Idealizing. Coding. Loving it!

This is part of my recommended strategy to study for the Sun Certified Programmer for Java 2 Platform [1] (an exam that is ridiculously detailed about the Java language) that I posted on javaranch.com right after I passed mine back in 2001. It is a guideline that I would apply if studying for any other certification, I think it would work well.

Select two good books on the subject [2]. First read the books, learn the material (by coding), and do the exercises or samples in the books. Have a notepad and take notes of the topics and you don't know in a way that you can study them (no short notes) from you notes. I recommend going through one book, then take some mock exam, then pick up the other book and focus on the areas where the first mock exam tells you are week at. At this point in the process, I had discarded my first notes and started a new notepad, this time with less topics that needed my attention. After you're done with the second book, start taking more mock exams. At this point you should have a very good idea of your week points. So get cue cards (3x5) and write what you don't know by topics with a full explanation, including examples, one for each topic. For example, for my Java exam I had: methods, inner classes, variables, one for each i/o class, one for each layout manager, etc. Go through these EVERY DAY at least once. If you think you'll end up with more cue cards then you're able to read in one day, it's a sign that you should still be focusing on studying the books and on coding instead of doing the cards or taking mock exams. Once you're working with the cue cards and doing mock exams, write on new cue cards those questions that you get wrong on the mock, even (and specially) if they are the ones you know that you know. You might end up with cards of repeated topics, but that is beautiful because you'll end up reading the topics you're having trouble with twice at least. When you start getting those right you can take them out of the stack. Save the best mock exams for the last days before the exam. Being able to immerse myself in the mock exams and the notes (not watching tv, not doing anything else) for the last 2 days before the real exam was crucial.

Also, try and participate in forum discussions. If there are questions you don't want to answer that's fine. If there are questions you can't answer, that's not a good sign. Searching for the answer and answering questions that you don't know are a good way of engraving that in your head.

Good luck!

[1] Someone at JavaRanch gave a really good tip on studying for layout managers and i/o: read the J2SE documentation. You need to know the classes hierarchy and the methods that they inherit and create. When you're studying this topic and the book presents you a class, have the documentation near and go through the entire class.

[2] I know being the cool geek that I am I'm not supposed to, but I'm a huge fan of books. It's happened more times than I care to keep track that I tried to learn something in depth online, spent a lot of time searching and wading through the good and the bad, and in the end ended up with holes in the whole picture. Good books take a pass on the entire subject, this way you at the least know all what there is to learn. You can always go online and further your understanding on any particular subject.

It took me long enough to do a write up on Ignite Boston 3, so O'Reilly beat me to it and did a great rundown.

This picture of me does not do me justice, as my better profile is the other side... :) It is Mr. @techpickles I'm talking to over there.

Here my own rundown of what made a big impression:

• Coolest Presentation: Interface Design Tenets for Beautiful Design, by Juhan Sonin.
• Coolest company presented (by founder Lucy Mendel) : Buy It Like You Mean It
• DIY Biology was the nerdiest/collest combo.
• Jonathan Zdziarski's talk about the iPhone security threat was scary. Everybody who owns an iPhone should read about it. It certainly has changed my behavior.

It was a great pleasure to meet some developers from MITRE. Nice to meet you guys!

There are few things that I subscribe to in terms of newsletters. But one thing I look forward to reading in my work email inbox every day is the pearl of wisdom the people at Trizzle send me simply from the goodness of their heart. I heart Trizzle. Their motto is:

"Trizle helps your business rock the world."

I don't know what they do for their clients, but their business tips totally rock my world.

Below is one of their posts that I formated to give some personal emphasis and also to fit into a one page Word document so I could print and hang up on my cube (yes, people, I have a cube...).

Enjoy!

Why Your Future Sucks

Jacko:

1. "In ten years, I will exercise, eat healthy, and live life to the fullest."

2. "But today, I will lounge on the couch, eat chili fries, and live like there are a million tomorrows!"

Lebron:

1. "Next year, I will build the most ridiculous startup the world has ever seen!"

2. "But today, I will read message boards!"

Dikembe:

1. "Tomorrow, I will start on my project."

2."But today, I will relax!"

How We Human People Suck

We psychologically overrate our futures.

Thinking tomorrow will bring us brighter days, we consistently sacrifice our today/now/this-minute time to the freakish wolves.

1. "Tomorrow will be better!"

2. "Oh, don't mind how I suck now!"

3. "Because, I will be smiling tomorrow!"

That's why we:

put things on credit card

take out freakish loans

put off exercise

eat junk food

avoid healthy conflicts

lease expensive cars

procrastinate on our projects

Thinking our futures will be oh-so super-duper-riffic-o, we use our today/now/this-minute-timewastefullydestroying that very future.

BOO!

Let's Reframe Our Perspectives

Try this:

1. Stop thinking 'in the future.'

2. Whatever you do for the rest of your life depends on howyouspendtoday/this-minute/this-second.

3. Done.

If you ever start with a sentence with,

"In the future, I will..."

...do this:

1.Look in the mirror.

2.Slap the @#$% out of yourself.

Then tell yourself:

1. "I will most-likely-probably-like-99% never do anything 'in the future'."

2. "If I want something in the future, I make progress -- even if it's teeny-tiny-tiny progress -- toward that future today."

I just did a ton of reading about virtual goods. I made quite a leap in understanding about this space, something that now is obvious I had little of. When I first thought of virtual goods, I would think of little virtual thingies people exchanged on Facebook. Through the reading I did, I learned that a whole economy could be augmented by utilizing this medium, and my little mind thinks that only the sky is the limit for coming up with creative ideas to enable people and businesses to further their interests in this new arena. This is the type of problem space that is really interesting to develop technical solutions for, because it is new and interesting, and so you get not only to discover interesting problems but also contribute with creative ideas for better technical solutions.

Backing up a little, I think little virtual thingies are silly. And I think it is okay to think so. Although I have never paid for one, I don't, however, dis-merit them, because it is there for anyone to see that a lot of people do. Where I get really excited about is when we start talking branding though. I do have a business mentality and I love to think about solutions that more directly help businesses succeed (in reaching customers, increasing roi, etc). On a personal level, I totally get the appeal for virtual goods like avatar accessories. I loooove Second Life, so much so that I am never there. Whenever I get in I don't care about getting out, and because I also have many Real Life interests and commitments and it... just not good. Anyway, I totally get it because if I had more time (or less outside commitments, I don't know) I would want to... really, have an empire, nothing short of it. I'm talking, buying land, building a business, etc, and, of course, having the coolest looking avatar. I would painlessly pay for it. Although I also get excited about doing my own technical development but, like I said, I can't really go there... Anyway, another thing that gets me really excited about this business is the gift giving part of it. And this brings me back to the little virtual thingies, I know, but it is thatnowI see and understand a purpose that I didn't see before. What appeals to me the most in this aspect is that I am sick and tired ofstuff: I don't want to give them, and I don't want to receive them. Really, in x-mas and b-days about 50% of gifts are good ones, but the other 50% is such a burden that it is just not worth it. I started trying to give people certificate for services (like massages from local businesses), but they don't have/make time to go! Still, we do want to give. And I think virtual gifts are an excellent alternative. Obviously, they are constrained to only being relevant to people who actively participate in virtual spaces (and none of my family is there and only few of my friends are). But it is something to look forward to.

Up front disclosure: I am a software developer at Eluma.

Everywhere I go I talk about the Eluma Desktop, and explaining all that it can do can take a little bit of time. So I started giving people the short version and directing them here, where they can get my own personal description of what it is that it does.

Eluma is an up and coming startup that offers a desktop tool (RIA) to collect, read, organize and share your web "stuff" and RSS feeds, as well as discover what others have publicly shared. On the sharing front, the cool thing is that you share things not only at the rate of 1 item at a time, like pretty much everything out there, but you can compose collections and share the entire thing at once. Even cooler, once you update the collection, everyone subscribed to it gets the update. At first when you collect an item, it is private, so you have to make it public to share it with others.

It is a revolutionary tool that makes it fast and easy to organize anything you could want to collect on the internet by giving you a repository on the desktop (fast) and a browser toolbar for collecting (easy). There is nothing like it in the market. In a much earlier incarnation, it was selected among hundreds of emerging technologies to participate in DEMO 2006, where it won the DEMOgod Award. According to Technology Review just recently:

TR10: Offline Web Applications

Adobe's Kevin Lynch believes that computing applications will become more powerful when they take advantage of the browser and the desktop.

In other words, desktop web applications are in the Technology Review Top 10 emerging technology in 2008. The Eluma Desktop runs on the desktop and is backed by a web server, which gives users the ability to log in from anywhere and access their data, as well as work offline. The tool also provides many web 2.0 features, such as the ability to share collections and tag, comment, and rate items in collections and the collections themselves. Most of these features are available right on the (IE or Firefox) toolbar. It provides organization capabilities via tags and also folders so as to maximize the range of user types.

If you try it and want to leave a comment, it will be very welcomed. We are working hard in directing the development of features in the way that will be useful to real consumers, not only to our little egos.

Thank you! I cannot pluck myself away from this place and now he has clarified what I just recently started suspecting. I moved to the US from Brazil 17 years ago due to family challenges. I went straight to Framingham MA, like many other Brazilian immigrants. On my second week here, a group of newly formed friends took me to Boston. I felt in love. I swore I would move there in 2 years time. I was living there in 6 months. Unlike many Brazilians, I was in awe with the new culture, and couldn't get enough of it. I didn't want to immerse myself in the local Brazilian community. Soap operas, the national past time of a country up to that time pretty completely closed up to foreign influence (read: low level of choices) had always been boring to me. I wanted to learn English as fast as I could so I could read the newspapers and get in the know of what was going on in such an exciting place! After learning English, I went to college (something of a dream, it was not a prospect in my life back when I lived in Brazil), had a really hard time choosing one career (I wanted to do everything) and found my love in building software.

In two years time I had pretty much shed the longing for the familiar things I grew up with, so the struggle between that and the thirst to experience the new subsided. After a while, I started thinking I need a new "fix": a move to a new (cool) place could do me good. I could never find a place I could justify moving to, but the need for the "fix" kept nagging at me. Until... I worked onsite on and off in Mexico City for 6 months and, despite falling in love with that and other places in Mexico, it was branded in me that no place other than the US would ever feel like home to me.

I kept looking to other cities, however. I naturally like to continuously reassess my choices anyway. It was very recently that I finally figured it all out.

I grew up in complete starvation of intellectual stimulus. I needed it, and didn't get it. Since landing in the Boston area, I have been completely consumed with nurturing this deficiency. I feel like I am behind and must catch up (to what, I haven't found out yet). Although I lived in Cambridge for 7 years up to a few years ago, I feel the same for the entire Boston area: there is not a time when I step somewhere that I don't meet somebody mind bogglingly interesting.

This is so good to my soul. There is no place with the level of intellect found here. He is so right.

[sorry, I'm still working on finishing this text]

This is a very interesting article. It talks about there being a clear separation between the needs and requirements of early adopters and the rest of potential users of technology. Particularly, it focuses on web 2.0 tools.

I don't agree with some arguments in it. First of all, there is an entire category of people missing from the group chart. I don't know what they should be called... but they are the people who would be sandwiched between the pragmatists and the conservatives. They are those people who don't have a "need" to be solved by technology, but they will adopt it anyway if they can be lead to trying it out. Usually, this happens when a critical mass of friends are using or talking about something that seems interesting. Ultimately, they will find discover that they have a "need" for it after all, and become to think how they ever lived without it and how no one else should remain in the misery of not ripping the benefits of said tool. Purely on guts feeling, I would say this group of people makes up 2/3 of the pragmatists slice shown in the pie that is displayed in the article. Argue this number as you may, but I'm positive that there are not that many pragmatists (as per the definition) out there relative to the total number of potential users.

This group of people could be as enthusiastic and log some serious assiduous usage as early adopters could when first trying out a new technology. So I want to call them Accidental Adopters.

Now that I have completed the definitions to my satisfactions, I want to go back to the arguments.

the next generation of successful tools will be ones that will guide people

My friends (and family) are amazing, colorful, people. They, however, don't have much geeky blood running through their veins. That is why if you invite me to a geeky event, I will most probably show up. If you offer free beer (thanks Reed at Microsoft!), make that a certainty. But when I showed at at POPSignal last week I, obviously, could not divulge my status of geek friendliness deficit and still seem cool, so instead I focused on telling people about my company's product, the Eluma Desktop.

Eluma, btw, is an upcoming startup that offers this tool to organize and your web "stuff". But not only at the rate of 1 item at a time, like pretty much everything out there. You can compose collections and share the entire thing at once, and once you update the collection, everyone subscribed to it gets the updates.

I met some really interesting people at POPSignal. I was blown away by the fact that people really did want to connect. Everyone wanted to talk about things in addition to their work, and some didn't even talk about their work at all. Everybody had interesting stories, advices, and an amazing attitude. And an unbelievable energy.

I hope Jay and Brian can do it again next year. No, wait, I hope they can do it again twice a year, at least!

And I also want to give a shout out to everyone I met there. If you gave me your business card, you already got a message from me. It was great to meet you! See you next time!