There are hundreds of papers and articles on Agile written in the past decade. I don’t want to compete with them so I’ll just be brief with this post. I’ll just go through the core of the subject, namely the Agile Manifesto and the Principles behind the Agile Manifesto, and provide short commentaries on each point.

First off, let’s look at the Agile Manifesto:

We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

The “by doing it” part is important here because it means that the software development methods that they are advocating came “from the trenches” and have already proven themselves. Contrast this with theoretical or (government) regulated software development practices (e.g. Waterfall Method) which don’t really work well in the real world.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Software is primarily created by knowledge workers; processes and tools may help improve productivity, but they are worthless if the individual developer is taken for granted.

Lack of interaction, as we have seen in Lean, is waste. In traditional software development, teams are divided into “silos”, each with a certain skill (e.g. analysts, programmers, QA, etc) and have limited communication channels. This often results in unaligned understanding of the system, as depicted by the somewhat infamous comic strip below.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Again, this is similar to Lean’s concept of muda. Comprehensive documentation is often unnecessary, most often a side effect of separating your team into non-interacting silos. Sure, some clients require documentation as part of the deliverables, but in reality, they’re not that important. Besides, if you deliver them too early in the project, they’re likely to be obsolete by the end of the project due to the unseen requirements changes. (Not to mention they’re easy to fake. Take it from a guy who had to do this thing for years.)

In the end, what matters is that the customer gets the working software they want.

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

The previous two points explains this point well. Learn to work with the user and expect a higher chance of successful projects (and repeat clients).

Responding to change over following a plan

If you can’t understand the simple concept that real-world software projects change a lot in the course of development, look for another field to work in (preferably a non-engineering one because this “problem” is common to all engineering fields). Thus it is imperative for software developers to embrace change rather than mitigate it via restrictive plans.

That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.

Many people blinded by the agile buzzword tend to forget this part of the manifesto and just trash the right side without considering the context. Yes, the right side is still important; don’t forget that agile methodologies also consists of processes (e.g. Scrum) and tools (e.g. kanban), and even documentation (e.g. user stories). The point here is that you should just learn to value the left side more.

Now on to the Principles behind the Agile Manifesto:

We follow these principles:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer
through early and continuous delivery
of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in
development. Agile processes harness change for
the customer’s competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a
couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a
preference to the shorter timescale.

This part focuses on the importance of the customer, without which we software developers won’t have money to put food on our tables.

It’s easy to forget that we’re not merely creating software because the customer wants us to, but that we are making software in order for our customers to gain a competitive advantage. A system delivered half a year late, regardless of whether it had no bugs, might already be too late for our customer–their competitors may have already released a product that was able to capture the market in that time frame.

This is also the reason why continuous delivery of the product is important: this way, the customer can see if the project is going according to plan (and have the ability to steer it early) instead of the usual pray-that-the-system-is-what-we-want at the (single) delivery date. This also gives the user the opportunity to release a not-so-complete product with just enough features before the competitors can capture the market.

Business people and developers must work
together daily throughout the project.

Already explained in the “Individuals and interactions over…” above.

Build projects around motivated individuals.
Give them the environment and support they need,
and trust them to get the job done.

Also explained in the same manifesto line, but this principle also brings to light the futility of micromanaging developers.

The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.

Face-to-face conversation is, simply put, far more efficient and effective than phone calls, teleconferences, boardroom meetings, e-mail, and documentation. Having the prototype/working software at hand also helps.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Working software, not documentation or filled up Gantt charts, measure the progress of the project. There’s no sense in saying “this module is 80% done” or something like that; that feature or module is either working or not working.

Agile processes promote sustainable development.
The sponsors, developers, and users should be able
to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Translation: the managers are there to make sure things move smoothly i.e. not hinder progress through bureaucracy or other stupid things. So are customers. And developers. Heck, everyone that has anything to do with an agile project must work to avoid possible roadblocks.

Continuous attention to technical excellence
and good design enhances agility.

This is why refactoring and other low-level agile practices are important: it’s hard to change software (i.e. be “agile” in the somewhat literal sense) when your design and code base sucks.

Simplicity–the art of maximizing the amount
of work not done–is essential.

Again, we’re back to muda.

A side note, though. Agile wasn’t based on Lean, though the former gets many lessons from latter. Which makes sense because Lean, in its most popular form TPS, works primarily for the manufacturing industry, and software development is not just a manufacturing industry (it’s also partly a service industry).

The best architectures, requirements, and designs
emerge from self-organizing teams.

Translation: they don’t come from following guide books given by governments or certification institutions.

Allow people to work together well and they will eventually find what best suits their project.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how
to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.

And here at the end is our looping structure: the feedback, the retrospective, the follow-through. Without this principle, agile is a useless unrepeatable cargo-cult fad buzzword.

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With this article, I can finally move on to other agile topics… (yay!)

Related posts:

1. Great Laws of Software Development
2. On Software Engineering
3. Basic Software Estimation Graphs

I’ve talked about Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 even before it hit the stores. Given that I am one of the people who actually boycotted the game, I never got the chance to play it. Instead, I chose to wait for a couple of months to support a game that actually supports the PC gaming community: Battlefield: Bad Company 2.

By chance, Activision decided to let the game be free this weekend. They also lowered the price, possibly both as a bid to deal a blow to the continuous migration of players from their game to the competitor’s, or as a last minute move to promote the game before shit hits the fan. Whatever the reason, the key here is that I get to play MW2 and compare it with BC2.

So how does the “biggest launch in entertainment history” compared to the current underdog?

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As expected, MW2 is more of a tactical game than BC2, which in turn is more strategic than the former. By “tactical”, I mean that MW2 game revolves around maneuvering and camping because of the close quarters nature of the maps. On the other hand, BC2 is strategic: because the teams (4-9 in MW2 vs 12-16 in BC2) and maps are much larger (around 2-4 times that of normal MW2 maps) there are multiple ways a team can achieve their objective, whether it’s a frontal assault with armored vehicles, a flanking assault with infantry, a long range bombardment with snipers who double as spotters, an unexpected airdrop using Black Hawk choppers, etc.

Now while that might sound like BC2 is much more “fun” than MW2, in reality it isn’t that simple. You see, not everyone in the current generation of gamers are that patient to run hundreds of meters without killing anyone (since indiscriminate firing will alert the enemy of your position and you’ll get cut down in seconds). MW2 caters to these types of gamers, giving them a fast paced gaming experience wherein they expect to kill (or get killed) in the first minute of the game.

–

Now let’s move to the “controversial” part of the game: the lack of dedicated servers. In my personal experience, the gameplay is “ok” in terms of lag especially if you’re paired with Filipino players. It’s when we go outside of the lag issue that it gets ugly.

(here’s a picture of an unlucky match. BTW, all pictures are click-able for larger size)

With dedicated servers, you can keep a list of servers that you know are frequented by nice people. With matchmaking, you don’t know if you’re going to be put in a game full of assholes. You could exit the game lobby when you realize that the lobby has a couple of assholes in it, but that would mean that you need to wait for a couple of minutes for that lobby to start so as not to be stuck there the next time you click “Find Game”.

There’s also the wait. Granted, BC2’s server browser sucks, but at least you’ll know if there is really an available server. In MW2, you can get stuck waiting if you’re playing in off-peak hours (eventually getting put in a high ping game).

Sorry IW, dedicated servers is still the way to go in PC gaming.

–

My other major comment about MW2 is its overuse of achievements and unlocks. Sure, BC2 has its own achievements and unlocks, but MW2 just takes the cake for the sheer amount it has (e.g. callsigns). If not for these “fabulous” addition to the MW2, this review would’ve just said “MW2 is to Counter-Strike as BC2 is to Battlefield 1942 8 years ago.”

And the point system… it’s as if MW2 makes everything you do look special. I mean, MW2 calls kills at this range:

a long shot.

No, that isn’t a long shot.

This…

is a long shot: a head shot at an enemy on another island (see map, B is the 3rd green dot and A is the 4th; the enemy is on the island to the south). It’s so long that I have to aim above the head to compensate for bullet drop due to gravity.

Heck, it’s not even that much of a long shot since I’m just using a 6x scope. In some other maps, I could hit targets that are about 200-300 yards farther than those and still get a head shot.

–

Now when we talk about sniping, we talk about camping, another problem with MW2. Memorizing all of the camping areas is a necessity in MW2 whether for camping or counter-camping.

BC2 doesn’t have this problem simply because all camping areas can be blown up.

Take for example, 2nd/3rd floor camping areas.

You can blow up holes through them with explosives and high caliber fire.

You can even destroy the entire house once all foundations have been destroyed.

–

From sniping to camping to blowing things up, the discussion will always go to the grenade launcher, aka the “noob tube”. In both games, the grenade launcher is a powerful weapon capable of killing enemies without the need for accuracy.

Overusing it in MW2 will get you called out as a noob. Here’s a teammate calling out the clan in the opposing team for being noob tubers.

On the other hand, it’s a relatively normal weapon in BC2. It’s a necessary weapon for a team because of the destructible environment, and the wide open spaces means that people don’t clump together for noob tube double kills unlike in MW2.

–

Final verdict?

Both games are ok, but since I’m more of a strategic player, I’ll stick with BC2.

Related posts:

1. A Mantra for Modern Developers

This is the third time an Indian dude (I checked the IP address) took time to go to my contact page and answer the CAPTCHA just to send spam about SEO; I think it’s a good time to speak my mind about SEO in general.

But first, let’s talk about how wrong this approach is.

If you’re going to offer to do business with me, you should have at least read my About page. There you should have realized that (a) I’m not doing this site for money, popularity, or the like and (b) I am an experienced software engineer and I could probably do better than you in SEO if I put some effort in it.

This display of ignorance alone is enough to make me throw your mail into the spam folder of my mailbox.

And now, back to the topic of SEO.

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To me, Search Engine Optimization is like investing in stocks. You can go the slow-and-steady Warren Buffett way, or you can go the “get rich quick” day trading way.

Most SEO (including the spam I got) falls under the latter; both this “hardcore” SEO and day trading promises huge profits for little effort. In reality, it’s the opposite—in the long run, the costs of using these two approaches often overshadow whatever profits you would gain.

A better approach for both SEO and trading would be to stick to the basics and take things slow. Here’s just some of the basics:

• Make your site SEO friendly, but don’t go overboard. For a WordPress site, this would mean getting a domain with your name on it, enabling pretty permalinks, installing All in One SEO Pack and Google XML Sitemaps, and adding either Google AdSense or Google Analytics somewhere in your themes. Anything beyond that is overkill IMO.
• Write interesting posts. Getting people to want to read your posts is really the best SEO you could do.
• Rubbernecking or writing stupid controversial things are fine (hey, it’s your site!), but I personally won’t recommend it. You might get a lot of hits at first, but don’t expect that to last once you get labeled as a douchebag.
• Join relevant communities and talk to people. If you’re nice and interesting enough, you don’t even need to advertise your site address—they’ll be the ones to look it up.
• Be consistent. You don’t need to post something everyday, but try not to leave your site un-updated for more than a few months.

Granted, some of the basics take a lot of effort (like writing interesting posts) and may even take more time and effort than “hardcore” SEO, but you’ll be more certain of getting higher exposure in the long run. The key here is that you shouldn’t focus on putting your site on the top of the result lists. Instead, you should focus on the quality of your site: getting on the top of the result lists will automatically follow.

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1. Usability and The Reservoir of Goodwill
2. What The Blogosphere Wants More Of

Habit #17 Failing to express gratitude

Dale Carnegie liked to say that the two sweetest words in the English language were a person’s first and last name. He maintained that using them liberally in conversation was the surest way to connect with a person and disarm them. After all, who doesn’t like to hear their name on other people’s list?

I’m not sure Dale was right. To me, the sweetest words in the language are “Thank You.” They’re not only disarming and pleasant to the ear, but they help us avoid so many problems. Like apologizing, thanking is a magical super-gesture of interpersonal relations. It’s what you say when you have nothing nice to say—and it will never annoy the person hearing it.

-from “The Twenty Habits That Hold You Back from the Top” from the book “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”

That book still lies unfinished on my desk because of this section alone. Out of all the business and human relations books I’ve read in the past year, none has been so naive, so misguided, so “let’s feed the fantasies of middle managers everywhere!” than that book, and this section highlights it so well.

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To me, there are two main types of “Thank You”s.

The first type is the basic thank you. As you may expect, it’s just a simple expression of gratitude for relatively simple things.

I personally don’t mind about how “real” a basic thank you is; both a heartfelt thank you and a mechanical “Thank you for visiting our store!” can have those “magical” effects on interpersonal relationships. In other words, I don’t have a problem with people giving away basic thank yous. I personally follow that quote often attributed to Forrest Gump: “Always say thank you even if you don’t mean it.”

(If anything, there’s a serious lack of it in society today. Back in my stint as a cybercafe attendant, customers rarely said thank you to me or the owner of the shop.)

My problem lies in the other type of thank you.

–

The other type of thank you is the “Thank you for saving my ass” thank you.

On the surface, there’s no problem with this type of thank you. If somebody saved your ass, saying thank you is the least you could do to that person.

There’s also no problem about people failing to say thank you to people who saved their asses. Sure, we’ve all heard stories about stuck-up managers who don’t say thank you to their subordinates even after the latter goes through hell and back for the former, but in reality, most managers in decent companies know how to express their gratitude for such actions. It’s part of basic management training; you don’t need a silly New York Times bestseller to tell you about that.

My problem with this type of thank you is that people often fail to address the underlying reasons why that person had to save the day. People are just content with simply thanking the person (with or without accompanying rewards) and ignoring the big picture.

I’m sure this problem is pretty common in all industries, but I think this is more prevalent in software development than in others. With the high demand for new software systems and the overall immaturity of the field, software projects often degenerate into inefficient code-and-fix death marches where heroism and firefighting (both frequent recipients of the second type of thank you) are the cornerstones of “progress”.

The sad part about software development is that people think this is normal. And even worse, many think that all of this inefficient heroism and firefighting is something to be proud of. Peopleware has a section where a manager bragged about burning out his team, and a recent blog article making its rounds around devs also provides some insights to this phenomenon. Even in my former workplace, we tend to brag (mostly tongue in cheek, though) about getting BINGOs (5 days straight OT) and JACKPOTs (7 days straight OT).

In short, I am not saying that expressing gratitude is wrong, but excessive “thank you”s for people going beyond what they are hired to do should be considered a symptom of a larger problem.

As a manager, it is your job to find that problem and fix it instead of relying on people to cover up for you.

Related posts:

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Dealing with old computers after an upgrade is very a common problem. Sure, there are the obvious solutions like selling them or giving them away, but these approaches carry some problems (e.g. personal warranty, recipient not happy to receive a very outdated unit, red tape, etc.) that make them somewhat impractical.

There is another option: turn them into a firewall/router using pfsense.

Tech-savvy readers might ask what’s the difference between doing this instead of just upgrading your router’s firmware using DD-WRT or the like. Well, for starters, most of the routers sold in the Philippines are nerfed versions of those sold outside the country and don’t support custom firmwares. This simply means that it’s much easier to setup a pfsense server in this country than to setup DD-WRT.

In terms of features, pfsense and DD-WRT have features to distinguish themselves from the other. Obviously, you can’t control wireless signal strength in pfsense, and DD-WRT has some firewall features that are missing in the former. On the other hand, pfsense allows packages to be added to it like squid and nmap. It also has these funky RRD graphs:

The one feature that really caught my eye is support for load balancing. This allows you to consolidate two or more internet connections on your router, whether it’s for simple load balancing (bandwidth usage is spread between the ISPs) or for failover (when one ISP fails, the connections are routed to the other ISPs). With this, you could subscribe to two crappy DSL providers like, say, PLDT and Globe, and still have a relatively higher uptime than you would normally have.

You could buy a dedicated load balancing router, but the cost difference between that (PhP 4,000+) and an extra lan card (PhP 100-PhP 150 in surplus shops) and the thought that your old PC would probably be much more powerful than the puny chip inside that router make pfsense a more logical choice.

The biggest downside to using pfsense instead of dedicated router devices is the power usage, which can be anywhere from 5 to 20 times that of a typical router. Expect a slight increase in your power bill, especially if your “old” PC is one of those power guzzling Pentium 4s or Athlon XPs. You can try to underclock them, but I don’t expect to see much of a difference.

–

With all that talk out of the way, let’s move on to the actual installation.

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What you need:

• an old PC – you only need the following: CPU/motherboard, RAM, power supply, hard drive, casing, and at least 2 ethernet sockets. For missing or defective parts, you can get replacement parts from computer surplus shops in malls (or in your neighborhood, if you’re lucky). Heck, if you buy all of this from scratch at a surplus store, you probably won’t spend more than the price of a typical wifi router.
• CD-ROM drive and keyboard from your current PC – for installing pfsense.
• download the LiveCD with Installer and burn it on a CD.
• Note that pfsense requires you to format the entire hard drive so backup files from the hard drive beforehand if you’re feeling nostalgic.
• Extra ethernet cable

Installation is pretty straightforward:

1. Setup the PC. You’ll probably add the extra LAN cards, CD-ROM drive, and keyboard at this point. Don’t forget to change the boot sequence in the BIOS to use the CD-ROM drive first.
2. Boot up the LiveCD and go to Installer when the OS prompts you.
3. Install using defaults (screenshots here). The system will reboot at the end of the installation.
4. When prompted for VLAN setup, answer no.
5. When prompted for LAN and WAN, first use autosense to list down the available interfaces. Then just guess which of the listed interfaces would be for LAN (the one you’ll eventually connect to your router) and WAN (the one you’ll eventually connect to your DSL modem). Don’t worry about guessing them wrong, you could always change them in the console and the web interface.
6. Connect your PC or laptop to the LAN socket of your new pfsense server. Open a browser and go to http://192.168.1.1/. In case you didn’t see the default credentials at the end of the installation, the username is “admin” and the password is “pfsense”.
7. Go through the wizard.
8. After finishing the initial setup, connect your DSL modem to the WAN socket. You should now be able to access the internet at this point.
9. To make your router cooperate with your new pfsense router, you’ll have to convert it to an access point (or a switch, if your router doesn’t have wifi). Normally you’ll just need to disable the DHCP server, change the router address to avoid conflict, and connect one of the LAN ports (not WAN) to the LAN of the pfsense server. Here’s how to do it with DD-WRT.

And that’s it. Assuming you already have all items at hand, this should take only 30 minutes, a far cry from the afternoons I spent installing DD-WRT on a D-Link DIR-300.

Related posts:

1. Using CD-R King’s Cheap Modem/Router
2. Spanish ADSL modem/router kit
3. Bricked Router Cheat Post

Problem is, even if I focused on just anime and manga instead of the entire Japanese hobby culture scene (which would include cosplay, collectibles, etc), I still have literally dozens of possible topics to talk about.

After thinking about it for a day, I went with the topic that I could say that I am really passionate about: the story of how we reversed the fortunes of UP AME; from being a hopeless anime organization into a thriving one. Not only is it a significant part of my life, the topic would also be relevant for most of the audience (I doubt that most of them aren’t inside a club or community of their own).

–

I put a decent amount of effort into this talk, not only because I don’t want to embarrass myself or the org, I also don’t want do look like a hypocrite after bashing the presentations in last year’s Y4IT.

Most of my effort went to the slides. It took me at least 3 days to finish them mainly because of my lack of experience (dammit, I’m a software engineer, not a graphic designer!) and because I had to look for good pictures from various sources. I also had to re-read Presentation Zen since it’s been a long time since I’ve made presentations.

Preparation for the talk itself was difficult, though it’s not as hard as the slides. I’d have to thank Scott Berkun for this part, his Confessions of a Public Speaker as well as his Ignite talk on giving Ignite talks gave me invaluable tips for making my talk.

One thing I learned on my own about Ignite was that Ignite presentations are more like song performances than presentations when you have more than 4 points to make. My talk had 7 different points so the timing is important. It didn’t worry me, though, since I have experience singing in front of a lot of people. I just had to practice enough that my mouth goes auto-pilot when on the stage, ignoring the inevitable effects of stage fright.

My script went through at least a dozen revisions throughout my practice sessions. With at least 3 runs per revision, I’m guessing that it took me 60 partial runs (just a 1-minute section) and about 30 full runs to get the hang of things. As you would see below, even with all this practice, I still had to ad-lib and adapt to the situation.

–

Oh and yeah, Ana Santos of Sex and Sensibilities talked before me. Talking about hardcore geeks after a talk on sex was kinda awkward. D:

–

Script, slides, and side comments below the cut.

Those of you who are into the local Japanese hobby culture scene, possibly the Go guys there, should be familiar with the University of the Philippines Anime Manga Enthusiasts, better known as UP AME. This university org is probably best known

[ "Org peeps holding the legendary tarp" picture from from Szusza's CAL photoshoot album. The source was bad so I had to crop it to look good.

The Go shoutout was added at the last minute to add the impression that at least some people in the audience knows what anime and manga is. Mikong was also a former co-worker, and PGA had a booth AME no Jidai.

The slide transition in mid-sentence was intentional. If I waited for the transition, I would not have enough time in the next slide for pauses. ]

for pulling off events that are on-par (or even better) than anime conventions held by commercial companies.

Let’s go back ten years ago,

[ Pictures from UP AME DeviantArt gallery. I chose to crop or use teasers instead of the posters in cases where they would look better in the grid.

Multiple pauses in this slide. The timing is important because the next slide has a lot of spoken text. ]

when a local TV station turned Japanese cartoons, aka anime, into a fad. A small group of anime and manga fans decided it was a good time to start an org in UP. As expected, a lot of people signed up like myself.

[ Instead of having to add another attribution to copyrighted material, I just cropped Deng from the AME no Jidai poster and used a simple scanline effect.

Forgot to add the TV picture's source to slide 20. Source is http://www.flickr.com/photos/pablo_perez/3256295059/.

As I said, this slide has a lot of spoken text. I need to define "anime" as well as introduce the org's founding. In my practice sessions, the "like myself" often goes to the next slide.

The "people" were just simple ellipses and gradients. And yes, the number of people is not far from the actual membership size.]

After a semester of monthly meetings, it was apparent that there was a problem with the org. People were losing interest and just stopped showing up, founding members included.

[ Again, a pretty accurate rendition of the number of active members at that time. ]

At this point, the org’s days were pretty much numbered. It doesn’t take much to see that this geek community would have gone the same way as other similar geek communities that came before it.

And this brings us back to the topic of my talk:

[ Forgot where I got the clipart for the tombstone. Oh well.

The "back" part is ad-libbed because every talk is preceded by a slide containing the title of the talk. Had there not been a "slide 0", I would've not said the word "back".]

How did we save this dying geek community? What did we do to turn things around?

To start things off, we went beyond meetings and

[ Drought pic, as mentioned in the final slide, came from http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgiesharp/371472003/.

Mid sentence transition is important again here. The next few slides only allow 1-2 seconds as a margin of error. ]

actually started doing things. We had a week long merchandise booth, a lobby exhibit, and we even joined the Lantern Parade complete with our own float. This had a couple of side effects.

[ Robert gave me a bunch of old AME pics from his old stash. I've uploaded a copy of the pics here.

The merchandise booth pic is obviously not from 2001. I got it from Fra's multiply album. I blurred it a bit to make it fit in with the pictures.

After a lot of experimentation, I found out that a seamless mosaic is the best way to create slides out of multiple pictures. The location of the text in this slide as well as the next two slides are also a result of trial and error. ]

First, the longer mingling time allowed people to bond with each other. And when people start to look forward to meet each other on a regular basis, they’re a lot less likely to leave.

The larger activities also acted as a filter:

[ The top two pics come from Robert's stash. The bottom left comes from Fra while the bottom right comes from Mic. ]

it weeded out the slackers while it brought to light the passionate people, those who are willing to contribute their time, skills and talents for the org.

Now, when passionate people bond with each other

[ A combination of one of the first (lantern parade 2001) and the one of the most recent (AME no Jidai) large-scale activities of the org: working on the float, hosting (from Wigi/Triccie), painting haori (from Wil), and painting the org banner. ]

a community’s culture is formed. Culture is important, as a bad culture would eventually destroy an org. Fortunately for us, what we got was this “fun org” culture. The “fun” part’s easy,

[ Four slides, four important points. I have to elaborate what this slide means in the next two slides, though. ]

We’re an anime org. We do fun stuff like talking about stuff that would get us weird looks from most of you guys here. We also do other fun stuff like, say, wear costumes. But part of our culture is that

[ Upper row: post-2001 lantern parade, pre-Gakuensai (from Krinkle), X-mas party 2007 (from Tiff), 8th Avenue (from Klaine).

Bottom left is from the post-Gakuensai photoshoot (from Krinkle), middle right is a tambayan pic (from Szusza), and bottom right is from 8th Avenue (from me).

The "most of you guys here" is ad-libbed. Had there been more obvious geeks in the audience, that should have been "most people" instead.

It was only after I submitted these slides that I realized that there are more presidents here than in the next slide. Oh the irony. ]

we know when to draw the line and focus on the important org matters like planning for future events, managing finances, marketing, publicity, and so on. Not so obvious from an anime org, huh?

[ Except for the first picture which is from the 2009 applicants orientation (from Krinkle), all of these pics come from the EALM 2 years ago (from Krinkle again, here, here, and here).

The "Not so obvious from an anime org, huh?" was ad-libbed. I sort of panicked when I realized that I was going too fast, around 4 seconds early. ]

And now we have this list. As you can see, there’s still one important thing missing. Those of you in communities should be able to figure this out. Any guesses?

[ The summary + rest slide. The pause at the end allows me 3-4 seconds of rest while the missing entry provides a small amount of unexpectedness to keep the tension/attention up.

Red and probably Frank guessed "Sex!" prompting me to answer "No, not sex!". XD ]

Applicants. Remember, we’re college students, and regardless of what you’ve heard about UP, most of us actually graduate on time. Thus the need for a constant supply of new members.

[ Pic from 8th batch buddy bidding (from Krinkle).

The UP thing was one of the last things I added to the official script. Just a deadpan comedy attempt to loosen up the audience. ]

Recruitment isn’t that simple. though. We have to have a balance here too. We don’t want to scare away potential passionate members, just like these guys who are just fine with our unusual culture…

[ One Piece cosplay pic from buddy dress up (from Fra) ]

but we don’t want the really passionate people, those who could damage the org with their antics. Probably like these guys.

[ Pic from the interwebs.

I really screwed up in this slide. I don't remember how much of the script I followed here. ]

And here we have this list. Follow these and your community will last for a while.

Before I end this talk, I’d like to share one last thing, what you might call the “secret sauce” behind UP AME’s successes.

[ Summary list. The "but wait there's more" turned out to be a good idea as it's hard for the audience to know if you're at the 5 minute mark or the 4 minute mark. This allowed me to keep the attention up for a minute longer. ]

As an org, we know that the best way to grow would be to take risks, to push ourselves beyond our limits.

A good example would be Una kAME!, the first collegiate anime fair in the Philippines. At that time

[ Pic from AME no Jidai (from Wigi/Triccie).

Not-so-obscure anime reference here. ]

we had no money, no experience, and our venue wasn’t that good. But in the end it was still a resounding success, raising the bar for other anime conventions and was a significant stepping stone for our org.

[ Pics from UP AME's photobucket account. Since the pics are all low-res, a mosaic with pictures of different sizes won't work here. I had to make a collage that looks decent.

The "raising the bar for other anime conventions" was partially ad-libbed. During my practice sessions, saying only "success" and "stepping stone" was the reliable approach. Luckily, I was going too fast so I was able to fit that part in. ]

So whether you’re currently in a geek community or just planning to start one of your own, I hope this talk gave you a couple of ideas to think about.

Thank you for listening, and good night.

[ As Scott Berkun explained in his talk, the first and last slides are usually wasted, hence the "thank you" slide. ]

Related posts:

1. First Ignite Manila!
2. Y4iT 2009 day 2

I’ve been wanting to write a proper post on “crab mentality” ever since I noticed that my post on Ako Mismo unexpectedly got into the first few pages of Google’s search results, but I didn’t feel like writing about something so trivial.

Unfortunately, some idiot tried to use that term as a rebuttal in a Facebook hate group that I passed by earlier today and it looks like it’s a good time to share my thoughts about that Filipino derogatory term.

As I see it, there are two uses for the term “crab mentality”:

As a catch-all rebuttal

You’re just saying that because you’re insecure.
You’re sour grape-ing; just because you don’t have xxxx, you’re attacking it.
Why do you keep on criticizing xxxx? That’s crab mentality!

If you’ve taken high school English or college Philosophy, you know that these are fallacies, not arguments. However, even while knowing this, people will keep on flinging fallacies at each other whenever there is a point to be argued.

To understand why people degenerate to using “What you’re doing is crab mentality!” and other fallacious statements in arguments, we must step back and understand how humans think and how they respond to certain situations. You don’t need to be a psychologist to find the answers to this problem; there’s a book you could find cheap in second-hand bookstores that explains it well.

Yep, How to Win Friends & Influence People, a book so well known that its cliche/parody status has prevented people from actually picking up the book and reading it.

Anyway, one of the chapters in the book neatly explains why flame wars tend to end up ugly in the long run. The title of the chapter?

You Can’t Win an Argument

Here’s Dale Carnegie’s explanation:

You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? Well, suppose you triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes and prove that he is non compos mentis. Then what? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have hurt his pride. He will resent your triumph. And—

A man convinced against his will
Is of the same opinion still

When people see their beliefs being attacked by other people, or even when people just feel that their beliefs are threatened, human nature will make them leap to the defense of that belief. At first, arguments may be logical, but there will come a point in a debate where the fact that humans are not logical animals will come up. At this point, logic will be thrown out of the window and fallacies will start to show up.

The end result is always the same: neither side will concede, and both sides will consider themselves the victor.

This is the reason why when I see people accusing other people of crab mentality in a flame war, I stop watching or participating in it. It just isn’t worth it. Heck, my years of trolling arguing with people with strong beliefs have taught me to stop way before that point, usually when I notice that someone has said something subtly contradictory (i.e. stupid).

In short, this use of “crab mentality” is improper because it’s no different from other catch-all rebuttals. The only proper use of the term is:

As a term to describe a certain human behavior

Pulling other people down instead of working together.

When you think about it, it’s not exactly a Filipino-only behavior. I mean, the Seven Deadly Sins has “envy” and ancient history is full of usurpers. I even quoted Machiavelli once about something that could be classified as crab mentality.

It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.

- Niccolò Machiavelli, “The Prince”

In other words, it’s a substitute term for a concept, just like using “cosplay” for wearing a costume regardless if it’s Halloween or not; and “color of the bike shed / pissing match” for trivial debates. I guess the term stuck because Filipinos are so deep into learned helplessness that they’d rather blame circumstance that shut up and do something about things.

The term, while depressing in the Filipino context, is actually pretty decent as a substitute term. It’s a bit ambiguous and not that popular outside the country, but terms like these tend to be like that.

The problem with “crab mentality” as a term is its use in arguments. The most obvious problem is that it’s a fallacy when used as an argument. The other not-so-obvious problem is that you can’t use it in an argument because there’s no way you can differentiate “having crab mentality” with “playing devil’s advocate” (which can be malicious or not). You don’t know whether that person is pulling you down or pulling you out of the fire.

That said, there’s no reason why “crab mentality” should show up in a serious debate.

IMHO, the correct response to it would be to raise an eyebrow and suppress a chuckle. If the one saying it doesn’t realize how stupid his approach is, it’s a hopeless case.

Related posts:

1. “Crab Mentality” and Internet Drama

It’s a 64GB solid-state drive for only PhP 5,800.

Now you might ask, “Why should I fork over 5.8k for a CD-R King branded drive with a measly 64GB of space when I could buy a 1TB WD Caviar Black for less?”

Well, there’s a couple of reasons why this can be a good deal.

First is the price. 64GB SSDs run from 8K – 15k in the gray market. Putting it in this context, shelling out 5.8K to experiment with SSDs doesn’t sound that crazy anymore.

Another reason is that it’s a rebranded OCZ Core SSD. (Actually it’s a double-rebranded drive; the OCZ Core was rebranded by Verico to Verico SSD-01-64 Phantom then rebranded to CD-R King.) This means that it’s not a no-name product.

–

As for my reason for going out and buying a couple of these babies to replace my primary hard drive, it’s all about the speed benefit. My rig’s pretty well rounded even for a 3 year old one: Quad Core, ATI HD4850, 4GB low latency RAM. The only bottleneck for performance is the hard drive; even at RAID-0, it still takes about a minute to load all programs at startup. With SSDs, I thought I could at least halve that time.

And so I went out and went through about a dozen CD-R King branches before finding 2 final stocks of the drive at SM Cubao. They came in these little yellow boxes that disguised their value.

Almost all of the clerks couldn’t believe that someone is willing to spend (tumataginting na) 11.6K for such small items. There was one jaded clerk who confirmed that the price wasn’t a typo.. I guess she’s the one who got to sell the other stocks.

The first thing I did with the drives was to update the firmware via USB. This was an early version of OCZs SSDs so it still had some issues. Thanks to this TipidPC thread and a bit of searching, I was able to find a firmware update for the drives. I’ve uploaded a copy here (ver 090508S) in case some of you might need it.

Next was to reinstall Windows 7 RC1. I used Windows Easy Transfer to backup my settings then proceeded to re-shuffle my RAID setup. I set my old RAID-0 drive to RAID-1 (for another layer of backup) and set the two SSDs to RAID-0.

I also did some suggested tweaks to the settings, but I don’t feel like looking them up right now so I’ll leave the Google-ing to you.

Here’s the end result:

Compare this with a typical Western Digital 10K RPM Raptor hard drive benchmark result:

258.9 MB/sec vs 72.8 MB/sec and 0.2 ms access time vs 8.8 ms: what do these numbers mean?

It means that in less than 5 seconds after logging in, all of my startup items have already finished loading. After enduring years of 30 second – 1 minute post-login load times (and years of 2-3 minute load times in my office PCs back when I was still working) this was practically instantaneous. For the first time in years, my PC finishes starting up even before I could finish changing my clothes!

–

Conclusion: The drives are a good buy so far.

Still, I would only suggest this drive to computer enthusiasts. Finding one can be a hassle (though you could try contacting CD-R King’s sales directly) and the risk involved is only suited for those people.

To end this post, here’s a pic of my ghetto “drive stand”. There was a cable conflict so I couldn’t put them in the floppy drive bay of my case.

Related posts:

1. Notable CD-R King Items
2. Using CD-R King’s Cheap Modem/Router
3. Gaming PC Builder Challenge, pt 2

Figure out the reasons behind your eating habits.

I’m sure many of you have resolved to “correct” their diets this year, either by cutting down on some types of food or by eating more of “healthy” food. Unfortunately, unless you have an unusually high degree of discipline, you’ll find out that these diet resolutions are impossible to follow.

The key point here is that one’s eating habits, like talents, are rooted to our past. Our experiences in our childhood subconsciously affects what and how we eat. Unless we learn the reasons behind our eating habits, we’ll eventually revert back to them a few weeks or months into a new diet plan.

For example, I was born into a poor family so I had been trained from a young age not to waste any food on the dinner table. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), our family became less and less poor as the years went by and the food on the dinner table also increased. My problem of eating more than I need became worse when I started working because of the free dinners and Frappuccinos the company gave us whenever we went on OTs.

After some thinking, I figured out a simple way of dealing with this problem: avoid free food. Having little free food means I don’t gorge a lot. When I did my fitness regimen four years ago, I didn’t eat at home except on Sundays. I also limited myself to salt crackers when passing by the company pantry (which is stocked with free snacks). Limiting myself to paid food also allowed me to limit the portions of food that I eat every meal, as opposed to the virtual all-you-can-eat meals at the dinner table.

Another aspect of my poor past allowed me to pull this off with relative ease: I can get sated regardless of how little I eat as long as I clean up my plate. It’s psychological, yes, but if I didn’t have this, I probably would have had to use other tricks to make me feel full easier on every meal.

So before you decide to change your eating habits, take time to look back and see what are the things that influenced how you eat today. You might be surprised that some of your worst eating habits could easily be turned off (e.g. you eat ice cream often because as a kid you thought it was the greatest thing ever, but nowadays it’s just meh) and that you could steer yourself to a healthier lifestyle with just a few changes (like my example above).

Related posts:

1. Fitness and Faulty Advertising
2. Kicking HFCS
3. A Mantra for Modern Developers

Learn a new language to complement your programming skills.

It would be a typical New Year’s resolution for developers to learn a new programming language this year. But seriously, what’s the point of learning C# when you’re a Java developer (or vice versa)?

What you should be striving for are programming languages that are orthogonal to your current skill set. If you’re an enterprise developer used to statically typed OO programming languages, try dynamic languages like Python and Ruby. If you’re already using dynamic languages, try your hands on functional programming like Erlang and Scala. Same goes for platforms: web developers might want try programming in RIAs.

The point here isn’t to add bullet points to your resume, but to have different ways of looking at problems, like adding new tools to a toolbox. For example, had I not been aware of the basics of functional programming, I might have tried to force traditional Java-like synchronization techniques in my Google Wave gadgets instead of the more elegant FP approach.

—

Just a short plugging:

Rapid Development’s Classic Mistakes (in software development) was a real eye-opener for me when I read it four years ago. Even though it was written almost a decade ago, a lot of the mistakes listed there were still present in my company.

To keep the list up to date, Construx (Steve McConnell’s company) is now holding the Classic Mistakes survey for 2010. Help update the study by taking the survey here.

Related posts:

1. Polyglot Programming
2. On Software Engineering
3. C.A.R. Hoare on Computer Science and Software Engineering