Which is probably why they asked the question (giving them the benefit of the doubt) as being aware of the small differences shows attention to detail at least. Saying that, I have been asked this same question more than once in interviews, but it was a few years back, when the differences were more pronounced.

Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:

Workout progress: Current arm size: 14.4in Desired arm size: 18in Next Target: 15.4in by Dec 2010

You know what they say about people in glass houses...

Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:

Ok for comics and cartoons:Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud[^].

If you're going down that route, definitely check out Will Eisner's book, Comicbooks and Sequential Art. Scott references it himself, as it's to do with using the medium to build up a story, whereas Scott's book is much more about deconstructing and critically analysing the medium. -Glenn

Jeremy Falcon wrote:

Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:For drawing concepts, my recommendation will be: The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain[^]. Or better attend their workshop. I bought that book for my ex-gf but I never read it myself. That sucks, I kinda wish I had it now so I could read it.

I'd also recommend that book. I had some reasonable experience with sketching portraits, etc - but practicing consistently with some of the techniques in the book I managed to improve almost as much in one month as it took me previously in two years. As much to do with dedicating time to it, but still a good recommendation for the book :) -Glenn

I don't know who you're dealing with, but if someone is pulling passive-aggressive nonsense like that and claiming that it's professionalism, it most definitely is not. I see one part of professionalism as being able to say why you don't agree with something while not losing your temper, and not turning it into a pile of back-handed politics. Let people know you're angry, just try not to lose your temper - different people lose it in different ways, and some don't just stop at shouting something that is going to come back and bite them later. It still comes down to the individual to decide when they need to hold their ground and when they might need to compromise (or when they might even *shock* be wrong). Too many people try to twist the term 'professional' to their own advantage - making out that if you're not being a passive-aggressive douche like them, then you're not professional. Do not let them get away with it - professional should mean that you get the job done in the most effective way possible, avoiding as many pitfalls as possible (and pitfalls include unnecessary arguments/office-politicking).

As technically accurate as IEEE and patent submissions have to be, their spelling/grammar is often secondary :/ This really does seem to be a bastardization of handleable - probably started by the people involved only having heard the word spoken quickly, and not seeing it written. It's about as valid as the word 'truthiness' - so we'll know what you mean, but it's still a lousy word.

Heh.. if you're graduating into that salary band, that's not bad at all really. Just depends where in the UK you are. In Northern Ireland, that's the kind of money they pay for a developer/engineer with 3 years competent experience. We're cheap (intelligence economy) labour, on your doorstep ...which sucks :/

While I can't speak from the experience of yet doing it, my take on things would be that these days you have a much larger potential pool of custom, but you must work harder to build relationships with those potential customers. If you're creating something now that can be thrown together in minutes using openly available scripts - something that you (the creator) would consider trivial - then it's unlikely to set the world alight unless it's a true game-changer. In this instance, I think the bar has been raised for execution and quality. The one thing that is very difficult to do now is to simply create something (relatively simple) and then just release it into the world, followed by ... watching money roll in. Salesforce.com is an excellent example of something that is duplicable on the software side, but the part that a free option can't compete with is the fact that they employ account managers for each group of companies - although this means that they are a low margin business compared to first-mover web application sites like Basecamp. So something that matters more than ever now is reputation and support. Particularly if you're selling a service (and thinking "woo, I'll just reap the advertising whirlwind" if you're planning to do anything non-trivial these days is not even being vaguely realistic). If you want to make a retail comparison - the boom times often lead to a lot of stores simply filling the shelves and watching the products sell, when the lean times, the stores that survive (unless you were a huge Walmart/Asda low-price monolith) were those that had some form of relationship with their customers; who make an effort to actually sell and support products. Still, this is just my opinion based on observation - considering start-up businesses always have a very low survival rate, the worst thing you can do is not try to make something work because someone else doesn't believe it will work (particularly if there's no prior evidence of it failing ;).