Simplicity Rules

We sprinted away to Bend this weekend for an impromptu overnight stay at Sunriver. It was my first time to central Oregon and waking up to snow-coated wilderness made me an instant fan.

Before heading back over the Cascade range, we visited some friends of friends at their machine shop. It is a candy machine shop, a place where they make/repair machines that make candy, specifically saltwater taffy and chocolate anything. I was especially taken by the many refurbished 1920s taffy wrapping machines. The design is so simple and it comes together to wrap taffy at 160 pieces per minute (and apparently that is slow).

For a real treat, check out the documentary-like video (20 MB) of their chocolate enrobers. It’s a little old school, but it oozes the passion of getting things just right.

There is a kind of beauty in a good URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or web address). The nameofsite.com part is important, but once you’ve decided on that, there’s more. Picking a good directory structure and naming convention makes a URL shareable and easy.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of examples of bad URLs. They are long and mean nothing to humans. For example, here is a very basic Amazon.com link (1):
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00023J4H0/duvinci-20/
As soon as you click on it, Amazon adds yet another bit of meaningless garbage–a session identifier, something like 103-4016647-1367485.

It’s very easy for we programmers to start slapping /info.php?name=adam&game=coding stuff onto our URLs. This is the way that our programs accept data, so it has become second nature and we are used to seeing it. Wouldn’t our users rather see info/adam/coding/ … ? (2)

I use URL rewriting to provide web addresses that are short, memorable, and easy to share. Apache’s mod_rewrite does the trick on Unix-like systems and ISAPI_Rewrite is your IIS variant.

A List Apart does a good job of walking the walk with their directory structure, as well as giving a great introduction to URL rewriting.

* A few notes: 1. Amazon is actually doing some rewriting to get the URL I mentioned, but my point is that shorter and less numeric would still be better. 2. I sometimes question whether your average surfer even knows how to find their current location.

Next door to my office building is a coffee shop. It is called The Sultan Cafe and features Turkish coffee and in the evenings they break out the Hooka, Turkish water pipes. Despite this and their full menu of panini sandwiches and Mediterranean favorites, it’s a pretty simple shop. I know the name, but I still call it Mike’s Coffee Shop.

Mike is there six days per week. His wife comes in to help a little each day, but for the most part it is just Mike. He has made simple decisions along the way that will help him continue to be successful. It’s the simplicity of it that impresses me.

• Mike got to the neighborhood before most of us. Almost a year ago, The Sultan Cafe opened. My building was still under construction and the one across the street was even further from completion. Of course, Mike made sure we each received a card for a free cup of coffee when we did arrive.
• The first time I went into Mike’s, he greeted me with a handshake and introduced himself. Every subsequent time, he says, “hello, Mr. Adam.” I asked Mike whether remembering the name is part of his strategy and he said, “sure, but it’s also just me.” Classy.
• The Hooka makes sense. It creates some word of mouth and makes his place a destination. And it gives the Sultan Cafe the aura of culture. Even if you never see someone smoking the Hooka, it’s an inviting atmosphere to have pipes lining the walls.
• Lastly, there are two simple monetary reasons I like Mike’s. 1) The coffee is a buck. I’m not against paying more, but it’s a great feeling to just slide one bill across the table. 2) His frequent buyer card only has seven spaces, making it attainable. Twice-a-day drinkers get a free cup every week.

If Mike spoke frankly, he might say that long hours and infrequent time with his two young children makes his business far from simple. But by getting in early and making some other seemingly small decisions, Mike has given his business some quick roots in a growing area.

Requiring a browser is one thing. Telling me to buy a new computer is going a little far. Homestead is an old name, but their new product led me to their front page. I wanted to try out SiteBuilder, which they describe as “simply the best.”

Homestead could have been nicer in their error messages. They had my best interest in mind, since there is no reason for me to download a Windows program to my Mac. SiteBuilder requires an Active-X control (IE only) and that the user download an 8 MB Windows program. If Homestead explained this in the initial error, I might not have written about this experience.

Google is showing that when it comes to web-based applications there is only one platform: the web itself. Google Maps isn’t even 100% platform/browser independent, but they are apologetic:

But the difference here is that the visitor is then given the option to try out Google Maps anyway, since it only requires Javascript and a browser made after 2001. This changes Google’s message from an error to a warning. I would rather receive a warning than an error.

I understand Homestead’s catering to the majority with the Windows/IE requirement, but I think the effort is misplaced. The web is the only platform that matters for web-based applications. Google Maps is able to reach an even larger audience while requiring no software installation.

People say the way to understand how you spend your money is to keep a log of all transactions. One of these days, I’m going to do it. First, I’m working on the same concept for how I spend my time.

Yesterday I picked up a little book called Manage Your Time. Since it held my interest for a number of minutes at the store, I bought it. It is full of ideas and encouragement, one of which is time-logging.

Today I am keeping a log of everything I do. Every thirty minutes an alarm goes off on my computer to remind me to log that half hour’s work. The idea is that after a few days I’ll be able to see a pattern and make some changes.

So far, the effect has been that I have treated the logging as mini-deadlines, wanting to get something of substance done by the next half hour.

Semi-related link: Mark Wieczorek’s Get Back to Work.

… with a technology

It must be Valentine’s Day because I’ve been thinking a lot about love lately. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about programmers and how we love our platform, browser, or programming language. What a bad idea. Don’t take my word for it–ask my father.

All Dad knows about programming he learned in his required punch card FORTRAN class in college. What Dad really knows about is tractors. Dad loves old Caterpillar tractors and is spending his retirement collecting/restoring them. These are tank-like yellow behemoths that specialize in pushing and pulling. If Dad needed to move a palette of, say, fine china, his Caterpillar could do the job, but not very well.

Dad would use a more agile tractor, like his fork lift, to move any palette. He would save his Caterpillar for moving a tree.

Programming languages are the same way. Some are heavy lifters, some are more nimble. I love Perl, but it takes a little bit of extra work to get it going on a Windows server. I have never written a shell script in PHP. I know about Mono, but I’m not so enamoured with ASP.NET that I have to run it on Unix, too.

It’s okay to love your technology, but don’t be in love. When it comes to programming, don’t be monogamous. Sleep around. You will be much better prepared for any project if you know as much as you can about your options.

I’m certainly not the only one who gave 43Things a shot after the Salon article that has been so widely discussed. Suffice it to say that the “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” adage probably holds true here. Their traffic (via Alexa) certainly seems to point to a rash of new interest:

The number of visitors who have signed up and like what 43Things is doing almost certainly outnumbers those who have been using the service and now feel betrayed. Plus, is it really such a bad thing to be associated with Amazon? It’s like being asked your biggest weakness in a job interview.

43Folders’ biggest weakness is Amazon. That’s pretty good.

Working from home since 2001 has taught me a lot about productivity. My first summer was spent in San Francisco without DSL or WiFi living in a house with one phone line and five people.

It could only get better. When I moved back to Oregon, I set myself up with a separate room. Unfortunately, I shared it with the laundry. My next space, the basement.

Now I have finally carved myself a near-perfect location and I have done some of my best work this past year. With all the excuses gone, though, I found there were still problems in the distractions. Some of these time-wasters are even part of my job.

Enter the POWER HOUR. Yes, the capitalization is necessary. For one hour during my workday, I focus exclusively on one project. Anything that could be a distraction is turned off and ignored. If I gets ideas, I write them down and deal with them at the end of an hour.

Distractions to eliminate:

Another one to add to that list is television. I didn’t include it because I learned long ago that it needs to be completely eliminated. If the TV is on, I’m never doing real work.

I work for an hour or so and then start my POWER HOUR around 10. My original reason for this is because I listen to NPR and Talk of the Nation begins at 11. I’ve found that early is better anyway, because productivity breeds productivity. If I have my POWER HOUR earlier in the day, it helps my post-POWER HOUR work as well.

Why not have a POWER DAY? I need some of my distractions for my work. Say an emergency email or phone call comes in from a client. It can probably wait an hour, but rarely can it wait all day. Also, it takes a lot of effort to focus on one project for an entire hour.

About six months ago, I moved to an office. It’s still just me, but I’m away from the additional distractions that intrinsically exist in working at home. Of course, there is a whole new collection of distractions, so that means from 10 to 11, the POWER HOUR is in effect.