The first suggestion, as others have already posted, is to give it some time. When I first started developing, the last thing that I wanted to see after 9-10 hours of work was a computer. I eventually got over the "last thing I wanted to see" part even though I never got to the point of generally wanting to work on personal projects (though I did when I found a cool personal project from time to time).
The second suggestion is to just do something different. Doing different things can open up your horizons and give you different perspectives. You might find a new hobby to enjoy or get a chance to meet different people than you would otherwise. Also, doing something different will give you new perspectives as well as new insights into your programming hobby/job. I started volunteering at an animal shelter shortly after I started my first development job, and the volunteering helped me "fresh" for my job as well as gave me a chance to meet quite a few new people (mostly women, another plus;-).
Just to be fair, are we now going to get the same sort of condemnation about Firefox developers leaving a known exploit unfixed as when news of an unfixed Internet Explorer is announced? Or, are we just going to say "that's what you get for using Windows"?
My company uses Java for multiplatform client-server application development (oil-gas industry vertical market) on Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Because of the need to include some native libraries (in C++ and, ye gods, Fortran (damn old scientific types)), the resulting code isn't a completely easy port, but it's hell of a lot easier than if we used straight C++ and GUI library of platform. I don't know why we didn't look at Qt, probably perceived licensing costs (I'm just an interaction designer).
The US does do plenty of offshore drilling, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico and, to a lesser extent, off of California. However, most of the oil doesn't go into government stockpiles or the military, but does go into general oil use: mostly gasoline, but also chemicals, heating oil, and plasticis).
You mean like the guys at Enron who thought that they were so smart that they could write their own rules and would never get caught?
Glare, Light Levels, Contrast See Optometrist
on
Handling Eye-Strain?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
It's important to reduce the glare on your monitor. Moving your monitor near the window may actually be increasing the amount of strain that you are experiencing if the amount of glare has been increased. Ideally, you'll want to have the monitor at a 90 deg angle to the window if there is a significant amount of light coming through the window. Almost the worst is facing the window and the screen dead on (if there is too much light coming in the window). Being able to focus on something more than 15 feet away is a good thing though.
Reducing the light level in your work area is also important. Either reduce the overhead lights, turn them off, or pull the shades slightly.
Using more contrast may help. A gray background may actually increase eye strain because there is less contrast. But, your mileage may vary here. Key thing is to use a combination of colors that is easier to see. For example, yellow on gray is a terrible choice. Black on white tends to be among the best for text. Do use a subdued, simple background for your desktop.
Finally, seeing an Optometrist or Opthamologist can help since they can prescribe special computer glasses for you.
I'd say just backup regularly (a good idea in any case), and just watch for more frequent occurrences of the problem. I have an 800 MHz iBook which has occasionally shown the same problem, but I'm not going to be concerned about it unless the problem starts cropping up regularly.
Space Empires IV Gold might be a game for you. The game is a customizable space conquest game that also allows for tactical, turn based resolution of space combat. Since you can design your own ships, you get to customize the ship design and tactics to suit your own style of fighting. There is also a substantial modding community coming up with customized race and technology sets.
Another game to look at is Age of Wonders 2. This game is a fantasy strategic game with tactical, turn based combat resolution. Cities can be upgraded ala Civ with different capabilities. Each city can produce a certain type of unit (or upgrade). Units are combined into armies and sent out to rampage.
Canvas from ACD Systems (formerly Deneba) handles Vector and Raster/bitmaps within the same application beautifully. Canvas is primarily a technical drawing/illustration package with image/raster graphics and page layout support. In terms of functionality, Canvas is sort of a technical/precise version of Illustrator with 60-80% of Photoshop functionality and light InDesign/Pagemaker layout capabilities added in.
Canvas is a commercial application, but it's a must have tool for me as an interface designer.
Wouldn't the likelihood for rental unit losses or damage outweigh the potential revenue? A series of distributed stations in the aisles for drink/food orders, sure. But, those rental units are going to have beer spilled on them; they're going to be dropped (a lot); people are going to accidentally drop them in the trash (and forget) them or drop them in the urinal trough and not want to pick them up again. You could make the renters responsible for the replacement cost, but would you rent something if the likelihood of having to shell out $2000 was high?
In most areas, 2 years is enough time to get someone fairly experienced (they know what to do), but more time is required to have enough experience to become polished and an "expert." For example, after 2 years or practice, you might be an experienced archer, horseman, or cook, but, more likely than not, it takes more time before the knowledge becomes instinctual, you have enough experience to know the various things that can go wrong (how to figure that something has gone wrong based on small clues and how compensate for them), and you can even begin compete with the best.
An analogy. Your boss's son is accused of a crime that he didn't commit. Would he rather have someone who is 2 years out of law school to defend him or someone who has 10+ years of standing in front of juries? Both, in theory, know the law equally well and the general theory of how to defend a client. The 10+ year person who has more experience is more likely to know what will work with juries, how to read them, how to work with judges, how to work with forensic experts, and how to make the best presentation.
Having a mouse that is comfortable for you is important (and highly dependent on personal preference), but how you use it is even more important. Many people end up gripping the mouse tightly, angling their hand up, and using the wrist for side to side motion too much. A light touch, letting the mouse go when not using it, and using your entire arm will help quite a bit. Also, just taking short breaks every 30 minutes to an hour will really help.
Reducing the number of people required to man the ship is great and all, but, if memory serves, one of the debates about reducing the number of people required to man the ship is the subsequent reduction in number of people available for damage control. If the ship takes damage and there aren't enough (remaining) people able to control the damage, the ship is even more likely to be out of the fight or even lost completely.
Customer buys Trilogy Software based on PowerPoint slides. Pays millions of dollars along with $250 an hour per consultant. Poor implementation partner consultants get to deal with trying to implement alpha level software that:
was essentially undocumented
would fail on install 5 times in a row and then magically work the 6th time
work 5 times in a row and then fail thereafter requiring a complete wipe and install
worked once for the developer on the simplest test case, so ready to ship
Had APIs with helpful parameters such as A, AA, AB, AC
The client site was essentially an OfficeSpace environment in the midwest.
Thank god I was only there for 9 months.
One of the dangers of buying software as a service is that the vendor company may be tempted to forgo quality or ease of installation/changes if the contract specifies that installation, changes, or bug fix services are conducted under a time and materials contract. In that case, the service company has an incentive to provide as much "service" as possible since that means more money.
I once worked for a consulting company that was a partner to compensation software company. I got this feeling that the compensation software company didn't feel the need to make their products easy to implement or of high quality (bug wise) because all contracts were essentially time and materials contracts. Thus, the harder the packages were to implement, the more money that the software company (and my employer) made. Thankfully, I only stayed with the consulting company for 9 months before moving on.
A firefight is close to being resolved right now, so if you're curious, you might check out the current group home: Travellogue2.
In short, the players indicate character speech and actions and provide a set of die rolls. The Referee takes the actions and die rolls, determines success/failure, and then writes up a post summarizing what happened.
I'm in a Traveller T20 PBEM game using Yahoo Groups. T20 is Traveller (the classic Traveller sci fi RPG) based on D20 rules, and running the game as a Yahoo Group works very well. One of the players has compiled and edited the posts into a "story hour" on the EnWorld forums: Tales of the Bray Keaven. The editing removes the rolls and out of character posts, but you can get a feel for how the game is being run.
Happens all the time with software projects. Far better to kill the project at $3million down the tubes than $25 million down the tubes.
I worked as a consultant for a project at a big insurance company. After an estimated $25 million, 1 1/2 years, and 40 people assigned, they killed the project after determining that the vendor's product didn't work well enough to be used in production.
At my current company, we haven't thrown away that much money, but we've killed projects after 1 year of development when they should have been killed after 2 months of feasibility research. But, still better than sinking another year or two and then killing the project.
Charlottesville is a small city, but you should be able to get a place outside of Charlottesville (in one of the surrounding small towns and commute in such that it's "rural," but not have much of a drive. GE Fanuc is on the north side of town, and Kesmai used to be there (when there was a Kesmai). There have got to be other tech job sources in Charlottesville, so poke around.
An online version of GURPS, aka GURPS Online is in development. The first settings will be the Wild West and a semi-near future setting known as Transhuman Space.
Slashdot Mirror
The first suggestion, as others have already posted, is to give it some time. When I first started developing, the last thing that I wanted to see after 9-10 hours of work was a computer. I eventually got over the "last thing I wanted to see" part even though I never got to the point of generally wanting to work on personal projects (though I did when I found a cool personal project from time to time).
The second suggestion is to just do something different. Doing different things can open up your horizons and give you different perspectives. You might find a new hobby to enjoy or get a chance to meet different people than you would otherwise. Also, doing something different will give you new perspectives as well as new insights into your programming hobby/job. I started volunteering at an animal shelter shortly after I started my first development job, and the volunteering helped me "fresh" for my job as well as gave me a chance to meet quite a few new people (mostly women, another plus ;-).
Mind you, I love Firefox, but I hate hypocrisy.
You mean, sort of like logging into an old VT100 or X terminal connected to a central computer system except on a larger scale?
My company uses Java for multiplatform client-server application development (oil-gas industry vertical market) on Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Because of the need to include some native libraries (in C++ and, ye gods, Fortran (damn old scientific types)), the resulting code isn't a completely easy port, but it's hell of a lot easier than if we used straight C++ and GUI library of platform. I don't know why we didn't look at Qt, probably perceived licensing costs (I'm just an interaction designer).
The US does do plenty of offshore drilling, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico and, to a lesser extent, off of California. However, most of the oil doesn't go into government stockpiles or the military, but does go into general oil use: mostly gasoline, but also chemicals, heating oil, and plasticis).
You mean like the guys at Enron who thought that they were so smart that they could write their own rules and would never get caught?
It's important to reduce the glare on your monitor. Moving your monitor near the window may actually be increasing the amount of strain that you are experiencing if the amount of glare has been increased. Ideally, you'll want to have the monitor at a 90 deg angle to the window if there is a significant amount of light coming through the window. Almost the worst is facing the window and the screen dead on (if there is too much light coming in the window). Being able to focus on something more than 15 feet away is a good thing though.
Reducing the light level in your work area is also important. Either reduce the overhead lights, turn them off, or pull the shades slightly.
Using more contrast may help. A gray background may actually increase eye strain because there is less contrast. But, your mileage may vary here. Key thing is to use a combination of colors that is easier to see. For example, yellow on gray is a terrible choice. Black on white tends to be among the best for text. Do use a subdued, simple background for your desktop.
Finally, seeing an Optometrist or Opthamologist can help since they can prescribe special computer glasses for you.
I'd say just backup regularly (a good idea in any case), and just watch for more frequent occurrences of the problem. I have an 800 MHz iBook which has occasionally shown the same problem, but I'm not going to be concerned about it unless the problem starts cropping up regularly.
Space Empires IV Gold might be a game for you. The game is a customizable space conquest game that also allows for tactical, turn based resolution of space combat. Since you can design your own ships, you get to customize the ship design and tactics to suit your own style of fighting. There is also a substantial modding community coming up with customized race and technology sets.
Another game to look at is Age of Wonders 2. This game is a fantasy strategic game with tactical, turn based combat resolution. Cities can be upgraded ala Civ with different capabilities. Each city can produce a certain type of unit (or upgrade). Units are combined into armies and sent out to rampage.
Canvas from ACD Systems (formerly Deneba) handles Vector and Raster/bitmaps within the same application beautifully. Canvas is primarily a technical drawing/illustration package with image/raster graphics and page layout support. In terms of functionality, Canvas is sort of a technical/precise version of Illustrator with 60-80% of Photoshop functionality and light InDesign/Pagemaker layout capabilities added in.
Canvas is a commercial application, but it's a must have tool for me as an interface designer.
DaRatThe difficult thing about a comment like that is that you're never sure if someone is trying to be funny or just a typical conspiracy theory nut.
Wouldn't the likelihood for rental unit losses or damage outweigh the potential revenue? A series of distributed stations in the aisles for drink/food orders, sure. But, those rental units are going to have beer spilled on them; they're going to be dropped (a lot); people are going to accidentally drop them in the trash (and forget) them or drop them in the urinal trough and not want to pick them up again. You could make the renters responsible for the replacement cost, but would you rent something if the likelihood of having to shell out $2000 was high?
Remember that he also made _Godzilla_. Now *that* was a terrible movie.
In most areas, 2 years is enough time to get someone fairly experienced (they know what to do), but more time is required to have enough experience to become polished and an "expert." For example, after 2 years or practice, you might be an experienced archer, horseman, or cook, but, more likely than not, it takes more time before the knowledge becomes instinctual, you have enough experience to know the various things that can go wrong (how to figure that something has gone wrong based on small clues and how compensate for them), and you can even begin compete with the best.
An analogy. Your boss's son is accused of a crime that he didn't commit. Would he rather have someone who is 2 years out of law school to defend him or someone who has 10+ years of standing in front of juries? Both, in theory, know the law equally well and the general theory of how to defend a client. The 10+ year person who has more experience is more likely to know what will work with juries, how to read them, how to work with judges, how to work with forensic experts, and how to make the best presentation.
Having a mouse that is comfortable for you is important (and highly dependent on personal preference), but how you use it is even more important. Many people end up gripping the mouse tightly, angling their hand up, and using the wrist for side to side motion too much. A light touch, letting the mouse go when not using it, and using your entire arm will help quite a bit. Also, just taking short breaks every 30 minutes to an hour will really help.
Reducing the number of people required to man the ship is great and all, but, if memory serves, one of the debates about reducing the number of people required to man the ship is the subsequent reduction in number of people available for damage control. If the ship takes damage and there aren't enough (remaining) people able to control the damage, the ship is even more likely to be out of the fight or even lost completely.
So, the chickens have seed to eat, but what about air and water? So, either an okay april fool's joke, or a really stupid plan. :-)
- was essentially undocumented
- would fail on install 5 times in a row and then magically work the 6th time
- work 5 times in a row and then fail thereafter requiring a complete wipe and install
- worked once for the developer on the simplest test case, so ready to ship
- Had APIs with helpful parameters such as A, AA, AB, AC
The client site was essentially an OfficeSpace environment in the midwest. Thank god I was only there for 9 months.One of the dangers of buying software as a service is that the vendor company may be tempted to forgo quality or ease of installation/changes if the contract specifies that installation, changes, or bug fix services are conducted under a time and materials contract. In that case, the service company has an incentive to provide as much "service" as possible since that means more money.
I once worked for a consulting company that was a partner to compensation software company. I got this feeling that the compensation software company didn't feel the need to make their products easy to implement or of high quality (bug wise) because all contracts were essentially time and materials contracts. Thus, the harder the packages were to implement, the more money that the software company (and my employer) made. Thankfully, I only stayed with the consulting company for 9 months before moving on.
A firefight is close to being resolved right now, so if you're curious, you might check out the current group home: Travellogue2. In short, the players indicate character speech and actions and provide a set of die rolls. The Referee takes the actions and die rolls, determines success/failure, and then writes up a post summarizing what happened.
I'm in a Traveller T20 PBEM game using Yahoo Groups. T20 is Traveller (the classic Traveller sci fi RPG) based on D20 rules, and running the game as a Yahoo Group works very well. One of the players has compiled and edited the posts into a "story hour" on the EnWorld forums: Tales of the Bray Keaven. The editing removes the rolls and out of character posts, but you can get a feel for how the game is being run.
Happens all the time with software projects. Far better to kill the project at $3million down the tubes than $25 million down the tubes.
I worked as a consultant for a project at a big insurance company. After an estimated $25 million, 1 1/2 years, and 40 people assigned, they killed the project after determining that the vendor's product didn't work well enough to be used in production.
At my current company, we haven't thrown away that much money, but we've killed projects after 1 year of development when they should have been killed after 2 months of feasibility research. But, still better than sinking another year or two and then killing the project.
Charlottesville is a small city, but you should be able to get a place outside of Charlottesville (in one of the surrounding small towns and commute in such that it's "rural," but not have much of a drive. GE Fanuc is on the north side of town, and Kesmai used to be there (when there was a Kesmai). There have got to be other tech job sources in Charlottesville, so poke around.
An online version of GURPS, aka GURPS Online is in development. The first settings will be the Wild West and a semi-near future setting known as Transhuman Space.
I wonder if they posted a reply to the recent Ask Slashdot question about "A Family IT/Tech Business"?