Got backup?

Okay, I was coming back from grocery shopping the other day when I saw a giant poster on the notice board. Unfortunately my mobile's camera is not working, so I will just have to give you the gist of it: "I have lost my Ipod that had all my research, If you've found it please contact me! Very Urgent!!!".

Are you kidding me?

Losing an iPod is stupid enough, but losing and iPod that has your thesis is beyond any comment.... But I cannot hold myself, so I'll have my take:

Backup is underestimated by everyone. Nobody backs up, I don't normally (or regularly) back up and most definitely you haven't backed up for at least 2 months. That's fine by me because I know that even if my hard drive is screwed, I'd only lose my iTunes playlist, some photos and some cool apps I've discovered recently... I can live with that... (and come to think about it, I have my favorite albums either on CD or on my old iBook)

Nevertheless, I backed up x3 while working on my dissertation on a daily basis.

Since I HAD to work on the Windows partition of my Mac, every night I'd e-mail the day's work to two different e-mail accounts, and also copy them to my OS X partition. JUST TO MAKE SURE. Just because I knew that when you are doing something of vital importance, you can never be too careful. The only day I forgot to back up and went out, I was thinking about it all night long (okay, until I downed my second pint, but it still counts...).

There is a Greek saying that goes like that: "You sleep on the bed that YOU have made". It means that there are some aspects in life that you can control. And if you can control something, at least be good at it...

I really can't imagine myself prancing around and drinking with my iPod filled with my dissertation. As said before, losing an iPod is stupid enough, losing an iPod with at least 3-5 months' work is unthinkable...

I really feel sorry about this person and I hope she finds her iPod but it's only her to blame if she fails her MSc/Phd/etc...

Web designing or Web developing?

I was recently reading a blog regarding web design which was arguing why text has taken a back seat to design ...

First of all I need to clarify my perspective: I, myself am a DEVELOPER, not a DESIGNER. I do not have what people call "an artist's touch", and definitely do not long for it. I consider myself to be what makes a DESIGNER design, what makes a BLOGGER blog, what makes an ACCOUNTANT account etc. I am what makes a machine move if you want... Relatively speaking.

My experience and education has taught me one thing: If your product is worth it, it will succeed. Especially in the Internet world, if a company with the homepage of Google can succeed, everyone can...

The blogger goes on to talk about the way a designer should write his text, the style of narration etc. I'm definitely not in the bandwagon of good designing principles etc. But I also do not undermine the power of a good design. I do believe however, that:

- If you are a good blogger and do not have a template created by a 12-year-old, you will not fail.
- If you have a good product/service and do not have a template created by a 12-year-old, you will not fail.

- If you DO NOT know what you are doing, a good design will not help you.

I am firm about the "IDEA" factor. it's all about what you have to offer. If you like what you offer and pay attention to it, you are bound to get a chance. It is when what you are looking for is immediate success and/or do not really care about your service when you go looking for presentation styles...

Perhaps talking about design is out of my range. Perhaps I have grown up so as to respect functionality rather than presentation (thank you mum!).

If you go 50 years back, newspapers and magazines would NOT be as good-looking as they are now if they didn't pay attention to DESIGN.

But then again... They still deliver the same service, don't they??

Keep your utilities close and your users closer.

As I have mentioned before, I am working for the network team of the University. It is not the most exciting job, but at some points trying to figure out what's wrong with the user's PC can be as interesting as traveling to the moon. The last user could not browse with her IE, but could connect with her Skype account. Visiting the user, I had the suspicion that checking her settings and firewall would do the trick. I was very wrong, however. Her computer (an XP machine by the way) was running about 20 applications at start-up, was incredibly slow and did not allow commands given in command line to be executed (ipconfig /all, ping etc). Wanting just to see if it is an IE-related problem, I disabled the firewall, installed Firefox and tried to run it. It did not however run. My next easy step was to install my favorite antivirus program and run a full system scan. This took me about 40 minutes. 40 boring minutes where we both tried to break the silence with smalltalk. The user told me that she had recently visited Cyprus, by the way ("beautiful country"). When the scan was finished, so was the awkwardness. The results however troubled me. Not a single virus found. Once the computer restarted I gave the firewall rules a thorough inspection. Nothing weird found there. I ran firefox and this time not only it ran, it also allowed browsing. That's were it hit me. It turned out that when the user had visited Cyprus, she was given a proxy in order to browse. She had meticulously hidden this fact from me. Naughty user. I restored this setting and she was ready to go. Everything running as smoothly as an overloaded XP machine can handle. Total time taken: 50 minutes of which wasted: 40.

At the end of the day, all that matters is correct communication with the user. Our whole conversation was around her skype account and the potential viruses she might have gathered rather than the last time she had to "change something as small as 4 numbers in a box"...

Note to self: Both MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger uses the "Internet Setiings's Proxy server", while Skype does not. That's bad for Skype. Even if it has a Proxy settings pane in it menu, it should all be centralized.

Inspiration

While working on my dissertation, a friend and fellow graduate student from my undergraduate university sent me an out-take from a greek tv talk show. The show was about the (notorious) $100 laptop (a.k.a. one laptop per child). The main talker of the show was our professor books have been awarded with software productivity awards, in spite of him being a big contributor to the open source community, it was his appearance on TV and him being referred as a "guru" on the subject in front of million Greek TV viewers that made me appreciate his contribution to the computing community even more. Maybe the reason underlying is the TV-centric model that my generation has grown up with. Maybe the reason was him being advertised on TV for his contribution. Whatever the reason, the outcome is one: Be inspired. Love what you do. Be passionate with what you do and good things will come.

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Tomb Raider: Being Lara Croft

OK, the title might seem like an extra from the Tomb Raider DVD or a new gaming title, but it was what I actually lived today.

Before I begin I should say that in order to make ends meet I am working for the University network team. What I actually do is to solve the users' problems connecting to the local network of the University of Manchester and eventually the Internet. The problems I encounter are mainly as simple as clicking a button, or running some commands from the students' computers. In case that none of those troubleshooting techniques work, I have to go to a room full of machinery, cables and lights (what technicians call "The switch room").

until today the problems assigned to me were what I call "the simple ones". Problems that I resolved by resetting some servers or by visiting the students for a couple of minutes. Today, though, it was different. Whatever I had tried had failed, and all the testings from my side made it obligatory to go to "The Switch Room". I must admit that I was intimidated by that room somehow. If you consider that pulling a wrong cable may cause about 100 students go offline and eventually lose your job, you would understand why I was a bit afraid by "The Switch Room". I, eventually, overcame my fear and asked the security guy to give me the keys to the switch room, which (according to a co-worker) was "somewhere at flat X". The security guy gave me the keys. They looked like keys to open a treasure box. I felt too proud to ask him where exactly in room X the switch room was, so I acted experienced, put the keys in my pocket and went on to "the quest for the holly treasure box".

Flat X was actually a flat. With people staying there. I knocked on the door but I got no reply. I used some other keys that the security guy had given me to open the main door and entered the flat. Everyone was I their rooms so I had all the communal areas to search for the room I was looking for. I opened some doors but nothing was there except for vacuums and mopsticks. I entered the kitchen but no luck there as well.

When I was about to call it quits and go back to the security lodge to ask for the room's whereabouts, I noticed a hatch on the kitchen's room. "No way", I thought. "How am I supposed to get up there?". I moved some tables and chairs -trying not to make noise, wake the residents and have to reply to the question "What are you doing?" with "I haven't a clue"- and climbed high enough to take a closer look of the hatch. It only had one hole, which didn't actually looked like a keyhole, but nevertheless I put my weird-looking keys in and turned a couple of times. I heard some metal turning and the hatch was open. The "door" opened to reveal a weird looking thing. I had to pull it down to become a ladder.

Without knowing what I was about to encounter, but positive that I was on the right track, I climbed the ladder. When I reached the top, I couldn't see a thing. It was completely dark. I could recognize some lights glowing at the other side of the room, but I couldn't tell if my next step was going to be on solid ground or not. It was time to use my brand new cellphone with flashlight capabilities. I made my way to "The switch room" and made the tests I had to do.

I had done it. I used all my skills to discover where the switch room was, to find my way to the actual switches and to make the proper tests I needed to do. And the most important thing was that I had done all of that without scaring the flat's residents. I was something between Lara Croft and James Bond.

I was smiling my way down the weird ladder only to discover 2 of the flat's residents looking at me fearful dressed in their pijamas ready to run scared outside the building. They had just seen a guy climbing down from a staircase they didn't even know existed smiling weirdly.

"I am working for the network team, sorry to disturb you" I said quietly while folding the staircase back into the hatch.

"Damn, it would be really cool if that just hadn't happened" I thought...