So, I recently installed some software on my linux box.

I saw on the homepage for the software that they were looking to make a new home page. So, I made a new one for them. I just took their content, threw in some divs and made a simple CSS. Took me about 2 hours (I’m no expert).

The project lead quite liked it. I sent him the files and he put it to the dev list.

What happened? The very first response was: I like it but I think it would be better if we had a wiki front page.

This is absolutely typical open source:

• There’s a problem or an issue.
• Someone takes the initiative and solves the issue or problem.
• They put the solution to the inevitable committee and immediately everyone’s hither to unmentioned preference comes to light.

What’s most annoying about this is that often you can tell that the responses are from people that have never put any thought into a resolution for the problem or issue before but now it’s been bought to their attention their brain has wandered off and decided how they’d do it (better). This wandering nearly always fails to take into account that they don’t have time to do it themselves.

What’s even more galling is you know that if you approached “the committee” for preferences before you start, you’ll just get bogged down in discussion and indecision anyway, again taking into account the opinions of people that don’t intend to actually contribute to the solution in a practical way.

So, the work that’s already been done is pretty much discarded and a new solution is proposed, taking into account the newly revealed preferences. As with everything designed by committee, this new solution will then limp along, unfinished for months or even years, because no-one has the time. In the meantime, the perfectly decent solution initially proposed could be filling the gap nicely but instead it sits unused and the time already spent is wasted.

The solution? Well, there’s two possible outcomes but no real solution:

1. get to a point in the “hierarchy” where you just implement your ideas, without even checking with anyone (really ballsy and often risky)
2. you get really fucking lucky and create a solution that everyone likes and meets everyone’s expectations with an almost psychic degree of accuracy

Good luck!

It’s time to do something other than moan about how boring my job is.

So, I’ve started to learn again.

At the moment I’m doing some stuff with PHP but I’m trying to chuck in CSS as I go too.

We were just about to leave the house this AM when my other half remembered we still had to print something. The laptop was already logged into Ubuntu and I thought “Hell, everything else has been so easy, I’ll give it a go”. I added a printer and printed the document in about two minutes. I was as simple, if not more simple than windows. Excellent.

Just spotted something awesome while watching the extras on my Iron Man 2 Blu-Ray.  During the “Practical Meets Digital” featurette you’ll see an ILM guy applying a dust map to the Mark II suit and he appears to be using a GNOME desktop, Firefox and Thunderbird.  Cool.

I had an email today from an employee of Tribal Group PLC – for those that don’t know they get a massive number of ICT contracts from the British government.

Anyway, this employee, no doubt under a multi-million pound contract, requested I complete a form and return said form via email.  However, rather than send me the form they directed me to where I could download it.  They didn’t provide a direct link.

Having found the form I discover it is in PDF format, with no editable fields.  So I email my contact and say as much.  They respond with the following:

“it is in the format of a pdf document so that it cannot be altered.”

That doesn’t seem the best format for something you are asking people to alter to me.

The employee goes on to suggest I print, complete, scan and email the form.

I don’t think I’ll bother.  After all, I’m not getting paid to admin the multi-million pound contract.

March 9th 2010

I’m a convert. FireFox has been my browser of choice for the last 7 years and I loved it. I never intended to switch to Chrome, as with all the best products I just found I needed it.

July 21st 2010

I’ve converted back.  Again, not a decision based on preference but necessity.  Chrome has some great features for web development and I will use them again but for general browsing it just eats memory.  And it’s slow.