May 20, 2008
Books
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Rain Fall
by Barry Eisler
This might be the first novel I’ve read since putting books up on the blog, and well, this is the kind of book I like.
It’s basically a hitman/assassin type novel with the usual twists and turns. I honestly couldn’t put it down, I needed to know what was happening. Not just because it was exciting but because it felt like there was emotion and the characters are built, not just thrown in. It’s based in Japan (mainly) and with all the Judo terminology brought back memories of when I was a Jitsuka. I really enjoyed this, and will be getting more, even though my reading pile is more of a huge stack now! The copy I have has the first chapter of the next book, Blood From Blood (Hard Rain) in it, so now I’ve read that I need more…
If you like Lee Child, Andy McNab style one man armies then you’ll love this.
May 12, 2008
Development, Strategy
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In my previous post I said (right down at the bottom) that the only thing I missed about home working was the social side of going to work. I’ve been thinking about this and I think it has more to do with removal of stimuli (yeah, bear with me).
Working from home is great, I get loads done and a lot of this work (despite being mostly programming work) requires communication. We mostly use chat (or email if anyone’s away from their machine) but there is a sterility in the chat conversations, most of them are one on one aimed at finding something out, and I think this along with familiarity, which may turn to cabin-fever, of spending more time than ever at home (yeah I do go out and I do have my ‘work room’ so I don’t feel like i should constantly be working) is leading to a state where there is no more stimulation.
How to overcome this…
- Meet up with work colleagues, try for once a week (it depends on how remote you are!)
- Have informal group chats on the go as well as the get to the point one to ones
- Don’t forget that the person hasn’t turned into a robot just because you talk to them by computer!
- Use Skype/ googleTalk etc to actually talk, even if it may take longer
- Get out! go see people, I do an art class, photography workshops and go down the pub, everyone needs people! It’s all things I did before I started Home Working but without them I think I’d go mad! make sure you leave the house every day even if it’s just to walk round the block.
- Keep learning, and keep sharing what you you learn.
It’s been nice having the chance to do some home working and I think there are loads of situation where it’s advantages are huge. One idea I had to encourage the social side of work yet keep the ‘home’ ease was to have local centres, you could have a community hall, or a purpose built one, but having a local hub where you can get a coffee, some technical help, access to some of the kit you may not have at home and… people. The hub could be a business centre with all the facilities like meeting rooms or it could just be a glorified network coffee shop or internet cafe. I know that there are some remote trading floors where the traders work from their towns trading floor instead of going in to the City, they still get the social, and the tips! but don’t have to commute (as far), so why not expand this for anyone who doesn’t need to be in the office.
Anyway I’m starting a new job in a few weeks, office based, but with developers working from two locations so the remote working skills and discipline will be handy.
May 6, 2008
Development, Strategy
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As I’ve said in previous posts we’ve been retooling so we can work remotely and more efficiently as a team.
So here’ a bit of feedback on how it’s all been going.
There have obviously been a few teething problems but in general its been great. We were lucky in that our team was all working centrally to start with so we have a good team bond and know each other well.
We’re using Google Apps for business and have transferred our e-mail over to them (after a bit of an MX record phaf) and now that is working nicely, once you get used to the way Google groups your e-mail (no problem to me as I’ve been on gmail for a while but some of the others did think they’d lost email). The Google Docs suite seems to be upgraded frequently and with Google Gears for offline sync is just totally awesome. We do still pull documents down and format them in Word to send out to clients but in Google apps we can all get stuck in and get the content right.
The problems we did have were that our source control was on a local server which we couldn’t make accessible to the whole world, and we didn’t realise that our RDP to our remote server and remote SQL access were locked to our old office IP address… good security not so good for remote working) all easily overcome though.
We’re using Clocking IT for time management and tracking projects which is also going really well, as long as everyone ensures the log their time and keeps their projects up to-date, and with a Google gadget in our Google Apps start page we can see what’s on at all times, great integration.
We have all now moved out of the office and productivity is still high, chat (with logging into gmail) is great just like in the office, but now I don’t have to commute!
What I do miss is the social side, whilst we do have offline chats, it’s not the same as going to make a brew and putting the world to rights, the range of music that people brought in to share (although I suppose we could still do that) and the people at our building who we didn’t actually work with… hmm yeah and sharing a building with a chiropractor was always handy!