Juixe Techknow

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Software Development

• If rhythm is a dancer, then algorithm is a break dancer.
• If you were a Java language reserve word what word would you be? I would be volatile!
• I get personally insulted when I am prompted to prove my humanness with a captcha. It makes me wanna bust a cap-tcha on some webdeveloper!!!
• Is there group think in the development community? Yes, but we build patterns around group think and call it Best Practices.

Team Leadership

• Change your perspective and you can change the world.
• If you don’t have an original idea you can remix existing ideas in original ways!
• Go hard, go home, go big. Pick two.
• If a web site’s end users are not paying customers, then the end users are the product that web site then sell to their advertisers.
• Why do people compensate their inability to communicate with the belief that others just know what they mean, you know what I mean?
• Hype is the food of lemmings.
• The plan was to have no plan, the backup plan was to leave the backup plan at home.
• Most people are natural born followers, it’s human nature.
• The toughest competition doesn’t always come from a competitor trying to build a clone of your product but from market shift in the industry

Product Placement

• In terms of hardware, mobile, and even operating systems Microsoft is anywhere between 3-5 years behind the leader.
• Startups age really fast in Internet time, by my calculation Digg is already and Old Media Company.
• Like what percent of Tumblr’s posts are reblogs and reposts?
• I want JJ Abrams to do a movie about do a remake of The Muppets in an alternate time line like he did for Star Trek.
• I want an iPhone that transforms into an iPad when I need a bigger screen.
• Google is an advertising company with great search technology. Facebook is a virtual share cropping company with great social technology.
• Who collects more personal data and knows more about a given user, Facebook or Google?
• Apple should add a few filters to their iPhone camera app.

Mini Meme Machine

• Scotty and Christopher Walken Mashup: Captain, I’m giving her all’s she got.  She needs more cowbell.
• You know who would be great in a reality television show? A prison gang! Imagine, Real World San Quentin.
• r-EPO, the performance-enhancing drug of champions!
• Monetize common sense because people don’t have it.
• I want to trademark the & char so that I could file a trademark infringement to all law firms with names of the form Dumb Dumber & Dumbest.
• The best part of a bagel is the creme cheese.
• My all time historical hero is Johannes Kepler.
• Your life comes with terms of service, batteries not included, void where prohibited.
• In Silicon Valley, everyone drinks the kool-aid but using bottled artisan water from a 10,000 year old glacier.
• In Silicon Valley, everyone is more interested in their piece of the pie than in the recipe of success.

Quote

• I didn’t mean for it to be released so quickly because I wanted to control peoples’ being offended by it. – Mark Zuckerberg
• I think people might be slightly offended but whatever, maybe there’s a way to control that. – Mark Zuckerberg
• Quitting while you are ahead is not the same thing as quitting. – American Gangster
• Living at home with your parents is a very powerful contraception. – David Willetts
• We should start a new social media web 2.0 holiday: Friend, Fan, and Follower Appreciation Day!!!

This geek gift guide is not so much for geeks and techies but for those that have geeks and techies in their life and need a little help in finding the right geek gift this holiday season. If you want to wow the geek in your life with the latest technology gadget you need to look no further.

The hottest piece of technology this year has been the Apple iPad. The iPad is great for geeks no matter their passion, music, photography, gaming, social media, etc. A geek that travels a lot would enjoy the 3G iPad so that they can always be connected no mater where they are. Whether you give the geek in your life an iPad or if they already have one, there are a ton of great accessories such as the iPad cases. I have been happy with the standard Apple iPad Case but for something more eye catching then consider the DODOcase. I also enjoy this leather portfolio iPad slipcase.

Targus Hughes Leather Portfolio Slipcase

To get the most out of an iPad you need apps, for stocking stuffers you can consider getting a few iTunes gift cards which can be used to purchase apps, music, books, and movies from the iTunes store. I’ve already written regarding my favorite iPad apps.

Not every geek is into Apple products. Fortunately, there are other viable touch-based tablets such as the Google Android powered Archos 9 PC Tablet or the Samsung Galaxy Tab.

For the avid reader in your life, nothing beats the Amazon Kindle. There are other electronic book readers but the Kindle is the most wished-for and most gifted ebook reader. The latest generation of the Kindle is smaller than previous versions and Amazon provides just about every top book in the Kindle format. What I love best about the Amazon Kindle is that your digital library is available to you in just about every device, iPhone, iPad, desktop, Android mobile device, and more.

This holiday season the most sought after family oriented game will not be on the Wii, it will be on the XBox 360. The XBox 360 has a set of games that do no require a controller to play, instead you play them by controlling the game play with your body. The Kinect Sensor has a series of camera’s that capture your body movements and uses that information to control the character in the game. The best game on for the Kinect Sensor has to be Dance Central. Dance Central doesn’t require any controller or pad for you to get down with your dance moves, you just dance in front of you television set.. The other games to look forward to is DJ Hero 2 and Rock Band 3.

Xbox 360 250 GB Kinect Bundle

As everyone already knows, the standard geek uniform is jeans and a t-shirt. Any self respecting geek needs to have some ThinkGeek shirts in his wardrobe. ThinkGeek gear is like Armani Exchange for geeks, binary fashionable and geek chic.

If you need more suggestions, take a look at previous years geek gift guides: The Ultimate Geek Gift Guide 2009, 2008

One of the most interesting technologies right now is Google App Engine. Google App Engine is a framework that runs Google’s cloud. Developer and programmers can program in Java or Python and upload their applications to be hosted in Google’s infrastructure. Google has a generous free plan, but if your application picks up traction you to buy additional bandwidth. Google App Engine has some decent documentation but I also like to follow in a book or two. Here is a short list of books on Google App Engine in hopes to get you started.

• Using Google App Engine
• Beginning Java Google App Engine
• Professional Google App Engine Programming with Java
• Programming Google App Engine: Build and Run Scalable Web Apps on Google’s Infrastructure
• Developing with Google App Engine
• Hello, Android: Introducing Google’s Mobile Development Platform

Dates are the source of a large number of issues that I have had to solve, and that I may have introduced.  When working with an application that is used outside of your office, date problems will propagate.  Many date bugs are like time bombs waiting to strike at the right daylight saving change or leap year.

Date bugs come in different flavors, you have your rendering and parsing bugs where you expect one format and are given a different one.  You have your timezone problems, where you expect Pacific Standard Time (PST) and you are given Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).  I also enjoyed working on daylight saving issues caused when the Bush administration passed a law that changed when the start of daylight savings time occurred in 2007.  In addition to date issues caused by policy change, there are geopolitical issues.  For example, many Caribbean countries don’t change their timezone for daylight savings, they are on Eastern Standard Time (EST) year long.  And I haven’t even mentioned the classic date issue of all time, the Y2K bug.

From time to time I just blast tweets about software development, project planning, team dynamics, or whatever else comes to mind. Here is a synopsis of recent tweets and rants. If you want to follow the conversation follow me at techknow and/or juixe and I’ll be sure to follow back.

Software Development

• Email is not the future of UI. I dislike services that use email for data entry or input device.
• Common source of errors, cut and paste!
• Functional specifications are often times as misinterpreted as the Bible.
• I’m a programmer by day, developer by night, and hacker in between.
• Some features are disguised as bugs.
• One man’s feature is another man’s bug.
• Void is my favorite return type.
• Code Commandment: No code shall PrintStackTrace
• Show me your implementation and I’ll tell you about yourself.
• The words “it does not compute” does not compute, they are not in my default dictionary.
• Get your hack on!
• When a developer says, “pretty much working” it does not mean production quality.
• I’m not sure that a software application larger than “Hello, World” can be bug free.
• If there is a giant red ‘Do Not Press’ or ‘Active Dooms Day Device’ button, someone will press it.
• Every design decision should be a conscious choice, not an accidental assumption.
• Will work for intellectual stimulation.
• If you are a User Generated Content site saying you will censor a topic will only inspire your users to find ways around that.
• What’s your default setting for the Ultimate Bitch Mode setting?

Team Dynamics

• Just like how there are no any stupid questions, there are no any stupid ideas.
• In order to get the most out of crowd sourcing you need to source your crowd.
• Look past people’s past.
• If you are going to shot for the stars you best have a rocket ship.
• When the stars align, shoot for them. And if you shooting for the stars you best bring the big guns!
• When shooting for the stars I bring an Klingon Bird of Prey!
• And on the 8th day God said, “Let there be a TPS report.”
• Life is too short to sell yourself short.
• Don’t think in problems. Dream in solutions.
• Never say maybe.
• The next big thing usually starts as a small idea.
• People will always push your buttons, you need to know how o deactivate those buttons.
• I don’t fear being wrong. I fear not being able to recognize when other people are wrong.
• You can’t delete emails once sent, but you can read them before you send them.
• For every great idea there are hundreds of ways to mess it up.
• Show me the monetization.

Product Placement

• Mark Zuckerborg is a geek super evil privacy villain.
• Boing Boing should just sell out to Rupert Murdoch.
• Panda Express’ logo says, “Gourmet Chinese Food.” Really, Gourmet? Chinese?
• American Apparel might file for bankruptcy, maybe China can buy it out and rename it to Chairman Mao Apparel.
• The company Manpower has a very male chauvinist sounding name.
• If only mother nature would have patented all her innovations, we would all be paying royalties to her.
• Why does it cost $30 for Apple’s iPhone earphones? They like $.50 worth of material and $.25 of labor!
• If you Google for love you will find about 1,930,000,000 results (0.23 seconds). At least one of those results is meant for you.
• Google Finance should have a “I’m Feeling Lucky” button.
• The cake is a lie. Do no evil is a lie.
• The next version of the iPhone should be called ivePhone after it’s designer Jony Ive.
• Upset that I’ve had to purchase yet another iPhone headset!!! At $30 a pop the white earphone are Apple’s razor blade business!

Resume Writing Tips

• Resume Writing Tip: Use a good phone line for a phone interview.
• Resume Writing Tip: At a minimum candidate should be able to figure out our URL by a) clicking the link on job description b) from my email.
• Resume Writing Tip: The minimum research a candidate needs to do is lookup the company website himself prior to interviewing.
• Resume Writing Tip: Ensure your cover letter or email is in one font, it shouldn’t look like you cut and pasted from somewhere else.
• Resume Writing Tip: I would leave out MS Access 2000 out of technical skills. It’s also not necessary to list HTML, DHTML, and HTML5.
• Resume Writing Tip: Proof read your resume and fix obvious typos, you can’t say you detailed oriented if you have basic spelling errors.

Quote

• I want to put a ding in the universe. – Steve Jobs
• The problem with Google is that Eric Schmidt is creepy. – Daring Fireball
• They [People] want Google to tell them what they should be doing next. – Eric Schmidt
• People aren’t ready for the technology revolution that’s going to happen to them. – Eric Schmidt

#ProgrammerPickupLines is a hashtag that will never trend on Twitter. Recently, some lonely nerds tired of playing with their debuggers on a Friday night tried to start a #ProgrammerPickupLines trend on Twitter. These are the type of pickup lines that only another programmer can enjoy, and since programmers came up with them, they are buggy and not what the client (women) want. Below are some of my favorite and perhaps the most desperate programmers pickup lines.

• @InfinitiesLoop: // TODO: YOU #ProgrammerPickupLines :P
• @csharphacker: hmm… I’d like to peek at your socket #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @BenAlabaster: Will you treat me like an object? #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @djg: I am immutable… but I’d change for you #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @lfborjas: for a ruby you wanted, i’d kill a twisted set of pythons #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @baugher: You’re more beautiful than a constant-time sorting algorithm. #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @JoshLessard: You’re so hot, you make me prematurely exit my for-loops. #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @BenAlabaster: If you like to Swing, my whole framework is at your IDisposable #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @JoshLessard: Baby, this will be the best hex you’ve ever had. #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @BenAlabaster: You had me at “Hello World!” #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @JoshLessard: Baby, you’ve got the nicest critical section I’ve ever seen. Ditch these threads and let me in! #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @BenAlabaster: Ooh baby, you’re causing my privates to raise events I didn’t know they had. #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @JoshLessard: I’d like to put my Element in your Vector. #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @rc_dickerson: Are your pants implemented using reflection? Because I can see myself in them. #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @xandercoded: Could I #invoke your #function with my #parameters?! #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @InfinitiesLoop: You implement me. #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @_KYA: Come home with me and I’ll corrupt your heap. #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @akroncdnr: Wanna come back to my place? Maybe issue a little mount or finger, you know, see what happens? #ProgrammerPickupLines
• @SyntaxC4: Are you into Inversion of Control? #ProgrammerPickupLines

Another programmer oriented Twitter trend was Songs in Code, which actually made the Twitter trend hot list back in 2009.