Week in Review – 2010-31

I've noticed a bunch of websites that just don't pay any attention to detail. Little things:

  • banking sites that don't remember your settings (i.e. for exporting statements) and you have to set them every time you export, for every account

  • log forms you fill it to register, and when you fail validation (like getting the CAPTCHA wrong), some parts of your form are now blank and you have to fill them in again (or you get to the bottom where they ask you to accept the terms and conditions, and when you view them it navigates away from the form you are on)

  • paying for things online is still very difficult! It took me almost an hour to pay for an extension I bought the other day - very confusing paypal process, which I haven't fully researched to know what is going on


Maybe these are symptoms of trying to do too much - and never doing anything very well? The banking site in question never seems to change, so perhaps they just aren't in a position where they can make small incremental improvements? Still on the big bang approach? The Minimum Feature Set is an interesting concept.

I came across a blog post about Performance Punishing via twitter this week. I've seen this at every place I've worked! If you highlight issues, identify work needed, present problems, you are always expected to work on it yourself - you found it, you fix it! One thing I like about Agile is the way it fosters teamwork, and team ownership of all aspects of the project. This spreads the load, results in less 'heroism' and obviously creates a better environment.

The Ubuntu Stackexchange Question and Answer site is now available to the public! Check it out for some useful Ubuntu information.

Bugs encountered:

  • Joomla 1.5 password reset token issue caused by some themes - http://docs.joomla.org/Confirm_password_in_1.5.16

  • I've found several Joomla extensions rely on their own javascript - but for some reason my theme isn't including them. I've just manually updated the html template in the theme to link to the javascript for now.


Bing has finally updated its index! See http://www.bing.com/search?q=exmount.com and http://www.bing.com/search?q=pmw-ex3+shoulder+mount - it must be at least a month behind Google and Yahoo, but it gets there.

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