Entries from March 2007 ↓

I just saw an interesting piece on Catalyst (on ABC2) about the effects of choice on our psychology.

Our entire market economy is based on one idea, the more choice you have the happier you get. But science suggests we’re going against human nature. In fact, too much choice can actually make you sick.

From here: “Choice”

You can see the vast amount of choices we are faced with when taking a trip to the supermarket. Do we really need half an aisle of toilet paper to choose from? How about 20 different brands of olive oil?

I think there are a couple of factors that affect our response in the face of “over-choice”:

1. The importance of the item - If we’re faced with a large number of choices for a trivial item, such as toilet paper, it induces frustration. One ply, two ply, or three ply? Plain, or pictures of dolphins or puppies? Who cares!
2. Our knowledge of the items - If we can’t distinguish between the choices, then more frustration. My favourite example is olive oil. Who knows the difference between the different types and brands, and who could be bothered learning when we just want something to cook with? I just want some oil!
3. The cost of the item - High cost and high choice is the worst, for me at least. The Catalyst piece spoke about how this leads to anxiety, and for some people depression.

This topic has been playing on my mind a lot lately, mostly because I’m a chronic over-thinker. I think the turning point was truly realizing that, for small items, the choice really doesn’t matter. Just pick one, whichever captures your attention first - it’s not that big a deal!

It’s been harder to deal with choice in the face of high cost items, such as when buying a camera for my US trip or my recent purchase of a new TV. I’ve been working on trusting my instincts and not second guessing myself, which appears to be working. Formulate what it is you want, find what is available in that area, and see what other people think. Internalize as much information as possible, and see what decision “bubbles” to the surface.

The sinking feeling when you crash your car is never pleasant, even less so when the car isn’t your own. I’d imagine the feeling would be almost unbearable if the car you crashed wasn’t a Falcon or a Commodore, but a Bugatti or a Ferrari.

There’s been two such crashes lately, both of which involved very rare cars and weren’t owned by the driver.

Bugatti Veyron [Pics]

Ferrari Enzo

A little piece of me dies inside when I think about such beautiful cars being wrecked…

It’s interesting to see the difference in the way that News Corporation and Fairfax Media reported on the PS3 launch last week.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports:

The launch of Sony’s PlayStation 3 games console got off to a feeble start last night with officials, media and security outnumbering customers for most of the evening.

The Australian IT section, in contrast, makes no mention of a poor turnout - simply saying that:

GAMERS queued outside retail stores across Australia to buy Sony’s PlayStation 3 (PS3) from the stroke of midnight.

Yes, I know the Terry Tate series of commercials are old. But they’re still as funny as the day I first saw them. Sam de Brito at All Men Are Liars has a nice, convenient post with links to all the videos on YouTube. Appropriately titled as well…

Mindless violence never gets old

My favourite has to be the one where the guy eats some cake that isn’t his, and Terry Tate brings some cake that “you won’t want seconds of!”

I’ve always been partial to Transformers, and in anticipation of the hype around the new movie (trailer) I dug up some of my old toys on my last trip home. I couldn’t find all of them, but I did manage to find my favourite - Optimus Prime. I even still have his trailer, one of his hands, and his gun.

It’s amazing how the toys have changed over years. For comparison, here’s the Alternators version of Rollbar that I picked up while I was in the US. The missing door and windshield is due to the rough treatment by baggage handlers.

The newer toys are so much more poseable, but they are definitely harder to transform.

I’m almost motivated to pick up some more new Transformers, especially before the market gets overrun with the toys for the new movie. I’m particularly keen to try and find some of the other Alternators toy series.

I recently bought a pair of black leather Chuck Taylor All-Stars from the Converse store at DFO Melbourne. Within a few weeks, the sole started separating from the rest of the shoe. Seeing as I’d lost the receipt (as usual), I didn’t expect much help from Converse in getting them replaced.

However, Rachel did some legwork and got in contact with Converse USA who in turn gave us the contact for the Converse distributor in Australia, Consports in Melbourne. A quick phone call, and they got in touch with the DFO in Harbourtown and organised an exchange. They even had a pair of size 13’s in stock! A quick trip in on the weekend and they were exchanged, no receipt and no problems at all.

So thanks, Converse, for looking after your customers.

I couldn’t help myself while I was there, and ended up buying a pair of Sailor Jerry All-Stars.

You’d think working for IBM’s Software Group would mean we have revision control sorted, right? Well, not quite. We use an internal system called CMVC - Configuration Management Version Control. There’s no reliable integration into developer’s tools (such as Eclipse); you can use either a command-line interface or a dated Java GUI. The servers are based in Austin, so it’s slow to work with from Australia.

It does have strengths though, mostly around it’s integration of defect management with source control. This tends to lead people towards the “one defect, one commit” policy I mentioned earlier, however it does come with overhead. My process to check in some source changes are as follows:

1. Create a defect, if one doesn’t already exist for the change I’m making.
2. Modify the owner of the defect to be me, rather than the owner of the “component” the defect was raised against.
3. Accept the defect.
4. Create a track for the defect.
5. Select the files I want to modify from a list of all the files in the release (or component). Make sure I don’t unselect the list of files!
6. Use a diff tool to merge the local changes into the checked out files. This isn’t a case of copying the modified files, as there are version control flags like ‘%F%X’ that need to be preserved in the checked out files.
7. Using the file list selected earlier, check in the changed files.
8. If you didn’t change a checked out file, “unlock” it.
9. Each “component” that contains a file you modified now has a “fix record”. Set all these fix records to “complete.”
10. When all the fix records are complete, the track you created earlier should now be in the “integrate” state. Make sure this happens, else your code won’t be included in the next build.
11. To make sure our local (ie not in Austin) copy of the backing source gets updated, kick off a script on an internal server to extract the changed files.

Sounds complicated? It is. No wonder so many teams use CVS locally and push changes across the Pacific once a week. In the system’s defense, it’s not designed for rapidly changing development environments. It’s strength is in tracking and managing changes caused by discovered defects in stable code bases.

While there may be newer and better alternatives, this does the job and does it without breaking. Mostly.

Michael Gall over at wakeless.net has written a three-part series on revision control.

• Revision Control
• Why Should You Use Revision Control?
• What’s Wrong With Revision Control?

It’s a good overall introduction to what revision control is, as well as the need for it and current weaknesses in the main revision control systems.

Michael makes the important point that integrating revision control into a developer’s work flow should be a priority. The harder the revision control system is to use, the longer developers will take between committing changes. This increases the risk that multiple “logical” changes are grouped into one commit, making it so much harder to roll back a specific change if a defect is discovered. In my opinion, a defect should be handled by one and only one commit into the source tree.

I’ll follow up with a look into the revision control I use every day in my work with IBM.

There’s an interesting article on The Age today about the downturn of university students studying computer science. One of the reasons quoted is the wide-spread assumption that there are no jobs in the industry.

Is Computer Science Dead? : Mashup discussion

As someone in the industry, this can only be a good thing. When I was studying, just after the dot-com boom and subsequent crash, the outsourcing trend hadn’t really taken effect yet. There were still a lot of people studying in the field in the assumption that they will make money.

Now, it’s getting back to the point where people learning computer science do it because they want it to - not because of some expectation of AU$100k+ salaries. Less graduates mean more jobs, and the people in the industry will hopefully be valued a little better than they are now.

So let every man and his wife think that all the programming jobs are going to India. There’ll always be plenty of high-value challenging jobs in the field for the rest of us.

In October and November 2006 I was lucky enough to go to the USA for work, so I took the opportunity to travel around while I was there. My travel emails were well received back home, so I’m posting them here for all to enjoy.

Original Date: 9 November 2006

Hi all,

Well, I’m now in Boston. Although once again, I’ve gotten in late at night so I haven’t had a chance to see anything yet. I gotta stop doing that…

The rest of my time in DC was pretty amazing. It really is a picturesque city, I’ve got a couple of images that stick in my mind… the first is walking along the Reflection Pool and visualising the Vietnam and Civil Rights protests that happened there, then standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial and realising that I’m walking and standing in places that stood witness to some of the greatest events in the world’s history.

The second is walking around The Mall, which is the big grassy area that most of the monuments and Smithsonian institutions are built around - bordered on one end by the Capitol Building, and the other by the Lincoln Memorial. It’s just before sunset, and all the buildings are starting to be lit in orange. I’m walking between two long rows of trees, and a gentle breeze is sending clusters of orange leaves swirling down and onto the path in front of and all around me. Simply stunning.

I also took the time to check out some of the museum’s and art galleries. I enjoyed the National Art Gallery the most, it had a lot of reneissance and dutch (ie Rembrant) work, as well as an exhibit by a New York school of photographers from when photography was a new medium. I have photos of a couple of really great paintings, ones that I want to remember later.

Oh, I also saw the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution - the actual documents, preserved and displayed. I didn’t realise that the phrase “John Hancock” meaning signature comes from his signature on the Declaration of Independence - his was the first and largest signature, seeing as he had a rather large part in the American Revolution. There you go, Craig’s history / trivia fact for the day.

Overall impression of DC, then, is that it’s a really nice place to sight see. I didn’t get a chance to check out the more exciting side of it, so I can’t really comment on the night life. I would definitely go back there again, given the chance.

For a lot more photos from the trip, have a look at my Flickr set. I’ve geotagged them, so the map is pretty interesting too!