Mark Freedman’s Blog

Archive for the ‘Review’ Category

I don’t normally write general posts referring to other blogs, but for a while I’ve wanted to give a shout out to Penelope Trunk over at her Brazen Careerist blog.

Anyone who’s familiar with her writing is likely aware of how strongly people react to her posts (mostly negative, it seems, especially at her former Yahoo! Finance column, from which she was recently fired). She definitely brings out the vocal worst in certain (mainly conservative) readers, which is a shame. She appears to be wildly (un?)popular, because no matter how many people deride her posts, they’ll continue to read her.

I believe it’s because, despite what they say, she is hitting a chord of truth with them — even though they publicly claim to completely disagree with her. I think a lot of people are afraid to admit that they often agree with her, but it’s the “popular” opinion to disagree with her. Some of the comments are so downright mean, it’s almost as if they’re in complete denial of their true feelings. You’ll see a good sample of such comments from that recently fired article.

This may be the most controversial post I’ve written to date, simply because I’m here to publicly state that I do agree with most of what she writes. Not everything, but enough to make it worth my while to read all of her posts. There are some things she writes about or refers to that make me completely blush, but it’s part of what makes her so refreshing.

She has a hell of a lot of guts to put herself out there on a limb and state exactly what she believes about any topic, and she doesn’t seem to give a damn what people think. In a way, I live vicariously through her.

I often wonder how much of her attitude stems from her traumatic personal 9/11 experience, but I’m willing to bet it put her over the top for her “critics be damned” attitude. Many of us have some sort of connection to that day (I worked in those buildings for a couple of years in the 80’s, so I related to it at that level, although I knew no victims personally). But her experience was extremely intense.

I’m currently reading her book, also named Brazen Careerist, which of course, like the rest of her writing, is totally brazen. I definitely recommend it, despite the mixed (unsurprisingly) reviews it’s received. Overall, though, it’s averaged 4 stars.

If you want a good sample of a post that may outrage you (and make you think), check out her article about workplace practices that should be eliminated.

I recently finished reading Mark Hurst’s new book, Bit Literacy, and I definitely recommend it. It’s a quick read, but it’s one of those books you should revisit time and again. Seth Godin of The Dip fame (also highly recommended) calls this “…The Elements of Style for the digital age,” and that may be true, but it would need to be regularly updated to retain that label. The digital world is moving way too quickly to expect this printing to remain fresh.

Although I agree with most of Mark’s points and suggestions, I do differ with him on a few topics, one being a couple of details about his method for naming files. Although I don’t want to go into too much detail about his recommendations (he deserves the book sale), I do want to discuss my methodology a bit here.

One of the naming conventions he recommends includes placing the date into the file name of date-sensitive files, in the format mmyy, and he explains that it’s useful for sorting files by date, but that year isn’t important because projects usually don’t last more than a year (project files are also grouped together based on naming convention). I think he missed an important point here. A large percentage of projects I’ve ever worked on have crossed a year boundary. It’s only 2 (or 4) extra characters, and it would guarantee that the files remain sorted by date no matter when the project started.

I prefer using the century also, because I have relevant projects that started last century, but that’s not so important. I am adopting the rest of his recommendation, so a typical file for me may be mf-20070822-minutes.txt. Actually, as I mention in my article on live music MP3 files, I find reading the date easier using hyphens between the date parts (mf-2007-08-22-minutes.txt), but as Mark says, it doesn’t really matter as long as you’re consistent.

Bit Literacy: highly recommended.

I know that the ultra mobile PC has not yet found its niche, but I have the Samsung Q1 Ultra, and so far I’m loving it. It’s far from perfect, I admit: the keypad leaves a lot to be desired, and I wish the keypad was backlit, and it’s no speed demon, but it’s extremely convenient.

I carry this with me just about everywhere. It lets me sneak out for some focused study time at the bookstore or Starbucks, and it’s great for late night reading in bed. The sound is decent, and video is crisp (especially for dnrTV). And it’s basically a tablet PC. I’m constantly amazed at the accuracy of Ink recognition, and do most of that with my fingernail. But I would not use it for any heavy typing (like posting on the blog) or coding, unless I hook in a real keyboard and monitor. But I still have my trusty Sony TR3A for that.

Why, you may ask, do I need an UMPC when I have such a tiny laptop? Well, I find it a lot more comfortable to use in bed and at a small coffee shop table when all I want to do is read or watch videos.

And it’s cute and cool. There. I said it.

So I think there really is a niche for UMPCs. But they really need performance improvement if they’ll ever truly catch on.