The “Seinfeld” Calendar

Published
by
jk
on January 2, 2009
in Web Applications
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I really think it should be called something else… but I think the Internet has decided on naming it as such.

I heard about it two days ago, when I saw in my feeds something about Calendar About Nothing. It seems like this concept was borne and named after this post on Lifehacker.

What am I talking about? It’s a simple concept: Just keep the streak of “X”s going. Don’t break the chain.

Looks like there’s a Don’t Break The Chain! webapp that is a bit more generalized. Of course, I’d go a bit further and start creating multiple calendars per user, sell it as an iPhone app, blah blah blah…

But really, this is quite an elegant way to get some stuff done every day. Good way to keep track of the things that you’ve done also.

Second Google search is for this page, where the author has generated two pdf versions of this calendar for easy printing.

The Silly Quest For Nonefficient Efficiency

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by
jk
on January 2, 2009
in Personal
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You can’t improve the efficiency of a process that doesn’t exist.

As with many things, this makes perfect sense in my mind. But I’ve been going about my projects as if I didn’t know this plain fact. This condition is quite similar to premature optimization, but I think it’s actually worse. With premature optimization, you’ve got some functionality that you’re trying to reduce into fewer lines of code or CPU cycles. Here, I’ve got nothing.

Here’s an example of this: Currently, I’m in the process of moving all of my sites to slicehost. I’m carefully deciding what kind of directory structure to use for them… and in my view, I’m very annoyed that I can’t just pick one method, and stick to it until later down the line, I have to fix it.

Instead, I keep thinking about my options, the cost-benefit analysis to what I do here. The “visionary” in me steps in to take control and ends up wreaking all kinds of havoc on productive work.

When Did This Start?

I think it’s when I became just a little bit more cognizant of the world. In high school, the world seemed quite small. That was around the time I started going into web development a bit more than just fiddling around with HTML here and there.

At that point, I didn’t know what was good or bad code: It just had to do something useful. These days, the requirements have been stepped up to much higher standards.

The Need For Historical Analysis

I think another reason for this weirdness comes from a desire to record everything. Record my failures as well as my successes, so that one day, I can or someone else can come in and figure out what really happened.

Slowly and painfully, though, I’m finding out that I actually do this fairly naturally. Not only that, I believe everyone start fabricating things about their past anyway, and so one’s reality and beliefs change as a function of time.

The solution? It’s not to write about it, which is what I thought it was. The solution is simple. You want it?

Implementation Is Always The Hardest Part

Some will call this “application”.

Really, it’s just to rise above oneself and just do.

“Be Awesome Instead” was 2008. 2009 will have to be just “Be Awesome”. I don’t have any other choice but to be awesome.

Sidenote: I haven’t had a post that varied in length throughout the writing/editing process like this one in ages. It’s time to write regularly again.

The War On Paper: The End…?

Published
by
jk
on December 24, 2008
in Personal
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I got my first real laptop during my Junior year in college. It was the PowerBook G4, the one before the last revision before the Intel transition.

Because I’m so forward thinking, I decided to start my journey to rid the world of paper. I started taking notes on the laptop. I shunned physical Post-it notes for the much more electronic Stickies. iCal would be open all the time to make sure I took down group meetings. OmniOutliner was the app of choice (since it came free with the computer).

Sidenote: After using OmniOutliner, I realized that I wanted them to be in plaintext files… I still haven’t gone through all my class notes and fixed this yet. One day… batch processing FTW.

But today, as I was going through the Cocoa book (Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X), I found myself desiring to take notes on pieces of yucky, non-indexable, paper-cut-prone, not-so-green (since being green tends to be the cool these days) dried wood pulp.

Maybe it’s because of my recent wrist problems… that might have to do with it. I was going through some of my older notes, and happened upon the math textbook I was writing. For some reason, I decided to codify everything I had learned about math I had learned in high school. I’m not too sure when I started writing in that wire-bound notebook, but I think it was around Junior high, looking at where I stopped with Trig and such.

Sidenote: I remember back then when learning was much easier. There was only a handful of things to memorize and to spill onto a test piece of paper. It wasn’t as bad as college, in terms of things asked to be answered and things “taught” (after all, the “learning” occurred outside of the classroom, a side-effect of the ineffectiveness of a large percentage of lectures). Wow, someone’s bitter? Moving on.

But alas, I am now in the market for some paper. Maybe Livescribe? This may be the best of both worlds.

Which reminds me, I have tons of reviews to write up… Darn this ambition to write every single application idea I have.

One Year Ago…

Published
by
jk
on December 17, 2008
in HanMeta
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One year ago, HanMeta, LLC came to life. And so now we enter into year two.

When I look back, it’s very interesting to see how much I did and didn’t get done. I definitely started something, but at the same time, nothing really materialized, as witnessed by the lack of any product releases.

I’ve learned to have a balanced view in all things, not just with respect to HanMeta: That while I may aim for the stars, it’s okay to have fallen short of the goal. After all, goals change over time, especially with experience and knowledge in knowing that those initial goals were foolish to begin with.

I’ve been restarting my efforts in trying to create a product with HanMeta. The waves of productivity waxed and waned throughout the year, with certain things in my life or in the world triggering them. There have always been roadblocks along the way, mostly created by me.

There has always been this desire to make sure that everything is used towards something. Metrics and organization are both very important, but to an OCD person like myself, it because a crutch to not get anything done. It’s yet another thing to occupy my time, rather than building awesome things.

To add to that, I’m always looking out of the formula for success; the silver bullet. All the while, I know that such a formula doesn’t exist. It must be why I like systems that can be reduced to absolutes. Games provide me with this system, and I’m seeing my business-oriented self come out a lot more often while playing such games.

But alas, there will always be lessons to learn.

The question is, now what? Now that Year 1 has gone by like this, what will Year 2 be like?

Well, much more awesome, right?

The roadblock now is… passion. I can probably tack on focus to that also. There are just too many things I want to do with HanMeta, and due to this scattered focus, I can’t get anything done. A couple of blog ideas here, a podcast there, and a B2C project idea all the way over somewhere…

It’s time for a list. And to think a little bit more methodically about what to get done.

I sure hope when I write another one of these posts in 2009 that things would have changed for the awesomer, indeed.

Wordpress 2.7

Published
by
jk
on December 14, 2008
in Site News
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Sure took my sweet time in getting this updated here on the blog. K2 came out with RC7, and updated that too.

I’m in the middle of a switchover process again. I’ll update the blog when that happens. For now, this is all I’ve got.

Definitely digging the new UI and all the new features of the web interface. Wee! I may have to go back to using the web interface, rather than busting out the MarsEdit.

This really should be it’s own version number, but WP doesn’t like version number inflation. Update, people, update!