What Do You Know?

Once in a while I see technical position advertised with the expectation that the applicant can do their work completely from memory. I have a friend who can do this, and he has an amazing career.

Most of us rely on a variety of references to back us up. One of the first lessons I was ever taught ended with this advice: If you’re ever asked if you know something, say yes, take the assignment, and get a manual.

The knowledge most of us carry around with us falls somewhere between total recall and knowing where to go to get it.

I have a personal bias toward knowing where to go. My reasons are that I have too many technical interests to have it all memorized, and also that so much rote memorization tends to crowd out original thinking—including the latest-and-greatest technical information, which becomes out-of-date the moment you commit it to memory.

It does slow a person down, admittedly, if they have to look everything up. Success with technology involves knowing what to know, and where to go to find the rest.

3-Button Mouse, 3-Button Velcro

I lament the demise of the three-button mouse. What an intuitive interface! You would wiggle your three fingers in a balletic dance, and the need for a very large number of keystrokes was eliminated. Of course, you’d have to have a program which incorporated the elegance of the device, and there were few. So few that the 3-button mouse fell out of favor.

I lament the demise of the three-strap Velcro on tennis shoes. Never very popular, people just didn’t get it. That third strap provided much additional comfort. It also provided security. If one of a two-strap Velcro opens, you feel as if your shoe is about to fall off. If you lose one strap and two are still secure, you feel just fine.

The best doesn’t always prevail.

Belt Ring

I have a ring for my belts. It came with a hook, but the hook is superfluous. Better to hang the ring on a hook for quicker access. Grab the belt you want, open the ring, take the belt, close the ring, hang it back on its hook.

I’ve looked for this item for sale the internet, no luck finding one as sturdy with a hook as easily removed and discarded. Closest available I found is here.

Perhaps it’s just too perfect a solution to be popular.

My Favorite Algorithm

There are algorithms for everything.

My favorite represents a combination of numbers in a single number. The value of that number is determined as the sum of all 2 ** (N-1) for each N included in the set.

For example, the set containing 1, 7, and 11 is:

(2**0) + (2 ** 6) + (2 ** 10) = 1089
(1) + (64) + (1024) = 1089

This algorithm was particularly useful when computer space and processing time were at a premium. But even today, it’s cool to be able to “say” several specific things with a single number.

The way it works is that each combination will have its own unique number, no matter how many items are in the set, using powers of 2.

Best to limit the range of “N” so you can decode your result number expediently. The software I know that employed this algorithm used it for a range of 1 to 15.

When to Upgrade Software, Hardware—or Anything Else

It's reasonable to have to pay for upgrades, but you should only upgrade if you require the functionality the upgrade provides.

The only reason to upgrade when you don’t require upgraded functionality is because the current version will no longer be supported. If you upgrade in this case, you aren’t actually upgrading, you’re meeting a support requirement.

Upgrades which increase performance, or correct errors or design flaws, should be called fixes.

It's not reasonable to have to pay for fixes.

Number, Please?

A friend of mine was looking for a phone number the other day. It wasn’t written in his address book, it wasn’t in his Blackberry. It wasn’t on his laptop computer, and wasn’t anywhere to be found in address books on the computer network at work.

He eventually found the number. It was on a scrap of paper .

Information aids can keep us from finding what we need to know.

Software: IdeaFisher

IdeaFisher is one of my favorite programs. Its benefit is the ability to associate ideas, just like we do. It's like plugging in an expansion module into your brain. The associations you make in your thinking are suddenly increased many-fold by IdeaFisher's creative suggestions.

IdeaFisher is now ThoughtOffice, and I don't own a copy. ThoughtOffice taps the internet, and includes images in its associations--certainly a boon.

But ThoughtOffice cut out IdeaFisher's most appealing and useful feature: the ability to add your own associations and ideas to the ThoughtOffice database.

I really liked being able to add associations to the IdeaFisher's database of ideas. It's as if ThoughtOffice turned the IdeaFisher model on its head, giving me countless associations but no ability to delete those I don't care for nor to add my own.

How I enjoyed IdeaFisher! Over time my "version" of IdeaFisher became startlingly familiar, a database of my thought processes, surprising me with associations I'd never made myself between my own ideas--it out-thought me. It was rather spooky, like the thing was my smarter twin, having original thoughts that could have been mine.

How many times have the simple, elegant uses of a program been hobbled by "improvements"?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.