Tag Archives: coderboy

A Guide To Stand-Up Meeting – Part 1

people around you are not blind...

I’ve been doing daily stand-up meetings for all but 1.5 years of my time in the software development industry, and I had plenty of chance to observe the good and bad habits during the stand-up.

For this part, I’ll just highlight the need to keep what you say relevant to the project, to not pause too long and too often, and to not unconsciously perform politically incorrect hand movement where no one wants to pair-program with you afterward.

The above panel was drawn this morning while waiting at Caulfield Station. I’ll do part 2 on the next down time, whenever that is.

Shall I Twitter This?

... twittering, officially a subset of living

... what goes through a geek's mind while playing sports.

I used to despise Twitter, but now I’m a fan. There’s something different in my daily life ever since I started twittering, nowadays I often ask myself if I should twitter something that just happened, or if my friends would find certain things funny/informative/etc.

…

So I went to a volleyball game last Sunday, and having been away from the game for a long time, I was excited to get back to it.

That’s me, wearing black t-shirt, jumping for a block. Back in junior high, I was on the school’s volleyball team, I could easily jump high and get my neck above the net. But now I’m at my heaviest ever at 88kg, and all these geeking around ever since I started studying computer science in uni obviously didn’t help.

I sprained my right thumb while setting up the poles for the net, and I was foolish enough to keep hitting the ball right where it hurted. That’s Tieh Ta Yao Gin covering the swollen area on my palm.

Yes, I twittered this.

The Wrong Way To Ask For Help On The Mailing List

... and some people wondered why they are ignored.

... and some people wonder why they're ignored.

Update: I guess the message from the above drawing is not obvious to some readers (I’m such a bad ‘illustrator’ :p), so I’ll try to explain it a bit more…
I’ve been following various open source projects’ mailing list these past 5 years, and from time to time, there’s always some people who send an email with a few short sentences (often in capitals, with lots of typos)… asking for HELP!!!, stating that something doesn’t work, and that it’s an urgent issue.

They need to remember that…

  • most people volunteer to participate in those projects, i.e. it’s not their paid job.
  • asking for help is ok, asking for HELP!!! is less ok.
  • notifying the list that something doesn’t work is not good if you don’t accompany it with more information on what you did, how did you come up with the conclusion, or what sort of investigation you had done.
  • if it’s urgent for you, it’s not always urgent for other people. most people won’t suddenly stop whatever they’re doing just to assist your urgent problem.

Mailing list etiquette. How to ask questions the smart way.