The Lengths I Go to Organize My Books
A few years ago I installed OpenBiblio on one of my websites to keep tab of all my books. I wrote a Perl script that uses a book’s ISBN number to retrieve the bibliographic information from Amazon and then enter the book into my library. I can now search all my books as well my DVDs and I have a complete list for insurance purposes. Also, now if someone wants to borrow a book, I can check it out and know who borrowed what and when.
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Coder’s Block
For the last several weeks I have struggled with programming. I completed all of my large projects and found myself with only mundane and/or repetitive coding in front of me. One day it was so bad that I just clocked out early because I could not get focused. Beginning this week, I would start my day by coming up with some little personal project to get into the right mindset. For instance, I wanted to see if I could pull stats from WordPress.com via Perl scripts. I was unsuccessful but I learned some things along the way. Because of this I was able to transition to another project and get it completed.
These little distractions were helping me overcome my coder’s block but I still struggled. That began to change on Wednesday. I was listening to Buzz Out Loud and the discussion sparked an idea. I got to work and began toying with the idea for geek-maps.com. I worked on it for a little bit and then switched over to my work projects. When I got home that evening I worked for several hours on the site. When I got to work the next morning, I didn’t have as hard a time getting started.
As I continued working throughout the day Thursday and then on Friday I noticed some nice side-effects. There was this new energy for my work. I also found that each project built upon the other and solved problems inherent in both. Another side effect was the overcoming of my writer’s block. As I worked on geek-maps, I began writing about what I was doing and the problems I was trying to solve. My purpose was simple. I was writing to let visitors know what I was up to and, it helped me think things through.
Writing for geek-maps, I was not worried about the topic or my sentence structure or the tone. I just wrote. Some authors say that it is the best way to combat writer’s block. It took this experience for me to see the evidence. I have had all kinds of ideas rattling around in my head, but I have not been motivated enough to write. My hope is that with this renewed energy I will begin to put some of those ideas to paper.
Coffee, Deadlines & FUD
To say the last few weeks have been stressful is an understatement. I have subsisted on 2-3 cups of coffee a day to stay focused. I am a part-time employee but it feels like I’m working full-time hours.
Last week my supervisor told me that I needed to create a site that handled event registrations and accepted ACH transactions. So I began working on this project and it needed to be done by Friday. I spent some time making sure that what I was coding would work with the current code base I had created. I was told repeatedly to not worry so much about making sure it integrated as opposed to just getting it working. That just goes against how I think. I know that Murphy’s Law will kick in at some point and I will end up wasting the “time I saved” by just hacking something together to get it working. As I came across areas of concern I expressed them. The responses I got were less than encouraging. The responses came across as “Keep quiet and do your job.” Read more
