Saturday, February 5, 2011

Creative & Productive Computing Desk Setting

I always think about improving my productivity.
And I love being creative.

So I quite often think about and seeks to ways of improving my productivity & creativity,
and this time I'll write about setting the computing workplace.

I believe one great way of discovering something new is to be inspired by others.

First, about more on being productive:
I searched for some workplaces of some well-known "cool" "new" "geeky" software companies.
Here are some pictures of workplaces of those companies:

Twitter
















(image from here)




Facebook















(image from here)



Google















(image from here)



So, what did I learn & tried & learnt from those pics? What are the lessons?

1. big screens are good.
2. dual monitors can be quite helpful while in programming.Bold
(you're probably already aware of those things already)

3. it's really comfortable and helpful for programming when you put yourself to the corner of 'L' shaped desk.
(man, this really is!)


Now about being creative as well:
I searched for how Pixar's workplace look like:

Pixar


























(this is John Lasseter's office. Image from here.)














(this is Lee Unkrich's office. Image from here.)

Lessons?

4. put something which can inspire you.
5. make it comfortable and your style.
(boring?)


Then I read about Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg's day life (from here), that
"Zuck would come into the office and, seeing every chair full, just lie down on the thin carpet on his belly, sandals flapping, and start typing into his little white Mac iBook."
Yeah, how is it? I tried. And it's nice to make myself comfortable during computing.
But not always, you know.










(image from here.)


They say, to be creative and inspiring, you need to make yourself the most comfortable.
Some "top-thinkers" of some design companies etc., say they need absolute comfortable chairs to make themselves think properly.
And lying down with computer is one way of making yourself comfortable, change from the desk-sitting, refresh and be inspired --- may be.

Now I'm quite a believer in working on laptop, like the Zuck --- maybe.












(image from here)


oh, the lesson:

6. make yourself most comfortable - bring your laptop with you to the most comfortable place and position.


So, how do I combine all of those lessons learned to maximize the productivity & creativity?

I. set the computer to the corner of the 'L' shaped desk and sit there
II. set your big monitor on top position of your laptop (like in the pic of Facebook office above).

In doing so, you can bring your laptop with you to the whatever comfortable place & position and work with your laptop,
and when you'll need a desk and/or big monitor, you can very easily & quickly connect your laptop to the monitor & etc, not changing too much of your working environment.

And programming at the corner of the 'L' shape is very comfortable.


And a blog post about finding a perfect office chair: here.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

After PhD: Academia or Industry?

Being a PhD student, I quite often have thoughts about "what will I be doing after I finish my PhD?".
Well, the obvious answer for me is, I want work in California at a cool company like Google, and I'm doing my best to make that happen, but being that not so easy, I sometimes also think about other options (not meaning that the way to academia is easier).

I heard of this guy and read his article sometimes (even posted something about his post: Logging is your friend), but I noticed his blog kinda first time - seems like an amazing guy: Matt Welsh.
He's been a professor at Harvard, and he has decided to move to Google quitting his professor job.

And he has written some nice posts about how it's like being a kind-of one-of-the-highest-profile (man, professor at Harvard!) academia, and how it's like working as a software engineer at Google, and how he likes better at Google: (1)'Why I'm leaving Harvard' and (2)Day in a life of a Googler.
And one of his colleague professor has posted that how he likes his job as a professor: Why I'm staying at Harvard.

And just going through his blogposts, there are a lot more interesting stories about PhDs (1)Getting started as a PhD student (2)So, you want to go to grad school, and Facebook founder! (1)In defence of Mark Zuckerberg (2)How I almost killed Facebook.

...

Will the Brainy Smurf be happy
being an academic, or being in the industry
or will he be happy being an entrepreneur?

...

And also the already well-known PhD comics.
(image from here.)

Thursday, January 13, 2011

ssh: connect to host xxxx port 22: Connection refused

Sometimes, in this complex built world,

(TEDTalks: Thomas Thwaites: How I built a toaster -- from scratch)


you forget about something, you took it for granted for a long while and when something doesn't work for you, you try to find the cause of the error, but cannot find it,
you delve deeper into the problem, and then,










(image from here.)


realise, what an obvious cause it was and you just didn't even think of it...!

Like,

1) in one of my digital circuit experiments, we thought we did everything right, but our circuit board didn't just work. We tried to find the problem for a long while and, D'OH!!! the power supply was not connected!!!

2) you started to use or moved into a house with one of the modernised kitchen equipments, and you wonder why the water on your electric cooker doen't cook!









(Image from here.)



and you realise, you didn't notice there's an energy-saver power-timer you needed to rotate!






(Image from here.)



3) and here's another one.











(Image from here.)



I wanted to SSH connect to my Linux virtual machine, but kept seeing the

ssh: connect to host xxxx port 22: Connection refused

message.
I checked everything else, like firewall settings and virtualisation software settings etc.
And realised, I didn't install SSH server on the virtual machine...

D'OH!!!

(p.s. does anyone have any other good examples of those common cases?)