Chris' shared items
The moment we wait for every year is upon us – SXSW has posted the day-by-day, venue-by-venue schedule for the SXSW 2010 Music Festival.
Check it out here.
We’ll continue our pre-coverage of SXSW 2010 by highlighting bands we think are worth your while to check out in Austin if you attend this year.
I've been unhappy with every single piece of software I've ever released. Partly because, like many software developers, I'm a perfectionist. And then, there are inevitably … problems:
- The schedule was too aggressive and too short. We need more time!
- We ran into unforeseen technical problems that forced us to make compromises we are uncomfortable with.
- We had the wrong design, and needed to change it in the middle of development.
- Our team experienced internal friction between team members that we didn't anticipate.
- The customers weren't who we thought they were.
- Communication between the designers, developers, and project team wasn't as efficient as we thought it would be.
- We overestimated how quickly we could learn a new technology.
The list goes on and on. Reasons for failure on a software project are legion.
At the end of the development cycle, you end up with software that is a pale shadow of the shining, glorious monument to software engineering that you envisioned when you started.
It's tempting, at this point, to throw in the towel -- to add more time to the schedule so you can get it right before shipping your software. Because, after all, real developers ship.
I'm here to tell you that this is a mistake.
Yes, you did a ton of things wrong on this project. But you also did a ton of things wrong that you don't know about yet. And there's no other way to find out what those things are until you ship this version and get it in front of users and customers. I think Donald Rumsfeld put it best:
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.
In the face of the inevitable end-of-project blues -- rife with compromises and totally unsatisfying quick fixes and partial soutions -- you could hunker down and lick your wounds. You could regroup and spend a few extra months fixing up this version before releasing it. You might even feel good about yourself for making the hard call to get the engineering right before unleashing yet another buggy, incomplete chunk of software on the world.
Unfortunately, this is an even bigger mistake than shipping a flawed version.
Instead of spending three months fixing up this version in a sterile, isolated lab, you could be spending that same three month period listening to feedback from real live, honest-to-god, annoyingdedicated users of your software. Not the software as you imagined it, and the users as you imagined them, but as they exist in the real world. You can turn around and use that directed, real world feedback to not only fix all the sucky parts of version 1, but spend your whole development budget more efficiently, predicated on hard usage data from your users.
Now, I'm not saying you should release crap. Believe me, we're all perfectionists here. But the real world can be a cruel, unforgiving place for us perfectionists. It's saner to let go and realize that when your software crashes on the rocky shore of the real world, disappointment is inevitable … but fixable! What's important isn't so much the initial state of the software -- in fact, some say if you aren't embarrassed by v1.0 you didn't release it early enough -- but what you do after releasing the software.
The velocity and responsiveness of your team to user feedback will set the tone for your software, far more than any single release ever could. That's what you need to get good at. Not the platonic ideal of shipping mythical, perfect software, but being responsive to your users, to your customers, and demonstrating that through the act of continually improving and refining your software based on their feedback. So to the extent that you're optimizing for near-perfect software releases, you're optimizing for the wrong thing.
There's no question that, for whatever time budget you have, you will end up with better software by releasing as early as practically possible, and then spending the rest of your time iterating rapidly based on real world feedback.
So trust me on this one: even if version 1 sucks, ship it anyway.
| [advertisement] JIRA 4 - Simplify issue tracking for everyone involved. Get started from $10 for 10 users. |
Are you growing tired of playing all those high-framerate first person shooters? Perhaps you long for the days of blocky graphics and text-based play. You’re in luck because Tradewars 2002 is still around. Many of you will remember this 1980’s BBS based game, playing a limited number of turns per day in an effort to rule the galaxy.
The game may be around, but the way you play it has changed drastically. The advent of custom scripts that interface directly with the game system makes this more of a who can write a better script rather than who is better at the game. A hacker’s challenge if you will. Using programs like TWX Proxy or Swath, scripts can be written and executed to perform just about any task you wish. Mapping out the galaxy, automatically trading for profit (cashing), automatically colonizing planets, and much more can all be done automatically. The most advanced script writers have produced advanced team scripts that several people run at once to coordinate team based strategy and hunting scripts that try to anticipate where enemies will end up so they can be ambushed.
There are plenty of resources for learning to play the game, the basics of the scripting languages used, and finding servers to play on. Dust off your coding skills and get down to some ASCII graphic goodness.
I've had an extra busy week this week, and my energy just isn't cooperating. By mid-day yesterday, I was ready to throw a pillow on my laptop and call it a day. It didn't take long to realize I hadn't been eating the right foods for breakfast (egg souffle, anyone?), and I vowed to eat healthier next week.
But how can you focus on health when you're strapped for time? Doesn't healthy food take eons to prepare? Not necessarily. Here are my top five favorite health foods that are quick, convenient, and most of all --- delicious:
1. Banana Oat Bran Muffins
You can find the health-conscious recipe right here, and I'd suggest making a batch on Sunday to last you through the week. They stay super fresh in the refrigerator, and are the perfect snack to grab-and-go on your way out the door.
For a complete breakfast... Add a banana, fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and a bottle of water to go.
Continue reading Top 5 Quick & Healthy DIY Breakfasts
Permalink | Email this | Comments
As huge fans of water rockets, we are worshipping Australian rocketeer George Katz and his Air Command Water Rockets team, who are now launching single-stage soda bottle rockets over 600 feet using three drop-away booster engines that separate, NASA-style, when their thrust is spent. The boosters have upward-pointing pins that slip into rings on the main rocket, so they simply slip back out upon burnout.
Water Rocket with 3 boosters from AirCommand on Vimeo.
To make it work, the team devised a clever launch base with an air manifold that pressurizes all three boosters equally, simultaneously with the main rocket. Air Command's insanely good website has video of the launcher build, DIY instructions for drop-away boosters and all aspects of water rocketry including multi-stage and parachute mechanisms, plus build and flight logs for all kinds of crazy rockets. And their launch videos (from ground and onboard cams) are so awesome we want to build a water rocket Cape Canaveral.
Link.
Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Flying | Digg this!
Regular submitter [Jared Bouck] from Inventgeek.com has sent us this cool project. He wanted to make a fireball cannon, but didn’t want to settle for plain old fireballs.Instead of using a common propane system, he built an alcohol based one so he had a “blank slate” to start with. He then applied some copper chloride to get the desired greens and blues. With all of the fire displays we see, how come we don’t see more colored flames? Check out the overview video after the break.
If you're looking for an easy way to store the manuals you've collected over the years or just want all the online information in one spot, then web site ManualsOnline is for you.
Once you've created your free account, you're ready to set up and compile your manuals. Choose the room, category, brand, product type, and model, and ManualsOnline adds it to your profile. After you're done, you'll have an organized collection of all your household manuals in one easily accessible spot.
Next time you're consulting your manual but still aren't able to stop that VCR from blinking (hey, I've still got one), the site also provides a forum where you can ask for product help from the ManualsOnline community.
But before you go ditching those paper manuals, upload and share any unlisted manuals if you can. Someone, somewhere will be grateful you did. If you like the idea but aren't keen on the site, check out previously mentioned SafeManuals for another take on the same idea.
We've shown you how to learn to play an instrument online in the past, but CNET's Don Reisinger has a great roundup of even more resources for the job, focusing primarily on the guitar.
The guide features several great web sites for polishing your guitar chops, including All Guitar Chords and Chordbook, two solid-looking resources for learning your chords. Reisinger does feature one drumming resource (which also looks really great) called VirtualDrumming if the guitar isn't your instrument of choice. If you've always been eager to teach yourself to play an instrument, both our guide and CNET's suggestions look like good places to start.
Already consider yourself somewhat of an expert on your musical instrument of choice? Let's hear your best tips for getting started in the comments.
[Jared Bouck] is on a roll this week. We just covered his Diamond thermal paste and now he’s got more for us. To celebrate the re design of his website, he has released the plans for the paintball turret. As you may recall, we absolutely loved this design when he originally showed it to us. Though he has had kits available for a while, he has finally put the plans up for download. You can cut your own parts and build it yourself. He mentions that version 2 is coming shortly, we wait with bated breath.
