Tag Archives: HanMeta

About:HanMeta

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This post is way over due. Got it in just before midnight, w00t.

HanMeta, LLC: What the heck are you talking about?

I guess not everyone’s is on the down low.

It’s been about a year since I’ve had a dream of starting a web application company. While I’m not going to go into detail as to the why right now, I can finally cross that off the list. Well… I guess I won’t really have one until the actual service is out in the open.

Hopefully, I’ll find the time to blog as I manage/develop it. I love reading blogs like The Scariest Fun : notes from a web startup, where companies go into great detail about the pains and joys of starting, not just any company but, a web application company. Heck, they do Rails, too!

Formation of the LLC

Many weeks and months of research came down to picking The Corporation Company to help me make the LLC. Hooray for Delaware, and lax laws towards corporations. I went with the most expensive plan, because the $100 price difference isn’t all that much. Registered Agent service is going to be $219 a year, and just by the additional 6 months makes up for that cost. Plus, all the extra books I received makes it all worthwhile.

Nolo Books 1

Nolo Books 2

It’s a good thing, too, because nolo.com has been a site I frequented for months trying to figure things out. But as with The Corporation Company, I’ll keep you updated with any good or bad reviews.

Membership Certificate

Hmm. I guess I’ll hand these out when HanMeta becomes a multi-member LLC.

Emboss THIS

Embosser? Hah. Time to just start randomly embossing things…

I’m glad all of this has been taken care of. At least, on paper. I sent in the EIN information recently; I think that ends most of the paperwork. For some reason, this business stuff is kinda fun. Maybe I won’t be saying that when taxes are due in 2007.

What Who When?

So a little bit more about the actual company.

Currently, it’s 5 people, all friends of mine. Lot of groundwork has been placed, and really, it’s time to code. I might end up coding less than I would like, but I do like the management aspect of web application development, anyway.

Well. Here’s to an interesting journey in ’08.

Another Weekend of Code

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This past weekend was well spent, inside. Good thing I had enough food to last through the insanity that is freezing rain.

Definitely made some headway into what I wanted to do with the projects I have. Wrote some code, but mostly throwaway. Looked into a lot of the new Rails 2.0 stuff, but only to realize how little Rails I know period. Also added a third to HanMeta, and I hope to keep adding more people as time passes, and… you know… as I get grander ideas. I’m sure I’ll tap on some shoulders as time passes.

And hopefully, soon enough, LLC is in the future. Need a lawyer and an accountant… yikes.

And that’s all the update I have with regards to HanMeta. I have some nice wrist support gloves to aid me in my wrist painness and it feels like they are working.

Well, I'm going to sleep well tonight

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I don’t know the exact number of hours spent on HanMeta today. I gotta keep better track of the hours spent. I mean, I read my feeds during my breaks, and do some other work related to finding a full time job. Regardless, It’s just been a very very hectic day.

I’ll try to be a little bit more detailed so that others that are trying to set up Rails, Subversion, and Capistrano won’t have to go through the craziness that ensued today. Just need to figure out Capistrano… followed by lots of tweaking.

Yes. I’m so happy the app is getting started. I set a goal for this Sunday night (a little leeway) to have all this process stuff out of the way. Which mean I need to:

  • People
    • Who’s in? Who do I want in at this early stage?
    • Who’s doing what?
    • Take inventory of the hours people have to put towards this project
  • Rails
    • FastCGI vs Proxing HTTP?
    • How do I even do the second (because I hear it’s the right thing to do) on DreamHost?
    • So many other questions just about deploying an app…
  • Subversion
    • Double check on user/passwords
    • Make documentation (very similar to what I did with UIUC’s College of Education) on how to connect to the servers
  • ActiveCollab
  • Capistrano

Oh, and as a bonus, I want to run through the tutorial in the Rails book again before the end of the week. That way, I’ll be completely prepared for the n00bage that’s going to start next week.

I really hope that this doesn’t turn out like the last time I set out to do this. Lesson from that failure: Do something. It’s so hard to get things rolling.

Meet Your New App: HanMeta

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I woke up today, fixated on picking a name. I had racked my brain trying to figure out clever metaphors in nature (everything from tree trunks to rivers to pollinating flowers)… clever mashing of two words… sticking “han” in front of everything, trying to go with the naming scheme I’ve devised a couple of years back. (No, I’m not going back to slapping “jk” in front of everything)

There was a domain name I had before this one that would fit in perfectly with what the application will do. But sadly, I gave it up and now it’s in the hands of some spammers.

Regardless, let it be known:

HanMeta.com: the social web 2.0 blah rounded corners blah starburst blah tags blah rss feed reader. Now with more Rails! Ugh.

Let’s see how far I can take this with a ragtag team of awesome coding ninjas, present company included. Looks like, at the beginning, it’ll be Derek Remund, Amir Manji (This guy needs a blog!), and me. I must call upon the help of the sweet coding ninjas of Alex Argo, Dan Janosik, and, of course, the venerable Raj “Taco HTML Edit” Doshi.

All I’ve got is a running list of great features I’d like to implement, and lots of time to do it. (Oh, please please please let me have less time to work on this, if you catch my drift, potential employers?) I’ll try to chronicle this crazy journey. Like… startup.com or the DVD that fogcreek put out. Just in text form.

I just hope it’s more like the latter than the former.

07.07.07: Here we come!

More details as I get time to write them down.

New Goals: Pre-Month in Review

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Before the month’s over… and I have to do yet another one of those crazy Month in Review’s… I think I need to take this time to refocus a bit.

Lent Commitments… Uh oh…

Originally, it was:

Initially, for Lent, I had given up things like YouTube, TV shows, and movies. Then I started to play Quake… ONE. Oh man, how much fun. I think I must have sunk a good chunk of time into it. Well… I’m going to say this here: All forms of electronic entertainment is forbidden until Easter.

This includes: ANYTHING Flash, ANY passive media… It’s quite hard, seeing how almost EVERYWHERE I go, there’s a TV on or a browser open to YouTube. Time to strategize how to avoid those situations…

Bible reading is going well. Kinda getting behind (I think… I’m not sure…), because I’m really trying to learn Philippians before Easter… but that’s only an excuse. By the end of this month, I want to be fully caught up. I need to do some math in terms of how many chapters I, then, have to read to catch up. We’ll see, at the end of the month.

Let’s just say I’ve broken… a few of them. I probably pulled a JK^extreme again and went overboard on making up incredibly difficult and unnecessary commitments. For example, I picked up playing StarCraft again. It’s fun. It’s not nearly as addicting as before (I’ve matured, hooray!), and so I’ve been playing to get my mind off of things… I didn’t really feel guilty about playing it, but after thinking about a little bit, I feel bad that I didn’t feel guilty enough to not start it up.

So what do I do… Do I go into insane failure layer mode, give up everything and just forget about Lent? Well, I have to question my motives in even setting up these incredibly insane goals for myself.

I don’t want to give up something that I don’t do normally anyway. So something like watching TV… I don’t do it that much to begin with. I might do it occasionally, but giving that up to…

You know what? From the time I joined Covenant Fellowship Church until now, I’ve never been a fan of Lent. I’m still very much unsure of why we even do this thing. While going through the Internet, I ran into this interesting page: The True Meaning of Lent. While it is from a different denomination than mine (PCA), it definitely brings up many great points.

So before this turns into a post that I should create a new category “Religion” for, I’m going to end this here with this:

I’m going to get rid of all the things I’ve abstained from. This doesn’t mean that I’m going to go start getting addicted to gaming or movies or whatever, but that I won’t be feeling guilty whenever I break the “promise”, or at least, the illusion of it that I’ve created for myself.

However, the things that I’ve decided to add to my list of “things to do”, I’m going to keep. Reading the Word as well as memorizing Philippians has been incredibly helpful for me (even though… I’ve fallen behind quite a bit). I’m not doing these things merely because they’re on the list, but because I genuinely believe that they are helping me in my walk with God.

As soon as I focus on doing the positives, these unnecessary things will fall by the wayside anyway. I just need to make sure I follow through with the things I know will help me grow.

And seriously, Josh Kim, it’s your pride for setting up these insane goals. You wanted to feel all high and mighty if you kept them, right? You idiot…

I love setting up myself for failure. Yummy.

Summary: Read Bible. Memorize Philippians. Keep fighting. Don’t waste time.

Books

Definitely want to finish up Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age… I think I might do my first ever book review on this blog on this book. Heck, it’s the first non-programming book I’ll be finishing up in years.

The book Textmate: Power Editing for the Mac (Pragmatic Programmers) doesn’t seem that useful… at least… $20 useful. This book definitely adds to the online documentation at macromates, but I feel as if the pdf version of this book should have been included with the crazy price of TextMate. Definitely want to take my time with this book, though… seeing how I use this app hourly.

Agile Web Development with Rails (Pragmatic Programmers): What is wrong with the manufacturer of this book? The text is printed on a slant. It’s readable, but it bugs the crap out of me. And also, THIS?

Binding Issue

It’s not just this book, but it’s also the case with the TextMate book (it’s not as noticeable because that book is thinner and the pages are thicker). I hope it’s just this batch of books of the Pragmatic Programmers series. I asked for a return on this one… so I won’t be able to dip into the Ruby on Rails just yet. Besides, I want to learn more Ruby before I go deeper. Should I just go and buy Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers’ Guide, Second Edition?

Waiting for Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days to come in the mail. I know for a fact I will love this book.

Summary: Read Hackers & Painters by end of the month. Textmate, take your time. Founder’s by the end of next month.

Consulting/Freelancing/Blogging/Entrepreneurship…ing

I felt like all these things go hand in hand. This is basically my life, or at least, it should be.

I like my “job”. I like having a steady income from a part-time job with College of Education at University of Illinois: Urbana-Champaign. I like having clients to work for. I like setting my own hours (as you can see with the insane timestamp of this post). I like working wherever I want… from my apartment to the library…

I like my blog. I love being able to write about whatever’s on my mind on whatever subject I please. I love being able to strategize about how to best present the content, the information… how to monetize… ahem

I love thinking about the company I’ll be starting soon. I love doing market research. I love being my own marketing department, almost tearing my hair out trying to come up with a cool company/service names. I love imagining all the services I could provide through the company. I love thinking about the tax benefits of incorporating from one state compared to another.

The only problem I see right now… is the lack of health insurance. I don’t bring in enough to have a personal plan for myself, nor do I have health issues to begin with… it’s just something that bothers me from time to time.

But in terms of things to get done before the end of the month:

  • College of Education
    • Get Active Directory working in ColdFusion
    • Templates for moodle working
    • Fix moodle bugs, submit to moodle CVS repository
  • Freelancing
    • Finish up drupal customization
    • Finish up portfolio
    • Actively seek out clients
  • Blog
    • New template, new categories, new… old posts… blah blah blah

Summary: Get work done. Finish redesign on paper by end of the month. Finalize what is to be done with hanmeta.

I Can’t Sleep

I’m currently sick. And yet, I don’t really feel like going to sleep.

I really hope I don’t start writing another post tonight…