Over the past couple of days I’ve put myself through installing the Windows 7 RC.
Apart from one grossly stupid moment of my own doing, it’s been a fantastic experience.
If there was a single word I could give about Windows 7, it would be:
Polish.
I’ve gotten a few tips together in this experience.
Tips
- Get an External Hard Drive (and BE PATIENT).
- I picked up a Terabyte one from JBs. While the copying of files can be stupidly slow (especially if you’re using Vista), it’s worth it. I’ve got a lot of potential and actual money on my Development Laptop (DevTop, just because).
- DO NOT DELETE FILES UNTIL 10 DAYS LATER!
- I lost my 8G music collection because I was too quick to delete folders without waiting to see what I’d forgotten _about_ said folder.
- Makes me cry on the inside AND outside.
- Also, I’m not sure about plugging my iPhone in. It’ll Synch, which is bad. It’s currently got my latest music on it. The music that doesn’t exist anywhere else.
- Be courageous.
- Especially if you’re running Vista, and you’re a Developer, MAKE THE LEAP.
- The Windows 7 installer makes some really intelligent decisions, the best by far being to back up NOT ONLY your Vista (or other) Windows folder, but all of the “windows” folders throughout the system. Users, Documents, etc etc. Very handy.
- While Installing, make a list of essential programs you remember.
- I found it a good experience to go from memory. Why?
- Because it removes the clutter. Only install what you remember using a lot. The other stuff will come.
My Important List
That’s what I’ve got so far.
And there you have it. Tonight will be my first foray into some serious development, using Clarion 6. Have had a few gotchas implementing that as well. Being that Clarion 6 is a 16-bit IDE doesn’t help so much :)
Windows 7 .. Tip of the hat and kudos to the team!
Ha ha. That’ll learn me. Not five minutes after posting this, Kieron of the most excellent Rock Paper Shotgun just uber-pimped Space Office Fight.
I am no longer sad. Someone should wipe the smile off my face.
Here’s my Google Analytics graph for the last month (ish):
Impressive huh?
Ahem.
I’ve been doing this (blogging) for a while now. Dev Dawn started back in August 2005. So this August will be four years.
Sure, that’s not very long compared to some, but it’s long enough. I’m still here. Still going.
Google Analytics is both a Boon and a Curse.
Boon – Seriously, you need to know this stuff about your blog. And Google Analytics is free. It tells you most everything a little blogger could want to know.
Curse – Have you seen the above graph? One spike. And we’re not talking about thousands here either. The spike is a StumbleUpon hit parade that took me to just under a thousand visits that day. Every other day ranges around the five to ten visits mark. Except there’s another bump when I released Space Office Fight, up to around seventy visits.
I’ve read Problogger and other wisdom on how to be a success at blogging.
I think I am a success because I write about what I’m doing, and I love doing it.
But I’m not a success in the terms that matter on a different level. Numbers. Visitors. Other people listening to you.
So what am I saying? Not a great deal. I’m a bit sad I guess. I’ve written some decent content over the past few months, released software, I’ve created a game and pimped it to the best of my ability (which needs to get much better, obviously).
Sometimes you want to see some concrete evidence of “the numbers” success. This is just one of those moments.
It is well.
When you design small systems, there are some big benefits.
One of these is with bug/feature tracking. This is not to say that with a simple project it’s not important to track bugs and features. WRONG. It’s vital.
My point is that you can streamline your other processes, as well as those in this most simple of software you are building.
While developing Oldaer I’ve been using Google Docs to track my Bugs and Features through the builds.
How does this work? Well, very simply.
1. I have a doc called “Oldaer, <buildnumber> Todos”.
This document lists all the Todos I have. It’s a relatively small amount. Important Todos are bolded. Sometimes there is a further description underneath.
2. As Todos are completed, I “mark” them off.
You can see it’s a yellow background. I’ve found this is the best because of it’s immediate visibility to the eye.
Whatever you want though, it just needs to be quite distinguishable.
3. After the build is done, we copy the Todos document (using “Save as a new copy” in Google Docs) into a Changelog.
To make this document a Changelog is easy. You simply remove all the Todos that were not completed for the build.
4. We then copy the Todos document (again) into the new build number’s Todo list.
To make this into the new Todo list, all you have to do is remove all the completed (yellow) Todos.
There you have it. Simple. Efficient. And because it’s Google, finding specific stuff is easy.
Of course, this is not going to work in most development situations. More than a couple of people, more than a simple project, and it becomes very hard to maintain.
However, if you are creating a simple piece of software, and don’t have any bug/feature tracking processes in place, then I urge you to consider using Google Docs.
Do this, and get the basic patterns in place for when you take on a big project.
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