Month: July 2008

bookmark_borderLearning Lessons

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I love making mistakes. Really I do. Sure they can be painful, costly and time consuming but let’s look at the positives here, every time you make a mistake you can learn something new. How great is that!

As part of our release cycle, we conduct a series of retrospective meetings, one per team, in which we focus in on the things that went well (with the aim of continuing them) and things that didn’t go so well (so we can improve them). I faciliated some of the last round of these and this time round I get to do them all.

So for the coming week I have two, two hour long meetings a day, helping the teams discuss and formulate actions for the next release cycle. It’s a fascinating process and I’m quite looking forward to it.

The technical writers in my team are embedded within the development teams so they take part in the relavent retrospective meeting, but I’m currently wondering if we need our own mini-retrospective process.

Technical writing is such a spread of disciplines that, whilst we are well hooked into the development process, there are still some things that we do that are unique to the role and deliverables we produce. I have a few things that I noticed during the release that I’d like to discuss, some of which are under my control, some of which aren’t, but all are things that can be handled better in the future.

Making mistakes isn’t ever fun, we all have great pride in our work and do our utmost to be professional and dedicated. However a lot of mistakes come about through bad processes (or lack of them) and those are the ones that it is easier to tackle first.

So go ahead and make mistakes, it’s ok, everyone does. Just make sure you learn from them and figure out ways to stop them happening again in the future.

bookmark_borderEnd on a good note

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So, the past week has been a little hectic.

At work it was the end of a product release cycle which is usually a little busy, I’m preparing to start handling the translation requirements for the product, and I was also (still am!) trying to get a new website up and running (it’s a whole Developer Community thing… well it will be..). On top of that my boss resigned and so we’ve been rejigging things for the new man.

Next week I’ll be facilitating our release retrospective meetings, 10 meetings in 5 days, with most averaging a couple of hours. It’s another thing which is quite draining but fascinating all at once.

Ohh and I’m arranging the next development team night out.

It’s all going well but has taken a fair amount of effort. But in a good way. You know, a sense of satisfaction. Anyway, that’s why it’s been so quiet here this week.

Needless to say I’m a bit wiped out so I’ve got tomorrow pegged to do… well not a whole lot. I’ll be catching up on the blogs, playing a little Metal Gear Solid, I may even read a book.

But enough of that mundane drudgery, there are far far more important things a foot for, this every night I’ve just had a wonderful WONDERFUL piece of news.

My wee sister, she who shares the same cheeky smile that adorns my face, got engaged!!

I’m so chuffed that, even as I type this, I have a big grin on my face and a few tears of happiness welling up. Congratulations Jen and Chris, so happy for you both.

bookmark_borderRedirecting Question

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Note: This is a techie question, all those not interested, look away now.

(and no, I’m not doing very well at the whole ‘staying away from the blog to be productive thing…)

[update]SORTED!!!
That nice man wot writes Hydragenic came through for me (apparently he would ‘not be defeated’, he cracked it second time round).

I’ve added the following line to my .htaccess file on the gordonmclean.co.uk domain:
RedirectMatch 301 /index.php/(.*) http://www.onemanblogs.co.uk/index.php/$1

And now when you click this link (which points at the gordonmclean.co.uk domain) you’ll be properly redirected back to this domain (onemanblogs.co.uk).
[/update]

I received an email the other day. It was a nice email, the very kind I’d hoped my 404 page would generate.

The problem is a simple one. I moved domains a while ago, so some of the links that still exist point to my old blog URL (which is still live but is no longer a blog).

Following one of those links (from Lifehacker.com I think) will take you to this URL. Which is currently displaying a 404 error message.

To get to the correct page, all you need to do is edit the URL, replacing “gordonmclean” with “onemanblogs”. Simple.

So why the hell can’t I figure out how to write the appropriate .htaccess commands to get it to do that automatically.

I don’t want to redirect everything, only anything that has “/index.php…..” in the URL. Shouldn’t be THAT hard, right?

Well I’m stuck. So, dearest technical interweb friends, help!!

bookmark_borderBBIAB

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The next fortnight is a little hectic for me, all work related, as it’s “release week” this week and “retrospective week” next week. I won’t have much free time so this is your advanced warning that:

  1. I haven’t died.
  2. I am not lying in a hospital after a freak tea related accident.
  3. I have not snuck off on holiday without telling anyone (I wish!).
  4. I am not in the huff.

No, I’m just busy. I mean, yeah, I’m always pretty busy but for the next two weeks I’m going to be predictably busier than normal so I thought I’d let you all know.

What? Ohh of course I’ll still be on Twitter. Don’t be silly.

What? Yes I know iPhone3G launches on Friday. My order is already in.

What? Yeah the tennis was good. Well done Nadal!

What? Ohhh milk and one sugar please…