New Site / Blog

My new homepage is online at http://www.mpdaugherty.com.  Please check it out!

You may have noticed that I’m not particularly dedicated to this blog.  Posts go up when they go up, and sometimes I go three months without writing anything new…  In addition, I realized that awesome blogs have a focus.  This blog doesn’t.

In my new blog, I’ll be focusing mostly on technology, python and javascript development, with some China and productivity influences.  Everything else will stay here.  That actually includes a lot, though, so I’ll try to update once a month or so – whenever I have time.

To conclude, here’s a picture of an awesome box of orange/mango Oreo cookies that I bought at 7/11 next week.  The orange side was ok, and the mango side was terrible.  Never again.

 

Orange Mango Oreos from 7/11

Cellephant

Sometimes you have to laugh at journalists’ aspirations to literary greatness. Check out the second-to-last sentence from a New York Times article explaining the Line2 iPhone app.

Cell carriers go through life hoping nobody notices the cellephant in the room: that once everybody starts making free calls over the Internet, it’s Game Over for the dollars-for-minutes model.

My first National Day in China

I just spent the last week traveling through China with my parents.  I’d planned on spending a few hours every day doing work, but I didn’t actually get anything done at all…  I’d forgotten how busy it can be to travel, particularly when you’re the host and need to show someone around.

First, we went to Xi’an for three days.  It’s a great city.  The city wall is the largest intact ancient city wall in the world, and I highly recommend a walk on top of it.  We also visited the Terracotta warriors (of course!), the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, and Beilin (a garden with collections of calligraphy and sculptures that was started in the 900s).  We stayed at the Shangri-la hotel, and had drinks in the downstairs bar almost every night after our crazy taxi rides home.  All the tourist sites are just way too packed during the National Day Holiday.  The funniest part of visiting Xi’an was that everyone thought Judy was a tour guide, so they kept asking if they could get pictures with her clients or trying to get her to tell us to buy stuff.

It was so crowded at the market that when we finally found a ride in this falling-apart ‘taxi,’ we took it. Needless to say, we had a drink in the hotel bar before bed…

Next, we visited Shanghai for another four days.  There, my parents met Judy’s parents, and we spent a few days with them.  We also visited Suzhou one day while Judy stayed back in Shanghai with her parents.  It’s only 30 minutes by train to Suzhou, which is really nice.  Again, everything was too crowded, but it was still nice to visit.  As usual, the best part about visiting Shanghai was eating the dumplings.

Some of the people who visited the peaceful Yuyuan Gardens with us

Finally, I’m back in Beijing, and really trying to get started on work again.  It’s tough enough to get back on track when you come back to a big company job after a vacation, but at least you have emails and other people to remind you what you need to get done.  When you’re coming back to your own project, it’s a little tougher.  Thankfully, I use Pivotal Tracker and keep lists of everything.

Productivity tricks for independent workers

Over the last half year of working remotely in Beijing, I’ve developed a few tricks for how to keep myself productive:

1. At Home – It’s easy to get distracted at home, so if I feel my concentration slipping, I will often set a timer for 45 minutes or an hour and tell myself that I can’t look at any websites, check email, etc. until the timer goes off.  This is enough time to get back into the flow of getting things done, and sometimes when the timer goes off I don’t even want to stop working quite yet.
2. At a coffee shop – Don’t sit on the couches.  If you’re not talking with people, couches are just there to make you doze off.  Plus, they’re too low and far from the table, so they’re usually bad ergonomically.
3. On the road – Get a cell phone with tethering.  It’s usually not fast enough that you’d want to use it as your primary internet, but if you end up in a coffee shop and their network goes down right as you’re trying to send a big file to a client, it’s great to have a backup.
4. Anywhere – Work with other people you know.  Coworking locations are great for this.  If you see the same person every other day and you always ask each other what you’re working on, it can give you a little bit of direct accountability; you see them working, plus you already told them what you’re trying to finish for the day, so now you have to get it done.

Boston’s Betahouse

I’m back in Beijing from my US trip now, but I’m still going to try to go back and fill in some of the blog posts I wanted to write while I was there.  This one is a brief reflection on what I saw when working at Betahouse in Boston.

Betahouse is a coworking location that is currently in a Central Square apartment/loft; they’re moving soon, though to somewhere else.  There are no bedrooms, but there is a kitchen with bar.  The whole floor is open with a high ceiling and wood floor.  Altogether, they have 9-10 desks, so it’s fairly small compared to other places I’ve seen. Pretty much everyone has monitors and full size computers and a reserved desk, so there are not many temp people.  This means the place is really focused on working and it’s easy to be productive.  Also, everyone has a key, so there are no open/closed hours.

I think this set up gives them a tight community, but it’s a little intimidating to walk in the first time.  You can’t help but be a little unsure of where you’re going, since it is just an apartment and you have to go up the stairs by yourself.  Also, there’s no secretary or door greeter, so it’s possible no one will say hi and welcome you.  You have to say the first word.

Overall, I think betahouse’s environment felt the most productive out of nearly everywhere I’d been; you could tell people were there to get stuff done while they were working.  They do relax, though; on my Friday in Boston I had some drinks over there after five and talked to people about startups and coworking.

What I learned at Betahouse is that having permanent members who are really permanent, and have their whole office setup there, not just people who come in every day with laptops, can make the place feel more productive.  Once I can get a coworking space up and running here, I’d like to encourage some people to really make it their permanent office.

SVN Haiku

Here’s my comment for my latest SVN commit:

How can I forget?
Don’t access variables,
Unless they’re not null.
Bug-ID GD-34785

Old Jokes

This claims to be a collection of the world’s ten oldest jokes

The World’s Oldest Jokes

I doubt it really is (especially since the last one comes from a whole book of jokes), but it’s fascinating to see what people find funny over time.

The Letter ‘Q’

Quick.  Draw a ‘Q’ on your forehead.  Did you draw it facing you or away?

Gone With The Wind – Too Good

This post on Marginal Revolution was too funny not to mention to all my readers who are fans of Gone With the Wind. Is it really too good to read?

Gone With the Wind: The Perfect Book?