DREWspective

I almost forgot to mention…

Over the weekend, I’d finally completed the first chibiMon model!

And it looks like…

Well, on this scale it would be impossible to make it manufacturer quality. But I have one completed, and that’s all that matters!

By far the most difficult part was applying the arms and legs; I knew that getting it wrong would destroy the rest of the work, seeing as it was looking good already. Nevertheless, I had to try.

Having difficulty with sticking the arms on properly, I decided to make a small "lip" of foam at the top of the arm, by cutting away some of the pipe cleaner, straw and surrounding foam. There was then enough space to stick the arm down, and it was a matter of holding it in place as it dried.

Which led to the final, most challenging bit: the legs.

Using the pieces of balsa dowel I’d cut a while ago, I shaped them a little with my trusty pound shop craft knife to make them look more like legs. Then I took one of the small polystyrene eggs I’d bought from the US, and cut them in half using the same knife. To make joining legs and feet, I had to cut the polystyrene some more to form shoes.
Once the pieces were glued together, I gave them a coat of primer just to be sure. In most cases only the feet (or shoes) would be painted, while the legs would be turned into trousers or pants using foam. In this case, the feet were painted in black (or just a very dark grey).

Once that had dried, the legs were covered in blue foam. The heating tool proved useful once again in helping to shape and stretch the foam, creating a desired, slight overlap over the feet. The join between the legs had to be preserved using a toothpick, as the glue dried.

By far the most awkward bit was attaching the legs to the rest of the figure; this was where a band saw, or even setting up my jigsaw (or better still, a hacksaw and mitre), would have come in handy. To my horror, the tops of the legs were not straight, and no amount of cutting with the craft knife would solve it.

The end result was unfortunately a wonky -looking model, but even so it is able to stand on its own.

Excellent!

Now 17 more to go…

• Not done
• Not working
• No changes made
• Not fixed

I’m racking my brain as I write, but I can’t think of a single other "bug report" that gets on my thickwick more than the above. And now you’re going to find out why.

First of all, whether you’re a web developer, programmer or someone who works on some kind of long-term project, you’ve probably come across some guidelines for submitting "bugs", or as I prefer to call them, tickets.

("Bugs" always imply that something is wrong, and in recent times I’ve heard the term being used for feature requests and tweaks.)

Unfortunately, you may have been in a company, or "team", where the policy is to make these "bugs" as vague and nondescript as possible. I’ve been in three such places to date.

On several occasions I’ve been presented with a "bug" that looked something like this:

012345: product price not showing

not working - pls fix

and every time I’ve wanted to retort with

please be more vague

but I can’t do that, because I’ve been brought up on "cynical" comments already. That’s how serious this is.

So what is the problem?

The first thing is, you may have already addressed the issue at hand, whether you’re working on it or you’ve done the work. You might have spent valuable time and energy implementing a solution. But because the other person can’t see the result, they automatically decide that it hasn’t been done, rather than double-checking on their end for anything that could hinder progress.

I remember one good example from when I was relatively new to permanent work. The company had decided to use some (what was then) esoteric method of updating a site, where I would edit a file and then have to copy it using Dreamweaver to somewhere else, where another developer would do some more work on it.

Well, I had made the necessary updates to the pages, and to the best of my knowledge had followed the instructions. The next morning I received an e-mail basically telling me that none of the updates had been done, followed by a written tongue-lashing. And if that wasn’t enough, the Technical Director joined in soon after and had a dig at me as well.

That was an extreme case, which ultimately hammered the final nail in the coffin and resulted in my resignation. That’s an example of what can happen when people get lazy and make assumptions.

The second thing is, a "bug report" like "not done", "not working" etc. gives you next to no information. You don’t know what exactly is not working, what kind of problem it is, or whether it is actually working instead.  You end up wasting valuable time asking questions and gleaning information, or—worse yet—try to figure out what the problem is yourself. I’ve been in at least one company where they insisted I asked questions, but threw things right back at me (on occasion) when I did.

These kinds of statements are controlling; as long as you don’t know what the real issue is, they are controlling you. It must be handled appropriately, and if they refuse to help you, leave.

Some "outtakes" from our main man Chadwarden, devised by myself and bro.

http://www.betweenlines.co.uk

One of my real friends from uni had the idea of starting an e-zine. Wanting to be part of something grassroots, authentic and underground, I offered my support and skills; the above link is the result.

Let me tell you guys: the whole process—idea to implementation—took almost a year. Along with my other projects, like The Ignored Board, my own portfolio site and the long-awaited return of BadSoft Inc., it was, quite frankly, a nightmare to design and build.

Note that I’d said in the introduction that my friend had the idea for an e-zine. Initially I was aware that it was a music e-zine, but I had always been confused about the direction of the proposed site.

• What kind of music would it focus on?
• Was it going to be a hobby or commercial site?
• What kind of content would the site have?
• Who would be writing on it?
• What kind of audience?
• What kind of "feel" would the site have?
• What would the site be called?

Nobody knew the answers to these questions, until the bullshit was finally cut after months of talking. I’d decided enough was enough, and started to build a potential site. That’s when the answers came flooding in. (Some of you web developers, and probably even people outside new media, probably have an idea of what happened next.)

After a few months of designing then redesigning the site, with no blueprint or concrete idea of what direction the site would take (and for a while, not even a name for the site), I finally came up with what you see here:

Luckily, this design went down well with other people interested in the site.

If I’m honest, I’m not too keen on the name Between The Lines; a quick search on Google, or your favourite search engine, reveals a number of different sites with the same name, and very similar domain names, which would make it near impossible to gain a good search engine ranking. We were very lucky to find betweenlines.co.uk, which was probably the only combination left for sale.
I have a dislike for cheesy web site names: you know those ones where they pick two words out of the dictionary at random, stick them together and you have a name like moonfruit, facebook, gymgit, lemonsquid etc. Instead, I would have gone for a long, one-word site name for a music e-zine, which would be more memorable and hard-hitting.

There’s yet more work to do on the site: I eventually found out that the site will focus on art as well, as evident by the links for art and a gallery, as well as a music player and reviews section. Fortunately the site runs on WordPress, which is highly customisable and will hopefully be up to the challenge.

This project could have been less painful if it began with a clear direction.  Even when working on my own projects, I fall into the trap of not having a direction to move in.

But how many people, groups and companies embark on directionless projects every day?

How many project "leaders", managers and bosses order people around, when they have no idea what’s going on themselves?

I’ve written about this before, and have made my views known about it on many an occasion. But not on DREWspective. So here we go.

Following my best friend’s success with online dating, where he claims to have had no less than 15 dates as a result, I decided to give being much more proacitve a go. I signed up to the same dating site as he did and began interacting, as well as going speed dating, winking on Match.com and trying to get things going on Facebook.

Unfortunately—since the Internet is the same as going outside these days—the result for me was exactly the same as before: a whole load of "not interested"s and unreturned emails.

There’s been a lot of them recently, but the icing on the cake comes from two or three girls whom I arranged to do something with. At the last minute they fall silent on me, giving their excuses or no reason at all. But when they do surface, they’ve magically ended up with someone else.

Today’s topic is silent treatment, and I’m going to tell you why I think it’s an evil thing.

First, let me point out that I’m wholly against using silent treatment as a first resort. People who use silent treatment as a first resort deserve to burn in hell.

You’ve probably met people who keep things to themselves and won’t tell you what you want (or need) to know, building up like a pressure cooker until they finally scream and shout and level blame and abuse on you.

You’ve probably met those kinds of people who think they can do whatever they want, and hide whatever important information they want at their convenience (and your inconvenience).

Those people use silent treatment as a first resort.

Second, let me talk about why silent treatment itself is bad.

For me personally, silent treatment—especially from the opposite sex—is a sign of disrespect, and a lack of responsibility; they don’t respect you enough to give you an answer, and they don’t care what it would mean for you.

Imagine you tried to call someone with your last remaining credit, and they hung up on you. Imagine using your last 10p to send them a text message that they never respond to. How about writing a long, detailed email to someone who doesn’t send even a short one back?

There’s advice circulating around the dating community that guys have to send detailed emails to potential girls if they want to increase their chances of getting a response.  How many of you guys have spent valuable time writig individual emails to girls who’ve written those lazy, cut-and-paste profiles, and got nothing for it? Wouldn’t you feel deflated?

Lots of people say that they don’t respond, no matter what the circumstance or medium, because they don’t want to hurt their feelings. Bullshit. Have you ever stopped to think that not responding would hurt their feelings?

Fair enough, you could argue that some people wouldn’t like what they hear. That would depend on both parties: the person wanting to know should be ready to accept what’s said; the person with the answer has the responsibility of telling them in the best way possible.

Personally, I might not like the answer I get (because I prefer pepole to tell the truth rather than candy-coat things), but in the long run I have far more respect for people who tell me how it is to my face, than people who resort to games and silent treatment.

There may be times when silent treatment is necessary, for example whe someone won’t take the clearly-explained, verbal hint. I say it should always be used as a last resort.

Your thoughts, please.