Botched Demo
Today I got to demo Hazel for the first time at the MetroMac users group meeting. I didn’t do massive prep for it. I just had a general outline of what I wanted to show and talk about. I’m the type of person that can’t deal with too much prep in these types of situations; it makes me nervous. I ran through the demo earlier in the day a few times and it ran fine. I felt pretty loose going into this.
For the demo, I did the typical vacuum cleaner salesman pitch. I had a bunch of files dumped onto the Desktop. I went over the rules I had set up (basically, just a variation on the sample rules Hazel ships with). I activated them all then ran them expecting that Hazel would clean it all up.
Nothing.
Ran them again.
Nothing.
I checked the logs and everything looked fine. The MetroMac guys ran some interference for me (thanks guys) while I did a little flailing and head-scratching. Ultimately, I just moved on with the rest of the demo but I never really recovered. The impact of the rest of demo was blunted by the fact that there was a mess of files all over the Desktop.
Afterwards, I sat on the sidelines and took the time to diagnose the problem. I looked at the Desktop directory in Terminal. Lo and behold. The files were gone. I looked at my Desktop. I looked at the Desktop folder in a Finder window. The files were still there. It finally dawned on me. Finder failed to refresh. Worse than that. It would refuse to refresh after I navigated to other folders and came back. I ended up force-relaunching Finder and was finally greeted by what the audience should have seen: a clean Desktop. In a nutshell, Hazel worked; Finder didn’t.
It was weird in that the subsequent rules I created worked fine on any new files I downloaded. Thinking about it now, it might be related to the fact that I set the clock forward to demonstrate a time-based rule. I did it during my test runs and I guess Finder got very confused afterwards. I don’t remember but it’s possible the setting-the-clock aspect of the demo was added later and therefore not “regression-tested,” so to speak.
In the end, it’s not such a big deal. It was maybe less than 30 people. Nonetheless, it’s not fun sitting up there clicking that button that refuses to do anything. I’m sure there’s a lesson here but at this point I don’t care. What is this? South Park?
Unfortunately, I don’t have lackeys to yell at like Steve but this thing is behind me and I have a bottle of scotch in front of me so here’s to looking forward!
Category: Hazel, Noodlesoft 11 comments »
May 10th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
I don’t think it’s clock-related. I’m pretty sure I’ve run into that same Finder bug before, though going in the other direction – I’ve downloaded a file and had it mysteriously refuse to show up on the desktop, even though it appears when I open the Desktop folder separately in Finder.
May 10th, 2007 at 10:24 pm
There is a lesson here and you may want to read this after you calmed down abit more.
The lesson is to be always well-prepared and rehearse whatever steps you are going to take during the demo beforehand. Like you said, it may make you nervous preparing so much, but I bet it felt alot more nervous when *your program* – which you’ve spent so much *hard work* on, didn’t work as expected before a live audience.
I learnt this the hard way some years back during a very important demo. Nothing worked at all due to a glitch in the database setup, and I cried as I entered the elevator as I left the presentation room.
And just like you, right after I had some time to take a breather and find out what happened, everything just worked.
Of course you have to put it behind you and move forward, but if you don’t take away the valuable lesson to be learned here, this may not be the last time a live demo will fail for you.
May 10th, 2007 at 10:46 pm
Sorry I wasn’t there to give moral support. I was planning to go, and I work only a few blocks away, but I got stuck at the office.
To follow up on Joe Goh’s thoughts, maybe there’s an analogy to programming here — once you’ve been through a painful experience, you get highly motivated to avoid that pain the next time.
But you can philosophize later. Right now, enjoy that scotch!
May 10th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
FWIW: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2007/04/30/how_to_not_throw_up.html
I know what you ran into was mainly a technical problem, but there may be some tips in there you can use. I haven’t done a presentation in a long time, but the next time I do, I’m planning to re-read that article.
May 11th, 2007 at 12:22 am
Yeah, Finder still has a few bugs, but I’m not one of those people who points them out as a critical reason to give it up and purge it from OS X. (Hey, they do exist). Too bad about the demo though.
For the future, there’s a handy little contextual menu that might have fixed this problem: Rainer Brockerhoff’s Nudge. AFAIK it’s basically a GUI wrapper around the Unix touch command, but it usually causes Finder to update a folder. It’s had less consistent results with the Desktop, but it may still have worked for you. I’ve used to fix the Stuffit bug where the uncompressed folder appears empty.
May 11th, 2007 at 1:43 am
Isn’t it funny how that stuff happens? (not so much ‘haha’)
When I do screencasts, it doesn’t seem to matter how well I plan and do a dry run, the final ‘live’ version always ends up with kinks. The perfectionist in me ends up with multiple takes till it’s right – very time consuming.
But what a drag in front of an audience. Hazel rocks, hopefully they were aware of that before your demo.
May 11th, 2007 at 6:30 am
Re-reading my comment, I think it may have come out like as though I was rubbing salt in Paul’s wounds.
Paul, I apologise if you were offended by my comment. You probably didn’t write this post on your blog for any advice at all, but for understanding from your fellow developers, or those that attended your demo.
Note to self: Never leave comments on blog posts first thing in the morning!
May 11th, 2007 at 10:51 am
Thanks for all the comments.
Joe: no apology needed. You advice is appreciated.
I did rehearse the demo part but like I said, it’s possible I didn’t rehearse it again after adding the clock setting part which I still think put Finder into a wonky state. More research is needed here. And when I say “research”, I mean cursing Finder and everyone who has ever touched its codebase, at least for the next few days.
Jordy: Thanks for the link to Nudge but it probably wouldn’t have helped in this case. I did continue the demo where files were moved off and onto the Desktop (which is basically touching the directory) and it didn’t fix anything. I had to restart Finder altogether.
But like I said, it’s not the biggest deal. I do realize that the Finder is a risk now and will be prepared next time it decides to be uncooperative. It wasn’t that large a crowd so it’s also good that a kink like this was revealed itself now rather than when I’m demoing to a group of 100+ (if that ever happens).
May 11th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Jordy, thanks for the link. The most recent Nudge indeed updates the folder’s accessed date, like “touch” does, but it doesn’t call the tool as such. What Nudge has always done is sending the Finder an “update” Apple Event, and it also calls FNNotify for good measure – the latter is probably redundant but can’t hurt.
May 13th, 2007 at 12:17 pm
Some positive news: you’re in the LifeHacker Top 10:
http://lifehacker.com/software/lifehacker-top-10/top-10-mac-utilities-259649.php
May 13th, 2007 at 3:17 pm
Do you call FNNotify after moving files? I know pre-Tiger Finders would fall behind if you omit that step.
If it was Tiger, then it definitely should have noticed anyway. (However, not FNNotifying will still confuse the Dock if you move things to the Trash.)