A new study proves what I have known for a long time: a fun office environment is a productive one. At ArcStone we believe in this so much, it is even part of our core values.

The basic idea is that as people form tighter bonds through fun shared experiences they open up more, trust each other more, and can generally work better as a team.

To all my past bosses who frowned on my antics: I told you so.

I grew up in a household saturated with the latest in computer technology, coding books and magazines, and general gadgetry. I have reaped the rewards of that upbringing, and I want to raise my children in the same forward-looking environment.

For those of you with a similar mindset, I present to you a handful of resources to get your young ones started off on the right foot.

Lego Mindstorms - programmable Lego system that is loads of fun for kids and adults alike. Create robots, strange creatures, or automate repetitive tasks. Just remember to instill your creations with the three laws.

Young Coders - a kid-friendly forum with lots of coding advice and tips. Many topics and languages are covered, and the site has an active community behind it.

Kid Computers - hook your offspring up with a styling computer they will want to take care of, and make their friends jealous with. You can also find kid-sized mice and keyboards here, which will help their all night coding sessions be more comfortable.

Photo by Alicia Cermak

Technology can be a harsh mistress, a sultry siren wooing you into total electronic nirvana. That’s why in the information age it’s increasingly more important to unplug for a while and reconnect with the real world.

Here are some tips to get you started:

1) Office Yoga - even with a highly ergonomic keyboard sitting in front of a computer all day can take its toll. Give office yoga a try.

2) Go On A Hike - with Everytrail you can look up some seriously serene locations for hiking, biking, and other activities. Its integration with Google maps will make computer geeks feel at home planning a trip.

3) Learn An Instrument - with all the free resources out there it can be fun and easy to pick up an instrument. I recommend the guitar. Also, learning the guitar has the dual benefit of also making you better at Guitar Hero.

4) Start A Book Club - before the Internet, people used to get information on a thin flexible medium called “paper.” Paper is actually made from trees, and is sometimes bound into a square package called a “book.” You can find resources here for starting and running book clubs.

5) Take In A Sporting Event - getting out of the house and socializing with fellow fans is the best way to enjoy a game and make new friends. I recommend ComedySportz. It’s the only sport that combines the athleticism of chess with the thrill of bowling.

Now get out there and enjoy the real world before its too late!

I love Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday. There are parties, decorations, candy, and it’s one of the few holidays where you aren’t obligated to spend time with extended family.

This year I decided to bring some holiday cheer into the office via a fake severed arm. When I laid eyes on it at the store I had to buy it, at only $4 this could very well be the best investment I have ever made. The arm has been moved about the office, popping up in unexpected places, giving my colleagues a chuckle or scare.

Send me a picture of how your office celebrates Halloween. I will post the most interesting pictures here on the 31st.

Part blog, part polling system, Oobject picks topics of interest and lets users submit their top picks, sort of like a pageant of gadgets. Sometimes the lists are full of beautiful things, old things, or just supremely weird things.

Each day a new topic is highlighted for users to peruse. I urge you to take a look, there is a good chance you’ll see something you never knew existed.

Working late at night on a project, all alone, your cubicle can seem so much larger and more lonely. I suggest filling it with little paper friends from ReadyMech. They have many designs, catering to all sorts of tastes. All you need is a printer, scissors, and some tape to whip up a companion.

If you are skilled with the scissors, and have some time on your hands, I suggest making them all. Take a picture and send it to me; I will reward you with my personal kudos and a hearty round of applause.

Here is my new friend:

If you have been following the console wars you are surly aware of Nintendo’s success with the uniquely named, and marketed Wii. Although I don’t own one yet, my son and I stop at our local GameStop every chance we get to play.

Before we started doing these freeloading recreational excursions, my son had never played a video game. He immediately picked up the Wii, and was able to play games without instruction or frustration.

This got me thinking about how the Wii was different from other gaming systems. By making the game controls a natural extension of the user, Nintendo has tapped into a very powerful control mechanism: the human body.

Although my son had not yet mastered a mouse, keyboard, or complicated button combinations, he had already mastered his body, and therefore the Wii.

Here is a video of my four year old playing a racing game on the Wii:

Vimeo, a video sharing site akin to YouTube but for a more discriminating user, has now launched HD video streams in gloriously sharp 720p. For those of you stuck in the analog, rabbit-ears age, that is 1,280 by 720 pixels of resolution.

I sampled some of their fare, and was quite impressed with the quality and speed of the video. The content however, like most video sites, still leaves something to be desired.

Other sites will probably follow suit and start offering higher video quality. It won’t be long before we have a regular resolution arms race on our hands. Alas gentle readers, this leaves me wondering: do we really need to see aunt Deloris’s 80th birthday party, or a montage of groin smashing shenanigans in high resolution?

It also appears that the move to higher quality video is in part inspired by a lucrative advertising contract with Canon. Throughout the site you can see ads promoting the obvious superiority of HD video, and Canon’s logo is even watermarked over select videos.

I have selected from the cream of the crop a video for your sampling (you still need to visit Vimeo for the HD version):

The FX Movie (A Tribute To Visual Effects) - HD version from Spinning Blade on Vimeo.

I couldn’t think of anything else to post, so I decided to put up a brief synopsis of my current musical adventures, especially what I listen to while I program.

1. The Knife. These guys are great; sort of electronic with fast beats. I listen to them when I really just need to focus, even if I’m having a bad day. I’ve never written any great code with them playing, but what they do for me is allow me to write code even when I really don’t want to.
2. The Hold Steady. I can’t listen to most of their stuff except in full album format, and I never listen to them just to get motivated. I reserve The Hold Steady for when I need to stay on a hot streak. I can listen to them on headphones, like The Knife, so they’re good for a midday streak often.
3. The Decembrists. I have all their stuff on my computer, and I’ve written a lot of my best stuff to their erudite lyrics and catchy melodies.
4. Radiohead. An old standby for writing great code. My very best coding sessions have involved listening to everyting they’ve ever done, in chronological order–it’s what I put on when I know I’m hot and I want to stay that way for the next 12 hours…
5. Dave Matthews Band. Not many programmers I know of are down with DMB, oddly, and I can’t listen to them for really hard concentration, but for basic bug fixing, they’re alright.
6. Mayaflyer. I like to start and end every day with Mayaflyer. They’re the only reason I’ve ever produced a worthwhile line of code, ever.
7. Wilco. Unbelievable for sustained periods of productivity. I can code for hours, especially with “A Ghost is Born.”
8. Just about anything from Schubert onwards, chronologically. I code really well to Shostakovich symphonies, Brahms concertos and sonatas, and Menotti’s operas. Also Philip Glass. If you’re a programmer reading this, try some Glass, especially the album of the Brazilian group playing his stuff, it’ll blow your mind.
9. TV on the Radio, The Strokes, The Libertines, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Velvet Revolver, Portishead, Interpol, We are Scientists… see Radiohead.

Oh, and as for what I’m reading right now, I’ll admit without embarrassment that I’m progressing through the Harry Potter series in order; I’m on book four and loving every second of it.

Every year, I learn two new languages and write (or at least design) one; I’ve done this for four years now and I keep up my skills in each language. I usually take about a month per language. I always learn one in January and one in June (well, June 21 to the end of July actually) January, I learn a language I don’t want to know but feel like I should. My birthday is in June, so I feel like it’s a good point to reward myself with a “candy” language. Help me pick a new language to learn! Read the rest of this entry »