Mark Roseman's Blog

Moving Prep...

As plans start to solidify... with our house here in Guelph not having sold yet, we're probably going to leave it as is (staged) with most of our stuff here, rent a furnished place in Edmonton for a while, and just ship out some essentials for the time being. When the house here sells, we can then do the big move of all our stuff out there (most of the furniture into storage). Then take our time to find something more permanent... with the market the way it is, no hurry.

Plans are to get us both out there likely by mid-April, so just a few things to do in the meantime. :-)

I do miss the days when moving didn't mean much more than packing up a few suitcases or throwing some things in the back of a car...

Real Estate Ramblings.

We've had our house up for sale for a bit over a month now. Given the time of year and price point, a decent number of showings, and all to serious buyers... about the number we expected so far, which is still small enough that we aren't constantly having to keep the house sparkling. Everyone seems to really like the house, but the objections have been either it's a bit too big, or they "need" a more typical suburban-style backyard (no surprise).

Talking to our realtor and doing some hunting around, the Guelph market seems to be doing not bad overall, though most activity in the lower-middle end, very little in the higher end. Inventory is actually fairly low, and actually very tight at the high end. Given that, and the fact that Guelph prices didn't really shoot up like most places, prices have been fairly strong, though a bit weaker in the new (overbuilt?) south end subdivisions. We'll see how things continue as we enter the spring market, what little there will likely be of one this year.

Quite the contrast compared to Edmonton, which I've been watching for a while. Inventory looks quite high, especially in the high end where things are moving very very slowly. Combine that with the huge price run up they had over the last few years, and prices are nose-diving. And you keep seeing the same houses getting listed, expiring, relisted, etc. One I've noticed which last year came on at $900k, later expired and came on again after a while at $800k, dropped to $775k, expired, and just came back on this week at $675k. And it's a not bad house in a nice location.

We've actually been more seriously considering a larger downtown condo; not that either of us will work downtown (well, I'll work where ever I live) but for the convenience. Edmonton's downtown has improved a lot since we last lived there, and they've attracted a lot more professionals to live there, with tons of new condo buildings, factory to loft conversions, etc.

But there's still a few big new buildings started in the boom which are just going to be opening up very soon, so combining that with the downturn there... yikes! Needless to say, I suspect the price drops will continue... I'm pretty sure we'll end up renting for a while when we move out there. No shortage of people who can't sell their places who have them up for rent.

In other news...

• Aspire 1.0 was officially launched today [unifiq.com]
• A ProjectForum customer posted a great case study [geometrica.com] about using PF to implement an ISO9001-compliant quality system

Of lesser note, Guelph's Flour Barrel started carrying Salt Spring Coffee Co. products, and I have to say their Metta Espresso blend [saltspringcoffee.com] is fantastic. Also newly discovered, a new gluten-free, wheat-free, everything-else-free (i.e. we can eat them) snack that is actually really good, the entertainingly but accurately named Sticks & Twigs [marysgonecrackers.com].

Autofocus Time Management System.

From Jim Estill's blog, I was introduced to Mark Forster's Autofocus, a new task management system.

It's a fairly simple system as these things go (thank goodness), so there's not quite as much need to drink magic Kool-aid as, say, GTD. While at a superficial level it looks like just an ever-growing todo list in a notebook, and without explicit prioritization at that(!), the again fairly simple approach to "processing" that todo list in Autofocus takes full advantage of some interesting but subtle cognitive and behavioral quirks.

For example, strictly rational people will freak at the idea of "pick an item that jumps out at you" as the next action. But I can't tell you how many times I knew what the most logical thing I should do next was, but I "didn't feel like it", or otherwise got stuck and procrastinated. Acknowledging the more intuitive aspect makes it more likely you'll get on with something rather than web surfing.

As another example, processing is done on the basis of notebook pages. By virtue of how pages are created (i.e. you just keep adding new items to the end of the last page), the items on any page are more than likely unrelated to some degree, with the actual page boundary being essentially arbitrary. So it seems counter-intuitive to use that as a unit to process. But the fact that there is a mix of things makes it more likely you'll find one that you would want to work on.

The idea that you just have to work on something to cross it off, but not necessarily complete it (in that case, write it down again at the end of your notebook) again helps minimize the dread you may be facing at starting a task. And the page-oriented order that items are reviewed, how to go back and forth between pages, what's needed before items can be "dismissed", etc. all go a long way towards ensuring you do get the important things done, not the least bit because of the guilt that most people would associate with not finding a single thing on a page to do. :-)

I'd echo Jim's impression that it seems to be promising in terms of getting over procrastination and in particular getting "stuck". I think I'll give it a shot for a few days and see how it goes.

But we don't have the money for...

If nothing else, the unprecedented worldwide financial bailout will hopefully put to rest that old government standby of "but we don't have the money for...", usually followed by something like poverty relief, international aid, preventative health, environmental protection, etc. Nobody believed the no money line before anyway, but now it will be a bit harder for politicians to use that excuse. Or now it will be, "with what we spent on the bailout, now we really don't have the money for...".

I was happy to see this article about Dr. Marmot who is quite actively going around and calling bullshit on those who've used "no money" as an excuse for "we don't want to spend it on that".

Essential technologies.

Attention all product marketing gurus! Hot off the Onion News Network, this video report captures the true essence of modern technology products today. Thanks Brydon.

Desktop GUI programming survey.

Alex Fenton just released the results of a GUI library survey in the Ruby community that I found very informative. It does provide a good snapshot of how different tools are used and perceived in that community, as well as various obstacles and issues developers perceive in general.

House up for sale.

After a freezing cold trip to Edmonton, we come back here to more freezing cold. Can't imagine why I'm thinking the Caribbean would be a nice place to live...

Anyway, we put our house up for sale with our realtor this week (info here), and so begins the struggle of trying to keep it clean for a while...

Desktop/mobile GUI options expand.

The news that QT, purchased by Nokia last summer, will now be available under the LGPL license is good news for developers on mobile and desktop platforms.

While nobody was really restricted from using it before, the choice between using the GPL version (give up your own code) or commercial (with fairly high licensing costs) did limit the audience somewhat. This move should help resolve that, in effect taking away one of the most significant obstacles to adoption.

This is attracting the most attention from the Linux hordes (where QT has long competed with KDE as the toolkit of choice), but I think the real value will be for users on other platforms (especially mobile), particularly as Nokia's resource are used to improve it.

It'll be interesting to see how this evolves, and what sort of secondary effects it creates.

How To for Entrepreneurs

Anyone interested in starting a business, especially in today's climate, could do a lot worse than to check out this page about John Buckman's LeWeb talk. Nice, practical advice to get your head out of the clouds and put first things first.