Gathered at the Moorings

Thanks for all that positive energy sent my way yesterday. It seemed to do the trick. I was up working into the way wee hours, but, with the help of the team this morning, managed to pull it all together for a successful demonstration this afternoon. It went very smoothly. The Beta version has been delivered on schedule. Pheew!

You've probably gathered already that I'm a bit of a perfectionist, and I like to think that this is a good thing. But it can make life hard for those around me - as well as for myself of course - and this piece of work was a case in point. I'm paying the price right now in terms of tiredness, but I'm sure I will reap longer term rewards as a result of the extra effort.

When it comes to any software interface I've always found it impossible to design something without first building a prototype and playing with it for real. It's only when you start using it to solve real problems that you find out the more precise requirements. So I built something originally which was fit enough for purpose, and met the specification, but it soon became obvious how it could be significantly improved. It was merely "good enough", not great. So we redesigned it and now have a much more elegant and intuitive solution. It's made for a lot of stress and many late nights (as well as severely denting my blip social life), but it was worth that extra effort because the client is very happy and I'm proud that we've done the best job possible.

I guess I'm mentioning this because it seems so often that people settle for "good enough" rather than go that extra mile to be excellent. I suspect that this attitude is highly insidious. The more we meet it in the world the more likely we are to settle for just good enough ourselves. So here's a call to everyone who reads this to go that bit further than is strictly necessary. Go forth and excel! I'm now expecting to see some truly awesome blips tomorrow!

Today was a continuation from yesterday in terms of weather. Low featureless cloud and rain all day long. This is what I've been fearing most in terms of achieving blip excellence. The rain eased to a light drizzle for a brief period before our demonstration so I dashed out to grab a blip from the bridge just a few yards down the canal from the office. There was an animated conversation going on. Perhaps it was about the double-parking!

I'm relishing having a good few hours tomorrow evening to start catching up with other journals. This aspect of the blip experience is growing to have the same anticipatory feeling that I savour when looking forward to curling up with a good book. This is such a wonderful community!