Global Nerdy

The Valvolo.com online store carries USB warming kneepads. Here’s the copy from the catalog page:

You can have a pair of USB heating gloves when you feel your hands freeze. You can have a pair of USB heating shoes when you feel your feet freeze. However, you will wonder how about the icy knees? Don’t worry! A pair of USB heating knees can help to keep your feet toasty while you are working near the computer under a chilled environment or in winter time.

As of this writing, they’re going for US$19.99 with $6.00 shipping and handling. Pair it with a Successories inspirational poster and you’ve got the perfect gift for the office suck-up!

[Via Engadget]

One of yesterday’s top stories on Reddit was Michael McDonough’s essay, The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School. Here’s a quick run-down of those top ten things:

1. Talent is one-third of the success equation.
2. 95 percent of any creative profession is shit work.
3. If everything is equally important, then nothing is very important.
4. Don’t over-think a problem.
5. Start with what you know; then remove the unknowns.
6. Don’t forget your goal.
7. When you throw your weight around, you usually fall off balance.
8. The road to hell is paved with good intentions; or, no good deed goes unpunished.
9. It all comes down to output.
10. The rest of the world counts.

Software development is a kissing cousin of engineering (if not an engineering discipline itself), and blends creativity with math and science. That’s why I find that a lot of advice to creative types is also applicable to software developers. Andrés Taylor of ThoughtWorks seems think so, and was inspired by The Top 10 Things They Never Taught Me in Design School to write his own piece titled Top ten things ten years of professional software development has taught me. Here’s his list — all of which I consider sound advice — with some excerpts of his explanations.

1. Object orientation is harder than you think. “t turns out that it’s pretty hard. Ten years later, I’m still learning how to model properly. I wish I spent more time reading up on OO and design patterns. Good modeling skills are worth a lot to every development team.”
2. The difficult part of software development is communication. “And that’s communication with persons, not socket programming. Now and then you do run into a tricky technical problem, but it’s not at all that common. Much more common is misunderstandings between you and the project manager, between you and the customer and finally between you and the other developers. Work on your soft skills.”
3. Learn to say no. “When I started working, I was very eager to please. This meant that I had a hard time saying no to things people asked of me. I worked a lot of overtime, and still didn’t finish everything that was asked of me. The result was disappointment from their side, and almost burning out on my part. If you never say no, your yes is worth very little.”
4. If everything is equally important, then nothing is important. “The business likes to say that all the features are as crucial. They are not. Push back and make them commit. It’s easier if you don’t force them to pick what to do and what not to do. Instead, let them choose what you should do this week. This will let you produce the stuff that brings value first. If all else goes haywire, at least you’ve done that.”
5. Don’t over-think a problem. “I don’t mean to say you shouldn’t design at all, just that the implementation will quickly show me stuff I didn’t think of anyway, so why try to make it perfect? Like Dave Farell says: ‘The devil is in the details, but exorcism is in implementation, not theory.'”
6. Dive really deep into something, but don’t get hung up. “Chris and I spent a lot of time getting into the real deep parts of SQL Server. It was great fun and I learned a lot from it, but after some time I realized that knowing that much didn’t really help me solve the business’ problems.”
7. Learn about the other parts of the software development machine. “It’s really important to be a great developer. But to be a great part of the system that produces software, you need to understand what the rest of the system does. How do the QA people work? What does the project manager do? What drives the business analyst? This knowledge will help you connect with the rest of the people, and will grease interactions with them. Ask the people around you for help in learning more. What books are good? Most people will be flattered that you care, and willingly help you out. A little time on this goes a really long way.”
8. Your colleagues are your best teachers. “A year after I started on my first job, we merged with another company. Suddenly I had a lot of much more talented and experienced people around me. I remember distinctly how this made me feel inferior and stupid…Nowadays, working with great people doesn’t make me feel bad at all. I just feel I have the chance of a lifetime to learn. I ask questions and I try really hard to understand how my colleagues come to the conclusions they do…See your peers as an asset, not competition.”
9. It all comes down to working software. “No matter how cool your algorithms are, no matter how brilliant your database schema is, no matter how fabulous your whatever is, if it doesn’t scratch the clients’ itch, it’s not worth anything.”
10. Some people are assholes. “People that because of something or other are plain old mean. Demeaning bosses. Lying colleagues. Stupid, ignorant customers. Don’t take this too hard. Try to work around them and do what you can to minimize the pain and effort they cause, but don’t blame yourself. As long as you stay honest and do your best, you’ve done your part.”

Photo courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.

Hey, it’s Friday. I can post silly pictures if I want to.

According to this posting at Reddit, the photo below was taken at a Motorola conference. It’s refreshing to see such candor in this type of PowerPoint presentation:

Yeah, this should be screamingly obvious to longtime blogosphere denizens, whether readers or writers, but as George and I like to say, “There’s a lot of value in repeating the obvious.” So in that spirit, I point you to this Bivings Report article, 16 Ways The News Media Can Use Blogs. The 16 ways are:

1. Solicit ideas for coverage.
2. Request feedback on how to shape an editorial product.
3. Host public blogs.
4. Provide ongoing coverage.
5. Foster interaction between journalists and citizens.
6. Cheaply report news about niche interests.
7. Request help from the public on covering a story.
8. Get experts to interact.
9. Get non-journalists to report on their areas of expertise.
10. Provide sneak peaks of upcoming stories.
11. Allow journos to share their interests and passions.
12. Share internal memos and briefings with the public.
13. Defend editorial decisions.
14. Provide case studies for issues of public interest.
15. Share what you’re reading.
16. Publish content that didn’t make it on air or in print.

The article goes into detail and provides examples for each one of these 16 ways.

HotelChatter’s top 5 list of hotels that cater to geeks:

1. Tribeca Grand, New York City. The iStudio rooms — those are the ones whose numbers end in 06 and 16 — are equipped with Apple G5s and enough multimedia production gear to create your own indie film or song. There are Bose SoundDocks for your iPod, or if you’ve forgetten yours, they’ll loan you one, pre-stuffed with (presumably hip) music.
2. Hotel@MIT, Cambridge, MA. I stayed here back in 2003 and loved it. Yes, there’s free WiFi with a strong signal everywhere, but the T1 wired access in the rooms is a dream. Each room has access to the networked printer. The laptop-sized room safes are a bonus. Room art: Scientific American comics in the bathrooms and photos of MIT engineers hard at work and play. I personally recommend this one.
3. Woodlyn Park, New Zealand. Themed rooms: a couple are half-underground, like Hobbit houses, a couple of others are built into a Bristol freighter plane and a few more are inside a 1950s train car.
4. Faena Hotel + Universe, Buenos Aires. A geek chic hotel that’s stylish, yet has geek niceties like a well-placed flat screen (the interior designers took glare into consideration) and good Wifi. Not necessarily a geek hotel, but at least it has nice amenities.
5. Sidi Triss, Tunisia. A geek hotel primarily because it was Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s home in the original Star Wars.
6. Wynn, Las Vegas. No idea why this made the list: yes, it has nice HD TVs and VOIP phones in every room, but that hardly makes it a geek hotel. The true geek hotel in Vegas for the longest time was the Alexis Park Resort, a small casino- and slot machine-free oasis across the street from the Hard Rock Hotel and home to both the DefCon and Black Hat conferences. DefCon has since moved to the Riviera.

For the Star Wars fan who’s already bought all the toys, posters, movies, book and model kits, here’s a set of TIE fighter speakers…