Making Decisions

The New York times has a great article about Making Big Decisions. Here's a nice summary:

Don't limit yourself to a single option. Simply by expanding your options you are 66% more likely to view the outcome as a success. The best way to expand your options is to diversify the group of people who have input.

Build stories for your multiple options: One where things go right, one where things go wrong and one where things go weird. Normally we build a single narrative, but by making multiple narratives we have a chance to figure out where things might go wrong.

Last, create a value model. List the values that are important and give them a score from 0 to 1. Then go through your three scenarios and grade them against your values in 1 to 100. Multiply the values to the scenarios and add up, the highest score is the one that fits you best.

4K displays are available

There are a couple of monitors available that have 4K resolution. There are many different 4K specifications currently, but these three are all 3840x2160. First is the affordable, but maybe a bit large, Seiki 39" SE39UY04. The $699 Seiki is a television first, so connecting a computer takes a little bit of hacking, but from reading the reviews, connecting it to a computer is achievable. Going up in price (way up) and down in size (which may not be a bad thing) are the comparably priced and sized Asus PQ321Q and the Igzo PNK321. Both are in the $3500 range and are 31.5" and 32" respectively. If you are looking for a 4K monitor these are the choices you have today.

(Please note the links in this article are affiliate links)

Participation

Last night I got into an elevator carrying one of my daughter's 4 trophies from the beauty pageant she was in. An old man and his wife entered after we did and he gave me a condescending look. Then, he looked at the other trophies being held by my sons and asked, "Was there a trophy give away?"

"My daughter competed in a beauty pageant, these are her trophies."

"Are those all participation trophies? I can't believe they give kids trophies just for participating these days."

"Uh, you don't get the big ones like these for just participating." I replied with a bit of pride and a little annoyance.

The elevator door opened and we went our separate ways. I don't know if he was trying to belittle us or my daughter but I was slightly perturbed by his supposition that my daughter merely participated. She didn't win, but she didn't just participate. My boys and I were carrying a first place trophy for one category, a fourth place trophy in another category, the overall third place trophy and the old man's derisive participation trophy.

Later, after I had forgotten about the old man and his questions, I talked with my daughter about what the weekend meant to her. I cried with pride and she cried with joy. That first place trophy was hard won, with many hours of practice over the last 13 years. Also, coming in third overall was a real accomplishment. There were 75 other young ladies gunning for that overall crown. My daughter was beaten by two older more experienced contestants. Third overall was fantastic. But I wasn't proud of her for those two great accomplishments.

Six months ago when she asked me if she could do the pageant this year I told her no. Financially we could not afford it. We had other family priorities that came before a beauty pageant. She countered with, "what if I pay for it myself." I found out last night that she expected me to say no. She was sure I would say no because she was aware of what the family priorities were. She had a plan and she had her arguments ready. The discussion that night was slightly heated but in the end she convinced me that she could do it. I gave her my blessing that night.

Then last night the picture of why she wanted to participate became more clear. She knew the experience would be one of growth. She had certain things that she wanted to improve. To make those improvements she put herself in a competitive environment that would force her to learn new skills. Skills that she will take with her for the rest of her life.

My daughter's story wasn't the only inspirational one on stage last night. There was one contestant who was obviously smart and confident but in previous years was very timid in front of the microphone. This year she was much improved. She even said that she had finally beaten stage fright. There was the severely handicapped contestant who has struggled through her whole life. But there she was, on stage, defying her handicap and looking beautiful. Each contestant on stage had their own story. It wasn't easy for them to submit themselves to judgement. They were all an inspiration.

The old man was even more of a jerk than he realized. I realize now, on this particular occasion, that participation trophy was the most valuable trophy of all.

The 4K Monitor Race Starts

Dell fires first in the 4k monitor shoot out with the announcement of a 4k monitor Dell Ultrasharp 32. The industry hasn't standardized on a name for 4k yet. Ultra HD is being seen in many articles. You know Apple will use Retina.

Dell says their new monitor will be available in the fourth quarter of 2013. Around the same time as I predict Apple will announce their Retina Display with the Mac Pro.

Display Industry's Squandered Opportunity

I just got an ad from Amazon for monitors, but I didn't look at any of them because I was pretty sure they were all 1080p monitors. This infuriates me because the display industry has wasted an opportunity in the name of standardization. What opportunity was wasted? We should have had higher resolutions 5 years ago.

In 1995 when I bought my first computer it took me an extra paycheck to get a 15" monitor instead of the standard 14" that everyone else was buying. It was a pretty big deal because the 15" had a resolution of 1024x768 whereas the 14" was limited to 800x600.

Since that time I have been upgrading my monitor to bigger screens and higher resolutions, because I knew that screen real estate was key to productivity. If I had money to spend on upgrading equipment, the first thing I looked at was the monitor or video card.

By 1999 I was using two monitors, a 19" and a 21", both with a resolution of 1280x1024 and they were both CRTs so they took up a lot of space on my desk. It was only a few months ago when I gave up my second monitor so my son could have one, that I have had a single monitor on my desk.
Around 2000 my office started upgrading to flat panels. This was about the time that HDTV started getting mentioned in the BestBuy ads. We got 20" flat panels that had great resolution, 1600x1200. I was in heaven. My next job was the same. Bigger flat panels and more pixels.

Then the wide screens started showing up and the race for more pixels pretty much stopped. The display makers figured out that not only would consumers settle for 1920x1080 (or 1080p), but they would also think that they were getting a good deal because the television makers were telling them that resolution was the best.

Then Apple came along with their 30" Cinema display. The resolution was at 2560x1600 and it was beautiful. Dell followed with their own 30" but that resolution never made it down to smaller screens. Apple would eventually release a 27" 2560x1440 screen for their iMac line, but that was as far as the industry would go.

The race for more pixels died. All of the display makers were happy with 1080p and Apple happily had the top end to themselves. The normal progression was for the resolution to be compacted to fit into smaller and smaller screens and then the bigger screens would start to have more resolution. Our video cards are faster than ever, and yet 2560x1600 is the best that you can buy for $1000.

The next 1080p will be called 4k (4096x2160). 4k displays should have been available 5 years ago. Everyone should be sporting a 4k monitor on their desk right now, but the television makers made it easy for all the monitor makers to stop at 1080p. Instead of more pixels the screen the industry got side tracked on 3D. Consumers got conned into thinking 1080p was the best. You can get 1080p on a 4" cell phone now, but good luck finding more resolution for your desktop at a good price.

Now things are about to change. There are two players who are going to bring 4k onto the desktop.
The first is a little company named Seiki. It is offering 4k televisions for low prices. I wanted to buy a 39" 4k to use as a monitor since it was only $699. (Buy it from Amazon here: Seiki Digital SE39UY04 39-Inch 4K Ultra HD 120Hz LED TV Full disclosure, that is an affiliate link). Forget watching TV, I want more room for my computing. The Seiki has a resolution of 3840x2160 which is more screen real estate than ever before.

The second company is Apple. Apple will lead the rest of the industry into 4k. They dropped a hint during the announcement of the MacPro. That hint can be seen in the product information for the MacPro. What is this hint? The MacPro will support up to 3 (three!!) 4K monitors. None of the press mentioned the monitors. When Apple announces the release of the MacPro I am betting there will be a new Retina Display to go with it. That Retina Display will be a 4k display that will look fantastic when powered by the new MacPro. Dell and all of the display companies will hurry to make a similar device. They will be playing catchup yet again.

I don't know why the industry doesn't move forward. I don't know why it waits on Apple. Any of the display companies could release a 4k monitor tomorrow and rake in the cash. Gamers, movie makers, photographers and programmers will all buy. I say, restart the pixel races. In the mean time, I am waiting on the Retina Displays.

Defeating Writer's Block

Writer's Block. You have experienced it at least once in your life. If you write often, you have experienced it more than once.

I have had a long bout of Writer's Block. More than a month of staring at the screen and not being able to execute. No creativity. No learning. No value added to the world. Tragedy.

Having Writer's Block was breaking my heart and ultimately breaking my bank account. I had to get out of the rut. I tried many things but continued to fail.

What ultimately got me out of failure mode and back onto a productive track was learned from the movie Finding Forrester.

Just to start typing. If that doesn't work, find someone else's work, and start typing their work until you find your own words.

I had a task. I needed to build something. I stared at my screen for three days. Nothing. I told my wife I had to fix the problem. Luckily, what I had to build had been built before. I just needed to implement it for our system. The pattern was there. While trying to get out of Writer's Block last month, I attacked a problem and copy-pasted the example code. I changed a couple of values, but I didn't understand it. I was still in failure mode. I was still blocked.

As I sat looking at the example I considered copy-pasting again, but I knew that would not work. I remembered the scene from Finding Forrester. "The first key to writing, is to write, not to think."

So this time I skipped copy and paste. I typed it in. Inefficient? Yes, very. But something was different this time. Something had changed. Knowledge and understanding were swooshing around my brain like smoke from a fire. Instead of disappearing into the air, the knowledge-smoke was solidifying. Almost in reverse. The smoke became fire, and then became wood. Solid knowledge. Productivity. Nothing really new was created, it was still just a copy with a couple of changes to make it work for my purposes. But the act of writing got me over the hump.

The creativity is coming back, slowly. I am writing code again and my productivity is greater than zero. I have defeated Writer's Block. So can you.

Fear of code

Have you ever opened up a code base, looked at it, and known that it was a complete train wreck? Not only was it undocumented, it didn't have unit tests either? Your goal is to make a change. But every where you look you find nice little corners of craziness that if changed, will have unforeseen consequences.

The worst part of the code base, is that you wrote it last week. Or two months ago.

Sure, you have learned new things since then, but this isn't the code you wrote when you were just starting out, or three years ago. This is the code you wrote last month. And now you want to go back and kill two-month-ago-you for not following best practices by documenting the code and writing unit tests.

The best way to fix this problem is to start writing unit tests now. Know that two-month-from-now-you will want to throttle now-you if those tests aren't written. It doesn't matter that the code is trivial. You don't need 100% coverage. You know the parts that are messy. You know the parts that are easily broken. Write tests for those at least.

For the love of two-month-from-now-you... write the tests!