Sysadmin Field Notes - November 2008 Archives

November 10, 2008

So the new front row that was part of Leopard that mirrors the Apple TV interface doesn't support sending to AirTunes like the last one. Straight from the horse's mouth: Front Row: Cannot stream audio to AirPort Express Base Stations in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard (although I find it funny that they say "may" be unable when it's clear the new front row totally lacks the functionality).

So that sucks right? It was great during parties to use front row, but send the music to the whole house.

I found at least a partial solution for my needs, which is full screen mode. Once you have your playlist, just hit CMD-F to go to full screen mode and you'll get your album covers, etc. and the Apple remote still drives everything. Not as nice if you need to change playlists, from across the room, so this only works for one use case, but it's better than nothing (helps that it was my most common use-case for front row).

November 9, 2008

Something just whizzed by my Google reader that was a link to a longer article saying that Agile was more about the principles than the methodology.

I think that's exactly true. It's about setting up a team that's always looking for things that could derail the project, bringing those issues up in a collaborative environment, and (this is the most important thing), explaining them to the customer in a way they understand.

It's not enough to find a problem, you have to make that problem front and center, whether that problem is that you're building the wrong thing, or that what you're building isn't going to be ready. Whereas traditional software development is caveat emptor, agile turns that around.

If your team can keep that in mind, you're going to be trusted by your customer regardless of methodologies. But by funneling the majority of contact with your customer through large documents, you're making it more difficult for both sides to find and communicate the misunderstandings.