The weather here did make a difference in my relocation from California. I spent my childhood in the midwest, and while I don’t miss the hot sticky summers, I liked the summer rain. I missed the change in the air, the thunder rolling across the fields, and the way everything smelled after it was over.[1]

My first Fan Week was in 2006. It was taking a long time to unpack my things, so I had the fan but not the cover. The first time I ran it, the cord from the venetian blinds got caught in the blades. Etc.

Hold onto your butts.

UPDATE: Imported. Will fiddle with URL stuff later

mamablogga.com – The ultimate guide to migrating from blogger to wordpress

p.s. Happy National Blog Posting Month. Out of a misplaced sense of journalistic integrity I am not back-dating posts to fill in the days I missed already. :P

I just finished an informal “interview” at blist in Pioneer Square. My brain stalled out when it was my turn to answer questions, but even so, I think there’s a >25% chance of getting an offer by Christmas. Before last week I’d never heard of them, but it sounded like they were doing something interesting, which would be a welcome change.

No. What they’re doing isn’t interesting. It’s mindblowing. It does for relational databases what Scripting News and Blogger did for writing. I mean, your grandma can keep recipes in this thing.

But blist is not only a really smart UI. Consumer applications for blists are also a free demo for organizations who are traditionally dependent on IT[2] to build and manage database applications for them. Need a timecard application? Drag ‘n drop. Need a gradebook for your school? Copy an existing design shared by the community. Need a warehouse management system? Tricky — you might need an analyst. This is everything Access was supposed to be.

The other end of the system is a massive-scale database fleet on a par with AWS or Google, capable of providing enterprise-class service with the same economies of scale. I’m a hippie-geeky idealist like my dad, so it pays to be skeptical, but I think these guys have the experience to pull it off. The CEO, Kevin Merritt, is a nice guy. He’s also got a track record. Even without attending the Steve Jobs School of Mass Hypnosis, he’s got me excited about this thing.

And they understand that the UI is crucial — with only a dozen or so employees, they already have a full-time UX person on staff.

I think I want this.

Elephant. Never forget.

Footnotes

1. Okay, sorry, Elephant wasn’t around back then. But there are plenty of other holes you could have picked at besides this one. Oh wait, it’s the only one with a footnote.[3] Never mind. As you were.
2. It always feels weird to speak of “traditions” relating to IT.
3. I’m not afraid to admit I was wrong.

Are you even listening?

]]> http://spazquest.org/2008/08/neo-luddite/feed/ 0 http://spazquest.org/2007/03/oscars-feh/ http://spazquest.org/2007/03/oscars-feh/#comments Sun, 04 Mar 2007 02:50:00 +0000 eric http://spazquest.org/?p=93 This is why I love being off the media "grid": I didn’t even know about the Academy Awards until after the ceremony. People arguing the merits of movies I’ve never seen, actors I wouldn’t recognize, and prom dresses I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing.[1] Thanks but I’ll make do without it.

Brain, brain, go away
Come again some other day

As the CSS expert[1] on the team, it was my responsibility to create a cohesive CSS structure, and use code review to ensure that the devs were using it properly. The Right Thing would have been to identify common page elements up front so that the structure would be consistent everywhere and easy to use. (E.g., IDs versus classes, div vs p, hx vs span, borders vs hrs, padding vs brs, functional vs presentational class names, etc.)

But I’ve let that opportunity slip through my fingers. Partly due to factors beyond my control, the other devs had to proceed without the structure in place. So we have all these different ad hac[2] approaches to fixing this or that alignment problem on individual pages, all these random classes added to the CSS file. Let me emphasize that this is not the devs’ fault! They have done very well under the circumstances. But to achieve the desired level of quality, they would have had to do bottom-up redesign of something outside their area of expertise. I just don’t see how code reviews alone can provide adequate direction.

[I wanted to include an example here, but Blogger can't make up its mind how to process embedded HTML code -- whether to render my divs regardless of wrapping them in code tags; whether or not to expand my already spelled-out &s. (Argh, it did it again!)]

I’m very disappointed in myself, regardless of the causes. The CSS code has my imprimatur, has my name on it, and it’s not what I would have wanted. To fix it, we’d have to refactor the CSS file and then have everyone go back into the markup, changing class names and structural decisions. That ain’t gonna happen (unless we get permission to wind back the clock).

Anyway, back to the purported subject of this post. While looking for articles on code review in Agile methodologies, I happened upon this post which starts with a discussion of the male insistence on trying to navigate and drive simultaneously:

Thanks to these unexpected excursions, I have seen parts of the country side that I might otherwise have missed, but I have no idea where they were or how to get back there. [Hacknot: In Praise of Code Reviews]

The reluctance to stop and read the map is analogous to the reluctance to do code reviews:

This desire to minimize small, short-term pain even at the expense of significantly more pain in the long term is at the core of much self-defeating behavior.

I feel very lost indeed.