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!

Looking for a Jr. Developer

My company is in need of a junior developer that is interested in building a marketing web site. This is a full time position with benefits. You will have to tackle all of these problems:

• Create a system that allows marketing to change the content on the site
• Create a way for customers to pay us for our software
• Keep the system online

Your main job? Find out what the marketing team wants, and then build what they need.

You need to know how to build a site from scratch. It would be preferred if you knew Ruby and Rails, but if you insist that PHP or Java is better, we will at least talk to you to find out why you are so misguided. Obviously, you need to know HTML and JavaScript. You would also need to be pretty slick with Photoshop and CSS. This is a marketing site after all. We really want you to be into the marketing thing but you need to be a real deal developer. CS degree preferred or some good experience. Last but not least, you need to be a US Citizen.

Why would you want to work with us? Awesome people. Good benefits like medical, dental, 401k. Great work environment. The equipment you need, you can have it. The software you need, you can have that too. More than likely you won't have to ask for it, we probably have it for you already. Oh yeah, and free soda.

If you or someone you know is interested, shoot an email to carl dot fyffe at gmail dot com with "Jr. Developer" in the subject. Include a resume and some screen shots of sites you have built.

Minor detail: this isn't the official job description, just me getting the word out. I will send you the official job description after you send me an email.

Also, you should follow me on Twitter.

Restaurant Alternative

I went to dinner with some friends tonight. Then somehow got hijacked into going to Karaoke night. My friend that was singing was pretty good. But some of the other drunks getting up there were just ruining good music. But that isn't what this post is about. I want a place to hang out and talk with my friends. A place that is loud enough that people can't overhear our conversation but quiet enough that I don't have to yell to be heard or strain to hear my friend sitting across the table from me. I want to be able to drink and eat while not feeling like I am being rushed out of the restaurant. But that is the problem, most restaurants want you to get out as quickly as possible because they aren't making as much money if you are just sitting there. Theoretically, the longer you are there the more you are going to purchase but there gets to be a time where the beers slow down, the food has been consumed, and I just want to sit and chat with my friends. I want a restaurant that charges me for using the space. Let's say $4 per person every 15 minutes. Coffee, Tea and Soda are free. If you order food a multiplier is added for the next 15 minutes. Appetizers are x2.5. Burgers and sandwiches are x2.5. Entres range from x4 to x10. Sides are just x2. The multipliers are additive. Booze is sold the normal way. The goal of this structure is to slow down the meal. Sure, the restaurant would make more money by pushing out more food, but they are still making a nice profit if you are just sitting there consuming soda. This may actually be one of the dumbest ideas I have ever come up with, but if you think you can make it work, let me know. I am interested.

Forums - Good, Bad and Ugly

Over on Branch there is a discussion about "Why forums work". I have asked to be invited to the discussion but they are in beta mode right now so adding my two cents will have to be done the old fashioned way, with my own blog.

One problem with forums is not knowing what's new. You have to visit each topic or forum to find the new posts. No "inbox" per se. So I was glad to see an inbox in Branch.

One of the problems that has begun to plague Stack Overflow is that new questions fall off of the front page quickly. This is a problem for HackerNews as well but in a different way. HackerNews requires users to go hunting for the new posts and doesn't make the new posts visible to the general audience. Posts that the audience may enjoy will go unseen unless you are a celebrity or game the system in some way.

Finding a way to bring new posts to the audiences that can "use them", answer the question in SO and read the article in HN, has to be a key factor to any forum these days. Sometimes it is as easy as an inbox like feature, and for the application I am building that is the way we are going.

One solution would be to notify users of "interesting articles". Learn what users are interested in and then bring new posts to them. The plethora of services trying to do that these days are all trying to use your social network to gain insight, but I think there is more value in just watching what the user does and determining his/her expertise based on actions instead of friends. Something along the lines of NetFlix suggestions but for articles or questions.

I think forums work because their hierarchy is easy to understand. It is organized and takes a minimum amount of moderating to keep things orderly.

Google + Hardware = Not a Bad Idea

Google didn't buy just a phone company. They bought a hardware company whose best known for phones. Google bought a hardware company. Why would Google buy a hardware company?

So much of Google's software business depends on hardware. All of their search engine software sits on hardware. Those servers can now be looked at by a team of engineers. And let's not forget all of the forward looking hardware. Self-driving cars require hardware. Hardware components that need to be miniaturized.

What other projects might those crazy engineers want to launch that requires hardware? Only time will tell. While everyone is worried about Google screwing over their phone partners, I am betting they are working on something else entirely.

Why all the hate for Google Motorola merger?

Is it just me or is the media really pouring sour grapes on the Google Motorola deal? I have seen more negative speculation/news on this purchase than most other deals. Is it just that it is a high profile/stakes play? I mean I understand why the Apple and Microsoft lovers would not be fans of the deal, but really? Do we need an article on the 5 ways the deal could go bad? Or speculation that while the other handset makers are saying they support the deal, in reality they are all suspicious? Because Microsoft is going to be a better partner? More secure platform? More profitable? Lower cost? Easier to customize for your customers?

When Nokia and Microsoft signed their deal most of the media thought the Nokia/Microsoft deal was a desperation move on Nokia's part and cast shadows of doubt on whether or not Microsoft had a viable platform. However when Google buys Motorola to protect themselves from litigation suddenly Microsoft's platform is somehow better? Give me a break.

Why chase the dream?

I have been having a conversation with a good friend about future plans. He is a couple of years ahead of me in experience and dropped some insight that challenged me to answer a question: Why chase the dream of owning your own business?

Growing up I was exposed to the entrepreneurial spirit. My grandfather started his own business while working full time. He ended up passing the business on to my uncle. Was it as big or profitable as the consulting company I work for? Not by a far stretch, but it employed 30-40 people each year and was a good place to work. More importantly though the business was a legacy to me and my family.

As a family we were proud of the business. We were proud of my grandfather and what he had built. My uncle took it to a new level when he took over and we were proud of that too. Pride in accomplishment of the family is what we had. I miss that feeling and that is what I am looking to achieve. I have been on this search for a while without knowing what it was that I was looking for. I knew I was looking to build something that I could call mine, but I didn't know why.

Why are you chasing your dream?

Humorous design decision of the day: Color coding titles

We are replacing a couple of spreadsheets with a web application. One set of spreadsheets had data separated/categorized into "orange section" and "green section". These were the background colors of the data in those sections. This data really belonged in a wiki, but that is another story. Anyway, everyone started referring to the data by color: like "Is that the orange data or the green data?" The users did not want to lose the distinction of the colors because now every one refers to the orange data and the green data instead of their proper names (which are pretty ambiguous). To keep the orange and green I made the background colors of the page names orange and green to match the spreadsheet. When we showed these pages to the customers they were very excited that we managed to incorporate their color scheme into the application. Sometimes it is the small things that matter the most to the customer.

XPRT tweaks

Coming from the HTC EVO to Motorola's XPRT has been eye opening on the differences in Android experience. It is completely different depending on vendor. HTC's Sense is pretty nice. My biggest complaint was the browser hides the notification bar. I really like to see the time while browsing so I know when to stop browsing :-) Everything else about Sense was great. If HTC makes a phone with a physical portrait keyboard I will go back. What I really want is the BlackBerry Torch form, but until HTC provides either of those I am sticking with the XPRT.

So, XPRT has a couple of "features" that aren't all that great. Here are the alternatives that I came up with to solve the "problems" that Blur has.

The calendar doesn't scroll and only shows three appointments. It resizes, sure, but there is so much padding around each event that you can only see five events at a time in a full screen widget. I needed a better calendar so I installed Pure Calendar widget (~$2) which doesn't scroll either but I get between two or three days worth of calendar events.

The next issue was actually more difficult to find a solution for. Sense allows you to create a shortcut to call a person with one tap. So on my home screen I had the faces of my family members and I could just tap the face and boom, phone call made. Blur only allowed you to add a link to the person's contact page, but from there you can tap on their phone number and it will connect you. I feel weird saying this, but that seems like to many taps. I want one tap calling! I won't give you the whole story about finding a solution to this problem, but there were at least three apps installed to solve this problem. I finally settled on One Touch Call/SMS (Free!) which works like a champ.

During my search for calendars and one tap calls I happened to install Launcher Pro Plus (Launcher Pro is free, to get some of the extra features you have to upgrade to Launcher Pro Plus which is ~$3). While playing with LPP I just found the calendar form that I have been searching for (scrolling agenda!) so Pure Calendar is about to get deleted. Anyway, Launcher Pro Plus has a couple of other fun features like a quick launch bar at the bottom that you can load with links to applications or contacts. It has snazzy transitions between home screens and a plethora of other features (including a calendar with an agenda!). One cool feature Blur and LPP shares is the ability to resize widgets. I highly recommend LPP.

Anyway, my XPRT is more to my liking now.

Posting eXPeRT

Yay! This is my first post from my Motorola XPRT! I have had the phone for a week now, and am thrilled to actually have a keyboard again.

I have to say, going from HTC Sence to MotoBlur hasn't been great, but the list of awesome features I gave up for the keyboard continues to grow. Several people expressed concern for my sanity over leaving my top of the line EVO for the XPRT but I assure you all, it is worth it.

The one thing that I wish that it would do but doesn't is autocorrect i and known contractions. The contractions are the worst because I havent learned where single quote lives on this keyboard. I have to search for it every time!

Also, I have enabled the mobile version of this site. It looks great. Thanks Google for adding mobile to Blogger!

Apple vs. Google == Consumer Wins

How quickly we forget. Robert X. Cringely states:

Having been shown the way by Apple, I expect Google to shortly do the same thing, adding automated backup, synchronization and migration to Android and Chrome.

Uh, didn't Google show off new hardware support for doing just that like a month ago? Chrome OS is completely networked. There's no local installation of anything. The next logical step for Google is to enable that capability on a phone. You login to the phone's hardware with your Gmail address and boom, the phone has your phone number, your apps, your music, all ready to go. Log out of that phone and into another one and all of the connections, apps, and data are there again. **Note** This capability doesn't exist, but it is what I believe to be the next logical step forward for Google.

Google and Apple are having some fun. Each are taking turns innovating solutions and improving existing interfaces. Apple's new notifications are an improvement on Google's notifications. Eventually, the two will drive each other to implementations that please their users. For example, I would love to see the notifications get screen realestate on the Android lock screen.

Google has the pieces to compete. It is just a matter of putting them all together in a cohesive way that improves the lives of their users. They have to figure out how to make it seemless. Apple has figured that out and shown their path forward. If Google hasn't already defined a path forward, they will be working on that now.

Apple's way forward is the most integrated and simple solution to a problem many people have. Everything they are doing with software and services sells more hardware. Giving the non-techies avenues to keep their data backed up and access it from anywhere will sell more hardware. The cost of the software is embedded in the hardware. Apple took the cellular industry's strategy, tweaked it, twisted it, and now are profitting like no one else.

From the phone

More than likely this will be my last post from my EVO. I am planning to get the Motorola XPRT and I will be able to post more since it actually has a keyboard.

The future looks bright!

Speed up your counts in Rails 3

Just bumped into this and thought I would share. If you are trying to find the number of records that match two columns in your schema you might do this:

find_all_by_some_column_and_some_other_column('val', 'val2').count

What this does is select all of the data that matches and then does a count in Ruby. This is slower because it retrieves all of the data for every matching record. Whereas if you count like this:

where(:some_column => 'val', :some_other_column => 'val2').count

It will do the count in the database (which databases are really good at) and only return the total number of records that match. If you have 12 records it won't matter much which of the above you use. If you have 12,000 records the second will be incredibly faster.

5 Alternate Uses For GMail

GMail is the ultimate email client. Humorously, the capabilities that are so great for email actually enable several other "features".

1) Note taking - Any time I think of something interesting that I may want to remember, I write myself an email with the subject starting with "howto:". A couple that I visit often are "howto: make SEO work", "howto: deal with meetings" and "howto: amuse users while they are waiting"

2) Bookmarks - I never could get into sites like del.icio.us. Something about going to another site to create a bookmark just didn't make sense. I tried to use the bookmarklets and the browser plugins, but nothing made sense. Then one day I searched for a note that I knew had a link in it because I wanted to find the link. That was when I started sending emails to myself with keywords in the email to help find the link.

3) To do's - To do's are just short lived notes. I almost always delete them after they have been completed. For some reason actual to do lists or to do list software (web based or fat client) just doesn't work for me. I have started to believe that I have to-do-list-ophobia. But if I send myself an email then I am impacting my zero inbox beliefs so getting that to-do email out of my inbox is a priority. Also, I am always checking my email so the to-do is always available, whereas if the to-do list is in software, I have to actively go looking for it. To-do's even have their own tag with the most annoying color combination.

4) File transfer - I can't count the number of times I have used GMail to transfer files from one computer to another. I have emailed songs, books and of course word documents. This "feature" may seem weak, but I would argue it is so strong that you don't even know it is is a feature. You just expect email to send files. Heck, when Gmail came out one of the first things people tried to do with it was put a file system on top of it. Of course everyone is using dropbox for this now, but I still use GMail from time to time.

5) Tell me about your alternate uses for GMail!