Getting Real – by 37signals
After a few weeks I decided to start reading "Getting Real" from 37signals. I bought the book when I read about it on a blog from Scott Berkun (Why Requirements Stink) .
I started in the morning and read it from cover to cover in a few hours.
The book does a fabulous job in creating a 'think small and easy' mind-set. And it does so without going in too much detail. Every chapter is relatively small and gets to the point quickly. After every chapter I got the feeling that I wanted to put the theory into practice and start right away. But moreover it made me wanna read the next chapter and find out more (which ultimately resulted into me reading it from cover to cover in one read).
As stated in the introduction, a lot of the principles and methods are not thought up by 37signals themselves. They borowed a few here and there and added their own sauce to create a 'methodology' which is very suitable for themselves. Although they state things as being a fact, they never force things on you. They just point out the way they do it and why it helped them to achiever their goals.
The book made me realise again how 'easy' it is to start a web application and do it right but without all the fuss of elaborate planning, specifications, etc, etc.
Another side-effect of reading the book is that I wanted to blog about it again, and it resulted in me writing 3 blog posts today. I just wanted to get it all out of my system, and get it out of there right away. True, there may be typo's and grammatical errors in some of the posts, but it is the web! When someone points them out they are realy easy to fix. Thats the way the Internet works! 
Why creating my framework ‘failed’
In one of my earlier blogs I posted about the framework I wanted to create. At the time I was really anxious in creating it and making it as cool as it was in my mind. Unfortunately, all didn't go as planned and although I have really created some nice stuff, it was not as I had expected.
So what went wrong?
First of all, I stoped working in an environment where the framework was needed for. I stoped working at my former employer and started my own business. At this company there were all sorts of problems which could be fixed by creating a framework of tools and guidelines. The framework had a purpose and the features it should have where crystal clear.
But when I stoped working there, this problem went away... So what I was eager to create became a "solution in search of a problem". And because the necessity for it went away, there was no drive to create all the aspects of it. With that, usefullness and motivation went away.
For a long period of time I did not really see this. I happily started working on it, but was not getting the results I was hoping for. Over time, the time spent on the project deminished and time was spent on other projects instead.
So the project failed?
Well, not really. I did create a solid base for all my other web development projects. The simple websites I created use the framework and it really helped me create them nicely and easily. Right now I use the framework as a "means to an end" instead of an "end". When the framework does not support something I want, I create it. Not the other way around. And although I should have learned this lesson before, from sources like Scott Berkun's: The art of Project Management and numerous other sources (books and online). I think the only way someone really learns the meaning of a statement like "A solution in search of a problem" is to experience it first hand. Preferably in a way he fail's (failure is the best learner).
What now?
Well, I learned quite a bit from the experience, and right now I am aiming on some new projects and products I would like to create. A lot of idea's sprung from reading "Getting Real" by 37signals. I will be posting about the book, and the idea's I'd like to work out, pretty soon.
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
In a recent post by on the Joel on Software blog by Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software: How to be a program manager) I read about the famous book "How to Win Friends & Influence People". The book covers some great ways to communicate with people and in a decent and nice way. Although the book is written more than 70 years ago, the book still applies to everyday situations. I bought the book and expected a book which covers the different aspects of communicating with people in a sort of step-by-step way which explains human behaviour. However this was not the case. The book is 95% examples and 5% explanation and guidelines.
Is this bad? No! Definately not! It gave me great insight in the human behaviour and how to cope with certain situations.
Is the book hard to read? Yes, in my opionion it is. I was not very charmed by the fact that I had to read example after example after example about how a certain principle worked for famous person X or regular person Y or business associate Z. I expected more of an in-depth explanation on why a certain principle worked and how it could be applied in a more general way.
However, all the principles and theories provided in this book are spot-on and can be applied in everyday situations.
For example I tried applying the simple principle of "Talk about your own mistakes first". I had some problems with my phone bills as I have converted my private-phone-plan contract to a business-plan contract. Some bills where lost or unretrievable from the website, I got charged twice in a certain period and got credited multiple times in other months. All was a mess and I could not make heads or tails about it.
When I called them, I did not start by stating they where wrong or that they had a non-transparent way of migrating me from a private to a business-plan contract. And that charging me double is totally outrages. Instead I started by stating that I was totally lost in the bills I received and that what was charged on my private bank account and business bank account did not add up in my mind. The response was that in their computer system all seemed well and that everything adds up neatly. However they did confirm that all was a bit of a mystery and that they would gladly help me make sense of it. I asked if she could resend all of the bills they had sent to me again so I would have everything in one batch. She responded that normally they could not do this and that they have to charge for it, but as it was a complex situation she would sent me all and charge nothing for it.
It amazed me that when I applied this simple principle, I got satisfying help and they even gave me more than I asked. I am sure that when I started complaining and stating they were to blame, I would have received a less satisfying response and maybe receive no additional help at all.
The bottom line is; this book is a really great read for everyone who wants to get the most out of everything he does and make his 'world' a more happy place to live in.
Calibrating my Barco 801s
Ever since I bought my Barco projector (I guess it has been a year or 3 now) I wanted to get the most from it. And since it is a CRT projector it is guaranteed that you need to put in a lot of time to get everything correct. Although the PJ is really high maintenance (it requires constant care to get the optimum result) the result is worth it. A CRT projector has, for a long time, been one of better performing projectors. In the past it was never a question whether you should buy a CRT projector or one of the other techniques (DLP/LCD). Black Level and resolution where the main reasons you should not buy a DLP/LCD. Not to mention the side effects they brought with them (screendoor effect, rainbow effect).
In these years I have frequently read about the need to calibrate it so you can get the best results. A greyscale calibration makes sure the PJ uses the correct amount of red, green an blue to display a grey-color (from black to grey to white) as accurate as possible (grayscale-calibration).
The reason it never got calibrated was my lack of action. I always wanted to have the PJ set up correctly in my room before I decided to have it calibrated. Of course it was never set up 100% correctly, so I postponed it again and again and again. Further the costs where to consider aswell. A calibration can cost up to €150 for a CRT device. And then you can only have 1 device calibrated. And as I felt my setup was not final, I thought I'd be throwing away money. And lastly I recently decided that I will buy a new projector in the near future which should be even better, so again, doing a calibration would be a waste of money.
Well... Last week I came across a cool from thread: Greyscaling for dummies! It explains how one could do a greyscale calibration yourself (of course, I need to add that doing it yourself is by far not the same as having an ISF certified person doing your calibration). After reading it carefully the experimental me shouted out and I decided I should buy a color analyzer and give it a shot.
It is quite fun to do a calibration (well, at least to me it was fun). Tweaking your display device to display a optimal picture is cool and gives you a sense of achievement! Furthermore, the resulting image realy is quite different!
I always heard the difference would be big, but I had not realized it would change this much. The image has more detail and the image appears to have more depth.
And the best part is, I can calibrate whatever and whenever I want. In my calibration spree I decided I should calibrate my Barco, My Dell 2405WFP, My laptop and the old Sony KV28FX65 television.
There where different results from the calibration on each of them. The TV for instance was massively off. the colors where to 'cool' (more blue) and much detail was lost due to the wrong use of the brightness/contrast combination. Though it was off, it was the most easy one to calibrate. It only took my 1 try to get as close to the optimum as possible. The Dell was a different story. It was already quite OK and needed just a little fine-tuning. Unfortunately the service menu of the dell wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped so I was not able to get it as perfect as I would want to. The laptop was a different story altogether. I did not put much time in it. The screen of my laptop is just bad in general. White at the top isn't the same as white at the bottom. So calibrating the center just makes sure the center is OK. But the rest is still wrong. Lastly, the Barco. This is the most difficult one. It is very susceptible to environmental changes. This is due to the nature of the Barco. It has relative low light output. Therefor the smallest light source has an effect on the image. A perfectly dark room is the most optimal, but this isn't always possible. In my room this results in that my greyscale differs when I'm measuring in the morning, midday or evening/night. So I needed to compromise. I decided I'd calibrate it for night use only and accept that when I'm watching during the day that the image might not be as accurate as it could possibly be.
All in all I would say that buying the color analyzer was a great move. I would not say it can replace a professional ISF calibration. But when you have the time and the motivation to learn a thing or two about display's, it is a really fun thing to do.
Bootable Vista Install on a hard drive
For a long time I was wondering if it wouldn't be nice if you could boot your Vista Bootable CD from a hard drive. Because hard disks are much faster in comparison to a DVD I figureed having the bootable DVD on a hard drive would shave off a few minutes of your installation time. Unfortunately I could not find any information on how to make this possible. Google just came back with results regarding Dual Boot setup's or having a full Vista install on an external hard drive or USB. Not the thing I was interested in. The sollution to my 'problem' illuded me.
Today I came across an article in the Personal Computer Magazine (PCM) issue of this month in which they wanted to boot the Vista Install DVD of a USB stick. Reading the article I found nothing that implied that it can only be used on a USB stick. So I grabed an old disk drive and fiddled around a bit.
After a numerous amount of reboots and trial&error I finally got it working! The Vista Installer booted from the disk drive. Although I have not completed a full install, I am quite sure it works.
The thing that annoyed me the most when booting from the DVD was that I had to wait quite some time for the white bar to fill, after which the actuall install environment showed up. Although it was faster, it wasn't as fast as I had hoped. I think it has to do with driver loading and lots of small files. My guess is that when you do a full install it you will notice a great increase in speed. The actual copying of files should go faster, although I have not yet tested this (maybe i'll test it in the future).
From the hindside the operation is quite simple. Maybe that is the reason I couldn't find it anywhere and havn't heard anybody trying it before.
However, a simple 'how-to' would probably in order, for the ones who where looking for this too
Things needed:
- A hard drive which has nothing on it (no partitions and stuff)
- A running Vista setup (i use 'diskpart' which is a part of vista and not of XP)
- A bootable Vista Install DVD (may be a slipstreamed disc. I used a Vista with SP1 slipstreamed)
Now the steps to follow:
- Open a command prompt and run diskpart: c:\> diskpart
- View the lists of disks and find the appropriate disk: list disk
- Select the disk you want to use: select disk 0
- Verify that you have selected the right disk: list disk (the one with the * is the selected disk)
- clear the disk of all information: clean
- create a partition: create partition
- select the created partition: select partition 1
- Make it active: active
- Assign a drive letter: assign
This is almost identical to what PCM had in its article. However it didnt work correct for me. The PCM stated you should format the drive using FAT32 (using "format fs=32" between step 8 and 9). However, Vista is not always able to format a drive in the fat32 file system (which was the case with me).
I found out that vista is not able to format drives larger than 32GB in Fat32 filesystem. You can force it on a command prompt ( format /FS:FAT32 X: ). But most people say that drives larger than 32gb will slow down due to fat32 overhead. What I did was the folowing:
- Open vista disk management:
- Select your disk
- Right click and select "shrink"
- Shrink the disk to something below 32GB. (because you havn't used your disk this should be seconds)
- Now right click it again and select 'format'
- Choose Fat32 as the file system and check "Quick Format"
Now you are done preparing your disk!
Don't close your command prompt. You're not done yet...
Assuming your DVD drive is "D:" and your hdd "E:", copy the files from the drive to your newly made disk using xcopy (or any of your favorite copying programs, like robocopy for example).
c:\> xcopy d:\*.* /e /f e:\
Now you are done and you can close your command prompt.
You can use the rest of your disk if you'd like. Just create an extra partition and format it the way you like.
To boot from the disk, reboot your system and enter your BIOS. In the BIOS you have to make sure the boot priority are right. Make sure it boots from your HDD and not from your DVD (remove the DVD from the drive helps too). And make sure it boots from the correct disk.
If you have done everything correct, you should see the system booting from your new "Vista Install Bootable Hard Disk". No more hours of waiting while installing your Vista!
Important Update (24-12-2008)
I was trying to install a fresh Vista 64 install on a machine which did not have a PATA controller and thus I was not able to boot from a DVD. So I was forced to use my own technique and install from a hard disk (yay).
I quickly ran into a problem which I hadn't noticed before because I did not complete a full install from HDD.
The problem lies within the Vista installer itself. When you boot from the HDD and enter the setup, chances are the installer starts to complain that it can not find a suitable CD/DVD/USB driver for the device where the installation source is located (duh, its a hard drive).
After hours of tinkering with RAID drivers (i didn't read it correctly and thought it was complaining about not finding the raid set) I finally noticed the problem. After some more google-ing I found a google cached item which explained that when you hold the CTRL key while booting the installer the setup will not be loaded and youll get a command prompt.
When on the command prompt, first go to the root ("cd \") then execute "bcdedit /createstore" and then enter "setup" and the setup will correctly start, and wont complain about the driver.
“PHP Tools which should help developers in creating high availability websites”
Well. There it is... My first official blog entry. True there were trial ones before this first one. But this is the actual one which is going to be visible to everyone!
So, why the hell do I want to start a blog? Everybody is doing it already, and everywhere you see useless information regarding some useless topics with useless comments by useless people. What's the difference with this one?
Actually, I don't know the specific answer to that question. It is partially for a bit of typing-away on the keyboard and partially for venting my ideas somewhere where it can be actually seen. As you may have gathered from my Info page I am currently working on creating some "php tools which should help developers in creating high availability websites".
Blah blah blah blah blah.
It really sounds like I am only using buzz and hype words. And that I am trying to sell some sort of product to people who realy don't need them. And if they actually do need them, there probably is an alternative which is better. But that assumption is wrong. I think the stuff I want to make actually isn't there yet. And if it is there, it is very well hidden (I haven't found it).
I know. What I've typed thus far is not very descriptive about what I am trying to create. The details of the things I want to do are exactly the things I want to describe in my Blog. The basic idea in plain english. For myself as an exercise to draft up the idea, and for other's an explanation of what I want to do.
In my next post I want to go into detail on the basic concept of my idea