mnt | 5v3n.com

What watching TV and developing for an open source project have in common

2010-09-06T00:00:00Z

Right now, I’m sitting in Berlin, enjoying the sun & trying to congest the impressions I had so far on this giant trade fair I happened to visit – the IFA.

Focus is on consumer electronics, mainly all kinds of more or less unique new tv sets. People are staring into these goggleboxes & get distracted of their more or less miserable lifes, I thought. The average guy comes home after work & spends quite an amount of time with this complete waste of time.

After this short rush of arrogance, I started to approach it a bit more grown up. I remembered my girlfriend’s comment on my habit of “jumping into that X-Terminal” from time to time when I dive into a serious hacking session.

Wait a minute – does that mean that I have that same habit of staring into a gogglebox & get distracted of my more or less miserable life? Am I coming home after work & spend quite an amount of time with this complete waste of time?

Yes, I’m guilty of all these points – but there is one big difference: It’s no waste of time. And, I am quite confident that my life isn’t more miserable than necessary ;–). I mean, I’m a working class boy who thought his way through an academic system which is so not made for my kind of people – and am enjoying a quite charming professional & private life in a wonderful city.

So what’s the big thing about open source projects when I just argued that – at least in my case – it can’t be distraction? It’s more about the cosy feeling of… the give a little, take a little game.

To be more precise, it’s more like taking a little – for example you use that open source blogging microframework. And then giving a little – like helping to add some functionality you missed in that framework or add some new features.

Sure, I could as well use tumblr and save a lot of time. And perhaps blog a little more and hack on the blog and it’s features a little less. But one important aspect would be missing: I’m doing something for the community. OK, it’s a worldwide spread community. But it sometimes feels like doing some work for your local neighborhoods development project.

What I like most about Open Source Projects is the fact that people spend their time with somthing useful. I like the spirit of the corresponding meetups, the general mood of the scene and the fact that I’m not the only lunatic who spends his working day with software development – and a variable amount of his free time, too.

I have to confess that I’m quite a new face when it comes to open source software – but nevertheless, I guess I described some aspect that are common perception. Sitting here in the Berlin sun, trying to settle my thoughts on the IFA.

One idea that came to my minde recently – how about open source literacy? Technical books are already written using the concept that first applied solely to software. Wouldn’t it be great to write a novel? Or would that lead to a too many cooks spoil the broth situation?

So – what’s your opinion about the subject? Do you agree? Do you love TV and hate Open Source? Tell us, it’s just some keystrokes & a click away.

Cheers

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

Nice talks, one book & a leitmotif

2010-07-27T00:00:00Z

During the last weeks I met a lot of interesting people. Having talked about the widest plurality of subjects, I realized that there was one common connector, a kind of leitmotif that occurs in almost all conversations I enjoyed. It’s the general situation of our working conditions, which leads to Daniel Pink’s book “Drive”.

This one book is outstanding, but I want to give an overview of all the books I read during the last months. Since I’m a slow reader, you don’t have to be scared: this list is quite short ;–). Have a look at this small pile:

So, here are the books from the stack above that I…

..read during the last couple of months

Daniel Pink, Drive

Absolute must-have-read! This book’s title sells it short. It answered so many questions, to name a few:

Why did I prefer to switch from superb paid body leasing to working for a company with a much lower salary but much higher “sympathy-factor”?
Why do I as a pro dev & IT consultant spend time in open source / non-profit activities in the exact same field in my free time?
Why does being paid for reaching goals almost always takes the long term motivation (and fun) out of it?

Plus, this book is walking on the shoulder of giants with a big bad scientific literature list. “There’s a mismatch between what science know, and what business does.” is a well thought repeated phrase during the read.

The big competitive advantage of this book is that it does not just point out the symptoms of the wide spread modern business misbehavior and what to do about them, but the sources.

I repeat: a must-read!

Feel free to check Amazon for an offer.

Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson, Rework

Very easy to read, since it’s sliced into short handy chapters which are supported by illustrations by Mike Rohde. Provoking approaches to well known problems and situations that we sometimes see as self evident.

A must-read!

Cory Doctorow, Makers

Great fiction novel, taking place in a not too distance future. Absolutely entertaining book that’s also thought provoking.

Makers, published in October 2009 by Tor (US) and HarperVoyager (UK) is about people who hack hardware, business-models, and living arrangements to discover ways of staying alive and happy even when the economy is falling down the toilet. Weirdly, I wrote it years before the current econopocalypse, as a parable about the amazing blossoming of creativity and energy that I saw in Silicon Valley after the dotcom crash, after all the money dried up. Cory about this book on craphound.com

Gary Vaynerchuk, Crush It!

Social Media Guru writing a book. Hm… I can’t really get excited about a millionaire who succeeded in self marketing after he was already wealthy giving tips about quitting your job to support your family with tweets & blog posts.

To be fair, he describes ways to play the exit from your day job smart.

Bottom line: this book is quite okay, but not really inspiring.

…started to read

Douglas Rushkoff, Life Inc.

Amazing intro – about Rushkoff’s own awakening about the social costs of gentrification biting the colonial gentrificators in the… backside. Absolutely curious about this one!

Steven Levy, Hackers

If “MIT Tech Model Railroad Club” and “TX-0” ring a bell, you’ll like this one.

I stopped reading this historical overview over the history of hacking since I got some more… contemporary & forward oriented books in my hands. But this one’s definitely on amongst the top of the waiting queue.

Seth Godin, Linchpin

Solid tips for being exceptional despite possible stumbling blocks in your way.

I stopped reading it since I didn’t like the subliminal “work like a horse even if your job sucks big time” attitude.

If I don’t like the circumstances I’m in, I change them. If my job sucks, I do everything to change it to the better. If I do not succeed in this plan A, plan B would be finding a place where my attitude & values are more welcome ;–).

That’s why books like “Rework” and “Drive” are more of my taste, although this is definitely a great book, too.

… did not read yet

37Signals, Getting Real

Being addressed to “web application development”, I skipped this one when it came out. Which was a big mistake…

After reading “Rework”, I saw how universal and useful the findings from 37signals about running software projects in general are.

It’s said to be far better than Rework – I can’t tell yet, but I’ll soon find out.

My advice: if you only read one book this year, choose Drive.

Having a look at this video gives you some insight in the general subject that is discussed – and it’s discussed in a very adequate manner.

If you watched that video & don’t feel the urge to get a picture of the whole story – please check your pulse. Otherwise, feel free to go get that book.

OK, so after finishing Life Inc., there’s only two books left on the stack. I’ll have to find some new material to feed my appetite.

What are the last books you read you’d say made a good reading?

If you also read one ore more of these books: what’s your opinion?

Hope you enjoyed these micro-reviews & I’m looking forward to reading your feedback ;–)!

Cheers

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

The next steps

2010-07-20T00:00:00Z

Fiddling around with toto & the blog_helper extension, I realized two things:

Having total control over your blog is awesome! In theory, you’re able to customize everything & connect all kinds of necessary and unnecessary services.
Having total control over your blog is cruel! In practice, I’m customizing everything & connect all kinds of necessary and unnecessary services.

The latter results in zero blog posts for over two weeks, which is not good at all.

So what are we going to do about it? How are we bringing some order into that creative chaos?

And I use the word “we” on purpose here.

I had a real fun time when you guys successfully guessed the color I picked for my new espresso machine in a twtpoll.

Now, I’m going a step further.

How about this: let’s just crowd-source the decision for the next feature I’ll hack for this blog. I think a nice little gadget that’s missing is a history of recent activities on my favorite social networking services (after twitter & forrst): twitpic and foursquare.

So, please join the fun & take control over the future development of this blog – don’t ask what this blog can do for you, ask what you can do for this blog!

Enough pathos, let’s get back to the fun part of this. Please participate & enjoy the following poll:

I’m totally looking forward to seeing how you decide this time.

Let’s get some more hacks going! Erm, I mean: let’s decide what hack to get going next!

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

Welcome to the new 5v3n.com blog

2010-07-04T00:00:00Z

Ladies and Gentlemen, 5v3n.com proudly presents its new blog!

As mentioned earlier, I had this little project running where I had a look at the features of the ruby based blogging framework toto.

I set myself a little time budget, and when I ran out of time and out of budget today, I followed 37signal’s advice: I shipped it.

What you see here is a fully functional blog, based on 300 lines of the toto ruby code. It’s enriched by a creative commons html/css design i adjusted a little, plus some blog features I found handy to have that I implemented myself, like tags and random posts.

When I ran out of time, I cut some features, like the migration of my disqus comments, integrating the tumblr feed and automated social bookmarks. Until these are done, I call it a beta.

Another important factor to get rid of the beta state is your feedback. I wrote an automated converter for tumblr posts, which currently supports text posts. The chances are quite high that I did not migrated that one photo post, conversation or quote that made the old 5v3n.com tumbl log so attractive to you ;–).

Besides this contentual response, I’d also just love to hear some technical questions. Or answers, like an easy way to migrate the comment system.

So, I hope you enjoy the new platform. I’m looking forward to hearing from you how you like it, feel free to use the connect section to your right or better: leave a comment ;–).

Let’s get some hacks, love & rock ‘n’ roll going!

Sven Kräuter | 5v3n

Augmented Reality Prototype for the N900

2010-06-22T00:00:00Z

I’m quite amazed by this little piece of trigonometric wizardy - it’s basically some 2d markers printed on a sheet of paper that are used to render some 3d objects into your video according to the angle of your phone in realtime. Crazy polka tune not included ;-):

The author resides at rojtberg.net. Did I mention that I’m stoked?

Adieu, tumbl blog... Hello tumblr channel!

2010-06-22T00:00:00Z

Using tumblr for some months, I realize that I tend to be distracted by my own smaller posts. Located somewhere between micro-blog and blog, I don’t have the necessary willpower to use tumblr & keep this a focused blog.

I’m going to move to a toto based blog hosted at heroku, which I’ll use as a “classical” blog.

Toto is a 300 sloc Ruby scripted stripped down blogging service for techies, using git to post your articles. It’s just pretty amazing, since you are able to fully adjust it to your needs - hosted at heroku, this also means you’re able to use any gem you want.

The tech side is up & running, I’m still working on details like social bookmarks, the page design & porting my disqus comments to the new blog. Any tips on the latter subject are very welcome, since I don’t want to loose the precious discussions with you guys!

So I’ll keep using tumblr as a channel, among twitter & facebook to quickly share stuff that’s beyond 140 characters, but below a full blown blog post.

This means - during the next weeks, it’s time to say:

Adieu tumbl blog, Hello tumblr channel!

DOWN! Forty-Five, Em-Pee-H!!!

2010-06-20T00:00:00Z

Ladies & Gentlemen, are you going to work today? Duane Peters performing “Jaks” with Nate Shaw. Enjoy!

N900 Firmware Update

2010-06-06T00:00:00Z

Just in case the OTA-Update does not work, here’s how I updated my n900 to PR1.2 using the Maemo Flasher tool on my Mac OS.

I expected it to totally rip everything off the phone, but I didn’t even need to backup the media files since they were untouched.

The built in backup-software does a great job, you don’t even have to reorganize your spaces after having re-importing your settings.

Sounds quite nerdy to flash your phone from the terminal? Right, but it ran very fluid & nobody got harmed ;-).

So here’s what to do:

Write down your n900s IMEI-Code
- You’ll need it later for downloading the flash image
Use the n900 backup software to save your contacts/calendar/wireless/browser entries etc.
Use rsync to copy the complete content of your /home/MyDocs
- this step also stores the backup you made, so it’s quite crucial
- rsync --progress -avz /Volumes/Nokia\ N900/ ~/Desktop/N900/backup/
- More sophisticated ways are described here
Download the desired
- Maemo flasher tool
- image to flash via nokia
Turn off the n900
Enter Flash Mode
1. Switch off the Maemo device
2. Press and hold down the ‘u’ key
3. Connect a USB cable between the Maemo device and host PC while holding down the ‘u’ key
4. When the USB cable is connected, it powers the Maemo device and sets it to flashing mode
5. When the USB icon appears in the upper right-hand corner, the Maemo device is in flashing mode
6. Release the ‘u’ key
start flasher tool from the terminal
- sudo /usr/bin/flasher-3.5 -F <firmware-image> -f -R
After flashing has finished, the n900 will boot into normal usage mode
Use the backup application to restore your saved settings
- Great tool, even your spaces will be restored
The n900 will reboot
Restore the copied files as necessary - I don’t miss any yet

There you go - brand new Maemo release, plus all of your settings & 100 MB free space on rootfs :-).

Now, all you have to do is install your applications again. The settings are still stored, which means you don’t need to reenter your WLAN-keys, browser stored passwords or anything.

Bottom line: I cursed when the OTA-update didn’t work, but it was unexpected little to none trouble to cope with it.

A Simple Thought Experiment

2010-05-31T00:00:00Z

rentzsch:

Fifteen years from now, will you be using the same language(s) as you’re using today?

If not, why not?

Concerning work:

There definitely will be some new languages you have to use, since there’s always language that are hyped by the economy and others that are totally underestimated. Cobol, C++, Java… what’s next?

The same is true for architectural approaches.

Concerning life:

As with friends, there’s always some of them to accompany you for a short period of time. And some for longer. All depends on how both of you develop yourselves.

Same is true for programming languages. I did my first steps in BASIC when I was a kid, and it was fun. I doodled around with pascal, C, C++. Then Java really hit me. Wow!

I still like my Java code, but I really get excited about Ruby right now.

So to answer your question: I think I’ll be using plenty languages during the next 15 years, and hope that most of them will be fun to do & that some of them will accompany me for a long time.

A Digital Renaissance?

2010-05-15T00:00:00Z

Sometimes I don’t really understand the world I’m living in. I’m not the classical nerd with little social contact. Which made it even more obvious to me how little people understand about the essence of what I’m doing when I’m “nerding around”.

I’m in my thirties, and for the last 20 years, it was almost a stigmata to be interested in math… computer science… or programming. Then later, I became overcautious with people in my private life knowing what my profession is - and vice versa. Interesting guy can’t be a software developer, good developer can’t be an interesting persona.

This loosened the last couple of years.

But strange things are happening these days. My girlfriend says she’s proud of me for the fact that I’m able to hack code. Huh???

OK, it took me a couple of weeks, but I was able to cope with that one. Awesome!!

But now this short blog entry by Douglas Rushkoff really irritated me:

I am writing Program or Be Programmed as a book. I will be done soon. Weeks, not months. Recent events in the Facebook and Apple universes have convinced me more than ever that programming is our era’s equivalent of literacy. Whether corporations are controlling the direction of technology, or whether technology is an emergent entity doing this on its own, our only option is to participate in its unfolding by participating in its programming.

[…]

Obama recently told a college audience that they’re being distracted by their iPads, and that they need to become aware of who is programming the devices they use. He is right.

(via Douglas Rushkoff)

Good point Mr Obama.

But wait - programming and literacy?

I saw many occasions when people talked about literacy in such a detail that nobody in their audience had a clue what the monologue was all about. And they were admired for it, the listeners having excited expressions on their face.

And I saw the ever same expression of pure boredom and non-interest on the same peoples’ faces when it comes to the subject of my profession - and there was no epic monologue at bytecode level, but an dialog on “executive report” level. Math… Computers… Logic… leave me alone with this crazy stuff!

Why is that? It’s just for the good reputation of writers, medicines & lawyers. They are free to talk about topics others can’t relate to, because it’s mostly simply out of scope. Domain specific knowledge. But it’s generally accepted & cool to have knowledge in these areas & show off with it.

Mathematics, computer scientists and simple developers like me have a bad reputation. We are not free to talk about topics that are out of other people’s scope. Since it’s generally accepted & cool to have no knowledge in these areas & even show off with that fact.

In my case, people in the private peer group are often surprised by the fact that I’m an IT pro.

Visiting an art exhibition, one of the artists asked “Are you having an atelier here, too?” I denied, but couldn’t hold back a bashful but charmed little smile. “But you’re doing something creative, right?” Which I heavily accorded to, proudly saying that I’m a designer.

I design software & software systems.

In the last couple of months, things got even stranger when people at work behaved that way - only from the over perspective.

Working at a customer’s site that seems to have a strict border between how the “resources” and the people managing them behave & appear, a project manager took me by the side after an initial meeting asking me: “Hey listen - you are really able of actually coding these things you just drew on the board?” “Sure… why not?” “Amazing! It’s just that you don’t appeal like that.”

Why didn’t I appeal like it? He apparently equaled top level view of the system we were working on plus my appearance with… no programming skills. Because I’m able to express myself, I have a bit of “stage presence” and I know what’s necessary to evoke certain impressions. I’m not only hacking computers, I’m also a cultural hacker.

So better watch out ;-).

Business people often aren’t used to a person that has soft skills, but is nonetheless also capable of crunching some microseconds from their e-commerce backend.

That’s why I judge the idea that Rushkoff declares - “programming is our era’s equivalent of literacy” - as absolutely true, but equally unperceived.

I’d love to see people recognizing the value of programming & the creativity that is necessary to do so. But I don’t think this is going to happen in the near future. There’s the occasional silver lining on the horizon from time to time, but will the perception shift?

Even for me, as I judge myself as a quite convincing character, it’s something like the ultimate challenge to awaken interest on these subjects that I invest a major part of my energy and time.

I’m impressed when there’s a little success - when I am able to let somebody gain a little insight from time to time. As i said, I totally agree with Rushkoff, and I’d go further and claim that programming belongs to our cultural assets.

But we’re so far away from a broader audience that does not only consume what we do, but also asks “What’s under the hood, how does that engine work?”. Or even asks: “What’s happening behind the scenes? Who profits from this service?”

One big step into that direction is happening right now. I was totally stoked when a friend of mine, a doctor of medicine, amazed me by the fact that she wasn’t only not bored when I lead the subject toward smart-phones & the choice between the iPhone, the Nexus One & the N900, but even advised me against the nexus one. I asked why, almost bursting from curiosity and having a hard time not to use a leading question. “Google is hoarding information, and ‘Don’t be evil’ doesn’t matter any more. You should not trust in their technology, neither software nor hardware.”.

Wow. That blew my mind. Just like some months ago, when my girlfriend told me that I shouldn’t use google for searching the web anymore, but ixquick.com. It hurt my ego that this idea did not come from me. I wasn’t able to find the google killer myself in years. But I managed to survive.

The M.D. continued to surprise me “When it comes to searching the internet, you should use ixquick.com since it respects your privacy.”

I was glad my girlfriend already put my ego in it’s place about ixquick: I think I couldn’t have recovered from that one ;-).

So what’s the bottom line? I’m curious how this topic will evolve on a long term. I’d be more than glad if Rushkoffs new book on the subject will propel this thought successfully.

This thought needs help to spread - and if it succeeds in doing so, there will be a kind of digital renaissance. The means of production are already democratized. Imagine the broad audience really using their computers & the internet not only to blindly consume, but to bring the content and infrastructure to question. Add basic knowledge of hard- and software hacking and it even will be possible to adopt the infrastructure according to the needs of the people, since they are able to do so themselves.

Besides these revolutionary changes to society, I personally would really love to see a broader understanding of my passion in general.