Geschreven

Divide

Een aantal interessante artikelen over development in mijn RSS-reader (ja, die gebruik ik nog) de laatste tijd. Ik weet niet zo goed wat ik erover wil zeggen, ik zet het nog even in de week, maar het is wel iets wat af en toe door mijn hoofd gaat bij mijn werk en de invulling daarvan, en misschien wel de toekomst van het Internet in het algemeen..

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Scrum

Woensdag en donderdag Training Scrum gevolgd bij Scrum Academy in Amsterdam. De training werd gegeven door Pieter Jongerius van Fabrique en Tibert van Dijk van GIFT.

Scrum is een raamwerk voor agile management ("flexibel beheren") van softwareontwikkeling. Er wordt gewerkt in multidisciplinaire teams die in korte sprints (iteraties van vaste lengte van 1-4 weken) werkende software opleveren. Samenwerking, communicatie en teamgeest zijn hierbij sleutelwoorden.
Erg interessant, maar wel zeer intensief. Het bleek een leuke, gevarieerde groep cursisten, wat door de verschillende perspectieven de oefeningen extra nuttig maakte. Nu al het geleerde nog in de praktijk brengen bij e-Vision. Eerst maar eens een passend project uitzoeken.

Scrum

Helemaal vergeten te vermelden, ik ga eind mei cursus Scrum doen!

Mobile

Heb sinds deze week het e-book liggen van A Book Apart, Mobile First. Nu nog even tijd vinden om em te lezen. Heb vorig jaar uit hetzelfde rijtje Responsive Web Design gelezen. Interessante materie, waar gelukkig de laatste tijd meer aandacht en dus, bij klanten, meer prioriteit, voor is. Heb voor e-Vision al een aantal sites responsive opgezet, momenteel heb ik een voorkeur voor Twitter Bootstrap, maar mogelijk verandert dat nog.

Woensdag

Beetje chaotische dag vandaag. Nog wat aanpassingen gedaan aan de nieuwe WNF-site, welke we gister na bijna 2 maanden ploeteren live hebben gezet (hoera!). Ben nu dan ook wel toe aan een Panda-vrije kerst. ;-)

Na enig wrikken zit mijn kroon (deze, niet deze) erop. De weg van en naar de tandarts was helaas minder leuk, de Willem de Zwijgerlaan bleek 1 grote ijsbaan. Eigen schuld, had ik ook maar gewoon over de singel moeten gaan.

Maar het hoogtepunt volgde daarna, toen plots de Kerstman voor de deur stond met een iPad voor ondergetekende! Dus die ben ik nu uitgebreid aan het testen. Kan in ieder geval al zeggen dat ik helemaal weg ben van de Flipboard-app.

Maastricht

Reuzenrad
Eerder vanmiddag teruggekeerd uit Maastricht waar we met kantoor naartoe afgereisd waren met de trein. Vrijdag in de middag vertrokken, en na een korte overstap c.q. Starbucks break in Utrecht door naar Maastricht. Bagage gedropt en even opgefrist in Hotel Beaumont, waarna we de stad verkenden. Het centrum was al goed in kerststemming, dus met alle lichtjes erg gezellig ingericht.

Omdat het er met 3 oktober om onduidelijke reden steeds niet van komt in het reuzenrad te gaan, heb ik nu mijn kans gegrepen. Bovendien een mooi foto moment, zo met uitkijk over het Vrijthof. Na een drankje en een wandeling in de frisse avondlucht zijn we naar Italiaans restaurant Molo 5 getrokken voor een aangename maaltijd. Als klap op de vuurpijl kregen we ook allen nog een iPhone Touch met onze namen erin gegraveerd!

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Educating clients

Clients want to have a sense of what is coming next. Explain the process, the stages the project will go through. This way you're setting yourself up to be the person who's in charge of the relationship. Put yourself in your clients shoes: They are nervous, unsure if they did the right decision to go with you. Make them feel confident in the situation. Make them feel confident that picking you, your studio was the right choice.
Paul Boag of Headscape: Educating clients to say yes

Update

Not much going on recently. My parents have gone on holiday, to Normandy, Bretagne and thereabouts for a few weeks, so I've been given a list of stuff to record. Can't miss the regular shows now can we? ;-) Oh, and we went to see Ocean's thirteen, which was pretty decent. Basically the sequel they should have made in the first place. I've also been trying to ignore the hype surrounding the soon to be released iPhone. Which is proving rather difficult, because everyone appears to be mentioning it.

I have been quite busy at work though. I've been in charge of creating the protoype for the new WNF site. I received the design a while ago and am now turning it into a decent XHTML framework. Quite a challenge with all kinds of layers and fun with PNG's. Especially in IE6, of course. But it's slowly getting to where it needs to be.

100 years ago

Dan's a web designer and wonders what he would have done for a living 100 years ago. I too work in the web business, and the post makes me wonder if you could still earn a living like this 100 years from now. If you look back at history, especially the last hundred years, there are so many jobs that no longer exist. For instance, an uncle of my mother used to play the piano to accompany the silent films that were shown in Tuschinski in Amsterdam. Not sure how much work that would get you these days.

Back

Back at work today, only to find out there have been some problems with the mailserver and all IMAP folders have been lost. Didn't realise untill today how much I relied on my archive and what a handicap it is, not being able to look up the simplest things still lingering in a mail folder somewhere. On the other had it is quite refreshing to start completely anew. I do need to set up my filters asap, as everything now ends up in my inbox. Which is quite annoying for all the mailing list related mail.

Moved, again

We moved yet again here at work. This time to a new room at the front of the building. As it turned out, the room we'd chosen initially remained to warm, even though it had cooled down outside considerably. Hopefully, with this one, we'll have more luck.

Playlist

Since moving to the new office, the music situation changed a bit. I'm now serving all the music on our share using an iTunes partyshuffle. Saves time from choosing what to hear and also keeps us from hearing the same stuff too often. Which has happened in the past. Also, to make it possible for others to see what's playing, skip songs or change volume, I found a bit of software called rTunes. Which, after a bit of tweaking, works rather nicely. Also, you can check out what's playing on out Last.fm account.

Moved

map
We moved offices yesterday. Timing could have been better, with the second heatwave of the year (wich hadn't happened since 1948) upon us. They even cancelled this years Nijmeegse Vierdaagse, since 2 people died from the heat.

On the right you can see a part of the map of Leiderdorp, where we're now located. If you click on it you can see a bigger version, also featuring my home and our previous location. As you might be able to see I no longer ride my bike through the city on my way to work. Which I rather regret. I liked riding past the market folk getting ready for their day. Passing all kinds of stores and pretty old buildings. Oh well, the new route is about 5 minutes shorter, so atleast that's an advantage. And I must say the office is quite nice, very light and bigger than I expected.

Stuff

Not much going on at the moment. I finally got the screens installed on my new rooflight, which should make sleeping in a lot easier. What else? Firefox 2.0 Beta Candidate 1 has been released. Haven't tried it yet, but I might this weekend. We're preparing to move offices here next week, so it's a bit chaotic at the moment. Timing couldn't have been better though, since the second heatwave of the year should be a highpoint around that time. Sigh.

Update

Due to problems with the Internet connection at work, I've been working from home these past days. Which suited me fine, since I was having a skylight installed yesterday. Unfortunatly the screen that will keep out the sun will take about two weeks to arrive. So the morning sun caused me the awaken a 5:15 this morning. Might try sticking some cardboard in front of it tonight. Ah well, I'm sure the extra fresh air will more than make up for this temporary discomfort.

Let's see, what else. Oh, my brother ran the 21 km distance at the Marathon in Leiden on sunday. Very impressive, especially with these high temperatures. Which my parents have escaped from, since they fled the country this morning, to go on holiday to Norway. They're going to take the Hurtigruten, a Norwegian coastal transport service which is over a hundred years old, now an 11-day round trip between Bergen and Kirkenes, which includes 32 other ports. Recognised today as one of Europe's biggest attractions and is internationally acknowledged as the 'world's most beautiful sea voyage'. After that they're planning to drive home, through a part of Finland. I'm jealous.