Tag: productivity

Synergy – just move your mouse from one screen to another

Synergy – just move your mouse from one screen to another

Synergy lets you easily share your mouse and keyboard between multiple computers on your desk, and it’s Free and Open Source. Just move your mouse off the edge of one computer’s screen on to another. You can even share all of your clipboards. All you need is a network connection. Synergy is cross-platform (works on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux).

Open space office kills productivity by 66%

While going through this article on noise pollution, I came across this:

If you can hear someone talking while you’re reading or writing, your productivity dips by up to 66%.  Open floor-plan offices distract workers without them even noticing it. In a classic study published in the British Journal of Psychology in 1998, researchers found that employers were highly distracted when they could hear conversation around them, and less able to perform their duties. Another classic study found that noise in the office also correlated to increased stress hormone levels and a lower willingness to engage with others. According to Sound Agency case study, when sound masking technology was used in an office, there was a 46% improvement in employees’ ability to concentrate and their short term memory accuracy increased 10 percent.

Most of the time through my working years I’ve spent at open space offices.  And here are the things I have to say about them:

  • I tend to hate them.  There were companies and teams and offices where it worked well and made sense, but those were exceptions. Most of open space offices are there for one and one reason only – cost reduction.  And that feels!
  • Noise pollution is a factor.  Some people cope with it better (naturally or via headphones with music or white noise), but I am not one of them.  I find it nearly impossible to concentrate when there are other people around.   Even if they don’t talk, they still move, and make noises.
  • Open space offices do help to improve collaboration, team building even sometimes.  Again, not something that works everywhere, but I’ve seen it more than once.  When the team members are not too far away from each other, and all of them work on the same sort of things, and once the chemistry of the group gets going, open space can be quite handy.
  • If the company doesn’t notice a 66% productivity reduction in an employee, it can probably afford it.  Chances are, it will probably have no idea how to handle the guy at the top of his performance.  It’s almost funny, but I’ve seen it happen before.

I don’t have a silver bullet solution to the problem yet, but I do like the recent trend of companies that care about people’s productivity, offering a combination of offices – open spaces, closed offices, meeting rooms, playrooms, etc.  That’s probably not ideal either, but having the choice is nice, I guess.  Now, if only there was a cheaper alternative…

 

WordPress + P2 = Company Intranet in 5 minutes

I’ve mentioned a few times already that I became a big fan of P2 theme for WordPress.  I currently maintain multiple installations of it, just because it is so easy to setup and start using.  I have it as company Intranet or as a project collaboration tool.  It’s like a blog, a wiki, and a chat room combined together.  And since I’ve installed it so many times, I thought I should publish what exactly I am doing, in case someone else will want to try it.

Continue reading WordPress + P2 = Company Intranet in 5 minutes

Bash directory bookmarks

While reading through the comments to this Habrahabr article (in Russian), I came across an excellent tip for the directory bookmarks in bash shell.  Here’s how to set it up.

Firstly, add the following lines to your .bashrc or .bash_profile file:

# Bash Directory Bookmarks
# From: http://habrahabr.ru/post/151484/#habracut
alias m1='alias g1="cd `pwd`"'
alias m2='alias g2="cd `pwd`"'
alias m3='alias g3="cd `pwd`"'
alias m4='alias g4="cd `pwd`"'
alias m5='alias g5="cd `pwd`"'
alias m6='alias g6="cd `pwd`"'
alias m7='alias g7="cd `pwd`"'
alias m8='alias g8="cd `pwd`"'
alias m9='alias g9="cd `pwd`"'
alias mdump='alias|grep -e "alias g[0-9]"|grep -v "alias m" > ~/.bookmarks'
alias mload='source ~/.bookmarks'
alias ah='(echo;alias | grep "g[0-9]" | grep -v "m[0-9]" | cut -d" " -f "2,3"| sed "s/=/ /" | sed "s/cd //";echo)'

Secondly, if you are already using ~/.bookmarks file for anything, change the two references to it in the above lines to some other file.  It’s where your directory bookmarks will be stored.

Thirdly, if you prefer to save the bookmarks between your bash sessions, add the “mload” command to the end of your .bashrc or .bash_profile file, and “mdump” to your .bash_logout file.

Start a new bash shell and you are all set.

Using this setup is extremely easy.  Navigate to the directory that you want to bookmark, and save it under the numbered bookmark:

$ cd /var/www/html
$ m1

When you want to navigate back to that folder, simply call the numbered bookmarks:

$ g1

If you need to refresh your memory, issue “ah” command (think: aliases help), and it will print out the list of your current numbered bookmarks with the directory paths associated with them.

In case you need more than nine bookmarks, simply extend the lines in your .bashrc or .bash_profile file to run through more numbers, or use some other bookmark naming convention that works for you.

Enjoy.

P.S.: A quick Google search points to the author’s page, which links to a more advanced solution – bashmarks.