SarioDev: Engineering IRL Podcast | Rev.20 - Networking in Engineering

[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.20 - Rev.20 - Networking in Engineering

SFW

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In this episode of the Engineering Podcast I go through how computer networking works in as simple way as possible. Weow. After you will learn how to apply this information to real life!Improve your people networking skills as an Engineer by learning from the greatest man made network in the history of mankind. The internet.

The Engineering IRL podcast is about improving your engineering mindset and applying these concepts to real life.

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SarioDev: Engineering IRL Podcast | Rev.19 - Motivation when working mundane Engineering tasks

[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.19 - Motivation when working mundane Engineering tasks

SFW

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In this revision of the Engineering Podcast, we answer how to find motivation when working on a mundane task. We all face these kinds of tasks and starting out it may be difficult when it feels like that's all the type of work you get is. Learn how to handle this!
If you enjoy Engineering IRL don't forget to subscribe and share it with your friends. If you want any topics covered just reach out.

The Engineering IRL podcast is about improving your engineering mindset and applying these concepts to real life.

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SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.1 - Engineering Rep and how to Improve

[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.1 - Engineering Rep and how to Improve

NSFW (Possible cursing)

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This is the very first installment of Engineering IRL. A great taste into what this podcast is all about.

The Engineering IRL podcast is about improving your engineering mindset and applying these concepts to real life.

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SHOW NOTES:
How to convince a senior engineer on doing things a different way.
Understand to break the rules of a game you must understand it first.
By doing things this way - you can solidify yourself as the "go to" Engineer
What it takes to make change.

SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.17 - IT versus OT and Cybersecurity

[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.17 - IT versus OT and cybersecurity

NSFW (Possible cursing)

Spotify // iTunes // Google Podcasts // Stitcher // Website

In this revision of the Engineering Podcast we discuss the differences between IT and OT, explain the key concept of what each are, what the difference is and relevance to cybersecurity. A really simple analogy makes it crystal clear and more! 
If you enjoy Engineering IRL don't forget to subscribe and share it with your friends. If you want any topics covered just reach out.

The Engineering IRL podcast is about improving your engineering mindset and applying these concepts to real life.

Twitter // Facebook // Instagram

SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.16 - 1 Drawing can Solve 1000 Problems

[TECH] SarioDev: Engineering IRL | Rev.16 - 1 Drawing can Solve 1000 Problems

NSFW (Possible cursing)

Spotify // iTunes // Google Podcasts // Stitcher // Website

In this revision of the Engineering Podcast we uncover ways you can solve problems via drawings. Technical diagrams usually describe a product or solution, but they can also describe a concept or a process, from which you can draw conclusions or measure against. Also a fun thought experiment!

The Engineering IRL podcast is about improving your engineering mindset and applying these concepts to real life.

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How to get your subconscious to target a specific creative design problem for you

Inspiration can come from the strangest of places.

Sometimes you think you know how you want your new app to look. But in reality you have more of a feeling that you want to get when you see the look of your new app. I know this because I thought I knew exactly how my app will look and when actually putting pen to paper (figuratively) I know it looks nowhere near anything work showing to anyone.

Okay, typically when you are getting to the point of showing your work, it is easy to be critical on yourself, but in this case, it was more the fact that it is early stage and all I really have is the feeling I want, and not the look itself.

So where do you go to find the look?

Well, firstly I go inwards, think of actually using your app, think of what would be the pieces of information you would want to see, think of what draws you in. Next its looking at others apps out there, maybe googling an app similar to yours and adding best UI. After some time it is best to go outside, maybe to an event, and just observe the world around you.

So that's exactly what I did. Tonight in Sydney the Vivid light show was on and I thought what better place to "inspirate" than an artistic light show where the city itself is the canvas!

Perfect

It turns out I did actually come away with the initial vision of how to achieve the "feel" of the app I'm going for. But you'll never guess which piece of art got me there.

Was it this nicely lit tree?

Or how about this melancholic sea of floating light bulbs?

Well it ended up being none of the above? My vision for the design came in transit sitting on a train listening to a podcast. It's interesting because much like when you are in the shower and you have those "shower thoughts" a monotonous task can get you into a different mindset, different pathways in your brain link.

But wait. Sometimes these thoughts are unique and different, but quite frankly useless thoughts such as

"When you drink alcohol you are just borrowing happiness from tomorrow"
or "clapping is just hitting yourself because you like something"
and "when you say 'Forward' or 'Back', your lips move in those directions"

Great. But it would be nice if that could apply to something I actually want to achieve. So why on this occasion on the train did the problem I was trying to solve get solved subconsciously?

Maybe it was coincidence, but maybe because my mind had locked in a future task i.e. get inspiration to solve my design problem after this train ride, that in my subconscious that was the "next" task. Then as mundane as a train ride was the subconscious has what is next and in that mind state began to solve.

I know the feel of the individual rounds in the game I want to achieve, the font style of the main message and the behavior as time runs out all appeared to me and I expanded it to the colors and the overall game flow.

By the time I got to the light show and had dinner it was out of mind and I just enjoyed the evening. Before I'd even gone out I had already locked in my idea!

The Solve

So try give this a go. The next time you try go out to get new ideas, don't focus on the problem, just focus on the fact that the next thing you are going to do is get new ideas. Lock it in. Schedule it.

But allow enough time for some monotonous tasks in between whether it be on a train (not actively driving) or perhaps the shower before you leave. The trip cannot be anything you are "organizing" and have stress factors to worry about others getting there on time etc. These things will take all of your attention.

Give it a go and let me know if you managed to trigger one of these mind states but got your subconscious targeted at a creative problem you were actually trying to solve.

As always good luck on your side hustle!

The motivation behind your ideas

Sometimes when you are trying to get creative and think of ideas you can get caught up by wanting to incorporate every single idea. Whilst you can come up with several good ideas, sometimes you just need to park majority of them and focus on one.

An idea may be good but the idea inherently adds some layers of constraint that may not be noticeable until you get so far into the project that it is too late to change. This may not necessarily be a bad thing, but simply something you need to be conscious of when deciding which ideas to go with and implement.

What's the motivation?

Focus on the motivation behind the ideas, almost like going to first principles. What is the root of the idea that gave this relevance? For 10Up, I last left you at the point where I was working through some design hurdles. If you didn't get a chance to read it see it here. I recommend it for a step by step process for working through your design hurdles. This process lead on the path of looking at the very first creation of 10Up for Windows. The design was focused around fun and cute characters to soften the "math" feel of the game.

So in this example the idea is to have "cute characters" integrated into the game. Now, to find the root of this idea and it's relevance? Well, simply, the game is meant to be a fun brain game and the root of this idea. Meaning I don't necessarily have to go with the same cute characters, but there is some value of introducing some visual characters into the game.

Let's look at another design goal that was missing from Version 1 of 10Up which was player progression. In the current version of 10Up the only progression is based on high scores, which was great, don't get me wrong, but it could be so much more.

Another goal was to keep the game free but still a way that creates an opportunity for revenue but without making the game pay to win. Using these 3 goals, the idea is now to create unique characters that will "help" you in game to solve puzzles, but in addition as you play the game or complete levels, you will have an avatar to add skins to or other characters to unlock.

Fall back to your design goals

Now this opens many, many doors and is the current design direction I am most exploring and considering,  but rather than expand (which I can do in another post) I will explain the connection. The motivation of this current idea is in consideration of 3 of the main design goals:

1. Creating a fun brain game atmosphere
2. Immersive player progression
3. Opportunities to monetize without disrupting the game

So, now I have created some layers of constraint which I will design within, but, aside from completing the idea, how do I have confidence that this is the correct design to go with?
Yep.
You guessed it.
The motivation behind the idea is seeded in and tied directly to main design goals.

You've got it right. Now go for it.

At this point, it is all in on developing the design within this framework and executing. Only time will tell, but I know for sure I am starting in the right direction to achieve my design goals for 10Up 2.0.

What are your techniques for validating some of  your ideas and making the choice to go a certain direction?

If this has helped you with your ideas and decision making feel free to let me know or share with your friends!

As always, good luck on your side hustles

How to motivate yourself to work on your side hustle

If you're anything like me you have a side hustle. You work on it when you can, you enjoy it - its your hobby. But if you're anything like me then there's also this thing called life that can "get in the way".
Now, this is normal and it doesn't mean you aren't doing well in the other parts of your life. Once in a while you get randomly inspired to "do something"... maybe you watched some clip posted on Facebook, or the latest Gary Vaynerchuk rant and you decide to do something about it. For me that was to start with a post on this blog, with some intention to do some follow up work, and then blog about the follow up work.
Blog gets posted, you decide to do the follow up work where you can, nothing substantial finishes ergo no follow up post. Looking at my history I posted more regularly during 2014 and 2015, 2016 was a hiatus and in 2017 is a singular post. This post was one of "those" moments.

Motivation as a boost

Now, trying to motivate yourself in terms of hyping you up to get into your flow and get stuff done is quite a google-able task. This form of motivation as a boost may be the stage you are dealing with currently and may well be all you need to get back into it. For me, this happens in cycles and this is normal for most people and goes with the regular ebb and flow of life. The problem is when you have gone through this cycle several times and the boost motivation has got you progressing a whole lot of things over time, but you haven't finished any of them.

At this point you may think you're looking for an even bigger boost but what you are looking for is actually not more of a boost, it's quite the opposite in fact, you need to strip things down and go back to original purpose.

Motivation for life purpose

This may seem daunting, but trying to find motivation towards your life purpose does not necessarily mean you have to have found your life's purpose - that could take a lifetime to find - but whatever your life purpose ends up being you need to know how to get motivation from it and use that motivation towards it. So we need to scale things back a bit here, perhaps it may not be your root life purpose, but it could be understanding the true purpose for your side hustle anyways.
This is where you could say its for your family, or you want to achieve x, or be as good as y person. That's not super motivating (if it is stop here and GO). But once you are here there's 2 paths to go down. 1: Emotional and 2: Functional.

Let me break that down real quick.

Emotional assessment of the true purpose for your side hustle

Explore a few things in your head (depending on what you chose as the reason for your side hustle) maybe its for yourself or a loved one or a random, regardless, consider both never in your life ever achieving that goal, then take it further and imagine it being worse. Now also imagine the life where you did achieve this goal, then take it further and imagine achieving it instantly, at a reasonable time and at an extremely long time frame (without it being unattainable).

Thanks... so what was the point of this?

Well, at best, you have gone deep enough to validate your reasons and quell your excuses for now, at least enough to go back to "motivation as a boost" and finding your nearest inspirational video, watch it and take some action... and at worst you have confirmed the level of seriousness and or criticality of this goal.

If the criticality or seriousness is not too high then this would explain why the emotional motivator was not enough. Lets now continue on to the functional approach to assessing the true purpose for your side hustle.

Functional assessment of the true purpose for your side hustle

What does this even mean? Well, what you want to do here is reverse engineer from the "why" how you would achieve that. Do you end up back at your actions being the original side hustle? For example, you decide to work on an app as a side hustle, you've now defined that the true purpose for your side hustle is to give yourself some financial freedom.

Start from this point and logically think out the steps that lead you back to working on an app as a side hustle. If it aligns this is where you become specific and think about it in such detail that you can break it down to individual tasks that need to get done to progress to the goal. For the example it could be selecting the color theme of the logo.

Hopefully this does one of 2 things at this point. First you have broken down things to where you could spend the next day selecting the color theme of the logo and have peace that you are actually doing something that helps achieve the goal and feels super easy, leading onto gaining some momentum and motivation. OR it lets you re define your side hustle and takes you back to square one, breaking your motivation cycle.

Bringing it back

So does any of what I have said so far made sense to you? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't feel free to discuss. This is one of those things that are an ongoing life battle with no wrong or right answers as long as it works for you in the end.

How I'll be specifically applying this and the area which I will be focusing on is my side hustle as an app developer. I've decided now to focus back on 10UP 2.0 and build out full functionality for it using Unity 5. This will be both an Android and iPhone release (and hopefully more!)

My why is for multiple reasons: 

1. to develop more skills and expand my experience as an app developer and an engineer
2. complete a game I found fun so that my future kids can enjoy it
3. generate additional income to provide some financial freedom for my wife and family

Lastly, I would also like to help other upcoming engineers out, sharing my knowledge and discussing current engineering issues and trends. This is why I have made the decision to commit to SarioDev and am now the proud owner of the domain sariodev.com

I will use the development of 10Up as a kind of muse for the blog and discuss more and more topics on the back of this project.

Accountability is good, documenting is good, and practicing communication skills is another positive part of developing as an engineer.

So with that, I wish you all good luck in your careers and get back on your side hustle