Posted: Tue 28 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Thoughts, Work-related |
After the first week in the new job, I’ve already been able to stop wearing bloody ties.
Basically, so long as I’m vaguely smart (i.e. decent shirts) then I can get away with not wearing a tie. Yes, I’ve got one in the drawer of my desk just in case, but for the most part I can get away with not wearing one.
I’m not the only one who doesn’t wear one – but I’m definitely in the minority. Not that that matters to me, I’m used to it.
All the same though, it’s good to not have to wear the damn things – I’ve never been a fan, and really can’t see that changing. I don’t mind wearing them for interviews or business meetings, but as an every-day piece of ‘clothing’, I just don’t see the point.
Posted: Mon 27 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Work-related |
One of my biggest bug-bears in development is having to come up with arbitrary methods of scoring.
For instance, I’ve got to work on an assessment system where there are three levels of skills based on roles, and three skill levels for the relevant tasks. For example, a question such as “I can touch-type” would have three levels, such as “Can’t at all”, “can but not properly” and “Fully qualified touch-typist”, but touch-typing itself would be a skill level of 2 (don’t ask me, I don’t know where the levels came from). Once the tests have been done, I’ve got to come up with some completely arbitrary method of taking the scores from those role-based skill levels, and from the skill level in each role of the user, and saying “User [x] is at skill level [y] and thus needs/doesn’t need extra training”.
But the actual formula for working out the points is being left to me – no-one else can get their head round it, so it’s been left to the techie. And I think I’ve got something that works, and weights things properly in favour of the higher skills, but I don’t really know. Even worse, I suspect we won’t really know whether I’ve got it right until the entire system has been fully tested and used – by which time it will (in theory at least) be far too late to do anything about it.
It’s enough to drive me crackers.
Posted: Fri 24 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Own Business, Thoughts |
I know I’ve written about Stuart Rose before, but he’s one of my business heroes, so sod it, I’ll write again.
Don’t know who he is? He’s the Chief Executive (and Chairman) of Marks and Spencer, and has been since about 2004. Any time I’ve seen him interviewed on TV, he’s always come across really well, and most definitely not your standard Chief Exec. He’s someone who believes in the company he works for, and to me that’s fantastic.
This time, he’s in a feature by the Guardian about their clothes, taking the Guardian’s columnist round the shop and showing her clothes, following her comments that M&S didn’t have clothes for women in their 20s.
Now first of all, when did you ever hear about a shop’s Chief Exec acting as a sales assistant to take someone round the store? And particularly one who actually knows his own stock lines and themes? Let alone actually wears clothes from the store?
He insists that he doesn’t expect even loyal customers to dress entirely in M&S, but to select key pieces to team with other clothes and accessories. The suit he is wearing is from M&S – he opens his jacket to prove it – but his shoes are not.
© Guardian newspapers 2008
To me, that’s what a Chief Exec should do. I just think it’s a pity that it’s something Stuart Rose stands out for doing, rather than it being the standard.
Posted: Fri 24 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Work-related |
Bloody fucking Barclays Bank, their internet banking service, and their unique ‘Membership Number’.
I don’t mind unique reference numbers – I really don’t. But I do wish companies – and today, particularly banks – would make them easier to remember. After all, it’s not rocket-science really.
My main bank, Royal Bank of Scotland use your date-of-birth, followed by a small, memorable unique number. I’ve never yet forgotten it, or had an issue with recalling it. It’s useful to both RBS and the customer. That’s how it should be done. It’s u
Barclays, on the other hand, have a 12 or 16 digit number, which starts off with either 2010 or 2020, and it has no fucking relevance to anything. In short, it’s an ID that is useful to Barclays, but not to the customer. And that’s just frustrating every time you come to need to use it.
In an absolutely ideal world, you let the customer choose their memorable number – it could be date of birth (although that’s easy to find) or something surreal like ‘Numberplate of first car owned’. Check that chosen ID, and if it’s in the system already for whatever reason, add a small number to it. No more than three digits. Simple, and memorable. It’s still unique in your own system (i.e. the bank’s database) so there’s no issues with replication or non-unique-ness, but it’s memorable for the customer too.
Except of course that banks in general still don’t operate on the principle that they should be a convenience for their customers (Note : not a public convenience, although God knows I’d like to piss all over them sometimes), rather than that their customers are there as a convenience to the bank. And I can’t see that concept changing any time soon, unfortunately.
Posted: Fri 24 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Web Development, Work-related, Writing |
Over the last few days, I’ve spent a fair amount of time setting up the PC at the new workplace, so I thought I’d do a bit of a dump of what’s gone in – and, as a corollary, a dump of the development tools and software that I find essential.
Browsers
The first thing to get installed was, of course, Firefox. This is just essential – particularly when the company’s default browser is still the incredibly shonky IE 6. Following on from there, the following Firefox extensions got installed…
- WebDeveloper – just an essential tool for web developing, couldn’t do without it
- AdBlock Plus – not for web-development, but just for blocking adverts on sites. It was weird to see sites with Ads, I’m so used to Adblock Plus now
- FoxMarks – as a user of multiple computers (home, laptop, work) I love being able to synchronise my bookmarks between all three machines without needing to repeatedly export them from one machine to another. I used to use Google’s BrowserSync, but that doesn’t support FF3, so FoxMarks is a suitable replacement.
- FlashBlock – similar reasons to AdBlock Plus, but as download of the Flash plugin is also blocked, I might as well just block Flash entirely. Works for me, anyhow.
Then we get onto the development tools.
PHP – I’ve put on two text editors
- Crimson Editor
and
- phpDesigner 2008, which I’m getting to like.
CSS
- BradSoft’s TopStyle – my CSS Editor of choice. Yes, I can (and do) use text editors to do the CSS, but when I get lost to what’s doing what, TopStyle’s the place to go
MySQL
- MySQL’s GUI Tool suite is always useful
Others – there are probably some more things I’ll add in over time, but for now the only extra bits I’ve added on are:
- Open Office 3.0 – always a joy to use after experiencing MS Office again
- CeltX – For the writing side of things, just in case I need some diversion tactics to take my brain off PHP for a while
And that’s it – for now at least.
Posted: Wed 22 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related |
I’ve just realised that my new employer has made a significant error with my contract.
I’m (as some of you may have noticed along the way) a web developer. Normally, a web developer’s contract will include stuff about Intellectual Property (IP) so that anything the developer creates for Company X still belongs to Company X when the developer leaves – and thus the developer can’t sell that same product to other companies.
Guess what my Company X has forgotten to do?
Yep – no IP clauses at all.
I’m not complaining – the main thing I’ll be writing for the next few months is something that is exceptionally saleable, and I can already see a fair old market for it outside the company. So, that might make life a bit more interesting over time…
Posted: Tue 21 October, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Work-related |
Oh, and it looks like I’ll have at least some internet access while at work, so things should be OK with keeping D4D™ up to date with thoughts and the like.
I won’t be writing loads during the day, I suspect, but at least I should be able to write things as and when I want to.
Clouds, silver linings, and all that jazz.