I’ve been thinking a lot about this recently; that most of the key changes in my life have a book associated with them, and the process of compiling this list has been quite enlightening.
Maplin Electronics Catalogue - Early 1980’s and I’m a schoolboy having been introduced to electronics by the gift of an electronics kit one Christmas - of all the sources of information available to me the Maplin Catalogue had to be my favourite - I devoured every page, tried to understand every component and product and what they could do, and fantasised about building many of the projects - alas it was mostly fantasy and ‘window shopping’ - but I must have learnt something in those days. Strangely, there’s almost nothing on the Internet about them (other than other people looking) - am I the only one with fond memories of the 1980’s Maplin Catalogues with their futuristic sci-fi covers?
I Robot - of all the Asimov books, this has to be my favourite, and I credit it with my belief that nothing is impossible - taking the premise of the elegant ‘three laws of robotics’ that you would think covered all eventualities, what would the result be of some unimaginable situation - of course with hindsight it all makes sense, but who could forseen a robot lying as a result of the accidental ability to read minds for instance?
Programming the Z80 by Rodney Zaks - not that I did much Z80 programming - my first computers were 6502 based - but this book helped me take the fundamental leap from a basic understanding of digital electronics to an appreciation of the inner workings of microprocessors. I first learned to program on an Acorn Atom with 2K of RAM (yes, 2048 bytes!!!) and the disciplines of squeezing every last ounce out of available resources set me up for later career in embedded systems - I still enjoy the ability to work in assembler even though most of my time is spent in much higher level languages with unimaginable resources to squander. I wonder how the next generations of geeks and techies will cut their teeth in the fundamentals, in the age of ‘GUIs’ and ‘IDEs’ and ‘RAD’ and ‘frameworks’? Would anyone now be able to shoehorn a game such as Elite onto the meagre resources offered by the BBC Micro?
CGI Programming with Perl - This was the main book that helped me take the leap onto the Internet - whilst I now predominantly use PHP I still have a fondness for Perl (perhaps related to my love of lower level languages as described above) and it was through learning how to use Perl as a CGI scripting language to develop dynamic websites that helped me understand the ‘pleasures’ of the Internet, client / server architectures etc. Again, I wonder whether the next generation of developers who don’t have to go through this process will get as full an understanding of ‘why’ to go with ‘how’?
How to be Idle by Tom Hodgkinson - it’s probably a bit early to claim this as a life changing book as I’ve not yet finished reading it, but it symbolises a change I feel coming. I don’t know if this is a mini midlife crisis but I’ve recently been reviewing the way I life my life and my attitudes to the world and those around me. This book suggests that much that is wrong with the world comes from how unnatural the 9-5 ‘must achieve’ worth ethic is. Many quotes from philosophers, thinkers (and idlers) have been striking a real chord, and helping me come to the conclusion that it’s OK to be content with what I do achieve while living a happy life, rather than feeling guilty because of course I could work harder and achieve more yet be miserable.
One thing is for certain, I’m looking forward to finding out what the next phase of my life will bring, and wondering what the accompanying books will be.
Believe it or not, I don’t think I really like computers - they’re the most frustrating, irritating, stress inducing devices I can imagine. But, it seems I do have a particular talent for getting them to do what I, or others, want them to do.
Of course I would like to say that part of my apparent success is due to years of study and experience having given me the ability to ‘think like a machine’ - or more accurately to be able to appreciate at quite a high level what’s going on inside the little black boxes - but I would also say that another part is an innate stubbornness and determination not to be beaten by a sliver of silicon.
Some days, no mater how hair-brained an idea you come up with might be - it just ‘works’. Other times, even the simplest most proven task fights back and you get nowhere, or as is often the case seem to go backwards. But I hold a strong belief that if machines and the things they do for us are to be worth anything, they should work for us rather than us having to work around how the machines want to do things.
Of course I’m not really suggesting that there’s some deep ‘conspiracy of the machines’, or that they have to handled like some wayward puppy you’re trying to house train, but I would suggest that to succeed in getting the most out of machines you do have to persevere and for goodness sake don’t let them see any fear in your eyes!
There’s a sweet contentment knowing that a system is fully up to date and patched, but how uncomfortable it soon becomes when you find out there’s a new update or patch – leading to the nagging question of if / when to go through the grief of updating.
On the one hand, you know you should apply updates as soon as you can to get any potential benefit of new features, bugfixes or even improved security and performance – but anyone who has been around long enough will know that even the simplest patch can upset an otherwise stable system and be a royal pain to resolve.
That leads to the temptation to procrastinate and put off updating systems until it can’t be avoided any longer, but the longer updates are left the more they build up, and the worse the process of updating becomes – again you may hear the sigh of bitter experience?
I’m not just talking about applications like Wordpress and Drupal, or the dreaded Windows Update – there are so many constant reminders from all sorts of systems to ‘update now?’ And I’m talking about minor updates rather than the biggies like Vista -> Windows 7 or Drupal 6 -> Drupal 7 – those you have a choice, but minor updates you really don’t, it’s more a matter of ‘when’ than ‘if.
Here is a summary the guidelines that I try and stick to:
Have a regular ‘maintenance period’ – Accept that maintenance is a fact of life, and schedule an appropriate amount of time at least monthly to review logs, apply updates and other housekeeping tasks to maintain a healthy system. Of course this implies that the more systems you look after, the more time will be spent in maintenance, but that cannot be avoided – without tlc systems tend to ask for your attention when it’s not so convenient!
Don’t do updates on a Friday afternoon – As tempting as it may be to slip this task in at the end of the week if your ‘proper work’ allows, it’s tempting fate and if you have problems with an update you might not have enough time to resolve it, or you might shortcut testing and not spot an issue until Monday. Make sure you have set enough time aside to do it properly, and you’re in the right frame of mind.
Design your system to be maintained – when carrying out initial installation and configuration, think ahead to how you are going to apply and test updates and patches, and migrate changes between environments. Good decisions at the start make life so much easier six months down the line. Documentation and good naming conventions are key. And of course as part of your deployment there was a test plan that can be used to validate updates?
Prepare and maintain a documented maintenance procedure – It makes the task much less daunting to know that you have a ‘script’ worked out rather than having to keep re-inventing the wheel. Wikis are ideal for the purpose as they’re easy to create and maintain. Anything you have to spend time figuring out so that next time you don’t have to struggle to remember it, or work it out again. If you find information that’s wrong or missing, fix it, and keep documentation updated as your system evolves.
Read the release notes - try to get an understanding of what the update or patch you’re about to apply will change so you can analyse potential risks and identify any mitigating measures you might take, and to also identify what testing you can do to satisfy yourself all’s OK afterwards.
Once you start – don’t stop until you finish – it’s probably worse half applying updates than not applying them, and even harder to do maintenance next time. So no distractions, and remember the ‘not on Friday afternoon’ rule.
Pat yourself on the back afterwards – it’s a necessary job, so make sure you get your due reward. If you’re doing this for someone else (a client) make sure they appreciate the effort it takes, and don’t be apologetic about taking the time to do it properly. Few people notice a well running system, but you soon get shouted as when it goes titsup, so sleep well in the knowledge that all is right with the world again and you have done a proper job!
So here’s the thing - I heard some Lou Reed on TV last night and I realised I hadn’t heard Transformer for far too long, so this afternoon I decided to finally get around to digging out and plugging all the various bits of my good-old-fashioned analogue hi-fi together again after far too long.
Having got over that fact I seem to have mislaid Lou Reed, the first album that caught my eye from my cherished vinyl collection as I scanned for something to put on was Fairground Attraction “The first of a million kisses”.
So I breath a deep contented breath, close my eyes, lean back in the chair and wonder why the hell it is that I haven’t done this for … probaly a good 10 years!!! My mind wanders further, and I realise that I’ve had this album for almost two decades, and although a few tracks on side one are like old friends I don’t know if I played the whole album more than a couple of times, but it’s great. So what other gems are in the modest collection of 200 odd LPs that I once put so much thought into? Given that most of the music is probably more than 20 years old - what have I missed in the mean time? Yikes - there can’t be enough hours in the day to find out what I’ve missed or am missing!!!!
But then I realise I have the same thought when I browse through my boxes of old novels looking for the next book to read again, and discover an old favourite, or something I once bought and never got around to reading, and also when I look for a film to watch out of the DVD collection (at least I finally threw all the videos away after they went mouldy or I’d have them to worry about too).
Half way through side2 (oh how I love vinyl - so tactile!) and I’ve decided that I don’t care. In all the various collections I have squirreled about in cupboards or sheds, on shelves and in boxes (and don’t get me started on tools, or bits of electronics) I’ve got more than enough to keep me fully occupied and amused for the rest of my life even if I worked at it full time - what does it matter if I’m missing other stuff - what I’ve got already is more than I will ever need and it’s all just fantastic even if it is often more than 20 years old!
As I mellow with time, it seems I’m becoming content with what I have - the grass is pretty green over here so why worry about the other side of the bridge?
I’ve seen some of these charting tools in things like Google Analytics but thought it was just a gimmick, but not only is this stuff entertaining, but makes the data informative and what’s more adds weight to the conclusions.
This post can relate to so many things - stylesheets, php code, glass fibre moulds - at some point when you’ve gone through a few iterations of an agile like process, you start thinking “If I’d known I was going to end up doing this, I would have started differently”
When you’re so close to completing, yet you know deep down it’s getting messy overcomplex and perhaps not as ‘nice’ as it could be, the decision of whether to leave it as-is because it works or to take the opportunity to rebuild everything before you go any further becomes almost unbearable.
But then I suppose is that not what the perpetual beta is all about, and eventually you get the opportunity to go for v2.0 (or 1.0 even)? In the mean time if it’s not doing any harm, leave it alone - you know it will only open up another can of worms if you start from scratch again!
I just had to look it up on wikipedia ‘cos it was bugging me - the British equivalent of 11th Grade in ‘my’ terms is Lower Sixth, or in ‘new money’ Year 12.
I’m trying to remember what I was doing that enhanced my life in the Lower Sixth - certainly not Perl which I didn’t discover until much later - I was probably doing good old BASIC and Pascal on an Apple II at that time, and perhaps some 6502 machine code on my Acorn Atom. Now that dates me!
Respect due to the Register for a very entertaining article discussing that “Boffins preparing to fire up the most powerful particle-smasher ever built have released another reassuring report which says that their machine will definitely not destroy the universe - nor even the planet Earth.”
I didn’t understand a word of it, and not only do I not know if I’m scared or not, I don’t know if I’m meant to be scared that I don’t know if I’m scared or not - is it one of these things that those of us that don’t know are supposed to trust those that are supposed to know?
Anyway, I’m sure that while some people may be scared (or pretending to be), others aren’t (or are pretending not to be), and I’ll imagine it’s all a Red Dwarf episode and carry on laughing at the Reg’s analogy of a subatomic billiard table.
If only someone had told me! The IP camera up the lighthouse plugs into a WiFi Access Point configured as a range extender, which through an external antenna connects to another Access Point with external antenna a mile away on my roof and into my home network giving internet connectivity to upload a picture every ten minutes.
But any tiny change I make to my home network (like changing subnet ranges ) seems to break the link, and to fix it means lugging a laptop up the 112 steps of the lighthouse. And if you’ve missed something vital at the other end (like turning something on) it’s a long walk down, back home, back to the lighthouse, and all the way up to the top to try again.
I spent a whole afternoon trying to get things running again after (stupidly) trying to upgrade encryption from WEP to WPA. It doesn’t make sense that you can’t configure the wireless side of these these over a wireless connection!
So, yes, it would be so much easier if there was someone else (or another me?) at the other end with walky talky. 10-4?
Respect due to 
) seems to break the link, and to fix it means lugging a laptop up the 112 steps of the lighthouse. And if you’ve missed something vital at the other end (like turning something on) it’s a long walk down, back home, back to the lighthouse, and all the way up to the top to try again.
