Advice

  • How to Get Things Done When You Have no Time

    This last month or so has been a hell of a busy time for me.  Working long hours, with a 1 year old at home who needs attention while trying to squeeze in social events, exercise, sleep, reading and personal projects is a lot to juggle. How have I managed to rock a streak of…

  • Why is it so Cold

    This week has been a difficult one for biking to work.  On Friday it hit – 35 with snow. Biking required the full snow suit including ski goggles.  Despite the slow slog home it still was probably more pleasant than being stuck in a car, gridlocked and worried about all the cars around that still…

  • Study Open Source Applications

    I came across an excellent resource last week that more people should know about. The Architecture for Open Source Applications is a series of books that examines how some of the best software ever written is designed. Programmers rarely get the chance to study the work of others in detail.  You learn the fundamentals in school…

  • How to Provide a Great Estimate

    Estimating the cost of developing software is difficult.  Very difficult. That’s because with each new project there are always unknowns, mis-interpretations and assumptions that are not communicated.  If the client knew exactly what they wanted then it would just be a matter of typing it up.  They hire you because they don’t know how to do it…

  • Life to Old Projects

    Maintenance.  UGH! We live in a world where software is part of an every evolving ecosystem of other software.  Everything is constantly changing and everything you do needs to keep up or risk falling into disrepair and creating technical debt. The maintenance window is a chance to breath fresh life into an otherwise languishing project.…

  • Adjusting to Fewer Blogs

    A couple weeks ago I drastically downsized my list of subscribed blogs.  Going from skimming 200+ blog posts down to fewer than 10 per day.  It has actually made quite a difference.  The time saved was used to read more books, which I’m happy to say has worked out. Being disconnected from the news has…

  • Long Vacation

    For the last 2 1/2 weeks I have been on a long vacation back home to Newfoundland.  This time we seriously lucked out on the weather, getting in two weeks of 25+ degree sunny days. We bookended the trip starting with the Tele 10 at the start and the Regatta to finish things off with…

  • Think Weeks

    One of the things Bill Gates did was to take a semi-annual ‘Think Week’ retreat. During this week he would extract himself from all obligations and hole up in a hotel somewhere with a stack of books to read. To Bill Gates these retreats were critical to his ability to stay ahead of big picture…

  • Time Audit Surprise

    When you measure things you can manage them – Words of wisdom from Peter Drucker. Every time I have made the effort to measure something whether it be calories, carbs, miles run, heart rate, cash flow, net worth or weight there is always a surprise in what the numbers reveal. Recently I did a one…

  • Thoughts on Swift

    So for an iOS developer like myself Swift is pretty exciting. When a new language comes along, especially one that is sure to get traction, there is a lot of opportunity to create some exciting new things.  We all know that Swift will make inroads into the mac and iOS app scene, but as a…