I know, i know, i should just shut the hell up, use WordPress’ web admin interface, and quit whining. But i have a big problem when it comes to writing: i’m lazy. Anything that takes more than a few clicks in order to start writing will make me want to fire up my desktop PC and play something. I once bought a desktop blogging client called Ecto (which i still use, from times to times), but i think it’s no longer maintained properly since illumineX acquired it from it’s maker – Adriaaan Tijsseling – in the spring of 2008. And to be honest it never felt quite awesome, complaining all the time about the malformed-ness of my youtube embedded code.

So i was wondering if any of you – the 2 people that actually read my blog – know about a nicer (WP) desktop client for the mac.

In other – completely unrelated – news: I have my own parachute rig now. Here are some pics:

DSCF0866 by nocivus

DSCF0867 by nocivus

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All of them are pretty good hotels, though my preference goes definitely to the Movenpick. Probably because they are located in a place that was stolen from the waters, hence allowing them to build a proper hotel building, and not confined to an old historic, small, city centre edification. This means the rooms are bigger, and the whole place looks – well – newer. It is also closer to the central train station, though further from the city centre. But i still prefer it even though their website is done in Coldfusion. Sorry for the geeky comment but i could not help myself

But this post is not about the hotels; this post is about something i noticed this morning while showering at the Crowne Plaza. Turns out that the shower curtains in that place are made by a company called “SealSkin“. That’s right, seal skin.

Now, i’m no hardcore environmentalist, but i would assume the Plaza (and especially this company) to be a bit more sensitive about company names. Is this a thing from older times, when wearing skin was fashionable, or do typical 4/5 star hotel customers (i’m guessing filthy rich business men) still think like this?

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Here’s what i mean: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/.rss

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Every good developer knows this simple fact: requirements change. They do, there is no point in denying it. And continuing to build on top of a base that was thought for one thing and now needs to do another one is just plain crazy, inevitably. The problem here is that, i believe, non-technical people still think that software is a living thing that keeps evolving and that, no matter what you come up with next, there will always be a way to make it do “just that one more thing that we need”.

So my question is: What is the best way to convince non-technical people that software needs to be killed or heavily re-factored from times to times in order for things to be maintainable and faster to build upon? I can’t help thinking about “Bruce Almighty”s quote when i ask myself the same question: “(BRUCE) So how do you make people love you without affecting free will? (GOD) Welcome to my world, son. If you come up with an answer to that one you let me know!”.

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In the meantime i want to express my sympathy towards Fanta lovers. I feel your pain when it comes to Fanta Lemon

Stay tuned.

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From the top of my head, and playing a devil’s advocate role, I can come up with:

1. Working remotely gives you an excuse not to work;
2. You are more easily distracted;
3. I cannot just go to your desk and discuss something with you;
4. I cannot control what you do.

I’m probably missing some, so feel free to comment on that and I will add them.

Let’s try to dissect all of those, one by one:

1. Working remotely gives you an excuse not to work. Fair enough. You are not present and – as such – can do whatever the hell you want. But you cannot not work. At least if you want to keep your job, that is. The main problem here – I believe – is just a matter of perception. You can keep track of someone’s work just as easily remotely or on the same building. IT people have it especially easy, since their deliverables are typically in the form of source code (it’s pretty easy to track changes).
2. You are more easily distracted. A fairly good point. I’m not going to say it’s not true, especially if you work at home. Your daily life can easily get in the way and it will take an extra amount of effort to keep them separated. But that is not to say that it cannot be done. Moreover, you will eventually find that the person will feel more motivated, even enough to put in more time and/or work outside work hours.
3. I can’t just go to your desk and discuss something with you. This is a no brainer. Ever heard of Skype? MSN? Google Talk? Email? What about Google Wave? Need I say more?
4. I cannot control what you do. Again, see point number 1. In software development you can. It’s pretty easy to keep track of what people are doing, especially if you use agile methodologies (like Scrum) in your daily activities. Get people to meet everyday in a room with Skype and do rounds talking about what was done the day before and what the plan for the day is. It does not get any easier than that, keeping track of people’s work.

So my question is: How come more IT companies are not doing this? It reduces their electricity bills, their water bills, the amount of money spent on office supplies, etc. I could go on, but you get my point.

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Sorry, the Nexus One phone is not available in your country.

Tough luck for all of us poor Europeans who will, as usual, have to wait for the latest gadgets to arrive (from the top of my head both the iphone and the motorola droid were released first in the US, being the latter still to be released in more countries than Germany and the UK).

I think I’ll get an iphone, since Google obviously does not want Euro-scum buying their phone right now

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Just tried to post a comment on a post where the submitter clearly forgot to add the link to the news article. Here’s what I got:

Am I the only one who thinks this is not really helpful to anyone? If any Reddit developer reads this, can you please fix it?

Thanks.

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In any case, one of the things I was hopping for – when I installed it as a plugin for wordpress here on Sugus – was that it would allow me to have open comments (i.e. no captcha) but still protect me from spam. I mean, they do deal with a lot of comments, so they are probably good against spam also, right?. Not really. This morning I checked my comments area and found 120+ spam comments, most in Russian. I am an international kind of guy but I’m pretty sure I don’t know that many Russian speaking people.

Also, for the past month, I have been getting a lot of these spam comments to moderate. It seems that no matter how many I mark as spam there will always be new ones (again, Russian mostly).

But I digress, so my point is: If you are going to make a system to manage comments, make damn sure you figure out clever ways of dealing with spam or no one will ever use them. At least, to be a little constructive here, give the proper tools to the site owners who will moderate the comments, like allowing certain domains from posting comments (for instance, I noticed a lot of these comments came from different accounts at the same Russian email domain).

And this is just my small blog, I can only imagine what bigger blog owners go through. Maybe they don’t use intense debate and rely on captcha like I will once again…

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