February 23, 2009
Random, Strategy
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Regurgitate (definition 3 from TheFreeDictionary.com)
3. to reproduce (ideas or facts) without understanding them [Medieval Latin re- back + gurgitare to flood]
Please note… I had an idea here, but it ran in several threads and they didn’t all quite join up.
I read blogs, I read articles, I watch many RSS feeds.
Some people create new stuff but mostly they just regurgitate it. I get the same story from 4 or 5 sources and not one of them has added anything new or original, okay some may have re-written the words but they have not added to the story, they haven’t done any extra research and furthered the cause, they have just passed it on, and sometimes without even adding any attribution to where the story originated! I mean I’ve already read it three times so I know you didn’t write it.
I guess not everyone has a million RSS feeds they watch so some people will only see it once. Twitter seems to be the same, or in fact worse. As a few people post a story the rest clamour to show how up to date they are by passing it on as quickly as they can.
I am worried. Whilst I love the power people now have to create, edit and publish whatever they like whenever they like it I’m just finding more and more that the circle keeps closing. I think this circle will close up even more as everyone starts to ‘life stream’ we’ll end up with a big brother (TV show not 1984… or well both…) where all we do is watch someone watching someone else… until we get bored and stop watching and move up the chain, to watch what the other person was watching… but who’s at the top? and what happens to those that feel they can’t live without being followed. (Well it might not take off and the few that do will be Snowcrash style Gargoyles.)
Take on board other peoples ideas and opinions but don’t just copy! create something new, create something you can be proud of… yes, babies repeat words back when they are learning but they learn pretty quickly to talk for themselves. It’s about reaching that next level, push yourself, learn, read around a bit more, add something of yourself, express your opinion. Make everyone elses life more interesting and re-open the closed loop of inward looking story regurgitation, this is what Editors used to do at the newspapers but now you, dear reader are also the writer, the editor and the publisher you must think more about the other roles. I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it more in the long run if you create your own work and you’ll certainly have more people reading your work, as it will provide them with original insight.
February 13, 2009
Random
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I just read this post
Can’t afford to buy cheap and it really struck a chord with me.
I really liked this opinion but as always I read it with my own interpretation, for which I would add the following caveats.
- For cheap read ‘poor quality’ and for expensive read ‘good quality’
- Do not assume that expensive means good quality.
- I would also add the caveat ‘where you can’, pick strategically, as one commentator said ‘Buy the best you can afford’and in ceratin situations that maywell be the cheapest, in some situations it may be not buying anything! (now that’s sometimes very difficult to do!)
- In software there may well be a free alternative! (in some cases though the same holds true, no-one advertises a design job asking for a GIMP specialist!)
February 12, 2009
Books
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The Moscow Vector, Robert Ludlum & Patrick Larkin
This is an amazing book, the story is gripping and well written. But I think what really got it for me was the closeness to reality, reality now just a few years after the book was written, Russian Invasion of Georgia (bits of it), the alleged poisoning of Ukrainian politicians, the Polonium poisoning… it all fits into place the excitement in the book is increased by current and recent actual events adding to the drama and realism of the story which made it even more difficult to put down. I’ll be reading more in the Covert One series.
Erm… did a Russian Satellite crash into an American one today…
February 12, 2009
Random
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Why does everyone think they are a developer?
On one side I’m annoyed I have been programming for commercially for nearly 10 year (20-25 if you count BASIC on the ZX81 and Commodore PET). So when people come up and say ‘oh I’ll fix that bit of code I wrote a Macro once…’ or ‘I’ve done a bit of PHP I’ll fix your database…’ I can’t help but get riled. Half of me is annoyed, well basically out of egotism I guess, my years of training and effort have just been undermined by a simple,’ I’ll do it myself’. On the other side part of me is amazed at how easy and accessible programming had become and is really pleased to see people being able to do it themselves is great.
However I do wonder about the depth of understanding. In some cases not understanding doesn’t matter you get what you want done and it works, but in other these fundamentals are essential, as the systems get bigger ad have to interact with more other systems then you must understand, and I feel that sometimes the easy of entry to ‘programming’ lulls people into a false sense of security that it is all easy. These people make awful managers and are probably the reason most Government projects fail, they think they know because they wrote a macro once…
I’m not against people giving it a go and I don’t think that you have to be formally trained to be good, some people are naturally gifted (at whatever they do).
I realised last night that this isn’t me isolated as a programmer thinking this. Last night on ‘Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud had similar misgivings (although he expressed them much more eloquently!) about a client who wanted to do a lot of the work the architect would normally do themselves. He thought this was bad and undermined the learning’s of the architect…. but in the end the project went extremely well, perhaps because it meant so much to the client that they put their all into, perhaps because of natural talent… perhaps because these things aren’t as hard or inaccessible as we make out….?
So if you want to write code, go for it in fact whatever you want to do you can, just put your mind to it.
February 5, 2009
Random
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I think everyone is born to be creative, people create in different ways, build, draw, cook, write, and people interpret that creation is in different ways, you must like some music and not others, some pictures and not others, some books… some food… .
Depending on circumstance we will use our creative skills in whatever way seems appropriate in that situation. Frankenstein was just being creative.
For some people the desire to creat is rooted in the end product and the feedback they’ll get, for some it’s in the process and the skills learnt on the way. For some people it starts as being for the joy of creating but turns into feedback driven motivation. I find this is when it becomes less satsfying, I guess the same goes for musicians and artists who ’sell out’ then either give up or rebel and go back to what they enjoy.