depthq - ccm|mac

I've only been using Twitter recently and just realised how useful it can be. Its the same feeling I get when using Facebook. I am not talking about all the stupid notifications that Facebook apps send but more of a history of things people have done.

Thinking about this it reminds me of our normal "offline" book/magazine/newspaper. There is probably too much information to consume if its all sent in real time. Having it kept as a log where you can view it at pleasure is much better. I guess the people in the print industry know what they are doing. Or maybe we're too used to it? Who knows...

But because its personalized in a way, its much better suited to your reading taste. I guess maybe this is why RSS and feed readers are such a hit, at least for me.

Not only that you can choose to consume the information when you want, consuming it in batches is so much more manageable and allows work to get done! There are just too many things to distract you everyday and its getting more and more addictive, just as Paul Graham says in his recent article. I don't think I'll turn off wifi on my main work machine. I'll just be more disciplined and see how I go from there.

Thinking more about async communication reminds me of the different type of mediums that we have now to communicate with your family, friends and people that you work with.

For me, with family, its always phone or video conferencing. Very direct and real time. Tons of vocal and visual feedback. The best way to communicate for the most important people in your life. I am in Beijing and family is in Malaysia so I can't do face to face.

With friends, its mostly instant messaging (IM), e-mail, twitter, facebook messages and sometimes voice chat through Skype. Looking at this its mostly text but with different levels of interaction. Voice chat definitely requires direct and real time attention. IM is probably the second most disruptive of the bunch as it demands, although not necessarily requires, direct attention. But what are friends for? The rest are mostly offline and are great ways to keep in touch. The best way would be to do it face to face of course but it takes more effort for everyone involved!

With colleagues, at least in the Exoweb, we mainly have face to face (meetings urgh!), voice chat, IM, IRC, e-mail, blog and wiki. Face to face is great but its mostly too disruptive and should be used for the most important of things or for things that aren't easily communicated in other forms. We don't really have that many meetings in Exoweb (thank gawd!) and we try to make full use of meetings when we do. Voice chat is rare and probably used to talk to clients or colleagues that are working remotely.

IM as I said earlier is quite disruptive and its mostly between 2 people in almost real time. IRC is a pretty good way to communicate as most of the time you're talking in real time in a chat room and others can quickly follow the conversation is needed. But again, it can be disruptive, don't expect a reply if you're doing over IRC because its meant to be async.

For most things, e-mail is the preferred way. Since there is a lag, you need to write it well so that there won't be wasted time going back and forth. This is more evident when your client is working at a different timezone. It can be quite a chore to write a good e-mail though.

I've read before that to maximize the value of keystrokes you should blog rather than write an e-mail. I think its quite a cool concept. If you write an e-mail, that information is normally only shared to the recipients. If you blog it, more people can learn and take advantage of that information that you provided. And looking at the whole Web ecosystem, your blog entry can be easily tagged in del.icio.us, digg or reddit, indexed by google, yahoo or your favourite search engine and etc.

Another way is to update the information into a wiki. We use wikis for most (if not all) of the information in Exoweb. Wikis are a great way to collaboratively edit a document which contains some knowledge or information. The problem is wikis is to tell people of the changes. Our current wiki system isn't that great yet and doesn't promote the collaboration part that much.

There are times where there isn't a way that will make everyone happy but choose wisely anyway and you'll be able to get your message across in the most effective way.

In light of the recent earthquake in Sichuan, our website team turned most of exoweb.net gray.

I just want to spend a bit of time to document how we did it.

First we change all the images into grayscale using PIL with the following code snippet:

import Image
import glob
import os

for file in glob.glob('*'):
    if os.path.isfile(file):
        print file
        img = Image.open(file)
        gray = img.convert('L')
        gray.save('gray-' + file)

We don't have a very complicated directory heirarchy, so the above code was sufficient.

We cloned the main CSS file and created a copy for the gray version. We remove the styles that used colours and replaced them with gray versions.

After that we updated our Apache rewrite rules and redirected the normal CSS and images to the gray ones.

As a parting note, I send my condolences to those who lost their loved ones.

Last Friday, 23 of us from the NB team set off to Shen Cun Dao for a short weekend excursion.

I would have to say that it was more fun that I expected. We walked on metal ropes and wires while avoiding the dangers of falling into somewhat dirt water. We raced against time, climbed over walls, dangle and get off-balance on swings.

I didn't snap many photos. I was obviously just too distracted. But anyway, we also had some less physically demanding activities such as creating some art stuff.

Many thanks to our friendly PM for doing a lot of the PM work for this trip.

I think I really liked the team oriented games/competition. There is an amazing amount of good memories, laughter and friendship that is developed through these activities. I am utterly amazed. Other than that I liked the rock climbing (pan1 yan2). Yes I managed to hit the bell right at the top! I thought the barbecued food was pretty good! I also like just snacking on random junk.

This whole trip reminds me of my school days. Its a good feeling.

UPDATE: Some links to some videos:

1. Some sort of charades-like game that we played, extremely funny
2. Dancing around the fire with the rabbit dance
3. One of our friendly PM rock climbing
4. Another one of our friendly PM rock climbing
5. And finally myself, rock climbing and hitting the bell!

Tolerate and Wait.

I'd say we should fight. Fight the stereotype. Fight the stigma. Fight for your life. Change your fate.

When we fight, adrenaline will pump through our body and keep us alive. Being alive is probably one of the things that make life worth living.

Be alive!

The best way to have the future you want is to make it.

I saw it and it really brought me back to a time long time ago. A flash of the past flew by but I can still feel the emotions like I was back then.

I totally forgot that I love to talk in code when I write a long time ago. It was pretty fun and exciting when you're writing just for that one person. Its also fun writing just for yourself. In fact I think that is what I do most of the time anyway unwilling as I am.

I digress. I was so young and innocent? Maybe I still am. I try to view the world with a tinge of utopia and probably tries too hard to be idealistic but actually I can't help to be pragmatic.

Oh I am so confused!