Developer Papercuts

Challenge: Eclipse 4

This month challenge will be to get the first version of my Eclipse 4 book out. I’m working on this now for a while and I think I should put a first version out so that people can learn better about the amazing Eclipse 4 platform capabilities.

I’m very busy this month so I hope this works out.

Retroperspective for last month challenge:

Last month I switch completely to Linux / Ubuntu. First of all: Thanks to all for their support to my questions in Twitter and Google.

Ubuntu 11.10 is amazing. Using Linux feels like coming home to me. As a student I used Unix (Solaris) and SUSE Linux a lot. Later at my first job I worked with HP-UX.

Ubuntu gets everything right (for me). The shortcuts are at the right position. It detects my devices without problems and I truely enjoy Unity (after I tweaked it a bit).

It is so nice to be able to run find . -name “*.xml” -print0 | xargs -0 grep -i “stuff I search” and get immediate results. Also using the Git command line feels so better, compared to using it under Windows.

I also also extremely surpised that Ubuntu supported my iPod directly. I just connected it, started Banshee and could maintain my playlists and put music on the iPod. Also the Amazon MP3 store integration is amazing. Much better for me then iTunes on Windows as I buy my stuff at Amazon.

I would like to thank Marcelo Módolo for his tips on Ubuntu. He told me that I can mount FTP accounts in the file explorer. That is a huge time saver for me.

He also gave me a hint to Shutter an awesome screenshot tool. I was kind of afraid that I would miss SnagIt but shutter is even betten IMHO. I was afraid that I would miss SnagIt, but Shutter works even better for me.

Marcelo also gave me a pointer to How to change tooltip background color in Unity to make the Javadoc view in Eclipse readable.

I also had some issues with Ubuntu

I got really frustrated with the Alt+tab key. But after some initial fighting with Alt+tab I learned that if I hold it over an entry with multiple windows (or press the Arrow-Down key) that I can select between multiple windows of the same application.

I also had a problem with the Touchpad. It seems to get activate quite easily. So I wanted to deactivated it but I still wanted to have the Touchpoint avaiable.
Dariusz Luksza gave me the following working tip via Twitter:

synclient TouchpadOff=1

I later got the tip from Thilo Wetzel and Martin Riedelon G+ that the shortcut Fn + F8 also works.

The other annoying things was that the Shift+CTRL+Up shortcut of Eclipse was caught by the Ubuntu system. This shortcut was not listed in the standard shortcut (how can you make fixed shortcuts?). I found an answer to that on the Ask Ubuntu Website – How to turn off the alt-shift-uparraw key.

Also the fading launcher was annoying at first, but I used ccsm to fix its position. It also took me a while to get used to the menu on the top (like the Mac has it). I’m looking forward to HUD in Ubuntu 12.04.

Summary:

I will not switch back. Ubuntu rocks. And just out of completely in the hope to avoid any: “Try a Mac” comments: I once tried using a Mac for a month and I didn’t like it.

Thanks everyone for there help with using Ubuntu. I can really recommend Ubuntu, it is Linux done right in my opinion.

Challenge: Eclipse 4 This month challenge will be to get the first version of my Eclipse 4 book out. I'm working on this now for a while and I think I should put a first version out so that people can learn better about the amazing Eclipse 4 platform capabilities. I'm very busy this month ...

A bit delayed and short, but this month I have the challenge to only use Linux (Ubuntu). I have no MS Windows OS installed anymore, no dual boot or such a thing. I still have a Mac in the house but this machine is not used by me.

Finally only Ubuntu for me! I will be using Ubuntu 11.04 with Unity on my Notebook and my Desktop machine.

A short retroperspective to last months challenge: I think wrapping up (at SAP) worked really well. As far as I know I left in good conditions and without any escalation.

A bit delayed and short, but this month I have the challenge to only use Linux (Ubuntu). I have no MS Windows OS installed anymore, no dual boot or such a thing. I still have a Mac in the house but this machine is not used by me. Finally only Ubuntu for me! I ...

Last month challenge was a big success. I published my first ebook: Distributed Version Control with Git. I also have several other articles which I’m in the process of converting them also to ebooks.

I really enjoyed the process and learned a lot about epub, mobipocket, DocBook, XSLT and Apache Ant. Is also helped me a lot with October Challenge of the month as I invested significantly time and effort into improving the content and the spelling. Also I finally learned how to use InkScape with was July Challenge of the month.

This month challenge will be to wrap up things. Things are a bit crazy at the moment and I’m incredible busy. This has unfortunately lead to several loose ends which I need to tie up. So nothing new this month but I have to finish lots and lots of little things.

Last month challenge was a big success. I published my first ebook: Distributed Version Control with Git. I also have several other articles which I'm in the process of converting them also to ebooks. I really enjoyed the process and learned a lot about epub, mobipocket, DocBook, XSLT and Apache Ant. Is also helped ...

This challenge of this month will be a publish something for the Kindle on Amazon.com. I played with the thought and the technology to convert tutorials from vogella.de into E-books for a while now and I think I should give it a try. I hope that by having my tutorials available offline for the Kindle that this will help people in getting their work done. I also believe that this might result in a better quality in my tutorials as they now available to a wider audience.

Last month challenge was a good preparation for this. I actually did a lot of spelling and error corrections for my site. Several people did also proof-read my stuff and gave valuable input. I’m aware that this need to continue but I think I had a good start.

This challenge of this month will be a publish something for the Kindle on Amazon.com. I played with the thought and the technology to convert tutorials from vogella.de into E-books for a while now and I think I should give it a try. I hope that by having my tutorials available offline for the ...

This month challenge is to proof-read my tutorial. I will try to find typos and correct them as fast as possible. My main focus for this will be on my Eclipse and Android tutorials.

Last months challenge was a tremendous success. I lost more then three kilograms of weight (which is good) without any other change but not drinking any sweetened drinks. I guess I keep this habit for a while.

This month challenge is to proof-read my tutorial. I will try to find typos and correct them as fast as possible. My main focus for this will be on my Eclipse and Android tutorials. Last months challenge was a tremendous success. I lost more then three kilograms of weight (which is good) without any ...

I recently read about the fatty degeneration of the world. According to my reading material a huge percentage of the population in most countries is overweighed; even in third-world countries more people are overweighted then people which are suffering from hunger. I dind’t know that.

I also didn’t really know that in some cases this is due to the huge increase of soft drink consumption. The paper gave Mexico as an example where lot of Coca-Cola is consumed and let to a huge increase in over-weighted people in Mexico.

Therefore as this challenge of the month I decided to avoid drinking juice, soft-drink, energy drinks, sweeted coffee and the like. Soft-drinks are not really a problem for me, but I really like drinking orange-juice (especially with pulp) so this will be a bit difficult for me. Lets see how this goes.

Regarding my July challenge: I completely failed. I think I opened InkScape once for 10 mins. I need to revist his again at some point in time.

I recently read about the fatty degeneration of the world. According to my reading material a huge percentage of the population in most countries is overweighed; even in third-world countries more people are overweighted then people which are suffering from hunger. I dind't know that. I also didn't really know that in some cases this ...

Challenge:

This month challenge is to develop some basic skills in ImageMagick. I have seen Sergej Shafarenka creating beautiful Android Mockups with it and I figure I should spend some time learning it. Lets see how this goes, so far I was a little bit proud of my missing drawing skills.

Retroperspective:

Last month challenge was a big success. I reduced my email to zero pending emails within the month. I focused on both ends, reducing new incoming email and getting ride of existing. Here is what I did to reduce incoming emails:

1. De-registered from newsletters I never read.
2. Tried to reduce sending out emails as this create a lot of “backtraffic”.
3. Applied some spam protection to the vogella.de Google Group. People have now to answer a simple question to join the group. Amazing how many fail answering.

To reduce the existing stack I went every day fishing for emails to solve. This included deleting outdated emails but mostly adjusting vogella.de tutorials as I didn’t want to leave helpful feedback wasted. I learned that often it takes only a little bit more time to actually solve the issue rather then reading it briefly and deciding to do it later.

The other stack of email I had were “task emails” which I send to myself to remind me of something. I have converted them to tasks which I keep separate from my emails.

Having almost no open email feels good, I try to keep it this way. But trying to archive it every day feels a bit extreme. I will target to have no email longer then a week in the inbox.

Btw: A good video about email efficiency can be found here: Inbox Zero from Merlin Mann

[Update 04.07.2011] Ups, I mean to write InkScape instead of ImageMagick -> corrected.

Challenge: This month challenge is to develop some basic skills in ImageMagick. I have seen Sergej Shafarenka creating beautiful Android Mockups with it and I figure I should spend some time learning it. Lets see how this goes, so far I was a little bit proud of my missing drawing skills. ;-) Retroperspective: Last month challenge ...

I receive a lot of feedback on vogella.de, sometimes tutorial requests and lots of error and improvements corrections. The stuff I like I usually keep in my inbox until I find the time to act on it.

The IT challenge of this month will be to reduce my email backlog. Every day I will try to leave my email inbox with one email less in it. Currently I have 69 open emails where I need something to do.

[Update] I found another bucket of emails (35) which I once sorted to another folder for a demo. This made it 104 emails in total at the beginning of the month.

I receive a lot of feedback on vogella.de, sometimes tutorial requests and lots of error and improvements corrections. The stuff I like I usually keep in my inbox until I find the time to act on it. The IT challenge of this month will be to reduce my email backlog. Every day I will try ...

This months challenge will be to use less Google Analytics and the like. I’m currently looking at the data at least daily which I believe is a waste of time. Hence I try to reduce this usage this month. I think twice per week should be sufficient.

A fast retroperspective on the January Challenge: I managed to reduce my existing reading backlog, even though I found serveral more articles / blog entries during this lecture. But at least my pile of magazins is a little less high. I think I was 50 % successful.

This months challenge will be to use less Google Analytics and the like. I'm currently looking at the data at least daily which I believe is a waste of time. Hence I try to reduce this usage this month. I think twice per week should be sufficient. A fast retroperspective on the January Challenge: I ...

The challenge of this month will be to reduce my reading backlog. I tend to pile up articles and magazins which I want to have a closer look. Unfortunately this pile is constantly growing.

Therefore this month:

1.) I plan not to increase the pile by printing out new stuff or buying more magazins.
2.) Significantly reduce the stuff either by reading it or by deciding that I anyhow will not read it and throwing it away.

This challenge is not about reducing my book backlog, I save this for another month.

The challenge of this month will be to reduce my reading backlog. I tend to pile up articles and magazins which I want to have a closer look. Unfortunately this pile is constantly growing. Therefore this month: 1.) I plan not to increase the pile by printing out new stuff or buying more magazins. 2.) Significantly ...