currently interested in awesomeness and how to create it

Fitness for geeks: an annual review of the Stronglifts 5×5 program

If you are the prototypical geek, you’ve probably only seen the inside of a gym once in the 2nd week after Christmas. That was when the shame of the extra pounds gained over the holidays momentarily overpowered your will to spend time doing more useful things, such as producing Ruby code.

I have been there myself. Once you hit 30, however, your monitor-focused lifestyle can start exacting its toll on your health and well being, which is what happened to me in the summer of 2009.

Having developed a severe back pain, I was unable to complete my daily commute using the Prague public transport without gnashing my teeth in pain as I stood in the metro wagon. During our family vacation in Italy, we had to stop every 200 meters on our walk through Bologna as I had to sit down and shake off the pain. The pain had become intense and had not subsided even when I laid down to sleep.

One day I could no longer stand the sense of humiliation such ailment brings and started shopping for solutions. Physical therapy was one. And the therapist suggested I develop some back muscle to fight the root causes of my pain, which was obviously a by-product of my sedentary lifestyle.

I had been an on-and-off visitor to the gym since my teens but if I were to count the “on” days, they were outnumbered by the “off” days by a huge margin. You see, I don’t really enjoy exercising, though I do like the hormonal rush you receive after a good workout.

Looking for ways to make the exercise fun and effective so that I wouldn’t give it up after bringing the pain to bearable levels, I looked around the web for inspiration. It was then when I discovered the Stronglifts 5×5 program.

Long story short, it has cured my back pain completely after one month, I haven’t been ill once, and when I do occasionally catch a common cold, it’s gone in two three days tops.

I think that the appeal of Stronglifts for me was its simplicity and focus. It’s a weight-lifting program that’s designed to make you stronger. You alternate two workouts, which means no more wasting time deciding what exercise to do next. You plan your progress weeks ahead as you are only adding 2.5kg of iron each time. And, since you only do free weights, you no longer compete with other amateurs for the use of machines. Oh yes, free weights are one of key ingredients to success in this program.

Now, let me say that I have re-visited the SL website after a long time and I do not particularly enjoy its direct-marketing copy. Nor do I enjoy the fact that you can no longer download the ebook freely. You now have to sign up and wait until Mehdi releases a new batch of PDFs sometime this year (as if distributing a PDF carried any distribution costs!) This is bullshit; I’d much rather pay, say, $15 without having to get on the mailing list.

Perhaps I am missing something but this is a serious flaw of the program, one that does nevertheless nothing to stop you from jumping on board and progressing from a weak geek to a strong and fit one.

It has done wonders for me in the 12+ months that I’ve been doing it. I’ve gained about 10kg of muscle, which is actually a lot less than you can do; I am a smoker, and I’ve had trouble keeping my diet straight (I’ve only added breakfast to my menu this month).

It just works and you don’t have to necessarily become a body-builder in the process; just the increased fitness and strengthened immunity is a fantastic outcome. So yes, you can keep spending most of your day in your IDE and only invest 3 hours of your time every week to insure the well-being of your inner code monkey.

I am not associated with the proprietors of Stronglifts 5×5 website in any way and have not received any compensation of any kind (just that so we are clear). I am just that happy with what it has done for me and thought I should share.

January 27, 2011 | Filed Under General | 12 Comments 

Don’t throw that mock-up away

Are “throw-away deliverables” such as requirements, mock-ups, or use cases a waste of effort? Yes, said Ryan Singer of 37 signals as he illustrated their design process at this year’s WebExpo conference in Prague.

Is such advice applicable to people who do not work at 37 signals?

If you’ve worked for a corporate client, you’ll know that on any given software project, more paperwork is generated than actual code. Paperwork that has no value on its own. Would it make sense, then, to go lean and go from sketch notes directly to HTML / code?

Remember, we’re not talking about a startup project. Your team has 20 members and 50 different stakeholders. Get them build the thing now, no specs, just communication and craftsmanship.

I’ll say that even with the best people money can buy you won’t deliver.

The value of “throw-away deliverables” becomes apparent when you realize people have trouble imagining software work. It’s near impossible to visualize a complete application in your head unless and until you have taken several intermediate steps – and created a number of throw-aways in the process.

These intermediate steps are (roughly in that order but not necessarily so):

  1. Business requirements and Use Cases (what the thing does)
  2. Wireframes, mock-ups (how it looks)
  3. Technical specs (how it’s going to be built)

Visit Scott Sehlhorst’s series on requirements for a detailed information on how good requirements make better projects. Suffice to say, if you don’t say what you want, chances are you will not get anything or you will get something else than what you want.

Even if you and your team can read your customer’s mind, however, requirements still have a tremendous value for the people who write them.

Say it’s you who’s writing them. It opens your mind as you explore the problem domain and forces you to focus and express yourself clearly. Instead of saying, make me an app that processes invoices, which is a very lazy way of putting it, you’ll think about each action that has to be performed for an invoices to be processed, and in that process discover many, many requirements that would otherwise have gone unsaid – and, therefore, un-implemented.

Mock-ups, and product visualizations in general, are complementary to written requirements in that they illustrate, verify, and complement them. Most people are visual and a conceptual mock-up will let them think in terms of user interactions, instead of just objects and results. Graphic models alone can help create an app that does not just solve a customer’s problem but does it efficiently and perhaps with an added aesthetic flavor as well.

Then there’s the element of time.

For the sake of the argument, let’s stipulate your superb A team of ninjas and rock stars have read the customer’s mind and built a perfect app for your customer. A year passes by and you part ways with this customer. Then, a B team of ninjas steps in to continue your good work. Except, they are not telepaths and have nothing to go on except your source code. Your former customer has not documented their requirements and thrown those napkins away a long time ago.

Baaam! Good luck navigating this mess! (not that it’s your problem anymore but you could just as easily become a B team in another example)

As you see a well-produced set of ‘throw-away deliverables’ can help all parties involved in a software project. Yes, they are not valuable per se, just like a blueprint of your dream house isn’t. Now, would you try building it without it?

I will say that I envy 37s who can work this way. And there may be many other teams who are doing so, and maybe you can, too. The mundane, boring, and oft-criticized way of ‘getting there’ with a paper trail in your wake is, however, still the way for many more teams and projects and will continue to be for as long as making software is a hard, unpredictable process with uncertain results.

September 27, 2010 | Filed Under General, Software | 2 Comments 

Mobile 2.0 looks pretty darn sexy

Pretty cool presentation from Rudy de Waele about some of the upcoming trends in Mobile:

Mobile Social Contextual Applications & Services

The future can’t come fast enough.

May 4, 2009 | Filed Under General, Links and Quotes, Mobile, Web | Comments Off 

Give feedback to Playground, get a coupon!

As Daniel suggested in the comments, I am opening up a public feedback channel at Getsatisfaction.com:

http://getsatisfaction.com/colladeo

Not only I’ll be thrilled to hear from you, prospective customers and supporters, but I’ll also be handing out coupon codes for the best / most useful suggestions. How’s that for a customer-driven approach?

(Sure, the service is free for now, but not for much longer!)

March 2, 2009 | Filed Under General | Comments Off 

Why hide on the web

Is there a surefire way of protecting your privacy on the web? The quick answer: no. The somehow longer answer: it depends.

Even if you’ve embraced the idea of transparency, whether because you think it has merit or because you gave up, you still may feel uneasy about Google’s data-mining powers. And not just Google’s; everybody and their sister can run a robust dedicated server for a couple hundred dollars, and if their application is popular, you can bet it is so because the proprietor has a good grasp of visitor tracking.

Google et al are mining customer data to make up for the lack of knowledge they can’t possibly have: your living context. Whatever you type into the search box represents your idea or request that you are making at that time, and its aggregated history creates a portrait that might represent you fairly well. But – it’s in the past. There’s a limit to what predictive analytics can do with past data.

And do customers want their providers to know their living context? Sure, some fork over a lot of personal data in exchange for deals of questionable value (like the CZK100 coupon some operators offer to PAYG customers by way of compensation for their names and addresses); others choose the opposite approach and use tools such as Tor or TrackMeNot that either hide or obfuscate your trail on the web.

I happen to believe that a (hypothetical for now) VRM infrastructure would alleviate the need of businesses to operate massive data stores when their business isn’t IT at all; by removing guesswork from the relationships and letting customers signal very precisely what they want. What I believe or not is of questionable value, however; this infrastructure doesn’t exist yet.

Paradoxically, though, the best way to minimize intrusion is to be as open as possible. If you have an online persona (blog, Twitter account, etc.), why not make it a true representation of who you are? There are proven benefits to that; starting with your career but not ending there. Instead of hiding, put out something you’ve created that’s of real value to other people. Create and share.

The need for privacy (not just) on the web is real. Many people (dissidents in oppressed countries, children) have a genuine need to protect their presence and activities on the web. For the rest of us, though, I suggest letting go of the paranoia and only protecting what is absolutely worth protecting. What you type into Google may or may not fall into that category. Most often it won’t.

Invest the time and effort you’d spend there into something valuable that you don’t want to hide but show and share instead.

February 1, 2009 | Filed Under General | Comments Off 

End VRM debates now

Is VRM primarily about companies ceding control to customers? Or about flipping the current segmentation model on its head and remaking the economy in a way where the customer initiates every transaction?

That these questions are being asked doesn’t mean VRM is poorly defined; anyone who has mined through the endless debates at the ProjectVRM mailing list should know. The problem isn’t definition or a lack thereof; it’s implementation. We’ve grown accustomed to ideas quickly gaining shape; thanks to an ever-growing pool of RAD frameworks and toolkits. VRM has been stuck in the debate club for too long. Now that people outside the club are peeking in, they better see something real soon.

The Mine! project could provide this long-overdue proof of VRM’s viability, as well as give guidance to people interested in starting their own VRM projects. Its adoption will provide a useful signal as to whether there’s sufficient demand for VRM solutions on the customer side.

I am wary of debating VRM in the open when there’s nothing substantial to back up its claims. Now that the CRM guys have caught up, it’s imperative that the talk moves from the library to the workshop. It would be unfortunate if the VRM idea got misunderstood, misinterpreted, and misused before it had its chance to even demonstrate how it works.

January 31, 2009 | Filed Under General | Comments Off 

links for 2008-10-01

  • Cloud computing is a trap, warns GNU founder
    The money quote: “The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion.” I agree to some point – locking into a cloud provider is no different than locking into Oracle / SAP contract. We need a mechanism to ensure that our data stays ours no matter who the provider is at the moment.
  • Mobile Startup Case Studies at mTrends – mobile media lifestyle trends – m-trends.org
    Why is everybody still making another photo sharing app after another? Are there any other use cases for mobile? It shouldn’t take a credit crisis for us to start getting serious. Can’t wait for Web 3.0 (apps with value AND a pricelist) to come.
  • The Business of Software – Offering free editions
    Interesting discussion, esp. for anyone trying to make a dime by selling software in the economy of “free”. I am strongly convinced that we’ll be seeing less “free” in the very near future. Nothing trumps “value for money”.
  • Ditching the Semantic Web?
    Perhaps. The problem of this (and many other lofty ideas) is that they haven’t been inspired by a real, dire need of actual people. But then, ideas and ideals do sometimes generate real, actual needs. Pick your side.

October 2, 2008 | Filed Under General | Comments Off 

Unsupported customer

So I hear Apple is now blogging to calm its customers who are none too happy about MobileMe flaws.

Apple? Blogging? Is the sun still rising from the east?

Apparently Firefox 3 isn’t a good enough browser for me to see it for myself. Clicking repeatedly on “Continue” had no effect – this is the only page I could access.

It’s been long since I’ve been discriminated against by a web site, mostly because all the major browsers now support all the features you can imagine, so discrimination makes no sense anymore. This reminded me of the days when companies assumed I’d install software just so that I could see their web site.

In 1999, I might have bothered.

July 27, 2008 | Filed Under General | Comments Off 

Indeed

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May 28, 2008 | Filed Under General | Comments Off