Instantiated Homemade Bread
“Do you use the same dough every time you make bread?”
“I use the same recipe”
That was the brief discussion at dinner tonight. I couldn’t resist teaching my young family about the object oriented programming concept of object instantiation. The analogy goes like this:
The recipe is the object. The dough is the instance. Arguably the oven would be the factory method and the bread would be the instance.
So, no, you wouldn’t use the same dough each time to make bread. Dough would be an instance of the BreadRecipe object.
Do you want to take the tag? Last fall, I was offered a ‘tag’ during a paintball match. Being new to the sport, I didn’t understand what the referee was wanting me to answer. He then shouted, “Do you want to walk away?”. Instantly and nearly in unison, I shouted ‘NO!’ and the referee belted “game on!” My adrenaline saturated opponent stood up and point blank range unloaded on me. The resulting impact to my ribs reminded me of the Far Side comic: Bummer of a Birthmark Hal!
I could have ‘taken the tag’ and skipped the bruising. But for the rest of that day, I would have repeatedly been a victim of ‘death by proxy’ as other players would decide to stand next to me and yell “tag!”. Take a hit and wear a bruise. Take a tag and forever by an easy target. This was a temporary bruise barely more than surface deep and a bigger bruise to my ego than to my skin. But in retrospect, I learned a valuable life lesson.
Have you ever been in a situation where you were offered the easy way out? What would have been the immediate price? What would have been the long term cost?
Never take a tag.
Philippe Kruchtenn at the University of British Columbia published an article entitled You Are What You Read in the Career Development section of IEEESoftware, March/April 2009. In the article he indicates that his favorite interview question is to ask the candicate what they have read lately. He goes on to discuss what to read: books, journals, blogs; when to read; and how to retain what you’ve read. He develops the concept of a fieldstone to use a sort of bookmark with notes. Near the conclusion of the article is a real gem, a link to a list of the Top 100 Best Software Engineering Books as listed by Jurgen Appello, the CIO at ISM eCompany in The Netherlands. I noticed that the author of the book I recently reviewed, Steve McConnell, has four books in the top 100 list with Software Project Survival Guide as #47.
In the last month and a half I’ve built out a launch page site at KellyOrr.com, a professional blog at ContinuousRefactor.com, a personal blog at 43five.com and a photo stream at Fotographiti.com. Aside from the hosting space, I have used a suite of free tools. Here is the list:
- Retaggr – the Definitive Online Profile. This service dynamically builds and serves out the badge that appears on KellyOrr.com and ContinuousRefactor.com with a collection of logos for each social network on online service that I use. It shows a brief description of who I am, my picture and my last Twitter update.
- Facebook – helps you connect and share with the people in your life. This site is primarly used for personal social networking. It enables you to link with colleagues and friends and share udpates, photos and Facebook-enabled games.
- LinkedIn – Over 30 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities. The network enables users to stay updates about colleagues as they move between jobs. I used it to keep an ever-current online resume of my professional activities.
- Twitter. I often call this micro-blogging. Twitter enables you to update your status from anywhere you have access to a web browser.
- Ping.fm – a simple service that makes updating your social networks a snap. I type my updates into the website at Ping.fm and each social network that I have identified in my account is updated automatically.
- Flickr – a Yahoo! service for storing pictures online. Admittedly, I do pay for the Pro version of this service, the free version is very powerful and only puts limits on daily uploads.
- Flickriver – this service creates a photo stream of pictures from a flickr account. I like how it presents the pictures and allows users to search by keywords and sort by tags.
- BlogEngine.NET — BE.N, as it’s often referred to by fellow developers, is my blog software of choice. It’s simple, effective, skin-able, written in .NET and free. I run my personal and professional blogs from it.
- WordPress – [Update Jan 28 2011] Since Microsoft has deployed Live blogs on WordPress and since it has taken off like wildfire in the last two years, I have switched my blog to WordPress as well. I run the locally installed version available from WordPress.org.
- Skype — I used to pay more than $50 per month for a land line and dial tone with no voicemail or caller ID out here on the countryside. Now that land-based high speed Internet is available, I got rid of my home-office land line and use Skype instead. For a dedicated number, I pay about $5 a quarter! Skype-to-Skype calls are free and people can call my Skype number from anywhere in the world and I can take the call anywhere in the world that I can get access to the Internet and Skype. I’ve used the service and my account in Germany and Russia with no problems.
- Gmail — For years I insisted on using my own domain names and Microsoft Outlook for email. I still use my own domain names, but I got rid of Outlook when I realized I have access to Google’s search horsepower in a GMail account. I no longer have hundreds of nested folders that I sort mail into. All of my mail gets tagged and added to a single archive folder. Now I search instead of sort.
- Amazon.com — I signed up for an Amazon.com Associate account. When I write book reviews or list books referenced in talks that I’ve attended, the pictures of the books come from Amazon. If a reader clicks the book, they are transferred over to Amazon and if they buy the book, I receive a commission from Amazon.
- Google Analytics — I’ve used several web traffic analytics tools over the years, but they all pale in comparison to Google Analytics. The basic version is extremely powerful and, of course, free. Once you sign up for your account, Google will generate a simple snippet of code for you to add to your website. That code will send information about each visitor to Google for analysis. The aggregated data is presented in numerous reports for your review via a web interface.
- Clustrmaps — This service provides a push pin style map of where your readers are located. The more visitors you have from a location, the bigger the head of the push pin. This map is available as a dynamic graphic to include on your site. The service is free.
I launched an effort earlier this year to take accounting for my consultancy to completely paperless. Although I wouldn’t say it is perfectly paperless now, I would say that I’m very close, say 98%. The bulk of the heavy lifting is done with Freshbooks. It is a fantastic SaaS online tool that lets me keep my finger on the accounting from any where that has an Internet connection. May favorite features include automated billing with tried and true “set it and forget it” functionality. They also interface with my payment gateway, PayPal, and Amazon Payments as well as allowing me to receive paper checks (remember that 2% remaining) and process them manually. Recurring invoices can be automatically emailed or postal mailed monthly. Estimates can be created, emailed to the client, accepted by the client online for tracking and converted to an invoice. Reporting is extensive enough to for accounts receiveable enterprise-wide or per client. I highly recommend Freshbooks for paperless, automated, efficiently accounts receivable accounting. Sign-up!