This Is Finda! » shawnh

If computer problems were real.

shawnh — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 01:28:22 +0000

THEY ARE REAL.

Being awesome, even when you screw up.

shawnh — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 23:52:21 +0000

Here at awesome Finda we prefer to deal with awesome people, awesome suppliers in particular. Being awesome doesn’t necessarily mean being faultless; we believe being awesome means acknowledging your faults and screw ups, learning from them and doing everything in your power to never let it happen again.

Today (or yesterday actually, but we only got it today since I was away yesterday…) our hosting provider and sysadmin company Web Drive delivered the awesome cake below to the Finda team. We really appreciate the gesture (how did you know we freaking love chocolate cake?) and know it’s the mark of an awesome company; acknowledging screw ups, owning it and learning from it.

The cake, it's ours! We get to have it AND eat it!

Good going Web Drive guys, THIS is why we work with you; we get to have our cake AND eat it too!

Edit:

Lunch of champions.

Epic release night, take five: All Black… and Yellow… and awesome.

shawnh — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 21:53:57 +0000

I’m a little embarrassed that there hasn’t been an awesome Finda post since the last awesome release night, six long weeks ago. But now there is. I am less embarrassed. A bit. Maybe.

We’re tired though; this release night was… very demanding. The actual software release went swimmingly as usual; @medhatgayed did a great job of making sure all the i’s were dotted and t’s properly crossed. And it paid off again as he smoothly guided our production platform into version 4.6.

The… challenge was with the release night awesome entertainment. Since the UV paint episode we had to think long and hard about what we could do that would be at least as awesome. As it turns out, more awesome things are also much more work.

Take painting a large Yellow wall for example. It sounds like simple thing. It sounds pretty easy. It feels pretty damn painfully hard.

Have a look at the video below. We took it upon ourselves to awesomeify the big yellow wall next to which we sit. And we succeeded spectacularly, but it took 7 hours, 3 coats of paint, 3 tins of paint, 2 rolls of painters tape, several people, buckets of sweat and one or two tears… Tears of joy, at how damn beautiful our Yellow Finda logo turned out!

Now… to get through the rest of the day without actually losing the will to live completely and the job will be done…

Always be awesome.

Go Big Or Go Home

Another Go Big Or Go Home

Yellow Finda

The Thing That Was Done

Epic release night, take four: the code that almost wasn’t!

shawnh — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 20:07:00 +0000

Another rather uneventful release night down and another epic video made to document it. The night, it’s about releasing software. Seriously. It is. Ok, it’s more about waiting for SOLR to sync and waiting to see if things go horribly wrong (and of course being ready to fix these things…) than anything else.

The whole operation almost turned into an epic fail but some quick thinking by one @semaj_nil and an hour’s colouring saved it! Sort of. As it turns out, the contrast of green on yellow doesn’t exactly lend it’s self to be scanned well on a phone. We attempted to fix the contrast issue by colouring in the post-it’s with permanent marker… hacking the fail; agile to the max. That’s how we roll.

It still doesn’t scan on my phone at all but it seems to work just fine on some people’s old iPhones, so I guess that covers most people.

So the lesson for this evening? QR codes need to be in high contrast colours… and must remain so after they are converted to black and white.

And now, for your enjoyment, The Video Of The Construction Of The QR Code:

Also, we have Some Stills… Of The Construction Of The QR Code:

A large green and black QR code.

Medhat, mid KILL.

Robert and James doing things and stuff.

The video, getting Product Managed.

The things that are the QR code.

To see some of the new Finda listing page widgets that we released, go here:

http://www.finda.co.nz/business/listing/1hd/finda-co-nz/

and here:

http://www.finda.co.nz/business/listing/4mcf8k/jayson-kingsbeer-photography/

Always be awesome. That is all.

Coding by Teh (awesome) Spec.

shawnh — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:40:50 +0000

Here at Finda we have the awesome mantra: “Agile to teh MAX!!!!1!”. It’s hard to be this agile and also be this awesome at the same time. I can see you wondering “what is their super sekrit awesome sauce” and “how do they do these awesome feats of technology”. You are right to wonder. It is not immediately obvious how it is possible to be this awesome. Let me explain: it takes hard work, dedication and awesome technical specifications like these from our product managers:

Teh Awesome Spec of Greatness and Wonder

Actually, (awesome) jokes aside, a quick brainstorm with awesome developers and awesome product managers to rationalise a problem and collaboratively come up with a solution is what it takes. This is something you can never have if you outsource your software development. That isn’t to say you should never outsource, just don’t outsource those projects you actually want to make money from or be competitive with. The technology market moves too quickly to have 6 week turnaround times and still be a player.

Nothing beats a quick awesome brainstorm and an agile implementation of the result.

Finda FTW!

The most EPIC release night, take three!

shawnh — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 19:35:37 +0000

So, after the last two awesome release nights we were hard pressed to come up with something even more awesome to keep the escalating awesome race going. We spent some time considering many options and finally decided on some UV insanity.

We’ve started a tradition with Finda releases to decorate the big Yellow wall that looms over the developers. To make it more friendly, to make it more Finda. As you will see in the video and pictures below, last night, we made it a LOT Finda. Awesome Finda.

The tools of the evening are two 42″ UV black lights (from Surplustronics who have an awesome collection of lights and electronic goodies) and three colours of invisible UV ink. Thanks to True Colours who sponsored us a vinyl Finda logo stencil we were able to… dab… small amounts of UV ink onto the big ‘ol Yellow wall making a nice, mostly invisible, Finda logo right there to look out over the awesome Yellow Coding Ninjas. Then things got… out of hand… you’ll see what I mean.

And now, for your enjoyment, the Epic Release Night Video V3:

A couple of stills to illustrate what’s up:

Now you don't see it...

And now you do!

One of them 'out of hand' things...

This, is, Finddaaaaaaaa

Welcome to Finda Betty, we hope you enjoy your stay!

shawnh — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 21:19:00 +0000

I would like to take this opportunity to welcome the newest member of the Finda development team. The team has been fighting to hire her for the longest time; we were severely lacking in awesome but now that Betty has joined us, we are complete. Betty completes us on a profound level.

Meetings were had, arguments were won, business cases were created and followed up repeatedly, there was begging, pleading, ranting and finally there was WIN. Betty joined us properly this week to start her career of awesome and win with the Finda developers.

We’re pretty sure she’ll enjoy her stay since we have every intention of looking after her very well.

Before we go onto the gallery I quickly put together to showcase the hotness and awesome that is Betty, please take this time to listen to Betty’s theme song, created in 1977 in anticipation of Betty joining our team:

And now, ladies and gentlemen and Awesome Geeks, I present to you Black Betty, her nickname is “Betty The Beast”, cos she’s got pride! She’s got power! She’s a bad ass mother who don’t take shit from nobody!

A portrait of our sexy Black Betty!

Isn’t she just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen? She’s cute, clever and has the memory of a whole herd of elephants!

A close up of sexy Black Betty the super model's face!

Just look at that face! So pretty!

Betty's beautiful green eye!

Her emerald eye, bright and shining with awesome!

Betty's beautiful inside... er... brain!

Isn’t Betty just awesome! 16 cores and 16Gb of pure developer pleasure!

Welcome to Finda, our lovely Black Betty “The Beast”!

The opposite of the #1 Coding Ninja trophy…

shawnh — Fri, 13 May 2011 03:43:08 +0000

So… even awesome Ninja Coders sometimes slip up and allow things that are… less than awesome. For example, completely hypothetically of course, a developer might insist that the release site is down and/or unavailable. One might, then, at closer inspection find that the developer managed to misspell the word ‘release’.

Mistakes like these are not acceptable from Awesome Coding Ninja’s.

To remind our resident Coding Ninja’s that only the most awesome things are acceptable we have two trophies. For outstanding performance and achievement in the Art of Software Engineering we have the #1 Coding Ninja Trophy. This trophy shows a developer’s peers that his skills are currently highly regarded and has recently accomplished an awesome feat of technical supremacy. Since the trophy is an empty Red Bull can (empty since people love to drink awesome and only 1 since it’s the recommended daily allowance… says so on the can…) other ‘normal’ people can also admire the technical genius of the developer in possession of this sought after symbol of Awesome.

The second trophy, cleverly designed to remind a developer that only the most awesome things are acceptable, is the “Luser of the week” trophy. As you can see from the image below, a sad face is displayed right underneath a word that may be read as “Luser” which is very similar to “User”, to remind the developer that “if it’s not awesome it makes you sad”. One might also notice that the trophy is constructed from… “green tins of liquid that shall not be named”. This indicates to everybody around what a sad situation was created by the holder of the trophy. Nobody likes sad and thus the “green tins of liquid that shall not be named” are full, since no awesome person would lower themselves to drink such awesomeless drinks.

The Luser of the Week trophy.

Always make it awesome. Don’t be a luser.

Facebook: The sad sad truth.

shawnh — Fri, 13 May 2011 02:32:18 +0000

Ok, so everybody has a Facebook account. If you don’t, you might not actually exist. Actually, you might as well not exist.

The difference between ‘existing’, though and ‘other people giving a crap about you’ is more adequately illustrated in the picture below.

I know you’re laughing but I also know your little inside voice is going ‘OMG, it happens to me… I’m so sad’. Yes, you are.

The sad reality of Facebook...

Happy happy Red Bull Friday MOTD 0×02

shawnh — Fri, 13 May 2011 02:23:36 +0000

Fridays are indisputably the most awesome day in the week. It is perhaps not blatantly obvious why this is so.

The reason that Fridays are the most awesome, opposed to Saturdays for example is that Friday afternoon is as far from Monday morning as you can get with no work in between. Saturday, while awesome, is not the most awesome because it is right before Sunday (which lacks awesome) which is right before Monday. Mondays are like the black hole of awesome. It sucks the awesome right out of everything in the world. Except when you’re on holiday that is.

The Happy Red Bull Friday message of the day is:

Happy happy Friday! Drink Red Bull, it’s main ingredient is awesome. It is also the main ingredient IN awesome. Only Stephen Hawking truly understands that.