Thursday, June 3, 2010

Side Projects - Good thing or...?

My main now almost 2yr old project has been a tough slog. I've made a ton of progress, but I'm facing some waning enthusiasm.  I've only shared the results with a few people who give it high praise.  I need to start shopping it around to the appropriate folk, but I was hit with an energy sapping dry period where my network access was knocked out just at the same time as I finished a collaboration with a University group.  The resulting frustration sapped my energy and eagerness.

I've started a couple of side projects just based purely on their intellectual interest, and they have gone reasonably  well. They are short period things, so I can achieve a fair bit in a short time. It's really that barrier - achievement cycle that drives me... and I guess most researchers.   You know at each challenging road-block that many people who have independently came along the same path have been turned away. As you overcome the challenge, you are rewarded with a sense of accomplishment.

Still, working as a lone-gun on a project means you don't get any peer recognition for the work. It's pretty pure in the sense that you are encouraged only by the personal elements.

Yet I worry about whether all the substance of my effort will be for nought.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Each Month Maybe?

As things get busy, I've been letting this slide. Also as things get quiet.

Okay, it's no big surprise.  There are very few blogs with a single author that continue to thrive years after starting up, and I'm sadly average.

Still progressing in my project, though my thoughts are often about how it's unlikely to go anywhere.  Finding funding and finding collaborators is more effort than I can muster.  Still I pursue the vision in the hopes that after I stabilize it, I can get a bit of attention that way. If nothing else, I'll have an interesting little freestanding service that maybe pulls me in $50 a year or something above the cost of running it.

And the vision is still exciting. I'm doing something that nobody else is doing, or can show a means to accomplish with today's technology.  That's gotta count for something. 

Researchinator strangely plugs along...

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Rotating Hats

Hat shifting has been happening more rapidly as I near exposure time for my project.  Shifted from Django work to python/app work now back to javascript/AJAX/Django today.  I'm trying to make content within a page change without the rest of the page changing.  I've done that already for inserting some media into the middle of the page, now I need to recreate that but for some hierarchical navigating.

That also involves traversing a database to figure out the levels of hierarchy.  This could get a bit messy, so will invest the time in planning rather than just jumping in.

Researchinator swaps hats from lethargic blogger back to worker...

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Riding the Wave

The transition from winter, such as it was to spring has brought a good solid couple of weeks of sunshine and above normal temperatures. Plus the days here in the northern hemisphere are getting longer.  I know from several decades of experience that with this period comes unexpected positivity.

My strategy is to ride that wave of positive energy for the win!

Researchinator sez that is all.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Your Work Buddy Really Helps

Working for long stretches on your own has a few pitfalls, a few challenges and several benefits.

The benefits are obvious - no interruptions, intellectual freedom, total ownership of successes (and failures) and flexibility in work methods.

The challenges are pretty easy to figure out as well - but if you haven't done a large project on your own, some of this might be new.

Motivation can be an issue - just getting the initiative to start the day. Focus can also be a challenge - it's not hard to get distracted by interesting little things along the way and find yourself miles from where you were headed (can anyone say Twitter?). Thirdly, there's the challenge of planning and finding the right amount of planning. It's tempting to form a rough idea of a direction in your mind then pursue it without writing anything down. When you don't need to explain to anyone, it might seem a reasonable path forward. But then you'll find, it's easy to forget (or mis-remember) the chosen path, weeks after you decided on one.

On the pitfalls front, mistakes are less easy to find when your work doesn't have to 'plug in' to someone else's work. As well, our brains are much more happy working 'multi-modally.' That is, not working only in internalized mode, but in others such as speech, written words, images, diagrams. All these other modes of operation allow our memories to be better 'cross-linked,' making our memory and learning more resilient, recallable and less prone to errors. We naturally get these multi-modal crosslinks when we work in teams. We write and publish documents that are shared. We talk in person or on a phone. We stand around and sketch diagrams on white-boards. All these things strengthen our vision of what we are doing, where we are going.

An invaluable tip for managing the work-alone situation is to build in a work-buddy system using simple electronic tools. When your project involves computer work, and you are on the machine all the time anyway, a blog or even a simple text file is a good means to invoke a virtual work-buddy to help you along.

More casual than a workplan, less onerous than a formalized logbook, a work-buddy log can keep you on track, focussed and maintain some continuity from one day to the next.

I don't find it so useful in long term planning. A small, more formal document is still better for that from my experience. Setting long term goals still seems to benefit from gantt-chart-like tools where you can visualize concurrent tasks, and linkages. But for the near- to mid-term, I've worked well with this work-buddy log approach.

Style and Structure.

The most important part of the blog is establishing a simple structure, but simplicity is key. If there are more than four or five elements to the structure, you'll forget them. So what I use is

  1. Dates - they are the backbone of the whole system. So making them standout is important. I use a double underline, because some of logging is done in a text only file (for rapid access). On my online (but private) 'blog' based Work-Buddy log I let the system do the dating for me, so I can concentrate on the rest.
  2. Plans. I make numbered short plan lists whenever I can think of two or more things I should be doing, then I hammer away at that list.
  3. Bugs - I log any bug in my development work with an all-caps BUG: tag so that I can easily find them again.
  4. To-do's - I log any thing I should remember to do, but don't need to do right away, with a TODO: tag. Again, I can find those easy.
  5. Finally, accomplishments. I start lines that highlight an accomplishment with a text arrow '->;' This is a minor but important thing.  It may sound silly but typing that arrow becomes a kind of 'reward' for completion of an item. E.g. a bug fix, a listed goal or a todo item.

With those elements I manage to create a structured place where I can describe my thinking process and work through details of how to move forward. Often, I find that just articulating the makeup of a problem in conversational-toned writing will lead you to a solution.

I get excellent continuity between work sessions by wrapping up my days with a "First thing tomorrow..." instruction to myself.   It's sometimes hard to recall where your mind was as you wrapped up the day, and a verbose instruction about where you want to start your day is very helpful.

My comment about a 'text-only' file is worth highlighting. While in a development environment, I'm working with text files that are computer code, thus having a text-only file in which I'm logging my progress and thoughts is a very easy, light-weight way to keep up the work-buddy system. If I had to switch to another application, or a browser to log things, it might just put enough of an impediment in my path that I wouldn't do it.  Plus a document with fancy titling, styles, margins etc might also be enough of a deterrent. Let alone opening a large behemoth like applications (hello MS Word) before you can start logging.

When working on other things (e.g. web-based projects), I do use the browser based blogging approach.  In a tabbed browser, it's very easy to have one of those tabs be an open blogger session.   A blogging account set to private (so you're not sharing your detailled design details with everyone) is a good way forward.  For some, privacy might not be an issue, and getting occasional comments on your thoughts might prove fruitful (or distracting!).

Which ever way you approach it, the ability to review your recent thoughts, or solidify thoughts enough that you both retain and apply some rigour to them is a very helpful tool when working on large projects by yourself.

Researchinator turns to the work-buddy to see where we left off...

Thursday, February 4, 2010

General Progress

A busy week, with a consulting engagement on one hand, and integrating new features into my desktop code going on simultaneously. On the consultation side, I'm providing review and critique services on funding proposals. The usual challenges there always flummox me. While I meticulously craft my proposals and ensure no questions are left unanswered in my own work, I continue to see people applying for big government bucks who can't be bothered to fill out their proposal to the guidelines. They leave entire sections empty never acknowledge that their might be competitors and don't understand simple concepts like "intellectual property." One applicant seemed to think that IP meant ability of their team to read and think deep thoughts.

On the app side of things, I'm in the midst of a crash-fest with multi-threaded UI control just now. I'm reasonably confident that I'll be able to wrestle this to the ground, but I'd really like to put the development to bed with something stable and roughly competent at meeting design intent so that I can turn the money-chase back on. It feels tantalizingly close, but then it has for about 8wks.

I suspect I need to peg a new date in spring sometime to make some tough decisions, for now though, the intellectual tension is somewhat rewarding and the progress is certainly nice.

Researchinator out...

Monday, January 25, 2010

Ten Requirements for Geek Certification

Have you noticed that everyone is calling themselves a geek now as a badge of some kind?  They are often people who have no business claiming that moniker - good looking, successful celebrities, movie stars, TV personalities with entourages, arts grads with no technical skills.  It seems that if they use the Internet, they feel they can claim it as ticket to geekdom.

I, for one, am outraged - well, slightly perturbed perhaps.  As someone with good geek bone fides myself, I recognize the signs of geek-fakery.  Perhaps because I can dance on both sides of the line, I have gained some insight into our make-up when I see one of my 100% grade A geek friends exhibiting their geek-dentials.

Sure, I talk tech, wear glasses, occasionally write code intensively, and could even competently construct a star-wars vs star trek timeline.  But I also can hide the inner geek and exhibit depth and competence in fine arts, witty banter across gender boundaries, choose quality wine and have a penchant for international travel.

Thus, having occupied both sides of the geek frontier, on different days of the week,  I thought I should speak up, and voice my opinion on some basic requirements for certified geekdom.  Hell, if I had some spare time and cash, I'd start a geek certification authority to ensure that Geek Guild members are not infiltrated by impostors.

So on that topic, here is my list of Ten Requirements for Geek Certification:
A Certified Geek™:

  1. Can explain what "Hello World" means, is, and can demonstrate in more than one language.
  2. Can sort a list of Star Trek characters into categories by series (and list which one's made cross-over appearances)
  3. Owns and has used a hand-held GPS device and have used it while walking 
  4. Has participated in some sort of role playing game 
  5. Can recite by rote several laws of science (e.g. physics, chem, math), and a few equations
  6. Knows what prime numbers are.
  7. Can recite Pi to MORE than 2 decimal places.
  8. Both knows and has written down the words "foo" and "bar" at some point
  9. Has more than three email accounts and more one website
  10. Often launches a sentence beginning with 'Actually...' to clarify a cliché or euphemism heard in casual conversation
I sadly fail on item 4 - so I suppose certification can still be granted with a single miss on the list.

Finally, I should point out that geeks and nerds are separate demographics.  The nerd is often a geek, but nerdliness speaks more to the social awkwardness and lack of fashion sense that are often present in a geek, but do not define them.  Geekiness fundamentally has a technical, information & skills element to it that cannot be faked with ill-fitting clothes and an awkward turn of phrase.

So, sorry, but nerds will have to find their own professional association and certification body, though as Geeks, we will happily admit nerd emissaries at our symposia. 

Friday, January 22, 2010

Approaching Technology

Next week is that big announcement, and the media is starting to notice the new competitive landscape that is emerging.   Funny how the certainty about what's happening becomes clearer as the day approaches. This sort of stuff is living proof that all the crazy conspiracy theories out there could never be true - it's impossible to keep big things quiet.

See this NYTimes article which explores the Amazon vs Apple battle brewing.  I fully expect that the kindle installed base won't be enough to save it.  A year from now, they'll have to introduce a substantially reworked kindle, or it will be kindling.

Meanwhile, I'm slogging away on my project. Django focussed lately, and making some progress.  As nice as it is to have such a powerful framework on my case, complexity breeds complexity.  Trying to keep it under check.

Researchinator continues along the path...

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Evolving Media Landscape and the Zero Dollar Invoice.

I watch the evolving media delivery landscape with interest. Here are a few thoughts to explain why I think we are on the verge of perhaps the third big leap in media. First was the Gutenberg Press and moveable type, next was the Internet, and soon the zero dollar invoice meets media.

The Environment
Unfortunately for media outlets, an economic downturn has come during a media revolution. Print -- and arguably TV-- are faced with a movement to online media that leaves key revenue sources like classified ads and other broad classes of advertising virtually dried up. Finding a new business model to replace the broken one remains a major challenge

Evolving Technology Picture
We have seen the emergence of the Web, blogs and Twitter result in an immediacy of news dissemination with which conventional media cannot compete.  These new forms still suffer from deficiencies in depth, rigour and from a lack of well-defined channelization, but the allure of immediacy is a key draw. Ironically that same fast-breaking immediacy was the basis on which conventional media defined success for many years.  But online content consumers are left to find their own sources in a sea of content, rather than being able to choose from an array of coin-op boxes or flipping through the channel line-up on their remote control.

Enter the tablet or 'slate' device.

Well, to an extent we got the first peek at elements of such a device with the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch. A small device with a high quality display and decent network access gave us a first sense of comfortable, mobile access to the media organs we already preferred on our laptops.  The rapid explosion of apps from the associated AppStore took that one step further, and we were able to disconnect from a browser-based presentation to reader applications designed for dedicated content given to us for free from specific media outlets - the AP Newsreader, the BBC newsreader and many others among them.

The stage is well set for new devices in this category.

The Kindle device emerged along the way as well - providing books from Amazon, but also other content. While I personally thing the design is quite poor, even in its second generation, there has been strong uptake on the device, and it's unique approach to network access is part of that. It has a proprietary pipe rather than an open do-what-ever-I-want-to-do-with-it one.  But the form factor, look and feel are a failure that only tech-hungry early-adopters and less discerning members of the early majority could love.

In a week we will see a new device from the thought leader in this space, Apple.  Presumably - if rumours are to be believed - they will introduce the first devices in their tablet family, purportedly called iSlate - perhaps two devices as big and slightly bigger than a paper-back novel, but as thin as a stack of 6 or 8 credit cards.

More important than the form factor, for print media anyway, is that newspapers and magazines are apparently being given the means to make this their new channel to market.   It couldn't have come at a better time. Apple will control the first entry into a portable, ubiquitous electronic print media marketplace, by delivering an attractive platform with broad appeal.  Expect well over two million units to be in users hands by this time next year.

The Challenge
As if the challenge of introducing a product in this space isn't challenge enough - and Apple knows this from their experience with the Newton a generation ago - there are some substantial challenges for the media outlets themselves.

With merely the features of the iPod Touch, a new iSlate could probably still succeed in the marketplace. But Apple is not often one to rely on an incremental path to product success, and will be looking to a compelling media offering as the iSlate's extra delight, in the same way that the AppStore is the delight behind the iPhone/iPod Touch (Why don't they just rename that thing the iTouch?).

Media Outlets face a challenge in embracing electronic delivery without a product like the iSlate.  Many are making noises about paying for content, but they must surely know that this is untenable in the web browser universe.

It has been well known in the online services and portals world that if you take a web-based offering with say 10Million users/participants/members and introduce a nominal fee-for-use, you will quickly find your portal left with about 150 dedicated users in about a month.

It isn't just the prospect of paying money that will send the users to the nearest competitor, rather it is due to the whole incremental user-cost associated with making payment happen.  A user cannot simply pay as they would dropping a few quarters into a newspaper box and pulling the door open. Online payment comes with a bevy of privacy disclosures and onerous acts of exposure involved. One must not only provide their true identity information - name, address, phone number - but a payment method as well, most likely a credit card.  I won't get off on my pet tangent of true micropayment service business opportunities (I think there is a huge one still waiting) but suffice to say that this step is a substantial impediment.


The New York Times has announced that it will begin to charge for more than occasional content access starting next year.

If they are going to charge for more than occasional use under a conventional browser based universe, how would they do it?  First, they would have to differentiate between occasional and frequent use. There are only two ways to achieve that - with browser cookies that track your visits (and are easily cleared, rendering the approach useless) or with registration. The registration approach has two options: to allow what I'd call 'casual' registration, where you use simply a 'name' and email address, or alternatively to use 'strict' registration, where you have to provide verifiable user information and credit card info. In that latter approach, you would start incurring costs upon exceeding your free usage threshold, in the former you would be pushed into 'payment-info-please' screens upon exceeding such a threshold.

Neither is very appealing, and really the strict approach is the only real option, and even that is rendered useless when we look at how media consumers actually access content. We don't pick an outlet and stick with it, we graze, sometimes over dozens of papers, blogs and other media sites. The prospect of having a strict-registration protocol with each is totally a non-starter. Thus the NYTime plan is untenable, unless we turn back to a now proven Apple model.


The iPhone/iTouch (okay I said it) has succeeded in introducing a solution to the issue of onerous payment systems through an approach known as the 'zero dollar invoice."  This is a commendable achievement, and is likely the element that makes a solution to the new media delivery impasse palatable enough to succeed.

While the NYTimes has declined, in these pre-iSlate days, to explain how there path to pay-for-content will work, it seems crystal clear that only through the clout of an Apple + iSlate would they be able to make it work. We will no doubt see them as a flagship service on the new device.

Their success will absolutely hinge on an Apple controlled payment system to get around that multiple registrations problem.  In the same way Apple's ecosystem for small portable apps revolutionized the mobile industry and left ALL serious competitors trying to make their own AppStores,  the success of portable media is also wrapped around centralized payment.  Media outlets would never get individuals to register for disparate sites all with their own desire to collect your personal information and credit card data.  Without an iSlate solution, they would fail with further demonstration of the 10M to 150 transition effect.

When the iSlate is introduced, your existing iTunes based payment system will be able to send you zero dollar invoices for any of the free print-media content that will be necessary to provide 'trainer' products for iSlate users.  Zero cost media will be vitally important just as free apps on the AppStore were vitally important for iPhone/iTouch users. Until we all get a few zero dollar invoices, we don't totally trust the system, and are wary of our latent credit card info sitting on Apple's servers.

The extra boon for media outlets is that not only do they get revenue through Apple for subscriptions, but surely their content will include ads that look very comfortably like old-style newspaper advertising. I predict success, and furthermore, I think this is why we are quietly seeing a few astute buyers trying to scoop up failing media outlets and local papers at bargain prices before the rush begins.

We are on the verge of a print media revolution. The NYTimes will likely provide free content for a while on whatever we call the new 'AppStore' (NewsStand? BookStore? PrintShop?) They have a bit of a challenge to manage the no-payment-now-but-pay-required-later approach. That's not possible with iTouch Apps. The model there is that you either pay or don't pay as you load the App. There is no transition from free to paying dependant on behaviour (e.g. exceeding a usage threshold). They could achieve it by simply having "NYTimes Lite" and "NYTimes Pro" App-equivalents. But these are implementation details that will work themselves out.

Suffice to say that the end of the dark days for media may well be upon us. Now, if you are a reporter, you just need to get a good grip on your desk to get you through the next 6-12months.

Researchinator is socking away a few dollars in the hopes of being able to read the paper again, without killing trees...