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These days, I often find myself at Step 1 of a very large project. How am I ever going to get it all done?
Let’s think about something different then software for a moment.
Here is my default thought process in the morning:
Alarm goes off. Groggy. I have to exercise. Think about getting up. Must exercise. Ugh, it’s so much work. I’ll just hit snooze one more time. Repeat for an hour.
Here is my new, revised thought process:
Alarm goes off. Don’t hit snooze. Just sit up. Swing feet off the bed. Stand up, put shorts on. Take a piss. Grab a shirt. Put on socks. Put on shoes. Go down stairs. Turn on the treadmill. Start running.
At each step of the process, I’m only thinking about one thing: the next item on my mental list.
Okay, now I’m putting my shoes on. I only have to put my shoes on right now. That is it. That is easy. Okay, time to go down stairs. One foot in front of the other, one step down at a time, that is it.
That process works a whole hell of a lot better than just thinking about everything I have to do. All at once. This isn’t a revelation, I’m sure. But doing it and really clearing your mind of everything except just the next step is something I found took practice.
Now, let’s jump back to software development. This is going to take 6 months and a hundred thousand lines of code. So how are we ever going to get it done?
“File > New Project…”
I’m pleased to announce a new design for this website. In fact, this is the first entirely new design I have made for my personal use in a long, long time.
When working on this redesign, it hit me that I love cars, live in the Motor City (well, in the metro…), have a lifetime subscription to Road & Track, and yet never have included automotive themes in my work. Well, let’s put a stop to that.
I also wanted to do something technically challenging, yet keep a very clean, simple look. I think I hit that. Although, there are a few things I still want to do and maybe a few tweaks here and there to make over time. I am especially in love with the very bottom of the page, taking a different spin on popular footer ideas. The performance on IE 9 isn’t quite what I’d hoped it would be, I’ve been thinking about turning off the side shadows for it. But I’ve long given up on making things perfect for that browser. Suck it IE.
Our first piece of new artwork arrived the other day at the new Brilliant Chemistry office. It’s a layered birch cutout with oil paint for color. Totally awesome. Check out the artist: Mitch McGee.
You have to see it from the side to really appreciate it.
Bonus points if you notice the abnormal placement of key electrical components…
As we are preparing to move into our new office, I’m looking at what my ideal bar would be stocked with. The most welcoming would contain a wide variety of “flavors.” After all, we must make sure visitors of all tastes are satisfied. So here is my first run at it:
- Grey Goose
- Kettle One (My preference, but some want the former)
- Valentine Vodka (Support our locals!)
- Stoli’s Fruity (Insert fruit of the month here)
- Stoli’s Vanilla
- Jack Daniels
- Captain Morgan’s
- Macallan 12
- Macallan 18
- Glenlivet 12
- Johnny Blue
- Bombay Gin
- Noilly Pratt
- El Tesoro Paradiso
- Tres Generaciones Anejo
- Patron Silver (For those who think they like Tequila)
- Kahlua
- Cointraeu
- Chambord
- Champaign (Several bottles)
I’m primarily a Scotch and Tequila kinda guy. Everything else is there for the visitors. What would you add?
Flowz just launched a handy app for checking the wait times at nearby border crossings. It’s puurty.
http://flowz.com/borderlines/
Oh yeah, and it’s free.
Kaleidoscope is a beautiful, relatively new text and image comparison tool for Mac OS X.
When I say beautiful, I mean it has to be the most spectacular, mouth watering application I use in my development workflow.
But it has its problems. <Read on…>
I’ve been a Comcast subscriber since 2001. I have had Comcast at my current residence for almost 4 years, since we moved in. This December, I switched from Comcast to DirecTV. The reasons why are many. <Read on…>
Damnit, this one catches me every time. I setup new cloudserver instances so infrequently that it never hits muscle memory. Open up that damn firewall port 80!
Edit /etc/sysconfig/iptables:
vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables
Add the following line
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT
Save and restart iptables.
service iptables restart
I’m not sure if it is CentOS or Rackspace that is locking down the instances. I do know that I don’t have to do this for my local CentOS machines.
Am I the only one that despises the new request mapping in Spring 3?
Why has everyone gone GaGa over spreading out the URL mappings across dozens, if not hundreds, of files? This is a step BACKWARD people!
There was something extremely convenient about having one place to keep track of all of your URL mappings. Hello Grails, you fantastic crispy UrlMapping.groovy, you!
My love affair with Spring is certainly in the twilight stages.
