is nothing worse then this, NOTHING). You see our customers are publicly traded companies, and the software we develop helps them streamline and manage disclosure around their websites. I with an accidental mouse click had caused some level of damage in there shareholders eyes. I don’t even have to tell you the anxiety and frustration I felt when I was alerted to what I had done.

Ok, that’s bad
Yes it was bad, it was too late to undo anything so it was time to put into play this great saying one of my co-workers has:

First, get the cow out of the ditch, then figure out how the cow got in the ditch, and then make sure that cow never goes back in the ditch.

It has nothing and everything to do with software development all at the same time.

Obviously getting the cow out of the ditch was out of reach, but there were some measures that could be taken to ease the impact on our customer. I recommended that they send a one off email to the list that I had accidentally sent to, simply explaining that a test message was sent in error, they thought this was a great idea and did it.

Next, I had to examine all the various steps I had taken trying to reproduce what I had done. I had opened the wrong test email and sent it, an honest mistake but one that can’t ever be repeated again.

With that information in hand I put together some process recommendations for our company internally to implement when promoting these kinds of changes, as well as some product changes that could make this same scenario much more difficult to repeat in the future.

So in the end it worked out ok?
I guess if you look at it optimistically, yes everything turned out ok. For me, this was a situation that I was not comfortable with happening ever again. Fortunately the people I work with let me handle the problem start to finish, they didn’t breath down my neck and demand answers right then and there, they trusted that I would do the right thing, plus the client who was initially annoyed and frustrated appreciated the constant communication and recommendations that were made.

So what do you do when the shit hits the fan?
I’m sure this has happened to many a software developer. What do you do when this happens to you? I would be very interested in hearing about it, I think these hard learning lessons are ones that should be shared, never swept under the rug. If we can’t reflect and learn from these mistakes we as individuals and groups will continue to make them over and over again.

It’s been about a month since I started using Rescuetime, it’s been a pleasant and eye opening experience. A few of my initial assumptions have proven to be on the mark and some of the others not so much

I don’t spend nearly as much time on my computer as I thought
I thought I was spending insane amounts of time at my computer when I first started using RescueTime, that’s what I subconsciously thought and I figured RescueTime would just reinforce this assumption, boy was I wrong. Over the month or so I’ve been using RescueTime it tells me that I am spending an average of 6 hours a day on my computer. Mind you there have definitely been some days that have been 12+ hours and some that have been much less (weekends get included in the totals and I have been spending next to no time on my computer during weekends lately). This has to be my one real big gripe with the app, I can’t specify times when it should record and when it shouldn’t, that would be a nice feature to see in the future.

I do a lot of work @ work, but not always at my computer
The metrics generally show that I am highly efficient and very productive when I am at work, but I spend around 5 hours a day out of a 8 hour work day doing stuff at my computer. This is an obvious indicator that I have a fair number of meetings as part of my work life, and I also know that I have been buying my lunch a lot over the last month so that makes for a longer period away during the lunch break. None of this particularly bothers me that much it’s just interesting to know this.

I know what you did last month!
Some of the really cool numbers I get out of RescueTime relate to what stuff I’m actually doing at work. I like to think that I am a developer but RescueTime let’s me know differently. This past month we decided to move all of our development servers in house. I was tasked with making this happen so an inordinate amount of time last month was spent in MS Remote desktop and working on infrastructure. One of the other great reporting features is slicing the time charts by tags. When I tag a program or url I usually do it in this format “work, development”, “work, client”, “work, support” that way I can look at a day and see how much each sub type I do relative to work related stuff. Again a really interesting way to examine your day.

Gooooooooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllllllllllllls
One of the greatest features of RescueTime is the ability to set goals for yourself. I set a few so that I could monitor how much time I spent in Google reader (I spend a lot of time reading feeds), how much time I spent working and how much time I spent in IM programs. These goals are prominently displayed on the dashboard so I can instantly see when I’m reaching numbers I’m not comfortable with. It’s helped me quantify what I thought were time wasters with real numbers (the data will set you free!)

Tagging just got easier
About 2 weeks ago a great new feature was introduced which has helped with the ongoing upkeep you have to do to keep the numbers in RescueTime accurate. Auto tagging looks at the sites and programs you use and does it’s best to tag them based on your historical usage patterns. In my first post, I was worried about how much time I would have to spend tagging new applications and sites, what happened is that after a couple of weeks the number of new sites and programs I used dropped significantly and I went from tagging every day to tagging every 2-3 days, auto tagging has made this even easier as I can just auto tag the whole list of untagged items and only manually tag the remaining few, a big time saver!

And the verdict is?
I love RescueTime! It’s really opened my eyes and made me aware of how much hard data can help you make better decisions about how and when to use your time to it’s fullest extent. I am really looking forward to the next few months as the data builds up and I get even more insight into how I spend my time on computers. If you are curious about what you do when your parked in front of the keyboard, you should install RescueTime and bask in the glory of your new found self awareness, the data will set you free!

Whether you are a hockey fan or not this guy is a sight to see on the ice. Every goal he scores is like his first goal, every game he plays is like his last. Every minute of the game you can tell there is no place in the world he would rather be then in that building playing that game. It’s inspiring and devastating at the same time. The side effect of his passion is that everyone else around him feeds off it, it motivates them and drives them to work harder. His teammates give that little extra effort and the crowd in the build cheers just a little bit louder.

So what does this have to do with software development? Absolutely everything! Being passionate about what you do not only makes you better at your trade of choice but it makes those around you better. If you are excited about what you do it’s hard for people around you not to start having the same attitude. Don’t just think about this as a way to improve yourself, it’s also a chance to improve others around you.

As always, in business (as in hockey) what you are passionate about can get lost sometimes, deadlines, interviews, clients, fans… they can all go a long way to drive the passionate parts into the background. This happens to everyone and can’t be avoided at times, but the best way to deal with it is to be positive and be passionate, your customers, clients and co-workers will appreciate it.

The value of RescueTime is achieved by spending a little bit of time tagging the apps that you use and then assigning a productivity score to each of those tags. This does require a fair bit of time on the end users part but I imagine after a while it becomes less of a burden (Note: I’m only 2 days into using the app so I’m still spending a good piece of time tagging my apps).

Goals and Alerts allow you to define criteria to monitor your usage of a specific type of application. I’ve got one setup that goes like this “I want to spend less than 2 hours per weekday on chat.”

Along with the goals you create comes a simple system for keeping you up to date on your progress to achieving them. There is an RSS feed that updates once a day with your goals status as well as an email notification system that provides the same information to one or more email addresses.

The final portion of the site that really adds some value in my mind is the Productivity and Efficiency ratings that are displayed on the dashboard.

(Explanations of these metrics)

I’m guessing that over the long term these numbers will provide some value. I spend a lot of time at the computer and this might open my eyes to some bad habits that I’m sure I have but up until now have not been able to quantify.

My experience with RescueTime so far has been a good one. It has allowed me to observe a part of my life from a that has up until now been unmeasurable.

http://www.rescuetime.com

Grab it at Codeplex

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