SME Web FactoryAll about website development

Working on the technology industry is difficult, in its own way. You have a billion of distractions when it comes to working because social networking sites such as facebook, twitter, plurk and youtube are easily accessible.

When you google something, advertisements of online shops will be displayed on the right side of the website, and it takes effort to just click on what you’ve been planning on looking for all along that’s related to your work.

I admit, my productivity has been low recently because of the bajillion distractions, but I’m currently working on it and it’s slowly but surely improving!

What kind of tricks do you do to keep yourself from getting distracted by facebook notifications and twitter mentions? Share it with us!

One of the greatest advantages of working in product development or anything involving a computer and the internet is that you have the privilege to work from home.

Whenever I feel a little sick or if I have a cough that I fear would infect my teammates if I go to work, I’d notify our HR department and tell them I’ll be working from home. The HR would then notify the project manager and they would divide tasks and assign them to me. As long as I get the job done, I still get paid like I went to the office itself!

I have been taking advantage of this perk a lot, lately, and well, responsibility is the key task for this. If you don’t actually set aside time to get things done, you will eventually suffer the consequences later, so don’t ever get used to slacking off, it’s not healthy for you and your job!

You know, I realized one thing when I was in college.

If you don’t care much about your overall performance on something that’s requires collaborative effort, then just exert a little effort for all of the other members who actually care, because it’s not fair for you to bring them down with you just because you don’t.

There are people who just don’t know how to get along with groups, but if you try, then you’ll get the hang of it. And if you have issues with your teammates, talk to them personally about it instead of holding a grudge and running immediately to your supervisor because it will only complicate things between the two of you and the rest of the team.

Who would want that, really? It would just make your work environment worse, and trust me, that is something you wouldn’t want because I’m pretty sure it would only lead to someone quitting the job.

Do you get that feeling that you’ve done something well?

I remember that one time when the COO of the company that I interned on told me that the clients were pleased with our work and that they wanted to start the second phase of the development as soon as possible. Back then I was used to making programs that were probably going to be thrown away somewhere and disregarded because I was a student and they were mostly just practice exercises to improve my programming skills.

I didn’t know how it felt to make something that people would actually put into good use until that moment. It was very fulfilling. It made me realize how those years in college weren’t put into waste at all.

Share with us your moments!

Programmers have this certain way of thinking, they analyze problems and look for plausible solutions. The problem with this is that at times, they tend to be more technical about things. They assume that as long as the program works fine, it’s good.

System analysts exist for this very reason.

Let’s take web applications for instance. I’ll share with you guys an experience that I’ve had. In this company, our boss gave our team the project manual, and, the developers dived right into it. I merely observed their progress because I was still new. I noticed that the web page layouts lacked a bit in the aesthetic area, the text boxes were all clumped up in one page when they could have grouped certain related fields. Some of the text boxes lacked constraints and the like, and, their work could have been improved if there was someone to analyze it.

So don’t complain about your analysts, they will make you look good!!!

There were times when I was in college that they required us to work in pairs. The problem with me way back then was that if I didn’t know anyone in the class, I would panic and end up being the last person to choose a partner.

This turned out to be a bad habit of mine that led to bad experiences. I ended up getting a partner that never did anything and relied entirely on me. I had to drop the course because I wasn’t able to submit anything without the help of my partner.

The following semester I saw him again on my class and I had a panic attack. The problem with me is I never knew how to take control of things. I would just panic and whine about things I cannot change.

If this happens to you, I suggest taking over and if your partner lacks initiative, motivate him/her to do it. If all else fails, talk to your professor / boss about it.

There are times when I like listening to songs with good beats. They actually help me think when I’m having a panic attack because the program is due in a short amount of time. I tend to procrastinate, and when I cram, I need good songs to keep my blood pumping and my mind on its development mode.

On other days, when I can’t think clearly but I have a lot of free time to write the code, well, I prefer a more calm environment. It annoys me to no end when someone makes a lot of noise while I program and I’m in this kind of mood. I guess it’s just these tiny habits that I have.

What kind of programming habits do you guys have? Do you like quiet environments or do you like loud music? Do you prefer working alone or with friends?

I can still remember how my thesis defense went. I was pretty scared for a whole week because I never really put much thought into what could happen until the date was actually getting closer and closer.

Most of the time I just disregarded my thesis whenever my friends brought it up because I knew the date was still far.

It wasn’t so bad, really. The panel was nice enough not to be too pressuring and the aura of the whole defense room was nice, it was like you were just explaining your thesis to your friends and not people who could potentially delay your graduation. I got nervous after that because it seemed like my adviser wanted me to change the whole methodology that I used for my thesis, but it turns out it was okay.

The best advice I can give those who are about to defend their thesis, just stay calm because you won’t be able to explain your thesis well if you’re not.

Did you know that Photoshopping a green screen isn’t the only way to change a video or image’s background? You could actually get the threshold of an image, determine which pixels are the background pixels and binarize the image accordingly, then just replace the background pixels with the pixel of your desired background.

If the binarization isn’t that clean due to poor lighting and what not I strongly recommend you to adjust the threshold and use cleaning algorithms like dispersion, erosion and the like. If it still isn’t nice, choose a background that contrasts the chosen foreground.

I kind of miss taking my image processing class. It was fun.

What other kinds of image processing would you guys like to talk about? I can give you basic tips on how to manipulate images without photoshop! OpenCV or ImageLab are great options on manipulating images through code.

Try them out, will you?

For some reason, my programming skills are most effective under time pressure. I tend to procrastinate a lot and realize that I have to get things done before the deadline, so I end up staying up really late to finish something that I should have been doing weeks ago.

This wasn’t very healthy and I’d end up finding myself sleeping in class or staring into space at work, it’s being counterproductive, and my boss hated it.

Procrastination isn’t really always the good way to go. Now I practice getting the job done before the deadline so I can have time to relax without worrying about anything else.

You should try it!