Publishing Tribulations

Okay so I will start here...

Now I have that out of my system, what am I talking about?  I am talking about English.

As you may notice I am English, I speak English, I write in English I am fluent in English.

I recently sent a piece literature for publishing, I've self published before, this time it was going to a publisher.... Their reply:

Sorry to hear you are unable to response in person for your trities will not meet our publishing guideline.  Please check and correct spelling, punctuation and parographing, formatting and font.

Very seriously this was the reply I was sent.

I have withdrawn my manuscript for consideration with them, sending it to penguin... No no the publisher, just a penguin, it'll be able to give me a more coherent reply.

The Old Lady and the Server

No, this isn't some strange nursery rhym (though I wonder if it could be) no this is a story of a literal old lady whom I believe was trying to collect as many notches on her bed post as possible...

Let's start at the beginning, I lived in a house I rented, I had a spare bedroom and my younger brother broke up with his long term girlfriend.  He came to live with me, quite unsuccessfully, as his life was very chaotic, and indeed in the end I threw him out in the end.

But in the nine months he inflicted himself upon me he had a few lovers through his door.  One of them was said "old lady".

I say old she was maybe early to mid-forties, with children, but that was old, my brother was nineteen... heck I was only twenty two.

He was going through a series of different jobs at the time, and somehow he met this woman, who promised him a bunch of things; like a car, and MR2 if I call correctly.  Which he went on about constantly.

These rewards never appeared, but one day she did, one morning to be precise, I came down into my own kitchen and there was this woman in my non-smoking house smoking.  If looks could have killed she would have murdered me when I asked her to go outside to smoke.  Until she realised this was my house; so the stories clearly went both ways between them and my brother.

"Where does server come into this xel?"

Well, when my brother broke things off with her she continued to communicate with me, I'm not even sure how she knew my contact details to be honest, I think she had a nominal business address or something, in fact thinking back now, I think one of the mysterious things she promised my brother as she bedded him was to get me a job; despite my not asking.

But it seems she was looking for a NOC engineer.

Indeed, I spoke to her briefly where she was talking to me about setting up BSD servers, "My servers run BSD".  She never explained what her servers were doing (I suspected porn).

She did however offer me a job, at £4,000 a month.  That's £48,000 a year.  At the time I was in a £21,500 job doing network maintenance (which I hated, and have commented about in earlier posts).

So her offer was interesting, I took a weekend to expose myself to BSD.  I'd not really used it before, just early versions of Linux, ScoUnix and Windows.  BSD was interesting, different, but nothing I had experience with.  She kept talking about her current NOC guy.

Either way, it came to nothing, and I think that's because I never came...

When to Dark and When to Light

As a programmer I spend a lot of my time either looking at a screen, using a keyboard or both.  As such over the years I've gotten quite particular about both, I like a nice crisp screen (or more than one to be honest) and I like my keyboard to be mechanical and be one I enjoy working with, rubber domed plastic crap from hell... For eight to ten hours a day, no thank you.

The screens, today it's easier to get nice screens, so I focus more on what's on them, which will generally be my IDE or text editor of choice on the Operating System I happen to be on at the time.

And I've come to loath the themes available in some IDE's but only in very specific circumstances...

Lets take the majority one of my time, Microsofts Visual Studio, it comes with a dark and light theme, I like both... I LIKE BOTH... But I like them in different circumstances.  The Dark theme I like when I'm in my own dark room, when it's late at night, when I'm not interacting with others.  Because (and maybe you get this as well) if I look at brighter text on a dark background the text sears a blot into my retina, not a problem if you're in a dark room, but then in a bright room or an office where you then need to go interact with others you're left with the problem of this blur in your vision... So I keep dark to my own space at my own time, I know when to Dark.

Light themes, I use in the office, I find it doesn't alienate anyone (programmer and non-programmer alike can get into dark text on a light background), and it keeps my ever changing focus in an open plan office from distracting too badly a vibrant and colourful display, I know when to Light.

The problem?  Well, seems many people don't, I've met a programmer recently whom steadfastly would not look at my work on my machine as it was "too bright"... Like he was allergic to LED light or something.  Literally telling me he couldn't read the code... Not because of formatting, not because of a lack of understanding or bad coding standards, but because I was in a light theme.

Folks, stop now and learn when to Dark and when to Light.  Please.

People : Office Space

I do not buy into the open plan style... There, I said it.... I think that a few people in a team can work well in a room together, and I think that a communal space for meeting, chatting or relaxing is very important, but that space, that place for conversation & distraction should be somewhere other than around the teams desk.

I also think that if whatever development methodology you're running, the progress should not be held up in public, no-one wants to have their co-workers see they've been behind on some ticket or story, they just want to get their heads down and get on with the task at hand...

So, when your staff members start to build artificial walls for themselves, made of machines, plants, books or empty coke cans... Then maybe they're telling you something... Perhaps this open plan this has over stepped it's purpose.  Perhaps they feel they are being shown up in review that they're not performing.

And it can only be an instant face palm for the likes of the Scrum Master or Product Owner to shove this down a developers throat, to make them worry, and take them off of track, rather than leaving them to work.

That said, what would be my perfect working space?

Well, I like the idea of my own desk, not hot desking, I also like the idea of being able to carry my work away from my desk, to a whiteboard, or a soft chair with a laptop to think about a problem.  Giving a personal level of separation from the work and a space to spread the mind.  Here in the UK the weather and the space generally precludes walking a problem through your mind as you literally walk, but walking desks might be an option, certainly I think height adjustable desks are a huge bonus.

A communal area, like a large meeting room, with both a large central desk, white boards and smaller tables for conversation is a key asset, not having this lends itself to staff being almost confined to their desk, this doesn't mean the desk isn't a place for conversation, but it at least leaves the desk as a focus of engineering a solution, rather then the talk of it, the thought of it, I find you need to clearly define the place of action from the place of inaction.

This includes consideration of a place for luncheon or formal meetings, the former should not be the desk and the latter should not be that communal area I've already discussed.

Everything else in an office space has to follow on from this, and there's a lot to consider, where are the power and network outlets, where is the light going to come from, is it natural or artificial light, is there a view, are there any ambient noises such as traffic.  Everything has so be considered when positioning a creative team.

I believe taking this all into consideration before a project begins, before a team of an office layout is cast in stone is important, and proves itself vital as people feel able to work without being considered to be snubbing others, but then able to get away from the pressure of the engineering chair, to let off some team or co-create with a team member over a problem they have.

All the environment relies upon the right work ethic in the team members, however, when it's right, it is right.  You soon notice when things go wrong.