I am on Dreamhost which I find a pretty neat service - it has Mysql, subversion, php5, one-click installs of wordpress… One thing that I always seem to stuff up though is my upgrades of Wordpress.

This is not Dreamhost’s fault (although I would encourage them to have the option of deploying apps into Subversion so that applying deltas after one-click upgrades would be a cinch) but really down to me not remembering to do every step.

Here are my steps so that I and anyone else looking to solve an issue after upgrade may find resolution :

1. Do the 1-click upgrade and then actually wait for confirmation it has occured (I often forget about it completely and hence never get to step 2 or 3).
2. Make sure you then run the db upgrade script (wp-admin/upgrade.php). WP didn’t remind me to do this or I overlooked it. The consequence of not doing this could be a broken feed due to a missing table error.
3. Reapply any changes you have made - for instance I have added an ‘ob_end_clean’ before generation of RSS feeds to ensure there is no whitespace that annoys XML parsers - something that became an issue for this blog a while back. Again the consequence of not doing this could be a broken page or feed.

Simple, huh? Except I forget at least one of these steps every time. It goes to show that those things that are seldom on your mind get filed away in a manner less retrievable than the search function on this blog. Hopefully I remember to read this post next time!

My inability to publish a post of late is due to my inability to switch out of verbose mode.

Most command-line scripts have a ‘-v’ directive which reveals all sorts of generally redundant information. I feel like I’ve flipped that bit on permanently and I am finding it contradicts both the times (in which sound bites rule) and the format of blogging - my favorite blogs are succinctly presented.

Some judicious editing will be required to shift a few of my drafts that have been blocking the flow like some fat kid stuck halfway down water-slide.

My first attempt to overcome the word glut was to send down more fat kids in the form of further meaty posts but they too are now stuck. Now, in a change of tact, I send down a runt in the futile hope its the fabled straw that put a camel in traction.

Fingers-crossed.

A constant battle in my work is the balance between being attentive to detail and being proportionate when addressing issues in relation to the goals of the business. It is easy to spending alot of time ‘perfecting’ things whilst ignoring more pressing business issues. This is not a post advocating a lax approach to work - I pain over detail - but I acknowledge there is a line to draw.

It is easy to lose sight of what you as a member of a business unit is trying to achieve. I won’t spend any time in this post going into what a business unit’s goals should be - it will differ for every unit. What’s important is to know what the business motivations are and how your unit can impact the overall business the most.

I find its helpful to reconsider what my top priorities should be on a regular basis (let say weekly). This involves weighing the guidance you get from above, from stakeholders and those challenges that impact your work overall, your day-to-day performance and more longer term efficiencies.

Pressure to take the quick and nasty approach to tasks (often complete aesthetically and functionally but completely destructive in terms of maintenance for you and your co-workers) often looms from your own pragmatism as well as from those with a limited understanding of the challenges of development.

The real difficulty is in reconciling your own interpretation of this balance with that of others. The danger all workers is to believe that every issue that can be described is worthy of immediate attention. It is also to favour the small tasks over significant challenges that might require longer than a few hours of someone’s attention.

We’ve done some great things at my workplace over the years which has been testament to a dynamic approach to our work. I can’t say we’ve got it right everytime but I can say that we’ve embarked on some projects which have taken us out of the small-task cycle to instead expand our business to greater opportunities.

Its the Melbourne International Film Festival and being a bit of a film buff I am quite excited. I am also a little overwhelmed - there are just so many movies. Naturally I hit the web to see what I could find that could influence my decision on which sessions to go see.

I am now three days into my quest, having made the decision last night to see Tideland, Terry Gilliam’s latest (and the description makes it sound like a filmic cousin of Fear and Loathing) so I am excited.

But I am also extremely frustrated. The MIFF site, for which MeccaMedialight take the credit, is, whilst dense in information, rates very poorly on the usability and quality scale.

First it took about 5 minutes of scanning and exploring their menus to find the list of films. Whilst

Navigating the list of movies (which for me was my initial task so I could choose something to go see) was a chore. Not knowing what you want to see is not helped when you are only presented with Title and Country of Origin.

A friend said I should check out Tideland - okay that gets around my navigatory issues but just getting to the page about that film required paging through 4 very long, slow loading pages. The pattern many sites use provides a set of links to important pages; ‘first’, various numbered pages (a subset if the list is long) and last page. It also tends to repeat these at the top and bottom of the table so scrolling isn’t required just to page.

Next was more hunting for the purchase button - make it big for !@#$ sake. A few more clicks and I am ready for purchase. There is a single useful looking button on the page saying purchase now - looks like exactly what I want, the page appears to be telling me about the two tickets I am about to get. Click.

No items in cart

What?! Hit back, tries again. Tries in another browser. IE yields Javascript errors!!  Page renders though;

No items in cart

I wasted about a half an hour on this until I spied that under each ticket listed it says ‘Sold Out’ in a small whimsical typeface. If its sold out make it obvious! And disable the purchase button!

Alright, I’ll fall back to phone order instead. Where is the Contact page? I surf around and notice it appears on some pages in the navigation but not others. And when you do click on it, 404!

Don’t worry, I found another session to go to and in the end got the purchase done online. What we can take away from this, though, is that the MIFF site:

• Failed to address the goals of the user.
• Did not guide me visually.
• Had a broken construct - why did they have a separate listing for each ticket? Is it to handle the case of only having 1 ticket left to a show and me asking for two? If so this broke it severely for the majority of instances of a purchase attempt when the system would be either plentiful in available tickets to satisfy a request or sold out.
• Overloaded the site with too much content and features but failed to deliver on its primary functions very well.

I think you should always identify a key set of goals (like one or two of them!) and then ensure you can satisfy them, regardless of what else the client is requesting. Not satisfying the true need of the end-user and the business need of your client is going to exclude your company for the next contract they may have.

Ego surfing when I should have been sleeping I came across this little escapade of a namesake of mine :

“…Authorities say the officers opened the door, and Walters came running at them — naked.” 

Lets see if I can maintain a decent posting rate. I don’t want this to go the way of my guitar… and my decks… and my pot plant…

Time will tell.

Well I barely even remember writing the first few posts… but then I guess 4 years have past.

Am working on a product launch for my company Hitwise (my implying association not ownership). Hmm, doing that link became an epic battle - once I started it, every bit of text wanted to be a link. Not even deletion would help me. I think I might switch to raw HTML mode cos at least I have some control, then (I hope - the way this is going I am likely to abandon blogging for another 4 years).

Sure enough, now I am editing in HTML mode I discover bunches of link tags which have no content. Dodgy text editors - why do the same bugs appear in almost every WYSIWYG editor? MS Word still has most of the annoying bugs - even after all these years.

Anyway, am working on this product launch (well technically I am procrastinating… actually, thats quite twisted cos its near midnite… I am actually, *technically* (yes I am *literally* poking fun at my use of the word technically :P), avoiding the temptation to work during my own personal time.

Well work awaits so…
…well I was gonna sign-off but I have no idea who I should be addressing? Am I writing this for my own benefit? I guess until the point someone else reads this I am.

Good Bike!

It’s been a week but, well, I have been busy doing not much… anyway, check out the following article - it reads like Mario Puzo’s fiction but its fact…

I reckon a good setting for a buffy style series would be in that school for mutants that was featured in the X-MEN movie. I am trying to think of some characters now and then try them out in some situations…