I know, why not make them draw things instead?

DrawSomething, a popular mobile and online game by OMGPOP, has taken the digital world by storm. Worldwide, mobile users are connecting with their friends (many via Facebook) and drawing pictures of words such as “swimming”, “magnet” and “katyperry”, in the hopes that their friend will be able to guess the word correctly. This digital take on the popular “Pictionary” board game is great fun and, frankly, rather difficult to put down. Other than the fun factor, what is the real bigger picture (pardon the punn)?

When someone in DrawSomething draws a picture or guesses a word, each is timed and tracked. Pressing the “Stats” button next to one of your “opponents” shows your average guessing and drawing time between the two of you, as well as the colours used and number of words guessed. This is great, but still not the true data-rich point in DrawSomething, for me. What about the drawings?

How many ways are there “really” to draw a word such as “swimming”? Infinite possibilities. How many do we choose? One.

When you think of the word “swimming”, does a stickman swimming through some waves doing the “crawl” with one arm in the air not come to mind as the simplest (and therefore “best”) picture to draw, such that the opponent will guess correctly? This seems to revert to our inner ideas and associations between words and images in their simplest form.

Being able to track this data, with the pre-defined and finite number of words available in DrawSomething, would be an amazing leap forward in data tracking and disecting the human mind and how we perceive the world around us. Not only our perception, but also how we communicate that visually to others. It is said that, after the age of approximately 10 years old, one has “seen” all that one needs to in the world. For example, a tree, when glanced at from a distance, is mearly a tree. Our brain receives the message that “this is a tree” and looks no deeper unless conciously instructed to do so. This theory, coupled with data entered into DrawSomething, could make for an incredible study on the strength of the human mind and how we, as a species, can improve our mental capacity for retention and communication.

With the number of users drawing pictures in DrawSomething every day, I leave you with this… how many people do you think draw something other than the above-described image of “swimming”?

You may have been popping in here this week and thinking, “why isn’t he blogging every day, after he said he’d aim to do a post a day for the whole year?”. I’ll explain why I’ve been quiet on here for the past few days.

Over the past few weeks, i’ve been working with Michael Krapf and Mark Forrester over at WooThemes on our new theme (released today), “Unsigned“. This theme, geared primarily at bands and solo musicians, is a theme that’s near and dear to me, as music is a great passion of mine, as is the independent music industry in South Africa. More on “Unsigned” in another blog post though. Back to Project 365 and the “post a day” concept.

While blogging, I tend to ask and re-ask myself the same questions every so often; “who am I blogging for, really?“, “is it worth posting every day for the sake of posting every day?“. I believe, after much thought, I’ve found answers to both of these (which I’ll most likely find again, should I end up re-asking these questions yet again).

Who am I blogging for?

Ultimately, I’m blogging for myself and for anyone who wants to read it. It’s not a case of “I’m blogging for me and that’s that” or “I’m blogging just to get readers”. Both of those viewpoints are really inaccurate… first off, if you’re blogging for yourself, why do you need it to be online? Just blog in a journal app of sorts on your desktop, or in a text document. Why go to all the effort of setting up a blog?

If you’re blogging for others and not for yourself, you’ve lost the point of blogging. Blogging is, as I see it, sharing. Therefore, by saying “hey, I found that interesting, let me share it”, I’m blogging both for myself (because I found it interesting) and for others (because I’m sharing it) at the same time. Question asked: question answered.

Is it worth posting every day, for the sake of it?

No, it isn’t. Quality over quantity any day. Not much more to say on that front. All clear, right?

What about Project 365 then?

If blogging is about being original and making something “your own”, to a certain degree, then lets do that. Instead of saying a “post a day”, lets say, a “post for each day of the year”. That means, as long as there are a minimum of 365 posts at the end of the year, we’re golden. That means I can stick to Project 365, while retaining a certain level of quality and interest in posts (instead of posting randomly with pictures of cats climbing out of shoe boxes and whacky Lolcats pictures… what’s the point of that?).

In other news, I made a few visual tweaks to this blog’s theme recently, highlighting the comment count on each post, adding post thumbnail support to each post (I’ve been meaning to do that for a while) and a few minor visual tweaks. I’d like to keep evolving this blog where I can, refining the layout, rather than switching it up completely when I get tired of the design. I feel that’s more in line with both my ideas for this blog, as well as my schedule.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Occasionally on Twitter, I read tweets along the lines of “20 years ago today, I was climbing trees” or “#whenIwasYourAge I rode my bike to school every morning”. Is technology part of what has caused this generation shift?

Many people refer to “Generation-Y”… the youth. The “young people” who are to “make a difference in the world”. I’d say that we’re entering a new age of “Generation-O”- the “plugged in” youth of today who seek to optimise every facet of their lives through technology.

Every day, I examine things I do daily and ask myself, “how can I optimise this?” “How can I make this process ‘easier’?” As I hit “Publish” on this post, it’ll be tweeted, Facebooked and Buffered, essentially optimising the sharing of the post. This stems from the question of “how can I optimise this?”.

Are these questions always necessary? Probably not.

Over the holiday season and entering into the new year, I’ve been finding methods of stepping aside from technology from time to time to take pleasure out of the natural joys we have all around us… walking on the beach, going for a drive by the ocean. These times led me to start thinking about the concept of “Generation-O”. Growing up in the 90′s, I was one of those kids who rode their bike every day and had fun in the forest. I feel as though I am of the final generation who enjoyed these activities, which technology seems to have replaced.

If you find yourself in this technological loop, try to step aside and just spend an hour or so taking a walk on the beach, in the silence, gathering your thoughts. While technology is great, it’s important to remember that even the smartest computer requires a human being to flick the “on” switch.

Over the past few years (I’d say, since about 2008), I’ve decided to approach tasks day to day from a different angle. How can we say that a task is “impossible” if we haven’t even yet attempted it?

This is quite a common occurrence in web development… developers looking at a task, attempting to analyze it, getting “stuck” at one point and then moving on, deeming it “impossible”. Why does it have to, all of a sudden, be “impossible”, if you haven’t even attempted it yet? Why settle for the “shortcut” when you could just sit down and develop it how you envision it in the first place?

It’s not about it being “impossible”… you just haven’t found the correct pieces yet, or how they fit together.

As a small example to illustrate how this approach sucks and how it could be improved with a simple re-thinking process, lets take a look at a real-world scenario I experienced last year.

During the development of our “Editorial” theme at WooThemes, we wanted to add functionality to provide the administrator with more control over how many columns their content should be laid out in. This, at first glance, seems quite straight forward. A simple PHP script to cut and re-arrange the words at certain points would do this.

What if the author wants to control where the content is cut off? What if they want virtually infinite possible columns? Well, a shortcode would do this, right?

What if they switch themes? Their content would look ugly and be riddled with a bunch of shortcodes that aren’t in use anymore. In a context like this, where the content is everything, we couldn’t have that.

This is where we got down to the drawing board and found the solution that stands to date. A simple button that adds an HTML comment into the author’s content. We then use a WordPress filter (and regular expression) to convert the HTML comments into semantic HTML tags on the frontend, keeping count of how many columns are being generated and adjusting the layout accordingly. If the administrator decides to switch themes, the HTML comments won’t affect the display of the content, nor the functionality of the WordPress admin. The button itself, as well as how the HTML comments are displayed in the WordPress admin, echoes how WordPress itself handles similar functionality, integrating seamlessly into the authoring experience.

To illustrate how this relates to the “impossible”, many would settle for the shortcode option, as it is the most direct and “obvious” choice, without taking into account the ramifications thereof.

We’ve taken this same approach on many other pieces of functionality within themes and functionality developed at WooThemes. I’ve made this concept a part of my day to day approach to things as well.

To sum it up in a sentence, I’d say, “don’t assume something is ‘impossible’ until you’ve tried it. You never know… you may just get a better result”.

In the music industry, there are many layers. The layer I’ll be focussing on here is that of the independent artists. The guys who run their own show and manage themselves and everything that goes along with being in a band or performing as a solo artist.

In the South African music industry, the independents are a sterling bunch. The passion these musicians possess is truly limitless. Many musicians truly live and breathe their craft (it’s not about the money or fame and is more a labour of love). Even if they lose out and don’t do as well as they’d like to, the passion doesn’t fade.

Lets take an example. A band releases a music video for one of their songs. Who do you reckon recorded that video in the first place? Where was it recorded? Who edited it and who’s now promoting it? The band and their mates, of course. The quality as well is usually incredible, because the band is pouring all their passion into achieving their desired goals. Musicians often bring in their other skills (be it illustration, design, etc) to enhance their band’s development. The result is clear, and the promotion is endless.

A few weeks ago, leading up to the Sublime tribute concert in Cape Town, the musicians involved were posting regularly up on Facebook, advertising the concert. This virtually flooded my Facebook stream… but it was great!

One doesn’t often view this kind of passion in an industry, and it’s something to take away and apply to your daily life. If you’re passionate about something you’ve created, promote it until you’re blue in the face. If it’s truly your passion, people will see that and they won’t mind (too much).

E-mail, as a technology, is broken… and we broke it.

E-mail (electronic mail) was originally intended as a means of sending messages digitally in a similar form as a posted letter. A nice simple envelope with a hand-written or typed up letter, possibly to a pen-pal or maybe a notice to cancel an account of sorts… only digital.

As the internet became more popular, it became more a commonplace item in our lives. Nowadays, we almost assume that someone has at least an e-mail address, let alone a Facebook or Twitter account. E-mail is a common form of communication amongst the majority of us who are hooked into technology… so why can’t we use it correctly?

When e-mailing day to day for business, it is a common occurrence to need to share files of indiscriminate size with colleagues… JPEGs, design files, slideshow presentations, etc. These files can become somewhat larger than expected, ranging from a few (acceptable) kilobytes to several (unacceptable) megabytes.

Ladies and gentlemen, I pose to you this question: would you attempt to show a shoe down a hosepipe?

Exactly. Then why send such large files over e-mail? It just seems impractical.

For instances where this is required, I’d recommend services such as Dropbox or CloudApp, two of the many online storage services available today… for free. If it’s free and easy to use, why not use it, right? This means you need only send a few characters of text in your e-mail, rather than, for example, a 5MB spreadsheet. The e-mail should arrive quicker in the recipient’s inbox, meaning you’ll get a potentially quicker response. It’s a win-win situation.

As e-mail has become such a common and widely used tool in today’s society, it seems to have become easy for us to lose sight of it’s original intended purpose. When you next find yourself needing to send a (possibly large) file to a colleague, friend or family member, I implore you to think back on the tool’s purpose and ask yourself, “am I attempting to show a shoe down a hosepipe?”

At many such conferences, I’ve heard successful businessmen and entrepreneurs impart valuable tips such as “the value of your fax machine is determined by how many others have fax machines” and “surround yourself with others who know more than you in certain areas of your business”. Both of these are valuable tid-bits of knowledge that I have taken to heart.

When listening to a speaker at a conference, I feel it is important to take in every word and process it (rather than just sitting and listening while tweeting a quote from their talk). I feel it is also important to ask questions and spark discussion from these talking points.

To the above two quotes, I find myself asking, “what of those who are just as skilled as you in your area of expertise?” and “but what if I don’t actually use the fax machine?”. This leads me to the topic of this post; growth through discussion.

A fax machine (metaphorically or literally) is useless if not used, regardless of how many others have fax machines. If I am the only person in my surroundings with the particular skill I specialise in, who am I to discuss things with?

Working with the developers that I do is an experience second to none, if I may put it that way. Just by sitting next to the gentlemen that I do, I’ve learned so much… and we hardly show each other any code.

Through discussion of concepts, ideas and approaches to problem-solving in code, we help each other to create a better end result, and trust in one-another that the result produced will be to each of our liking.

Therefore, what I’ve learned through listening, taking in, processing and re-interpreting the above two quotes is, do that they suggest, and also make sure that you have people around you who are like-minded individuals and discuss ideas with them, rather than just putting headphones on and zoning in on your tasks at  hand. That way, you are able to discuss your ideas and, through discussion, come to a better (or different) approach that could take your product or idea to the next level.

Stop. Listen. Discuss. Grow.

So far, the journey (pfff… it’s been only 5 days) has been interesting. The main challenge, really, is to figure out what to post about. I’m definitely of the belief that a blog post should provide some form of value for the reader (not just a video of a cat jumping into a shoe box, for example). That makes it all the more difficult. Luckily, I find I learn a lot and find & pick up web development tips on a regular basis (such as more rigorous use of the Transients API- thanks Warren), which fills up one section of posts I’d like to write. I also tend to think of concepts and theories, which I could flesh out a bit more and post up here in my “thoughts” category. These may become a bit too general though and would need to be filtered into the proper categories.

On the whole, blogging is something I really enjoy (especially using the “distraction free writing” feature in WordPress, which this blog post is currently being written in). I’m really glad I chose to blog for Project 365, as I’m thoroughly enjoying it so far.

Got any ideas for blog posts you’d like me to write up? Pop them in a comment below.

Having given this some thought, the “Uncategorized” category doesn’t really seem correct in that the term is a category in itself. It’s almost a full paradox to say that a post is “uncategorized”, meanwhile it is in fact in a category.

Upon removing the relationship entirely between the “Uncategorized” category and a specific post, the post worked as expected with no issues. By default, a post is assigned to the category set as the default category in the WordPress settings screens within the WordPress admin. Therefore, while it is possible to assign a new default category and delete the “Uncategorized” category, the question is more, why do posts in WordPress need to be assigned to a specific category? Can they not just float independently?

I’m sure there’s a reason behind this (if you know it or can offer some insight into possible reasons, please share)… just thought I’d pose the thought and see what you all think.

2011 was a year of much excitement and many developments for me. Travels, WordPress plugin releases and exciting developments at WooThemes, coupled with the inclusion of our new family member, Maddie (now almost 5 months old), made for a truly amazing year.

With 2011 now firmly in the past, I’d imagine the usual chain of thought is happening with you all as well… “what new years resolutions should I make?”, “should I make any new years resolutions at all?”, “can I actually keep any of them?”. These are three questions that have been on my mind on and off for the last day or so (clearly, new years resolutions don’t weigh down on me ). I figured, lets cement a few down in a blog post as a starting point, and see if it’s possible to get them done sooner rather than later in the new year.

1. Blog more.

Yes, yes… this old favourite. Don’t we all just want to “blog more”? Luckily, this very post is a starting point for making this resolution happen. With the post-a-day and post-a-week projects run on WordPress.com, surely it’s possible to achieve at least a post a week? What always keeps me from this resolution is the question “is this blog post relevant, or am I posting it for the sake of the post-a-day/post-a-week?”. Therefore, I’ll do my best to keep the posts as relevant as possible. If I truly can’t think of anything to blog about at any given time, I’ll either not post or try one of the topic ideas from post-a-day/post-a-week.

Note: This isn’t me committing to a set posting schedule… I’ll post when and as often as I can.

2. Learn another instrument.

I’ve been wanting to learn drums for many years now, as well as one or two other things. Drumming is starting to call on me more. While this one may not happen for sure, I’d really like to look back in 365 days and say “hey, I did that”… so why not add it to the list, right?

3. Do more.

Okay, this may seem like a stupid one. Let me explain.

When I accomplish goals, I get this sense of overwhelming calm and satisfaction. Therefore, accomplishing more goals produces more of this great feeling. That being said, having too many tasks on the go at any given time, while exciting, can become a bit pressuring. Therefore, a more accurate description of this would be to “do more, and not over-extend my bounds”. This should surely make for an exciting year, as there are many many ideas rattling around in my brain, just itching to be executed.

Right, I’ll keep this short and sign off for now. Here’s to an incredible 2012 and a happy New Year’s Day to all. If you’ve written a similar post or have any similar new years resolutions, pop them in the comments below and share them.