Diff for "ColinMacDonald/NotePad"

This is where ColinMacDonald does various brainstorming kinda things.

1. To Do
1. sub-header
2. Professional Snapshot
3. Social Activities
4. Tech Research
5. Obscure Brainstorming
6. Work stuff
7. Audio Samples
8. Social
9. Background
10. Interface
11. Recent Reading
12. Geek Stuff
1. XML/XSLT

To Do

move this all to the palm

• CocktailPartyChecklist

• InterviewQuestions

• clean out junk room

• fix downspout

• Staples

• bill organizer

• home depot - outdoor caulk

• organize house

• filing cabinet - giveaway?

• small bookcase - to reading room or living room?

• EssentialWebSites

  sub-header

  More stuff here

1. list of things

2. more stuff

3. yet more stuff

       foreach $a (@a) {
           # do something here
       }
   

Professional Snapshot

How do you do your job, and how do you learn to do it better?

• What does your company do, in technical terms? IT/database integration software and services, focused on law enforcement agencies.

• How many people (technical and non) work at your company? How many of those do you work with on a typical day? 9 technical, 10 non. 3 others on my project team, plus my project manager. Our parent company is 5000+ people, but we don't interact with them at all on a day-to-day basis.

• Describe your job activities: Design and document application components. Develop task list, estimate and assign. Mentor junior programmers, assist others. Review code. Interview applicants.

• What tools and languages do you use: Server-side Java, including JSPs, servlets, Java Server Faces, JDBC, RMI and Jini. JUnit, HttpUnit. Tomcat. XML & XSLT. IDEA development environment. Cygwin (unix shell for Windows). Vim. CVS. Windows 2000, some Linux. Excel and Project for management. Wiki for internal documents.

• How do you learn new stuff? On my own, pretty much. Some company support for tuition and certification, but not conferences. Arlington Central library has a good stash of technical books. Linux users group discusses a range of open-source tools and technology.

• What do you wish you knew more about? Enterprise integration tools. The whole Microsoft application development universe.

Social Activities

The idea here is to figure out which communication technologies are best for organizing each of these activities.

• dinner

• events(fixed): movies, concerts

• parties(coordinated): (self, other)

• chat

• share news

• keep in touch

• travel

• discuss books, news

Tech Research

• Hibernate

• Gforge

• Struts

• Java Swing

• Velocity/Turbine/Coocoon

Obscure Brainstorming

• Wiki seeding party: The Obscure community Wiki has a network effect: People won't really get involved in it until there's a bunch of stuff already there. To get to the tipping point as fast as possible, get a bunch of people to do the initial content. Tom Sawyer it - make a party out of it. Get everyone to get together one evening on AIM chat, and just start riffing on pages. Need to do an introduction to wikis first. Do it as a two-stage thing: Get a bunch of people together at Common Grounds some night, show them how to use the Wiki, and build a bunch of pages. Then get together every couple weeks to generate more content.

• ever more ideas for the ObscureHomepageTemplate

Work stuff

• Ponder: "Software is an encoding of institutional knowledge."

• Task tracking: 3x5 cards grouped by: active, waiting for client

• what about dependent on other task

• why not just track online?

Audio Samples

• metro train arrival and departure

• Jiffy Lube oil pump

• gas pump

Social

• essays w/ Will

• geeking w/ Rikk & Eric

• micro-book clubs (Quicksilver)

• useful metaphors: pioneer/civilizer/administrator

• any organization, society

• people as they age

Background

• 214 N Wayne St #3, Arlington, VA 22201: Nov. 12, 1999 - Sep. 21, 2002

• 2266 Pimmit Run Lane #201, Falls Church, VA 22043: Oct 31, 1998 - Nov. 12, 1999

• 2507 N 20th Rd #207, Arlington, VA 22201: July 20, 1996 - Oct 31, 1998

• 504 E Nelson Ave, Alexandria, VA, 22301: Aug 1, 1995-July 20, 1996

• 2604 N 12th St, Arlington, VA 22201: Aug 1, 1992 - Aug 1, 1995

• Microstate: Aug 30, 1999 - Feb 16, 2001

• Erols/RCN: May 12, 1997 - June 16, 1999

• Lunaria Inc: July 10, 1995 - May 9, 1997

• Capitol Disc Interactive: April 13, 1992 - Mar 1, 1995

Interface

• seamless (mostly) web and file integration (caching)

• track canonical copy and versions?

• searchable bookmarks

• distributable - same view from other machines

• need restricted view from portables

• all files tagged with keywords

• nightly locate-style inventory

• prompt for info on unknown files

• wizard for cleaning out unused files

Recent Reading

• RobertsRules in Plain English

• GoodToGreat

• WilliamGibson - PatternRecognition

• BrianEno - A Year with Swollen Appendices

Geek Stuff

• VimConfig

• WebSiteRedesign

• Tooltips in CSS

• Palm Dev

• heirarchical task tracker w/ JPilot plugin

• apps: use Palm beaming for face-to-face auth of server-based transaction

• Orkut/Six Degrees

• LARP (spy?) game - need to gather info, make contacts

XML/XSLT

• http://www.stylusstudio.com/xml_to_xml_mapper.html

• http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/747181

• http://www.idevnews.com/CaseStudies.asp?ID=100

• http://www.activestate.com/Products/Visual_XSLT/more_information.plex

Random idea:

• make a movie in which things that look like continuity errors are actually intentional and integral to the story.

MoinMoin Powered