Not sure why I didn’t think of this, but I’m sure I can write a zsh script that does this and run it every time I have pictures or take screenshots.
Looks like I have my weekend project set aside for me.
Floating up and away into the atmos, moving away from the traditional computing paradigm. Except for when I have to dev, and even then… VMs FTW.
Whatever you do will be different.
The choices you make to add or subtract, hopefully more of the latter, will effect the final product.
So writing yet another blog engine? No. Journaling engine? Eh… need a better name for what I’m attempting to write.
Gotta figure out what I want specifically and then figure out how I’m going to migrate into this system without breaking too many things.
September 25th was when I started on WebFaction. It’ll be a good date to close out this blog. A little more than three months left.
Pulling an all-nighter into a sleep experiment probably wasn’t the best idea, and may be why I failed completely at nap #3.
From what I’ve read, the Everyman is a form of Polyphasic sleep that, in total, lets you sleep 4 hours of the day. One core sleep of 3 hours, with 3 20-minute naps thrown about during the day. Since my sleep has felt pretty crappy in the past couple of months, I decided to give it a whirl.
After waking up at around noon the day before yesterday and pushing through until 9:20 AM yesterday, I took my first nap. Felt refreshed, as I would with any 20 minute naps I’ve taken in the past. Then, I took my nap #2 at 1:40 PM.
Then, nap #3. Since it’s Thanksgiving, there was quite the turkey feast that occurred just before it. That, and the fact that I was sleep deprived for a day probably added onto the inevitability of fail to follow.
I ended up with around 6 hours of total sleep time, which isn’t bad, but isn’t great either. I guess I’ll just be easing into this whole process.
I will be keeping a sleep log, just like I log almost everything else. Still need to finish programming that online log, though…
Six Months on Everyman was a very nice post on the subject, if you want to get started.
10 Levels of Intimacy in Today’s Communication (Ji Lee) .
I have a thing for infographics, and a lot of Ji Lee’s work is awesome. Word as Image is especially cool.
The image, although an interesting take on the different levels of intimacy per communication medium, I would reorder, remove, and add certain levels.
And the important thing here is that different people would order this differently. Some who never use Twitter won’t even have that on their spectrum. I hate text messages, so I wouldn’t have that in my graphic.
I had a project years ago that never left my brain trying to capture this data: How different people use different channels of communication, and how people infer certain data based on the usage of a certain medium. Yeah, I still don’t know what I’d do with it, but it kinda made me think of that project from long ago…
In the course of writing and finishing this blog post, I hope to have not switched out of this window.
All too often I’ve left things undone, because of my tendency to try and be as efficient as possible. Because of this, I keep attaching myself to something newer and awesomer.
This, and a whole slew of other reasons, make up the litany that are my excuses for not getting anything done.
Today, I’m trying something different. Blogging a lot more often is one thing, but I want to make some headway into a project.
So here is the first of many posts today. This is also a nice way to check to see if my feeds aren’t screwed up. I have this feeling I’m going to be parting ways with feedburner sooner than later.
As 10/10 grew near, I started getting pretty disappointed that I had not yet decided on a project. I’ve thought about doing a PHP web app with an MVC framework to an iPhone app written in Cocoa. I’ve even thought about developing content for blogs with topics ranging from programming to business development to… music games. (Yes, I love music games. Too much. In fact, if a certain post gets done, you’ll see how much I love music games.)
After some meetings with the Josh’s upstairs (in my mind), I’ve decided to move forward with making a feed reader. Not GadgetGet or SetStat, but FeedSt.
Here’s what I wanted to create in a nutshell.
Most of this functionality exists out in the web. It’s just not tied together in one happy place. I also have a list of companies that have already created so-so comparison shopping sites that achieve some of these features but very poorly (sidenote: I have no idea what gdgt.com is supposed to be about, but maybe it’s something like this?).
The real question is, would I use this? I would use this to keep track of all of my gadget purchases, and even check how much I’ve spent on stuff over time. It’d be a very useful system to buy and sell used gear as I shed my technological skin very quickly. It’d also be extremely useful for when I want to find out more on an array of items. If I ever wanted to get into photography, I could very quickly look up which lens were awesome at what, using reviews of people that I trust.
But I can deal. Searching on Google for review ends up serving me pretty well, and all I really ever do is go to Amazon and Newegg for reviews and buy from Amazon anyway (because Amazon Prime is so freaking awesome). Eh. It’s a problem that I feel like only a certain few people have, and I don’t foresee myself paying for this service. If that’s not the case, if it really is that I’m trying to profit from advertising (3rd party accessory affiliate sales or direct affiliate sales or just general Google Adsense), I’d need some serious runway in terms of money, hardware, and people. Eh. I’ll maybe work on this later.
Initially, this project was supposed to be my first foray into creating a pure social network. You know, the kind where there’s very little thought to actually how one is to make a living off of one. (I kid… kinda.)
This was my first effort (although a minor effort, at best) of actually doing what people would generally call a “startup”. I got a couple of my friends together to build the thing, and renamed it to StatusFix. I probably should have gone all out and went for VC capital, if I were bold enough. Regardless, getting a group of friends fired up about a social networking app was ultimately a fun overall. Getting everyone together and managing meetings as well as release schedules… would have been fun if I kept going.
As the project unfolded, I lost sight of what I wanted. I learned that this wasn’t a project that I was in control of, but became much more of a group effort. This isn’t a bad thing if from the start it was to be a group effort, but from the get-go I had a vision for StatusFix, and I wasn’t going to compromise it. I also felt that I wasn’t a very effective person in the project overall. I had to step back and prove to myself that I could “do”.
So I left, leaving it in the capable hands of the people I worked with. I haven’t heard much about the project after I left, but I think it’s still being worked on here and there. I’m definitely holding onto StatusFix.com for a while… it’s a good name, and maybe someone will make some use of it. (I want 5% cut, tee hee.)
I learned a lot of lessons from this experience. Relationship lessons aside and more on business lessons, I learned that I didn’t want to go into creating a project for the sake of having a project made. It had to be useful for me and also be freaking profitable. Also, it had to be fun, new, and exciting in ways that I can’t really describe: the gut feeling.
And so, more recently, going back to the original name, this general concept of a social networking application turned into one for setting status messages across multiple platforms. (Sidenote: StatusFix was going to be everything and the kitchen sink. Which would have been redonkulously awesome.) It wasn’t just for messages; I wanted to incorporate status images also. I began to think about the iPhone platform for this, since there’s a camera built right in. The location awareness was interesting as well. With the recent garbage that’s going on at the iPhone App Store with the NDAs and the removal of applications, I thought twice on this project.
However, the iPhone App Store is not why I pulled back on this. I decided to go with another project, although I see myself using this app quite frequently. I feel like someone else can work on this. It’s just something I may do in my spare time, but it’s not all that important. Also, the features of this app might as well just be an addition to any of the multitudes of applications out there already.
Plus, it’s a social networking app, for the sake of social networking app. Facebook is doing that… moderately well. They’re keeping afloat, which is good. The only place I’ll be making money is the sale of the iPhone app, and maybe some kind of freemium scheme for the webapp. Meh. Definitely a good side project or a proof-of-concept project, though.
Okay, finally. To the point of the post.
I use Google Reader. A lot. I don’t think I can go without a whole day without my news (lest be hit with the dreaded 1000+ count on the number of unread items… I’m never letting that happen again). I can benefit directly from a better feed reader, with a lot of features that I personally can use and love and would even pay for (not much, but I’d be willing to go over from free to not free, $.00 to $.01, which is a huge difference.). Reader’s good, but it can definitely be better.
The question is, am I building an app based on just pure providing the same look and feel of Google Reader plus some features? I hope not. I hope to actually do something different than just slapping a few more features on Google Reader and call it. I wouldn’t pay for that, not saying that this is strictly going to be a pay-only service. Freemium ftw.
A sidenote here is that I have a soft spot for this project. This truly was my first “business mindset”-driven project ever. After I graduated from college and after I did a couple months of freelancing, I really wanted this project to work out into the first project of HanMeta. I went on and got a full-time job, though, and so the plans of world domination was put aside.
Make something people want. That’s it.
I feel as though feeds are going to be immensely important real soon. I’m talking not only in the technorati, but for everyone. “iTunes for data”? Heh.
Of course, I can’t put all my eggs in one basket. But really, at this point, I’m sick of the researching of what projects I should or should not be doing. I picked it. My gut has a warm and fuzzy feeling. I hope it isn’t the massive amounts of caffeine.
Rock. Roll. Repeat.
I feel like a huge weight has been thrown off my shoulders. Now, it’s time to learn even more what I have to learn as I go along.
The long four day weekend was mostly spent on one of two things: Rock Band 2 and setting up for projects. And the Rock Band 2 stopped as soon as I completed the game in solo guitar mode. And no, I didn’t count the Endless Setlist… unless I can get 3 other kids to go all out for hours and hours on end.
This weekend was a blur. I don’t remember much of it. A lot of late night talks with Dean didn’t help the project progress, but was beneficial. As a sidenote, he’s my third impromptu roommate after I started living solo (I guess I should count that Jong-Sun kid, because he was over constantly, so four).
Moving on, I’m hoping to get the whole development environments set up tonight. It seems like my forearms aren’t even happy about my typing this entry. We’ll see if I’ll sleep happy or not.
I have these artifacts as evidence to the caffeinated stupor I was in.
Remember, the green one’s the most tasty.
But yeah, working ’til the week hours of the night/morning, I popped on the sysadmin hat and rocked out. Finally after having installed MediaWiki (it’s a little slow, I need something faster… any suggestions?), I started to document the insanity.
I bought a new”er” slice at slicehost. I love how close to the metal all of the insanity is. I finally got to see how Derek worked his magic during the days of StatusFix… er… more like I copied and pasted commands, all the while man paging everything that went past my eyes. Lots to learn and screw up on so that I’ll learn even more.
Still need to work on Capistrano deployment from the git repository. Hoping to get this done tonight. Still not sure where I should be developing… should I be using my computer for both dev and test? Hmm.
Lots to chew this week. But indeed, only three weeks remain.
After a normal sleep cycle, I returned to my computer to start cracking.
Of course, life threw its usual curveballs. After church, I had realized that my printer was being wonky. I also realized that NewEgg’s return policy on broken items sucks (you have to pay for shipping for sending it back), which makes me not want to order from them ever again unless it’s something like an.. xbox live 12+1 month card. (Which I didn’t get from them, because buy.com has it better. DO IT.) I’m probably continue to order from Amazon… I love everything about this company, from Prime down to its amazing return policy.
That took a while, then I had a couple hours of fun on the guitar as well as the 360. Eh, it was bound to happen.
Then I buckled down. I realized all the physical needs of a human being, including sleeping and eating, really gets in the way of doing some productive work. I worked on and am still working on organizing all the web “properties” I have. I’m talking email addresses to AIM screen names to… you guessed it, domain names. Yesterday night, I did something I should have done a while back.
I finally bought joshk.im. Currently, I’m beta testing something called SweetCron, which is perfect for the purpose of that site. I have this strange feeling this might be a project I look forward to committing some changes to. Yes, even though it’s PHP… but it’s so well written! So pretty! I’ve never seen CodeIgniter code before, and it looks very very clean. I’m only used to seeing the insanity that is Symfony. It might just be that the guy who’s writing this thing, Yong Fook, is quite good. It was interesting to find out that SweetCron was going open source just as I found his blog a couple months ago. I really do hope for great things, if he’s reading this.
But alas, I may do something else with my newly acquired shiny domain name. I’m fresh out of ideas at this point, but I really wanted it to be a site for just that.
I’m still figuring this out. I hope to have a list of my requirements for this project. Here’s a preliminary list:
So I’m looking back on February 2008′s posts, and it seems like I stopped blogging like a madman after I found Twitter. Then this blog turned into, for lack of a better phrase, a Twitter archive. But before then, when I actually contributed to the world with some meaningful posts on the web… ugh… 2.0 market and on life in general, I would have multiple posts in various stages of completion.
I’m back at that stage. I have screenshots and halfway finished posts all over the place. I may need to slow down a bit, but I feel so energized.
I want to have these daily blog entries about the status of the “project”, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be doing some other random updates along the way. I have a feeling something about Rock Band 2 is going to get posted. Effing Braid needs to get a good review also. So many lovely post ideas…
Man, what the heck did I do with all this time I’m using up for the blog? I really have no idea. Must have been watching and playing things… Hmm. If I could have tracked all that lost time… but really, what’s the point then? What’s the point of being meta with things that you can’t change if you’ve already changed and are looking back?
Ah, the meta-life post. [Creates a new draft] I’ve deleted and rewritten this post so many times, physically, electronically, and mentally. ARGH.
This post’s written with good ol’ TextMate. I’m still working on that mac desktop blogging software review post, now that I’ve added Blogo into the mix.
I’ve decided to give myself 30 days. Thirty days to do something that I deem worthwhile. And hopefully, I won’t have some grand vision like I do with so many of my freaking projects: I hope to just do something small. Really, the goal is to have that something small turn into something big.
Of course, I’ve given myself deadlines many many times. I can already recall the cutesy number games I play with dates of the calendar year. This time, I hope that there’s an added outcome of something awesome, rather than just a list of lessons to be learned on what not to do.
The goal is to create a service/product. A useful and useable service/product that can be somehow used to fulfill someone’s need in exchange for money. I want to experience the entire gamut of development, from planning to delivery, from a first person perspective.
It could be a web app. It could be a desktop app. It could be a blog. Heck, it could even be something that doesn’t involve computers. But I know, it’s gotta be something creative. After 30 days, I want to be able to say: Wow, that was time well spent.
Of course, this requires the definition of what time well spent is. I guess all the past time planning all those past web applications were time well spent. It’s just that there wasn’t any tangible outcome.
Well, I’m hoping to keep track of each day’s worth of work for HanMeta in post form. These two days, I’ve been writing up some fresh content for the Josh Kim dot Org blog, but I’ve been thinking about creating a more tech focused blog.
Really, the next couple of days are going to include reflections as well as planning. I’m hoping for about a week of planning, followed by two weeks of implementation, followed by a week of testing, give or take.
There are just too many ways I could use up the next 30 days, but I just need to find out what’s the most opportune way to do so.
Maybe I’ll upload the project map that I’ve been holding in my head for so long… or just fabricate a list of sorts.
Since I’m moving in about a week, I started making a list of address I have to change. It’s becoming longer and longer, including:
Note to self: (done) means the new address, (completed) means new new address.
There should be an app that does all of this for a one time fee. I’d pay for it. I actually will be moving again in three weeks, after my new lease starts at my new apartment. When that happens, I’m going to have to go through most of these sites again. Ugh.
I bet, though, this is going to be near impossible other than hacking through some of these sites because of the lack of an API, or completely impossible if a service doesn’t have an address change form available online. Never say never, though.
I was met with some of the worst and the best UI on the Internets while changing my addresses. Just a few sidenotes, for my reference and for yours.