Baus.net Podcast 3
I recorded a quick podcast tonight. No big picture ideas, just some
discussion on email, calendaring, and task management geekery.
At work I am stuck using Exchange even though Gmail is my mail
application of choice. Fortunately a new feature
in Gmail
(ok it isn't that new; it came out in July, but I just heard about it)
which
enables it to send email out through third party
SMTP servers has made my life much better. It makes it possible to
send all my email from Exchange to my gmail account. The only draw
back is that Gmail polls our Exchange server using POP3, so emails
aren't updated instantly.
I then push my email and calendar to my new iPhone using
Gmail's
Exchange Active Sync.
It is a strange world we are living in when an Apple product talks to
a Google service, using a Microsoft protocol.
Finally, I tie my Google calendar together with my Exchange calendar
using the Google Calendar Sync program which is a desktop
application. Blah, now that's a hack. Why Google doesn't offer a web
service to do this is beyond me. Maybe there is a technical reason I
don't understand.
I am back to using todoist for
task management, but haven't found a great iPhone solution there.
I also briefly discuss multi-tasking on the iPhone, and the reason I
bought an iPhone over the Motorola Droid. Simple things like scrolling web
pages are still glitchy on Android. Plus when Android phones start
shipping on AT&T this spring, it will be possible to use both
platforms on the same carrier. Thus far my experience with AT&T has
been fine.
Baus.net Podcast 2
First off, I have to apologize for the spottiness of the baus.net uptime. I'm having problems with twistd after switching my site over Linode. I don't think twistd's event driven I/O model is working well with pyblosxom.
I finished my second podcast that I recorded on my iPhone yesterday. It is keeping with the theme to do what is important.
My general premise here is that working and running companies is important, and it is wrong to discount capitalism as evil.
Here's a couple links that I mentioned in my podcast:
Randy Pausch Time Management Talk from 2007
Notes from Ryan Carson's BoS talk
New Year's is one my favorite holidays as it comes with the least responsibility of all the major holidays. There is nothing
to do except have a good time. No turkeys to cook or presents to buy.
K keeps a scrap book of mementos and looking back, even with all
the economic craziness, 2009 was a good year. We traveled, went to a lot
of shows, got some work done, and our families saw good health. Last spring, when the market melted down,
I thought I would be out of a job. Fortunately that didn't happen, and
in many ways our team came together which made us even more effective.
I'm optimistic about 2010. Although the U.S. has some systemic
problems that we haven't come to terms with, our fundamentals are
right. In times of crisis, it is best to embrace the fundamentals.
I appreciate the customary self critique of resolutions. A resolution
doesn't need to be self deprecating, but a recognition that no matter how well
things are going, there is room improve. My resolutions this
year are a bit odd (sure I need to lose 15lbs, but that isn't anything
new). My resolutions are to become a content production
machine, and do what is important.
Become a content production machine
It sounds kind of strange to aspire to become a content production machine, but I wrote last year that I had started
to take the internet for granted. I acted as if there will always be another day
to express my opinions, but if history is a guide, that
might not always be the case. I have more
power of expression at my finger tips than in the entire history of mankind. That's not
something to take lightly, as there are many places were the internet
is already tightly control and freedom of expression limited. I am
very fortunate to live in a country with a strong foundation in
freedom of expression.
Also the ability to create content is increasing quickly. Writing is
just the beginning. Video and (and to a certain extent) audio is going to be
increasingly
huge in the next couple years. It takes a lot of energy to write. I'm busy, I'm tired, I don't have the mental energy to
write, but why limit myself to writing? It could very well be easier
to just record my thoughts in a audio cast or video log. I definitely
think doing something is better than nothing.
Do what is important
One of my biggest influences from 2009 was the late
Randy Pausch. I
was a late comer to Randy Pausch's work, but I've never heard anyone put the meaning of life
in such concise terms. If there is one lesson I've learned from Randy,
it is, "Do what is important."
While Pausch deservedly became famous for his
Last Lecture, I've
found his talks on
time management to be even more pragmatic and possibly valuable.
When I'm driving (which I do a lot)I tend to put a familiar album on repeat and roll
around the events of the day.
This year I kept hearing Randy's voice in my head, "Do what's important. Do what's important."
I'm bad at this. I do shit that isn't important all the time. Here's
an example. With Randy's guidance, I did do something semi-important
on my to-do list: I got my old Porsche out of the
garage. That is something I failed to do for nearly 2 years as I
became overwhelmed by the work it required. But getting the car on the
road was important because everyday when I came home and saw it in the garage
it sapped a little energy from me because in the back of mind I thought, "I need to get that
Porsche out of the garage." It kept me from doing other more important
things.
While the Porsche isn't important, getting it out of the garage was because it represented just another thing
to do. But then I did something that wasn't important. I obsessed
about the stupid thing. How much is this going to cost? How much is it
worth? Is the suspension pan going to rust out? Is it going to need a
valve job? Those are valid questions, but they aren't important.
And this is why I haven't reached Pausch's zen state of
productivity. In retrospect, I should have done the important thing
(get the Porsche out of the garage), and then moved on to the next
important thing. But that's hard, and it is the reason Randy Pausch
was Randy Pausch,
and I'm not. Completing one important task threw me off course
of my next task.
Even in his dying days, Pausch didn't claim that his work, and the
fun he had doing it, wasn't important. It is clear that Randy put his family above all
else, but he had a lot of pride in what he accomplished in his career.
He said he made dreams come true, and he did. If I saw one thing last year that absolutely blew my mind as an engineer it is was
the game by two of his former students,
World of Goo. The entire game,
including design, animation, musical score, and programming was done by two people with virtually no budget. It is
a benchmark of what can be accomplished with a small team, and the
interdisciplinary skill set it took to build it is mind boggling.
Fascination, passion, and the freedom to dream is what
drives our society forward. The U.S. has a strong work ethic, but I
don't believe work should be viewed as universally unenjoyable, because if virtue
is found in doing unenjoyable work, the small things that make our
working lives better will be not be considered valuable, even when the
true costs are very small.
So this year I resolve to do what is important, but the hard part is
understanding what is really important.
I just finished a significant upgrade to baus.net. I
regrettably let the site atrophy to the point where I wasn't
sure how it is was running. Baus.net felt like a messy desk. While I could get other work
done, it kept nagging me every time I looked at it. While I haven't made any aesthetic changes yet,
I did complete the following tasks:
- Download pyblosxom blog code to my Mac and get running in WingIDE.
- Get Subversion plugin that hosts my entries running on Mac.
- Make some code updates to take advantage of the Python Subversion API changes.
- Get pyblosxom core running under WSGI on twisted.
- Research re-enabling comments (decided to make it another project).
- Move static content to S3.
- Move image hosting to Flickr.
- Centralize code and content into a singly rooted Subversion repo.
- Load javascript libraries from Google.
- Upgrade from statcounter to Google analytics.
- Create CentOS VM on VMWare Fusion to stage deployment.
- Configure nginx to proxy to twisted and feedburner for my feeds.
- Upgrade memcached and libevent.
- Centralize logging for all services.
- Document the installation process.
- Write startup script.
- Provision new Linux VM from Linode.
- Perform installation on Linode.
- Update DNS to point to new installation.
This project ending up costing tens of hours of my personal time, and there was a point
that I was ready to scrap the whole thing and move to WordPress.
But I'm glad I finished the project. I use baus.net to try out technologies in a pseudo production environment,
and having my own personal content in total disarray didn't sit well with me.
I also realized that my previous experiments with using Subversion to store my blog content had a direct impact
on a project we are working on which uses Subversion as the back-end of a content management
system. I had confidence that it would work after running baus.net this way for years.
I take pride
that in my free time I've created a system from end to end including system administration, Python development, and
some basic CSS/HTML hacking, which includes a pretty novel use of Subversion. That might sound silly for something
as small as baus.net, but I think there is something to be
said about building an entire system no matter how small. As a project manager responsible not
just administration or software, but whole systems, at some point I have to walk the walk to maintain credibility.
If all I do is go from one meeting to the next projecting ROI,
discussing synergies, and saying
absolutely have I added
any real value?