Day 12 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – What area do you want to expand your skills into?

Day 12 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek)…

– What area do you want to expand your skills into?

One area I would like to focus on is plug-ins and OSGI.  Specifically, I would like to spend more time looking at the Eclipse RCP system, and implement some plug-ins.   I have worked though some hello world examples, but found those a bit limited, and would like more.

Luckily, I am moving to a new job next month, and the new system is designed around an OSGI architecture using JMS (which I used at Vodafone) and heavily uses plug-ins.   More about that in the future.

Additionally, I recent joined the apple developer network, and bought a macbook

and an ipod touch with plans do develop some iOS apps.

Day 11 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – Favourite hacking environment – music, light, seating, etc

Day 10 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek)…

– Favourite hacking environment – music, light, seating, etc

First of all, I dislike overhead fluorescent lights.

• The high frequency flickering drives me crazy and they really cause bad reflection off monitors.
• My eyesight is bad enough without adding that nonsense.
• So, in corporate environments, I prefer to unscrew the bulbs to save energy and stop them annoying me.

Seating wise, I prefer a nice upright chair.

• My favourite?  The Herman Miller Aaron chair:

• Had one of those when I was working at Vodafone .

What else do you need to work productively?

• Freedom from distractions.  Unfortunately, most of us have to work in cubes, even though a lot of research shows that (the increased noise) hurts productivity.  Read this article to see what I mean:  http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html

• Here is a really good layout to help productivity
• If I am really annoyed by multiple conversations around me, I put on earphones and listen to music.  More about that another day

Cheers

— Ding

 

 

 

where have I been?

not sure if anyone noticed a delay in my recent posts (is anyone out there?) but I was away for a bit due to:

• Went to LA for 2 weeks with the family for Thanksgiving
• Came back and had too much work before xmas
• Had a week off for Xmas break
• Have been living without a kitchen for a month… in the middle of renovating my old one.
• Just bought a ride on mower and am in the middle of preparing the 1/2 acre test plot for growing truffles
• Now I’m back and am trying to finish a bunch of work before I switch to a new job. (more about that soon)

Cheers,

Ding

Day 10 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek) – Picture, screenshot and specifications of your primary Computer.

Day 10 of 30 (in 30 days of Geek)…

– Picture, screenshot and specifications of your primary Computer.

My 1st work PC is an HP desktop (nothing special), running Ubuntu 10.10, dual screen with 19″ and 22″ LCDs.

the 2nd PC is also a HP desktop, running XP, with a 19″ LCD

The are connected via Synergy, so I can drive XP and Linux using the same mouse across all windows.

Sitting to the left, just peeking into the photo, is my 13″ macbook for music and testing our apps on mac.

Interestingly, the white thing on the desk in front of the PCs is a Wildlife Tracking GPS collar for a Moose 🙂