Over the falls

That a Day on the Moon is the same as a Year on the Moon? A day is defined as a celestial body's period of rotation around it's axis. A year is defined as a celestial body's period of revolution around whatever it's orbiting. The moon is in synchronous rotation - both of these periods are 27.321 days, which is why the moon always shows us the same face. Which, of course, led to that dreary Pink Floyd album. (There's currently a furious debate going on between our help desk manager and LHS as to how this can be so. I hope it doesn't come to blows... )

When I was a kid, we had a marble craze sweep the playground. But it wasn't the traditional, knock the marbles out of the circle kind of marbles. Oh no. This was way more 'Lord of the Flies'. What happened was that kids set up shop by drawing a line in the dirt, and then putting a particularly attractive marble a certain distance away. Other kids could then front up to this 'stall' consisting of a dirt line and a kid sitting in the sand, and throw marbles at it. The rules were simple. If you hit the marble, you got to keep it. If you missed, the stall-holder got to keep the shooter marble. So every lunch time, the playground would be turned into this kind of dust bowl marble bazaar, with all these kids yelling 'One shot a Tom!' or 'One shot for two bird-cages!' As I recall, there was a discreet order of value, with 'normals' being near worthless shooter marbles, and a whole dazzling array of 'milkys', 'sheenys,' 'Steelies...

I was invited to test the new google page creator today. I recently spent some time with joomla , and a few other content management systems, and to be honest I was a bit disappointed at how complicated it was to create a web page. It's easy for nerds like me, but if you're a more casual web user, having to type html, or learn a scripting language is too hard. If a user has to read the manual, you've already lost. So I was pleased to see that google make it ridiculously easy, and all you need is a browser and you're good to go. That makes it easier still. The image uploading process was particularly easy - and a little different to the standard HTML file input that we see so often. The templates are all nice, and there's enough diversity to please nearly every one. So, yeah - nice one, you guys. Less power to the nerds, I say. If you'd like to see the results of my investigation, you can share the love here .

Stilly already posted this one, but I just got around to watching it: Seth's talk to the Googlers. Some great, candid takeaway points about permission marketing, and how making things you love can make products that sell themselves - (As long as someone else loves it, and tells a friend...)

Generalizations are all good. While I'm talking about that, let me just mention that the point of every software team is the same: build something great. A piece of software that fulfils its promises, is easy to use and learn, and adds real value to any human who wants to achieve whatever goals are incorporated in the system. That's great software. That's what we're all trying to do. The Google search engine is an example of great software. I'm not a player, but I bet World of Warcraft is great software. The .NET framework is great software. There are beacons of design that inspire every software team, in every field. When I first started managing software teams, I was a process nut. I just assumed that the best way to get great software was to join the process dots. Back then, it was all about the planning. Plan the planning phase, and then plan out how you were going to build it, in painstaking detail, from the very beginning. Then you build it all (exactly as you...

Google acquires Upstartle , the tiny silicon valley startup that made a pretty neat little in-browser word processor. Naturally, everyone's abuzz with Microsoft vs Google talk , and how Microsoft have got it all wrong trying to beat google at their own game, and how they should stick to what they do best, and whatever. Personally, I think that it makes some sense to move the office productivity stuff onto the web. The more stuff I can do on the web, the better, as long as it's not a hassle. That's the key, I think. If I have to install stuff, and poke around with any configuration at all, then the whole thing is a dumb idea. But the technology isn't really the issue here. But if the focus is true zero-footprint, nothing installed, just write a letter to your mom and save it from wherever you are office suite, then we've got something. Something that might just be the next wave not so much in technology, but in business development models. Naturally, Google will want...

Having spent so long in traveling mode gets really tiring. Crazy scattered thoughts of a tired man. I don't know how I can be so respectful of people as individuals, yet harbor such a deep-seated resentment and dissatisfaction at the money crazed, status chasing society that we've all created. It's like an ant colony- I can appreciate each individual ant for their own qualities, but I don't like the anthill. You know what? I don't want to be successful! I don't want a Raymond Weil 'Timepiece' or a buxom blonde wife dressed in Versace. I don't want to smell like those super attractive gay men in Hugo Boss advertisements. I don't want to 'challenge everything', or 'be a tiger', or 'always come out on top'. I don't want to buy a sports car that goes faster than you are allowed to drive it. All of these status driven capital achievements are stupid and hollow, and they are just stuff designed to compensate for things that ...

But the stupid IE browser at the Heathrow Terraces Lounge somehow manged to erase it. (I have a long, long flight ahead of me, and I can't be bothered typing it all again.) EuroTUF 2006 was really cool. It was snowing, and we got drunk and sang songs at night. We talked business during the day, and shared some new stuff. All of my demos went well. My vote for Worst Weekend Ever: Get on plane Friday Night, get off it Sunday.

One of the things I was dreaming about last night was the concept of precision. I know it sounds a bit strange to be dreaming about a concept, but there you go. When the plane I was flying into Heathrow on descended through the clouds, I was, as always, relieved to find that right there, directly below us was an airport runway. And it dawned on me that the pilot was probably a little bit relieved too, despite the fact that he knew it would be there. Because when you are landing a giant aeroplane, precision is absolutely critical. You can't be "Close Enough", or even "Pretty Good" - try explaining that to the people who's houses you've just landed on: "Come on, it's pretty close to the airport! I'd like to see you fly a giant hunk of metal for 10,000 miles and get it absolutely perfect..." No, precision is one of those things that humans really, really, care about. And it's something that we usually do really well. That's why peo...

I'm flying over to the UK tonight - to speak at the European Trim User Forum (TUF) next week. I'll be talking about the new features of Context 6, discussing some of the future plans for the product and explaining how we built ice, how it works, and demonstrating some of the ways that the web framework can be used. (I know it might not sound that exciting, but it could be a life changing experience for someone in the audience. Although that's quite unlikely.) I'll also be praying to the patron saint of software demonstrations, (as soon as I can figure out who that is). If you'd like to read a laugh-out-loud-funny-because-it's-true account of what it's like to be a presenter who suffers the consequences of not praying, check out Rory's experience. I'm not generally a supertitious person, but some things are too important to risk...

I was just helping some friends set up their new website, and to buy a .com.au domain, I sort of autopiloted my way to melbourneit.com.au .According to them, registering a .com.au domain was going to cost 140$ for two years. Smartyhost , on the other hand, offered the same service, for 49.95$- a saving of 90 dollars! Now, I know that some kind of brand power justifies an increased price - but nearly 300%? That's just plain crazy. A domain is a domain is a domain, right?

Hey! I just found the Google Enterprise Blog. The Google team have just released a version of Google desktop specifically aimed at enterprises, and are encouraging users at companies and organizations to install it now for free. I noticed they're also offering a premium support package that offers consultative help with deployment and configuration. It looks like you don't need to be running a google search appliance to use it, but you get cooler functionality if you do. Having been a Google Desktop user since it's first beta, I know how well it works. And at first, this offering looks to me like an interesting take on the ECM field. They can search all content across an organization from one place. They have some nice collaboration stuff built in with Googletalk. They're even offering rudimentary retention management. But, unlike everyone else in the ECM field, Google aren't storing the content. They're leaving it exactly where it is. All they're storing ...

LHS and I were musing the other day on how once you find out a little about how people's brains function, you always end up thinking to yourself - "Yeah, well you're actually pretty strange. " (This discussion came up just after we had discussed dream-logic, and how strange dreams are.) And, to illustrate the point, I'm going to share the way that I relax before I go to sleep. It seems perfectly natural to me, but it may well leave you thinking that I'm a bit nuts. The technique goes like this. Just before I turn off the light before I go to bed, I'll take a mental 'picture' of my room - where all the furniture is, and what's piled where, and so on. Then, after I close my eyes, I imagine that I can open up my head. I never really thought about this, but I guess I imagine four flaps opening up on my head like the lid of a box. Out of my head comes a whole bunch of boxes, that represent all the thoughts that I've been fussing over all day. E...

Me playing the artsy photographer out at Wee Jasper. ( Picasa makes it so easy to blog photos!)

It's true. This is a list of the things that have exploded, broken or otherwise ceased to function in my house in the last two months: Dishwasher (x2) - Pump broken, 350$+ to replace - abandoned. VCR - won't load tapes without chewing them and jamming - binned. Clock Radio - mysteriously crushed - binned. Microwave Oven - spontaneously ceased to function. No explanation - binned. Regular Oven - spontaneously ceased to function. Still sitting in kitchen wall. Dryer - exploded. Still fixed to Laundry wall. Washing Machine - wouldn't spin. repaired after 200$ and three visits from repairman. Television Set - displays thin line instead of picture - binned. Kettle - won't work - binned. Bose Lifestyle Stereo - amplifier sends no signal - still in lounge room. Range Hood - doesn't work at all - still nailed to ceiling. Iron - fell apart and leaked rust all over clothes. Replaced. Oh, and a CD Rom exploded in my PC, shattering plastic shards all over the place, and renderi...

A Big congratulations to everybody's favourite googlebot, Mikal , for his appearance in the Feedster top 500. 120!! That means that (according to Feedster), our humble bespectacled nerd friend has only 119 other blogs in the entire (known) blogosphere that are more popular than him! He's more popular than DJ Adam Curry , The hilarious Rory Blyth , Celebrity Nerd Will Wheaton (Wesley Crusher), and even Doc Searls , co-author of the cluetrain , and practically the inventor of the modern blogosphere. That is a truly bizzare thing. Onya, Stillbert. And this link is dedicated to my friend Simon, who got a pretend parking ticket. Which is quite lucky, really.

Remember the gesture based computer interface in Minority Report? Ok. Hold that thought in your mind. Now check out this video of multiple touch interaction research. Cool...

Lindsay asks: ' who are your customers? ' It's an interesting question, and the answers aren't always as obvious as you might think. If you're shipping software, your customers are the people who buy your software - these are often not the ones who use it. But, as she says: The people who pay you, want the people who pay them to be happy. And that means the people who use your software. If you sell your software through partners, or re-sellers the same applies - your deputies want to deploy your software and have it a success. And annoyed users are a great shortcut to unsuccessful projects. It all goes back to something I've noticed for a while now - that perceived failure and actual failure are the same thing. If your users don't like the product you build, it's a failure. Even if it helps them solve their problem. If you always aim to make the users happy, chances are that your ultimate customers will be happy. I think this applies right across the mar...

I often wondered (well, not often, but at least once, or maybe more) why a lot of the features in Googles Gmail weren't available to me. For instance, there's a cool feature that lets you see snippets of any RSS feed you like, called Google Web Clips . I could read the ad. I could even read the help pages. But I couldn't use the feature. Same goes for the new "Talk in Gmail" Ad that Australian Gmail Users might've read today. I naively assumed that rolling out new features like this to everyone in the world might cause some kind of intragoogle support explosion that might cause everyone in Mountain View to cry. (well, I didn't actually think about it that much, as is evident by my lame assumption) . I did however conclude that the magic of google was somehow preventing me from getting access to such features - that I might as well just forget that they exist, and wait for the Blessing of Larry to enliven my web mail experience if and when He saw fit. But,...

A few people have asked me why my blog is called 'Over the Falls'. Well, it's a subtle double meaning, that's so subtle, I think I'm the only one who understands it. So, allow me to explain. When I started blogging, I decided I'd probably end up carrying on about my job - which involves managing a software development team. But then I thought that it was inevitable that I'd end up bragging about my surfing to at least some degree. So, how best to combine those... In surfer land, going "Over the falls", is when you take off on a wave, but you don't match the wave for speed - and you end up getting sucked right up to the top of the wave, and unceremoniously pounded into the ocean ( or whatever is under it). It's not fun. (Although it can be funny when you see someone else do it) In Project Manager land, there's an old fashioned, long standing bastion of project management called the 'Waterfall Process'. Basically, it's where y...