Geeks in Teams – Team Geek by Fitzpatrick and Collins-Sussman

reading,

teamgeekSome weeks ago, I came across a quite interesting title from O’Reilly Media, Team Geek by Brian W. Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman. There are quite a lot of books out in the shelves trying to explain how to behave as well as how to improve your life as a professional programmer. However, most of them are either hard to read, difficult to understand or just boring while repeating stereotypes over and over.

Team Geek is quite different, though. It seems the book benefits from the experience of the authors. Both come up with a bunch of experience working at Google and probably dealing with quite a lot of people during their professional life.

The Content

Six chapters, each about 20 pages – some with topics you probably never thought about and others just confirming what you ever thought of but never believed in. And that’s basically what you most benefit from. The book shows you are not alone with your thoughts how teams and collaboration should work. It’s about you as a developer (as a human thing) but also working in a team of geeks (often not understood as humans at all).

The Truth

Based on my very own experience during my professional life, I have to acknowledge almost everything the two authors write is true. Considering the fact, the book is written based on an US American context, with different culture, people and background, most of the topics are true for European developers as well. It seems the kind of human becoming a developer is the same all over the world. Whatever if it was during my time in UK or Germany, the you can apply many of the patterns provided in the book to your daily job.

The Reader

Professional developers, managers, team leads, architects, open source developers and even designers could benefit from the book. However, I would definitely recommend to already provide some experience in this kind of business to fully understand (i.e. to feel with the authors) what’s written and to benefit from the book. Not sure if beginners (e.g. students) or juniors can benefit from the book. Eventually, the reader will find some hints how to improve his or her daily life within a world of geeks and nerds and how to strengthen the very own standing within the company or group.

Pros

  • well written and easy to read
  • chapters of the right size to read during an evening
  • nice illustrations (not a reason to buy but really nice to look at)
  • great content
  • references for further reading given

Cons

  • terrible to useless index
  • not suitable for juniors and beginners (but that’s fine)

Where From

You can order the paperback or the Kindle version from Amazon or get the entire set of digital formats directly from O’Reilly.

A Pi’s Home

hack-the-planet, 3 Comments

A few weeks ago, I ordered my very personal Raspberry Pi. I ordered mine with element14 from the UK. Actually element14 is Farnell, which in turn is well known in the UK. In fact, we ordered many times with Farnell during my time at Microsoft Research in Cambridge when we needed sensors and stuff for our projects.

The Case

I also picked a case for 6 Euro from RS Components which is available in white, black and sort of transparent plastic.

Raspberry Pi and Case

The board firs perfectly into the case, even with a little bit of fiddling. To fit the board into the bottom part of the case you need to bend the circuit board quite a bit so it moves under the clips.

Fitted Board

At bottom side the case provides quite good rubber stands with a quite good friction. Even with all the cables in the Raspberry Pi, the case should be relatively stable – considering the weight.

Raspberry Pi Case Bottom

Once assembled, the case look pretty nice – all ports and slots easily accessible.

Assembled Raspberry Pi Case

Still working through the Raspberry Pi’s possibilities, it now looks at least much more like  something you can put on your desk.

iPhone 5 Battery Review

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Almost three weeks after receiving the new iPhone 5, I wanted to write a few words about the battery life of the new iPhone. If you check out the Apple support forums, you might find thousands of people complaining about the battery drain of the new iPhone.

Also you find dozens of tricks how to extend the battery life by turning off all kind of features (which make the phone interesting  in the fist place).

Battery Life Now

iPhone 5 Battery LifeAfter three weeks, I have an average usage similar to the following screen:

Given six and a half hours of usage and 41 hours of standby, I have to charge my phone every seconds day, which is similar to my previous iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4/4s I am aware of.

To Lithium Ion or Nothium Ion

I did not turn of any features and I did not re-install my phone from the scratch. I restored my iPhone 3GS backup and kept all the settings. I have turned on WiFi all the time and most of the time I use Bluetooth as well. Also 3G is turned on all the time. I have some calls and write several text messages during the day, but I do not switch the phone of during night (but do use the new do not disturb mode). I check Facebook and Mails a lot during the day, read tweets on a regular base and check in as often as I can using foursquare.

When I used the phone during the first few days, the battery did no last longer than eight hours (i.e. the phone turned of before a working day was over). I “calibrated” the battery in letting it drain completely and loading it up to 100% several times – which is a very questionable technique considering the underlying technology.

The lithium ion technology is a quite clean technology. There shouldn’t be any learning effect on the battery, the first charge should be as the 20th and fully draining the battery should not affect its overall capacity.  One of the few drawbacks of lithium ion batteries might be their complete failure after two or three years.

The last then percent of the battery drain quickly when being used, however, after the first three weeks the battery seems to be fine. Alexander Olma run some tests on the phone with extensive traffic usage resulting in 3h non-stop downloading bits and bytes until the phone turned off.

Due to the lack of data for comparison (i.e. data I can access), I can’t say whether there are other smartphones out in the wild with extensive longer battery life than the iPhone 5. However, a fully charged phone can make its way through a normal business day and a nice evening while still waking you up the next morning.

Pixeur Color Picker

tools,

For quite a time, Pixeur became one of the tools I almost can’t work without anymore. It is a lightweight and free color picker provided by Veign.

First of all, it’s easy to pick a color from the standard color palette. A great feature is the automated calculation of HSB, RGB and CMYK and Hex (the numbers used in HTML code) values. Which value you ever need, Pixeur does calculate the corresponding color codes. 

Pixeur Color Picker 

The ultimate uber feature is the screen picker tool. You simply drag and drop the pointer to the pixel on your screen you want to know the color code from.

Screen Color Picker

Drag and drop the target icon to whatever pixel on your screen to get the exact color value. In addition a zoomed area of the hovered are is shown in the corner of your screen which makes it quite easy to pin down a single pixel even on some kind of retina like displays.

Picking a single pixel with Pixeur

It’s very simple to use and so far I haven’t had any issues with the tool. Amazingly, the tool worked since ever on various Windows versions I used so far including Vista and windows 7 without the need of updating.

Pro:

  • easy to use
  • low footprint (~2MB)
  • provides color values in various formats
  • screen wide color picker
  • zoom of the hovered area when picking a color
  • free (i.e. no money, cash, PayPal or diamonds needed)

Contra:

  • Hard to find on the web

The tool is so great, I usually forget about it until I need to get a color code or pick some pixel’s color from the screen. It’s one of the first tools I install after setting up a new machine, and there’s the problem – if you don’t know where to find it, it’s hell of a job to find the download site.

There are probably a dozen of similar tools out in the wild, and each and every major drawing program probably provides such features. However, as a free, and very easy to use alternative, give it a try.

IEEE Data Breach

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A few days ago, Radu Drăgușin discovered a data leak at the IEEE servers, enabling him to download about 100.000 plain text keywords (probably mine as well).

On the one hand it shows how critical it is to consider the security off your system, nevertheless if you are a small company or a worldwide organization such as the IEEE. On the other hand it showed that even large organizations you never thought of this might face such fatal security leaks.

However, Radu went ahead and (a) decided not to share the information he gained through this security leak with public (big kudos for this decision), (b) to prepare various statistics on ieeelog.com based on the information (which are indeed interesting without revealing traceable information about individuals) and (c) to inform IEEE about the leak (also kudos for this). As a result you can say, he was quite responsible with the data he received and at least e followed some of the principles, provided by the IEEE Computer Society Code of Ethics.

One result of his analysis is the fact, that about almost 300 users are using the password 123456, reminding me Mel Brooks epic Star Wars parody Spaceballs, Dark Helmet saying

“So the combination is… one, two, three, four, five? That’s the stupidest combination I’ve ever heard in my life! That’s the kind of thing an idiot would have on his luggage!”

As a result, I went straight to my IEEE account and changed the password. Luckily, it was a password not used for any other site beside the IEEE. Said that, if you have an IEEE account, it probably is a good thing to go there directly changing yours as well if not already done.

Most used IEEE passwords

And Radu, whenever you ever read this post, if have the chance please have a look into the log files and let me know if the user aheil is listed there as well.

Feddburner Burnout

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It is officially, the Google Feedburner APIs have been deprecated and will be officially shut down in the near future after being bought for about $100 million in 2007.

“Important: The Google Feedburner APIs have been officially deprecated as of May 26, 2011 will be shut down on October 20, 2012.”

For all readers of this blog subscribed to the google Feedburner feed, it has not been available using the URI http://www.feedburner.com/aheil probably providing a 404 error code for the last few days. The Feed Stats dashboard already shows that the feed has subscribers anymore.

. Feedburner Stats

Therefore, everybody looking for a RSS feed of this blog should switch over to https://www.hack-the-planet.net/feed?rss2.

I used Feedburner even before acquired from Google. It was a great way to aggregate various sources of information on the web. Even with a deprecation time of three years, it is quite a loss as Feedburner provided a great way of mashing up data sources. Probably this service did not generate sufficient revenue for Google…

Initiating Hacking The Planet

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After several years spending time (including writing a book) in the field of intelligent environments, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, I decided to brings some digital life in our home. As winter is coming, I am looking forward to finally start some home automation project called Hack The Planet.

The project itself has two goals, at first it should be fun. Being a computer scientist, geek, nerd, developer gadgeteer this is obvious. Second, I want to document how to deal with a project, abut the artifacts, the process, pans, restrictions, chances and threats hat might occur. In this article, I am going to discuss the very first thoughts of this project as part of the project initiation.

First of all there needs to be a vision. I am not talking about the business case, yet, just a very first vision statement.

“For me and my family, I want to set up our home in a way, I can remotely monitor and control most of the electronic and mechanical devices any time during the day, at any place where I am currently located as long as I have a decent internet access.”

Let’s have a look and revise this vision so it passes Moore’s elevator test:

“For me and my family who want to monitor and control our home remotely, Hack The Planet is a home automation system that is easy to use and extensible. Unlike available off the shelf products our product integrates hard- and software components from various vendors and can be easily extended with new techologies.”

That’s basically a very broad statement, however, for the near future this will lead the direction. I have seen many projects failing, because of the project management keeping the vision under any circumstances.

Second, I invested several hours if the project as I have it in mind is feasible at all wich is a major constraint. Are the devices I have roughly in mind available as off the shelf components, will they be within the project budget (i.e. can I afford them?), can I connect/hack the available hardware, are the serious technologies compatible or can I at least connect them in any way?

Beside creating a business case, drilling down the vision into scopes should be the next step before continuing with the project.

Project Initiation

 

Elevation Dock Unboxed

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Last year, I became a backer on Kickstarter. I was looking for a while how to support great ideas in a way with relatively little risk. I wasn’t looking for sort of business angel backing,  was looking how it is possible to help folks with great ideas and visions to achieve their goals. The Elevation Dock for iPhone was the first project I pledged and as plus, I received a reward, one of the first docks being produced.

Elevation Dock Package

The dock arrived via standard mail, i.e. in Germany it was not delivered with DHL as parcel it came by snail mail, though. Fair enough, as only a few dollars have been added for international delivery.

 Opening the Delivery

For international delivery the box was fairly packed. Could be better, as it seems that the box moved around in the box a lot. If it would contain breakable parts, this would be probably fatal. However, considering that some human put a lot of effort into packaging this thing for me, that’s fine. I guess there is a lot of improvement in he future.

  The Dock Box

The box of the Elevation Dock quite nice. White, sort of apple style, took me a few seconds how o open it, I tried first to push the inner box out of the sleeve before I realized that you can simply flip the box cover.

Elevation Dock Box opened

The box itself showed that it traveled some thousand miles and that several people moved the parcel from A to B before it finally arrived here. Actually, I don’t care, at this moment I am just interested in the content of the package.

Elevation Dock Content

The dock, which is surprisingly heavy for being made from anodized aluminum, comes with a pre-mounded USB cord. It’s only a few inches. A longer replacement cable is provided if you want to place your dock somewhere away from your USB hub, power supply or computer. Kudos for this add-on.

Comes with Hex Wrench

Actually, I haven’t seen this in the first place, the dock comes with a hex wrench. I think this piece does not cost that much but it#s great for being included. It’s in fact the only tool you need to replace the USB cord. What it does not come with is a AC adapter. While there is a spare place in the package it seems there are no adapters in the Kickstarter rewards added. Maybe this was announced in one of the various mails send during the creation and funding process and I missed that one. However, the empty place in the box labeled AC adapter is quite an indentation there will be a adapter in the docks sold regularly in the future.

Elevation Dock Left RearElevation Dock from Above
Elevation Dock ConnectorElevation Dock Rear

The overall manufacture quality is impressive. The surface is well done and all parts fit perfectly. Turning the dock upside down, you see how well the parts fit. The black bumper within the dock can be turned to fit iPhones with cases into the dock. Also this part fits perfectly and is easy to change.

Elevation Dock Upside Down

The rubber stands are well made, on various surfaces the dock comes with quite some  friction.

iPhone 3GS fits well

As my new iPhone 5 is still on its way, I tried the dock with my not-nearly-retina-and-meanwhile-slow-like-hell iPhone 3GS. Fits perfect. In fact, it fits so well that you have to hold the dock once you want to pull the iPhone from the dock. We have tried this with the iPhone 4 as well, and as promised by Elevation Lab, the dock is a low friction dock. It is awesome how easily you can remove the iPhone 4 from the dock. No need to fix the dock at all, the iPhone 4 just slips out of the dock. Very well designed. That was the original reason I supported the dock.

Bad Luck

On the photography above you might have seen a small spot on the left edge of the dock. This is really bad luck, as the quality of the dock is so high, I really got one with a small mark on the left top edge. Maybe this happened during packaging, as I cannot imagine this happened during transportation. As most of the packaging and quality assurance process in done by hand yet, this might happen. I bet the process for controlling the quality of the devices will improve over time.

 Swapping Cords

As a very last step, I tried to exchange the cables provided with the dock. Opening the dock with the hex wrench works quite smooth. Opening the bottom of the dock, I found this surprising note. It should be obvious not just to bull on the cord how some moron, however, it is a great idea to provide such a note to the user. Many people would probably damage the connector while swapping the cords.

 Dock Connector

Finally, I had a look at the connector. Again, very high quality. The USB cables have micro USB connectors. Surprisingly, the dock connector is mounted using hex screws. Said that it should be possible to change the bolt in connector. In fact, Elevation Labs recently announced that they are currently working on a exchange connector for the new iPhone 5.

I am quite happy being a backer of this project. The quality of the device is high standard, the updates on the project by Casey Hopkins have been great and regularly, and finally receiving the reward is just awesome. Now I am looking forward for the new connector. The time Apple announced the the new connector, the design and production of the dock has been already in full progress. Also many people complaining about the dock having the old connector, one should bear in mind, the docj was designed as a low friction dock for the iPhone 4/4s. And as far as being evaluated it is as promised.

As a resume, Elevation Labs will be definitely one of the gadget providers I will keep on my favorite list for the future. As they already announced the design of a new dock with improved sound capabilities and the development of the new connector I hope that business goes well and they will supply a lot of nifty gadgets in the future.

Visual Studio 2012 Upper Case Menus

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I am probably the last person in the .NET community who figured out how to disable the Visual Studio 2012 Metro design upper case menus. I haven’t had a chance to work a lot with Dev11 yet, so I was not bothered too much by the new design. After working a couple of hours with the new IDE, I was quite annoyed by the new upper case menus.

Visual Studio 2012 Upper Case Menus

It seems that Richard Blanks was the first who figured out how to disable the upper case menus in VS 2012, looking nice and capitalized.

Visual Studio 2012 Capitalized Menus

As I love to do things automatically when possible and hate to fiddle with the Registry Editor, I set up the registry key to change in a small script. Just rename it to .reg and double click the file.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General]
"SuppressUppercaseConversion"=dword:1

If you create the file manually, keep mind to save it in ANSI encoding, as Unicode scripts are not merged at all.