Category: Case Study

WordPress #2: Blog Boost

When I get a new WordPress subscriber, I do wonder if they are a legitimate subscriber, or if it is like Twitter and it’s just someone following me in hope I follow them. I usually get music artists, or girls (they might not even be real girls, it could just be a scam, with an enticing picture to lure you in. At least the bands are legitimate).

I actually got 3 new subscribers this week, which is a massive increase since I have 17 in total, and one of them is myself. I’m actually inclined to say these subscribers are legitimate, because they all gave a blog a “like” first. It’s incredibly rare to get a “like”, but it means a lot, especially since the view counts are always wrong.

If you are real… “hello! Thanks for thinking my blogs are worth your time – given the insane amount of content on the internet that you could be reading instead. It’s much appreciated“.

In the last week, with my 3 subscribers and 3 likes, how many views do you think I got? Surely at least 3, but hopefully 16 if everyone read just one of my blog posts.

The actual answer is 1 view, and it was for a post from January.

So if you did read one of my posts, it didn’t log your views. I do enjoy writing the blogs, even if people don’t read them; it’s quite therapeutic keeping a diary of sorts. However, if I do see a view/like/comment, then it does give extra validation.

I only really want a “like” if you legitimately liked it, but I probably aren’t aware if someone read it but didn’t like it, or was on-the-fence about it. Feel free to leave a comment though. You could ask questions about that particular blog post, ask questions about software development (which is basically posting ideas for new blogs), or just say that you read it. 

As it goes, I have only ever received 1 comment. I was well excited. But then when I re-read it, I realised it was probably just spam, so I decided to delete it.

Plans for next month

I do have some annual leave to take, and I reckon loads of other people will too. We tend to have a “change freeze” where we don’t put out any patches, so December is a quiet month for us. Therefore, I probably won’t have much to rant about. Instead, I’ll look at my draft blogs, and maybe finish some of those.

If you are a regular reader, you may be wondering what happened to my Apprentice since I haven’t mentioned him for a while. Well, he has had loads of forms to fill in, some exams to take, and has another assessment coming up. This is just so he can pass his Apprenticeship with the Bootcamp company. It’s dumb because if he passes, then he officially works for my employer and will be working with me, but he ain’t gonna be using the languages he is being tested on. So all it has done is stifle his development for many months. It’s ridiculously dumb. He should be fully available in January, so that’s something to look forward to.

Biassed Twitter Picture Algorithm

People are accusing Twitter’s algorithm of being racist, which is sometimes a problem when it comes to algorithms based on Machine Learning.

If you don’t train the algorithm with a representative data set, then it can cause failures. e.g. if your data set only has pictures of males, then the algorithm will have problems when it is then tested out on pictures of females.

This sure is an interesting thread.

Originally, Dantley who works at Twitter, states the background is swaying the algorithm to choose the white guy. Then Graham has followed up with a set of tests.

In his reply, he has 4 pictures. If you click each one, you can see the original image. The image is very tall, which means Twitter has to crop it in order to display in the tweet. It seems that it crops the image around something interesting in the pictures. So it should detect 2 people and then needs to choose one to display in the preview. In each of the 4 examples, it is choosing the white man.

Dantley follows it up with an experiment of his own, by placing them in the same outfit, but he also removed their hands. This was probably just easier to edit, rather than swapping clothes and adding their hands back in. The black guy is then chosen.

I wonder what the outcome of this is going to be. Some people, including Dantley suggest it should crop the image, but I don’t want a massively tall image on my timeline. Maybe they have some other way of handling it that I’m not thinking of.

Jon Skeet

Soon after I started using Stack Overflow to find answers to my programming questions, I noticed the same name answering the questions; Jon Skeet. His “reputation” was really high. So high, it was the highest on the site. 

His reputation has become so large though, that it has outstripped his ability, or so he says in his blog on Imposter Syndrome.  

I sometimes think that with other aspects of life. For example, can The Beatles be anywhere near as good as their reputation? Surely no band is that good. 

It’s funny that Jon even references his Chuck Norris style facts about his ability. The internet definitely see him as a programming legend of the C# world.

I think it’s undeniable that Jon Skeet is an expert. I think the best developers aren’t necessarily the ones with ability, but they also need the right attitude to compliment it. Jon’s support to the community by answering so many questions to aspiring developers on Stack Overflow – makes him an absolute legend. He deserves his reputation.

Watch Someone Drink Water

I was using the Explore feature on Steam, and came across this “game”:

Each Sale I Drink a Glass of Water : The Game

The game/experiment is in Early Access for one year and every time someone buys it, I will record myself drinking a glass of water and add it to the game. The updates with the new clips will be added each Friday. Have fun watching me drink water!

Each Sale I Drink a Glass of Water : The Game

There’s quite a lot of weird cash grabs on Steam, but I guess the phrase “Build it, and they will come” is appropriate. If you put it on Steam, someone will buy it.

It’s £2.09. Buy loads of copies and make him drown.

Case Study: Steam – Play Next

On the PC digital game store, Steam, they have been adding experimental features under the name Steam Labs. One that eventually was implemented on your main library page was a feature called “Play Next”. 

This is simply recommending games that you already own. Steam users are notorious for having massive gaming libraries of games that they haven’t even played, so this was actually a highly requested feature.

I was looking at the discussion page for this feature and found a thread called “Can you add a different metric to use besides “0 hours played”?”

Right now it looks like Play Next only suggests games that are registered to our account and have no play time. As someone who idles games to get card drops, it would be helpful if there were some other metric we could use instead, like maybe “0 achievements earned.”

So he downloads a game and installs it. Then leaves it running without playing it just to get some “cards”. Cards are just simple images that are awarded to you after you play a game for a certain amount of time. Maybe it’s a random period of time. You may get around 5 per game, but maybe there are 8 cards to collect. So you have to buy the others from other gamers to actually complete your collection.

What does he do with the cards? He either sells the cards for around 2-5p each profit, or buys the remaining cards which could cost around 12-20p (Steam takes a cut of your sales). Then he can feel proud of his complete virtual card collection for a game that he hasn’t even played.

I’m guessing he isn’t paying for his electricity.

Meanwhile, Valve, the owners of Steam are laughing. They are basically printing money and keeping their users engaged.

Maybe they should make another Steam Lab feature that actively tells you which games have remaining “card drops”. There was (or still is) a page that shows this, but it was always hidden away.

Hoaxes and campaigns

There’s been a lot of hoaxes/campaigns/fake news in recent years, and sometimes a small Google search can easily disprove them.

I’m not even sure if there was an outcome to the campaign against the communication app House Party; which was accused of hacking into people’s bank accounts. Even one of my colleagues shared that one, and actively encouraged people to uninstall the app. I pointed out it was probably just a cause of reusing passwords, which also was the opinion of security expert Troy Hunt.

Another recent example is 5G causing Coronavirus.

Troy Hunt’s blog on Let’s Stop the 5G Hysteria: Understanding Hoaxes and Disinformation Campaigns is brilliant, so go and read his blog instead of mine.

Here is a summary of the headers:

Insight 1: You can tell a lot about the credibility of a claim by observing those attracted to it.

Insight 2: Understand the difference between people who have formed their own opinion versus those who are qualified enough to influence your opinion.

I enjoyed Zombieland, but not once did I stop and think “here’s a guy who looks like he’d know a thing or two about voltage-gated calcium channel activation exacerbating viral replication”. Yet here he is, broadcasting it to 2M Instagram followers. Fortunately, he’s since deleted the post.

Troy Hunt on Woody Harrelson’s level of expertise

Insight 3: Consider whether you believe a claim because the evidence supports it, or simply because you want to believe it.

Insight 4: When faced with alternative theories, consider which one is the simplest and therefore most likely to be true.

Insight 5: Question why you’re being encouraged to influence others and if you’re sufficiently informed to do so.

Simon Sinek

I came across Simon Sinek and some of his talks are really interesting.

I was watching some of his ideas on performance.

Here he was illustrating that you can set a goal (the circled dot in the top right), and one team’s performance may be all over the place but has a general upwards trajectory. They may have many moments of poor morale, high staff turnover, yet they reach the target and are most likely rewarded by many companies.

The second team is the fairly straight and consistent line. They don’t reach the goal and aren’t rewarded. However, give them a few more weeks and they will get there. They get there with high morale and with structure. His point is that it’s the team’s momentum that is important to spot. 

He prefers this second team but most companies will reward the first team and that bad culture will thrive.

Here, he was saying how you can categorise people in terms of Performance and Trust. We often have metrics for performance but not trust, which leads to companies rewarding toxicity.

You don’t necessarily want someone who performs high, but you don’t trust (top left circle); they may perform but “do you trust them with your money and your wife?”. No.

Obviously “low performance and low trust” is really bad, and high trust and low performance isn’t that great either. 

“High trust and high performance” is really rare, but if you come across them, then keep hold of them at all cost. The people you also need to make sure you keep are the ones he has circled on the right: “mid performance, high trust”; they are the loyal and effective employees. If you ask someone “your team is failing, who do you turn to for help?” then they will point these employees out.

How do you measure success? Simon Sinek

Social Justice Warriors and “Cancel Culture”

This is going to be a controversial one. It’s also a long one.

Many months ago, I went out seeking new development podcasts to listen to, and I checked one out that happened to be run by a group of women in the tech industry.

My opinion on the content was mixed and I did think it would be a cool idea to do some podcast reviews. However, after I wrote it, I felt that some of the criticism could be perceived as a sexist attack (because they are women), so I decided it wasn’t worth the backlash, and therefore didn’t post it.

I did listen to more episodes and I did follow some of the hosts on Twitter. However, as time went on, I saw more things I didn’t like with their behaviour.

I still don’t think it is worth naming them, because as I’ll explain, they could retaliate with their “cancel culture” attitude, and I really don’t want a tirade of abuse from 80 thousand people.

So in this blog, I’ll just refer to them as the SJW Podcasters.

Let’s just summarise some of my beliefs, so you can bear in mind as you read.

  • Yes, I do have a blog where I criticise people, but I also like to draw attention to the positives. Also, see the two points below:
  • I think freedom of speech is important, but I do draw the line when the speech incites hatred and can cause harm to people.
  • I judge developers on their code and attitude towards software development, and not by any bias of race/gender etc.

One criticism I had with the podcast is that sometimes they seemed to view things in terms of Social Justice, rather than just analysing the content. So for example, they were doing a book review which talked about differences between men and women in the workplace. They criticised the author because they didn’t explicitly mention that trans-women are women too. Surely it is implicit unless the author contradicted the assumption? However, later on they start talking about issues that apply specifically to biological females, which means their initial statement was hypocritical. Given that they spent time moaning about the author, essentially accusing them of being a trans-phobe; the podcast seemed to be more about Social Justice than it was about being a tech podcast. Also, they explicitly stated they lowered the rating of the book because it never used the word “transwoman” or any related words.

I can’t find the quote now, but I’m sure they wrote/said they will never have a male guest on their show because it takes away from the efforts of women. Surely if you want to promote equality/inclusivity, then you shouldn’t “fight fire with fire” and be exclusive with “positive discrimination”. What happens if a male wanted to come on the show to talk about how to get more women in the tech industry? Nope, we can’t have that can we?

The other day, a developer with 80,000+ followers on Twitter, posted a nerd joke which was a witty play-on-words on the Black Lives Matter movement. Obviously racism is like 10,000 times more important than trivial nerd issues in software development.

However, surely people are either:

  1. Going to find it slightly offensive, and unfollow him
  2. Don’t think anything/much of it, and ignore it
  3. Going to find it witty, and are happy people still can post humorous stuff in these dark times.

This joke was in no way racist, although you could say he was trivialising the movement. Whatever your stance, surely it doesn’t warrant drumming up hate to try and destroy his career.

One of the SJW Podcasters was extremely vocal about getting her followers to unfollow this guy, and no doubt they were also providing the negative comments towards him. I think he lost about 5,000 followers from the backlash, and got a tirade of abuse.

I’ve seen the SJW Podcasters gang up on other people for their tweets. What will happen is one of them will tweet some criticism, then the rest of them will join in, so it seems like there is bigger backlash. They did the same thing to this guy by targeting a director of a popular development tutorial website where the developer had a large presence. The director was quick to action the deletion of all his content, and banned him from the site.

Another development content provider saw the declaration of the ban, so also followed suit and also banned him from their platform.

Then they looked for his other online presences on major platforms and got him banned there too.

When this developer primarily finds work by his online presence, this is a massive hit to his career. People have flagged up other potentially controversial statements (more like Frankie Boyle style humour), so there is some argument that he could deserve it. However, why didn’t they “cancel” him years ago? Why now with a simple joke? Shows like South Park can be controversial too, but yet they address social issues with satirical comedy. They have mocked Social Justice Warriors with their character PC Principal.

Some responses were along the lines of “this guy has taught me a lot, who can I follow now?”. Someone was nice enough to respond with a list of their favourite developers. Who could be offended by that? Obviously the SJW Podcasters! He got a negative response, chastising him for his choices and dictates he needs to edit his post and include women and ethnic minorities. He did a follow-up tweet, including the members of the SJW Podcasters to appease her.

She then tweets a more detailed explanation directly to her followers. I was so pleased that this got a lot of backlash. It seemed like 70% of the responses were along the lines of “I follow developers based on merit, not their ethnicity/gender”, or “please do not tell me who I am allowed to promote”. A few high-profile developers also responded with messages along these lines. I thought they were quite brave for doing so because obviously, the SJW Podcasters were going to retaliate. “You are part of the problem” she tells them, angrily.

Absolute toxic behaviour.

The next day, I was so pleased to see that she deleted her tweet, but I was saddened when I saw the other high-profile developers having to debate with her followers that were accusing them of being sexist/racist.

I looked back through their recent tweets and there was another tweet by someone promoting their favourite developers. Not only did the SJW Podcasters claim it was sexist, but they also suggested they were unethical by just promoting their friends and not mentioning that fact. Now, that is quite a good point. If there is bias and you are promoting something with a commercial interest, then you should declare it. Promoting Twitter profiles is debatable because if you are promoting developers, then you are indirectly promoting their services (books, lessons, website, consulting etc). Now here is the hypocrisy… You can go to a popular book reviewing website, view the books that have been written by the SJW Podcasters and what do you see? 5 star reviews from each other without declaring that they are best friends with the author. Surely they got the book for free, and since they hadn’t declared it; that is against the website’s terms and conditions.

So let’s return to the “cancel culture” story. Additionally, on one of the posts I read that day, this tweet from well-regarded developer “Uncle Bob” was quoted.

Despite Uncle Bob stating that you should only judge the code by the quality of it, and not the author’s background, you can see the negative replies to it. There are replies telling him he “is wrong”, “please delete your account” etc.

What the hell.

I even saw one of the SJW Podcasters’ followers suggest that their next target should be Uncle Bob because that tweet “is racist” and he needs to be canceled. No dude, it is literally the opposite case.

I just don’t understand what people are thinking. People are so obsessed with being politically correct, that they are then attacking and abusing people…which is completely against what they are fighting against:

  • They want inclusivity, so they promote exclusivity.
  • They want people to treat each other with respect, so they promote abuse.

Anyone that doesn’t agree with them is declared “part of the problem”.

After the “dust has settled”, one of the SJW Podcasters’ tweets “A little kindness goes a long way”, another tweets “Take care of each other.”

Practice what you preach. Lead by example. Call out toxic behaviour (but definitely make sure it is toxic). Don’t be a hypocrite.

WordPress – The 100 Post Special

I probably come across like I hate my job and hate my colleagues, but the truth is that it’s a safe job and has a very laid back culture. Most people are actually really nice and we do feel close to the developers in the close vicinity.

There are plenty of great developers who really know what they are talking about, but that’s not that fun to write about. There’s plenty of other blogs that write about great ideas and genius developers. My blog fills a gap in the market. I’ve read many blogs that describe people’s experience with Imposter Syndrome; where they reach a certain level of success but feel like they didn’t deserve it. I often write about people that have had a certain level of success, but definitely don’t deserve it.

Some people at work occasionally do/say stupid things, and when someone does do something stupid, then it plays on my mind and I probably over-analyse. It’s usually the same several people that I rant about anyway, so it’s more of a minority than a majority.

After ranting to my friends about it, it does feel good, but then I like to put it into text. It’s like a diary of all the good/crazy times and will be great to look back on one day.

I often check the view stats and see no one actually views my blog; which is disheartening. Well, sometimes I get one view now and then. I enjoy writing the blog though, so I carry on anyway. I’m finding it very therapeutic to put my thoughts down. Maybe one day, someone will find it, share a link, and then it could gain traction.

A few weeks back, I got a notification that someone liked one of my blog posts. I check the view counts, eagerly anticipating that 1 view statistic, and ready to bask in its glory.

0 Views.

I think I know why this is. I reckon if you go to my main page and view the blog, then it doesn’t count as a view because you aren’t on a specific page.

I always like using RSS feeds, so there’s loads of blogs I read without contributing to the statistics (since I’m viewing it inside some software). I probably should click through more and show my support, maybe even write a comment of appreciation on occasion.

It probably means a lot to bloggers because it takes a surprising amount of time to write each post. “Likes” and “comments” will encourage them to write more content, and try and write content that their audience enjoys. So if you are reading this, interact with my posts in some way. Also, show appreciation to other bloggers that you like. If I don’t know what audience I’m reaching, maybe your other favourite bloggers don’t know either.

EA Sports

Around 2002-2009, I was very loyal to the FIFA computer game franchise and purchased it every year. There were always detractors; people stating each version had a few tweaks and updated player rosters – so was always a cheap, annual cash grab.

After 2009, I bought the game occasionally, before taking a 6 year break, returning to the franchise for FIFA 2019. I really enjoyed the game and seeing all the improvements in 6 years was really impressive. When I read other reviews and comments, people were saying that the Career mode was exactly the same as 2018 versions with virtually zero changes.

So people’s complaints of EA reselling the same game each year seemed like a valid viewpoint. When FIFA 20 was announced, EA not only announced Volta, a 5-a-side football mode which has been missing since FIFA 98, but they also promised an overhaul of Career mode.

Feature 1:

They promised to fix the problems with fixtures. Sometimes you would get fixtures multiple days in a row. This has been a problem for years, and you would think EA would have fixture scheduling perfected. Surely a similar algorithm is required for Madden, NFL and NBA Live? (although I guess the NBA Live franchise died off on the consoles).

What actually happened…

Fixture scheduling still broken; they are still been organised on consecutive days. Additionally, after a few years, the European Cup and Champions League stop working.

EA put out a statement saying “…implemented logic improvements to this system early in the development cycle, where the results we were seeing were positive. Unfortunately, a change that we made late in the development cycle, which was the insertion of the authentic fixture schedule for the first season of a Career Mode, resulted in an issue where the rescheduling of games is creating new match congestion issues.”

Feature 2:

“new Morale system” and “player conversations”. They announced a new morale system where player’s morale will affect their stats. You can talk to players to discuss their concerns.

What actually happened…

Players request a rest…then moan when you don’t play them.

Feature 3:

“Speak to the media”. Press conferences

What actually happened…

The general consensus is that they got boring real fast. Also, sometimes the questions won’t be relevant to your matches. EA’s response: “due to the large amount of text and options that are present, despite our best efforts during testing to identify and resolve as many of these issues as possible, there are some issues that have been found by our players that we were unable to find during the development cycle”

Feature 4:

“Improvements to team line-ups”

I didn’t have a problem with the line-ups for opposition teams in FIFA 19. When changing your own tactics, often players would switch positions, e.g. your winger playing in centre midfield.

What actually happened…

Opposition teams mainly play reserve squads. This resulted in big teams like Manchester City being relegated rather than winning the leagues. Final league positions were essentially the opposite of real life.

Feature 5:

“getting sacked for offering contracts”

What actually happened…

I read there was some kind of contract negotiation feature on FIFA 19 that could be exploited to gain extra cash. It seems EA have prevented it on FIFA 20 by sacking the manager if they offer a big contract. People were complaining they signed a new star player and were instantly sacked. Other people took small clubs up the leagues, only to find they couldn’t offer even small pay-rises without getting sacked. It makes zero sense.

All these problems got the hashtag #FixCareerMode trending on Twitter. You would think that EA will work harder to improve their reputation. They have had a lot of bad reputation in recent years with the disappointing Anthem, the loot box controversy of Star Wars Battlefront. Going further back, they kept on being voted “Worst Company In America”.

To those detractors that say “all this game is – is FIFA 19 with updated rosters”, well you are wrong. The game was released with old squads! You would think it would have updated squads since the game releases after the transfer window has shut, so squads are finalised. But no, EA can’t even have that correct on launch.

It was interesting to watch a few videos on YouTube from the “Game Changers” – YouTubers that get the game early, and can deliver constant feedback to EA. The Game Changers said they got the beta for FIFA 20 only a month before release, and even though they reported all these problems, they knew that EA would not have enough time to fix them before launch.

To be fair, it’s been less than a month, and EA have actually put out a patch that apparently fixes the majority of these issues. However, a company shouldn’t need a huge backlash before sorting things out.

We just need #FixVolta to start trending. In the story mode for the Volta mode, one of the main characters, Syd plays for your team. She also plays for every other team you are up against. She must have 30 identical twins. How do bugs like this even get released?