[stars: 5] Touching the Void. Do you think that your problems are difficult? Get a grip. This film will tear a strip off your back, and show you what the impossible looks like. And the impossible is possible, if you really want it. The story is a tale of unimaginable pain, facing death, and inspiration.

It’s funny how it goes. You use stuff, you find it useful, and you consider it pretty good. Then you use something else and a gap appears — what was pretty good now looks like crap, and you realize that your perception was warped. It happens to me all the time, and the resets are really cool. When I get a glimpse at something I really like, it refreshes my spidey senses and kicks my ass. And that’s a good thing.

So I spend most of my time in Windows Land. It’s ok. I’ve even pimped out my development machines with every tool I need. Then I boot my Ubuntu system at home and it kicks my ass. This is what real tools look like. I browse AmieStreet for some new tunes, and it kicks my ass again. It’s what browsing music should be like. Suddenly I’m inspired again. I queue up some tunes in Rhythembox, and it’s what iTunes should be like. Simple, solid, and does what I want. There’s inspiration everywhere, I just have to remember not to get stuck in the crap.

I’m tempted to buy a license of VMWare so I can boot my Windows development partition from a productive environment.

Some slides on Flickr’s architecture. It’s all sensible stuff, with very little magic: Php4, Mysql (innodb), ImageMagick, Perl, Java (for nodes), RHEL, and so on.

Some Tricks of the trade, a surprisingly funny list of useful tidbits for various trades.  A choice quote:

And when doing botanical work in South America, steer clear of the monkeys: They will throw sticks at you with surprising accuracy.

Canada rules! Check out Amie Street, an independent Canadian online music store - sans DRM. They charge based on popularity, with a better revenue model for artists.  In ten minutes I found a dozen new and interesting artists, all worth paying $.20-.98 per song to.

Have you ever had one of those days filled with email, IM, and office debate, where none of it gets anything done? Communication is useless on its own–if it isn’t metered, focused, and intelligent. A lot of what slows us down is due to simple, standard corporate ways of doing things. But just because it’s common doesn’t mean that it’s productive.

So in that vein, here are five ways to be totally unproductive.

1. Passively ask for help

“Who would be responsible for managing EULAs?”

When you ask for something passively, you’re really wishing that something gets done without requiring any of your own effort. You know that something needs to be done, but are too lazy to figure out the who, the what, or the how. It’s like you don’t even care if it gets done, but you know enough to cover your ass. The problem is that when you don’t care, things only sort of get done … if at all.

So say what you want, and be willing to help it along. You do care, don’t you?

“Who wrote the EULA for the last release? Do they have time to update it, or should I?”

If you can’t say what you really want, then you don’t want it enough. If you’re not willing to do a bit of work to get it done, then you don’t deserve to have it done for you. Don’t be so lazy: your own success rides on the success of everyone around you.

2. Don’t give a real opinion

“I guess that feature would be nice.”

Do you want it or not? When you can’t say what you want, you’re doing a few things: wasting my time, making me think about what you’re saying, and forcing me to question your intelligence. When I ask you what you think, I actually want to know what you think and why. And if you really don’t care, then just say so.

“We need that feature, because of X. “

Say what you want and why; you’re not going to offend me. You’re helping me understand if something is important, based on your area of expertise. You do know what you’re doing, don’t you?

3. Respond with only opinion

“Whoever did it last time should do it again.”

This is another tool of the I-don’t-care-enough mindset. It doesn’t get anything done, and it doesn’t answer any part of what’s required to get that thing done. In fact it does nothing other than give someone more work to do. Hey, go and ask other people more questions.

“Joe should do it because he’s a ninja.”

It’s clear that you want to influence things, but you don’t have the time or energy to actually help. Your best bet is to either take a few minutes to do the leg work (and actually help), or shut up and save your breath. Either approach is better than adding noise to the problem.

4. Complain about something that’s really your fault

“Boy that company is retarded.”

There’s a complainer hidden deep within all of us. The complainer deflects responsibility, pollutes the thinking space, and brings down the team. Is it really someone else’s fault? I doubt it. Most of our failure is our own, and complaining about it certainly doesn’t get anything fixed.

“You know, we could have done better there. No matter, we’ll do X next time.”

Shut up and reflect on the problem. Study it. And learn from it. Then talk about it–only when what you plan to say has a chance of making people laugh, think, learn, or actually get something done.

5. Make fun of the complainers (meta complain)

“Ha, they’re not retarded, you are!”

Be careful when you mock the complainer, as they’re unlikely to hear you. You’re really just complaining too, which doesn’t change much. The mocking, while entertaining, is mostly spam in the work environment.

If you have to chastise the complainer, then make damned sure that you’re accurate and brief. If you fail to be either, your message will fall flat.

Even better than mockery: do something to prevent that thing from happening again. Show people how they can change, or put practices into place that encourage measurement and analysis. If you really want to improve things, then you’ll look for ways to help. And you’ll participate in the fixing.

6. (Bonus) Rant about the whiners, the complainers, and the spineless

Yes, I’m writing about a the lame communications I see every day. Yes, I’m wasting time. And yes, I’m complaining about it. But I’m making fun of the insanity in a semi-entertaining form. The problem is that I’ve never groked why the standard corporate culture cultivates such a meaningless, passionless, passive way of saying things. Frankly, I’m surprised that it works at all.

At least the whiners, the complainers, and the spineless offer us something great. They give us the opportunity to kick their asses, as it’s easy to say what you mean and do what you say.

A bit about code review at Google. What do you think about code review?

Kurt Vonnegut has 8 rules for writing fiction, which are surprisingly portable as rules for writing software.

Unix tool of the week: MultiTail, a super-tail for viewing many log files at once.

Cure your sore throat with Cayenne?.   I’ll have to try this the next time I’m sick.