Growing up is optional

My desk at work was moved over the weekend. I now sit above where the main power supply enters the building, which means I have to use an LCD monitor. It’s the same size as my 19″ CRT that I had before. It looks really concave, but I guess that’s just because I’m used to looking at a convex CRT. Colours are different too. I hope that’s just some tweak that needs to be done to fix it.

It’s good thing that Gmail is not a full public release yet. Mostly it’s good, but occaisionally I get 500 errors and the odd javascript alert telling me to try later. I guess that why it’s still a beta.

My career to date has been interesting and broad: I have worked for large business, multinationals, government and small business in domains from retail, manufacturing, law and science. I even worked as a barman and occaisional bouncer. This has given me a great appreciation for the big picture and how things fit together. I could not be here now if I had not had all of the experiences that I had (i.e. I learnt a lot)

Generalisation vs. specialisation was not a conscious debate I had early on. I studied chemistry at university because it was what I was good at. By the time I was into my second year I knew that it was unlikely that I would find a job I like with middle of the pack grades. I enjoyed chemistry but it was not what I wanted to do. After graduating I took a contracting job as a lab tech; what else could I do with a BSc.?

While working as lab tech I relised that what I probably should have done a mechanical engineering degree instead (although now that doesn’t look so attractive).

Fortunately I had a really great boss in one job who changed my outlook. He convinced me to study management. So the next day I enrolled and did a post-grad diploma (over 4 years).

Now I consider myself a “Specialist Generalist”. I take pride in the fact that I know a lot about a lot. This is not to say that I know it all; I a room full of experts there are obvious shortcomings, but again that is an opportunity to learn.

Richard writes about the down side of being a generalist. It’s not all bad.

The way I see it there are 3 main career functions: specialist, generalist and manager. The way the world is managers get paid the most. Generalist the least (that is a huge generalisation of course). However, the generalists are far better placed to become managers than the specialists. (Some would argue that is not a good thing, but do you really want ot be at the bottom of the job food chain?)

Specialisation is OK as long as you have a broad enough view to realise when your speciality is changing (and change with it), otherwise you can become obsolete. They don’t pay generalists big bucks, but long term security can be better.

P.S. I also played rugby. I was a utility everything. I played every forward position except hooker and every back from 2nd five-eighth out. Loose head prop or wing is where I played the most.

I got Gmail. I went to GmailSwap, put in my swap and had an invite in 5 minutes. All it cost me is a bed for a night for a traveller to New Zealand. I though it’s a good way to meet someone else and expose the kids to another culture.

As a web craftsman, how much effort should you put into fixing past mistakes? obviously glaring errors should be fixed, but what about when you learn something new?

I recently had a case study published on SitePoint. I no longer work for the Ministry of Justice where I did the work that is the subject of the study. However, responses from readers have shown me how to fix problems that I was not aware of at the time, and fixes for problems that I could not solve.

Of course, I have learnt from this and will not make the same mistakes. The manager that requested the work is happy, but I still feel oliged to fix them. Is it different because the work was for an internal customer, rather than a paying client? Would I feel different if it had been a frelance job?

New Zealand has a tradition of succeding when others with more resources and money fail. The sports field is a clear example of how our tiny nation takes on the giants of the world and often triumphs.

The #8 wire attitude has become legendary helped by Gallager (electric fence), Hamilton (jet boat) and in more recent times Britton (super bike).

Now in the infromation age there is a new kiwi taking on the world: Ben Goodger is the primary engineer on the Mozilla Firebird browser project. There are plenty of technical reasons to use Firefox. However, most users don’t care about this until they are given a demonstration or have some (security panic) reason to change.

This is an appeal to kiwis out there: cut down the tall poppy. Download and install Firefox, if for no other reason than to support the underdog.

This is not the reason I use firefox: I’m not someone who hates microsoft just because they are a large company. I genuinely believe that firefox is a better product than internet explorer.

A lot of well recognised web designers are currently venting their frustrations about web standards. Not frustrations about the standards themselves, quite the contrary, they’re some of the staunchest supporters of standards, they’re just sick of harping on about them.

Andrei chips in with his great summary with which I concur:

Generally speaking, standards are a means to apply pressure on corporations to behave in a manner that is beneficial to everyone, not just the shareholders of the corporation.

Like the world of ends says:

The Internet isn’t a thing. It’s an agreement.

This is how I like to think of standards: they are an agreement about the way to do things. If we adhere to them we will get along much better

To all of the standards advocates: keep it up, don’t weaken, the message is getting through, you are being heard, you are making a difference

My Maori Land Court case study has bee published on SitePoint