The Greatest Power

Like so many people I hear about the things that go on in the world and try to think of a way that we can end all the terrible things that we do to one another and to the environment around us. What kind of power would bind the whole human race in mutual compassion? 

Love

Most people would tell you that it is love, that love would bind us all in a mutual bliss that would end the suffering in the world.  There is just one problem with this, the world is full of love yet here we still are discussing how to make world a truly great place, so what is missing? Growing up in South Africa we were all inspired by Nelson Mandela’s sense of Ubuntu. I however find the idea of ubuntu lacking in that it relies on a person’s interpretation of community. In South Africa with our fractured past people formed strong but isolated communities normally caring very little for events  and people outside of their circles sometimes leaving those outside to starve.

Truth

Many people in talking to me have exulted the purity and humanity of science and the quest for the truth. The core of the idea relaying to the concept that we don’t have to love one another to peacefully coexist we simple have to strive for a common goal being the quest for some ultimate truth. While there were many great scientists that ended up making great human I can think of many great scientists that experimented with great zeal on their fellow man just ask the victims of the Nazis. Truth in itself lacks compassion, searching only for some great answer. If that answer brings some sense of kinship great, but I wouldn’t rely on it.

Courage

There is an old saying that the only thing evil needs to thrive is for a good man to stand back and do nothing. The premise of this statement is that many people feel that there is something wrong with the world but feel to small or sacred to act. The sad truth really is that our lack of action is due to a lack of empathy. We only react to a situation in front of us and most of us make a choice to stay clear of troublesome predicaments. It’s true that standing for something in the right place at the right time can make a difference(I’m reminded of Nelson Mandela’s trail) but these times are far and few. What we truly need is the resolve to make small incremental changes everyday. Nelson Mandela refused his freedom everyday until his people were free.

A little bit of everything

Reflecting on what Nelson Mandela achieved in South Africa I feel that it’s a little bit of everything, the essence of it: the courage to love driven by the simple truth that we are all one. We are all energy vibrating to the same frequency, we feel the same emotions, joy and sadness. It’s simple fundamental love born from realising that the person walking by on the street is exactly the same as you.

We need to measure our success in the simple compassion towards all things, even a rock. To have ubuntu without communities or borders, to realise that what happens on the other side of the planet affects you. Because of South Africa’s past I realised something, watching someone else's humanity suffer breaks down yours as well. Nelson Mandela once spoke of his jailers as prisoners, I believe this is what he meant. I AM BECAUSE WE ARE.

The greatest power is the courage to love even when you are not loved. born form the simple truth that we are all one.

Your president is not a King

I almost wrote this blog post instead of the one on IOS.  It seems more fitting considering what is going on in South Africa at the moment.

This is not a South African thing, the whole world seems to have this thing about treating their presidents as monarchs(kings).  The president is not the ruler of your country, if your country does have a ruler it would be the democratic constitution and the spirit of the people. The president is nothing more really(ok, there are some military and diplomatic stuff) than the boss of public services and is bound by the same laws and constitution as the rest of us.

The Americans have an entire coronation every time they swear in a new president that reminds me of those overly done british royal events, and the rest of the world is following their fine example.  We treat our ministers like the Lord and Ladies of old and extend them the same privileges, like dipping into public funds for their private residences or treating their entire family to a holiday.  Someone was arrested once in South Africa for giving the president the middle finger, in America they made free speech zones, something that is against their very constitution because the president didn’t want people criticise him.

It’s like we want to be led by someone, like we need the security of someone telling us what todo instead of taking responsibility for our decisions.  The Nkandla scandal is not just a South African thing or a Zuma thing, it’s a bi-product of the collective stupidity of the human race.

Why I don’t like IOS7

So I promised this blog a while ago, the nice thing about taking this long is that I have had more opportunity to live with it, and my final verdict: I really like it and dislike it.

Sounds weird right, having to live with both android and IOS devices as part of my job I can tell you that the usability on IOS is still better than android and it still looks much better, a quick look at just the typography can tell you that much. I like how they made the status bar at the top fit to the app that you are using and how they implemented the notification view to show important information with cluttering it with chrome like android widgets.

As for the revamp on the look and feel, they have made away with all the little details that cluttered a relatively small screen and was at odds with Apple’s general design principles of simplicity but this is where the problem starts as well. 

The revamp is not polished and not in a tiny unnoticeable way, two of the standards offerings from Apple(ibooks and the university apps only recently got there updates to comply with the look and feel of IOS7).  There are other more subtle issues for me, how the folder view zooms in but I have to tap instead of pinch to dismiss it compared to the IOS6 that was very intuitive on how to open and dismiss folders.  Another pain issue for me is the on or off switch, the design of it indicates that I have to swipe to change the state, but no, I have to tap it.

Yes all of this seems nit picky but that was what made Apple products great, that I couldn’t really nit pick it, that what I got was polished up and until the last small detail. I paid a lot of money for the feeling that I bought a product that could not get any better than it was. IOS7 feels more like a product aimed at countering android than a product aimed at being the best that it can be and that is why I hate it.

It’s missing the feeling that some perfectionist at the top was keeping it from being released until the very last detail was perfect, in short I’m missing Steve Jobs right now.

To put this in context, many times in my job I’m reluctantly asked to produce a piece of code or feature as cheap as possible(within the bounds of good quality of course) but still knowing that it can be better, and Steve Jobs showed the world that sometimes the last inch mattered more than the first mile, the hope that I am asked to build something that is the very best that it can be.

IOS7 to me is not just an operating system, it’s a mark to an end of an era and the death of a legend.

R.I.P. Steve Jobs.

My views on Global Warming

Ok so I’ve said some things to some people about Global warming that confused or angered them or just made them shake their heads.  This blog post is about clearing up the air on how I feel about it because sometimes I feel misunderstood about my view point.

I don’t doubt that global warming exists, I’m not completely soled on how much man is contributing to the issue but I do believe we have some responsibility.  My issue with global warming stems more from a political reason then a scientific reason.  

One thing I don’t doubt either is that the issue was popularised in the media and cause an imbalanced expenditure in the scientific field, one of our best bets on creating long lasting cheap energy is fusion reactions however we are spending so much money on trying to figure out what type of insect is going to be affected by a 0.1 degree change in temperature instead of perfecting this technology.

I hear this thing about solar power all over the place.  Solar panels have a large environmental footprint to create and don’t produce that much energy compared to fossil fuel.  Mostly they just make us feel good about ourselves.  A well known scientist said it best, fossil fuel is like concentrated sunlight.

Some where out there are people being affect very poorly because of disease and starvation, where is the outcry in there name.  Most of the eco-people cart around in private jets all over the world telling the poorest people they are not allowed to exploit there natural resources which means the Chinese end up doing it in exchange for some new roads.  If you are going to tell me I can’t build a nuclear power plant at least give me some electricity.

In terms of pollution I doubt air pollution is the worst type in the world, the air is the most malleable component of nature we can pollute and also the only one with an inbuilt filter because air particles gets exchanged with space all the time.  I fear far more that humanity will one day suddenly wake up to the fact that we have no more viable top soil or that the ocean is dying out because of yet unknown pollutant and there is nothing we can do about it.  Air pollution that causes global warming is going to be mostly likely in my opinion the easiest thing to solve.

I still can’t get away from the feeling that companies have started overcharging me for their eco-ness status without presenting any real benefit to the environment.  Some companies have whole heartily jumped on the global warming bandwagon telling their customers how they are contributing to the solution and I very much doubt their claims.

Which brings me to the last point, the eco hippies always tell us how we need to reconstruct the world market if we are going to face these issues, the value of money in society and global economies is another topic, but needless to say the market place as it is, is not going anywhere.  If you really feel that strongly about the issue find a solution the rest of the world can live with.

I try and spend a fair amount of my spare time in nature, I love being around animals and feel a need to protect their habitat and existence I think more than most people.  I do feel that we need to more responsible about how we use the earths resources, but I also believe doing so will need a change in what we do, not how we do it.  Instead of buying eco brands, buy less.  If you don’t want people using a resource provide another one, be a good neighbor.

Nothing here is researched and don’t take anything as facts, these are just my feelings about the subject.

Google Web Toolkit, Why?

Ok, I get it, I really liked the idea of Google Web toolkit way back when, when browsers where stupid, but do we really still need it?

My answer is simply no, in a world where things like angular and REST exists I really don’t seem to find a use for it anymore. Going by the official documents surrounding architecture in GWT the initial startup for getting a simple page rendering is insane compare to straight HTML.

To start the process you have to remember that GWT compiles Java to javascript, so we need a JDK installation and Java IDE. Anyone had to ask a designer to go through all of this?  They hate GWT just for this. Ok so we followed all the guides and got our environment setup. Now for the second problem GWT until recently has never followed the java community in terms of build and development process, they only recently have come around to using maven for their processes.  Third point getting this setup with maven to work at the moment is a real issue and lastly the process of building the project is very, very slow.

Ok so we finally got a building project, now what, well firstly there is the problem of competing architectures, the GWT way was to try and mimic android with activities, except that GWT-P is a part of the new GWT steering comity, so which one do I use? Well it really doesn’t matter they both end up bloating your project with lots of code I don’t want to deal with.  Talking about bloat how about dealing with the idea of JSNI.  I used JSNI objects to send and receive JSON REST information, I ended up dealing with server side DTO objects and client side DTO object, I think this kinda defeats the purpose of reusable code. Yes yes I know about the constructing bean vs proxy class thing, still to much code and not very usable. Using JSNI makes parsing an using complex data structures so much easier to use in views.

On the subject of views, why do I not have some sort of control logic in views like repeating the same DOM structure for a given list. Instead I have to bloat my activity or presenter with this, or create a view class bloating my code even more or the sake of unit tests.  Really, unit tests have that much impact on code architecture? when did this become thing?  Horrible.

Now enter something like angular, it uses conventions or tries to use conventions that are or are becoming very popular and standardised, its easier to develop with, unit testable(without messing up or bloat the code base) and designer friendly(this is a bigger thing them most people realise).  It uses MVP pattern the same as GWT but does not take forever to compile and it’s not as bloated. Angular can be made to play much more nicely than GWT with other well develop and very useful javascript libraries, heck it comes with mini jQuery library.

All and all my development time spent with both of those pushed my so far down the angular path that hopefully I will soon stop having nightmares about GWT and some of the stuff I had to do in order to be productive.  I get that Angular can have it’s issues but if you are developing to a modern browser like most people doing SPA application on the chrome store these days Angular is so much easier and for the most part it still works fine with other browsers(IE ... cough).

Please use Angular! :)

We become awakened

The principal of enlightenment is the understand of our relationship with the universe, however the universe exists as a construct of the entity perceiving it but this entity exists as a part of the universe making enlightenment a seemingly unobtainable state of mind.  The human beings that was able to achieve this state to some degree was hailed as heroes(Christ, Buda, Gandhi, Mandela).  Most of us understand this relationship with the universe as god.  The universe is collapsed to a singularity in our minds to simplify the relationship, our feelings of god simply becomes a reflection of the feelings we have toward ourself, the universe and our relationship with it.  To achieve this state we have to abandon the “self” and look at the universe without filter or assumption and by understanding ourselves we can purify the perception of this relationship. we can be come enlightened.

The greatest obstacle to this state of mind is the emotion of fear.

Considering the current state of the media, government, religion and business, it seems that the entire world was designed to stop us from achieving this state for the simple reason: from a deep understand of our relationship with the universe, is born an iron will awakened by the knowledge of what it is that we were designed to achieve.

We stop being sheep.

We become awakened. 

Why I think hosting JQuery from a 3rd party is a bad idea

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Now that I given you time to get over my post title let me explain my logic here.

Firstly many corporates block popular sites(yes even google) that you are likely to use to host jQuery, if your site relays on jQuery to function, the user will have a very bad experience and is likely never to return to your site(when they are at home where jQuery can be loaded from google).

But it safes bandwidth?

What about all those images you are using for your templates or your pictures of cats? Anyway you are using some sort of javascript in your site somewhere and if you did it right the javascript is in a separate file, using minification technologies like https://code.google.com/p/minify/ will enable you to present the user with only one javascript file and set the appropriate caching headers while its at it.

What only one javascript download?

Yes, only one. The problem with loading resources from third party like google is the latency of pulling multiple files, lets say you are using jQuery, jQuery-ui, etc ... living in South Africa this sometimes means 200ms latency each. One javascript file with proper caching headers saves a lot of time loading your site which makes for a much better your experience.

I moved jQuery to a 3rd party CDN and it broke my javascript?

What did you think would happen if you relied on library elements before they finished loading? Using combined and minified javascript gives some control over the sequence of javascript loading.

But its already cached in the browser because of other sites?

Yes this is one good reason to let google host your javascript libraries(and not a very good one, see "But is safes bandwidth?").

My answer?

If you really are going to care about this issue to the extreme, minify and combine your css and javascript, spire your templates images and host every thing on Amazon S3.