racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

Last week I ditched Beryl in favor of Compiz Fusion. While Beryl effects are really slick, what I’m really after is the productivity boost I get with being able to manage windows and workflows more efficiently. For instance, I like how I can group windows, and how I can use different faces of the desktop cube for different window/task groups. And I particularly like the OSX Expose-like “Scale” functionality. The zoom functionality is also useful when making presentations.

However, I found Beryl to be quite unstable at times. It’s great that Compiz and the Beryl (a fork project of Compiz) had merged into Compiz Fusion. I would expect better stability and new functionalities and that’s just what I got. And they’re actually still in beta. I hear they will release a stable edition later this year.

Some screencaps. Oh, pardon the OSX-like theme. I was trying out some eye candy, and since I’m used to my Mac’s look, I guess it helps to have a more or less uniform look.

The desktop cube in action

The Expose-like Scale feature

Expo is much like the Desktop Wall feature. One thing I don’t like with Desktop Wall is that it conflicts with Desktop Cube. So it’s great to have Expo along with Desktop Cube (you can move windows across the different faces easily just by dragging).

Compiz Fusion’s settings manager has less customization abilities than Beryl, though, but I guess that’s a good tradeoff if you’re after stability. And it’s still not a final/finished product (active development is ongoing). So you can still expect more. Check out a guide for installing Compiz Fusion on Ubuntu Feisty here. I hear Compiz Fusion is included by default in the next release of Ubuntu (Gutsy Gibbon).

My DSL connection has been really slow for the past two weeks or so. Some colleagues of mine who also use SkyDSL are also reporting similar problems. Thing is, we people rely on the Internet to work, do business, and earn money.

Here’s an email I recently sent to SkyDSL customer service. If you have been experiencing slow speeds on your SkyDSL or Bayantel DSL (essentially the same) accounts, please don’t hesitate to call them up or send email. Their address is csdip@bayantel.com.ph .

Dear Bayantel/SkyDSL,

I’ve been having very slow speeds and unreliable connections on several of my SkyDSL accounts since about two weeks ago. I’ve been getting very high latency and low speeds, and this has badly affected my productivity (most of my work is Web related). I called up 411-2000 but the CSR I talked to said there were no outages or maintenance operations being done on the network. Still, I’ve been getting bad performance, regardless of machine (both PCs and Macs) I use, and on two locations.

Here are some details.

On both my apartments, I use Sky DSL bundled in with my telephone subscription. One 768kbps and one 384kbps.

768K – username (xxxxx). tel no (xxx-xxxx)
384K – username (xxxxx). tel no (xxx-xxxx)

Both of these are along Maginhawa St. in Teachers Village East Quezon City.

Here is a sample traceroute output (to gmail.google.com, one of the sites I find quite slow these days). I was asked by the CSR to send these over for your analysis.

Traceroute has started …

traceroute to gmail.l.google.com (209.85.139.107), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

1. 192.168.2.1 (192.168.2.1) 7.345 ms 2.492 ms 2.396 ms
2. 202.78.96.116 (202.78.96.116) 32.113 ms 35.902 ms 34.489 ms
3. 202.78.97.157 (202.78.97.157) 28.060 ms 32.474 ms 22.195 ms
4. 210.4.2.195 (210.4.2.195) 24.580 ms 23.940 ms 22.066 ms
5. so-1/1/0.ig3.lax1.alter.net (63.114.59.105) 330.247 ms 334.106 ms 325.866 ms
6. 0.so-7-0-0.xl1.lax1.alter.net (152.63.112.250) 328.786 ms 392.810 ms *
7. 152.63.57.78 (152.63.57.78) 329.267 ms * 328.802 ms
8. 0.so-6-0-0.br1.lax7.alter.net (152.63.112.41) 327.186 ms 321.951 ms 327.682 ms
9. lap-brdr-01.inet.qwest.net (205.171.1.145) 206.683 ms 202.827 ms *
10. bur-core-02.inet.qwest.net (205.171.213.109) 203.963 ms 211.153 ms 205.584 ms
11. sea-core-01.inet.qwest.net (67.14.1.186) 216.476 ms * 218.024 ms
12. * sea-edge-08.inet.qwest.net (205.171.26.74) 222.415 ms 218.789 ms
13. * 65.121.106.86 (65.121.106.86) 242.668 ms 240.028 ms
14. 72.14.239.12 (72.14.239.12) 1467.341 ms 1513.570 ms 1480.514 ms
15. 72.14.233.37 (72.14.233.37) 1465.196 ms 1461.246 ms 1466.459 ms
16. 209.85.250.69 (209.85.250.69) 242.306 ms 209.85.250.65 (209.85.250.65) 1511.369 ms 209.85.250.69 (209.85.250.69) 241.461 ms
17. * 72.14.239.190 (72.14.239.190) 242.521 ms 72.14.239.194 (72.14.239.194) 1513.615 ms
18. * pr-in-f107.google.com (209.85.139.107) 1503.991 ms *

And here are some speedtest.net results.

The first one is using the Bayantel server in QC:

Download speed: 763 kbps
Upload speed: 701 kbps
Latency: 106 ms

The second one is using a Hong Kong server:

Download speed: 50 kbps
Upload speed: 41 kbps
Latency: 580 ms

This third one is using a San Jose, CA server:

Download speed: 132 kbps
Upload speed: 126 kbps
Latency: 243 ms

Notice the big speed difference. With this, I think we can perhaps initially rule out any problem from my end to your end (meaning between my computer/s and Bayantel) because connection from here to the Bayantel server (using speedtest) is fast. But connection to the rest of the world is slow.

I hope you can help out with resolving this problem. This is particularly unfortunate to people like myself who rely on the Internet to do work and business. And I have had several colleagues complaining of lost productivity due to slow speeds.

Regards,

Angelo Racoma

The in-laws recently bought a spiffy new desktop computer, and courtesy of the shop discounts, they also got me a desktop computer table. I’m not much of a desktop user (as I prefer to work on laptops), but my wife and kids use the desktop for documents, web and games. So I thought of reorganizing my home office to minimize the clutter and to help with the workflow.

Previously, all the computers were on one table, and that included the 17-inch CRT the desktop used. It was really cramped. And I tend to clutter my desk with documents, computer peripherals, wires and even used mugs and plates from snacks.

Here’s my new setup after assembling and installing the desktop computer table. It took me a couple of hours to assemble the thing (no easy task because of the cryptic instructions!).

That’s my desk, sans the clutter. In a few hours the clutter will be back.

I know the elliptical table doesn’t exactly serve as a good office desk, but I had to make do with what I have. I know I have to buy a real desk pretty soon. At any rate, this used to be our dining table, and I folded the other half down, so I can set it up adjacent to the wall (but not directly against the wall, since the wall tends to get hot during daytime). I used to face the window, and I could easily glance sideward towards the TV. Now the TV is behind me (which will hopefully lessen the possibility of getting distracted when the kids are here watching).

Now that some space is freed up, and now that the desktop computer can be used without the table being so cramped, and now that I cannot glance toward the direction of the TV, I’m looking into boosting my productivity.

I’ve been a Mac user for more than two years now, but it’s only now that I’ve started to appreciate Safari. I just recently started moving away from from FireFox—at least on the Mac.

I’ve been reading raves about how Safari was lightning fast, and how Camino was quickly catching up to FireFox in terms of features, plugins, and all that. But I have been using Firefox for the longest time (the full Mozilla suite before that), and I wasn’t just about to switch away. Ultimately, it was the performance issue that made me start using Safari instead as my main browser.

FireFox is just too resource-hungry. I’ve got a (relatively) slow Mac, and I’m not just going to give all my resources to FireFox!

Also, there’s the workflow issue. I’ve been so used to FireFox’s tabbed browsing interface that I usually run it with 20 or more tabs per window, and this has both cluttered my workflow and bogged down my system. While Safari and Camino also have tabbed browsing, it’s not as easy to maintain dozens of tabs open because (1) you will run off the tab bar and have to work with a dropdown list after a certain number of tabs, and (2) you cannot rearrange tabs.

I just started this a couple of days ago, and here are some of my observations.

• Safari is definitely faster than Camino, and both are definitely faster than Firefox.
• Camino renders pages better than Safari. I guess Safari is just too standards-compliant that the least mistake in XHTML encoding breaks things up! (And we know not all sites out there have good markup.)
• I’ve grown more comfortable to the interface of Camino, which is like FireFox in many respects (it’s made by the Mozilla team, after all).
• Still, there are many differences. For one, Camino doesn’t allow you to reorganize tabs. Camino also doesn’t have session restore (which I don’t use anyway). And Camino doesn’t have those subtle refinements in the latest version of FireFox, like returning to the original tab after closing a recently-launched tab.
• I’ve come to appreciate the fact that the tabbed browsing experience is more limited in both Camino and Safari. At least I don’t have tabs cluttered all over. And I’ve learned to better appreciate working on multiple windows. Hey, that’s what Exposé is for!
• Camino doesn’t come bundled with a spell checker. And for some reason the OS X built-in spell checker doesn’t work on input entry boxes in Camino. This is a bummer especially for one who makes a living writing on blogs.
• Safari doesn’t (by default) warn you when closing windows with multiple tabs. In fact, I just pressed CMD-Q while writing this blog post and everything disappeared. Yes, all my Safari windows. Good thing WordPress has auto-save. (I’ll be looking for a plugin for that soon.) Update: I changed Safari’s Close Safari keyboard shortcut in the Keyboard Shortcuts preference to something not as easy to press.
• Safari doesn’t offer full-screen browsing by default (I guess this is against Apple’s UI philosophy, huh?).
• I miss the plugins, like FF’s drag-and-drop file attachment plugin.
• Passwords, passwords, passwords. FireFox on my PCs and the Mac have a cache of my latest passwords. Now I’ll have to key them all in again in Safari and Camino whenever I need to log in to my blogs/web apps. At least FireFox lets me take a peek at saved passwords, so I have a reference whenever I forget, when logging in via different browsers.
• I just notice TAB works better in Safari and Camino. With FireFox, you cannot tab to form buttons and dropdown menus, so you have to use the mouse to navigate. But with Camino and Safari, you can use tab and arrow keys to navigate form submit buttons and dropdown menus.

Just recently, I’ve been preferring Safari over Camino, because it’s just so darned fast, and it doesn’t take up as much of the computer’s resources.

I’m a person who would rather bear with adapting to my environment instead of having my environment adapt to my needs, whenever necessary. And given the resource constraints, I think I’m adjusting rather well to not using the browser I’m most used to. All those plugins might have been bogging down my system anyway.

Turned Off Twitter Updates

On another note, I just turned off the automatic publishing of twitter daily summaries. I’ve decided to turn those off for several reasons.

• While Twitter updates can make for substitute content in lieu of my regular blogging, I usually find myself incoherently rambling on Twitter, so that doesn’t make for good content, anyway.
• Too many Twitter updates, and too few regular posts in between makes my blog look like a link blog instead of a blog supposedly focusing on good content.
• Several of my readers have expressed their dislike of the Twitter updates (and Twitter itself, actually).

If you’re interested in what I babble about on Twitter, there’s always my Twitter status page at http://twitter.com/jangelo and the update feed at the bottom bar of this blog. BTW, here are a few posts about Twitter I recently wrote on JOAB:

• What makes Twitter so cool
• The argument against Twitter
• Do you use Twitter to chat?

So it’s back to quality programming, then!

One of the built-in games on my Nokia 1112 (a very very basic phone) is Yahtzee. You might be familiar with this game as the Yacht dice game. I usually play this game to pass the time during those lull moments. I used to play this game on the computer, too, way back in the late 1990’s, when we were addicted to Hoyle Board games (we especially liked Parcheesi, too).

I’ve more or less mastered Yahtzee through the many times I’ve played it, but recently I’ve developed a surefire technique to increase points—and I think this might have good parallels with work flow and work habits.

The system

First, the basics of the game. Yahtzee is a dice game, where you roll 5 dice to arrive at a combination. You get a total of three rolls per round, in which you can save certain dice so they won’t be rolled in the next roll (in the hopes that the next roll + the saved dice will give you a good combination). Here’s a visual reference for the rules (although rules have varied through time and through different game releases).

Here are the combinations and the points.

Upper section

• 1 to 6: The sum of the die faces corresponding to the number.

Lower section (combinations)

• 2 Pairs: The sum of all die values
• 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind: The sum of all die values
• Full House: A pair and a trio: 25 points
• Small straight: dice 1 to 4, 2 to 5 or 3 to 6: 30 points
• Large straight: dice 1 to 5 or 2 to 6: 40 points
• Chance: any combination of dice, the sum of all dice
• Yahtzee: 5 of a kind, 50 points

The technique

For the longest time, I had been focusing on filling in the combinations, especially with the upper-end values. For the fixed points, it’s okay to get low die values, since you get fixed points anyway. For instance, three 1’s and two 2’s give you a full house.

But for the combinations where the points are summed up, it’s best to get the higher values. For instance, a four-of-a-kind with four 6’s and one 5 will give you 29 points, while a four-of-a-kind with four 1’s and one 2 will give you only 6 points, since it’s summed up.

Of course, it’s the Yahtzee puzzle that’s the jewel of the game. This gives you 50 points, whether you get five 1’s or five 6’s. But it’s also the most difficult to achieve, in terms of chances.

At first, I tended to disregard the upper section, and just selected these when I couldn’t find a better combination. After all, combinations either get you fixed high points, or the sum of all dice. The upper section just gives you the sum of all corresponding die faces. So for instance I get two 5’s and a mix of other die faces, and I select the “5” box, I only get 10 points.

A new strategy

However, I realized later on that the game—at least according to the rules that my mobile phone uses—that the game will award you a bonus of 50 points if your upper section totals to 63 points or more. This means if you fill in the single number boxes with high values through the game, you get the chance to win an extra 50 points.

For instance, if I get four 6’s, that’s 24. Another four 5’s, that’s 20. Another four 4’s, that’s 16. Another single 3, and that’s 3. In total, that’s 63 points already. I get an additional bonus of 50 points!

It’s just like getting a Yahtzee! But it’s way better, since apart from getting 50 points, you also get the combined points of your upper section boxes.

What have I learned from this game?

In real life, getting the Yahtzee is like winning the lottery. Or it’s like going through a short cut at work, with business, or with other important things. You get the big bucks, or you get some result, but you didn’t really work hard (or smart?) for it. However, your chances of winning the lotto are very low. You either have to be very lucky, or have a very very good strategy to win. And when you do shortcuts (like cheat in exams, bribe your way through bureaucracy, etc.) you’re not really helping solve problems, but instead it’s like helping a sickness get worse.

Building up the upper section, on the other hand, is like working hard (or smart) on something, and then earning a big bonus once you’ve reached a certain goal. It’s like breaking even with your new startup business sooner than expected because you know how to optimize operations for best profit and least cost. It’s like putting out the best output at work (not necessarily by working hard, but perhaps by working smart) and impressing the boss, warranting you a bonus.

What do you get from this? At work, you build up experience (and brownie points with the boss) while getting a hefty bonus paycheck in the process. In business, you better optimize for profit, and hence you are likely to earn even more than you planned.

Focusing on or prioritizing the upper section is like building a structure on top of a solid foundation, instead of just focusing on how the structure looks from the outside. Focusing on winning the Yahtzee and neglecting the upper section is just like building a skyscraper without digging deep into the ground for some good foundation. Soon enough, you have a good looking building in no time, but it’s likely that this will topple soon enough, too.

Focusing on the Yahtzee and the higher combinations made me neglect building up this upper section in the past. But since I discovered that I can get better points by building up the smaller non-combination amounts, I learned to focus on this instead. So now, when I get four 6’s and a 5, I prioritize the 6 box instead of the four-of-a-kind box. I know I’ll only get 24 points (6×4) instead of 29 (6×4 + 5) but I know I will potentially gain a bonus of 50 points if I grow my upper section total to the appropriate level.

So when I started focusing on the upper section (and with a bit of luck in die rolls) I can now beat the opponent (which is the phone) more often. And while my highest scores below were in the range of 250+, these days my average is 300+, and my highest would be about 380+.

Now if you get to both build up a solid foundation, and get the Yahtzee, then you’re really lucky and smart!

The rules may vary across games and systems, as I earlier mentioned. But it’s the concept of building up a good, solid foundation that’s important in winning the game.