Remember my last post? I advised David and Marielle to buy: “How to win friends and influence people” I think it is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Why? Every chapter I read instantly gave me the feeling I could change the world!

Now to discuss all the contents of this book would probably take me a lot of blog posts (that I don’t feel like writing), so instead I’ll refer people to a page that sums it up pretty well and respond to the points I feel like talking about! BTW David: you might want to advise Oscar to read it as well (and plug my blog in the same sentence :P).

Part 1:

Building Personal Relationships

Never criticize, condemn or complain:
People very rarely criticize themselves, no matter how wrong they may be. Your criticism will not be welcome.

“I will speak ill of no man, and speak all the good I know of everybody.” – Ben Franklin

Criticism puts others on the defensive, hurts self-esteem and builds resentment. Criticism is futile.
Positive Reinforcement works better. Example: Reprimanding soldiers for not wearing their helmets is less effective than asking if the helmets are uncomfortable and reminding them that the hats were designed for their protection.

Ivo: Critising is taking the easy way out, since the person giving it isn’t the person that has to fix what is wrong. Most likely the only reason to critize is just to make the person giving it feel good about making somebody else feel bad.

I notice this when having discussions with my boss A LOT. How does it help me get done what I want if all I do is tell him that his ideas suck? It doesn’t, because it will give him a feeling that I don’t think he will be able to come up with a solution. Instead of simply critisizing somebody you should suggest alternative solutions that would better solve the problem and make it sound like you are convinced that person will do a great job in solving it. Sounds easy doesn’t it? But there’s a catch: you actually have to come up with an alternative solution and it has to BE a solution, else you didn’t help the person change the situation AND you made him feel worse about himself (and you!).

Make the other person feel important.
People yearn to feel important and appreciated.
Continually recognizing someone’s expertise and capabilities will make them feel important. They will want to demonstrate their expertise by possibly helping you.

“I am hearty in my approbation and lavish in my praise.” – Charles Schwab.
Give others clear authority over a part of a larger project and help them understand their tangible contributions. They’ll become more committed to the success of the project. Be sincere and avoid flattery. However, obvious, over-the-top flattery can often win smiles and carry the same favor as if it were sincere.

Ivo: this point conincides with my previous point. If you want to get something done, the worst thing you can do is make the person feel like a complete newbie and that he will never accomplish his task. Instead you should make the person feel important and give them responsibility that suits the task. This will drive the person to make sure he does a great job, because he doesn’t want to let down the faith you have put in him.

This all sounds very momentous and like a lot of blabla, but I’m sure it happened to you multiple times as well. Don’t think of large projects at work, but simple things. You had to get a gift for grandma when you where little and you shouldn’t forget it, because it was “very important”. Or you got to hand over the rings to a wedding couple, you wouldn’t even DARE to forget those!

Smile.
Greet others with enthusiasm and animation. A smile tells others that you like them and are glad to see them.  Smile even when on the phone; the smile will be clear in the tone of your voice.

Ivo: this is the simplest thing you can do: just smile. But it keeps suprising me how effective it is. It is most effective for people that don’t get a lot of affection/positive attention. Good examples of these are secretaries or janitors. Now you might think: off course they don’t get much attention, they aren’t very important! But there always comes a time when you need the help of these kinds of people and then you don’t have any credits with them. Why should they help you?

The easiest way to get this credit is just be kind or smile to these people and give them the feeling they’re worth your attention. Next time you need their help, you’ll be worth theirs!

Part 2:

Establish a Space for ooperation

Avoid arguments: you can only lose.

Most arguments end with each contestant more certain of their opinions and less willing to change them. Even if you win, you hurt the pride of the loser and the loser may resent you for it.

“If you argue, rankle and contradict, you may achieve a victory sometimes; but it will be an empty victory, because you will never get your opponent’s good will.” – Ben Franklin

Ivo: this is more true than it may seem and we all make this mistake until we learn otherwise. There is no use in being right if it results in something negative. If the disagreement is very large, the only way to win the argument is by devaluating the other person’s opinion. However this opinion is deeply entangled with the person’s feelings and vision about the world. If you touch their opinion, you touch them! Thankfully this part of the book has some suggestions on how to tackle this problem.

Respect others’ opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”
People don’t like to admit even to themselves that may be wrong, but when handled gentlely they can overcome that hesitancy.  Telling others they are wrong:  may be considered a putdown to their intelligence.  often pushes them to defend and further embrace their positions. Body language can also communicate “you’re wrong.”
Don’t immediately assume you’re right. Demonstrating your willingness to rationally examine the facts will inspire others to do likewise.

Ivo: first of all never tell people they are wrong, because it translates into: I think you’re dumb and I’m smarter than you! Ironically, the best way to get someone else to admit they’re is leading by example: admit you’re wrong about a certain thing makes it easier for the other person to do likewise. But never, ever hurt somebodies feeling by saying: “you’re wrong!”. (I know, I know, it’s sooo tempting!)

Frame requests in terms of what others find motivating.
Before attempting to drive someone to action, ask yourself, “How do I make this person want to do it?”

“If there is any one secret to success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as your own.” – Henry Ford
Example: Rather than force his young son to go to kindergarten, one man’s family began engaging in kindergarten activities – finger painting, etc. – while excluding the young child. After seeing all the exciting things he would be doing in kindergarten, the child was eager to go.
Example: In the following letter, a freight company details their difficulties, while disregarding the inconvenience their changes might cause their customers. After having the reverse effect from what was intended, a second letter was sent, which spoke in terms of what were the customers’ best interests.

Ivo: if there is one thing you should remember from this part it would be that you never win an argument by using arguments that would persuade you. Why? Because it does exactly what it says: it only persuades you! If you want to make someone do something, you have to wrap it up in gift paper and dip it in honey. Think hard how it is in THEIR best interest to do that thing. Like with a lot of these points: you can’t fake it. You can only make something sound interesting if you know what that person likes and the only way to find that it is by showing genuine interest (which is another point in the book).

Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.
People are more committed to their own ideas.  Make suggestions and let others come to the desired conclusions. It may be in your best interest not to claim any credit.

Ivo: You convince people by appealing to their interests, but even more effective is making the other person feel like they came up with your suggestions. The downside (for some people) is that they don’t get credit for their ideas, but if you have more than enough ideas, it never hurts to let other people take the credit. Especially if it helps you get things done!

Part 3:

Leadership: Giving Criticism & Driving Improvement

Begin with praise and honest appreciation.
It is easier to take criticism after we’ve heard some praise.  Look for things done well before calling attention to failings. Follow up sincere praise with an “and” rather than a “but” before delivering criticism. Otherwise, your praise may seem contrived and artificial.
Example: Instead of, “We’re proud of your grades son, but if you had tried better in algebra they would be a lot better” to “We’re proud of your grades son, and if you keep it up you’re algebra grades will be even better next semester.”

Ivo: like with most critism, being negative never helps. Instead, if you want somebody to improve: praise the traits you approve off and people will focus on getting more praise. The hardest part about this, is that you don’t (always) get immediate results.

Take as an example you want to teach your cousin to throw a baseball. It’s hard to spot anything good AT ALL the first times (like you did it any better back then) and it becomes tempting to tell them what they are doing wrong. While they will probably think you’re right about them doing it wrong, it often also decreases their willingness to try otherwise, because you just made them afraid of faillure. Instead if you focus on what they did right, they will try and do it right again and again and again.

I will finish this post with a short step-by-step guide:

1. Be Sincere. Don’t promise things you can’t do or deliver.
2. Know preciesly what it is you want the other person to do.
3. Be Empathetic. Ask yourself what others want.
4. Focus on any benifits the other person will receive. Forget about the benefits to yourself.
5. Explain how those benefits match the other person’s wants.
6. Frame requests to communicate that the other person will personally benefit.

Example: “John, clean the stock room now.” Vs “John, if we clean the stock room now we won’t have to deal with it later.”

With many thanks to notes of intelligence for making this awesome wrap up!

Credits to all the quotes go to them!

So I finally got myself to writing something again! Now I don’t really have a reason for not posting anything the past few weeks. I guess it’s because I can only spend my time once and I tend to spend it on other things.

Now a typical day for me consist of getting up at 6 AM to do some sports, getting to work at 7:30 AM while staying there till about 5:45 PM. By that time I probably have spend nearly half day reading, writing and doing some more reading (heey! I could have had a worse job)! This makes writing/reading some more when I finally am at home not the most interesting thing to waste my time on. Besides my girlfriend also requires (vast) amounts of attention, resulting in long-lasting Skype calls and some mindless Stumblingupon pour moi…

All in all this may not sound like the most interesting way to spend my day, but I actually read a lot of things that I would love to share with other people. I am currently reading books on software program management, which rub in the fact that my superiors NEVER EVER read those kind of books. I also have read some books about user interface design, that makes me think nobody at my work ever saw an actual user USE the software… Between reading these kinds of books I also waste some of my time reading up on the latest trends in computer hardware/software, making me think some people at my work don’t even know what their computer is all capable off!

At the moment I just rant about these things to the only colleague that has the misfortune to share an office with me, but perhaps it would be more useful to write some of these things down on my notebook and then reflect on these things when I get home! That might just give me something to talk about WITHOUT having to look everything up again…

Before I quit I will give my only two readers: David and Marielle (P) a take home message: run to the stores and buy “How to win friends and influence people“. Now I know the title sounds like the worst marketing book EVER, but it’s one of the best books I have read and it really makes you feel like wanting to change the world!

(Perhaps I’ll write a blog post about that book as well )

Now I like fooling around with technical toys AKA geeky gadgets

However this fooling around has a serious side-effect: killing your hardware!

Last week, for instance, I tried to “upgrade” my good ol’ Qtek 9000
But after some heavy experimenting (thanks to the XDA forums ) I thought I managed to “brick” it!
After some searching it turned out Windows Vista was the root of all evil and thank the light when I tried it at home I managed to properly get Windows Mobile 6.1 up and running. Only to discover that my Wireless Lan didn’t work, my SD-cards couldn’t be found and don’t even get me started on Active Sync. Guess I’ll have to keep trying (and read the entire post beforehand this time…)!

Some other pieces of hardware that have a hard time being in my abusive hands are my two (older) laptops. One is getting as stone-age as Windows 3.1 even though it does have a 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4 processor, the newer being one of the early Core Duo models nothing special. So what do I do to these poor little pieces of plastic and silicon? Installing Linux, the de facto geek piece of software! Now Ubuntu is probably the most n00b friendly version the Linux community could come up with and it works pretty well. You can run it off a CD without installing a single thing, which is quite handy if you happen to have deleted your boot.ini file from your Windows installation because it’s date of creation (prehistory) looked weird. But if you do decide to install it as your main OS you learn something about this “free” piece of software.

Namely Linux doesn’t cost you a single dollar or euro, but a shitload of time! So much in fact that simply buying Windows which though it runs mainly on malware/spyware also happens to have the largest support in software. Now don’t get me wrong the Ubuntu community is very good at helping you and their intentions are all well. But if you don’t have any basic knowledge about using a command line, don’t even dare to do more with it than browsing your favorite pr0n sites! Since a: you probably don’t know how to make the software do what you want it to do and b: you don’t have any clue if what you did was exactly what you wanted it to do! Now off course Windows also does a lot of things behind your back which you don’t know of, but at least most of the time it’s as simple as clicking on the .exe file (installer) and follow the steps. Instead of typing a arbitrary sentence like: sudo apt-get install package and then instead of a wizard you get a command line throwing commands at you that a spell checker wouldn’t approve of! Off course after some days of experimenting you do get the hang of it, but if they expect people to migrate from Windows to Linux they better start thinking about making GUI solutions for these things else NOBODY is going to use it! I should mention that I downloaded the latest version of Ubuntu last week and this time it even managed to install my old school WPC54G wifi card (which was the cause of all my problems a year ago). But I don’t expect it to run World of Warcraft for me, even though I managed to get it running through Wine ones with 0.5 fps…

Another fun experiment is trying to install OSX86, because since Apple shifted to Intel’s x86 processors it is possible for humble PC users to experience the Mac experience. Sadly for me, I never managed to get it to properly finish the installing since my hard drives weren’t formatted in the correct (Linux kind of) format. Which is probably another reason people won’t migrate to Linux, since it’s not as easy as it sounds to format them back if you want to go back to Windows (why would you I hear you think). Off course I was doing something wrong, but then again I wouldn’t call Linux programmers usability experts. This formatting problem actually caused me to wipe my external hard drive ones, because it had the same size as the notebook’s hard drives, but those weren’t recognized since they weren’t formatted as FAT32 or NTFS… Say bye bye to all my Venice pictures

Now why all this fuss? First of all I was preparing my old laptop for my little cousins (4 and 6 years old). I wanted to try out Windows 7 for them (looking sooo good), but this unfortunately didn’t recognize my ethernet/network controllers so no internet == bye bye Windows 7. Ubuntu solved these problems without too much hazzle. So my cousins will probably be the first kids in their school to own their own Ubuntu notebook! But I also just got a new laptop from my boss to replace my desktop. Now in my terms probably NO laptop can replace a desktop since it’s always overpriced for in terms of dollars/performance, but I guess it solves the problem of needing two desktops. But be serious? 2 Gb RAM and a 110 Gb 5400 rpm hard drive? Do I look like a grandma? I always have Firefox opened with a gazillion tabs opened which eats RAM like a maniac and then I’m not even talking about the memory hungriness of Vista (can’t wait till Windows 7!!!). Nor the fact that Windows Vista costs like 10 Gb of drive space, so no random installing of applications for me anymore…

Let’s pray those things can be updated! 2 more Gb, 250 additional drive space, an external S-ATA drive, a docking station, … Yes I think I can keep myself busy with these kinds of things. The funny thing is I haven’t even gotten to talking about the Larrabee or the new i7 cores from Intel which make me drool after each review/article I read!

I guess it’s just time till I update my home pc! Well I’ll just make that the topic of my next post, so stay tuned!

The past year I wasted even more time on my “nerd hobby” than I was expected to spend on my graduate study for an ENTIRE year.

Which equates into more than 1600 hours or 66 days… The fun thing is I managed to graduate without too much delay (and that was more due to reasons explained in my previous post), but looking back in hindsight: HOLY MOTHER OF JEZUS!!! That’s a shitpile of time wasted on a couple of pixels! Off course the name of this godforsaken time sink is World of Warcraft, the largest MMORPG till date.

As probably more people out there, I started WoW when Burning Crusade was already running for a couple of months, meaning you lag behind for a LONG time and have no idea what stats, specs, addons, raiding, tier sets and professions are. But not long after I left my pathetic first guild, I went to a larger, more matured guild which actually also helped my playing skills mature.  Somewhere down the line I became an Officer, helping to smooth our raids and manage some of the guilds leading. But I somewhat later dropped the task, because I didn’t like the bitching that went about other people’s backs. Plus, I didn’t agree with some of the guild leaders, which always tend to cause trouble! However, I got all my virtual friends into the guild so I stayed around simply for the social factor. Another factor was the lack of other guilds on the server that managed to progress through Black Temple without raiding more than 2/3 nights a week!

But then on Nov 14th two things happened:

1. I moved to Belgium to start working (at RSscan International)
2. Wrath of the Lich King FINALLY launched

The first point meant I had to get an appartment in Geel and drive back to Holland to see my girlfriend every weekend. Also the working life meaned getting up in time and actually being able to DO something at work. The second point meant I had to level my character to level 80, spend 2-3 nights raiding each week to clear Naxx-25 and gear up and farm more gold for all the expensive hobbies, like leveling a Death Knight.

Somewhere in March I got a) fed up with guild leaders bitching EVERY SINGLE RAID and b) the great idea to start sporting again. Result: I just quite WoW, the greatest addiction for youthly people (probably even more addictive than smoking). Why? Well to start sporting again I decided to get up at 6 AM every day and either go running or go swimming. Doing that in the evening would mean I had to wait with it until 1-2 hours after dinner, so then it’s dark again. And if it’s dark, HELL, what’s the difference with running in the early mornings then?!? But getting up at 6 AM also means you can’t go to bed at 12 PM and think you can easily get your ass out of bed… Since our raids used to last from 8 till 12 PM, I figured: no more WoW.

By now, it’s been over a month since I last played WoW. I happened to log on this evening to check out if everything was still working and with the launch of patch 3.1, bringing us Ulduar things start to itch again. But I think I’m better off without it and there are more games out there! I recently bought Guitar Hero World Tour and already finished the drumming campaign on easy and can’t wait to see if I can play songs on Expert!

Only time will tell, but I hope I never get such a bad addiction anymore…

PS: you NEVER, I repeat NEVER get a girlfriend if your first words are: I like video games… The only worst thing you could say is that you like Star Trek or guys!

Recently I commited what I believe to be the deadliest sin of blogging: not writing any posts!

Now I have been hit by some form of flue as a present from my lovely girlfriend, Marielle, but still this would have given me an excellent opportunity to write something. Originally I planned to edit my previous post about software usability, to make it more “constructive”. But I happen to have the obnoxious habit of not wanting to finish something. Give me something new, exciting to do and I’ll work on it non-stop until I get to the point where I think I have figured out something that resembles the big picture and wander off to the next new and exciting thing! Not a very useful trade if you try to write stuff that have to be understandable for people who haven’t bothered to read all the resources I went through.

This actually gave me a lot of trouble during my graduate study, which in the end is mostly about writing excellent articles. Writing an excellent draft IS NOWHERE near the same as an excellent article… And while I think I can write fairly good and interesting drafts, I have a really hard time finishing stuff to make it into a finished product.

I currently experience this at my work as well, when I have to write down a list of recommendations for the new software we’re working on. I can create a very useful link filled with lots and lots of facts, but putting myself to describing all the details to make them understandable… God, do these people have any idea how much info I went through to find this? Writing a summary for all that knowledge would be like writing a frigging Wikipedia!

So in a vain effort to try and get some more practise writing more polished stuff I started this blog. But again, bad habits sneak up on me instantaneously! However, there is still hope:  I managed to write a text right now that at least tells some story Hopefully I can keep this up and make sure I write more comprehensive posts from now on!

If there is anything you want me to write and share my opinion about: leave a comment!

For my work at RSscan I’ve been researching software usability and it’s starting to get rather dazzling. So I compiled a list of all these onliners / lists I’ve come across. Now obviously this list lacks all context, but I think a lot of these points apply to nearly every kind of software and most often don’t need any context.

I’m going to leave it here like it is for now, but I’ll go and edit it later when I can find the resources again and perhaps add some thoughts/comments to it!

Welcome to my Reality Check!

My name is Ivo Flipse and this blog is my blog which will be dedicated to anything I find interesting…

I was inspired to start writing this blog by two people, who’s blogs have been an example for me: David Brussee and Joel Spolsky.

David and I go way back when we used to chat all day long on Lycos Chat and somehow became friends while trying to beat the type-the-most-words-per-day-meters and somehow became friends. Joel on the other hand is a complete stranger, but has such a interesting way of writing and I feel that his blog has helped me a lot during my work lately. But both David and Joel also have other web-related projects which I’m practically subscribed to being: David on Air! and Stackoverflow (which is cooperation with Jeff Atwood)

Hopefully I can make this blog into some kind of mix of all these inspirations, so talking about stuff I think I should share my opinion about! Which most likely will be tech, gaming, sports, politics or whatever-related…, but most of all it will be my opinion! I plan to make sure I write at least one blog post per week, but don’t pin me down on that…

Well David, just so you know I didn’t categorize this page since I had no idea if I could get that Friend Connect working.

But I just spend half an hour downloading loads and loads of plugins, gonna try some of them out right now. Though most of them will mostly change how the blog editor works (read: help my lazy ass make something out of it).

This page actually includes the html code for friend connect but off course I have no idea where to actually implement it, luckily I found a plugin for it!

Edit: After trying to implement a lot of things last Saturday I had the database crashing on me. Resulting in some loss of data, but no worries it were only minor things. Gonna try and do some more work tonight!