McDonalds doesn't teach queueing theory

I was in McDonalds today (don't ask), and there was a single line in front of the one attended register. One of the staff opened a second register, but everyone happily stayed in one line. Here's the dialogue that followed:

McDonalds : "Please form a second line here"

Steve : "Why?"

McDonalds : "What?"

Steve : "Why should we form two queues, when one queue is more efficient?"

McDonalds : after 3 or 4 second pause, "Because I say to"

Can't argue with logic like that....

Batch Conversion of Pages file *in Leopard*

I was very proud of my Pages to rtf script, and then I upgraded to Leopard last night and it stopped working! In my search for the answer I came across this post, which solves the problem more thoroughly, though you need to combine it with information from here as well.

In case you don't want to do this yourself, here's a script that will start Pages, prompt you for the type of export you want, and then prompt you for a destination directory, and it works under Leopard. I told you it was more thorough than my last solution :-)

[sourcecode language='jscript']
on open theFiles
tell application "System Events"
if process "Pages" exists then
display dialog "whoops, please close Pages before running droplet!"
end if
end tell
tell application "Pages"
activate
delay 1
close front document
set theList to {"doc", "rtf", "pdf", "txt"}
set theType to (choose from list theList OK button name "Select" with title "Pages Export" with prompt "Choose one or more formats to export using Pages" with multiple selections allowed) as text item
set s to theType as string
set theLocation to choose folder
set theLocation to theLocation as string

repeat with aFile in theFiles
open aFile

if theType contains "doc" then
set asType to "SLDocumentTypeMSWord"
set docName to name of front document

-- Remove .pages extension.
set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ".pages"

-- Add .doc extension.
set docNameNew to first text item of docName & asType
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs

-- Save file to Desktop.
set docPathAndName to theLocation & docNameNew
save front document as asType in docPathAndName

end if
if theType contains "rtf" then
set asType to "SLDocumentTypeRichText"

set docName to name of front document

-- Remove .pages extension.
set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ".pages"

-- Add .doc extension.
set docNameNew to first text item of docName & asType
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs

-- Save file to Desktop.
set docPathAndName to theLocation & docNameNew
save front document as asType in docPathAndName
end if
if theType contains "pdf" then
set asType to "SLDocumentTypePDF"
set docName to name of front document

-- Remove .pages extension.
set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ".pages"

-- Add .doc extension.
set docNameNew to first text item of docName & asType
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs

-- Save file to Desktop.
set docPathAndName to theLocation & docNameNew
set s to save front document as asType in docPathAndName

end if
if theType contains "txt" then
set asType to "SLDocumentTypePlainText"

set docName to name of front document

-- Remove .pages extension.
set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ".pages"

-- Add .doc extension.
set docNameNew to first text item of docName & asType
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs

-- Save file to User Specified Location
set docPathAndName to theLocation & docNameNew
save front document as asType in docPathAndName
end if
try
close front document saving no
end try
end repeat
quit
end tell
end open
[/sourcecode]

Murray Gell-mann, in a TED video....

"In 1957 some of us put forward a partially complete theory of the weak force, in disagreement with the results of seven experiments. It was beautiful and we dared to publish it, believing that all those experiments must be wrong.

In fact, they were all wrong."

I love that in maths and physics truth and beauty are so frequently aligned, and that misalignment often indicates immature understanding. A new insight can reveal new beauty.

I think the same is true of programming. Your code should be at least as elegant as your problem domain (I can't do anything about accounting *s*).

Batch conversion of Pages files

My current assignment makes me a Mac weenie in a Microsoft world, so while I'm happily tootling along in Pages I need to be able to share stuff with my colleagues. At the moment I'm the primary author of 30+ short course descriptions, stored in separate Pages files, and I've been exporting them to RTF when I need to share them. That was initially ok, but got out of hand as the number of files grew, so yesterday I was introduced to AppleScript.

I know nothing about AppleScript, but I was able to find a script on the web (thanks again, Google) that did most of what I want. I'll show you the script, then tell you the parts that weren't obvious to me and slowed me down

[sourcecode language='jscript']
on open theFiles
tell application "Pages"
repeat with aFile in theFiles
open aFile
set docName to name of front document
-- Remove .pages extension.
set prevTIDs to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ".pages"
-- Add .pdf extension.
set docName to first text item of docName & ".rtf"
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to prevTIDs
-- Save file to Desktop.
set docPathAndName to (path to desktop as string) & "rtfs:" & docName
save front document as ".rtf" in docPathAndName
close front document
end repeat
end tell
end open
[/sourcecode]

My first challenge was that I couldn't figure out how to get this to run! Pressing "Run" in ScriptEditor did nothing. I ended up saving it as an applet (use "Save As", selecting FileFormat => application), and then I could drag and drop the files I wanted to convert onto the applet. Once I put the applet in the dock, that was pretty convenient.

The second thing that slowed me down was figuring out how to save the results to a folder (the original script saved to the desktop). What I needed was the bit ' & "rtfs:"' while setting the docPathAndName. Here I'm dealing with a string, and it already has a trailing ":" - I kept trying to add another one, and AppleScript gave me a message about the target not being writable, rather than not existing, which lead me astray for a while.

Anyway, now I can select my Pages files, drag and drop them onto the applet in my dock, and the rtf files appear in a folder on my desktop. Sweet!

Releases with themes

When I'm doing agile training, I commonly advise customers to give names to releases and iterations to help them decide which stories belong in which iteration, but it's not something that I see many customers do and since I rarely take that role not something I do much myself either. But today I got some direct experience!

Cogent is building a software application to help you organize your personal work, and I'm acting in the sponsor role. The details of the functionality are being sorted out by someone else, but I'm the person focussed on the operational requirements and how we get it to the billable stage as quickly as possible (everyone else in interested in this too, but it's my particular role). Yesterday afternoon I added operational stories to our list, and then prioritised the list story by story, and got what looked like a reasonable response.

Today I went back and created some themed releases, and gave them names.

1. 
   Homely - Ugly, but interesting. This release is usable, but won't win any design awards. We want it first because we're using the application internally now, so functionality is important. This is the release we'll pass to "friendly" testers for feedback, so it needs to support a small set of concurrent users without getting too slow. Codename : Homer


2. 
   Prettified - Like Homer, but certainly nicer looking and generally more usable. We still won't be confident in our backup plan, nor have stress tested the application, but it will look professional and be generally usable. Codename : Marge
   


3. 
   Robust - we need this one to be tough, so it can withstand the abuse of a lot of people. This is the point where we can do an open beta - still not charging, but giving the general public access. Codename : Bart
   


4. 
   Billable - something that we feel we could reasonably charge money for. Codename : Lisa
   

With these releases in mind I went back and looked at my priorities again, and found that some of them were quite different. If you are a customer on an agile project, I strongly encourage you to do the same thing - you may be surprised by the difference it makes.

Another "I wish I had said that"

“Simplicity and elegance are unpopular because they require hard work and discipline to achieve and education to be appreciated.” - Edger W Dijkstra