Open Space Offices

Well, I was changing my mind about whether open space offices are good or bad few times already.

But now as I tried this, that and that my opinion established into solid idea.

Open space in no way helps to gain the pick of productivity. You can argue with this but I don’t give a fuck to this.

I am not about to state that each employee (developer) should take its own room. That’s would not be productive as well.

Small rooms for small teams seems to be the best.

But separate room seems the best choice for me personally. Just I am able to do the most during a day.

For those not able to use their brain efficiently I will use figurative language: working in an open space is like living in a hostel. Wanna work in open space ? – sell your house and go live in the hostel.

Ten Commandments of a Dutifull Bloger

I’ve been thinking few minutes if there was a Bible for bloggers then what commandments it would give to those millions of people who polish each day their keyboards writing piles and piles of different posts…

If I was a blogers God I would give them the following rules:

1. Connectivity. Try to keep your posts connected by hyperlinks. You may add a phrase like “In my previous post bla bla bla” so there is a good chance the person reading that page will click and read your previous post. The net effect may be quite impressive.
2. Your post better contain some pictures, preferably with a bit of humor. Humor should be everywhere even if you write about disasters or diseases. Only sick people hate humor, the remaining 99% love it much. Remember when you were a child and you read your last book … you liked much more books with pictures, right?
3. Use good tags. Almost all blogging services provide you with some tagging abilities. Just use it with a good mind.
4. Reply to comments. That would be your mortal sin if some people interested with your post left some comments and you ignore them.
5. Read others people blogs and comment on them.
6. Promote your posts (blog) by linking it from twitter, your personal site, your company site, wherever it may fit.
7. Bring value. Your posts should be valuable to potential people out there. If you only write things like “today is rainy, I hate such weather” then your blog is shit, honestly, better go and find some friends or job. Try to have at least part of some meaningful posts on specific themes that could be valued by others.
8. If you write on a certain subject provide references to other good posts/sources/etc. on that subject. Remember a simple rule: everything you do to others they will do to you.
9. Try to express as less subjective opinions as possible especially if such opinions are aggressive/rude/etc.
10. Regularity. You should blog regular, without long pauses.

May you have a popular blog. C u.

Java Data Objects and Russian Folklore

In this post I’ll try to explain in English few concepts that came from some Russian fairytales.

I just was sitting in the office and reading a book on JDO while somewhere in my head a thought bubbled that it would be great to have 4 things to have no problems:

• скатерть самобранка
• ковер самолет
• сапоги скороходы
• шапка невидимка

To start with all these 4 things are a bit magic, they possess certain supernatural qualities.

Скатерть самобранка can be translated like a magic tablecloth. It serves you a food whenever you tell it so.

Ковер самолет is a magic carpet that can fly. Just a transportation vehicle ))

Сапоги скороходы this is what is called seven-league boots. Just one more transportation mean.

Шапка невидимка is a magic hat. When it’s on your head you are invisible.

It is interesting to me which of these things have some analogues in the western fairytales. In slavic folklore there are much much more magic, seems like people always liked to dream about getting things without labor just by magic

Now you may wonder why I titled this post “Java Data Objects and Russian Folklore”… In the JDO book there is a section called “Transparency”. I think that is why my brain decided to rest a bit and went to some “шапка невидимка” things. Sometimes seemingly unrelated things can be related. Learn from it ))

Viral Marketing

Some time ago I have first heard about viral marketing in relation to social networks. It sounded interestingly to me since my interest in immunology. The word “viral” attracted my attention and I put it on a shelf for closer investigation a bit later when I have some spare time.

Today I’ve found that spare time and let’s see what wikipedia tells me on the thing: … marketing techniques that use … social networks to produce increases in brand awareness … through self-replicating viral processes…

After closer look I see that this is just a buzzword. I must say I don’t like buzzwords and moreover I don’t like people who operate with buzzwords. Such people immediately shows me their lack of fundamental knowledge of things which they try to substitute by words.

It may sound too aggressive but this is how I see it. Fundamental progress in any science and technology is not going through the ways of buzzwords. It goes through people who see a problem, analyze it and then creating a solution. In general this is called SYNTHESIS.
In case of buzzwords the process is reverse: people take already established things and processes to which they are not related at all, they call it with a nice word and try to bring it forward as something new and something their.

Advertising has been there long ago. Advertising in net has been there long ago. There is nothing self-replicating when comparing spread of information about printed advertisement and about advertisement in a social network. Just a scalability and speed is a bit different. There is too much ANALYSIS and too little SYNTHESIS. I think this is what all marketing and marketers are all about.

Watch more ads, take more bullshit ppl

My environment

I’m growing and I need to move.

After recent talks about life with two my friends, one living now in China and one living in South Africa I thought for the first time that my life style should be constant moving. I would like to live one year at one place, the next in other and so on.

Also I clearly see I’m growing professionally. My understanding of what the software engineering is is broader than I can see in a lot of my colleagues. I need better environment and will start searching for it.

How To Control A Continuum

I’ve been thinking many times why a human body, my body in particular, is so encapsulated and acts completely like what we used to call a Black Box in software engeneering. I can only see what my eyes can see, I can only touch what my skin can touch. That’s all. We do know alot how our body is constructed inside, how those parts are interconnected between themselves but there is one major drawback: this knowledge doesn’ t help us to feel, control and change our body functions.

I am not able to change the rythm of my heart precisely, I am not able to measure the number red blood cells in my blood as well as not able to detect which cells are infected by some virus, not even talking about fact that I can’t “feel” my cells. That would listen as a trivia if not one thing: body does possess means of measurement and control for each cell, each parameter and actually controls and measures.

The answer hides partially in the field of big numbers. There are ~10 billions red blood cells for example in each liter of my blood or ~ 4 millions of cells in each square inch of my skin. If my conscious was exposed to some signals about state of each of those cells I would end up in total collapse caused by this information. Just try how “easy” for you will be to quickly count the English alphabet from the end to beginning. This is very easy task comparing to “seeing” whether each of 4 million cells is live or dead but still you will most likely stumble on it

The conclusion is that only a small part of your CPU time is dedicated to your conscious needs and operations. The remainder (I believe more than 90%) is not available to average human.

There are ways of trying to learn some simple basic things on how to expand your consious control and intrusion into your black box. These techniques are not taught at schools, they can’t be described by formulas and rules. They are continuos work on yourself, like phisycal exercises, yoga, meditation, reflection, relaxation. I deeply believe in possibility of opening the black box cover and looking inside, this just requires a lot of work, not easy but interesting and very useful.

P.S. Almost forgot about one great thought that I have just clearly embraced: when doing anything you better need to not feel yourself as just you, a thing in itself, but think about you as some object at which you can look from aside. At least try to think in this way about your body. I try to do this as much often as I can and it gives me possibility to partially see myself like others people see me or like I see others people.

A thought

Sometimes life fucks… but gently and with care ))

Tell me what you think

I just thought that it would be very nice to implement and support a service that can be called for example “Tell me what you think” or alike.

This service should be smart enough to answer any normal questions we humans can ask it. But it shouldn’t be a one more instance of wikipedia, that wouldn’t be interesting, at least for me. It should speak like an average dude from the street. If it has no answer it must tell me “I don’t know” or “I don’t care”. It should like some registered users and don’t like others, etc. I think you’ve got the idea.
For example I am reading now a book section dedicated to Singleton design pattern. So I open my service and ask him “WTF this singleton pattern is?”. That would be very constructive and funny if it answers me “I think mate that this thing is something for very smart asses and your girlfriend will not appreciate it”.

I am seriously starting to think how this piece of wisdom can be implemented

What is what

It’s very hot weather,
Non-working day in UA,
Tired of doing nothing,
I’m in the office again

And strange thought are running in my head. Strange since they are not thoughts. They are questions. They ask me if I’m doing what I should be doing. If I’m doing what I suppose to be doing. If I’m doing the most proper things that I can do.

And I need to seek for some answers.

Recently I reflect a lot on which things today are the most interesting to spend your time on, to be engaged in. And there are 2 I can count at the moment:

- molecular biology and all that stuff

-MEDIA

The last one is something that I don’t know yet, but I feel it’s much more powerful and fascinating then IT. And also they intersect, sometimes IT is Media and Media is IT.

Ruins of the music

I’ve been just listening one song and started to think about mixes. Whether mixing some original songs is good or bad thing.

From the simple consumers perspective of view it is off course good thing since it results in larger diversity of what is available for consumption. It’s the same thing as you go to a store and there are only 2 kinds of beer and on the opposite in the other store there are 22 kinds. You’ll go to that second one without a question.

But there are also other ways on how to look at this. Each song has its author and a story or even a history. Also each song has a long and sometimes hard process of Creation. The creator puts a lot of effort to produce the song. And when I see a clip in some cafe on a song that I know, and I see that it is signed not with the name of original author but with the name of some dude from the basement who just inserted few pauses into the song and added some more effects then I think this is not proper. When we consider time we’ll see that in long term all such mixes can completely change mind of people and their knowledge on who is the author.

I think there’s already some legislation existing on such subjects, just I don’t know anything about it. Would be interesting to research