Geeky Stuff -- Travo's Guide to pants off living

Would you work for Gordon Ramsay?

So, despite being completely saturated by Gordon Ramsay, we still watch. Amid all the hype and excitement at our house about "Kitchen Nightmares" one question remains; would you work for him? I would -- here's why.

1. He has a foul temper, a foul mouth and suffers no fool.

Ah, so do I. In fact I've made more project managers cry than any of the geeks know. Yeah, it's not a pretty stat and it's probably true that I'm a genuine arse-hole. There's no reason to take pride in a stat like that but I'm passionate about my work, I care about the outcomes, I'm opinionated and I believe that what I'm doing is "right".

It's often taken for granted but working with people who care about what they do is one of the most rewarding benefits of healthy working environment. The passion created by people driven to work hard and do their work well can be contagious. Sure, it can also be poisonous, but I think that's a result of poor communication and expectation management rather than passion.

2. But he's a bully, Travo you hate bullies.

I do hate bullies, I loathe and despise them. My experience tells me that while Ramsay is confronting, in-your-face aggressive and sometimes demeaning to the people he's there to help -- he's genuine about his intentions. Bullying as I've seen it is not so in-your-face. It's passive-aggressive, it's spiteful, bitter and manipulative.

Ramsay doesn't operate in this way. He communicates what he expects up-front (sure, sometimes he doesn't -- he observes) and makes assertions about the outcomes.

3. Ask. Order. Explain. Order

When I was a cadet, and after I had been awarded the rank of corporal after two weeks of training and drilling, I came back to my squadron and was told, "All you've learnt can be condensed in to Ask - Order - Explain - Order."

WTF? Essentially the idea goes that, if you're working with people in a position of leadership, there are certain assumptions you can make about the context and environment you're working in. There should be trust and there should be a shared understanding about a common goal. You should be comfortable asking someone to perform an action.

If that person fails to comply with your request, as you are in a position of leadership, you can order them to do it. This is of-course pretty much in the domain of the defence forces and people who hold official rank. If you were a chef in a kitchen it probably meant you bellowed your request louder. If you were a manager in an office, it probably meant you would ask again with a threat -- you fucking manipulative coward.

Finally, if that person continues to fail to comply with your order an explanation is required. You need to communicate to them your expectations, you need to make the outcomes more clear, you probably need to give the over-all mission more clarity. Then you can repeat your order.

What's not included in this cycle is the need to listen; the person you have just ordered to do something may need to provide you with some critical feedback as a leader, so you can adjust and modify your expectations and goals as a result of a change in the situation or environment.

In a kitchen for example, your team may need to let you know that you're out of a certain ingredient. It's a micro-adjustment you need to make, based on feedback from your team. A good manager, I would expect should be capable of absorbing and adapting to these micro-adjustments without blowing a gasket.

So yeah, I would work for Ramsay.

I am passionate about my work, and I feel energised by people around me who also have passion for their work -- I don't feel threatened by those kind of people.

As I get older I'm more open and less anxious about feedback and tuning -- acknowledging that you don't know everything is both horrifying and also comforting. If you're lucky enough to work with people who are willing to share their knowledge and experience with you, you'll soon take advantage of a collective knowledge.

If people want to help you improve your skills, and you're open to it, you can only become better. I'm sure Ramsay's frustrations are mostly from people who are not open to improvement; he's essentially banging his head against a brick wall.

It all makes for entertaining TV though doesn't it!.

Six Months on Rails

I've been a full-time commercial rails developer (feels good to say that) for six months now and I want to describe some of what the experience has been like, and importantly what lessons I have learnt coding Ruby, on Rails, for Cogent.

Specs are your friend... but they can't be trusted.

One of the first thing that Steve said to me was that while you might be able to get 100% coverage (using RCov along side RSpec) on your code by writing specs, they aren't truly indicative of whether or not your app works as a whole.

Writing tests against every line of code that I'm writing is intense -- and it requires a hell of a lot of discipline. But, this is my reality now and I'm really enjoying the challenges it presents.

It's one thing to use an exciting new language, but to keep coding the same old shit to solve the same old problems is a shame and a wasted opportunity. To embrace a set tools and resources though, which encourage you to improve the way you approach those problems and sometimes force you to rethink your approach, is really another thing entirely.

Get your recipes right... and deployment is a dream.

I spent a horrible week becoming increasingly frustrated at not being able to deploy. We needed to deploy to both our staging environment (which we already successfully deploying to) and our new production environment. I was making a bunch of newbie type mistakes and stumbling all over the place until Rob showed me the light.

Rob had been using Webistrano to manage the deployment strategies he had for his application quite successfully. He had also taken advantage of the ease by which you could create and manage the recipes for each stage. And thankfully, he showed me how to weild the same mojo. If you can learn to get your recipes right, then you'll have dreamy deployments too.

Some advice though is keep your eyes peeled for stray mongrel .pids!

Your code sucks... no, really.

The beauty and simplicity of Ruby is like a magnifying glass over every nasty bad habbit you have. Any weakness you have in your understanding and boom, you're exposed for the fraud you are.

I'm pretty certain that I've been able to obfuscate my weaknesses within the structure of other languages. I guess it's easy to do that with Ruby and Rails too, but rigor that Cogent uses tools like Saikuro, Flog and Simian peel back the veil and show you the horror which your rubbish code.

Props to Marty for spending some time with me in the early weeks and months helping me to get my act together. I definitely struggled early on, Ruby is a cruel mistress.

Keep your eyes on the fries

You know what it's like; you're learning to ride a bike and you have to learn not to look at obstacles, 'cause you can become transfixed by them, and if you're not careful you'll run into them! Before you know it -- you're on your arse.

I love my new gig with Cogent, but since landing the gig one of the main things on my mind has been "don't fuck it up". And I can't help but think, I've been pre-occupied with failure rather than success. If I'm not careful, I'm going to be on my arse.

So I have to work at turning my mind to success.

The last six months have been great - I've not been more challenged both technically and personally since I started web development in Melbourne nearly ten years ago! Working with Cogent, and in the open and transparent way that they do, has been a revelation. It is a very real business experience -- I'm closer to the work, the business development and the bottom dollar than ever before.

I have embraced a new platform (Mac, OS X - not to mention Unix), a new language and framework (Ruby, and Rails), a new way of working (strict BDD with Rspec, coverage, complexity and similarity analysis before check-in), and since I started I have deployed two really great web apps. Not too bad for six months work. Not to shabby at all.

The staff at Cogent are awesome, they're super, super smart guys who are always on their game and always ready to lend one-another a hand or provide support where needed. It just doesn't get any better than that.

So, focus on the candy. Accentuate the positive. Celebrate your victories - no matter how small - and keep your eyes on the fries.

Brief and Succinct

I'm starting to become concerned that I'm failing to engage with my colleagues because I can't be well, brief. A post to our group email usually goes like this;

So what do people think of implementing blah on our blah?

And then usually someone will respond inline;

> So what do people think of implementing blah on our blah?
+1

But I come unstuck trying to offer a genuine opinion...

Well, I think that to truly understand blah-de-blah, we should first consider how we present our blah in that context. ... and on ... and on ... I go.
> So what do people think of implementing blah on our blah?

The point is that despite my best efforts to engage in a discussion, I'm not getting any traction. My genuine believe is that this is a forum for hashing out issues and exploring ideas. I also believe it's a place to get consensus and group decision making.

The real reason here (as my esteemed colleagues have suggested) is that they're mostly time poor. If time were currency, my colleagues and I are living below the poverty line.

What doesn't help is that I'm also trying too hard. Which brings me to my next point...

Fighting Inertia

Since joining Cogent one of the most difficult aspects of keeping up with the team is fighting inertia.

In roles where you're bored, unchallenged and without focus it's very easy to go looking for distractions; email, web, coffee, a stroll 'round the office -- anything to help pass the day.

Sure, if you're disciplined and still have interest in the projects or organisation you're working for you'll go and poke a stakeholder with a stick and see if you can't get them interested in some prototype that you've mocked up. If they can see some kind of benefit they'll invest in your enthusiasm. But usually, it's an uphill battle.

I'm aware that this paints a fairly grim picture; it's a catch 22 but isn't laziness a merit in a developer? Well, no. I'm sure it's not. Not from what I've seen at Cogent.

So, lately, I've been shutting down the IM and email and working hard to focus on putting in solid hours. It's hard. But I think I'm turning a corner.

The next most difficult thing now is keeping up with Simon Harris.

Hand wringers

We've recently had some work done on our house and what struck me is the amount of hand wringing that goes on by tradies when asked to quote.

"Awww gee mate, I'm not sure about this mate, it could get really expensive real fast mate..." Why is that? - Is it the lack of confidence, inexperience, lack of exposure to similar jobs, isolation, lack of colleagues?

We were lucky to have a brickie come by who took one look at the job and said, "Yeah, I can do this." My wife and I were like, "Great, how much?", expecting to pay up around the area a hand-wringer had quoted us. He quoted well under. "Awesome - when can you start?" Monday. Brilliant.

He was confident, and when we had raised the worries and concerns of the other bricklayer who quoted, he was unconcerned; "I'm a brickie, it's what I do. I could rebuild this whole house." Love it. When we asked about other trades that we needed to be involved in our epic job, he had a network of contacts in other trades that he could call upon.

I find the same thing happening in tech; hand-wringers. They get one sniff of the work and they start wringing their hands; "Aww gee, but what if... and then there's this thing that might not work... and if I don't get this then that happens..." Is it conditioning? Or the same reasons as above.

Working with Cogent gives me confidence, exposure and colleagues. Experience I'll get with mileage, but for now the first three go a long way.

Getting Leopard Licked: installing postgres82 with MacPorts

Without a doubt the most challenging unix-on-a-mac-like thing I've had to do is install the Postgres database server on my MacBook Pro. I persisted with the MacPorts approach (I like MacPorts, any package manager is a good thing) and finally found a solution that worked for me. I say this because there are many legitimate solutions out there... the trick is finding one that works for you.

One of the most ironical things about this, is that in one of my final emails at Yamaha Music went along the lines of, "... do not do this. It won't work. Not even if you try twice." I tried some of these solutions, over and over again, crossing fingers and waving dead chickens around hoping that by the glory of geebers, something would work.

The first discovery was that there is a MacPorts ticket for the problems I was encountering - this details are similar to the grief I was having, but not the same.

Further Google searches on the problem revealed some helpful advice from Lee Packam's blog; he had a handy post describing the same kinda problem, but with a specific patch for DTrace and that configurable option.

I tried this several times yesterday, blindingly hoping that it was something I was doing wrong. The unix side of Mac is was so unfamiliar to me that I didn't have a clue what I was doing.

Today I came accross Jeffrey Gelens post, who was also unable to build using the Packam DTrace fix, but with some twiddling came up with a solution that worked for him. I tried this a couple of times (to be sure) and still it didn't work.

Finally, with more googling I found the InVisible Blog, that describes a way to get the whole Rails stack working on Leopard. Foturnately, the rest of my Rails stack is pumping, I just needed to get Postgres running.

This technique combines the previous two in a sensible way, kinda - if you read and look closely, you'll notice that the DTrace patch is probably not required, furthermore, by this time the MacPorts guys had updated the Postgres PortFile to include the Packam DTrace Patch anyway. I'm just not certain that this guy even bothered to include it in his configure command.

Anyhoo, I'm relieved to finally have it installed and working.

Why bother? You might also ask; well, as one of my new colleagues suggested, if possible my applications should be database platform independent -- which makes sense. So I did have MySQL 5 running by yesterday evening.

All in all, a painful experience. I probably would have been much, much easier if I'd waited for a month or two - hell, even a couple of weeks for the MacPort weenies to have sussed it out.

Oh well, I'm here now... which way to the bar?

Switched - Part Two

And I have a new job. I'm no longer going to be amassing Yamaha branded consumer electronics and musical instruments. I'm going to be working for Cogent Consulting - the cracking-est bunch of developers you ever did see. I realised while writing this that I had yearned to be a part of their posse before. A good year later and here I am -- rock!

Yamaha was an equal parts great learning experience and difficult personally negative experience. I'm grateful to everyone there from whom I've learnt many interesting things; logistics, finance, service, marketing, product support and dealer networking.

I've ranted about the negative aspects of this before; the significance is that these experiences actually have a lot more to do with me and my ability to deal with them than the individuals and circumstances that cause them.

As if I need to reassert my goals; I must work harder to develop a personal toolkit which allows me to function and act appropriately in environments that are uncomfortable, disagreeable or downright crappy.

Which makes me all the more grateful for the support of my new colleagues -- it's great to be in a positive and encouraging environment.

Not to mention all the cool stuff that I get to do, the exciting new platforms I get to do it on and the killer technology I get to do it with. Sweet.

Switched - Part One

And now I'm a Mac whore. Fully switched, surrounded by more Apple logos (and Apple remotes - what's with that, does every Apple device need a remote now?) than you can poke a stick at. It's great; it's been nearly ten years since I used Mac OS in anger and in a familiar / slightly weird way, it's good to be home.

Sure things have changed. It's not like I remember. Hardly at all really. But it kinda feels better.

What I'm loving

Terminal : under the hood, there's this really strange and powerful beastie that will do your bidding for you.

Good Mac software : Mail, TextMate, Calendar, Adium, iTunes, iWork, Delicious Library, Toast; there's just a whole bunch of really nice, well made apps which just work

MacPorts : The developers hardware store -- you want it, just grab it off the shelf. Sorted.

Parallels + BootCamp : This really is the best way to run Windows. Lock that fucker up in a box, don't let it out unless it's, really, really necessary. Parallels makes using windows the most surreal experience; seeing ugly windows over the top of your shiny Mac desktop in coherence mode is the strangest thing. But, it's so convenient.

What I'm struggling with

Windows windows everywhere : it's a little hard to explain, but I do get quite lost trying to locate the last window I was working on. Command-Tab is useful, minimizing stuff to the dock is weird -- I can minimize something, but if that application is still active, there doesn't seem to be a command key to maximize it.

Bad Mac software : as with most operating systems there is a load of junk out there.

Unix : I don't have a heap of experience in this environment, so I've got to sharpen my chops. I'm enjoying the challenge, but hoping that I don't screw anything up.

Just sublime

And there's the hardware, and this is where it gets a little creepy; it's freakin' beautiful. I kinda want to touch it in inappropriate ways. Do you think Jobs would care?