The web is abuzz with Cuil, a new search engine that claims it’s gonna eat Google’s lunch. One problem I see right off the bat is the name “Cuil”, it does not work well as a verb. Though “Google” doesn’t really either, so who knows.
I was wondering how long it would take before a portable version of Firefox 3 would show up on PortableApps. The answer is about 24 hours. If you’ve never heard of PortableApps, you should check out their site. They host a multitude of useful standalone applications that can be run off a USB drive or the like. It’s a handy way for web coders like me to have both Firefox 2 and Firefox 3 installed on the same machine and not have them interfere with one another.
L337 h4×0rz have produced stand alone versions of Internet Explorer, also for web coders to test their sites on, but Microsoft doesn’t support them, instead recommending coders test their sites using Virtual PC disk images with different browsers installed on them. The disk images have an expiration date, so you have to re-download them every few months. Not exactly the most efficient solution.
I’m sure this has been around for a while, but I just discovered Wikiquote. And today they had a link on their main page to some of Douglas Adam’s more interesting quotes. Here one that stuck out, from Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency:
“What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?”
This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.
Richard continued, “What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve learned something about it yourself.
I think this applies to user interface design as well. By the time you take pretty much any process and break down into actions and steps for an end user, you’ve learned a lot about a lot.
How many of the Internet People do you recognize? You’d really have be a on the net a lot to know them all. Watch the funny music video (work safe):
This is very cool, Pandora Internet Radio. It’s based on the Music Genome Project and it’s a very cool way to find new music, based on the music you already listen to. And it’s a life saver when you’re at work and you’ve listened to all the MP3s you have about 100 times already.
I’m tired of freelancing. It’s been a fun ride, but the instability, the annoying clients, and low pay have all finally put me over the edge. Tomorrow I interview for a job that I would actually take, if it were offered to me. It’s for a company called Avenue A | Razorfish. Yes, there is a post “|” in their name. And yes, it’s what’s left of Razorfish, who you might have heard of back during the iBoom for riding the crest of the venture capital wave to its great heights, then crashing like a beached whale stuffed full of dynamite. Yeah, so the job would be an Information Architect position, and would be on site at SBC, which is one of their main clients in Austin. So I wouldn’t get to do any visual design, which would suck some, and I would basically be working for SBC, which would also suck some. But because Avenue A | Razorfish is an agency, I might have to chance to jump to another project later, and the steady paycheck would be nice. I am crossing my fingers, sort of.
I went to a job interview last Monday. I know a handful of people at the company I interviewed with, including the one of the main guys, who I’ve worked with at three previous jobs. I tried not to play this up, I’d like to think that I can get a job based on my qualifications and nothing else. So I answered honestly, too honestly, about why I quit the last several jobs I’ve had, and what my interests are, even though I knew that information would only work against me. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m still operating under the naive assumption that being honest with a potential (or even current) employer is in everybody’s best interest. After dealing with clients for the last three years who pretty much asked me to lie to them, I approached this job interview as if it were a refreshing change of pace. I should have known better.
Notes to self: Don’t admit that if you were offered a better job with better pay somewhere else, you’d probably take it. Don’t admit that at any point in your career you’ve disagreed with the policies set forth by an executive staff. Don’t admit that you’ve ever quit a job because you thought it was un-fulfilling. Don’t admit that you’ve put your own happiness in front of the well being of a company you worked for. It doesn’t matter if things like this are true, justified, and obvious to anyone who looks hard enough, it’s not what any potential employer wants to hear.
Something else I think I might have underestimated; the fact that it’s a buyers market. Employers have the upper hand. The word “commitment” was thrown around in this interview more times that I could count. Even during the boom, when jobs were aplenty, I worked seventy to eighty hour weeks fairly regularly. I’ve had a commitment to the companies I worked for that I felt, and still do feel, was unquestionable. And I left more than a couple companies when it became apparent that my commitment to the company was not matched, not even in part, by the company’s commitment to me, or any other of its employees who worked equally hard. This is the one thing I didn’t mention that I probably should have, though it too would most likely have worked against me. That jobs are no longer aplenty doesn’t change anything for me, but it does for employers. Along with figuring out better answers for why I left previous jobs, I need to figure out a way to demonstrate commitment beyond saying, “yes, I’ve worked under a lot pressure with tight deadlines, and have no problem doing so again.”
Here’s a first shot at my new song and dance: I left my last job, not because I didn’t agree with many decisions made by my boss, but because I did not feel I was a good fit for the position I held and made a decision to pursue a career as a freelance web designer. My interests from any future job are not those that match my skills or things that I have a genuine interest in, but the duties listed in the job description. Commitment? Yeah, I’ll work sixty, seventy, even eighty hours a week for as long as you want, at a wage that is at least 25% less than my market value, and of course I’ll pass up any better job offers.
For the record, I don’t know whether or not I got the job. Over the past few years I’ve come to the conclusion that first, my job will never be a significant source for creative fulfillment, and second my job should not be at the center of my life. Any job I take will be something I do to pay the bills (and maybe afford a few luxuries) and something that I may not necessarily like, but it will not cause me to be unhappy in my life as a whole. Also, any job I take should leave me free to pursue creative endeavors outside of work. I think these conclusions I’ve come to have made me largely unemployable in this market, at least not if I’m honest about them.