I coded while being on the move for about 5 years. Sometimes I rented a place for a month or two, sometimes I would change location every two days.
- expiment to find out what work environment works best for you. E.g. I work highly productive on trains (most people don't). - get a very sturdy laptop, mate screen, with a global on site next day warranty, so you don't have to send your laptop in. I have used thinkpads from the x and t line. Sometimes the service still sucks horribly (IBM Dublin, I am talking to you), but better then nothing. - have a lightweight laptop, you want to be able to carry it with you at all times. - bring an external keyboard, and a laptop stand (e.g. https://baach.de/Members/jhb/lapchop/howto). Your neck will thank you for that. - prepare for offline development, git is your friend. - have a backupdrive in your backpack, and backups on the net. - carry a multi-plug - fellow travellers will love you for that. - either plan on tethering from your 3g mobile phone, or have 3g in your laptop. Use a local sim, or one with good roaming (e.g. three network was good at the time) - Learn being the best guest possible. Bring a gift. Do couchsurfing. - As others mentioned: coworking spaces can be great. I used the ones from the-hub.net quite a bit. - Get yourself a voip number that you can redirect to your mobile phone, so that customers can reach you using the same number all the time - Organise snail-mail. People stil send letters. Either a friend who opens, scans and emails, or one of the professional services. - Organise money transfers. Not all countries love credit-cards.
I just came accross http://web.monkeysphere.info/why/, which looks to me like an interesting idea: delegate the trust issue to the PGP web of trust. Maybe this would be a sane alternative?
I am not sure about the doing it at home part - you maybe can. But not when copying a book from a library, which is the case as far as I understand the article
Ok, I am not sure about US copyright laws, but over here in Germany you are not allowed to copy a whole book - only excerpts, even for your private use. So, scanning a whole book will be a huge problem...
Google seems to forget that they are not a library. It is not about sharing the excerpts from the text to their users, it is about the act of scanning the books.
The author's guild's point of view seems to be pretty much within the normal frame of copyright.
The problem is much more the copyright system than the authors making use of their copyright laws.
My world is 2D as well, and I tried several 3D displays a couple of year ago, nothing worked still 2D.
In Sydney I had the first 3D experience in my life: in the powerhousemuseum.com they have a 3D display where you look into the corner of a room, two walls are projections and you have shutter glasses. Really cool, nearly missed my flight back home.
Second time was on the cebit back home. The Frauenhofer Institute have a display which is autostereoscopic, using a single large lens to projecting two beams. Great experience as well, and the headache lasted only for half an hour.
So there seem to be some displays that work. Now I only need some special glasses for augmentation, to make my normal view 3D.....
While working for some months on the same project (as a freelancer) I travelled from Japan to New Zealand, and will shift over to Australia, while the customer is located in Germany. Works really fine so far.
Before that I run a small bussiness for 5 years - the people involved in the team, producing dynamic websites, where either in different locations (200 km apart) or moving (Europe - US). It worked quite well.
Why does it work?
The work (producing dynamic websites and intranet tools) can be easily devided into several parts: concept, graphics, backend, assembly. Each team member understand at least the main issues involved in those areas
All the people involved (not the customer) know how to communicate with each other. Which involves making good guesses, asking stupid questions and knowing the time shifts between locations to not wake each other when doing phone calls.
All the people involved can be trusted. Trusted to a) deliver b) in good quality and c) not to get greedy
Assuming that all people in the team (not the customer) know how to do their work, it really all can be cooked down to communications. The most crucial part seems to be the communication customer - team, where the more vague and eh, surprising, ideas need to be refined into something clear and realistic. Within the team it seems to helps a lot when people choose to rather get the job done and be honest instead of being in control or cool.
I am not to sure it actually helped or not that we never decided on a common "protocoll" for exchanging ideas and questions - instead the members try to write in an understandable way.
Slashdot Mirror
I coded while being on the move for about 5 years. Sometimes I rented a place for a month or two, sometimes I would change location every two days.
- expiment to find out what work environment works best for you. E.g. I work highly productive on trains (most people don't).
- get a very sturdy laptop, mate screen, with a global on site next day warranty, so you don't have to send your laptop in. I have used thinkpads from the x and t line. Sometimes the service still sucks horribly (IBM Dublin, I am talking to you), but better then nothing.
- have a lightweight laptop, you want to be able to carry it with you at all times.
- bring an external keyboard, and a laptop stand (e.g. https://baach.de/Members/jhb/lapchop/howto). Your neck will thank you for that.
- prepare for offline development, git is your friend.
- have a backupdrive in your backpack, and backups on the net.
- carry a multi-plug - fellow travellers will love you for that.
- either plan on tethering from your 3g mobile phone, or have 3g in your laptop. Use a local sim, or one with good roaming (e.g. three network was good at the time)
- Learn being the best guest possible. Bring a gift. Do couchsurfing.
- As others mentioned: coworking spaces can be great. I used the ones from the-hub.net quite a bit.
- Get yourself a voip number that you can redirect to your mobile phone, so that customers can reach you using the same number all the time
- Organise snail-mail. People stil send letters. Either a friend who opens, scans and emails, or one of the professional services.
- Organise money transfers. Not all countries love credit-cards.
Have fun.
"...wait for March 20, when the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in other currencies apart from the US dollar..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NB17Ak04.html
(No, I haven't read the full article, it was linked on wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse#Opening )
I just came accross http://web.monkeysphere.info/why/, which looks to me like an interesting idea: delegate the trust issue to the PGP web of trust. Maybe this would be a sane alternative?
Hopefully someone will implement ecash again, e.g. opencoin.org, and will provide some more interesting payment features for the users.
I am not sure about the doing it at home part - you maybe can. But not when copying a book from a library, which is the case as far as I understand the article
Ok, I am not sure about US copyright laws, but over here in Germany you are not allowed to copy a whole book - only excerpts, even for your private use. So, scanning a whole book will be a huge problem...
Google seems to forget that they are not a library. It is not about sharing the excerpts from the text to their users, it is about the act of scanning the books.
The author's guild's point of view seems to be pretty much within the normal frame of copyright.
The problem is much more the copyright system than the authors making use of their copyright laws.
Its a bit late, but a short reply:
My world is 2D as well, and I tried several 3D displays a couple of year ago, nothing worked still 2D.
In Sydney I had the first 3D experience in my life: in the powerhousemuseum.com they have a 3D display where you look into the corner of a room, two walls are projections and you have shutter glasses. Really cool, nearly missed my flight back home.
Second time was on the cebit back home. The Frauenhofer Institute have a display which is autostereoscopic, using a single large lens to projecting two beams. Great experience as well, and the headache lasted only for half an hour.
So there seem to be some displays that work. Now I only need some special glasses for augmentation, to make my normal view 3D.....
Joerg
Before that I run a small bussiness for 5 years - the people involved in the team, producing dynamic websites, where either in different locations (200 km apart) or moving (Europe - US). It worked quite well.
Why does it work?
Assuming that all people in the team (not the customer) know how to do their work, it really all can be cooked down to communications. The most crucial part seems to be the communication customer - team, where the more vague and eh, surprising, ideas need to be refined into something clear and realistic. Within the team it seems to helps a lot when people choose to rather get the job done and be honest instead of being in control or cool.
I am not to sure it actually helped or not that we never decided on a common "protocoll" for exchanging ideas and questions - instead the members try to write in an understandable way.
Joerg
(slashdot,@,baach,dot,de)