Probably Random

Collaboration

I’ve recently been looking into online collaboration and how we can do this within our business successfully.

We’ve decided to make a short list and try some out.  There’s a lot out there and there are some very strong feelings about them too, I certainly wouldn’t want to get involved in any fight between those for Basecamp and against it for instance, but what I do love is the fact that they are so vocal, it means I can get real insight into peoples dealings with it.

Also gotta say I fell for the shiny new Buzzword from Adobe Labs…. but have since gone back to Google docs, yup, Buzzword certainly looks the part but Google Docs is a better for me ( for example structured documents and more document types available).

Anyway when I get a bit further I’ll let you know how we go, the only way we’re going to be able to find out what’s best is to try them out, and see what’s best for us, then at elast if anyone asks i’ll have a better idea of what may be suitable for them.

Left eyed

What I’ve not ever really thought about during what must be 20 years of Photography is the fact I’m left eyed.

I mean I’ve thought about it, I wear glasses (sometimes) and my left eye is stronger but I just assumed everyone did it, and cameras were poorly designed with winders (old school) or the LCD in the wrong place, in fact it’s just me being right handed and left eyed. It wasn’t until I had this realisation (a couple of days ago now) and got everyone else in the office to shoot off a few frames so I could see how they did it that people did it differently.

obviously a quick web search brings up loads of people who figured this out a while ago.
PhotoEthanography
Science Daily
Left Eyed Right Handed Blog

And Science Made Simple says is that left eyed people would have to shoot left handed. I am right handed and shoot right handed (not very often mind) but when I used to do archery, I would usually shoot right handed right eyed, but when tired would (accidentally) switch to my left, at the range we were working at (not very far!) changing eyes made a huge difference, but in fact seemed to be just about right to move me one target over, so i would still do pretty well just on the wrong target.

Anyway back on the photography side, I reckon it makes little difference to the picture as the camera is monocular, but I’ll never know if the camera is easier to use right eyed, i just can’t seem to do it.

Dragon Dragon Monkey Tiger

All this time I thought I was just a Dragon! turns out theres more than one way of geting your Chinese sign and I’m Dragon Dragon Monkey Tiger.

By the way Chinese New Year is 7th Feb this year (2008)

Awesome beatbox

Not what I’d usually post here but it is truely awesome, and pretty random.
Beatbox cook on YouTube

Talking of which. Which of these is most random 1, 76, 952, 34?
Answers on a postcard.

Shiny things

Technology changes fast, we’d all be bored if it didn’t.  But. Are all the changes necessary? I was reading Magpie Developers and couldn’t agree more, it’s something which has frustrated me frequently.  If it ain’t broke why fix it.  Yes okay so there are some really useful changes, optimisations and the like, but most of my development work is building web apps and really some of the changes in say .net 3.5 are not useful in themselves, i’ll probably never use a lambda in anger but i will use linq and lambda was necessary to make that work.  But I get developers coming in all excited about shiny new stuff which is probably, in itself, not needed in our core day to day work, but I know for a fact they will try and add it… because they can. Stop. make it work. simply, correct, robust.

I’m not a luddite and openly accept change, especially those which make things more simple, easier or faster but you need a context and to be able to show a useful improvement.  If we continually re-invent the wheel then we’re not inventing something new.