Will Knott

I’m not the type to fill in those “what type of X are you” surveys, but when Sean McNamara wrote about his programmer personality type I thought I’d give it a shot. The output is similar to the Myers-Briggs Personality Test but I think the questions are a little too simplistic.

Anyway here are the results of my programmer personality test.

Your programmer personality type is:

DLTB

You’re a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money.

–Will here. The alternative to a doer is the planner. I will plan but sometimes a prototype is needed to make sure that you are doing the right thing. Personally I’d do after I make sure the requirements are in place. And that’s just the prototype that’s willing to be changed. I suspect I’m right on the edge of the two states in this case.

You like coding at a Low level.
You’re from the old school of programming and believe that you should have an intimate relationship with the computer. You don’t mind juggling registers around and spending hours getting a 5% performance increase in an algorithm.

– I’m comfortable with high level coding and scripting but that last 5% is a bit on the mark. There is an old quote which goes “Art is never finished, its just abandoned”. The same is almost true of software. The almost is because software has a “next version”. Getting something working out there is one if the basics of rapid prototyping. Technology changes, requirements change. Having said that, there is a point when a new feature shouldn’t go in, but become a new tool. Keep an eye on that.

You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it’s parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.

– I like working with people. Solo works for me when I’m deep in a function, doing that 5%. The rest of the time I like to be able to bounce ideas. Software needn’t be lonely.

Besides, I do believe in code reviews. You tend to be too close to the code to see something is missing or wrong based on the reqs. Other eyes make sense. That way you can ensure the comments match the code if nothing else, see below.

You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We’re not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

– This is a mix of a learned and an acquired taste. Write a piece of un-commented code. Leave it alone for six months (or six days). Then come back and look at it. Unless you’ve written very accurate function names and variable names, the code will take a while to sink in. Its better explaining in the code (as comments) what you want it to do, in case someone else thinks its meant to do different, and how it works. Its the team programming thing mixed with the big bus theory (which roughly goes as “Splat! Oh noes, that’s the only one who can fix the code”.) And remember to change the description if you change the functionality of the code.

Its also that if you are indispensable, you can’t be promoted.

If you are a coder, or a tech person who has to write at least one script, give the test a shot yourself.

I’m waiting for Ikea Dublin to open. OK, not waiting, but making some plans. So I keep an eye on the Ikea Hacker blog.

And today, this shows up.

The Good Vibrations table was created by Tim G Taylor as part of an art exhibition.

• Materials:
• one Lack side-table top,
• four ‘ultra-smooth lite-up multi-speed simulators”,
• one book ‘Great Railway Journeys of the World’.

The idea would be to have a traveling table at the exhibition, but it stayed in place. Rattling.

Obviously the choice of dildo is important. It has to be rather hard (ahem) to hold up the the weight of the table. But somehow the sight of the flexible ones, flapping about, trying to go around the floor would be amusing. Maybe tongues would be better (a telephone table to get tongues wagging!). Also the table being considered a “Lack” despite its clear endowment means that the artist is a very happy man. Something like this should win the “Filthy Butt Fun Award” from Maxi.

But I think I could go one better (even if I get weird looks from the TOG guys).

You see, one of the most popular hacks for Ikea products, is to make a multi-station charger for your phone, MP3 player, laptop etc.

Well why not a battery recharger.

After all the legs need something to keep going.

Maybe I should apply for a business idea grant. Is there a business to be made designing furniture like this? After all I can see an excellent horizontal Saint Andrew’s Cross being made out of four Norden benches and an Oddvar stool. Or would something like that be considered blasphemy?

take care,
and insert the batteries correctly,
Will Knott

Every so often you discover that some programmers are cool.

I don’t mean in the really skilled (can write a million euro application in 10 lines of code) but actually cool.

For example Luis be Bethencourt Guimerá one of the presenters at OSSBarcamp. No only is he a talented coder and software designer (who worked on the forthcoming Ubuntu release), but he also wrote his own VJ software (being released in the Jaunty Jackalope release of Ubuntu Studio) and digital DJ software, complete with intuitive interface, to help his gigging around the world.

That is cool! I’ll cover more on this later.

This OSS Barcamp was less like most other Barcamps I’ve been to in that the schedule was locked down in advance. It made an interesting change, but it didn’t stave off everyone’s technical difficulties.

OSS Barcamp has its worthy side too. Éibhear Ó hAnluain took the opportunity of a number of skilled and focused minds to look at “How to present a political party’s FLOSS-friendly IT policy to the electorate” or rather, what are the benefits to the country for using free and open source software. What I loved about this talk was actually Enrico Zini and the impact that open source software had on the Italian political scene and its civil service.

The lightening talks were fun, I missed part of James Larkin’s “Intro to CSS Frameworks”, but there should be a video of his talk (and I’m sure he’ll release his slides). One other thing which stood out is the effort to translate or localize Ubuntu to Irish. If you are a native speaker, talk to them.

I’m also fascinated by the formation of TÓG, hackerspaces in Dublin. In the same way that co-working has benefits, I can see similar benefits with co-hacking. And folks, this is the old style of hacking as in making things work, work beter, or creating something new out of other products. Not cracking which is breaking in to things. Think more of an organised “voiding your warranty”.

Due to the lighting talks I ended up missing David Coallier’s “Get Ready for web 3.0 talk”

Now, back to Luis.

First off watch this video.

Some RSS readers may need to click through to see the video

Looks pretty good. Not too fancy and suits the song.

Now just think that this video was created with

• one $160.00 disposable pocket video camera
• one batch of Free Software, most of which is in Studio Ubuntu
• two hours of shooting
• four hours of production

Cheap? And good looking too.

And then there is “Big Buck Bunny” created by the open source Blender tool. Now it took a long time to put together, but the Peach Movie Project Team include tutorials on how they did it.

Just remember kids; software is an art as well as a science. And artist in one field tends to have skills in other fileds.

Take care, and enjoy the short movie below,

Some RSS readers may need to click through to see the video

Thanks to Laura Czajkowski and Jaime Hemmett for putting the whole day together.

Will Knott

If you are looking for me tomorrow, I’ll be at the OSS Bar Camp in Kevin Street, Dublin (with my badge bag, makes me easy to spot I suppose)

Before you go to a Twestival, how should you keep an eye out for your friends off Twitter? Well, why not wear your Twitter friends? (yes that does sound like a very bad superhero team).

Wear their faces on your chest. (eewww) OK, pictures of their faces. Better? Or have their mug on your mug.

Walter Higgins at Sxoop (pronounced Skoop, or Scoop) is a image manipulation software developer for a a while now. The headlined Pixenate, an online photo editor, is integrated on many sites worldwide. He also has a history of making image manipulation tools for Twitter. He’s responsible for all the Santa hats this Christmas, and he’s brought out something new, the Twitter Mosaic.

You tell it your Twitter user name (no need for a password) and it generates a mosaic of all your twitter friends or followers. A big image. This can be turned into Mugs, T-Shirts and Bags.

All of this is made possible because of Web2.0 and the philosophy of open APIs (both Twitter’s and Zazzle’s). What has been done recently at http://sxoop.com/twitter/ simply wouldn’t have been possible a few short years ago. Needless to say, these APIs are being battered at the moment. Walter has more details on how to get things running quickly too and the end products seem to be reviewed very well.

So you can create a physical social (media) object and drink to the health of your fellow Tweeters from a Twitter Mosaic mug  (hopefully full of  clean water thanks to Charity:Water) and wear your friends in public.

The Twitter Mosaic is indeed the beneficiary of a Tuesday Push, so soon after demoing it at the Cork Open Coffee Club. And yes I got to know Walter through the Open Coffee movement. However its a cool idea, a great set of products and it since to see someone in Ireland making money in there times. And making money while Twitter is still trying out how.

take care,

Will Knott

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sxoop Technologies turn a buck on Twitter (patphelan.net)
• Tuesday Push was Sxoop (web2ireland.org)
• Twitter Mosaic: Using the long tail to make money from Twitter (antonmannering.com)
• My Twitter Mug is here – Merry Christmas to me! (u-g-h.com)
• Tuesday Push: Twitter Mosaic from Sxoop Technologies (ewritecork.com)
• Push it: Twitter Mosaic from Sxoop Technologies (cjwriting.com)

Get your twitter mosaic here.

“How does it work?”

“Magic”

We all know that technology isn’t magic, but as Robin Blandford points out, few customers care about how it works. They just want to see things working. And if its a mash-up, then the data sources don’t matter as long as it works.

but I’m a tinkerer, and I care. I just don’t always have the time to tinker. So has anyone gotten the “Tweet-to-speech” Yahoo Pipe mash-up working. I know I’m missing something, but I can’t see what I should do with it. Do I need a grazr account to hear my tweets?

And given I mentioned mash-ups, GHP has been busy with Spliced Krispies, so here is a little memory of old Saturday mornings, with added Supremes.

take care,
Will Knott

“Iarnród Éireann (IÉ) feels that it wouldn’t be in the public or the company’s best interest to install the current wireless technologies on its fleet for customer use due to the limited lifespan of said technologies.” — Iarnród Éireann’s own F.A.Q.

Image via Wikipedia

Now a state body such as Iarnród Éireann (or Irish Rail) if you prefer) being behind the times when it comes to technology is not too surprising, but given that there are huge drops in not only 3G broadband but GSM coverage along the main Irish rail routes the company has a potential killing on their hands.

Even if a current mobile broadband carrier offered to install the local technology on even their First Class (City Gold) carriages and you’ll find that the number of business users would increase. I mean, you have just given a very valid incentive to pay for a “City Gold” ticket! Remember that “cloud computing” is an option used by a lot of companies. For that to work an internet connection is needed. On a almost three hour train trip from Dublin – Cork you can get a lot done. A similar time (usually with a change of train) exists on a Dublin – Limerick trip. Sligo takes even longer. When you have a captive audience, use them.

What would you pay for a “single trip” password to use the internet connection on the train? Either sell the “scratch card” style access for the rest of the train or offer it in the same way that you used to have smoking carriages.

As for the five year limit… you CAN have multiple wireless services on the same train. You are missing out on a chance to make a lot of money Irish Rail (and the mobile carriers are missing out by by leaving “coverage holes” on the route).

Buck up boys. Buck up.
Will Knott

The idea struck when Carl availed of a cheap flight to Cork and took his Sat Nav GPS device with him. He also took a camera so there will be more photobloging soon. Given that I was going to meet him a few days later at TechLudd he lent me the device for the trip.

Image by Will Knott via Pix.ie

This Cork-Dublin trip was the first time I had actually used a GPS Satellite Navigation system the way it was intended and I’m wondering if I might suggest a few things (and this might warrant giving away a business model, but I think only Apple could use it. If so, I want one). If this already exists… tell me about it please.

Driving along with both a Sat Nav and an MP3 player (full of podcasts) talking at me it occurred to me that having an integrated unit which would pause the audio to give directions would be wonderful. I think it could work in much the same way that the iPhone or some Nokia devices pause playback when a telephone call comes through the device; integrating a hands free phone would be useful for pedestrian use around a city anyway.

In fact it might make sense to integrate a hands free phone in to the device (see the Nokia and Apple angle folks?). Given the cost of these things, and how tempting they are to thieves, it makes sense to have a reason to put it in your pocket.

However the nasty part of owning a Sat Nav is not the annoying voice (it can be fixed) but, as Adam explains, the cost of the maps. So how about incremental updates via “the cloud” and wireless access?

Imagine the scenario. You want to drive from Cork (say for the Learning Festival this fortnight) to the Ice Cream Ireland book launch at the end of April. Later to the 3D Camp event in Limerick in June. Then to the Open Coffee Club BBQ in Terryglass, Co. Tipperary in either June or July. And maybe even a quick trip to London in July, or San Francisco in April. If you want up-to-date Sat Nav maps you would have to check for an update, and buy a map for the entire country (if its available). But what about an incremental update.

In April you plan your trip from its starting point (Cork) to your destination (Killarney) and the Sat Nav calculated both the route, and what map data is available. It could then use that calculated route to check if there has been an update in that area (say 20 miles within the calculated route) by checking in to the “iTunsMaps” or “KlubNocia” online store and see if there is an incremental map update (or 2) and offer to sell you the maps updates on the calculated route for 1.99 (be it Dollars or Euro).

You are not getting the whole map, but a single route. Similar to buying a single track and not the album. And you are choosing to update the route based on the age of the stored route (and the update naturally).

In addition, a pedestrian probably wouldn’t need the whole country map while he or she is in one city (the quick trip to San Francisco). So downloading a city Sat Nav map (with points of interest, an event guide for that week and free wi-fi hotspots) could cost the same as a single album would.

Straining the point, the current map sales model is akin to being forced to buy a 50 year anthology every time you want to hear a single track.

Given the advances in mapping database systems (yes geographic databases of geography do exist, its Sat Nav data) such modular updating could be useful. You could even automate it for a road trip (and hope the connection lasts to let you know that the old road is now a dead-end with a wall across it)

So guys. Think it could work and is a viable model for a business?

take care,
Will