First visual studio, now I’ve come to learn that in-car GPS systems also rot yer brain. I spent the first half of this week at a friend’s place who has in-car GPS systems in both his cars. They’re cool. You don’t have to know a thing about where you’re driving, what signs to look for, landmarks, directions, etc. You just punch in where you’d like to go and start driving. A lovely voice tells you when to turn, what to watch for, everything you need to get where you’re headed. Next time I’m somewhere new and renting a car I will inquire how much to add one of these to my rental cost since it makes it so simple to get around in a new town.

It does not, however, do anything to help you learn and understand how to navigate your surroundings. In fact it does quite the opposite. You don’t have to pay any attention at all. You don’t have to watch the signs, you don’t have to look for visual cues, landmarks, anything.

It left me thinking of intellisense and what it does for, and to, developers. They’re both very slick useful tools but you’d be hardpressed to convince me that intellisense makes you a better developer or in-car GPS makes you a better, more aware driver.

Just hope that thing keeps working so you can find your way back home.

In the March issue of FastCompany, they ask 10 of their favourite brains what’s next for business and how to get ready for it. I’m most likely breaking a bunch of rules by posting the quotes here but I never had a black leather jacket as a kid so these are my rebel years. Here are a few quotes I picked out:

“I was told again and again that the basis of hiring is not your skills or experience, but how likable you are. The rationale is that you have to conform, in great detail, down to the shape of your lapel pin. In what kind of team does everyone have to be the same?”, Barbara Ehrenreich.

“Fewer and fewer people will want to be employees of corporations, because corporations don’t have anything to offer. Corporations don’t provide security and provide fewer and fewer benefits….This isn’t globalization, because globalization to me feels big. I think it’s the opposite, it’s villagization - making everything smaller and in some sense more intimate.” , Avram Miller.

“To pull this off, the corporate organization is going to change. No longer will there be a few people at the top, millions in middle management, and very few at the bottom. It’s going to become a lot of people at the top thinking strategy, and a lot of people at the bottom executing it against all these different segments. Sod all in the middle - it’s the end of management.” , Kevin Roberts.

These and many other quotes in this article excite me as we’ve somewhat bet the farm on this at ClearSpace and CreationStep. It isn’t what we do but how we do it and how we chose to build and organize ourselves around the work we do.

I’ve often wondered myself, does visual studio rot your brain? I openly admit I’m a vi and vim bigot. I used vi back in university, however, it wasn’t until my mks days that I solidified my bigotry. I worked primarly on a java codebase with the odd bit of awk or make files mixed in.

So without further ado, here are the top x reasons I’m in love with a text editor that’s name begins with the letters “vi”:

• Command mode. For me, that is the key feature in vi. I have access to my entire keyboard for commands instead of having to use key modifiers like alt, ctrl etc. I tried emacs, if I was good at chords I’d have played piano. This is also the biggest hindrance to new users adopting vi.
• I despise using a mouse. To be more precise I hate moving my right hand between my keyboard and my mouse.
• At times, I work in various operating systems, most of which have some flavour of vi out of the box. I know I can login to any *nix OS, open a shell and type “vi” and be up and running. Contrast that with an IDE like visual studio.
• I’m part of a club. Let’s face it, vi is a clique bordering on a cult. In order to get in the club you have to tolerate months, if not years, of being utterly unproductive in this crappy editor if you want to have any hope of getting in. The average person’s experience with vi consists of opening it, trying to type a line, getting three key strokes in before the computer starts beeping. They then look around the room for anyone who has any clue whatsoever how to close this shitty editor. After rebooting they type in “pico” and get back to work. It’s an editor that comes with a built-in hazing ritual. That alone is enough to solidify my love.

Being that we do a lot of time and materials projects at ClearSpace, tracking hours worked on what project is very important. I’ve recently switched from my trusty OO spreadsheet to using MyHours.

It’s an easy to use web-based time tracker that includes a mobile edition that works well on my blackberry. It’s also completely free at the moment. They claim that their “Basic Personal Account features will stay free to use.”

While this may at first appear to only apply to you if you’re doing consulting or time and materials type work, it may be worth checking out even if you’re a corporate man. I started tracking my hours at my last office gig as a means of figuring out where I truly spent my time. The first thing I realized was that I spent way too much time in meetings. Try it, you may be surprised or not, ignorance is bliss.

So I still sit firmly on the fence when it comes to hungarian notation in code. I’ve experienced it misused so badly over and over again that I’m hesitant to commit myself again. You can look into it’s history here (link courtesy of Joel). I will, however, say that I love it when used on database table indexes.

I find that prefixing a table’s index with “ix” makes life so much simpler. The table named “User” has an index named “ixUser”, “Role” has an index “ixRole”. It’s quite clear when you’re looking at the columns for User that the column “ixRole” establishes a relationship to a table called “Role”.

Contrast that with the myriad of databases I’ve seen with tables filled with index columns named “index”. How does that do anything for anyone? Or inconsistent naming where some indexes are “UserIndex” while others are “RoleId”.

Obviously the important part is being consistent but the ix prefix is where I’m at today.

Hugh pitched at idea for English Cut to limit their production to 100 suits a year. Apparently they’re now going ahead with it. As Hugh explains, this approach really brings focus to their team as it’s clear they have to nail the quality and service part as they can’t rely on increased volume or new business to make money. I love that type of clear focus and it gets me thinking how we can apply it at ClearSpace. How would that even work in custom software development where you have multiple clients running multiple projects?

Apparently not everyone’s in love with LogoWorks. I’ve created logo’s in the past for companies I’ve started or been involved with. Not being a designer in the least means I spent a lot of time looking at other people’s logos for inspiration. I suppose I’m okay with some overlap but I draw the line if someone is truly outright plagiarizing another logo.

I’m very curious to see what logos come back tomorrow.

I decided to give LogoWorks a shot at designing a logo for BlueTurbine today. We’re exploring a rename of ClearSpace and BlueTurbine is the most likely candidate. For the price, as low as $299, we figured it was worth seeing what they could come up with for a logo. Maybe it’d seal the deal in terms of us falling in love with BlueTurbine as a name.

LogoWorks blew my freaking crocs off. I was three pages into their four page ’start a logo’ process when a few questions came up. I started flopping around their site looking for faq’s or a contact number. While doing that my phone rang. I answered to find a guy from LogoWorks on the other end calling to see if he could help me out at all. He proceeded to ask me some questions, we looked at some logos together, he took notes and before I knew it he said they had more than enough info to get started.

I suppose I’m used to most companies these days who drop the ball completely on customer service and just don’t get it. You want to talk to your customers. You should do everything you can to have meaningful conversations with them. Most companies instead do everything they can NOT to talk to customers as a cost-cutting tool. The extreme is my bank where they have the arrogance to charge me to talk to a human.

LogoWorks went the other way and made this process work by having me talk to a human for 10 minutes. Without those 10 minutes, they would have had poor information and most likely have come back with inferior designs leading them to believe their offering isn’t working or leaving me with a bad taste for their designers. Simple but brilliant.

I don’t have an MBA, don’t plan on getting one, and view that as a positive not a negative. I personally agree with Seth’s assessment of financial and social pressure although his comments apply to post-secondary school in general not just an MBA. Having said that, we can’t ignore what an MBA is intended to teach. On that note:

• Josh Kaufman wrote a ChangeThis manifesto titled The Personal MBA: Mastering Business Without Spending a Fortune. “If you care more about increasing your effectiveness at work than a diploma and a few lines on your resume, the “Personal MBA” is for you.“
• Rajesh Setty wrote an Ebook titled When You Can’t Earn An MBA: Thoughts on getting ahead without an MBA.