1 Terrabyte

Bought a 1 Terrabyte external hard drive yesterday as backup for my data. A far cry from my 20MB hard drive that came with my first computer. A nice no fuss drive, just plugged it in and started transferring files.

Retrospective Predictability

I have been reading a bit from John Bogle of late and came across an interesting term Retrospective Predictability that caught my attention. The term comes from the three characteristics that define what is called a ‘Black Swan’ event which he describes in his article Black Monday and Black Swans.

Retrospective Predictability is defined as:

A happening that, after the fact, our human nature enables us to accept by concocting explanations that make it seem predictable.

This term is used in the context of teh stock market but I think that such occurances also occur in technology as well as other areas. I could almost hear the chorus of memories when I or someone I was working with said ‘Oh yeah I knew that was going to happen’ when something went wrong.

Code Camp OZ 2009

Code Camp OZ is a great event that I would recommend you attending.

IE8 – Correct Tab with Focus

I just downloaded RC1 of IE8 to check it out. One of the first things that I have noticed is that a usability issue I was having regarding tab focus seems to have been fixed. I use Windows Live extensively was my mash-up of blogs and sites I like to keep track of. An anoying behaviour with IE7 tabs was that after clicking on a post in Windows Live it would load the article in a new tab, when I had finished readin the post I would close the tab to go back to Windows Live to find the next post I wanted to read. Well IE7 when you close a tab would give focus to the next tab on the right if there was one, which there usually was in my case, rather than Windows Live which was to the left. Well IE8 gives focus to the tab on the Left, Yeah!.

 

 

Another interesting feature is tab grouping, which visually is the tab that you clicked a link on and the tab containing the link being coloured the same, as above. Not sure if this will provide any value but interesting none the less.

Inherit this

Just came across the idea of inheriting actors in a use case, it didn’t seem to make sense initially but as a concept it makes a lot of sense. I don’t like the notation though, I can describe bubbles and stick figures to a business person but inheritance not a chance.

Geek vs Jock

BRW Top 50 sports earners list
1. Greg Norman Golf 20.9
2. Harry Kewell Soccer 10.5
3. Chad Reed Motor sport 8.7
4. Mark Webber Motor sport 8.5
5. Andrew Bogut Basketball 8.2
6. Lucas Neill Soccer 7.7
7. Mark Viduka Soccer 7.1
8. Lleyton Hewitt Tennis 6.6
9. Mat Mladin Motor sport 6.5
10. Adam Scott Golf 5.8

Now read this -> Geek vs Jock

PowerPoint Tip

I attended a presentation skills training course recently and was told about an interesting feature of PowerPoint. When you are displaying the slide show pressing B will make the screen Black and pressing W will make the screen White. I am amazed that after all these years I have not come across this.

Architecture and how to mess it up

Jeff Cohan in a nice little post on Rails Architecture makes a great point about Architecture being one thing but using the architecture correctly is another. He relates it the the architecture of a house or apartment and how you destroy what the architect envisioned when he designed it by putting the wrong things or too many things into the building.

Got to love a good metaphor.

But there are no macros

I came across an interesting problem the other day where I had created a macro in a spreadsheet then decided to delete it. When I opened the spreadsheet after deleting it I still got the obligatory macro dialog when I opened the spreadsheet asked if I wanted to enable or disable macros. Well out comes Google and I found the following article on deleting macros, it turns out deleting the macro doesn’t really delete everything. I hope this helps someone somewhere and sometime.

Get with the program

I was looking around The Age web site and ended up with a list of articles by a particular journalist, my first thought was cool, I might add that list to my RSS reader. Could I find a feed for that particular page, No! When you come to expect something and it isn’t there it can really throw you out.