Thoughts Pad

For those of you interested on taking a look (or should it be a “hear”?) on the podcast I had with my friend Leslie Hawthorn[1], here goes the link[2]. Yeah… I was a bit nervous, and I missed some words… Also, we had a problem with skype at the time of the interview, and was kinda hard to come out with it. Anyway, hope you have good time with it!

There is another post at Google Summer of Code blog talking about some stats arround the Brazillian comunity[3] on open source and GSoC.

The last weeks, I’ve been playing on Umit trying to improve a little bit it’s usability and hunting some bugs for the next stable release which is going to happen at the same time Umit is getting integrated with Nmap officially[4]! Level Up for Umit!

Next Monday (28th May), the Summer of Code will officially begin, and keyboards will get really hot all arround the world. It won’t be different with us at Umit, and students didn’t wait until the official beginning of Summer of Code to start hacking their projects! Stay tunned to the Umit Project blog[5] to get some update about their projects. Soon the community will have brand new toys to play arround with Umit.

Cheers!

[1] - http://www.bengoodger.com/hawthornlandings/index.html
[2] - http://googlesummerofcode.blogspot.com/2007/05/umit-project.html
[3] - http://googlesummerofcode.blogspot.com/2007/05/brasilians-in-google-summer-of-code.html
[4] - http://umitproject.blogspot.com/2007/05/umit-as-official-nmap-frontend.html
[5] - http://umitproject.blogspot.com

Yes… That’s the name of that almost best seller book (I said best seller, but I didn’t mean best book), and I used it as this post’s title. Actually, I don’t mean to talk much about that book, neither I mean to read it.

Most part of those who look forward to read that book, do that with the hope of finding the answer of how to have a money tree in the backyard. First, I would like to state that I believe that money doesn’t come without hard work. You can work hard, and make something that give you loads of money after that, but not with the initial hard work stuff. So, even if that book can tell you the secret of making some money grow in a tree (and I tell you in advance that this is not the secret inside that book), I would still believe that there are better ways to earn some money. The best of them (and the only one I know so far) is working. Impressed?

Now, what about earning more money working the same? That’s the secret (not the secret of “The Secret”, but the secret I’m telling you right now by my own)!

Think about it… What if you could do more work in less time? You could work more, and make more money. Too obvious, uh? Sure it is!

Now that you know that, start thinking: are you working fast enough? This is a boolean question, which can return only True or False. So, here is how we should handle the output:

• True - “Yes! I’m working fast. Thanks”: Ok! You’re a fast working guy, but you still should consider stay tunned to stuffs that can make you work even faster.
• False - “No! My work goes like a slug.”: Well… you need to analyze your environment, machine and tools. That’s all about increasing your work rate. And, IMHO, tools are decisive on that matter. You can work in a nice and fresh aired place, with the Mac Pro of your dreams and still wonder how you could make your job faster. That’s true that you can go really fast with a good tool, and awful machines and environment (my case), but think about working in a nice place programming C++ with notepad…

So, “The Secret”, for those of you thinking about earning money with more work, is working more in less time. Find a way to get a better environment, machines and tools.

Finding or creating a better environment, means setting up a place in which you feel confortable, with a good desk, chair, etc.

Well… Finding a good machine is up to you! Try to find one with specific features that are favorable on increasing your WORK speed, not a machine that is favorable on increasing your GAMES speed. First, try to earn money, and than, try to find something to waste your money with (after you have it, please! And pay cash!).

About tools, I can suggest Umit if you’re a network admin trying to find a better way to keep track of your machines in your network (lol ;-), but if you’re a programmer, try Python and related frameworks (Zope, Turbo Gears, Django, etc.). That’s what I’ll try to share on a speech I’ll give at UNIVERSO with some Information System students.