fredericiana

Boogie Board, an LCD-powered chalkboard

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 00:00:00 -0700

Last week, I went to a toy store to buy some gifts, where I discoverd something really cool: A "boogie board".

It's essentially a very thin touch-screen LCD display that comes with a stylus so you can write on it. Press the "delete" button, it's gone again.

As simple as that.

Boogie boards are obviously intended for children, but I nonetheless picked one up for myself. Quite often during my work day I jot down a few things on a piece of scrap paper so I remember them for five minutes, then throw away the paper. That's really wasteful, and besides, paper notes are sooo 1999.

Depending on where you want to put it, the boogie board comes with magnet strips so you can stick it to your fridge and write your grocery list on it, or to your NASA cubicle wall, inviting the Mars Rover to draw oblong tire tracks on it, next time it rolls by.

But I don't only like the board because of what it can do. It also intrigued me because of its limitations.

The similarity to a chalkboard (white on black) is probably quite intentional: Much like a real chalkboard, it does not sync with a computer. If you are an inventor and just drew the Next Big Thing on it, you can (and should!) take a photo of it, before you or anyone else erases the board.

In summary: A boogie board won't replace your new fifteenth generation iPad, but it just might make the stack of sticky notes on your desk last a whole lot longer. If you find yourself jotting down things a lot, if you doodle while on the phone, or want to sketch the flux capacitor before the idea escapes your mind, this thing is for you. Give it a shot.

If you're as intrigued as I was: At the time of writing, you can pick up a Boogie Board on Amazon for under 30 dollars.

I'm blogging about once a week in 2013, on various topics. This is my tenth post of the year.

Not Every Problem is a "First-World Problem", or Chilling Effects of Social Pressure

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

There's a semi-funny Internet meme called "first world problems", here is an example:

They idea is that it's a whiny statement (fishing for empathy, perhaps) that expresses an outrageous level of entitlement. So much so that it appears certain that this person has never encountered an actual hardship in their life before, nor do they realize that probably over 90% of mankind (entire continents!) are worse off than they are.

Hence the name: First world problems.

From the outrageous and (hopefully) made-up statement above, this meme has sometimes made its way into popular culture, when actual people make actual statements that show a baffling disconnect from "real" problems.

Alice: My iPhone 5 is out of battery, now I have to use my old iPhone 4S :(((
Bob: First world problems!

The first world has real problems, too

Sadly, people also seem to do this when actual problems just happen to be located in the "first world":

Alice: My employer just cut our vacation days in half and got rid of our maternal leave policy! What shall I do?
Bob: At least you have a job! First world problems!

Sure, perhaps "Bob" is just being a jerk by implying, as long as you're not in life-threatening danger, you are doing better than many people on this planet and therefore you have no reason to complain. Sure, maybe Alice needs to pick her "friends" more wisely.

Chilling effects

However, the real danger I see here is when this results in proactive self-censorship by people who fear being stigmatized as whiners but would otherwise have every reason to complain about legitimate problems -- and may need to create awareness to change the situation for the better.

In a legal context, this is called a chilling effect, when the threat of penalization caused by overly broad laws keeps someone from saying what they want to say. Unfortunately, social pressure like this can have the same effect.

It is hard to quantify how much of a real issue that is, since by its very nature, self-censorship is virtually impossible to detect, unless the person considers not complaining about a real problem, then does it anyway and shares this fact with us. One example is a recent post by Linus Torvalds, complaining about the crazy setup of the US public school system and a misguided attempt of the Oregon State legislature to fix one aspect of it -- which Torvalds argues would actually make it worse.

You don't have to be a parent to see concern for the education of one's children as a real and legitimate worry. Meanwhile, Torvalds is well known to not exactly be shy about his opinions.

Yet, he writes:

Oh well. I bet nobody wanted to hear that whine, and I guess I should put the "First world problems" meme picture here, but hey, I wanted to get that rant off my chest.

Would someone less bold than Torvalds but harboring the same concerns still have chosen to write this article? I'm not sure.

Don't be Bob.

Keep that in mind next time you're thinking about accusing someone of whining who may actually have a legitimate case.

Don't be that guy who keeps people from changing society for the better.

Don't be Bob.

I'm blogging about once a week in 2013, on various topics. This is my ninth post of the year.

6 Rules for Hiring Great People

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

By now, I have helped hire a few dozen people (web developers, mostly, but also database admins, recruiters, QA engineers, and such) and I really enjoy when my assessments were right and they turn out to be great employees.

The road to a great new hire can be rocky: There are questionable resumes, disappointing phone screens, promising candidates with positive interviews who still end up not making the cut, and many other possible pitfalls. It's easy to lose sight of what it takes to hire awesome people and what these people should have in common to ensure the next round of hires is just as great.

Therefore, I hope you'll find the following rules for hiring great people useful.

1) Hire people you can trust, then trust them.

If you remember only one thing about hiring, this is it.

Hiring people you can trust is your most important job as a manager. Not only will this enable success for the projects you work on and make your employees happier. By giving your team the power to decide who will be a good fit for the position in question and then trusting their judgment, you also base your hiring decisions on better data and significantly reduce the risk involved in bringing new people on board.

2) Time is scarce, use it wisely.

Trusting your employees can go so far that you don't have to phone screen every candidate as a manager. If you have two or three interviewers agree that the applicant is worth talking to in person, you might decide that's enough to bring the interviewee in for an onsite interview.

Don't take that to say phone screens are free though. Be mindful of your interviewers' time and energy. Screen resumes or talk to candidates yourself that you're unsure will be worth being interviewed by your team. It is common practice to preselect "interesting" resumes before even giving applicants an initial call. If you want to make it past that step, James Socol has a number of recommendations for applicants to rise above the crowd.

Similarly, if you have an onsite interview day and a candidate has talked to a few people, all of whom had nothing good to say about him or her, don't hesitate to stop the process early. Their time (and the applicant's!) is better spent elsewhere.

3) Recruiters are your friends.

I <3 (good) recruiters, I really do. Their job is not just to surf the Web for resumes so you don't have to. Instead, they are actually instrumental in surfacing great candidates for your team.

But the old wisdom still applies: Gargabe in, garbage out. So do your homework and make sure your recruiters really understand the positions you're hiring for. If they don't understand what you're looking for, don't be surprised if they don't find good candidates for you to interview.

4) Hire people who are better than you.

A bad hiring manager will readily hire people, as long as it is clear that the new hire knows less than the manager. This is a great way to establish and perpetuate a culture of mediocrity. Instead, you want to hire people who blow your own skills out of the water and are going to add to, not detract from, the overall skill level of your team.

If the solutions your team produces blow your mind and you have to concede you couldn't have done it better -- you might just be doing something right.

This rule is a variant of the Lake Wobegon strategy Google employs to keep their hiring skill level up. Of course, this is easy to simulate, but real people are hard to compare, even if they have the exact same job title, as Rands concedes in his recent post about the downsides of job titles. Still, before you sign that job offer, make sure you know what unique qualities the new hire will bring to the team.

5) New technologies are easy, people skills are hard.

When weighing positives and negatives about a candidate, don't forget that you don't hire them for what they've already done, but for what they are going to do.

You'll have to weigh fancy college degrees, prior engagements at renowned companies and such against the needs of the position you're hiring for and the team you're hiring them into. Your candidates will fall short on some of your requirements. It's your job to decide what gaps the new hire will be able to fill later and which will likely remain part of the "package".

As a rule of thumb, gaps in technology are easier to close than gaps in their character: A good developer who has gotten a little rusty in a certain programming language because they worked with a different one over the last few months is probably preferable over one who has questionable but strong opinions and shows no desire to discuss their reasoning, or to compromise on anything, ever.

6) Be a mediator, not a dictator.

There is an excellent book on risk management for software projects, called "Waltzing with Bears". One quote out of it really stuck with me: If a project doesn't have risk, don't do it.

The same holds true for hiring people. At the very least, if you have no concerns about a new hire, you probably didn't encounter Superman. Instead, you probably didn't look or think hard enough, so look and think harder.

Because of this, most of the time, your team's hiring decisions won't be unanimous. That is where your job as a mediator comes in.

Take the positives and negatives you and your team have come up with and weigh them against each other, deciding if one person's concerns are outweighed by the positives another interviewer put forward. Don't be afraid to let the team partake in those considerations and make clear that your decision is balancing their concerns, not ignoring them. They will ideally thank you by accepting your decision, even if it goes against their initial personal assessment of the new hire.

The final leap of faith, of course, is yours alone to make. If you did well, you'll get the reward of another great hire.

With that said, let's go, hiring managers. You have a lot of work to do. Good luck.

What do you think? Do you disagree? Do you have any other rules for hiring great people? Share your thoughts in the comments!

I'm blogging about once a week in 2013, on various topics. This is my eighth post of the year.

Recruiters from Hell

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0700

I am grateful that my skill set is apparently a scarce commodity -- so much so that I routinely get emails from recruiters trying to get me interested into their respective employers / clients. So far so good. That's nice, even flattering at times.

In my day job, hiring great engineers is part of what I do, and I work with a number of excellent recruiters.

But ever so often, recruiters send me messages that just make me shake my head. Not just the ones from Yahoo, I mean.

So, perhaps it is time to start blogging about them. Not to ridicule the craft (seriously, I <3 recruiters), but to give an insight in what your messages may sound like on the other side of that email chain.

Not what you think

Here, take this one for example:

Hi! I am not reaching out to recruit you. I've learned technologist of your caliber are more than able and willing to communicate once options are being kept open. […]

Well, that is comforting. For a second, I thought you being a recruiter and me being an engineering manager was setting the stage for a chat about a job opportunity at one of your client companies.

But, now that we've cleared up that this is not about being recruited, it's just plain creepy. Did you mean to type this into your eHarmony account and picked LinkedIn on accident?

That stealth 300-million user base company

Exhibit B:

I need an Engineering Manager for an exciting company in SF.

Check out their specs:

profitable since 2008
potential candidate to go IPO this year
Over 300 million people have signed up for their service
Ranked one of the top places to work
Well known Silicon Valley veteran is on their board (and one of their early investors)

Benefits are:

100% Medical For Employees
75% Medical For Dependents
Monthly Massages
Catered Lunch & Dinner
Unlimited vacation and sick leave
Free Gym Membership

[…]

Ping Pong Tournaments
Field Trips
Fully Stocked Kitchen
Pet Insurance

Would you know anyone interested?

Oh, where to start.

First, who? Stop beating around the bush. If your client is profitable, has 300 million users (signups, anyway), and is otherwise as well known and respected as you claim, then I can google them. If you want me to work for someone, at least tell me where. Playing the guessing game is a joke and a waste of time.

Even though you're probably working on commission, and you fear I'd cheat you out of it by going to the company directly, that's not an excuse. As a potential applicant, I have no incentive to do that. For starters, I do not pay your commission, and I also have no interest in applying at a company "cold" via their website, if instead I can have a recruiter put in the good word for me.

Second, nice list of benefits, but more than boyscout-style field trips and supposedly unlimited vacation, I see you leading with 75% of medical insurance for dependents, and ending with pet insurance and I wonder if that means your client values my dog's health more highly than my kid's. That's not your fault as a recruiter, but strikes me as an odd juxtaposition.

Also, how is a ping pong tournament a company benefit? But let's not get carried away…

Third, and most importantly: "Would you know anyone interested?" -- this is more than only borderline offensive. You email me, an engineering manager, and instead of asking if I am interested in the job, you nonchalantly ask me to recruit someone else for you? Sure. You probably mean "are you or any of your friends interested", but why not write that? You wouldn't walk into a butcher shop and ask if they happen to be able to refer you to a butcher, would you?

Benefits: Massive Growing Pains, for free!

Third and last example for the day:

Subject: [We] raised [a ton of money] and revenues are growing faster than we can hire great people to keep up!

[We are] growing rapidly and, in fact, ha[ve] grown from 128 "nerdy but lovable" [cute employee nickname]-ers to over 250 already this year.

[…]

Congratulations on your massive funding. I appreciate (I really do) that there is a chance your startup has enough money to make payroll and rent. (Of course, as a regular employee I will see very little of that money beyond my own paycheck, so perhaps it's not so much reason to cheer after all).

But I am not convinced doubling in size a few months into the year is quite as much reason to brag about. This, in combination with your subject line about having too much money on your hands, does not fill me with confidence that you also thought about maintaining (or building) your company culture along with it. Turns out, as an engineering manager, my peers and I will have to clean up that mess. I can't wait!

(By the way, mathematically I might have enjoyed the sentence more if the employee count had truly gone up from 2⁷ to 2⁸, but only for a minute. And, alas, you missed this opportunity to get some geek cred.)

'nuff said

I'll leave it at that for now. If you're a recruiter yourself and you've cringed throughout this post, don't be too hard on your peers. Just promise to do better, the next time you reach out to a potential candidate.

And if you think I got it all wrong, just leave a comment here, as usual.

I'm blogging about once a week in 2013, on various topics. This is my seventh post of the year.

Image credit: "money, savings" (CC-by-sa licensed) by 401k 2013

On "Green" Incentives

Sat, 09 Mar 2013 00:00:00 -0800

"Green" programs, like waste reduction, energy or resource saving campaigns are sprouting everywhere. Laudable, generally, but more often than not, I notice that the economics incentives don't support the programs as well as they should.

What are incentives?

In economics, incentives are factors that motivate a person to do something. There are different types of incentives, two of which I will focus on here: Moral incentives vs. financial incentives.

Moral incentives work by convincing the individual that something is the right thing to do or somehow socially desirable or respected. Avoiding judgmental looks is a moral incentive to wear pants in public. A moral incentive that works for one person in one way might not work like that for another. If you like people to stare, you might actually be inclined not to wear pants.

Financial incentives are often easier because as a rule of thumb, people like money. They dislike losing money, and like getting money. Store discounts (to buy a product) and cash bonuses (to reach company goals) are examples of financial incentives. There are exceptions to that rule, but at any rate, economists love financial incentives because they are so easy to understand and calculate with.

How do many "green programs" use incentives?

Moral incentives are at the core of many "green" programs.

The California "save our water" program talks about saving water quite abstractly. The moral incentive is to avoid droughts or to make it easier for "certain parts of the state" to provide enough water to everybody, now and in the future.

However, there is no substantial financial incentive connected to this program: Your average Bay Area water bill is over 80 percent a fixed price. Only if you currently waste outrageous amounts of water ("that running faucet helps me sleep!") and stop doing that, will you be able to significantly impact your bill. Doing one fewer load of laundry a week? Buying a slightly more efficient dishwasher? With a lot of luck, you'll save the equivalent of half a cafe latte per month. Maybe.

Another example: The Go Box PDX program provides reusable food containers for food carts. The moral incentive: Reduce waste, enjoy food carts guilt-free.

However, this program even provides a counter-incentive, financially. You pay 12 dollars a year, then you receive a token that you exchange for a reusable box, which after lunch, you drop off at a collection point where you get another token back. The detour to a dropoff location (unless your employer provides one) is added opportunity cost, a lost token or misplaced box sets you back another $12. Meanwhile, regular containers remain "free" (included in the sale price).

Ironically, there is a financial incentive for the food cart owners to participate: They receive $2 for every subscription sold. However, they do not at the same time agree to extend any incentive (like a discount) to the customer, or alternatively starting to charge, even only 10 cents, for their regular food containers.

Why is that a problem?

Misaligned incentives mean, at best, that these programs are less successful than they could be: People who aren't "buying" the moral incentive have no reason to participate.

Moral incentives are particularly weak if they are not easily observable by others (like my water bill) or if the social component is not well established (like the preferability of a reusable food container over a recyclable one).

Weak moral incentives without a financial counterpart also cast serious doubt on the respective company's commitment to the "cause": They expect the customer to open their wallet for moral reasons, but the company refrains from putting their money where their mouth is.

How can financial incentives become part of the mix?

Reasonable policy changes have often proven successful at establishing financial incentives for desired behavior: City ordinances disallowing shopping bags to be handed out for free work wonders at making people remember their own bag or deciding if they really need two double bags for two small items.

City hall is not the only place where such incentives can come from: Take a look at Starbucks' new $1 reusable cup, which they pair with a $.10 discount per drink filling. The company is still the most likely party to make a profit in this process, and it is still early to decide on the rate at which it reduces waste created by the coffee chain. The key, though, is that Starbucks understands consumer economics and realizes that the simple proposition of a refillable cup will not make the program a success by itself.

Win-win-win

I wish more "green" programs would use well-placed financial incentives to gently (or not so gently) align a wider audience with their goals. It would prove beneficial for customers who sign up for the program and use it intensively. It helps the merchant by encouraging customer loyalty. And, not least, a successful "green" program will be good for the environment.

Win-win-win. What's wrong with that?

I'm blogging about once a week in 2013, on various topics. This is my sixth post of the year.

Image credit: "Water Fountain" (CC-by-nc-sa licensed) by airdiogo; "Food Carts in Portland" (CC-by-nc-sa licensed) by camknows.

The Ostrich Approach to Social Policy

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Today I came across this political post on Facebook:

Thank you Florida, Kentucky and Missouri, which are the first states which will require drug testing when applying for welfare.

Some people are crying and calling this unconstitutional. How is this unconstitutional??? It’s OK to drug test people who work for THEIR money, but not for those who don’t… Re-blog this if you would like to see this done in ALL 50 states! If you can afford to buy drugs and extra illegal things then you can afford your own groceries.

It's a Facebook meme that has been around for a while. Considering it is factually false, it has a surprisingly long half-life.

Normally I just let these things slide, but I subsequently alluded to this post as "mind-numbingly stupid" on Twitter, and besides, I am in the mood for a rant today, so let's dissect this a bit.

Constitution, Shmonstitution

I'll leave the legal analysis to people who have studied a lot more law than I have (and in the right country).

But it strikes me as ironic that ultraconservatives, who never grow tired of proclaiming their weariness of the government, would be upset by someone even questioning the constitutionality of a government-imposed measure based on absolutely no "probable cause". That's at best dangerously naïve, at worst deliberately hypocritical.

Misery For Everyone

The author goes on to claim "It's okay to drug-test people who work for their money…" — this false comparison is a particular pet peeve of mine with the American public. It conveys the basic assumption that because I had to go through a negative experience, it must not be fixed for anyone else, ever, in the future. Otherwise that person is a freeloader and a whiner.

An infamous example of this is the "we are the 53 percent" meme, in which people in various kinds of horrible life situations brag about how they work 3 jobs, don't have health insurance, and are somehow still alive enough to boast about it on the Internet.

It is one of the most despicable character traits I have encountered on this side of the Big Pond.

Don't get me wrong: I fully agree that you're ultimately responsible for your own choices. But I may never get over the fact that it is more popular in this country to live equally miserable lives (after all if you're miserable that must mean you're not working hard enough) than working together as a society to improve the quality of life for many.

The Ostrich Approach

Which leads me to the Ostrich Approach. The meme above mentions "If you can afford to buy drugs and extra illegal things then you can afford your own groceries." Superficially, a splendid idea. Practically, this is suffering from argumentative holes the size of average Mars craters.

As it turns out, no one gets up in the morning thinking "What a beautiful day! Should I be a drug addict today, or should I have a picturebook life instead?" So while the initial decision to take drugs is the individual's own responsibility, just cutting them off their food supply and taking away the roof over their heads is not going to solve the problem. Not for the individual, and not for society (that will then have to deal with a homeless drug addict, probably turning to crime to fuel their addiction).

This "ostrich approach" to social policy is another baffling occurence I have observed in the U.S. The solution to "too many homeless people" is a "no loitering" sign. Too much gang activity? Enlarge the prisons. Teenage pregnancies? Pretend young people are asexual until their wedding day, when they flip on that switch.

I marvel at how people can seriously believe that societal issues will go away if only they close their eyes hard enough. I have a hard time deciding if this is just mind-boggling naïveté or malevolent ignorance, or perhaps something in between.

But much like the ostrich, humans must eventually concede that reality catches up with them, no matter how hard they try to ignore it.

Hope

On the upside, there's some room for hope. Organizations like ACLU fight hard to keep basic civil rights from being eroded in the name of simplistic populism and dense dive-bar rhethoric. And an ever-increasing number of Americans seem to agree that dog-eat-dog is not the basic fabric that their society should be built out of.

Here's hoping that conviction catches on.

I'm blogging about once a week in 2013, on various topics. This is my fifth post of the year.

Can We Learn From the User Experience of Cruise Controls?

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Let me preface this by saying: While I have some education in the field, and I create user experiences in software on a daily basis, I am not a User Experience professional. So take this with a grain of salt, and feel free to comment on this and point out where I err.

Sore Thumbs

It lies perhaps in the nature of user experiences that good ones are easy to miss (as they're virtually effortless) and bad ones stick out like a sore thumb until eventually the constant friction adapts the user to the tool (and not vice versa).

An odd mixture of good and bad UX seems to be the world of cars. While car manufacturers take design very seriously, some seemingly innocuous design choices can greatly affect your safe (and sane) driving. One of my pet peeves is the cruise control.

Exhibit 1: Basic safety

Let's take a look at some very recent cruise control designs, like this one:

Four flat buttons. There's a little bar in between so you find them blindly, but no indication what each button means. Until you remember (so, perhaps: never), you have to look down to press exactly the right button at the right time. If you hit the wrong one (resume instead of set!), your car might speed up madly instead of holding the current speed. Or you'll have to slam your breaks because you failed to find the cancel button quickly enough.

This is just all around bad and potentially dangerous UI design.

Exhibit 2: False Friends

Second example:

This is a lot better (safer, anyway) by making the different switches all feel different. Once you figure out which one is the on/off switch, accelerate/decelerate (or resume/set) and cancel are easy to distinguish. You're probably not going to rear-end someone while trying to figure out where the cancel button is.

Yet, common inteaction models still require a lot of effort. Imagine:

You're on the freeway, speeding up to the speed limit. You turn on the cruise control, and hit set. Now, a truck passes another in front of you. You hit cancel, hold your lower speed and once the truck has passed, you want to go back to your previous speed. So you try to remember which one was the resume button (Up or down? Let's look, just to be sure). Finally, you press resume.

Notice something?

Unlike accelerate/decelerate, the functions set and resume are actually not complementary. Yet, they are frequently mapped to the same buttons. Check your own car, chances are yours has it too.

Exhibit 3: What belongs together*

From the scenario above, we actually have these 4 groups:

on / off
set
cancel / resume
accelerate / decelerate

Arguably the most important are cancel and resume, because you want to ensure that the user hits cancel when they need to, and resume (only) when they want to, and not accidentally.

Set is necessary, of course, and accelerate/decelerate are icing on the cake.

The first ever design I have seen following these principles is actually this one, from a 2013 model year:

This design does a lot of things right: on/off is small but easy to find in the middle of the rocker button. Both up and down are set, colocated with accelerate/decelerate (+ or -, doesn't matter to the driver when first setting the speed), and cancel / resume are actually a huge "trigger"-style button underneath.

These small changes go a long way: The panel can be used blindly with little chance for mistakes, and it reduces the amount of traveling your fingers have to do to perform related actions.

Four decades and counting

The modern cruise control was introduced about four decades back, and still, in all those years no "best practices" user interface has been established yet. In fact, even in 2013, manufacturers still seem to blindly copy previous designs, no matter how bad an idea they may be.

Keep that in mind when you build things (be it cars, space ships or software). Just because something has been around for a long time, it is probably not perfect yet (in fact, far from it). Never stop challenging the way it has previously been built. Never stop improving.

Update, Feb. 5: Martin pointed out that "res" stands for "resume", not "reset", so I changed the phrasing. Sorry for the confusion.

I'm blogging about once a week in 2013, on various topics. This is my post for week 5 of 2013. (My intent readers may have noticed I missed week 4: I know, I owe you one.)

Hey, at least it's rent-controlled

Sun, 20 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

Sure, the view is out of this world. But did you know this 102nd story apartment doesn't come with elevator privileges?

Still want to trade places with me?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

I'm blogging about once a week in 2013. This is my entry to the "Trifextra week 51" writing challenge.

The challenge was to write 33 words about one of three photos; I picked the one above.

Image credit: "Empire State Pigeon". CC BY-SA-licensed by ZeroOne on Flickr.

The Promise

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

First, she'd put her children to sleep. Only then she put on her heels, her skimpy outfit, and way too much makeup. She didn't want them to see her like that.

She had only one intention: Make enough to feed the kids tomorrow, maybe even rent. Get it over with, get home safe, and wash off the sweat, the smell of cheap cologne. The shame and disgust.

As she turned the key in the lock, she promised herself: Tomorrow they would leave this town for good.

Just like she did every night.

This is my first entry to the Trifecta writing challenge.

This week's challenge was to write 33 to 333 words about:

INTENTION (noun) 3 a: what one intends to do or bring about
b: the object for which a prayer, mass, or pious act is offered

I am planning on blogging about once a week in 2013. In this context, this is one of my first-ever attempts at writing fiction. Let me know what you think of the story in the comments, but keep that in mind :)

Writing challenge: Accepted

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 00:00:00 -0800

As mentioned earlier, this year, I'd like to get better at writing.

How come?

Since Twitter, SMS and the like have surged in popularity over the last few years, a lot has been written about a shortened attention span, the curious habit of an entire generation to communicate exclusively in abbreviations (cya, lol!) and so on. I am not going to bore you with another version of that. (Ironically, the most ardent critics of 140-character communications seem to publish their pages-long articles in places like the the New York Times, which the average addressee of said criticism is unlikely to have on their reading list, except for, perhaps, the headlines they might be following on Twitter… But I digress.)

So "blogging more" is not my personal crusade against Twitter, but more about improving my writing in what's not my mother tongue and generally becoming more fluent at putting my thoughts into words.

Challenge: Accepted

Therefore, I've challenged myself to write a blog post at least once a week.

I went for once a week (rather than every day) because I don't think I have enough time to make quality posts every day. And I don't think I am doing my readers a favor by turning my blog into a quasi-twitter.

As far as topics go, I should have plenty of tech projects to blog about, like my screenshot app or the Firefox Add-ons I wrote.

Additionally, I might experiment some with writing fiction. I haven't done that a lot before (in English, anyway) and I might well suck at it, but I won't know until I try ;)

So that I won't have to come up with the topics all by myself, there are a number of writing challenges out there I can borrow from. Wordpress.com has The Daily Post, for example. It's targeted at wordpress.com users, but who cares. Some of their challenges are a tad cheesy, but since theirs are daily and mine is weekly, I'll have plenty of topics to choose from.

Another interesting writing challenge seems to be the Trifecta Challenge, that's all about the number 3. Their "weekday challenge", for example, uses a word from Merriam Webster and requires you to write about the third definition of it. Intriguing.

Let's do it!

Luckily for you, gentle reader, there's not much you need to do, except maintain your attention span beyond 140 characters. Luckily by the time you read this, you've proven yourself well!

I hope you like my little experiment and will enjoy my writing. Off we go!