It’s the fourth day of Chinese New Year: while the working classes are reporting back into their offices and started work, I’m still back with my parents. My laptop flipped open with the backlit display shining at me, my stationeries and notebook spread across the dining table among the containers of Chinese New Year snacks. I’ve made the dining table back home my remote office.

After a series of hackathons, I’m starting to experiment with how to work in remote locations — outside the comforts of office cubicles where everything is within reach and I never need to worry out running out of office supplies. It’s always about learning to deal with small desk spaces, less than optimal furniture in terms of ergonomics and tuning out ambient noises and distractions from …

Just recently I took up a simple freelance project, which involves interfacing with a USB camera. Considering the fact this is my first programming related project and having no prior work to base on, I took the naïve approach by using a rough mental estimate on effort and difficulty and then picking a number that sounds just about right based on that mental exercise.

As soon I started this virgin project of mine, I realize one critical thing that I had overlooked: The work involved is not just the programming, but also making the initial setup to my development and testing environment. The mistake of my oversight is made more pronounced by the need to interface with a specific piece of hardware – I’m nastily surprised when Windows 7 crashes spectacularly due to the driver …