As it turned out, I was very, very wrong.   I spent part of the day Sunday and all day Monday wading through non-working sample code, looking at near duplicate setup guides for the 56 (how it is 56 I don’t know) versions of their Website Payments Pro system, installing all of the add-ons needed to get the sample apps going and so on and so forth.  All of that merely to make a Get request with the proper query string (which is all the Website Payments Pro System really is).

At the end of Monday I reasoned that if it started out this bad there would no redeeming features down the road and signed up for Authorize.net.  I was approved and got their sample code working (with test data, but working) in about 45 minutes!

Lessons learned from the experience:

• Quick start guides are mandatory
• Descriptive URLs are more helpful than I previously thought
• If something is obsolete, be it a help file, or a download, keep it available, but mark every page  as obsolete.
• Call different things with different names.  For instance, Website Payments Pro is easily confused with Website Payments Pro, PayFlow Edition (which predates Website Payments Pro actually)
• Do not require third party software in sample code, even if it is free open source software
• Use the bare minimum amount of code as sample code
• If you have a knowledge base, answer the actual questions, do not refer people to guides, help files or similar questions.
• Do not require special permissions to run sample code
• Provide sample code in snippets, not solution files

photo credit: mangpages

The 12 things (with my notes in bold and italic)

1. EXERCISE | Rule #1: Exercise boosts brain power. – The most important chapter.  Short version – if you exercise your brain will be smarter and it won’t get dementia.  I’ve put this to the test, and I am more focused with exercise than without.
2. SURVIVAL | Rule #2: The human brain evolved, too. – Not that memorable, good background information.
3. WIRING | Rule #3: Every brain is wired differently.- Not that memorable, good background information.
4. ATTENTION | Rule #4: We don’t pay attention to boring things.- Intuitive,  and general background information
5. SHORT-TERM MEMORY | Rule #5: Repeat to remember. – Important, counter intuitive info on memory.
6. LONG-TERM MEMORY | Rule #6: Remember to repeat.- Important, counter intuitive info on memory.
7. SLEEP | Rule #7: Sleep well, think well. – The second most informative chapter.  I had always thought of sleep as a time of rest, it turns out to be a very active process for the brain.   Sleep is when the brain cleans and restocks itself.
8. STRESS | Rule #8: Stressed brains don’t learn the same way. – I had no idea that stress was the physical reaction that it is.  This is the third most important chapter.
9. SENSORY INTEGRATION | Rule #9: Stimulate more of the senses. – Good advice for graphic designers.
10. VISION | Rule #10: Vision trumps all other senses. –  mostly background information.
11. GENDER | Rule #11: Male and female brains are different . – we knew this already, but Medina tells us how male and female brains differ.
12. EXPLORATION | Rule #12: We are powerful and natural explorers. –  mostly background information.

From this book I have made the following changes in life

• I am distance cycling again
• I sleep eight hours or more per night
• I structure presentations differently (in accordance with the memory chapters).
• When I do graphic and information design I use more graphics and less text

After reading this book I life a more positive, more effective, and less stressful life.  Thank you Dr Medina.

photo credit: laszlo-photo

With no further ado – here are the books I recommend to start out.

1. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss – while it sounds like a scam, Ferriss actually write about how to say no to almost everything and focusing on a few things
2. Rework by Jason Fried and David Hansson – more manifesto than tutorial, but manifestos are important.  There is a bit of method involved, but it is mostly manifesto.
3. Growing a Business by Paul Hawken – As you might expect, a nice book on growing a business.  Worth reading – over time I’ve felt the gardening metaphor to be apt.
4. Never Eat Alone by Keith Ferrazzi – pretty much the classic on networking.
5. Ignore Everybody  by Hugh MacLeod – More motivation than method, but motivation is usually more important.  Whatever you do consistently defines you, and motivation is the biggest piece of consistency.
6. The Art of Profitability  by Adrian Slywotzky – Changes how you look at business methods, and helps define your goals.
7. Certain to Win by Chet Richards – The thinking of John Boyd applied to business.  I maintain that this book is the best introduction to the thinking of John Boyd and the OODA loop.
8. Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath – a handy checklist to use when evaluating ideas.
9. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie – the all time classic on working with, for, and around people.  Everyone would be far better off if reading this book was mandatory.  One of the inspirations for Stronico.
10. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It Michael Gerber – The classic book on how to systematize your business.  It helps you make the shift from owning a job to owning a company.

For another list, arguable much better, check out Derek Sivers’ list of worthwhile books.

photo credit: gadl

1. Remove the advertisements written directly into the program.  Click on “Learn about Payroll options” to see what I mean
2. Allow better sorting of invoices and estimates, currently the program throws everything at you at once.
3. Fix the printing problems – there is really no reason why creating a pdf is so error prone.
4. Allow easier access to templates – they should copy the sadly defunct Microsoft Office Accounting in their use of templates
5. Split off recurring invoicing and functions, avoid this whole “Memorized” metaphor, it’s simply not accurate.
6. Easier previewing of different invoice and estimate template options
7. Tell the user specifically what is being installed when the program auto updates
8. Tell the user about limitations of the product.  For instance the conversion tool does not work on 64 bit windows, etc.
9. Add progress indicators – at the moment there is no good way of knowing whether or not the product is working on something time consuming, or locked up, and the odds are 50-50 as to which it’s doing
10. Add more explanatory text on the credit card and bank synchronization.

photo credit: Rego – twitter.com/w3bdesign

First things first, I have not seen the Apple iPad.  I am an enthusiastic owner of an Amazon Kindle.  I honestly don’t see what the hype is about.  Granted, I never do with Apple products, but I can’t even see it from Apple’s point of view this time.  The Kindle is perfect at what it does, largely because it doesn’t do that much.  You read order, download, and read books on it.  Period.  The Kindle does that effortlessly and the e-ink is easier to read than paper.  The pages are consistently sized (an under-reported feature of the Kindle that helps quite a bit) and the battery lasts forever.  The Kindle also weighs almost nothing and you do not have to choose between it and a laptop in terms of weight or space.  In sum, the Kindle solves the problem of “I want to read something” quite well.

What problem does the iPad solve?  It will have the low battery life of anything with an actual monitor, so it can’t go that long without being charged, so add in the bulkiness of a charger 40% of the time to the transport of the unit.  It is harder to read (again, relative to the Kindle) so that’s another strike against it.

Perhaps I’m reading this wrong, maybe the competitor isn’t the Kindle, but rather some segment of the iPhone market.  Perhaps there is some segment of the world that is clamoring for multimedia computing power that is available while in motion.  But the obscurity of the Microsoft Tablet OS/PC indicates that there are not legions of people clamoring for walkable computing power.

Happily no one’s products depend on me, so good luck Apple.

I recently picked up a copy of The Power of Less by Leo Babauta (I was using a gift certificate and that was the only interesting thing Barnes and Noble had in stock).  Babauta blogs as www.zenhabits.net and I imagine most of the content originally appeared there.  It is an easy, fast read.

The book boils down to these points:

1. Start small, in fact below your personal capacity at whatever it is you are trying to do
2. Move in small increments
3. Announce your goals
4. Clean and organize
5. Eliminate the non-essential
6. Come up with 3 “Most important things” to do each day.  Do nothing until those things are done
7. Break down goals, plans and tasks into specific increments
8. Single task

That’s pretty much all there is to the book.  I would have ranked it a bit lower, except for all of the points are true and accurate. Point 6 is a good and useful tool to make sure that tasks actually get done and never slip.  Beyond that it’s all well written, but generic and unneccesary.  I do intend to get Babauta’s other book Zen To Done, which is his implementation of David Allen’s Getting Things Done system.  Perhaps that will be a bit more up my alley.

The first book I purchased on my new Kindle was Ignore Everybody by Hugh MacLeod. I bought it based on this review by Derek Sivers. On the whole, I liked it very much. In fact, I read it in one sitting. Here are my thoughts:

What the book is not:

• A step by step manual for doing anything
• A specific guide to doing anything
• Case studies

What the book is:

• A collection of generalized lessons learned from 20 odd years in the creative business
• Extremely well written
• Largely a collection of aphorisms, similar to the work of Eric Hoffer
• Highly motivational

I think I’ll just let the items I highlighted tell the story of the book (thank you Kindle) -I recommend it to everyone.

My Highlights

The more original your idea is, the less good advice other people will be able to give you.

If somebody in your industry is more successful than you, it’s probably because he works harder at it than you do. Sure, maybe he’s more inherently talented, more adept at networking, but I don’t consider that an excuse. Over time, that advantage counts for less and less. Which is why the world is full of highly talented, network-savvy, failed mediocrities.

Nor can you bully a subordinate into becoming a genius.

Creating an economically viable entity where lack of original thought is handsomely rewarded creates a rich, fertile environment for parasites to breed.

So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western world, making love to their PowerPoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

So now we have millions upon millions of human tapeworms thriving in the Western world, making love to their PowerPoint presentations, feasting on the creativity of others.

All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Every kid underestimates his competition, and overestimates his chances.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Art suffers the moment other people start paying for it. The more you need the money, the more people will tell you what to do. The less control you will have. The more bullshit you will have to swallow. The less joy it will bring. Know this and plan accordingly.d3665701B0026NBZFI

I think one of the main reasons I stayed in advertising for so many years is simply because hearing “Change that ad” ticks me off a lot less than “Change that cartoon.”d3665701B0026NBZFI

We think we’re “Providing a superior integrated logistic system” or “Helping America to really taste Freshness.” In fact we’re just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Your business either lets you go hunt the woolly mammoth or it doesn’t.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Every form of media is a set of fundamental compromises; one is not “higher” than the others.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Well, a cartoon only needs one person to make it. Same with a piece of writing. No Big Group Hug required. So all this sex-fueled socialism was rather alien to me, even if parts of it seemed very appealing.d3665701B0026NBZFI

It’s hard to sell out if nobody has bought in.d3665701B0026NBZFI

MAKING A BIG DEAL OVER YOUR CREATIVE shtick to other people is the kiss of death.d3665701B0026NBZFI

To me, it’s not about whether Tom Clancy sells truckloads of books or a Nobel Prize winner sells diddly-squat. Those are just ciphers, external distractions. To me, it’s about what you are going to do with the short time you have left on this earth. Different criteria altogether.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Writer’s block is just a symptom of feeling like you have nothing to say, combined with the rather weird idea that you should feel the need to say something.d3665701B0026NBZFI

PEOPLE ARE FOND OF SPOUTING OUT THE OLD cliché about how Van Gogh never sold a painting in his lifetime. Somehow his example serves to justify to us, decades later, that there is merit in utter failure. Perhaps, but the man did commit suicide.d3665701B0026NBZFI

Part of being creative is learning how to protect your freedom. That includes freedom from avarice.d3665701B0026NBZFI

There’s a famous old quip: “A lot of people in business say they have twenty years’ experience, when in fact all they really have is one year’s experience, repeated twenty times.”d3665701B0026NBZFI

THE LATE BRITISH BILLIONAIRE JAMES GOLD-SMITH once quipped, “When a man marries his mistress, he immediately creates a vacancy.”

Upon reading over this, MacLeod really is a lot like Eric Hoffer. Anyway, go get it and read it.

This Christmas I succumb to pressure and purchase a Kindle. First thoughts

The Good

• The clarity is superb
• The Kindle screen increases readability slightly compared to the printed page
• The Kindle page is slightly smaller than an ordinary paperback page. This was nice actually.
• The software is intuitive
• It arrives pre-setup for the most part
• Taking notes is quite easy and easy to review
• The dictionary feature is wonderful

The Bad

• It is far too easy to purchase books accidentally. The purchases are reversible
• They should include a cover and light as accessories. Those two items are essential to the safe operating of the Kindle (the cover anyway) and are not included with the Kindle.

On the whole, the Kindle is wonderful and I reccomend it to everyone.

As a self-diagnosed Aspie – I was particularly fascinated by the part about degrees of difference, mainly that some people can appreciate/perceive some things, music, food, books, etc, to a far higher degree than others. I thought I would create some lists for future reference.

High degree of perception list

• Music written in pentatonic scales
• Word choice
• Barbecue
• Written History
• Driving pattens (I can predict what people in front of me will do)
• Boxing
• Speeches and internal messaging
• Verbal tone
• Dogs

Low degree of perception list

• Classical music
• Jazz
• Sushi
• Body language
• Basketball
• Poetry
• Cats

What does all this have to do with Stronico? I’m not sure, but I was inspired to make several changes to the app after reading the book, though I find the reasons to do so unclear.