In the past I have used rescue time from https://www.rescuetime.com/
It lets you mark any program or website either as productive or non productive on a five point scale. Then you can enable focus mode and it will disallow you any of the non productive things you do.
Also it gives you great insight in where you are spending your time, for example you can see if those e-mails really take that much of your time away. Using tools like this is said to improve your productivity about 15% just by creating awareness you are going to be more focused.
The linux integration is not official supported and not so good at the time, but it works really good on a Mac or Windows. Also on multiple machines or virtual machines at the same time. I think they also have mobile clients.
And as others have suggested try to become a advanced user of the pomodoro technique: http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/download/pdf/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf
I have played the game back in 2010, then I thought it was already a great game, but I only play games casually due to the lack of time mostly. Playing 10 dollars each month for only a couple of hours seems pretty steep.
I really like the new MMO business models like Planetside 2, where its free to play, but the paying does not screws the balance of the game, just buys you time or less grind as i see it..
I understood clearly, just wanted to illustrate why I don't like e-mail and why I do like short face-to-face updates. Also just because you can't derive all the context you need from a text message as we noticed in this short comment conversation.
But I guess you couldn't care less.;-) have nice weekend.
If you want to monitor the sprint's progress, have people send status update e-mail to the project leader or have the project leader go around go around and ask people individually. S/he's the only one who should care. There's no reason to force everybody into a room at the same time even if it's only for 15 minutes.
E-mail? Whaaa, help! You mean everyone CCing me more bullshit. Not more e-mail, please! E-mail is really the biggest productivity killer ever, or is it PowerPoint?
If someone's stuck and needs help, let him ask for help. If you have people on your team who hide and do nothing for a week, you should fire them.
If life was only that simple. Often people are too proud to ask for help, they think they can find the solution themselves even if it takes them some more days. Of course you fire the lazy fucks, but sometimes its hard to spot that some is not really productive, certainly if management has no clue what developers are doing. I saw many small companies where developers (or other personal) are telling their boss, this and that, and thus and so. But in the end they deliver nothing. This is an issue with the managers, just trying to saying its not so easy as you describe. Shame it isn't, but it just isn't.
BTW: I never said I work in an Agile environment. I didn't specify what my environment is. It's irrelevant to my point. All I described was my biggest problem with Agile.
The "Daily Stand-up" is a way to monitor the sprints progress and adjust the sprint accordingly to make sure the sprint goal is met at the end of the sprint. If someone is stuck on a task for a day, maybe he needs help. Also its harder to hide and do nothing for a week, telling the same bullshit story everyday gets old very quick. Agile is about team work and team's need to know what everyone is doing to meet a team goal.
From your comment I read you are a loner, you don't care what others are doing, you don't work in a team. I think you are doing something wrong if you think you work in a Agile environment, by just doing Daily's.
Still I wonder why you can't spend 15 minutes a day with your fellow colleagues. I seem to like social interactions...
You don't have to use the real answer to these questions. Its just another password, but one with a hint. Now that I am thinking of it, time to change all the security questions to the same hard to guess answer.
Maybe its not to please the die hard linux community, but its great for the average linux Joe. I would love to play the steam games (LFD2 for example) I own under Linux.
Personally I think crossplatform game developement should be the norm and bringing steam to every platform might help.
Being a good hacker is fine, but acting like a cowboy (someone who is reckless or irresponsible) when putting code in to production isn't.
Creating quick and dirty solutions can give you great insights, implementing them that way in production environments will bite you in the ass later on.
I suggest you fund a noble project to crowd fund. This way you can also monitor what is happening with your money. And if you really invest in something you might even have a small influence of where this project is heading. Companies are often way more transparent then charity is.
Personally I put some money in the www.wakawakalight.com project, which is designing cheap solar powered lights for the third world. You can either buy equity at www.symbid.com or donate at www.kickstarter.com
Yeah, for this guy you at-least know what he does when you piss him off. Other IT managers might do the same or worse (delete all your files and backups), but you wouldn't be prepared for it.
Also i think he will have learned a bit from this and might have better control over gis emotions next time:)
I used to play UO on Siege, the only hardcore pvp server UO has left. I left Siege due to the fact that it didn't have enough players on when i was playing, hours of running around to find a player. Its mostly americans that play there and the europian all leave, because of lack of players in their timezone.
So, i started looking for a new UO like game just like you. I found Darkfall, which was a grindfest and didn't give me the same adrenaline shots UO gave me when running around its forests. Also the Europian server was full of cheats and they didn't wan't to do a server wipe. Recently i tried the open beta of Mortal Online, wow the combat engine really felt sluggish, i hope i was wrong and it will be better, but i haven't logged in after the first hour. Guess thats another game that won't give the UO feel, although its mechanics looked more promising.
But what all these new games lack is the roleplay tools, UO has all these small parts as tables, chairs, flowers, paintings, etc.. You can really build your own scenery to play your character in, combined with a death penalty which makes life in the world much more intense.
If you find a good UO like game, please let me know;-)
I used to be SysAdmin/Support so i started my own Support Company which got me burn out. I was so sick of IT that i decided todo something else, i became a technical project manager for a market research company. We did a lot of online research so my past knowledge was perfect for this job. After about two years i moved and had to leave that job, now i am Software Tester for another market research company. Its a lot more IT, but it doesn't have the fast pace of the SysAdmin world.
Conclusion: I agree better to change your IT field once a while and do something that feels good.
The only thing MS did was take us back to the stone age. Atari,Amiga and Apple where much futher ahead then MS and IBM where at the time. The hardware was much better and the software was all gui oriÃntated.
MS took most of us back to DOS/Win3.11 and later to the piece of crap called Windows 95. Personaly i think if MS never was created we would be around 10-15 years ahead from where we are now. While the 486 was just new, the other computer manufactors where allready doing real GUI multitasking even on multiple CPU's like Motarola and DSP chips. For example we were playing music on one CPU and rendering Mandelbrots on the DSP chip.
The main problem with the other computer company's at the time was marketing most of them where crap at it, hence how MS got it monopoly with its cheap crap software.
But i agree all commercial company's are evil even Apple!:)
I heard that when you are not moving you body except for example your hand the body will go into sleep mode, which means the blood won't transport garbage created by moving your muscle's. So the garbage sticks for example in your wrist. or shoulders cause the blood wont transport it further. Now you feel that, but it will be moved later on, but the brain feels pain in your arms en shoulders now when you think you have RSI the pain wont go away, cause the brain thinks you should have pain. By making sure you do something else once a while moving you whole body you body wont go into sleep mode and you will be fine. Using an object for this is perfect ofcourse.
My doctor says there are prettye good therapies for RSI now a days, which help in weeks. So this theorie is believable for me.
Just some info i got when we where investegation RSI within our company. Dont know if its true though.
community chest card by smsing a text to 82222, this i what they try you to do while playing the game, i am telling you its just another get rich quick sceme!
It doesnt really matter if it's crackable, it should just be a waste of time to the average user then i guess its fine with apple. So we geek wil be running Mac OS X with some small problems here and there on our old x86 computers, while must users wont try cause it will be to much trouble, hench we the average users uses windows and not linux;P
Slashdot Mirror
In the past I have used rescue time from https://www.rescuetime.com/
It lets you mark any program or website either as productive or non productive on a five point scale.
Then you can enable focus mode and it will disallow you any of the non productive things you do.
Also it gives you great insight in where you are spending your time, for example you can see if those e-mails really take that much of your time away.
Using tools like this is said to improve your productivity about 15% just by creating awareness you are going to be more focused.
The linux integration is not official supported and not so good at the time, but it works really good on a Mac or Windows. Also on multiple machines or virtual machines at the same time. I think they also have mobile clients.
And as others have suggested try to become a advanced user of the pomodoro technique: http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/download/pdf/ThePomodoroTechnique_v1-3.pdf
Thanks this looks great, just what I needed.
This sounds like a nice weekend project, wonder how fast you can fill up a harddisk with just some javascript.
I have played the game back in 2010, then I thought it was already a great game, but I only play games casually due to the lack of time mostly. Playing 10 dollars each month for only a couple of hours seems pretty steep.
I really like the new MMO business models like Planetside 2, where its free to play, but the paying does not screws the balance of the game, just buys you time or less grind as i see it..
I understood clearly, just wanted to illustrate why I don't like e-mail and why I do like short face-to-face updates.
Also just because you can't derive all the context you need from a text message as we noticed in this short comment conversation.
But I guess you couldn't care less. ;-) have nice weekend.
If you want to monitor the sprint's progress, have people send status update e-mail to the project leader or have the project leader go around go around and ask people individually. S/he's the only one who should care. There's no reason to force everybody into a room at the same time even if it's only for 15 minutes.
E-mail? Whaaa, help! You mean everyone CCing me more bullshit. Not more e-mail, please! E-mail is really the biggest productivity killer ever, or is it PowerPoint?
If someone's stuck and needs help, let him ask for help. If you have people on your team who hide and do nothing for a week, you should fire them.
If life was only that simple. Often people are too proud to ask for help, they think they can find the solution themselves even if it takes them some more days.
Of course you fire the lazy fucks, but sometimes its hard to spot that some is not really productive, certainly if management has no clue what developers are doing.
I saw many small companies where developers (or other personal) are telling their boss, this and that, and thus and so. But in the end they deliver nothing.
This is an issue with the managers, just trying to saying its not so easy as you describe. Shame it isn't, but it just isn't.
BTW: I never said I work in an Agile environment. I didn't specify what my environment is. It's irrelevant to my point. All I described was my biggest problem with Agile.
True, I am really sorry.
The "Daily Stand-up" is a way to monitor the sprints progress and adjust the sprint accordingly to make sure the sprint goal is met at the end of the sprint. If someone is stuck on a task for a day, maybe he needs help. Also its harder to hide and do nothing for a week, telling the same bullshit story everyday gets old very quick. Agile is about team work and team's need to know what everyone is doing to meet a team goal.
From your comment I read you are a loner, you don't care what others are doing, you don't work in a team.
I think you are doing something wrong if you think you work in a Agile environment, by just doing Daily's.
Still I wonder why you can't spend 15 minutes a day with your fellow colleagues. I seem to like social interactions...
You don't have to use the real answer to these questions. Its just another password, but one with a hint.
Now that I am thinking of it, time to change all the security questions to the same hard to guess answer.
Maybe its not to please the die hard linux community, but its great for the average linux Joe.
I would love to play the steam games (LFD2 for example) I own under Linux.
Personally I think crossplatform game developement should be the norm and bringing steam to every platform might help.
Being a good hacker is fine, but acting like a cowboy (someone who is reckless or irresponsible) when putting code in to production isn't.
Creating quick and dirty solutions can give you great insights, implementing them that way in production environments will bite you in the ass later on.
Yeah! Hetzner is great. You can cancel the contract per month. So just try it for a month for 8 euro and if you dont like cancel it.
I have been using for about a year now. Its stable,fast and has a very easy webinterface for reinstalling your OS if needed.
I suggest you fund a noble project to crowd fund. This way you can also monitor what is happening with your money. And if you really invest in something you might even have a small influence of where this project is heading. Companies are often way more transparent then charity is.
Personally I put some money in the www.wakawakalight.com project, which is designing cheap solar powered lights for the third world. You can either buy equity at www.symbid.com or donate at www.kickstarter.com
Rob Malda is Steve Jobs, makes way more sence...
Yeah, for this guy you at-least know what he does when you piss him off. Other IT managers might do the same or worse (delete all your files and backups), but you wouldn't be prepared for it.
Also i think he will have learned a bit from this and might have better control over gis emotions next time :)
I used to play UO on Siege, the only hardcore pvp server UO has left. I left Siege due to the fact that it didn't have enough players on when i was playing, hours of running around to find a player. Its mostly americans that play there and the europian all leave, because of lack of players in their timezone.
So, i started looking for a new UO like game just like you. I found Darkfall, which was a grindfest and didn't give me the same adrenaline shots UO gave me when running around its forests. Also the Europian server was full of cheats and they didn't wan't to do a server wipe. Recently i tried the open beta of Mortal Online, wow the combat engine really felt sluggish, i hope i was wrong and it will be better, but i haven't logged in after the first hour. Guess thats another game that won't give the UO feel, although its mechanics looked more promising.
But what all these new games lack is the roleplay tools, UO has all these small parts as tables, chairs, flowers, paintings, etc.. You can really build your own scenery to play your character in, combined with a death penalty which makes life in the world much more intense.
If you find a good UO like game, please let me know ;-)
Guess its harder to pretend your the new Helpdesk personal if you don't have a t-shirt. ;-)
So maybe its not great but it enhances security a bit
I used to be SysAdmin/Support so i started my own Support Company which got me burn out.
I was so sick of IT that i decided todo something else, i became a technical project manager for a market research company. We did a lot of online research so my past knowledge was perfect for this job. After about two years i moved and had to leave that job, now i am Software Tester for another market research company. Its a lot more IT, but it doesn't have the fast pace of the SysAdmin world.
Conclusion: I agree better to change your IT field once a while and do something that feels good.
I dont really care as long they just OpenSource Mac OS X if things go bad...
The only thing MS did was take us back to the stone age. Atari,Amiga and Apple where much futher ahead then MS and IBM where at the time. The hardware was much better and the software was all gui oriÃntated.
MS took most of us back to DOS/Win3.11 and later to the piece of crap called Windows 95. Personaly i think if MS never was created we would be around 10-15 years ahead from where we are now. While the 486 was just new, the other computer manufactors where allready doing real GUI multitasking even on multiple CPU's like Motarola and DSP chips. For example we were playing music on one CPU and rendering Mandelbrots on the DSP chip.
The main problem with the other computer company's at the time was marketing most of them where crap at it, hence how MS got it monopoly with its cheap crap software.
But i agree all commercial company's are evil even Apple! :)
Scared ? cause its difrent ? think difrent!
Prolly if he put as much effort in his real life as he is putting in wow, then he would be a miljonair by now...
Food for thought...
You could ofcourse change your shell to cmd.exe and be done with desktop icons and the taskbar under windows.
I heard that when you are not moving you body except for example your hand the body will go into sleep mode, which means the blood won't transport garbage created by moving your muscle's. So the garbage sticks for example in your wrist. or shoulders cause the blood wont transport it further. Now you feel that, but it will be moved later on, but the brain feels pain in your arms en shoulders now when you think you have RSI the pain wont go away, cause the brain thinks you should have pain. By making sure you do something else once a while moving you whole body you body wont go into sleep mode and you will be fine. Using an object for this is perfect ofcourse.
My doctor says there are prettye good therapies for RSI now a days, which help in weeks. So this theorie is believable for me.
Just some info i got when we where investegation RSI within our company. Dont know if its true though.
community chest card by smsing a text to 82222, this i what they try you to do while playing the game, i am telling you its just another get rich quick sceme!
It doesnt really matter if it's crackable, it should just be a waste of time to the average user then i guess its fine with apple. So we geek wil be running Mac OS X with some small problems here and there on our old x86 computers, while must users wont try cause it will be to much trouble, hench we the average users uses windows and not linux ;P