Discipline is a virtue

One of the things I struggle a lot with is Discipline.  I want to get better at what I am doing, but get distracted by learning how to get better at what I should be doing, thus not doing anything.

This is quite a problem when you're trying to finish up a project and are faced with pending deadlines.  I suspect that the perfectionist in me keeps me from completing something until I have exhausted all research on ways to effectively perform a desired task.  As some may already know, this takes up a lot of time, and the fastastic and ever-entertaining internet does not help me balance this equation.

I have also noticed that I am constantly being distracted and that my mind roams in the social cloud, dreaming of possible products and possibilites but seldomly detailing the requirements for such projects.  I keep saying to myself that I need to focus on the task at hand, but before I notice, I'm wandering off finding something shiny to look at.

I am afraid of myself sometimes, since my behavior doesn't help me advance towards the goals I have set forth for myself.

What am I doing?

As if it wasn't obvious, I haven't been updating my blog as often as I should or would like to. So in order to save face, I usually update my twitter account.

You can also stalk--err follow me on friendfeed.

I need to reconsider the purpose of this blog and if I'm really going to follow up on it. Until then, happy browsing -- you know where to find me.

Erator's Weekly Pick: the bird and the bee

A friend suggested I do these "weekly picks" since I am always recommeding stuff.

So for this week I will recommend a music album: the bird and the bee
I really like this album, it flows even if a lot of the tracks have different styles, though the whole album only lasts about 35 minutes. The music style is similar to the one of Feist, with a very "indie" feel.

Check out some of their songs using Seeqpod:

When Twitter stumbles, the world panics!

Twitter was down today (not that I noticed, thankfully) and the reason was "too many connections" -- the price to pay when you become a staple of the internet!

Check out the number of comments on their blog post: Twitter Blog: Man down!

The Apple Effect

Why, as I sit here typing this post, have I been itching to get an Apple computer? More specifically, a MacBook Pro laptop. I already have a laptop, provided by work, and a home desktop that is close to 4 years of age but works fine, yet I am here fiddling with the options on the Apple.com web store dreaming about hitting that "Check out now" button with what I think is a decent and conservative configuration.

Why do I and so many others want to jump on the Apple bus so badly? Could it possibly be that much better, or are we just being played by excellent marketing tactics and pressure for items that provide social status?

What can I do on an Apple computer that I can't do on my current Windows XP machines? Or is it not what I can do, but how easily? And does that really merit spending over a grand (unless you choose the Mac Mini) for an Apple setup?

I'll follow up later, but I would like to know what you think.

Information Overload

So just the other day I was talking about technologies and frameworks with a fellow engineer and then the million dollar question came up after much debate: "What have you done?"

And I just sat there, trying to come up with an answer to justify my points and where I was coming from, but I couldn't respond with anything recent.

I read about emerging technologies in the software engineering field. A lot. I think that's a double edge sword too, because as one keeps reading about the best practices here and there and what others have used and plan to use, you just sit there, wishing and planning on doing so many great and awesome things, but as time goes by, nothing gets done!

So my advice, which I am going to eat my own food in this case, is to learn, but above all, START SOMETHING. A popular slogan comes to mind...

When CAPTCHAs Block Users

I was creating a group with Google Groups for a weekly programming meeting I am a part of, and after filling out the first page, which asks for the group's name, email address, description and other settings, this CAPTCHA came up:


It appears the CAPTCHA's service was unavailable, and so the challenge image was unavailable (I typed the error's sentence just in case I could continue), so I, a real human, was unable to create the group, and had to postpone my attempt until some other time.
I wasted time in the previous page, writing the name of the group, email address, description; all content I had to come up with was to be wasted (though I saved it to a trusty text file).

So here's my suggestion: why not verify "humanness" first -- before the user has to even start thinking about group names and descriptions. Get the "verification" out of the way first so that this doesn't happen to anyone else, because it was truly frustrating.

This may sound like a rant, but going through the sequence of actions and errors that your users might experience, will enable you to design your application in a way that will delight the user, if not, lessen their frustration.