Zooey Deschanel

Zooey Deschanel

Google Friend Connect

I have just found out what Google Friend Connect (GFC) is. It's really interesting. The way I see it as it likes the blackboard that you could hang on your home-wall; then visitor can leave a message for you and they would be your friend later.

That idea's really wired. The physical shape of GFC's widget is just a segment javascript and html that you put on your site. Of course the widget acts as the blackboard. I'm trying to think about the world GFC's building : you can let everyone join to your site with nothing more except pasting a piece of javascript code and html, then your site members are able to give their thought, rate on your post in convenient way. I think that can raise a new trend to browsing Internet sites : joining and giving idea on any site with one account

Sounds good :-). Let see, at least I tried on my blog

What does job teach us - fresh developer?

When we were in school to learn a job (university, campus, ... ), we usually study only major knowledge for our coming career. It's just main concepts which will help us to obtain missing parts that are necessary in the job but school is unable to teach us. Obviously, the educational environment is always different from real office by many factors (time is most) and everybody agrees with that cause. In school, we could hardly to get the main points of a subject or technology until we are in trouble with real issue that we have to finish within a short time. Personally, I think that's the important thing that we can't experience them at school. Another thing could be that freshers (me, also) generally need to take some time to adapt first new job and train themself to be better - because the fresher's expectation may be getting good income within 1 year (just my thought) :-). But how long the time would be depends on variety of skills they have as well as how professional working environment might be. Sadly, I needed almost one and a half year to see myself in the career, but it's better late than never. The thing that we can't learn real knowledge for job out there is right and we have to accept it. If you want to change right the time in school by your own actions, you will be ahead.

In school, we could draw a perfect picture about up coming job such as : a good mentor to support all kind of question for newbie, a handsome timeframe for assigned tasks, not have to finish 10 items in 1 hour while helping colleagues in their tasks, working with outgoing clients who will let you know any breaking change before 10 days ... However, after several days at first company, we realized what real environment is. Yes, it isn't perfect at all. And next two months, we only focused on doing what we had learned all time in school. The new things didn't appear well as we expected. By this time, we might talk ourself "Hey, why do I hold off learning new stuffs and take a rest in some weeks". Then "some weeks" passed and new urgent task came; and we have to go to new cycle and keep doing things we learned in school. So for. Finally, after your first 1 year, we got nothing from work accept some stuffs we had known already. That could be sad for those who want to earn pretty money in short time ^^.

With our fresher, the point here is how to move skills to next level in a little while. Surely we don't want to use up 3 years to end being junior guy in career. But that doesn't count the case we are in particular situation that forces we have to. Is there any tips to make it ? Yes, a ton of tips are waiting for you to read out there. I just want to list some simple one I learned and used from others, nothing new here at all (you may read somewhere). First and mostly important, pay a lot of attention to foundation skills like time management, effective communication and English (used mainly for reading and asking question ^^). Although these skills won't give us any right away improvement but we eventually achieve great betterment with those. So we should start getting to know them soon. The second item is a bit harder if we were geeky ^^. It's making friend when having chance. The new friend doesn't have to be good as yours in present but it can be someone who has same hobby or goal as you do. The reason is simple : people can't do everything by their own, they need a small help from friends. I admit that may be difficult to do, not all people can talk openly with new friend. But why don't we give it a try ? It's worth doing, I think.

I would like to know reader's view about this, please leave comment if you have any.

Live to work or Live to learn

Last week, I had a small talk with a friend about the attitude to work. She's working at FPT around 2 years. Basically, I think she is good in term of desiring to learn skills/techniques, sharing knowledge. Currently she is in charge of a product for banking to manage exchanging gold. I'm sorry if you're FPTer :-) but I can see FPT style via her project : a product is considered a success if it's released ontime whatever its quality. I'm not going to argue about the quality of her project. That's a long story for managers. I just want to share some thoughts about her view on the job because it's different from me :-).

Her point is all-for-work. That's you should use all your resources (time, mainly) only for producing good software. And after that you will recieve a great reward which could be client's bonus, becoming a leader in another project or moving up :-). The term all-for-work means that your team have to build the product as quick as possible; there is no unit tests, test scripts, spec, .. They are things I had to do or be involved in my team. And as quick as possible could mean you need to work overtime frequently. However, if you have to develop something within a short time, I agree that you will do like this because it's no choice. But the main point in her all-for-work is that she prefers taking time only for product to learning something new that isn't related to work. That's why I call it all-for-work

Mine is opposite : work is only a part of life. Self-improvement is my style. Actually I have learnt a lot from Buu Nguyen. I have completely changed my mind since he interviewed me at FCG Vietnam (CSC Vietnam). I suppose the client is always hard to please so I usually give out the result that almost fits their expectation, no more no less. Then after the task is done, I do self-improvement to make myself better for future. Therefor, things I learn to improve myself aren't quite linked to the project. It can be something else like book reading, a new programming language, another platform for development, blog writing ...

We talked about 30 minutes to protect our oppions. She dislikes my attitude with 2 ideas:

1. Work can teach us new things and experience you learn from work is better than pure theory.
2. The pressure from client will let you get the right things to learn new technique instead of looking through it.
   

That are her points. Hmm, the way I see it that you're going to know ajax if the project requires fast response, you're getting to know unit if you have to use unit test ... That means if project doesn't require any of them, you wouldn't know those stuffs. Does it sound we are inactive to get new knowledge ? Once she asked me "how do you develop your 3-layers in application". It's 3, not 2 or 4 :-).

I'm a open mind guy. Of course I don't tell her off for her way. She has being followed it and she succeeds in her career. I prefer self-improvement in order I can be up for new chance (maybe). All things I wrote in this post just a question : why doesn't she accept my oppion as I did with her ?

Got a lesson. It's hard to change somebody's view :-)

What should yough people do

Being a human, we usually show the same manner when we process / receive / learn / handle things or people. That is having a great expectation on people more than ourself. We always say or think something like

• "Why does this javascript library only support those browsers" - Although that guy doesn't really know what other feature is
• "Can you explain this technique in simplest way in order we can get the basic ideas" - Although latter he may say "This stuff also has a lot cool features. Why don't you present them at the beginning"
• "Hey, that guy likes an idiot. How can he say that." -Although they don't realize the idea behind
•  ...
  

That's normal. I know because I'm too. But I would like to find out the reason, at least the one I can understand, not very fancy. After observing people in my office, I see why. When you have to get new thing / idea (usually bad, trouble or you don't really like it). There are two kind of response

1. You ask the author of thing / idea all questions come up from your mind even ones that people expect you to answer or do. We almost fall to this kind and I think if you aren't this type of person, it's a bit difficult to work with them.
2. You receive the basic info and then go on your own way. If you need some extra, you'll ask latter. This type of person usually don't show their opinion right way and they tend to see the issue in their own view. Maybe it isn't quite correct but they like to.
   

The manner having great expectation on other people is used usually by people in first type. I think the possible reason is that it is easy to criticize anything that you don't involve. Is it true ? At least it's the scenes I have seen. Therefore, if you want to be somebody that is different, a little bit special, why don't we jump to the second one? It isn't bad. Just behave in opposite manner. I know it sounds pure theory but the best way to get to know something new is "just do it" (I learned from my delivery director).

I think, when you are trying to do that, actually you are improving yourself (more technical, refactoring yourself. :-). Basically, people isn't perfect when they were born, so you are allocated a 30 years timeframe to be better enough for future.I have been refactoring myself a year ago. Maybe it's not long enough but better late than never.

To train myself, I always do following things:

• think first, don't give any opinion or conclusion
• understand other's view about the issue before resolve in my own way
• reading
• asking, even it's silly question
• guide people what thing I know, that is the best way to review and improve communication skills
• smile
• sense of humor
  

Do you know the message I want to say. hopefully you do :-)

c:\>clr

What's CLR ? It's just a DOS command to clear the screen :-).

So how it comes into this post ? Well, it means I will start using blog again as a real blogger. I want to write my thought, life and career in a professional way. Ok, let CLR the previous posts and start again now.

P/S: I write this post and push it to blog via email but how can I put tag into post ? Still searching ...

How to know what social network is

Hmm, I have heart about this term a lot but have no idea what it is ? 



So today I spent about 2 hours to browse and go though some service on Facebook, one of most popular social network that I know. In general, it's cool. But I currently have no friend  . Anyway. it's ok. I'll find some latter.

I'm using Flock for blogging, sharing image and getting news with RSS.  Specially RSS,  I don't know which application is the best,  Google Reader or Flock. The only RSS problem in Flock is it uses local store for rss subscription and I don't like it. I prefer storing online for easy synchronization.

it seems I talk too much. Come on, get back to discover Facebook, man

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flock

How can I say about Flock? Is it really cool? 
It say Flock is a browser for web 2.0. So what is web 2.0? Does it like this picture ?



This post was written in Flock with Web Clipboard tool to help my insert image from web and my favourite image service (Google Picasa).

Man, it's time to work 

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