The Lair

I have no idea why, but people (usually undergrads) occasionally ask me for project advice. Specifically, what do I think they should do for their final year project and so on. Like so many things in life, that’s pretty much a no-win situation. I find it insanely difficult to propose a project idea that doesn’t suck on some level to the person who is going to do the project.

So I cop out tamely and always end up asking them a counter question: “Well, what do you like to do?“. Inevitably, there is a lot of hemming and hawing or an immediate response of “I like pretty much anything, just give me a project idea“. Occasionally accompanied by a “OMG deadline tomorrow. It doesn’t matter if it sucks: if I don’t give in a proposal, I fail“.

Someone (was it you, Ed?) proposed that you should do stuff for your project that you like, but don’t absolutely love. You need to be able to like the project topic enough to stick with it when the inevitable teething problems occur. At the same time, perhaps you shouldn’t do stuff that you passionately love. Not so sure about this, but the line of reasoning is that you will end up hating the drudgery of a project and that means you will like what you’re doing a little bit less. Why get to the point where you’d treat a former favourite subject area like a dirty shirt? No reason at all.

(and it gets really tricky now)

This is related to a question I was asked earlier – am I the sole author of the (snarky and sometimes hilarious) tags on Achcharu? If that’s all you wanted to know, then the answer is no. But since I’m not content with a simple answer, a bit of history is necessary. Actually, no. The history lesson isn’t necessary but I’ve been busy in the real world and a series of digressions will serve as content for today.

When I started on Achcharu, I just needed three things from it. Those goals are essentially unchanged today so it’s worth repeating.

1. I wanted to have blog entries presented in a manner conducive to quick scanning
2. I wanted to have some collaborative input on the stories and some commentary.
3. I wanted meta-aggregation (more on this later)

(but wait! there’s more)

There is a school of thought out there, simply expressed, that says fewer features are better. This is classic 37 Signals ethos. If you’ve never heard of 37 Signals, well … long story short, they focus on minimalism in their online software offerings. Both figuratively and literally, you’re not missing much if you’ve not heard of them before. But their software is still very shiny and functional and most importantly, it works.

This is hardly a new concept; see paying more for fewer features. But from my point of view, putting in fewer features focuses the mind wonderfully on things that are most important (or core) to the application. It forces me to think about what I want to see in there, rather than running around with a gigantic shopping trolley in the feature supermarket and having a nasty shock at checkout.

Read the rest of this entry »