The trick here is that Gimp considers the current directory (i.e. where it is executed) as the default directory. Thus, to change the “default” directory setting in Windows, all you need to do is to open the launcher properties:

And change the “Start in” setting to the folder of your choice.

Taking a cue from oDesk, I decided to make a simple script that takes screenshots of my desktop every few minutes so that I could just review them at the end of the day. For this I used scrot for taking the screenshots and cron for the scheduling.

First install scrot:

$ sudo apt-get install scrot

Then write a script, say /path/to/home/scrot.sh:

#!/bin/sh
LOCATION="$(date +/path/to/home/Pictures/shots/%Y/%m/%d)"
mkdir -p $LOCATION
cd $LOCATION
DISPLAY=:0 scrot '%Y-%m-%d-%H%M.jpg' -q 20

This script will take a low quality screenshot of the desktop and put it in the Pictures/shots folder separated by date.

Set the permissions with chmod:

$ chmod u+x /path/to/home/scrot.sh

You can now test this by running:

$ /path/to/home/scrot.sh

Now time to add the script as a cron job. There are a lot of cron tutorials out there, but to summarize what you need to do, here are the basic steps:

Run crontab -e to edit the cron table file for your current user.

Add a line that will execute scrot.sh whenever you want it to run. For example, here’s the entry for running the script every three minutes on Monday to Friday:

*/3 * * * 1-5 /path/to/home/scrot.sh

Changing your login background picture in Ubuntu will take a bit of Google-ing, but it’s still pretty easy to do.

Changing the background of the lock screen, however, is a different thing altogether.

If you do some digging around, you’ll find out that this lock screen is defined in /usr/share/gnome-screensaver/lock-dialog-default.ui. In other words, it uses Glade for its design. On one hand, that means you could design funky lock screens like the NSA Lock Screen. On the other hand, simple tasks like changing the background can be a pain to do.

To spare you the effort in studying Glade just to change your lock screen’s background, I’ve created a Github project to point you at the right direction.

As shown in the relevant commit, changing the background requires 3 things present in your /usr/share/gnome-screensaver/:

• a background image (the source of the quote should be pretty obvious),
• a gtkrc file to add theming to the UI, and
• the updated .ui file

This customization assumes you’re using a 1366×768 monitor. Modifying it to suit your monitor resolution shouldn’t be hard to do.

And the finished product:

Anyway, here are my slides. As usual, they don’t make sense without me talking.

For the interest of those who find it preposterous not to have Facebook always open in a browser tab, here are my reasons why I stopped using Facebook:

The signal to noise ratio is low

Unlike some people who have deleted their Facebook accounts, I understand that Facebook is a very useful tool. It has an integrated “mail” and “chat” service. You can create picture albums. It allows you to organize events. There are a crapload of apps in the platform.

However, the main feature of Facebook is always its social aspect, whether it’s sharing your status or tagging people in pictures. And this is where I don’t like Facebook: this social aspect is always full of noise.

“Oh sure,” the Facebook fanatics will tell you, “but why don’t you just hide or block the noisy people/apps?”

Well if I do that, I’d block 95% of my friends list. It’s so much easier to just not visit Facebook.

Social circles overlap

I can’t seem to find a link to a similar article I saw a while back so I’ll just say it with my own words.

In high school, I had 3 social circles. In college, everyone went to La Salle so I made 4 new social circles. After college, I got another social circle. After I got fired, I made two new social circles.

Long story short, I can post something totally appropriate for one of those many circles while totally offending another.

It’s like attending a really big birthday party with people shouting things for all to hear. Again, too much noise.

It’s also the reason why I’m only using Twitter nowadays: my current Following list only consists of a single social circle.

I am not dependent on social interaction

It’s not obvious, but I rarely use my cellphone. I can go on weeks or even months without texting someone. I started wearing a watch when I realized it would be a hassle for me to dig for my phone in my pocket just to get the time.

It’s the same thing with Facebook. A lot of people are dependent on Facebook the same way they are dependent to their phones: they need to keep in touch with their friends and family.

And I don’t.

How I got to this is a long and complicated story, so I’ll just take a cue from a certain NDS game and just say that I believe that when you become too dependent on social interaction, your world ends with you and your friends.

There are a many great wondrous things in this world, and I choose to see, feel, and experience them rather than waste my time and thoughts to wondering who’s dating who or what drama this group of people are involved in this time.

It’s not that I don’t have the skills needed to be employed; it’s actually the opposite: even though I’m not actively looking for a job, people still come to me asking if I could work for them. My part time teaching and Rails “consultancy” gigs fall under this (i.e. I never “applied” for them formally), and I’m getting emails requesting for interviews from local companies once in a while.

The reason I’m not taking any full-time job offers is different:

It’s been over a year and a half since I left my previous full-time job and I still haven’t fully recovered from burnout. I’m not confident that I’d be able to do software development “grunt-work” at peak performance for more than a few weeks on end.

After a year’s hiatus, I guess it’s safe to say that I’ve suffered permanent damage from my burnout.

—

Looking back, the main turning point of my career was on January 2006.

I was supposed to be transferred to another project. Having endured a year and a half of working on a really difficult enterprise system that was going nowhere, I knew my best bet was to make my programs relatively bug free. This way, I could be moved to another project (since they don’t need me around anymore to fix my programs) and get a fresh start. One bad project should be offset by a good project, right?

As you might expect, my plan backfired. Not only was I pulled back from that new project, I was also assigned to maintain the programs of another developer in my module while he gets to be transferred to another project.

Best. Reward. Ever.

While the whole resource allocation FUBAR was eventually fixed (that developer was also pulled back), the whole incident was a turning point: that was the time that I was pushed beyond my limits.

I was never known to be a weak-willed individual. In college, I had the reputation of surviving (and thriving) in the face of adversity. I’m the guy who graduated with honors without joining a CS-related organization and without having more than 10 friends in the department.

This sense of pride and confidence eventually led to my downfall. I thought this “over the edge” thing was just going to be short and that I could just “hang on” and “bite the bullet” until it passes.

I didn’t know that I had to “hang on” for more than half a year.

—

In hindsight, after reading management and psychology articles on burnout, I’d say that the things I did back then to deal with the problem were the best things you could do in that situation.

Too bad they all failed.

Probably the best thing you can do to deal with burnout is to get a “lifeline”, a person or a group of people who can support you. By listening to your problems and giving sound advice, they could either prevent you from hitting rock bottom, or help you get back up from burnout.

I tried getting lifelines, but there’s this sad fact in the way: In my groups of friends, I’m always a lifeline. I’m the guy you approach when you’ve got problems, whether it’s computer problems, financial problems, or random life problems. Not the other way around.

And this made asking for help really awkward. One notable instance was when I tried approaching a friend that I was sure was good enough to be a lifeline, but then she mistook my “subtle cries for help” as “lame attempts at courting”. That didn’t end well.

So with lifelines out of the question, there’s the cliched advice: “find a way to release your frustrations”.

Nope, didn’t work. The scars on my knuckles prove that venting your anger violently to concrete walls doesn’t help much when you’re burned out.

Then there’s the “exercise will give your brain happy chemicals to help you get out of depression”. And so I hit the gym. Sadly, unlike normal people, those “happy chemicals” don’t work on my brain as advertised. But hey, at least I lost 15 pounds in 2006!

So I gambled with stuff that would have solved my burnout but I lost. Was there anything else I could’ve done at that time?

—

Well, there is one thing that I didn’t try back then:

File for resignation that day in January.

Looking back, I would never have considered doing something as drastic as resigning. But also, hindsight tells me that that move actually makes sense: all of the reasons why I hung on were for naught.

Pride?
The pride you’ll save is nothing compared to the passion that you’ll lose.

Personal redemption?
Thanks to your burnout, you won’t be able to redeem yourself. You won’t get that big project that would compensate for your failed first project. You won’t even get promoted.

Chance to save others from the same fate in the future?
You won’t get promoted. Ergo, you won’t have the opportunity to affect how the management does things.

That cute co-worker you’ve been fond of?
She’ll just shoot you down before you even get serious with her.

I’m not saying that the second half of my stay in my previous company was entirely useless. Even as a burned out employee, I still learned a fair amount of new skills and knowledge in those two years. Things like full-time teaching and interviewing, Linux administration for project deployment, integrating payment into a system, design patterns and refactoring, and so on.

But thinking about it, I probably would have learned all those skills better had I resigned in Jan 2006, took a 3 month break to recharge, and took a job at another company. The teaching and interviewing practice might come a bit later, but that’s a small price to pay when you take into account that I’ve already lost around 2 years of my life to burnout.

—

To sum things up, burnout is a race against time. Once you start having the symptoms, you only have a short amount of time to come up with a solution before you get a full blown case.

What you do in that span of time will decide whether you’d save your career or lose it.

My suggestion? Build strong relationships with lifelines before you set out working yourself to death. You might fall into the same trap as I did and not be able to find suitable lifelines in time.

IMO, getting lifelines from people on your own project is a bad idea. Since you share the same problems, you’re a lot more likely to drag each others down to depression than to drag each other out of it.

Also, consider resigning if the situation becomes unreasonable. I don’t usually give this advice as I’ve seen a lot of friends and colleagues resign prematurely. But given my experience with burnout and depression, I’d come to realize that resigning too late is even worse than resigning too early.

–

TL;DR

I don’t want to work full time for anyone anymore.

After my first job milked me for what I was worth, I:

• never got promoted
• ruined any chances of getting a love life
• got fired for insubordination
• was eventually forgotten by my friends and forced to make new ones
• lost my reason to live

If you can read this, it means I still have no raison d’etre: a robot zombie, highly skilled but dead inside.

Give me a good reason to live and we’ll talk.

Here’s a TED talk about what happens when you announce your goals to the world:

This has happened way too many times earlier in my life, back when I was still a hyperactive (yet introverted) loudmouth. Fortunately I learned to shut up about my goals about the time I got into college.

One good example: in my past job, there was a gym fad going around a few years back. Those who were actively announcing that they were to lose weight didn’t follow through with their gym plans, while those who just kept quiet about the whole thing (e.g. me) had the most visible results.

And that’s why I’m not talking about the stuff that’s keeping me busy these days.

As part of making my “freelance” status semi-official, I’m currently migrating stuff from www.bryanbibat.com to this site, www.bryanbibat.net. You might have noticed that I’ve already merged my old blogs to this single blog as well as modified the links in my portfolio pages to point to here.

Another change is the shift from using my Gmail/Yahoo Mail account to bry@bryanbibat.net, and this is what I’ll be talking about today.

Setting up e-mail for your domain

I originally thought setting up a personal e-mail based on my domains was going to be a hassle until I stumbled upon a comment somewhere (I don’t know where, probably Lifehacker) where the guy mentions that his e-mail is handled by Google Apps, saving him the trouble of setting up spam filters and the like.

A bit of searching lead me to this page: Google Apps Standard Edition.

It’s actually pretty easy to setup Google Apps for your domain. You’ll just have to upload an HTML file to your server so that Google can verify if it’s really yours.

I think the only tricky part is how to setup the MX (Mail Exchanger) record settings in your domain. It’s still pretty straightforward though. In my case bryanbibat.com is hosted by MSWEB and uses cPanel for site admin tasks. To change the MX settings, just go to MX Entry

then modify the settings as instructed by Google.

On the other hand, bryanbibat.net is hosted by Linode. The process is pretty much the same, just set the MX Records under DNS Manager page.

After configuring the MX settings, it’s all a matter of waiting for Google to confirm the MX entries and preparing your inboxes for you.

Consolidating E-mail

So now I have two new e-mail addresses, bry@bryanbibat.com and bry@bryanbibat.net. Of course, it can be a pain if I would have to check those two along with my Gmail and Yahoo Mail account. The Yahoo Mail is fine because I have YM! on most of the time, but I have to consolidate the Gmail accounts to make my mail checking easier.

Thankfully, Gmail supports receiving and exposing mail through POP. Under the Accounts settings, you can configure the “Send mail as:” and “Get mail from other accounts:” to consolidate all of your mail to one single Gmail account.

I’ve designated bry@bryanbibat.net as my main account. Here’s the current Accounts settings for that account:

And that’s it. Hopefully by next post I’ll be able to post something more “normal”, less “Site News”-y.

—

Install and set up My Weekly Browsing Schedule on Firefox.

(This, of course, assumes that your main browser is Firefox.)

My Weekly Browsing Schedule is a Firefox extension that automatically opens websites according to the schedule you provide it. Setting this up on your browser can boost your productivity in two ways:

1. It saves you the burden of manually going through your bookmarks.

People normally use bookmarks to open regularly visited websites at certain times in a day. They open mail, news, and social networking sites at the start of the day and at regular intervals throughout the day. Some sites like webcomics and stock market news only need to be visited once a day. Other sites require less visiting frequency, maybe just once or twice a week.

The problem with the bookmark approach is that your browsing efficiency is dependent on whether you’re disciplined enough to develop a good browsing habit e.g. you don’t visit certain sites too often (see the next reason below) and you don’t forget to go to the rarely visited sites.

My Weekly Browsing Schedule can help resolve that problem. You can define which sites open at startup. You can define which sites open at certain hours and the days of the week. You can even tell the extension to catch up with certain sites in case the browser wasn’t open when they were scheduled.

2. It helps cut down on distractions.

When you’re working and have internet access, it can be tempting to check your mail, your social networking sites, and news sites once in a while to keep up with things.

Studies show that this habit can kill your productivity. Don’t believe them? Install ManicTime and see for yourself how many hours a day you waste on those sites.

The most common suggestion to deal with this problem is to learn to “batch” these sites at certain times (I personally use 4 hour intervals). Now while I’ve written against batching previously, the scenario is different in this case because of the conversational nature of e-mail and social networking sites. The more you visit and participate in these sites, the more you’re compelled to post new stuff and initiate conversations.

When you limit yourself to certain times during the day, you get more work done while still keeping up with the updates in your social network (preventing you from becoming a soulless zombie/corporate slave). The extension can help you with this, though you’ll still have to learn to close the sites when you’re done to keep yourself from refreshing/checking on them.

–

The downside to this extension is that the UI is clunky at the moment. Setting up a schedule will eat up a bit of your time, especially if you visit a lot of sites regularly.

Finally decided to take the StrengthsFinder quiz after months of buying the book. My top 5 strengths according to the site below the cut:

Learner

People who are especially talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

The top strength didn’t come as a surprise to me; I’ve already known since college that given the proper environment (Don Bosco vs UP Diliman) I absorb knowledge a lot faster than most people.

According to the Marcus Buckingham books on talent, the key to success is to focus on one’s strengths and no on one’s weakness. I think I did a good job focusing this talent in the past half decade: the main reason I took the job offer from my previous company was for the training, not the money. Even after I left, I still focus on this talent by continuously learning new stuff.

Command

People who are especially talented in the Command theme have presence. They can take control of a situation and make decisions.

This one was surprising because I don’t really consider myself as a leader.

However, it does make sense when I think about it. When everybody is hesitating, I’m usually the one who steps up and takes command of the situation. I also have this intimidating aura around me that makes people become wary about my presence.

Another thing about Command is that people who have it aren’t afraid to disagree with other people or to get into conflicts when something is on the line.

Yeah, I guess I’m that kind of person.

Futuristic

People who are especially talented in the Futuristic theme are inspired by the future and what could be. They inspire others with their visions of the future.

Yet another surprising revelation.

Like Command, I don’t really think of myself as a guy who focuses on the future. And like Command, this strength makes sense when I think about it.

The key here is that I don’t dwell in the past nor do I worry about the present. I live my life without regrets, instead I just use past mistakes as a way to guide me to the future. I am also content about the present, constantly making sure that regardless of how many risks I take in life, I know that I won’t lose.

Without those two, I only have the future to focus on.

Individualization

People who are especially talented in the Individualization theme are intrigued with the unique qualities of each person. They have a gift for figuring out how people who are different can work together productively.

This is a relatively new talent, influenced by first, break all the rules and the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition. The idea behind this strength is the belief that every situation and every person should be dealt with according to the context of the situation.

Thinking about it more, I already had a bit of this talent for a long time. I’m picky about friends because I know that I eventually have to treat each one of them differently unlike other people who are fine about treating “friends” equally.

The dead giveaway is my habit of gift-giving: I never give non-personalized gifts.

Achiever

People who are especially talented in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.

This isn’t a surprise especially to the people who have worked with me in the past. I probably wouldn’t have survived in a company who considers 50-60 hours of work a week as normal for over four years without this talent.

However, it’s surprising that this strength isn’t higher on the list. It may be a hint that the goal (Futuristic) and the process (Command) is more important to me than the achievement itself.

—

Overall, the assessment was slightly unpredictable. I was expecting to have strengths like Competition and Developer (a guy who wants to make others succeed), and I was expecting Achiever to be higher on the list.

The assessment also hints that I am not suited for rank-and-file corporate developer work because of Command (and to a lesser extent, Learner). Good thing I’m done with that phase in my life.