New Car! Vroooom

I splurged yesterday afternoon and bought a new toy.

Well, it's a big toy, but that's what separates the men from the boys, yes?

Anyway - it's a brand new Ford Falcon XR6. In black too. With a leather interior. Nice...

www.flickr.com

Okay - I think I've finished gloating for the time being... :D

Technorati: ford, falcon, xr6, cars

The Mind Game

A friend was telling me about a comment apparently made by Brisbane Broncos coach Wayne Bennett. (For the record - I am not a fan of the Broncos!)

Anyway, the story went something like this:

Wayne Bennett would take the team on a training run of however long it was (let's say 10km for the sake of the story). Some of the players would stop running 2 or 3 paces before the finish line and walk over it. Coach was not impressed.

Physically, they had received the benefits of the run. 2 or 3 strides at the end makes no difference from a physical point of view. But mentally - that's a diferent story. Mentally they had quit before the finish line.

And thus cometh the lesson: do you have a tendancy to pull up just before the finish line? What limitations do you place upon yourself? The finish line is right in front of you. You've done the hard work - don't quit until you've crossed it!

Often, the only limits in life are the ones we place on ourselves.

Technorati tags: positive mental attitude, positive thinking

New Stats Tracking Tool: Measure Map

I first heard about Measure Map back at Web Essentials 05 - Jeffrey Veen showed us a few screenshots as part of one of his presentations. So of course as soon as I got home I added my email to their waiting list.

Well... my invitation just arrived!

I have just added their code to this blog - the setup process is actually quite well done. As part of the signup process you're asked what sort of blog you have, and on the next screen you're actually shown screenshots with specific instructions for your brand of blog (Wordpress in this case).

The whole process took about 60 seconds.

I also installed the tracking code for Google Analytics about a week ago but I've got to say I'm somewhat underwhelmed. I think Google have been overwhemed though, as data only seems to be updated every few days at best. Great potential, poor execution. We'll see if they can sort that one out.

I'll give Measure Map a few days to a week and see how useful the reporting is. So far I can say that the setup was a breeze. Stay tuned!

Technorati tags: Measure Map, statistics, blogs

Finding Your Files

If you've ever had someone upload a file to a project in NetOffice, finding it can be a bit frustrating.

Did they upload it to the task? To the phase? Or just to the project?

I've changed the View Project page a little so that it shows all linked content, and also lists the task or phase they have been linked to.

Download ZIP File (10187 bytes)

New Category: Quick Links

Just set up a new category for what I'll call Quick Links. It will just contain stuff of interest that's I'm too lazy to write something about! :)

So here we go with our first bunch:

• Don't annoy me with your crappy form field focus
  Cameron Adams improves on the code used to set the focus to the first form field on the page - it won't do it if the user starts entering data first!


• CSS Hacks and IE7
  Oh no... just when you thought you had it all mastered, along comes a new IE.


• Calendar Candy
  Zimbra is a promising web-based email calendar app (nothing new there) but if you've ever gone through the pain of trying to share Outlook calendars without Exchange then this AXAJ-laced project might do the trick!

Great applications don't do much

Venture Voice has published a podcast interview with Jason Fried of 37 Signals fame. Well worth a listen.

He uses the example of a builder who uses numerous tools to get his job done - he doesn't use one multi-purpose tool. This translates well, not just into software development, but web development as well.

Instead of trying to be all things to all people, concentrate on being really good at something specific.

When you look at 37 Signals' products (Basecamp, Backpack, TaDa List) you'll see that they are very simple applications with limited feature sets. And that's what makes them so popular.

I've seen it written elsewhere (can't remember where, sorry) that Jason also said that each feature request was initially rejected by default, and had to make a really strong case for itself before it was considered for inclusion.

Food for thought...

A Tasty Site

Something important I learned at WE05 recently:

I heard these guys talking about something called delicious. Some social bookmarks thingy.

After some thought, I realised what they were talking about. I had always just read it literally: del dot icio dot you ess. Ahhh, delicious!

(Yep... I'm a bit slower than most)