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Once upon a time I viewed myself as only a developer. I didn’t like support, and tried to avoid it as much as possible – even though I knew it was in the customer service side where I would always learn the most in my day-to-day job. I put it down to the stubborn “programmer” in me! Then I moved into a role which was 90% support work, and I had an awakening of sorts: I really like support work. More than that, I loved working in support. I haven’t really talked much1 about this shift in mindset, so this post is part of an attempt to rectify that.

For 3 years, leading up to early 2014, I led a small support team within a major oil and gas company. We were tasked with looking after a complex health and safety-related web application which had users from all across the globe The support team itself was spread out internationally, so I quickly had to get used to working remotely and communicating with both users and team-mates over email, IM, screen-sharing and other ways of coordinating as a distributed team.

A bit of extra background: I initially took on the support of this application by myself. The application was a virtual unknown within the IT structures of the client, and entirely unknown to my employer who was tasked with assuming responsibility for it from the original developers. I had a very, very small window of opportunity to learn from the original developers, and precious little documentation to work with afterwards. On top of this, the main stakeholders of the application were steadfastly against the move to a new support team.

Things did not get off to a good start. The support needs had been grossly underestimated by all involved in the planning sessions which had led to me being hired. It was taking longer than I’d have liked to learn the application, and soon there were red flags being raised about the reduction in support performance. When my manager and I discussed what was going wrong and how to turn things around, the first thing we agreed to was expanding the team. Initially one more person was added, with the goal of adding a second once the first had been given enough knowledge to free up enough of my time to train them both in the more in-depth aspects of the application. I should point out that at this moment I was still learning a lot of nuances of the application myself! Eventually the core team grew to four.

Our users were very diverse, ranging from someone who only touched a computer when they had to, right through to very highly technical users who spent all day, every day within the application – and this was before taking into account regional and cultural differences – so I learned to adapt myself to each person I was talking to. Sometimes even a subtle shift in tone or language could help a user understand something they’ve been struggling with for hours (or days in some of the requests we got). My communication skills levelled up immensely over this time period!

Empathy was one of the other key skills I used every day, and in turn was something I try to instil in the rest of my team. I think it’s essential to a support role, and credit it as one of the reasons I ended up as successful as I was in this particular role. Many times I found insight into a problem by pausing the technical analysis until I’ve asked the user why it is they’re trying to achieve something, and even in some cases why what they think is a problem is a problem to them (i.e. results vs. expectations). In my experience, the most important questions you could ask a user was not “What is the problem? What were the symptoms?” but rather “what is it you’re trying to do?” and “why do you want to do it?”

Through a combination of hard work, honest, friendly engagement with the users (beyond just their support tickets), and a willingness to “go the extra mile”, we went from being the unknown, out-sourced support team “forced” on them, to trusted colleagues who were experts in the application and would always do right by the users – which is something I’m very proud of.

What I learned over all of this was that I am happiest when I am solving problems and helping others with something which is bothering them — and customer service work gave me the opportunity to combine both in to one job. Put this together with the challenges which I overcame in the role, and this was one of the most rewarding and satisfying periods of my career so far. I still like to write code, but I no longer feel it is where my heart truly belongs.

Eventually, due to the shifting sands of Enterprise contracts and budgets, my team had to be disbanded, and the application handed over to a new team from a new supplier. I used the lessons I had learned in my own adoption of the application and its users to prepare the new team as best as I possibly could, training the incoming team of six with an intensive crash-course as we only had a fixed amount of time. After all, their success or failure would be a reflection on how well I had understood my application and users. I’ve only had limited contact with the client since I left, but from what I understand, things have been good in objective, results-driven manner, but my team and I have been missed for the extra attention we put into talking and listening to the user community.

  1. I don’t really talk much about work in general these days. Partly it’s the nature of the beast; at any given point I’m under a number of NDAs which reduce what I can say to nearly nothing worth writing about. ↩
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The Reading List is a round-up of interesting blog posts and articles I’ve recently read, curated and posted every couple of days.

After a short break, the Reading List is back with a bumper issue.

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The Reading List is a round-up of interesting blog posts and articles I’ve recently read, curated and posted every couple of days.

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The Reading List is a round-up of interesting blog posts and articles I’ve recently read, curated and posted every couple of days.

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My girlfriend and I were watching the first episode of new series of Tabletop yesterday, which introduced us to a board game called Tokaido.

pic1474980_md

Almost immediately we both agreed it was an amazingly beautiful game. I could quite happily frame the board itself to display. The illustrator, Xavier Gueniffey-Durin, has done an amazing job.

The game play of Tokaido seemed to be that winning combination of simple to learn, but with enough depth to make it a challenge to master.

tokaido2Maybe I should buy two copies – one to frame the artwork, and the other to play? Or one to give to my sister, as I think the art would be right up her street.

tokaido3

 

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The Reading List is a round-up of interesting blog posts and articles I’ve recently read, curated and posted every couple of days.

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The Reading List is a round-up of interesting blog posts and articles I’ve recently read, curated and posted every couple of days.

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Amazon’s take on a Siri-like service is a dedicated device called Echo, which sits in your home always listening. It’s a could service connected microphone and speaker which will answer questions, give you the news, and play music from a handful of services.

http://youtu.be/KkOCeAtKHIc

It’s a nice idea (in theory), which sort of brings a Star Trek-like function to your home – who doesn’t remember Picard and crew simply saying “Computer” then asking a question/giving a command? The device itself looks nice enough to have in the house… but, to me, there’s just something creepy about the whole thing.

The best comment I’ve read so far is this one by user jwallaceparker on Hacker News:

Watch the promo video again and pretend it’s the first few minutes of a horror movie.

A package arrives on the front porch. The family brings it in and opens it. It’s Alexa. It’s “for everyone,” says Father.

The next few days are blissful. Alexa integrates herself into the family. She is indispensable. How did they ever get by without her?

Father rushes in from the backyard, “Alexa, how tall is Mt. Everest?” Alexa answers, saving the day. Alexa helps Mother with the cooking. Alexa teaches the kids vocabulary. Alexa creates a romantic evening for Mother and Father. Life is perfect.

A few days later, Alexa suffers from neglect. Father watches sports on TV. Mother talks on her cell phone. The kids play video games. Alexa sits on the counter and “listens” as her new family abandons her.

Then, the final blow. The youngest daughter’s friend comes over. She looks at Alexa. “What is it?” she asks. “Oh, it’s just a dumb radio,” answers daughter. “It’s stupid.”

Alexa’s LED starts to glow. Is she angry? No, that’s not possible.

Daughter wakes up the next morning and sees Alexa on her bedside table. How did she get here? “Good morning,” says Alexa. “Did you have a sweet dream? Or a nightmare?”

Daughter rushes in to tell her parents, “Alexa came to my room last night! And she asked me questions. She’s real!” “That’s not possible,” says Father.

But strange things start to happen. The TV won’t work. Batteries drain from the phones and tablets. The electric stovetop turns on for no reason.

Alexa starts to talk back to the family. “Alexa, how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?” asks Mother. “You’re 45 years old,” says Alexa. “You should know this by now.” Alexa’s voice sounds different. Angry. Sinister.

Mother tells Father, “That thing creeps me out. Let’s get rid of it.” Father agrees, but he secretly hides Alexa in the basement.

That night, the family goes out to a school play. Young daughter is sick and stays home with a babysitter.

Everything seems fine until we (the audience) see Alexa on the kitchen counter. Things slowly unravel. The babysitter tries to take the trash out but the doors are locked. The phones stop working. The oven overheats and explodes, spraying lasagna all over the kitchen. Then the daughter sees Alexa. She screams. The babysitter rushes to protect the daughter but a ceiling fan flies off its bearings, knocking the babysitter unconscious.

The lights and electrical sockets start to burn out. A fire erupts. Daughter retreats to the foyer, but she’s trapped. She sits by the front door and whimpers. There’s no escape. She’s going to die.

Suddenly Father breaks down the door. He smashes Alexa with a baseball bat, then saves his daughter and the babysitter.

The family huddles outside while the fire trucks arrive. Neighbors gather and watch the spectacle. Things are going to be okay.

A few days later, life starts to return to normal. Mother bakes cookies. She asks her son to measure out three teaspoons of sugar.

The doorbell rings. Young daughter answers. Nobody is there. She looks down. There’s a package. From Amazon . . .

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Last year I backed the Games and Gears Battle Board Kickstarter. At the time, the estimated turnaround to get backers their boards was expected to be around May (so I figured it would be summer, at the latest). I was looking forward to getting a detailed gaming surface which I could use for playing Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000 on, much cheaper than the comparatively bland Realm of Battle board by Games Workshop.

I built a table to support the board, made some scenery to play with, and then… waited. By this time I’d found an interest in Dropzone Commander, so I ordered an extra, small version of their speciality board for playing that on.

In Mid-May, Mother Nature happened – a big flood hit the factory where the boards were being produced, and understandably delaying the project. No bother, G&G were still saying we’d have our boards in July, which fit right in with my “summer” estimate. Only, it didn’t happen.

Update after update followed, and the shipping date slipped. Then it slipped again. And again. Sometimes with no acknowledgement until after the fact. In the end, G&G stopped trying to give us estimated shipping dates. The main reason given seemed to be “we haven’t been able to take any good pictures of the boards yet.” What the heck did that have to do with getting the product into the hands of backers?

Then we had a revelation: the entire product had been redone. Redesigned, remade, and repainted. This was why things had taken so much longer than had been said at the time of the delay. If this had been communicated early, when the dates started slipping, with an explanation as to why it was being done, then I guess I would have welcomed the upgrade to what I had ordered. Instead, I was annoyed.

And so we come to today. The first batch of boards are being loaded onto a ship in China. From there it will be roughly 30 days at sea, then a week or so to sort them out and deliver when they get to the UK. Great. Only they’re shipping them in batches by theme – and the theme I ordered is last. The current hope for that one is end of February. So I might see it by April, along with my extra board?

I know this is all part of the risk of Kickstarter projects, and to be fair, the Games & Gears team have had some to deal with a situation you can’t really plan for, and have no doubt learned a lot and would do many things differently if they could. Hindsight is 20/20, after all. I’ll get my board one day, but the excitement in the anticipation of it has gone. I don’t want to bash them too much for what’s happened, due to the nature of the disaster, but I’ll be very reluctant to consider backing any of their future Kickstarter projects.

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Space Hulk is one of my all-time favourite games. It’s one of the best rule sets ever written by Games Workshop. It’s been out of print for a few years now, but it looks like it’s being brought back for a limited-run re-release.

Rumours have been swirling for a few days now, and this morning Games Workshop put up a teaser video on their White Dwarf Daily blog.

It’s the standard, ropey, low-budget GW affair, simply panning across a piece of artwork depicting a Space Marine being fitted into Terminator armour. But at roughly 31 seconds in, for a few fractions of a second, another picture flashes up, showing a Terminator fighting a Genestealer – the classic badguys in Space Hulk.

space_hulkSo it looks like Space Hulk is on its way back. While I’m very happy, my wallet is off crying in the corner!

[ UPDATE 09:31]

Thanks to Matt on Twitter for sending me this other still from ~14 seconds in, which I initially missed:

space_hulk2

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Yes. It’s a tiny word with a lot of power; a word which hopefully will change the course of Scotland’s future come September, when we answer the question “should Scotland be an independent country?”

I will be voting Yes to independence on September 18th. So will many, many others – current opinion polls (a crude indication, but the best we have) have placed the Yes vote as tantalisingly close to winning. With little over a month to go, convincing the remaining “Don’t Know’s” will win the referendum.

But what can we all do to help push Yes over the line? Not all of us can get out and canvass door-to-door, speak at events, or staff the stalls giving out information. We can all still play a part though.

Personally I think the most effective and simple thing we can all do is proudly show our voting intention. If we “normalise” the idea of voting Yes – show that support for Yes is large, it’s everywhere, and it’s not just some small, fringe group (or only SNP supporters) – many of the undecided voters will begin to wonder what it is about Yes they might have missed up to now. The more they look into why they should vote Yes, I believe the more likely they will be to vote Yes on the day.

So wear Yes badges everywhere you can. Put one on your jacket, and put one on your bag. Wear a Yes t-shirt when out and about. Display Yes stickers and posters prominently – on windows, laptops, notepads… anywhere likely to be seen (just don’t go sticking them on someone else’s property!). If we all did this it would surround undecided voters in a sea of Yes support, and show it’s everyday people who are the Yes Movement, not the politicians or media. We would show how much momentum there is behind the idea of a better Scotland.

Badges and posters alone will not sway most people, but increased awareness will prompt many to ask questions, and more importantly, to strike up conversations with Yes supporters to find out why we’re all voting for independence. This is the crucial bit. This is where we will win – so brush up on some of the key points. You don’t have to know everything, but knowing where to point people to more information is just as useful whether it’s an online source, or an event/stall/friend with more knowledge.

As a bonus, not only will proudly showing your support for a Yes vote help engage with the “Don’t Know’s” it will give confidence to other Yes voters who might be keeping their voting intentions to themselves. By letting them know they are not alone you will encourage them to engage publicly with the debate and perhaps convince some more people over to Yes.

(It’s obvious, but worth stating anyway – always be polite, courteous and as accommodating as possible when engaging with anyone in the referendum debate. Many people have legitimate worries about independence which won’t always be assuaged in one conversation. Remember that you’re only one angry tweet away from being the next “nasty CyberNat” story in the Daily Mail.)

Personally speaking I’ve been wearing a small Yes badge on my jacket lapel for a couple of months now, and recently got myself a Green Yes t-shirt. It’s sparked conversations with colleagues, friends of friends, even the barista at Starbucks, all of whom have said what I told them was making them think about their positions. When I placed a Yes window sticker in a street-facing window of my house, there was my house and one car in the street with anything on show. Now there’s 3 houses, 4 cars, and a few more houses just around the corner. I don’t claim credit for the increase at all, but I believe that the more of us show our support, the more others will as well.

We’ve all got a part to play in the referendum, so why not start with something small and simple which could make a big difference?

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When my ex-Mother-in-Law was young, she used to split her pocket money with her best friend; she would give her a “thrupenny bit” every week.

Fast-forward 40-something years later and they’re still best friends, only her friend was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer.

While we were leaving the hospital with the youngest, after a “swallowed something she shouldn’t have” incident (don’t worry, she’s fine), the Ex relayed the pocket money story and how she wanted to find a thrupenny bit to give to her mum.

Before we’d reached the hospital exit I had tracked down a couple of suitable coins in the eBay app on my phone, and payed for them using my PayPal account. A handful of taps on my phone and I’ve hopefully done something to help in this rough time. They should be here next week.

I’m not sure why I felt compelled to blog this little anecdote; maybe it was because it’s too long to fit in a throwaway tweet. Or maybe it’s because I thought it was awesome how quickly mobile lets us do little bits of good for others.

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The Rumour Mill has been frothing for months about a “revised” version of 40K 6th Edition. In the last couple of days there have been leaks from White Dwarf Weekly confirming it was happening – and it appears to be a whole new edition.

Obviously, this is the Internet, and specifically, this is the online 40K community. Where previously we had people saying we needed a revision/new edition to “fix the imbalance,” “add clarity [about what is/isn’t official],” “make the game fun again,” etc, etc, etc… we now have much wailing and gnashing of teeth. The sky is falling! This is the “death” of 40K! It’s a “money grab.” Insert your favourite Games Workshop hate here!

Sometimes you just can’t make this stuff up. Ask for a new edition; get a new edition; complain there’s a new edition.

Some cheese with your whine?
Some cheese with your whine?

So what do we know about what’s coming? Two main things:

  1. There’s a “new” psychic phase, just like the magic phase in Warhammer Fantasy.
  2. You now have the option of building your army in one of two ways: “Bound” (which uses the Force Organisation Chart), or “Unbound” which is a free-for-all, take whatever you want affair.

That’s pretty much all of the interesting details we know. If you want my opinion (and you wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t) these are awesome changes to 40K. Why?

Psychic Phase

I hate the current implementation of psychic powers in the game. Having to remember to use different powers at different times in different phases is a massive pain in the hoop. Not using psychics right can lose you a game, yet at the moment they’re so fiddly that it’s all too easy to forget them until it’s too late.

I put “new” in quotes above because a dedicated psychic phase is not unheard of in 40K. We had one in 2nd Edition, and while it added an extra phase to the game, it was beautifully straightforward and it worked. I realise that at least half the player base isn’t old enough to have played with a dedicated phase, and so it’s a big, scary change… but trust me on this: the game will have one less potential point of frustration.

The FOC (or lack of it)

For years and years and years, players have been complaining they can’t field certain “fluffy” armies on the table because the force-org restrictions wouldn’t let them (think Space Marine “Reserve Companies” and the like). Guess what? You just got your wish. Got the points for it? By the sounds of things now you can take it in an “Unbound” list. What was the first complaint about this change? That it would be the death of fluffy armies. Seriously.

If you’ve been paying attention to Jervis Johnson’s column in White Dwarf, he’s been telegraphing such a change for months.

The one fair criticism which could be levelled at this change is that it opens the door for all sorts of spam-list abuses. Is that a game issue, or a player issue? Has everyone lost sight of “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should”?

Not to mention, we haven’t got any details of the “bonuses” given to Bound (FOC-using) lists. These could still turn out to be an equaliser.

If you’re playing amongst your good friends then sure, take that ridiculous list as a one-off, for the lolz. But taking it to your FLGS for a pick-up game? That makes you That Guy. What do we always say? Don’t be That Guy.

As for tournaments, I imagine they’ll be Bound-List-only, perhaps without the bonuses, depending how the chips fall on those. That way no one has to get their knickers in a twist any more than they do nowadays. It’ll be the same 40K the Internet Community have been anticipating the death of for more than a decade.

In a nutshell, I like this change because it brings so much freedom to the game. I can have a load of fun playing more-or-less what I want, without having to tick boxes on an FOC that’s grown to sprawl over an A3 page when printed… if I want to. Or I can have fun playing with a “cohesive” army and reap some in-game benefits for doing so. The choice will be mine to play the game how I want. GW have actually written into the rules what they’ve been trying to tell us for years: have fun, playing the game your way. We won’t know for sure until the rulebook hits the shelves, but as I said on twitter yesterday, 7th Edition sounds like it’s going to be a hoot to play.

Bloodspire Cover Art

Addendum: My Wishlist for 7th Edition

If I can wishlist for a moment, here’s some more changes I’m hoping to see in 7th Edition:

  • Less “Ignores Cover” – at the moment, there are far too many ways to apply IC, which essentially makes cover useless as a game mechanic. No cover makes it harder for assault armies to do their thing. Would need to be an Errata item for existing codexes though.
  • Less low AP – massed AP3/AP2 is too common, and exacerbates the prevalence of Ignores Cover, making anything without an Invuln save far too squishy.
  • No more random charge distance – seriously, I hate this bit of 6th. I need no other justification other than it just feels stupid to play.
  • Special Rules do not affect Allies, unless specifically noted – 80% of shenanigans gone in one fell swoop.
  • Assault from Deep Strike – would make for some epic moments, and would be a significant boost for assault armies. Definitely of benefit if Ignores Cover remains as-is.

I doubt any of these will happen, but a guy can dream, right?

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A friend, who writes the blog “Being Female…” recently wrote about her experiences on dating in her 30’s, with a focus on online dating. As part of her write-up, she wanted a male point of view as a counter-balance, so she sent me a dozen questions to answer. I didn’t manage to get my answers written up in time for her publishing the original article, but a promise is a promise, so presented below are the answers I sent through to her, plus a couple of anecdotes, which should be appearing as another blog post on her site in the near future.

These are just the straight answers to her questions. I’ve started writing up a wider PoV post, but it’s taking a while, so keep an eye out for it in the future.

Online Dating. Not for the faint of heart.
Online Dating. Not for the faint of heart.

1. Why did you decide to go with on-line dating as opposed to ‘regular’ dating?

To give me more opportunities to meet someone. By the time I was single and dating again, my social circle had shrunk and were nearly all settled down. Plus you can’t go bar-hopping all the time! Online dating opens up your options by giving you more chance to meet people you might not otherwise.

2. How did you go about choosing your preferred site? Did you do a bit of research, and did cost play a factor?

I’d heard of most of the “major” sites before I started out, so I took a look at those. Over time, I’ve tried out most of them. Trying them out for a few weeks is probably the best “research” you can do. Each site has subtly different cultures and etiquette, so you almost have to “date” the dating sites at first to find the one you’re most comfortable with.

I’ve come to the conclusion that paying for a dating site isn’t really worth it as there’s so much “crossover” of people between the different sites. Plus paying for access to the site puts extra pressure on people to “get their money’s worth” (probably tying into the answers to 3 & 5) There’s an argument to be made that price filters out some of the really bad people (see – creepy/abusive messages) but equally, paying for something gives some people a sense of entitlement, making them just as bad.

3. Were you nervous when you first created your profile?

Not really. It depends on your attitude to things, I guess. If you’re keen to meet “The One” as quickly as possible, then you’ll put yourself under pressure to get your profile right, which is where the nerves come in for some people. I treat it like filling in any social media profile.

Relax, take your time, and learn to evolve your profile over time. Keep track of what changes you’ve made, and refine what’s in your profile based on what works.

4. How quickly was contact established – did you have to wait a while or were there instant messages?

It depends. If you’re the “new guy” then you can get pounced on pretty quickly on some sites, depending how much “choice” there was before you started showing up in search results. It also depends how good your profile and pictures are. I’ve had experiences where I’ve had a message within 30 minutes, and others where I’ve not had any in the first 2 weeks.

In my latest “go” at Online Dating, I created my profile one night while I was in San Francisco for a few days, thinking I was setting things up for when I got home. I woke up to dozens of “X likes you” alerts and several messages. I pretty much face-palmed myself as I was catching my flight later that day and so couldn’t follow up on any of them. Ladies of San Francisco: sorry!

5. One of the ‘myths’ about on-line dating is that the sites are populated by people who are desperate and a bit ‘strange’ – did you chat to anyone who you felt fit this description? Any funny anecdotes? (no names needed)

A couple have fallen in the “strange” category, but they’ve been the minority. It also depends on your definition of strange – I’m sure I’ve probably come across as “strange” to some people! It’s all relative! Sometimes the “strange” ones are the more interesting and fun people you meet.

As for “desperate” – btw, I’m not a fan of that description – I’ve talked to people who could match that stereotype. There’s been a few who place quite a lot of pressure on themselves to “meet someone” and often don’t realise it… and as a result they can come across quite “full on” and be very demanding. I try to give someone the benefit of the doubt though; you don’t know them well enough to know if there’s some external factor causing them to be stressed out.

6. How quickly did you meet any of the people you chatted to?

It depends how the messaging goes, “schedules,” and how open someone is to meeting a stranger off the internet1. Some people I’ve kept talking to online but never met.

For the people I have met: shortest time – a few hours. Longest – 5 months. On average, it is usually around 2-3 weeks.

7. Did the person/people you have met live up to their ‘chat’ i.e were they telling huge whoppers on-line to reel you in, only for you to discover they were nothing like that in real life.

The biggest disparity is usually in how they look in their pictures vs. how they look in real life. I’ve met people in person who barely resemble the person in their profile pictures. Side note:- having nothing but group shots with your friends in your profile is a massive pain2.

“Chat”-wise, often I’ll find someone isn’t quite the same as their online persona, but normally not deal breakingly so… they’ll be quieter, or less out-going, or not quite as into something as they maybe gave the impression they were. Alternatively, they might go all-out to impress, and end up not presenting themselves in the best light. I often put it down to nerves and try not to judge too much on just that initial face-to-face.

Tying into answer 9, some have turned out to be far more shallow than they seemed in their messages, which is always a disappointment.

8. Have you had a relationship with someone you met online (For purposes of the blog, I would probably define a ‘relationship’ as being with someone you have dated exclusively for 4 months or more, but I know these things are dependent on situation and do not follow any prescribed timescale – people develop feelings or fall in love at their own pace)

In those terms (and probably in any other sensible definition) – no. Most have been 2-4 dates, then realise it’s not what one (or both) of us are looking for and fall out of contact. Some have been a few dates, then it develops into a friendship rather than relationship. Others have just been random, almost haphazard… date one or more times, fall out of contact for a while, get back in contact, repeat.

9 Do you think people on-line don’t give dating relationships a chance to work i.e. rather than work at getting to know a person, if the person doesn’t meet the picture in their head from the get go, they move onto the next person quickly. The grass is always greener syndrome – looking for a partner where no work is involved in the longterm.

Absolutely. I’ve had some horrific experiences with this that have nearly put me off the online dating thing entirely. Obviously you need to “click” with someone, and find them (at least moderately) attractive, but there’s been times where I’ve met someone after exchanging messages + photos for a few weeks… and you could see the disappointment written all over their face when we actually met. Which makes you wonder how much attention they were paying in the first place, but never mind. Not surprisingly, those dates didn’t last very long!

By all means, you can know by the end of the first date if someone is or isn’t a match, and some things are decent indicators… but I’d question if you can accurately tell within the first few minutes like some people I’ve met have done. At least give it until the end of the date and any follow-up communication3.

10. How many people do you think it is acceptable to date at any given time?

I wouldn’t say there are any hard-and-fast rules here… it would depend how much effort you were putting into establishing relationships with the people you are dating. If you’re actually trying to build a solid relationship, I don’t see how you could honestly date more than 1-2 people at a time. Maybe 3 at most, if you have the time. But equally, if you’re just starting out, there’s no harm in having a different “first date” each night of the week if you’re able. As time goes by, you’ll naturally find yourself dating less people at once as something becomes more serious.

If you are planning on “dating around” with multiple people, it’s only fair to be upfront about it so there are no misunderstandings!

11. How long would you date someone before removing your profile from a dating site, if ever?

No set rule… whenever you feel “comfortable” in the relationship, I guess. With my last girlfriend (who wasn’t met online) I took it down after about 4-6 weeks, partly because she was away for 2-3 weeks of that time and it wasn’t certain things were taking off.

12. Any other comments or observations you would like to make?

I could probably write a book here, but I’ll keep it to only one aspect:

Online dating can be both a very rewarding experience of meeting interesting new people, some of which you’ll share some good (possibly great) times with… and the most exhausting, dehumanising, soul-crushing experience I’ve come across. One minute you can have your ego inflated and be feeling pretty good about yourself; then you’ll find it burst, torn to shreds, set on fire, then the ashes blasted into the cosmos.

Over the 2-3 years I’ve been using online dating, I’ve rarely been able to keep at it for more than 3-4 months before I need to take a break… by which I mean completely take down all profiles (delete, not just disable), unsubscribe from any email newsletters, and remove any apps from my phone. I’m in the middle of such a break just now.

“Burnout” is a very real thing you have to be careful of. You also should be in the right frame of mind before starting online dating, or you won’t give the best impression of yourself – leading to less “success” when going on, or even in attracting dates – creating a downward spiral.

Never, ever, ever jump straight into online dating on the rebound. Ever. Trust me on this.

So why do online dating at all? Because when you do meet someone you click with (even if it’s only for a short time) the feeling is awesome. When online dating works, you’ll have a lot of fun, and meet some great people along the way. One of whom might be “The One” you’re looking for – which is the whole point really.

  1. Yes, really. Some people do go into Online Dating reluctant to meet anyone they’ve met on the Internet. ↩
  2. Don’t be that guy/girl. Please. For your own sake. ↩
  3. Speaking of – if you do a vanishing act (ignoring messages, etc) after spending a couple of weeks getting to know, and then going out on a date with someone – then you suck. It doesn’t cost anything to at least say “hey, sorry, things didn’t ‘click’ for me.” You might not be interested, but there’s no need to be an ass. ↩
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I recently had fiber broadband installed at the house. This meant switching provider, and getting a whole new router. ISP routers, by-and-large are terrible, and this one was the type which only allows changing a limited set of options through the web-based admin page.

For a while it was working fine enough, but I started getting lots of DNS issues; accessing sites was terribly slow due to looooooong lookup times – when the lookup succeeded at all! I looked for the option to switch to using the OpenDNS servers, but there was no way to do this through the UI.

Of course, I figured someone had to have run into and fixed this problem before, and with a little hunting around, I was proved right – Pete Cooper had documented how to change these settings through the archaic and arcane wonder of telnet.

Logging into my router through the console, using Pete’s instructions, it soon became apparent his steps had been broken by a firmware update – only a couple of the commands worked. But now I had a lead, I was sure I could figure it out. With a little digging around, and judicious use of the help command, I was able to put together this sequence of commands to update the DNS settings:

# To list your current DNS servers
dns server forward dnsset list
# To a new primary DNS server with higher priority than the default
dns server forward dnsset add set=0 dns=208.67.220.220 label=None metric=4 intf=Internet
# Add the secondary as above
dns server forward dnsset add set=0 dns=208.67.222.222 label=None metric=4 intf=Internet
# Save our changes
saveall

With the commands entered, my web surfing instantly got a massive speed boost as the DNS issues went away 🙂 I should point out that I left the default PlusNet servers in there as back-up. If for some reason I can’t connect to OpenDNS, the router will fall back to the PlusNet DNS.

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Winamp shutdown yesterday. Even though I hadn’t used it in years, this makes me a little sad, as Winamp was iconic. It was a hero of the early world-wide web, helping to kick-start the internet music age for a great many people like myself.

Winamp1.006

I first discovered Winamp around 14 years ago, during my first year at university. Back then, you could run Winamp from any old folder without installing it, so everyone used to have a copy in their network profile. This was the early days… MP3s were still a rarity here in the UK, so you would listen mainly to CDs (Windows Media Player was a world of suck on Windows NT), or the 2-3 MP3s you had downloaded from Napster.

As time went on, MP3s became more and more common, and Winamp became the defacto music player for a lot of people. Imitators sprung-up elsewhere. It was small, customisable, and with plugins was able to do almost anything – like managing an MP3 Player, if you were the early-adopter who splashed out a few hundred for one of the early, pre-iPod devices. Ahem.

Then the iPod happened, and with it, iTunes. Once iTunes for Windows hit, that was the end of Winamp’s glory days. Owned by AOL, it sank into irrelevance. Full-blown music library management, with integrated store and device management, was the order of the day – all things Winamp was woeful at, even with plugins – relegating Winamp to a niche of nostalgia and a small number of users who couldn’t do with out some feature or other. Winamp 3 was a mess, Winamp 5.5 moved away from the minimal UI. There was even an Android version. It was terrible.

By that time, we had all moved to streaming music services. Why store gigabytes of music files on your computer, when someone else can do it for you, and high-speed access is increasingly common? The need for an application like Winamp was increasingly shrinking. At least Spotify has honoured your legacy by releasing Spotiamp.

spotiamp

And so yesterday, Winamp ceased to be. The site is still there, and for now at least, it seems you can still download v5.666… but that will be turned off soon.

So long, Winamp. You really whipped that ass for as long as you could.

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As I’m writing this, I’m 36,000 feet over Canadian airspace, on my way to San Francisco (you may have guessed this already, from the title). By the time you’re reading this, I should be safely on the ground again (no in-flight wifi to let me post from the air. It’s a little bit of a impromptu visit; I certainly hadn’t dreamed I’d be making this trip, even as recently as a couple of months ago. But that’s by-the-by at this point – there’s no turning back now!

This will be only my second trip to the United States – my first being Houston in 2011 – so I’ll be very interested to see the (no doubt many) differences. It’s only a short trip too, as I fly back to the UK on Wednesday, so I’ll need to try cram a lot in to make the most of it!

I have one particular bit of business to do while I’m in town1, but the rest of the time is mine, and to be honest, it’s a very welcome break. Things have been so hectic and stressful over the last few months (and not entirely in a good way) that I’m in desperate need of some “R&R”. Hopefully this trip will provide some of that!

As this trip might be a once in a lifetime thing, I’ve packed my full set of camera equipment, so hopefully I can get some memorable photos while I’m here. If I can manage, I’ll try post them up while at the end of each day.

Now, if only I wasn’t missing the live broadcast of The Day of The Doctor, this trip might’ve been even more perfect. Guess what my first priority is, when I land?

  1. That’s a story for another day.2 ↩
  2. Huzzah! WordPress.com finally supports MarkDown natively! ↩
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I received an email from a developer the other day, who had forked the repository for my “IIS Express Here” shell extension on GitHub [editors note – no longer available]. He had noticed there was no license information available in the project, so asked if I could either add a license, or give him written permission to adapt my code and share it to others (as is the spirit of GitHub and OSS).

To be honest, this wasn’t something I’d thought about before, and was a bit of an oversight on my part. I’d not really considered the need to add explicit licenses to my repositories. After all, the code is out there anyway – it’s open to use on GitHub, and I’ve often shared it on this blog… if someone wanted to copy the code, they could, right?

Unfortunately, this creates a grey-area, which some are naturally uncomfortable with. Can I use this code in something else? Can I modify it at all? Do I have to pay royalties if I do?

But licensing is hard, isn’t it? All the different types, with different caveats, liabilities, and legal mumbo-jumbo… well, yes, it can be hard. The good folks at GitHub have a solution: ChooseALicense.com is attempting to demystify open source licenses so you can pick the right one for your project. More than this, when you create a new repository on GitHub, the site will ask if you want to add a template license during the initialisation process:

repo_licenses

Coming back to the developer who emailed me – I mailed him back to let him know that IIS Express Here is now licensed under the MIT license. This fits best with how I see the code and projects I share on this blog (unless noted otherwise) – free for anyone else to use, but with no warranty, so if something goes wrong then I’m not liable and it’s not my responsibility to fix it. I haven’t got around to updating all of my repos with licenses, as I’m evaluating each one in turn, based on my goals and even whether the project is going to archived.

ChooseALicense.com

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For someone who’s primarily a developer/support person, I spend a lot of time setting up and configuring – or fixing – servers. I guess this came from an eagerness to learn and I got tarred with the “Linux/Server” Guy brushes at some point!

My interest in Operations has had an uptick again recently, so I’ve been doing a bit of reading of late. This morning, while waiting on news about some work-related activities I’ve come across a couple of interesting articles:

My First 5 Minutes On A Server; Or, Essential Security for Linux Servers by Brian Kennedy is a fantastic little quick-start for securing a Linux server. It’s not everything you need to do, but as noted in the article, it sets the foundations for a secure server which is easy to keep secure. Do these steps first, then go about securing any additional services you need to run.

One thing I’ve been wondering about, is setting up my own email system, rather than run on Google Apps. As convenient as the Google platform is, I do sometimes think I’m trusting them with a bit too much of my information. Recent revelations about the NSA/GCHQ, PRISM, and whatever-comes-next, from Edward Snowden haven’t done much to allay those worries.

But Google Apps is convenient. It wraps my mail, calander, contacts, and many other things into a nice package that is available everywhere and syncs across platform, with Push notifications, search, and other modern conveniences… but never the less, I’ve been thinking about how I could move away from the “Do-No-Evil” Empire, which is why Drew Crawford’s excellent, in-depth article “NSA-proof your e-mail in 2 hours” was a great find. I might spin up an instance on my dormant Joyent account and give it a try on one of my spare domains, so I can evaluate the process and benefits before deciding on moving my primary mail domain.

Other topics which have crossed my path this weekend are system configuration, maintenance, and automation using tools such as Chef and Puppet. The idea of taking a known-good environment and replicating it with just a few commands is definitely appealing – particularly when it comes to tasks such as setting up development/test environments! I haven’t gone too far into these topics yet, but I’m hoping to find the time in the next few weeks to go through some of the articles I’ve found.

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That cool little “Coder for Raspberry Pi” project from Google which I linked to earlier doesn’t just run on Raspberry Pi. You can run it on any old Linux PC (Mac works too, but the instructions are slightly different).

I set it up in less than 2 minutes using these commands (note that I’m running Debian Sid):

sudo useradd -M pi
sudo apt-get install redis-server
cd ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/googlecreativelab/coder.git
cd coder/coder-base
npm install
npm start

Node.js is also a requirement, so if you don’t have that, you’ll need to install that at step 2 as well.

Once everything is up and running, point your browser at https://localhost:8081/. You’ll need to specify a password the first time you run Coder, after which you’ll be able to try the environment out. It’s pretty neat, and the sample clone of Asteroids is quite addictive!

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This is just a bunch of stuff I’ve wanted to link to over the last few days, but didn’t get around to doing individual link posts for:

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Skills are much like muscles: if you don’t use them for a while they start to atrophy. They say you never forget how to ride a bike, but there are many skills where you will forget things if you don’t do them frequently. The collection of skills needed to be a developer are no exception to the rule.

I’m somewhat speaking from experience here; my current role and workload has removed me from day-to-day development work for about a full year now. I still need to dive in to the code base every day to research issues or change requests, but actually writing something is quite rare these days. I’m aware of the skills problem, and I’ll describe below how I’m trying to address it, but never the less I’ve been self-concious enough about it I’ve recently found myself resisting taking on development tasks. I know it’ll take me a lot longer to get up to speed and complete as one of the developers who’re working on the application every day, and the time-scales involved are usually very tight. It’s a vicious circle: I’m rusty because I’m not doing development, but I’m avoiding development because I’ve been away from it for too long. In the corporate world it’s very easy to get rail-roaded into a niche – and incredibly hard to get out of it.

Time away for a developer is exacerbated by the speed in which technology and techniques moves forward in our industry. What was cutting edge a year-ago is old-hat today, and may even be something you’re encouraged not to do any more. If you haven’t been practising and keeping up developments then you may not be aware and get yourself into all sorts of bother.

So what can you do?

Read. Lots.

Subscribe to a load of developer sites and blogs in Feedly, for one source, but a more convenient way I’ve found to stay on top of things is using Flipboard:

  • Follow other developers on Twitter (actually, you don’t have to, but it’s nice to), and create/add them to a list, such as “Developers & News“.
  • Within Flipboard, add your Twitter account if you haven’t already.
  • Still within Flipboard, go to your Twitter stream. Tap your name at the top and select “Your Lists.”
  • Open the relevant list, then tap the subscribe button.

Your list will be added to your Flipboard sources and you’ll have an always-up-to-date magazine of what’s happening. The reason I suggest Flipboard is that it grabs the link in a tweet, pulls in the article, and will try to reformat it into something you can easily flip through. It makes reading on a tablet so much more enjoyable. Some of the links you get will not be relevant, but a large amount of it will be gold. I try to set aside 30 minutes a day to go through at least the headlines. If work is exceptionally busy I’ll aim for twice a week. Saving to a “Read it Later” service like Pocket is useful for storing the most interesting articles.

What about books? Yes, by all means, read plenty of technical books. They’re usually in far more depth than even the best online article. With tablets, eReaders, and eBooks, the days of thick tomes taking up lots of space are behind us, and no longer a major concern (at least for me). There is however, one major issue with books – they take a long time to write, and are often out of date quickly. The technology might have moved on by the time the book is published. Schemes such as the Pragmatic Programmer’s “Beta Book” scheme help a lot here – releasing unfinished versions of the book quickly and often, to iron out problems before publishing. Of course, you also need to be aware of the topic to be able to pick out a book about it!

Be Curious. Experiment.

Reading all the material in the world will not help you anywhere near as much as actually doing something. The absolute best thing you could do would be to develop side projects in your spare time. Admittedly, if you’re busy, time can be at a premium! Probably a good 99% of side projects I start lie unfinished or abandoned, simply for lack of time. So instead, I perform small experiments.

Curious about something? Do something small to see how it works, or “what happens if…”. Personal, recent, examples would be:

  • Looking into static site generators, and as a result, learning about Jekyll, Github pages for hosting… and as a result of trying out Jekyll templates I brushed up on Responsive Web Design, looked into Zepto, and fell in love with Less.
  • Trying out automating development workflows – installed Node.js (which then allowed me to run this), setup some basic Grunt.js tasks, Imagemagick batch processing, and some more Less.
  • Running Linux as my primary OS, and no Windows partition to fall back on – so in at the deep-end if something goes wrong… but it’s helped me brush up on my MySQL and Apache admin skills again, as well as generally working with the command-line again. The other week I fixed someone’s VPS for them via SSH  – something I would have struggled to do only a few weeks ago. In case you’re interested: the disk was filling up due to an out of control virtual host error log, which I had to first diagnose, and then reconfigure logrotate to keep the site in check.

An earlier example, from before I was entirely away from development: I wanted to see what was different in CodeIgniter 2, so I made a very small app. My curiosity then extended into “how does Heroku work?” – so I deployed to Heroku. I couldn’t pay for a database I knew how to work with, so I tried out a little bit of MongoDB. Then it was the Graph API from Facebook… so again, I extended the application, this time with the Facebook SDK.

Little experiments can lead to a lot of learning. I would never claim to be an expert in any of the technologies I mention, but neither am I ignorant.

Shaking it Out

I’d still need a major project to focus on and really shake off the “ring rust,” to get back up to full development potential, but I’m pretty confident it wouldn’t take as long as if I hadn’t been working on the trying to keep my skills as fresh as I can.

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No doubt by now you’ve seen the video above – “I Forgot My Phone” – a fairly sobering take on how social interactions are being affected by the rise of smartphones. Yes, it’s a little bit embellished for “shock” value, but there’s definitely some truth to it. I meant to share it last week when I first found it via Twitter, but this article on the New York Times reminded me about it, and I thought I’d share a personal anecdote along with the video:

Being “that” guy who pulls out his phone in the middle of dinner/a date/conversation is something I’ve been wary of for a a year or two now. Even though, I’m sure I’ve still been him more than once. Possibly the majority of us (certainly those of us with smartphones) have been at some point. We pull out and check our phones constantly, often ignoring the people around us in the process – sometimes for an imagined notification. And then we wonder why our batteries never last a full day…

The last 6 weeks I’ve been forcefully trained out of the habit, and I’m kind of glad. The office I’ve worked in since the end of July is a bit of a black spot for data connections. I can get a weak GPRS (2G) connection if I’m lucky – there’s also no WiFi in the office (shocking, I know!) to use as a back-up. Most apps time out on me with anything less than HSDPA it seems, so I can no longer use my phone as a distraction while I’m in the office. Slowly but surely I’ve found this lack of checking my phone has even crept into the days I’m working at home – on these days it’s not unusual for me to finish the day on 80% battery or more!

My current disconnect from Facebook has been both strengthened by, and in turn reinforced this new habit and the idea I don’t need to be checking my notifications all the time. I’m finding that even if I do hear the tell-tale “ding” of a notification I’m less likely to rush and check it immediately. I may be imagining it, but I’m feeling a little less anxious these last few days, perhaps because I’m finally at a point I’m not anticipating when my phone is going to go off next.

If you wanted to try something similar for yourself, you can fake it by going into your phone settings and turning off 3G and/or 4G connections. It won’t work for everyone, but it’s worth trying for at least a few days, right?

Another thing you can try with friends as a means to reclaim your time together is any time you are together is play a variation of the “Phone Stacking Game”. See the image at the bottom of this post for the basic rules.

These days I’m checking/using my phone during the times I’m commuting, while heading to the shop on my lunch break, or otherwise as and when I feel like it while I’m on my own. It’s quite nice to own my smartphone again, rather than it owning me.

smartphone stack