New Terms in IT #1

Lately I've noticed a lot of new terms / terminology in IT. hybrid IT, data injection and non-invasive data governance!

So I'll add my terms as well, here is my first:

New IT Terms #1: Complexity Injection

When something appears too simple, or can be solved with a simple solution, we need to inject some complexity into it to make sure it seems more likely.

Can games help you find the perfect job?

Can your perfect job be determined based on the games you play?

I've been working in IT for over 20 years. When I first started, it was new and I really enjoyed what I did. There was a bit of analysis of product requirements, a bit of programming, testing and seeing a piece of software come to life. Because I was new, I was given small tasks to complete one component of a larger project. My responsibility was to get that bit working and testing, and it would be "plugged" into the bigger system.

As with most things we do, we want more, we want to grow. We get better at what we do and are given more responsibilities. On the next project, you now get to create a larger part of the system. It's more complex, requires more thinking and time to solve, more programming and testing. 

Many people thrive on this continuous growth cycle, they get more responsibility, more challenge, more satisfaction to deliver the final outcome. That's what I thought as I grew to become a "Tech Lead"; I owned the construction of the complete system, not all the programming, but the architecture and how it all hangs together. That led to being the Application Architect, designing and creating the architecture for the next system. Initially, this was fun, but as the system got more complex, and we built more component onto of components, I started to feel uncomfortable.

I couldn't put my finger on it. I thought, I'm just not smart enough to understand all this complexity, but it wasn't that. I understood it, but it just got very scary. I didn't enjoy it anymore, I didn't enjoy the job anymore. Hang on a sec, I've got this really good job, I'm on the trajectory I wanted (or should have), but how could I no longer enjoy it?

What has go to do with playing games?

Firstly, a bit about my childhood ...

When I was young, I got my first computer. I taught myself how to program, and the first things I did was to build a tool, a digital clock on the screen, with an alarm. The second was to build a game - a jumping game to see how far you could go avoiding blocks coming at you. 

When I got a bit older, I got into playing Retro arcade games. Most games have levels. That is, you complete one screen, then there's another one with more things to do, and it is just a little bit harder, it is supposed to keep you hooked through the continual challenge. Even though I had fun playing, the concept of levels, and building on top of what I had already done, always bugged me. I always preferred games that were continuous with no levels, like Tetris. There weren't that many games like this in the arcade, so I started to write my own. I never really published any, but they all had this style to them.

So why am I write this now?

Because, after downloading a few new apps on my iPhone, I was cataloging them and it dawned on me that all the apps in the "Games" folder were all of the continuous game kind. It them made me think about my career and my job - I know, what a leap! I have had many jobs and roles, and today I an Enterprise Architect for a financial institution. I still have the hobby of creating tools and games, while on my commute to and from work. I am still at my happiest doing this.

I've been trying to determine if is it the process of creating, or the programming, or the fact that I'm not at work, that makes me happy. But somehow when I boil it all down, I think it has something to do with the fact that I create tools and continuous games.

I believe the tools are my way of needing to fill-in the gaps, when things are not straight forward, or small and I'm not feeling "harmonious". When I was the tech lead or application architect, I think it was the fact that even though I designed how the "thing" should work, I rarely saw things end up how I felt they needed to. Something was missing and I just couldn't put my finger on it, but when it was right, I just knew it.

For games, continuous games to be exact, I thought maybe it was same kind of thing. The fact that it's continuous, and there are no gaps, it has already achieved that harmonious feeling for me. But I believe it's actually the exact opposite. I like things to be harmonious, but that requires understanding and confidence, and therefore continually repeating something is my way of getting that feeling, or learning. And maybe I'm not so good with continuous change and new things, even though I think I am. 

So how does all this help me with my job?

Well, the fundamental question is do I create tools and games because I just love doing that, or is it deeper than that, and it is an indicator of an underlying need for something more in my job and career. I've been at my current job for quite some time, and as of thinking and writing about this, it might be time to see if I can find the things (in my job) that give me that "harmonious" feeling. Otherwise ... I need to look for a job that allows me to have that, more of the time than not. 

At least I know that I've always got the hobby of creating tools and games, and that makes me happy, and I can continue to do it, and it may eventually lead somewhere.

I don't know if this makes me a bit of a nutter, and what I've just written is just nonsense. But I do know that now, more than ever, I use and need that "harmonious" feeling as a gauge of whether something feels right. When I feel that "rightness", I am happy.

Check what games you play, and why. Maybe thinking about them (in addition to playing them), might give you some insight into what make you happy!

Love / Hate Relationship

We have a love / hate relationship.
We love the person, but we hate the choices.
Maybe hate is a bit strong for most of the time, but there are definitely times.
We love the person that is smart, funny, full of potential, capable, knows right and wrong, all the things a parent hopes for.
When we are not looking, you are kind, caring and loving of your own.
You wouldn't believe any of that, that we care and love you.
We have spent the last 20 years trying to give you our attention, our time, teaching, experiences, knowledge, care, help...
We have tried your way, our way, nice, tough love, every way.
We still keep trying, time after time, attempt after attempt, we do care.
We want you to succeed, do what you want, be what you want.
We just want you to take a step forward, then another.
You don't - this is where the flip in the relationship occurs.
You avoid choices that help you go forward.
You chose to do as little as possible when presented with a challenge.
You chose to give up when things got hard, in-fact before that, when things looked like they might get hard.
You chose to not learn, not care, not help yourself.
You chose to listen, but not hear, and believe that we are horrible.
You see it as horrible because we hate you, but it's because we care, and tell you how it is.
You chose to walk away from everything - school, basketball, music, family, us.
You have not moved forward.
In-fact, you have chosen to move backwards.
You have chosen to eat badly and sleep badly.
You have chosen to work little and help little, but spend a lot of money.
You have chosen to be uncooperative when asked, when you promise, pretty much always.
You have chosen to live in filth in your room, and produce mess without concern.
You have chosen to use resources, food and any else, whatever and whenever you like.
You have also chosen not to contribute anything to the household, even though you consume and earn money.
This is why we hate the choices, because they are mostly bad, but the person is still in there.
We are not expecting perfection in choices, but choices that are reasonable, healthy, allow forward movement.
We experience frustration on a daily basis, and it appears like we hate the person, No - only the choices.
It appears like your life is bad, but nothing has changed in more than 5 years.
5 years ago, the same things were said, the same frustrations were felt, and the same choices were made as today.
We are fed up with the bad choices, it has gone on too long.
We do get frustrated and want the bad choices to go away, but not the person.
We have not given up, and never will.
We will suffer, you will suffer. The others in the family will also suffer.
We care, we love the person, we know you can do it.
Step back and look at where you have come from and are going, you're stuck in a loop.
We are part of that loop, and we are stuck too.
We can't change you, we can only remind you that you need to change.
We can't fix everything for you, even though in the past we have fixed most of your bad choices, so many times.
We were wrong, and we will no longer fix your bad choices.
 Please try and see the forest for the tree.
It is all about you and your choices, it's only about choices.
In the end, you must move forward.
You need to make some good choices, hard choices.
You need to follow through.
Then maybe we can flip back to the person, the smart, funny, capable person.
The person that makes better, or even good, choices and moves forward.
The person we love.

iPhone Games

Being successful writing iPhone games is hard. Maybe not so much hard as it has a high learning curve to get started. Then there are the tools, XCode seems quite archaic compared to Eclipse for Java devs and Visual Studio for Windows. Then once you've come up with an idea and written it, competing with the 250000+ apps out there is your next challenge. To all those out there who are giving it a try, good luck, I hope you do well and hit the big time. Those that already have, you are amazing!!!

If you're interesting in my attempts check out:

Psychic
Colorz

Good luck and good coding.

Regards
Paul

Hi folks, Happy New Year and all that!

As an architect I spend a lot of time creating IT landscape roadmap, diagrams, etc; my primary tool is Microsoft Visio 2003. Visio is a powerful drawing tool and one of the features I always use is Layers. Unfortunately, layers are not exactly what they sound like. When I think layers, I think photoshop. You can draw stuff on a layer and bring it forward or back and use z-order property as you would expect. Visio layers are more like tags or categories that you attach to shapes so that you can quickly find all the shapes of a paticular category. Shapes themselves have a z-order, you can bring them forward and backward - not sure if you can access the z-order value itself.

So why am I telling you this!? Because I have a diagram with 24 layers representing 24 months of application change over time. Each layer has anywhere from 1 to 50 shapes that belong to that layer (month). All great and good as long you don't add anything or bring something forward or backward - otherwise layer hell!!! If you add an object, it is immediately place at the top of the z-order stack. The first time user of Visio may think that if they put it on layer "May2010", that it will be in front of layer "Apr2010" and behind "Jun2010" - WRONG! The shape's z-order has no correlation with the layer, it's just been tagged with the layer "May2010". To get it to actually be in the correct z-order, I need to do a sweep through my layers, starting with "Jan2010", select all shapes "Bring To Front", then "Feb2010", select all, "Bring To Front", and so on. Let me tell you, if you're changing stuff regularly, it's not much fun.

Anyway, that's all behind me now because I've created a nice little Visio macro called "ReorderLayers" in the stencil file on SourceForge. It relies on a simple convention of naming the layers that you want to automatically reorder to be prefixed with a number. By default it's three digits, e.g. 010-Jan2010, 020-Feb2010, 030-Mar2010, ... (I always number my layers by 10's initially so I can insert additional layers layer). Then you place the shapes you want on the appropriate layer, then run the Macro (i.e. from the menu: Tools > Macros > PaulsStencil > layers > ReorderLayers). This should reorder all the layers numerically, i.e. from 010, 020, ...

Enjoy!!!
Paul

It's that time of year again - Christmas you say, no ... Holidays you say, no ... Interest rates!!!
They're at it again. The economy is getting better, so we're again hit with interest rate hikes. But you know, 0.25% is not that bad given we're all doing so well now?! :-( I just read in the elevator that the economy is still in for a shakey road for next 18 months. Shouldn't be left alone for a bit longer then? But of course the lovely Banks, they think we are doing better, so they raise the rates even higher. 0.39, whatever, just to make sure we have a fantastic Christmas and start a lovely New Year on a high, interest rate that is!!! Merry Christmas and a "Happy" New Year.

We're doing so well!

Wow! Australia's economy is doing so well that we need to keep raising interest rates. I'm no expert on economies, but maybe all that money going into the system and credit cards going up and all that is a symptom of how bloody expensive it is to live now days! I don't think big business is suffering and trying to pay off their mortgage or feed their kids. I make good money, but two years ago that money went so much further than it does today. How many people have to lose their home before the countries economy is happy. Come on, think! There has got to be another way to fix the economy issues than increasing interest rates all the time?!