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Re: Thanks HN

#31

Post by khalidmbajwa »

I have a proper fully equipped office at home, and a designated workplace for the company i run where developers i work with operate. I instead prefer to work from Coffe Shops simply because they offer distractions at such a minimum threshold. It works for me because A) Crappy Wi-Fi : So i can't stream Youtube or Hulu or download movies or Tv-Series yet not bad enough for me to be able to look up online documentation, parse through StackOverFlow, hold voice calls over Skype or make SVN commits. B) My external hard disks that contain the bulk-load of my sources of distractions, are no longer a moment's click away. C)No useless camaraderie, noone ambling by your desk to engage you in menial distracting conversations. It's just me , and my Macbook. D)For about 10$ (Two coffes per day), i get a serene and beautifully decorated place, that's hot in winters, cold in summers,complete with a comfy Sofa and a little table all my own, and for what is a sheer bonus in this part of the world, no power interruptions ! (7+ hours of no power is regular over here in summers).

If i feel a need to have one of my devolepers or my designer collaborate with me more closely than Skype voice calls can afford, i prefer to call them over to the coffee shop rather than go over to the office.It works for the kind of work i do.It may not for everyone. It's cheap, it's comforting, and it's completely distraction free. I get more done in 3 hours over here than in 10 at any other place.

Re: Thanks HN

#32

Post by jdsnape »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

Here in Durham the University and cathedral libraries are open to local residents to use. I'd recommend visiting the cathedral one if you're ever here, it's an amazing place to study.

Re: Thanks HN

#33

Post by jonrob »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

Exeter University is open to the public, although they've just done massive amounts of work on it and I don't know how it's turned out.

It might be worth taking another look at your nearest Uni library, as I think quite a few are similar to Exeter/Durham, at least in the day and if you don't want to take out books.

Re: Thanks HN

#34

Post by damncabbage »

petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

Some Australian University libraries are open access (Sydney Uni if I remember correctly), but others have card-only access points out the wazoo.

(I can't get into UTS' library anymore; my old student card must apparently be blocked now.)

Re: Thanks HN

#35

Post by robryan »

damncabbage wrote: post #34
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

Some Australian University libraries are open access (Sydney Uni if I remember correctly), but others have card-only access points out the wazoo. (I can't get into UTS' library anymore; my old student card must apparently be blocked now.)

Yeah, at least at Latrobe an rmit there doesn't seem to be any reason why you can't, apart from probably having to bring your own connectivity. I don't see them actively encouraging it but not policing it either.

Re: Thanks HN

#37

Post by snth »

In my experience, almost any productivity "treatment" works at first, until you get used to it. But, I hope I'm wrong and this continues to work out for you.

Re: Thanks HN

#38

Post by cookiecaper »

bergie wrote: post #8
zdw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I'm disconnected, I tend to just leave a bunch of comments in code with ONLINE in them and what I need to look up and recover my train of thought. I then switch to working on a different part of the program, or a different program altogether, and come back to them when I'm next online. This has worked pretty well for me so far, as long as I'm not under a time crunch.

That is a good point. Another tag like TODO and FIXME :-) I've noticed that I eventually get "push anxiety" when I work offline for longer periods. Once we even had to do a detour on a road trip from Poland to Helsinki to stop by a colleague's office in Sweden to be able to push code I had written on the way. I guess I simply don't trust my laptop...

This is a great reason to get a phone capable of tethering.

Re: Thanks HN

#39

Post by petercooper »

jonrob wrote: post #33
petercooper wrote: post #9

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

Exeter University is open to the public, although they've just done massive amounts of work on it and I don't know how it's turned out. It might be worth taking another look at your nearest Uni library, as I think quite a few are similar to Exeter/Durham, at least in the day and if you don't want to take out books.

My local university is Lincoln and I'm on campus every now and then as I have friends who work in their enterprise park. They have an excellent and reasonably new library but you need a student card to even get in since they put barcode scanner gates in when they built it. Their Web site notes this also :-(

That said, I might go and explicitly ask sometime, as there may be an unpublicised way around the problem.

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