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Focal length analysis of my photo collection

New lens – what should I buy

I am a very happy owner of ultra-wide zoom Nikon f/3.5-5.6 G ED 18-200mm  lens. I bought it in 2007 (the original model) and have not parted with it since. The best lens I’ve ever used. I love it. t is portable enough for travel and it covers a wide spectrum of focal lengths, so that I do not need to take any other lens with me for hiking and cycling trips. Why do I need a new lens? Zoom lens, even a very good one, is always a bit inferior to a single focal length (prime) lens. For some time now I’ve been thinking of a prime, especially when trying out more advanced photography techniques.

One of the best performing, sharpest, and highly recommended prime lenses is the Nikon 50mm 1.8G lens. So, decision made. Simple! After deciding to purchase a new 50mm prime lens I thought I’d better check if the 50mm is what I really want (on DX DSLR the 50mm becomes 75mm lens). How to know if I need new 50mm lens? Well, if I shoot a lot of photos around the 50mm focal length, then it would be more than justified to invest into a prime, well performing lens with that focal length. I simply need to analyse what focal length I mostly use in my photographic endeavors.
Simple – I’ll take a collection of photos I have, check from the EXIF data what f-number each photo has, and plot the data in a form of histogram.

After hacking a simple NodeJS script with exif module for about an hour, it turn out that even for a simple folder the program runs out of memory. 10min later, I had a bash + awk script ready and gnuplot was showing me the data - I explain here how to generate a focal length histogram for your own photo collection.

 

First half of 2012

I’ve done 995 photos so far (first half of 2012). These are mostly outdoors shots on trips and indoors family photos. The first test was to run it on all those 995 photos. As you can see, most of the “action” happens in the focal length range of up to around 80mm. I’ve decided to have a closer look into the range of up to 100mm. The second graph depicts just that region from the upper graph (they are the same, it is just easier to see certain patterns).

The x-axis depicts the focal length in mm, and the y-axis depicts the total number of photos taken with a given focal length.

 

Himalayan expedition

For the second try, I’ve used photos from the cycling expedition to Himalayas, that I’ve done with my brother at the end of last year. The collection consists of 1140 photos. Almost all are outdoors sceneries, monasteries, and mountains. Early winter shots, almost always with clear blue skies. Same as before, I’ve highlighted the area of focal length of up to 100mm in the lower diagram. Comparing these two it is easy to see that although in both cases the lowest focal length of 18mm dominates, the expedition did generated more “interest” in the wider focal length area – the histogram seems more dense.

Entire collection

For the final test I’ve used all the photos that I have on my laptop. The collection is just over 20,000 photos. Most of the photos are mine from my own camera. Some are from other people, most notably from my brother. And there are some from non DSLR cameras (notice the wide-angle shots in the range below 15mm). The new 50mm spike is due to about 1500 photos that my brother took during our Himalayan expedition – he opted for a lightweight, single prime lens setup.

Summary

The exercise turned out actually quite revealing. I was not aware that the lowest and highest range of my lens (18-200mm) are so heavily used throughout my photos, with the lowest, 18mm being the hands down winner. Overall, due to the nature of outdoor photography, the lowest (wider) spectrum is more frequently used that the upper half of the focal length spectrum. It is also clear that majority of the photographs are in the range below 50mm. Note also, that the 50mm reported by my brother’s lens is in fact 75mm focal length on the DX camera.

Final decision

After the exercise it was rather clear that I actually would not “like” the new 50mm (75mm) lens. In fact, something between 20-40mm would probably be the most appropriate. Voila – there is a relatively cheap, highly praised Nikon 35mm f/1.8 AF-S DX lens which I’m going to get instead.

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By mariusz – May 18, 2012

Cycling to Milford Sound

Friday. Started late, around 10:30. Weather gloomy. Cloudy and low hanging fog. Coldish in some places. Doing fine for the first 10km. Then small hills. Enjoing the ride. Getting to Te Anau Downs and going over small hills. First stop at around 40km mark. Sky clearing up, fog lifting up and clouds disappearing. Perfect weather. Enjoing the valley. Perfect blue skies. Minimal traffic. First crisis at 70km. Running low in sugar and food. By 90km feelling better. Climbing up to the Divide is tough but a great motivator especially that there is a nice downhill that follows. Hitting 60km/h for the first time there on this trail. Slowly climbing to the Homer pass. Not steep, but long gradual climb. 100km mark just next to the bridge real close to the tunnel – celebrating and eating. Pass. Tunnel. Downhill in the tunnel easy – only one car climbing up. Inside cold and a bit foggy. Breathing lots of steam on the other side. Great feeling. Only downhill from there, and less than 20km left. Smiling. Ride down real joy. 20km in about 40min. Must have been a good average :-)   Hitting 64km/h few times. Could try faster but the back wheel not perfectly aligned and bike vibrates.

Milford Sound. Great feeling of achievement. Late. Touching the ford at 19:00. Total 120.5km in 7hrs 8min. Total 1400m climbed.
Going back to the Milford Lodge about 19:20. Shopping for beans and pasta in the can. Joy sitting eating warm food and sipping ginger ale. After the feast gearing up, warm clothes on, and cycling back uphill. Real slow progress but a nice surpise that not everything was up hill on the stratch between Homer and Milford. Riding about 10km in over an hour, and detour into The Chasm. Camping near the river, roaring water on, the whole night. Dry and warm throughout the night but sore muscles and joints made the night not the best. Waking up multiple times. The sleeping spot quite a squeeze for a bivvy sack and me. Sliding down a bit during the night.


Waking up 6:45 and packing. Quick bread roll and apple and cycling up from 730ish. Real hard work cycling up. Only 10km but drags. Getting to the tunnel at 845. Great, managed to cycle up before the light system in the tunnel is on. Already quite a traffic flowing into the Milford. Tunnel takes about 13min to climb up, but done before 9. Feast on the other side. Bread roll, cheese and some marinated tofu. Apple. Putting warmer clothes on, freezing on the downhills. Great ride down, then climb back to the Divide. Not as bad as I thought. Riding down. Lakes. Sceneries. Weather on the east side of tunnel clears up fast. Meeting with Ula and the rest of the party after lake Gunn. Break.

Going with Ula and girls back to Milford. Visit and walk to the Chasm. Cruise on the boat in the fiord. Awesome. Girls excited about seeing dolphins. Excited about the boat and cruise in general too. Lots of fun, screams, splashing water. Great weather. Windy on the boat, but warmish. Short walk in Milford, visit to the lodge, drive back.

Picking up the bike from the bush at 17:00 and starting the final push. 75km to ride back to Te Anau. Going well. Up and downs but no major longish uphills anymore. Only short manageable climbs. Legs really sore and weak, but it feels every km makes them feel better not worse. Doing well. Two short stops, and one longer at 200km mark. Celebrating of course ;)  Next to a giant river bank washout. Eating the last tofu leftovers. Feeling good. One apple and two chocolate sweets left. Celebrating 30km to go with an apple, and the next two tens with sweets :-) Last 40km riding in the dark. Great full moon. Riding in the dark with the moonlight, and using the red light on the torch on the back of my head. Great feeling. Moon casting a nice shadow of me riding on the road. Almost no traffic. The road and sceneries mine. Forests dark so have to switch the torch to be used in front.

Reaching home exactly at 14hrs mark. 241.5km. Tired, hungry, sore. Happy.

Cycling slows me down. It allows me to enjoy the sceneries more that in the car. It allows me to feel the terrain, all the little hills and all the open fields. The forests, all the smells, the varying temperatures, and atmosphere along the way. I become part of the scenery myself, and cease to be the visitor enclosed in a metal tin and isolated from the surroudings. I become myself part of the environment. The terrain, not me, dictates my speed. The terrain dictates the mood. Every short stop allows contact with birds in their natural habitat, interested of who I am and why i am there. On one of the spots the bird almost came to my hand, puzzled of who I may be. Probably never interacted with humans before. Sandflies were there but not bothered me that much. I did not used insect repellant – it would mess up the purity of the experience.

Most drivers were considerate, thank you. But some do not get it. Passing with a 1500kgs vehicle next to 60kgs person at high speed from behind makes it a terrifying experience. Sometimes when the car gets to close I can feel the primitive flight-ot-fight reaction in my stomach, happy to be alive, but real angry at the driver, especially if the entire lane is empty and there is no reason to drive like that.

Great trip. Waking up, packing and just like that, cycling 240km in two days, climbing over 3000m, and enjoying the best sceneries in the world. Words hardly express it.

 

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By mariusz – April 9, 2012

Paragliding at Sandy Mount, Peninsula

Dropped off Lidia for a birthday party and went with Murad to Sandy Mt. Great calm conditions. Wind picked up to about 12knots. Started alone around 2:45. Two extra people joined later. 4 pilots at 4pm and conditions getting better. Had to sop, land and drive back after an hour in the air.

Picked up Lidia and went straight into Ula birthday party. Great day. Awesome weather.

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By mariusz – April 1, 2012

Night diving at Aramoana

Christopher, Jack and Kessy. Night dive at Aramoana. Great calm evening. Awesome.

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By mariusz – March 29, 2012

David Robinson on Universities and academia

Notes from the Radio interview with David Robinson.

“Senior Consultant to Education International, the global federation of teachers unions, David Robinson is very unhappy at the way universities are being refocused for the purposes of commercial enterprise rather than academia and scholarship.”

Paradox: governments and decision makers claim Universities and Higher Education is more important now than ever before, yet, Universities around the world are under more pressure and stress than ever before. Is it the problem driven by the need of accountability? Yes, it is part of the drive. How much time academics spent on accountability measures? 10-15%

Assessing criteria: is it a paper that you can do quickly? Is is the paper that will have economical impact?

This pushes the pursuit of knowledge for the knowledge sake out of the picture. The academic tradition of pursue of knowledge has many benefits in the society. Is it an unacceptable indulgence to pursue knowledge for the knowledge sake? Pursuit of knowledge for its own sake has broad impact on society and economy. Example: “blue sky research” (why is the sky blue?)

Broken ideology? “Vandals at the gates” pushing a broken ideology, based on market economy. Governments should not fund education, but it should be part of the market. Customer will drive what the product is.

Educational process requires fundamentally to challenge the status quo, to challenge people, and make people uncomfortable. Yet, the metrics use “student satisfaction” as a measure for academic progress and promotion. Something that can be seen as a good pedagogical outcome (challenged students) is causing the professor to be “punished” within the system.

Relying on students for the revenue stream, especially relying on international students as a revenue generating machine is causing some problems. In australia and new zealand on few occasions international students plagiarized work and the officials tried to cover it up in fear of scandal and “loosing paying customers”, and revenue.

In the past, 20 years ago, 75% of teaching has been done by full-time academic staff. Currently, 75% is done by fixed-term contractors and non-tenure staff. This has serious integrity implications. Tenure doesn’t mean “job for life” – tenure means certain level of protection, against institutional censorship, or political censorship, from political and economical fluctuations. Currently, it is easy for those with unpopular viewpoints to simply not extend their contracts.

Long-term prospect: unsustainable model of higher education. If the workforce is hollowed out, the system will not work.

Re-investment into people.

Are there any societies that are winning this war? These are global trends, but anglo-saxon countries are in the worst shape. The scandinavian countries continue to keep the model as a service, but they are slowly experiencing the same pressures.

Concerns about the quality of research? The shift on commercial aspects made, for example the medical research focus almost entirely on small modifications of existing drugs, instead of focusing on broad aspects such as causes of diseases, public health, etc. Big pharma makes certain influences and pressures that weeds most of fundamental research.

Universities and acedemia is the only place in the society that has a dispassionate outlook on the reality around, whether something is beneficial or harmful, whether something has a benefit to society, or doesn’t. Example of a blood research in one of Canadian university done in collaboration with a big pharma company. Research indicated high risk for certain people of a particular drug – researcher wanted to publish the results and notify the public and other researchers about the findings, and the company was trying to cover up the research results.

“All research is applied or should be applied”. “We expect research output to produce commercial economic benefit for the country.” Is it inherently bad? No – it isn’t. One of the roles universities fullfill in the society. But it is not the only role. The strong focus on short-term commercial outcomes is pushing the long-term pursuits impossible. The short-term economic and commercial benefits should be driven mostly by the private sector. The universities should focus on the long-term research – otherwise there will be none doing that in the society.

New Zealand – serious concerns on drive to short-term impact and commercial economic benefits.

Departure from the collegial governance of the universities where the management was conducted by academic staff themselves and drive to focus power in the Universities in corporate-like management, should be balanced with the voice of students and staff. Academic staff and students should be involved in decision making on all levels.

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By mariusz – March 26, 2012

Android Developers Lab day, Auckland

Notes

from ADL2012, Auckland

Wednesday, Feb 8, 2012

Outline

Definite Android Design
morning tea follows

Market services for Developers

ICS: communication, Connectivity & Camera

after lunch – practical sessions and codelab

http://bit.ly/adl2012

Starting at 9:20. Running slightly late.

Conversations on Twitter: #adl2012

What’s the best way to contact the developers team:

* Stackoverflow, android section – the best resource.
* Google Plus Android developers
* and Google Plus hangouts (on weekly basis)

 

Talks and presentations

Definite Android Design

Home screen, identity. Application Icon? Should you have Widget? Important choices to be made about the identity of your app. In the market listing one should emphesize that there is a widget, advertise it.

Make widgets resizable, instead of different widgets for different sizes.

Launcher Icons: 48×48 dp
In Market listing: 512×512 px

Style:
distinct silhouette, 3-dims, front facing, slight perspective, slight depth
App icon is visible in different places (see Recently Used apps)

Persistent UI bars
- status bar
- navigation bar (replacing the physical buttons)
- system bar (tablets, combines both, status bar and nav bar)

Controlling the System Bar icons. Two different modes: dimms the bar, or removes it (hidden navigation).
View.setSystemUiVilibility LOW_PROFILE and HIDE_NAVIGATION

 

Common App UI

1. Main action bar (Top of the GMail app, for example)
2. View control
3. Content area
4. Split action bar (bottom of the GMail app)

Tabs,
scrollable and swipable side-wise
UI improvements (extending the fixed tabs)

Lists
- section divider (lower contrast, non-interactive element)
- organise sections into groups. Use them.
- line items: single, multiple lines, custom items with icons, checkboxes, buttons, etc

Generic grids
- grids scrolling
veritcally scrollable lists: Z-pattern, from left-to-right first, then top-to-bottom
horizontally scrollable grids: top-down, left-to-right.
- Grid lists with labels: semi-transparent panels for labels, control contrast, ensure legibility

Scrolling
- Scroll indicator appears only when needed
- Index scrolling (e.g. alphabetically organised lists)

Text fields
- single-line/multi-line
- for particular entry, present keyboard specific for the data to be entered,
enhance user-experience, use data-type driven entry fields, use autocomplete

Spinners (drop-downs)
Use spinners where appropriate, do not force user to type everything in

Buttons
3D-buttons vs. borderless buttons
Use the borderless buttons where it makes it obvious for interactivity

Indeterminate Activity
1. activity bar (blue bar, like in browser)
2. activity circle spinning
Let user know when there are things going on in the background.

Progress bar – same as above, used when you know the end-point of an activity

 

New UI components in ICS

New sliders and on/off switches added in ICS
Use on/off switch instead of check-boxes

Checkboxes – use them for multiple selections. Use them when terminology of on/off does not apply

Radio buttons – single selection from a group of choices

Picker – picking element from a list. Kinetic scrolling. Tap on the entry field,
and the user might be able to start typing. See Date-and-Time pickers.

Prompting the user

Dialog boxes: optional title, content area, action buttons

Alerts (title bars are optional: is it truly required to have the title?)

Popups: lightweight, single-action choices

Toasts: feedback to the user after some action has completed. Do not use them a lot.
Try to not show Toasts from background process, if you have to, provide sufficient context to the user.

 

Style and themes

Themes, introduced in 3.0, ‘pure google experience’, called Holo. Guaranteed on Android 4.0
Normally do not force a particular Theme on user, but you could.

Touch feedback, important to user to smooth the interaction (glow at the end of lists, transparency when removing item from Recently Used list)
Devices and displays

- be flexible layouts, optimise layouts
- 1 dp = 1 px at 160 dpi, px = dp * (dpi / 160)

Metrics

- Android 3.2 or better: smallest width 600dp (sw600dp), before Android 3.2, large or xlarge layouts
- 48dp = ~9mm, touchscreen objects should be 7-10mm

- lists, use 4dp gaps for buttons, and 8dp for icons, bottom and up
- sides – leave 16dp on each of the side for accidental touching through holding the phone

Best practices:
- use wrap_content, fill_parent, dp (‘match_parent’ same as ‘fill_parent’)
- do not use hard-coded pixel values
- do not use AbsoluteLayout
- use alternative bitmap drawables for different screen densities: ldpi (120dp), mdpi (160dp), hdpi (240dp), xddpi(320dp), nodpi, tvdpi(213dp). Rationale: reduce the stress on the computing resources on a smaller devices. Script the build process so you only have high-res resources and automatically generate lower-res resources if applicable.
Typography
New font: called Roboto
Text sizes: micro 12sp, small 14sp, medium 16sp, large 18sp (sp scales with the user settings)
Colour schemes
(download from Android style website)
Writing style
keep it brief, keep it simple, use human terminoloy, be friendly, most important message first,
describe only necessary things, do not repeat yourself.

 

Action Bar

1. App icon
2. View control (tabs or drop-down), category/account (in Gmail it is the account, in Calendar it is the day/week/month view)
3. Action buttons (replaces OptionMenus)
4. Action overflow

On the phone, in Vertical view, the Action Bar is split into top and bottom parts of the screen.
In Landscape mode and on tablets the Action Bar is kept together, as a single unit.

ViewControl, Tabs, can be used on their own too

Action Bar items:
Frequently Used
more than 70% of times, constantly repeated?, would extra step be burdensome?
Important
especially cool or a selling point! Needs to be effortless!
Typical
First class action in similar apps? If in Action overflow would users be surprised?

Action overflow
Overflow is not a menu. Menu shows up in the navigation bar instead as an overflow.

Sharing Data, Share ActionProvider

Action bar icons
32x32dp, but effective space is 24×24 (plus spacing)
Style: flat, not too detailed, smooth curves, sharp edges, mono-colours
Contextual Action bar (CAB)
Long-press gesture – used for CAB

show the user what makes sense in a given context

Long-press – show the user contextual Action Bar (instead of Menu options)
E.g. selecting one photo shows particular contextual action bar, selecting
multiple photos changes what’s available

Contextual icons: 16x16dp but effective 12x12dp

Style: neutral, flat, simple, use colours,

 

Notifications

Un-intrusive inform users of events, time-sensitive, involves other people, pertinent to the user
Do not use notifications: for info not related to the user, not time sensitive,
information already visible, recoverable errors, do not use it for spam, starting/stopping services,

Icon/photo, app icon; Title/Name, Message, Timestamp, Secondary icon

Make it personal, navigate to the right place, timestamps for time sensitive events, cleanup after yourself
If the notification was not read, after a while the notification should be cleaned automatically.

Do not use multiple notifications, instead try to collapse multiple ones into single notification

Provide a peak of what notification is about (in the bar)

Ongoing notification (e.g. for music player, controlling music player)

Make notifications optional

Icons: 24x24dp, effective 22x22dp

Style: flat, simple, single visual metaphor,
Colours: entirely white, system may darken them

 

UI Patterns

Gestures

touch: trigger default functionality
long-press: select and show contextual action bar, multi-selection
swipe: navigate between views, scrolls overflowing content
drag: rearrange data in view, move data in container
(story on backporting drag-and-drop to Android 2.1)

double-tap: zooms into the content (similar to pinch-open)
pinch-open: zoom in
pinch-close: zoom out
General structure of the app

- top level views
- category views
- detail/edit views
Examples: some content placed in the top-level view, use analytics to determine what views users spent
most of their time in). Try to contextualise the experience.

Category view (app dependant)
swiping with flexible tabs, or fixed tabs

Spinner on list view to cut through a hierarchy and action on individual item

Consider lights out mode (to highlight the content).

Define and use the “hero moment” in your app. Examples of the albums 3d carousel view in music app, or the people card in people app.

Gmail – swiping goes through e-mails in a given label (folder)

Try to keep hierarchy level up to 3 or 4 levels. Do not make it too long.

 

Navigation

Up vs. Back button behaviours

UP – Action Bar, Navigate screen hierarchies, Cannot exit app

Back – System Bar, Navigates screen history, can exit app

Developer can manipulate the “back step” to put some intermediate screen for user interaction.
Useful when going to a practicular screen from a widget.
Combining multiple views: Fragments
Strategies for combining multiple views, eg. on a tablets you can combine multiple fragments together.
On phones, show different fragments in their own acitivities.

Expand/collapse strategy (collapse one of the fragments)

Show/hide strategy (completely hide one of the fragments)

 

Backwards compatibility

Physical buttons used instead of navigation soft-keys. Overflow items show up in the “menu” button.
SDK includes ActionBarCompat (provides Action Bar for Android 1.6+)
Thin wrapper
API <=10, lib supported
API > 10, system implemantation

Fragments: re-usable UI components, can be used as non_UI data objects.
Organise layouts in sections, each section is a fragment.

ViewPager, PagerAdapter class for swiping, part of the SupportLibrary.
SupportLibrary – Fragments, Loaders, ViewPager/PagerAdapter
Eclipse: Android Tools/Add Compatibility Library

 

Pure Android experience

Do nots

- mimic UI from other platforms
- carry over platform-specific icons
- do not use tabs at the bottom, use tabs at the top
- use labeled back buttons
- use righ-point curret icon

 

DOs

- use action bars
- build intelligent context-aware apps
- pre-load data at appropriate times
- focus on the user experience (do’h!)
- provide offline support/data pre-load/working offline, sync when online

 

More info at:
developer.android.com/design

 

Market Services for Developers

12:10 talk by @ryosukem

Rapid growth of the Market
700k Activations per Day

400k applications in total, also growing fast
11b app installs in total

Licensing services

Google can help and facilitate to validate the applications installed against the database of purchases.
What to do when the License check fails? Granting the user trial-period, trying to convert a pirate into a user?

License Verification Library

Client Attack:
disassemble Dalvik/native code,
alter the response from the library to ignore the server result and always return “licensed”.
Reassemble the application package. Sign the package with an alternate signature.

High-quality applications are modified for profit by different pirates.
advertisements hijacking
in-game goods collection and re-sell on auctions

How to make the app tamper-resistant?
- use obfuscator (e.g. ProGuard)
- Modify the LVL code, in different of your apps
- Make code more resistent:

change bindResult = mContext.bindService(new IntentILicensingService.class.getName()), to
“com.android.vending.licensing.ILicensingService” with some transformation

Use hashing and CRC checks, use reflaction to call the API
calls instead of making the call directly. Use NDK. Use the code signed and
downloaded from the server.

When Pirates becoming Vampires (sucking on server bandwidth or resources)
Try using the server-side verification and connection tracking.

 

In-App billing

Market Billing service (on the client side and on the server side). See the examples in SDK.

 

Cloud storage

- copies application data to the server
- backup/restore capabilities
Provides devices independant way of storing the data for users. Introduced from Froyo but not used widely.

Cloud Messaging

C2DM service – Allows you to push some of the lightweight messages directly to the user devices.
200k msgs/per day for free.

Ranking in Android Market

based on many signals,
designed to provide end-users helpufl results
different categories
signals cover entire app life span
- users interested? engaged?
- updates?

seasonality, user comments, fit and polish, unique Android features, (we are not looking into direct ports from other platforms).

 

ICS specific technologies

Android Beam

- NFC based sharing technology, zero setup (on the user side), data exchange, social sharing
- based on NDEF message push standard
- 4cm or less
- uses: google wallet

NdefMessage, setup URL or MIME type in the first record.
Receiver end: notification of ACTION_NDEF_DISCOVERED intent

Context aware data sharing.

WiFi Direct

based on the WiFi Alliance standard,
provides Peer-to-Peer connectivity,
doesn’t need hotspots or Access Points

all the calls are asynchronous, allows peer discovery and connection, high-performance connection at a range

setup a BroadcastReceiver, responses are via callback interfaces:
- peerListener

State change: enable/disable
Connection Changed: connected/disconnected
Peers changed: new devices are in range, obtain peerList
Changes to self, i.e. ‘this’ device

The group has always a single GroupOwner

 

Android Camera API

added API for face detection: mouth, eyes, bounding box, etc
custom exposure metering APIs
focus API

getMaxNumDetectedFaces() > 0 — means the device supports face detection
FaceDetectionListener.onFaceDetection(Face[], Camera)
stopFaceDetection() to stop pulling the data.

(ideas: tracking the face while the user is using an app)

 

13:15 – going for lunch

 

Practical work

Eclipse session on Sharing, Action Bar and ViewPager. Lots of fun, wit and geekiness.

Fragments that require arguments should be instantiated through a static method newInstance,
that creates and attaches a Bundle to the new instance.

Architectural problems of where to keep “managing the fragments” logic. In the Activity?

New style of UI for mobile devices – re-thinking the principles.

NFC is off when the screen is off.

 

Posted in Conference, Development, Mobile, Work.

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By mariusz – February 14, 2012

On motivation

On motivation and work incentives

Extrinsic vs Intrinsic

Extrinsic vs intrinsic motivation, definitions and examples. Evidence of extrinsic motivators interfering with intrinsic motivation. Examples

“For artists, scientists, inventors, school children, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation the drive do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing is essential for high levels of creativity.
  • Teresa Amabile, Harvard Business School. 23 professional artists. Commissioned and non-commissioned work. Judged on creativity and technical skill. No difference on technical skill. Creativity reduced in comissioned work.

“Not always, but a lot of the time, when you are doing a piece for someone else it becomes more work than joy. When I work for myself there is the pure joy of creating, and I can work through the night and not even know it. On a commissioned piece you have to check yourself be careful to do what the client wants.”

“It is those who are least motivated to pursue extrinsic rewards who eventually receive them.”

  •  ROWE: results only work environment

The role of if-then motivators

  • 1970, british sociologist Richard Titmuss, on blood donation. Paying would reduce the donations hypothesis. Tested in sweden. 153 participants, split into 3 groups. no reward: 52% donation, monetary reward: 30%, monetary reward with charity option: 50%.  Italian government introduced paid time off work, donations increased.
  • Dan Ariely MIT students experiment, and experiment for Federal Reserve System, in Madurai, India. India: 87 participants. Small reward (daily wage), medium reward (2 weeks wage), high reward (5 months wage). 9 tasks. Tennis ball at the target, anscrambling anagrams, recalling a string of digits, creativity, concentration.
“As long as the tasks involved only mechanical skill, bonuses worked as they would be expected. The higher the pay, the better the performance. But once the task called for even rudimentary cognitive skills, a larger reward led to poorer performance.”
“In eight out of nine tasks we examined across the three experiments, higher incentives led to worse performance.”
  • 2009 study by London School of Economics, 51 studies of corporate pay-for-performance plans.

“We find that financial incentives…can result in a negative impact on overall performance.”

“Our experiment suggests… that one cannot assume that introducing or raising incentives always improves performance. Indeed, in many instances, contingent incentives that conerstone of how businesses attempt to motivate employees may be a loosing proposition.”

Candle experiment

1930, Karl Duncker candle experiment (a candle, some tacks, and a book of matches. Sam Glucksberg, psychologist from Princeton University. Functional fixedness – inability to see something beyond what it’s obvious function is.

 

Exceptions

When if-then motivators work well? For repetitive, algorithmic tasks, following an existing formula to its logical conclusions.

In tasks where narrow focus helps. Extrinsic motivators narrow our focus, help in performing tasks better.

 

Adjusted managment style

  • Autonomy: a desire to direct our own lives
  • Mastery: a desire to get better, to be more skilled
  • Purpose: a desire to do something that matters, yearning to do something bigger than ourselves

Traditional management style: designed to enforce compliance. Not good to provide engagement.

 

Posted in Management, Movies and Books, Science and Art, Work.

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By mariusz – January 12, 2012

On mindfulness and silence by BBC

BBC audio broadcast on research on meditation and mindfulness

In 2003 there were only about 60 peer-reviewed studies, and now, peer reviewed studies on meditation and mindfulness coming up with the rate of 40 per month.

Research confirms mental health benefits of sitting still in a silence for few minutes each day. Mindfulness combats stress, can reduce pain, improves brain elasticity. It is a simple practice, that is slowly disassociated with extreme religious practices, and becomes part of everyday life in the western culture.

Posted in Monk's mind, Personal.

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By mariusz – January 12, 2012

Is science a synthesized experience?

Is it possible for a scientist who never had schizophrenia to study schizophrenics?

Is it possible for a researcher who never run 100km race or took part in IronMan to study endurance sports?
Is it possible to utter a truth about endurance sports while searching Internet and reading data sheets in the comfort of one’s armchair?

When people research phenomena that they have never experience themselves, are their results and conclusions correct? True? Or rather superficial, even though the methodology and scientific process might be correct? How far a scientist needs to push their studies to be able to experience and be able to describe the real phenomenon, truly?

Can someone, who has schizophrenia, provide description that scientists would agree on? What is, really, the relationship between personal experience and knowledge, versus verifiable facts and data collected by scientists?

Can someone who never experienced love understand truly what love is by reading the scientific articles about love?

Posted in Monk's mind, Personal.

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By mariusz – December 28, 2011

On entrepreneurship by Marten Mickos

Lecture by Marten Mickos. Free flowing notes from the lecture and random thoughts:

Entrepreneurship is a belief system. You essentially must believe in something that is bigger than yourself, bigger than VCs, bigger than the business you are in. You must believe that you can do something enormous for this planet. Something that you can do that nobody else can do, and if you do it, then the world will be a better place. You must also believe in yourself. Being entrepreneur is about convincing everyone about things that do not make sense. Until everyone agrees with it, and then it makes sense for everyone. But until then, it makes sense to none. So you have to believe in yourself. You need someone who believes in you. Mom gave him encouraging words: “you’re not too bad”.

Distributed office work model. People working from home. life@mysql mailing list to share life moments. Money saved on not having offices, spent on travel. Getting people together. Creative moments require body language, face-to-face meetings.

70-20-10 rule.

Open source business models. Give paying customers something special. Focus on features that are worth paying premium.

The money is not an issue. Leadership and creativity is the issue.

Innovative practices to the management, leadership. Maybe it is my lack of discipline. I do not like to do the same thing over and over again. So I invent new things just for the sake of doing them. I believe in very special value of each individual human being. It so annoys me when companies treat human beings like machines.

I will never work for a large company ever again. Unless I have created it myself.

It is all about building business, having fun with people, creating something.

 

Posted in Management, Ngarua, Work.

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By mariusz – December 17, 2011