October 2008 - Posts
If you happened to catch all of the fuss about Git lately, you might also have heard Linus Torvalds bragging about it (literally bragging). And you might have, like me, dismissed it as another of those linux against the world moments (as a side note: nothing against linux, using ubuntu, freebsd, and osx myself atm.).
Well the win32 native binaries went out not long ago, and i gave it a try, it didn’t take long until Linus Torvalds’ image in my mind jumped a few steps, everything he bragged about was true, Git IS THAT GOOD.
I’m now considering doing what i always planned but never had the guts to do – version my entire /work area, which might include documents, media, _and_ code.
Anyone unfamiliar with Git, its a new open-source distributed versioning system (like bazaar, mercurial), here are some links:
Get it, understand it, remember it, try hosting it here and here.
I’ve been wanting to implement a solution for this problem:
When i’m working on a problem, naturally i can go through gazillion of sites, when the problem is solved, there will be no record of traceback for references for that problem.
namely, if i ever want to solve it again, or re-check it, i will have to do the browser history traceback dance, will not find what i want, and do the research all over again from scratch.
I needed either of these two solutions.
one: add the option to group history entries by a time radius, so that, the group of urls visited '”this afternoon” would be grouped together, maybe draggable to somewhere so i could save it in an email or text under “problem XYZ”.
two: hook something ALOT more powerful than browser history between my browser and sites i visit. something like a subconscious del.icio.us.
Well of the two options i found several solutions to the latter:
1. Google Web History
2. hooeey
Have fun!
I’ve decided to try and polish up aspects of my design knowledge. This included the long overdue read of Emotional Design: Why We Love Or Hate Everyday Things.
Firstly it’s a lightweight book (272pgs), and its written lucidly so I finished reading it in an evening. The author have put out some very respectable ideas IMHO, and overall it is a slightly mind opening text, its worth the time so i’d grade it 4/5.
spoiler alert
One of the things that I liked about his ideas and i’d like to share with, is something that i’ve always known and used but could never tag with the correct title.
He claims good design is built upon visceral, behavioral and reflective attributes. While the first two are obvious (beauty and function) the last one isn’t.
Reflection would be, for example, the ability of a person to socialize using the item you design – you should always put something in that will allow people to socialize with. There is a point designing a car that is both good looking and functional but why not overprice it? (ferrari), why not make it really cute? (mini, beatle), why not make it vulgar/manly (hummer). This is the value of reflective design.
Lately I’ve been managing to read a lot of books. In order to achieve more in less time I’ve tried speed reading, however that doesn’t really work well with technical texts where mostly you need to stop and think about connecting things you’ve learnt.
However its been a long time that I’m using what I would call no-bullshit-reading. In this so called method, I’m impatiently skipping the filler material in pages and visually scan the page for the actually knowledge bits. I never read a whole paragraph – start right in the middle, and if you need - work back or forward. You’d be amazed how much bullshit there is in even the highly respected technical works. I don’t think it is done intentionally. Think about it, when you discover something great, you _have_ to pad it with your own stuff.
Now look at the bolds. This is what I would read in this entire blog post :).
To sum up:
* never start reading at the beginning, never finish at the end.
* always look for the point, skip filler material – there is no need to read about the author’s friend that used X and Y and that’s why I’m showing you Z. just skip to the showing you Z part.
* the key is learning to identify those parts.
I was able to read 3 books in the span of 4 days, total pages well over 1000.
I’ll publish reviews once my opinion solidifies :)