The Whitehawk

I’d just like to take the time to thank everyone that visits this blog for taking the time and appreciating what I write about. I hope you are all able to spend Christmas near your loved ones, and I’ll be back in 2010 in full force!

Living in a thriving and rapidly growing city in a small tourism-based island has taught me a few things about the way employers think when they are hiring new personnel. Having a few friends that worked, or still work, in some of the big name companies of the island, and having a father who used to manage the sales department personnel in his firm, I’ve seen both sides of the picture, so I can firmly talk about it.

A lot of teenagers, including myself, usually take the first job they come across, when they’re starting off. As soon as they do, it doesn’t take long for them to realize that they’re getting the short end of the stick, while their boss is taking in all the green bills.

This explains why service quality is so poor in most low-paying establishments, like in fast food restaurants.

A rule of thumb that a lot of people take is:

If I’m not going to get payed any extra money, why should I put in any extra effort?

It’s easy for any unmotivated person to follow that rule, and stick to what they have to do, instead of what they could. It makes sense for them to act in that manner, it’s the employee’s way of expressing his dissatisfaction with his position, it’s his way of thinking that he is getting back to his employer for paying him such a low amount of money.

Your employer couldn’t care less if your doing job properly or not

And this is something that everyone looking for a first, or a low paying job, should consider. Just like you showed up for the first interview, others will. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of people, ready to fill your shoes, and feel the same way you do now.

So now you’re probably thinking “Does this mean that I’m on a lose-lose situation?”

No, you’re not.

Your employer made a large investment, he put in an amount of money to start, or run the business that you will never be able to match with your earnings. He needs to make more money than you to keep the business running, he took the chance, risked his money, and created a job for you. He’s not a saint, he’s just someone trying to get by, as you are. The only difference is that he has more money to risk and invest, and you don’t.

If your working place is doing great, and making good revenues, your boss will most likely consider expanding. But he will need to gather trustworthy people in order to do that. That is where you might come in.

He’s not a saint, but he has everything on the line, while you have nothing. If your shop has to close down, you move to another job and start over. It’s not as easy for your boss as it is for you.

Not all contributions you can give to your job are money-related, but at the end of the day, it is money that keeps your job going or not. Unless your boss is cruel, and greedy, he will appreciate any extra effort you put in. Because all that effort does measure up at some point, and your company will feel that. You have to understand that it’s something that is not easily measurable.

If you work in a diner, and you take the extra time to help close down the shop, or clean the logo outside, your boss will appreciate it. But there’s no way he can account for it. He can’t witness your work and say “he cleaned the balcony when he didn’t have to, I’ll give him $5 extra in his pay check”.

Don’t look at your position as the one of a slave.

YOU are the customer.

You are the one looking for the right job, the right employee, the right colleagues. You can move on effortlessly, and leave your job behind, but your employer can’t do the same.

If you do happen to find a bad job, and you probably will, just make sure that when you leave it things are better than they were when you got in. That way they’ll feel the difference, and who knows, maybe your former boss will come to his senses and figure out how, or that he should have, accounted for void you left behind.

Take your time finding the proper job, don’t settle too soon if you don’t have to, and specially if you’re not satisfied with the job you got.

Whenever the company you work for takes on a new project for a random customer there will always be some minor or major conflicts or missinterpretations from both sides. This is normal, for it is part of human nature for each person to interpretate things in their own way.

Some company bosses/managers might agree that the most important thing about a project that was agreed upon by both ends is the contract. This idea couldn’t possibly be any further away from the truth even if it tried.

In the same way that you might missinterpretate the ideas of a customer, he will also make his own presumptions about how the project should or will be carried out. Whether you are a manager, a programmer or a designer, you have to realize that your customer usually is not.

The Manager

If your customer conducts his business in a different way from yours that is normal, you don’t have to agree with it, you just have to follow the legal terms that were defined in the contract and define the borderline in the gray areas. Your sole job is not to only make the biggest profit possible, you have to listen to your customer’s demands and meet him halfway.

Public Relations / Designer

If your customer has a different taste from yours and finds your masterpiece design inadequate that is also normal, as the designer you are the person who has to “connect” to your customer the most, and understand his feelings and intentions.

Some customers already have a fixed idea of what their website should look like, if you present them with something that looks incredibly good, but is completely different from what he had in mind, he will be disapointed, even if your design was worthy of praise. Communication is the key here, and the designer, more than anyone else, should be the master of it.

The Programmer/Mechanic/”Labor force”

You are the “monkey”, the hamster running inside the wheel. You’re the last person to know anything about the customer. You hold the most unappreciated job because most of what you do isn’t palpable, visible or understandable by people who don’t realize what you do, yet, you are the one who makes it all happen.

If it weren’t for you the project wouldn’t be anything other than a nice idea, a great deal or a pretty picture.

You need to understand all of the work that was done before the project arrived. You need to know what the project is about, what it consists of, what was the budget, what leanway does the project have, what is the deadline, what are the customers tastes, what kind of person he is, what  kind of sites/products does he like.

If the Designer or the PR person is meant to be the master of communication, the programmer has to be the master of understanding.

You need to explain clearly to your manager what the work involves, how long you think it will take and share your opinion on how viable you think the project, or the tasks at hand, are.

You need to talk to the PR, who had to understand what kind of product the customer wants, how things should work. You also have to make the PR understand that some of their “brilliant ideas” might not always be the most viable in the project’s scope.

The Team

Needs to be coese, understanding, and aware of the weight of their words and actions. The more your team members try to understand each other’s tasks, the better it is for them to realize how each of their tasks work.

Every member should always take a minute out of every conversation with their colleague to explain what the task at hand consists of. Doing so will not only improve the overall quality of the projects, but it will also make the next projects easier, and most mistakes, or ill-given tasks will not reoccur.

With all these things said, you’d think that the most important aspect is a gathering of the points made above…

It isn’t.

The most important aspect of any project is “listening”.

You can have the best manager who understands the scope of the project, knows fundaments of design and how the project development process works, and manages to squeeze the biggest amount of profit from the project…

You can have the best PR person in the world, one who can dive into the minds of the customer and find out everything that the customer wants from the project and more…

You can have the best programmer/mechanic/engineer that ever walked this planet, who can turn dust into gold, and achieves goal in lightning-fast times…

… and it won’t matter a thing, if the customer doesn’t follow the project, or listens to what your team has to say to him.

When customers are participative, and understanding, all phases of any project run smoother. The team members will work harder, they will be more motivated and feel more relevant in their tasks. And the only reason they will be is because they were listened by him.

When your team members have a hard time acknowledging the value of each other, and what each of their tasks involve, a lot of discrepancies start to occur in the project’s requirements, and tasks will start falling behind schedule.

If you’re dealing with a particularly “hard” customer, or a team that has a hard time communicating, this is where your manager or team leader has to step in, take the reins, and be the voice of that “perfect customer” or “perfect colleague”, and explain to the team members each of their tasks, without neglecting any of their words or the importance of their tasks.

Having a customer that listens, and a team that listens to itself, can make all the difference between a bad to a mediocre or a mediocre to a great project.

As I dust off the old Wordpress and replace it with it’s younger, more mature, brother, I can’t help but think about all the things I’ve been missing out by shutting myself away from a community I used to love.

Sometimes the amount of tasks we take during our days make some hobbies seem less worthwhile. But what is the point on living in a globally connected network if I am not to share my words and thoughts.

Not blogging has made me lazy.

Some people have or lack the motivation to find and discuss their topics of interest without anyone calling out  to them. I had the privilege of belonging to one of the very best networks in the web, had great friends who’d read and discuss my articles.

Since I quit writing on ForeverGeek and this blog I’ve been less keen on keeping up to date with the latest news, and instead of feeling like someone else would fill that void for me, I found out that no one does. None of my friends would bring up the subject of a brand new product or platform they found, unless our conversation happened to lead to it.

Perhaps that makes life more interesting, more random, but it also kept me and my friends from finding out about great things sooner, rather than later. Now that I think about it, with the exception of the posts I wrote for ForeverGeek, I didn’t use to share many news on this site unless it was a subject I was very excited about.

With that “restriction” torn away, I’m now free to write about whatever I want, technology included. Don’t call this a comeback, it’s simply a return to my roots, and the continuation of something I enjoy doing.

Starting from tomorrow, I will do something that very few bloggers have attempted: to redesign my blog from scratch in front of a live audience, or in other words, in front of you visitors.

So during the next few days (hopefully they won’t be many) when you visit this site you will see it flourishing into what will eventually become my best achievement in web design yet.

Such a task is not an easy thing to accomplish, and in the midst of the rush to make it look as nice as possible, in the shortest amount of time, it is very likely for me to forget some basic rules or to make some dire mistakes which I normally wouldn’t make.

That is why I will have the help and the commentaries of a few friends, colleagues and acquaintances. All of them will be lending me their eyes and words, and help me keep the progress in line (and pull my ears if I take too long to do something).

So far the three people who will be helping me out are my dear friend, and co-worker at BloggyNetwork: David Peralty; the incredibly talented and nice Elena from DesignDisease (who designed all of the sites in the BloggyNetwork); and my very intelligent friend and former-colleague from college, David Gouveia.

If I’m lucky enough, I might even trick a few of the 9rules members into giving me their opinions also, but only time will tell. So by this time tomorrow, or a bit later (you never know in this business…), you will start seeing new things in the site, or at least it’s main structure.

I formatted my laptop yesterday, so today there will be no design journal since I will be busy re-organizing and re-installing all my applications and drivers, however, I made a lot of changes during the weekend, so look forward to the next “Design Journal” post

As everyone has probably noticed, Wordpress is giving me an unknown error. I don’t know what exactly is wrong…

The Apache version is quite old: 1.3.37 (Unix) therefore it might be that, but then again I’m not too sure. If anyone knows anything regarding this problem please tell me.

Update: the problem was the More Smilies plugin. Everything should be ok now.

Hello readers, some of you might be wondering why I haven’t been posting as much lately, and the reason is partially explained in the topic. Why partially? Well, because the it’s been a slow Anime season thus making it a bit hard to review new episodes.

In the meantime, I got a chance to finish watching an Anime I never saw before, Elfen Lied, and I’ll try to bring you a review very soon, hopefully tomorrow.

I’m sorry if I sounded too much like a comedian with that title, but honestly, why do 99% of people immediately stop, when they go on one. And the situation is even worse with flat escalators (conveyor belts).

Today I went to the shopping mall, and I happened to get there when it had just opened. There were about 50 people, all of them eager to go in, and none of them moved an inch after they stepped on the conveyor belt. I even saw a lady shoving her purse in front of another man just to get to the conveyor belt first, and what for you might ask? So she could stand for 30 seconds right in front of him completely still as the escalator moved for her.

I’ll even go as far as saying that one day I saw someone literally running to an escalator, and as soon as he got there, he remained completely still (even though he could step up) and looked at his watch impatiently while the stairs brought him up.

Sometimes my father tells me that one day we won’t have to lift a finger to do anything (that we’ll basically become “vegetables”). Although his line of thought is a bit exaggerated, it seems that his words aren’t too far from the path that we seem to be heading to.

And then people wonder why they get fat and think that they can solve it by taking a few pills before meals.

It’s been a while since I’ve made a rant on this website, but I have been keeping quiet for far too long. After months of speculation, and bad rumors against the Playstation 3, I want to make the rant to end all rants against the Playstation 3. Rumor has it, that some people that have bought the console have actually been able to play games on it!Don’t you people realize how shocking this announcement is? For months without end people have been whining for every little reason against Sony, and now that it’s console is actually among us (us of course being, in this case, the US and Japan) some people are actually playing games on it and having fun while doing it. What a shock!

On a more serious note, some blogs need to stop exaggerating and posting every little bit of negative news they can about a popular console. There was actually an article today about how the Playstation 3 gathers dust! Please people, please forgive the Playstation 3 for being a solid object, and thus capable of being a landing spot for the small particles that float around your bedroom.

But wait, there are better rants against the Playstation 3 out there, one user claims that his Playstation 3 was scratched in 10 seconds. According to his claims, he took it out of the box, and noticed it had gathered a lot of dust, therefore he scrubbed it with his hands and it was already scratched! How many of you have ever scratched any gadget or plastic toy by rubbing your hand on it?

Thankfully not everyone is so easily eluded, one user actually read the content of the article and wrote:

is your hand made out of steel wool?!

Is the Playstation 3 that bad that people have to make an article about every little defect that a dozen of users, from the thousands of owners, have? IGN even gave the console a 10/10 rating on future potential.

The PS3’s strongest prospects, though, lay with its software. In 2007 alone we’ll be seeing an armada of promising videogames. Allow me to name drop: Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R., Eye of Judgment, Indiana Jones, Lair, Haze, Stranglehold, Golden Axe, Virtua Fighter 5, Def Jam: Icon, Heavenly Sword, MotorStorm, Warhawk, Burnout 5, Formula One, Medal of Honor Airborne, Army of Two, Mercenaries 2, Oblivion, The Darkness, Unreal Tournament 2007, Calling All Cars, Alone in the Dark, Brothers in Arms, Gran Turismo HD, Spider-Man 3, the Naughty Dog Game, NBA Street, Dark Sector, Frontlines, Grand Theft Auto IV, Killzone, Ratchet and Clank, Assassin’s Creed, The White Council, and Metal Gear Solid 4 are but a few of the 100+ PlayStation 3 games expected to ship before the end of the year… and that doesn’t even include the dozens and dozens we don’t even know about yet.

I’m not going to purchase a Playstation 3 this Christmas (it isn’t out in Europe). My money is going for Nintendo, and even they are suffering from stupid articles about people who throw their Wiimote (the controller) around the house, and are actually surprised (!!!) when it breaks stuff! (!!!!!!!!!!!). There are others who let go of the controller after swinging their arms really fast and get upset with Nintendo because the wrist strap broke…

People… the wrist strap is there so the controller will hand from your hand instead of falling to the floor if you happen to need your hands to do something else, not to stop it from flying towards your television when you swing at it like you were batting for a home run.

Next week, the Wii is coming out, and hopefully I’ll be able to play it during the weekend (if it arrives on time). In March, the Playstation 3 comes out, and if Gran Turismo ends up being a launch title I might consider getting it also. My point is, these consoles are actually working, their problems are nowhere as bad as the problems the XBox 360 had when it was released. Don’t you remember the heat complaints? Or is Sony the only company that releases defected products at launch?