Randell.ph

If desire did not dim the brain, nobody would ever get married, drunk, or fat.

– Valentine in a message to Ender, p.218, Chapter 15, Ender in Exile by Orson Scott Card

During the last week of November and the first two weeks of December, I promoted Null Pointer on local geek and developer meet-ups.  Not that I didn’t expect to be speaking on behalf of the Null Pointer team, but public speaking isn’t really my thing.

During the years I spent in school and in the university, I avoided all situations that would make me speak in front of the class or a larger audience.  I only delivered speeches in front of the class when it was required and when there weren’t any other options.  If there was an option to submit a project instead of speaking in front of the class, I gladly took the opportunity.

But this time, I didn’t have many options.  The other members of the team had work on the days of the meet-ups and I couldn’t have backed-out because I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to promote my project in a large audience.

I think my presentations went relatively well, but like other things that lacks practice, the rust showed.  In the process, I learned things that I need to keep in mind for future presentations.  Here’s a quick list:

Prepare a good slideshow presentation. The slideshow presentation I had wasn’t visually appealing enough. I think there was only one image for the entire presentation.  Most of the content were text which actually served as cues to what I was supposed to say next. Looking back at it, I think it made my presentations dull.  Just talking in front of the audience with a bit of hand gestures when my topic required visuals showed lack of preparation.  Another reason why I need a good slideshow presentation is because…

There isn’t always an internet connection. What I wanted to do was just give a brief introduction of the site (how and why it was conceived) and then give a demo of the thing.  The problem with giving a live demo is when there is no internet connection to access the site.  This reminds me to include screenshots of the pages that I plan to demo so the audience can get a clue of what I’m talking about even if there’s no way I can access the site.

Make sure my presentation machine is working fine. I brought my laptop during the presentations but I ended up using somebody else’s because I didn’t know how to make the dual monitor work on Fedora. Yeah, I sucked like that.  But I know how to do it now, so embarassingMoments–.

Crack jokes. This is required, right?  I suck at this.  I think I repeated the same joke for all of the three presentations I gave.  I’m not sure if my Pugad Baboy readings helped me at all.

Socialize. I fail to take the opportunity to get to know people during meet-ups.  Maybe because I’m too shy to approach other people or maybe I just don’t know how to start a good conversation.  In any case, I need to practice this.

What other advice could you give to a n00b public speaker?

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

– Rich Cook

I already filed my resignation from my currently employer for reasons that I’d rather not discuss here to keep the privacy of the matter within the company.  It’s nothing serious in my opinion, but I think my decision is for the best of both parties.  I’ll only have a few more days before I embrace the U quadrant.

I still haven’t thought of finding a new job, although I know that it would be hard to get one at this time of economic crisis.  I could start job hunting, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to take a break from the office environment and unwind a bit.  I haven’t had a really long vacation since I started working professionally almost four years ago.  I thought that this would be a good time to do some of the things that I’ve been wanting to do that I haven’t been able to do because of my schedule (and laziness).  Here’s a quick list of what I’m planning to do:

Clean my room

This is the first thing that I’m going to do.  I’m betting that no other room in the world is messier than my room.  It’s so messy that I wouldn’t even dare take a picture of it to show how messy it is.  This should take a week at most.  Sub-tasks:

• Donate unused clothes.  This should free up some space in my closet and discover fossilized spiders and lizards while I’m at it.
• Throw away unnecessary stuff.  This includes old magazines, journals, random scratch papers, candy wrappers, motherboards, and some other stuff that I probably didn’t know existed in my room.

Play basketball

It’s been nearly 4 years since I last played basketball.  I sure am out of shape and I probably won’t last a minute on the court without losing my breath.  I’m going to get myself a basketball and start practicing in our street.  Perhaps after a few weeks, I can show up to The CPS Triangle’s weekly games.  I need to remind myself that I need to make time for this every once in a while.

Read lots of books

I have lots of books in my queue that I’m only able to read when I’m in a jeepney or a bus, or when I’m waiting for my girlfriend from her duty in the hospital.  I also don’t speed read because I tend to enjoy the book more if read every word.  The huge focused reading time should empty my queue in no time.

NullPointer.ph

NullPointer.ph is relatively new and still has a lot of room for growth in terms of the number of users.  I want the entire Filipino developer community to join the site.  It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be fun and challenging.  It’s also not impossible.

I’m giving myself couple of weeks before losing my sanity from boredom, then I’d probably find a regular job again.

Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

– Plato

I got the quote from this blog post: Project Update: The xkcd school in Laos is nearing completion! Randall Munroe is awesome.

This is also my 100th blog post for this blog. Yay!