On Privacy

I came across this article about privacy in CodingHorror. I thought his argument that privacy is a 'human right' is spot on. It also brings to light the fact that privacy is wrongly associated with evil-doers and evil-things. In the past, I've definitely taken a "privacy doesn't exist" stance, but after this article, I feel my previous apathetic stance on the issue is not the way to go. This doesn't mean that I'll take down my Facebook, and demand Google to blacklist me from all their query results, but it does mean I will pause that extra half a second before agreeing to the next EULA I see.

On Google Android

I had heard about it before, but I only bumped into it online today. I haven't done any mobile development before, but these videos have got me excited about mobile technologies in general. Both talks felt a little too scripted and stiff to me :)

This first video is a show and tell of some apps Google made.

What interested me more was an intro video of how to develop an app on Android. The SDK shown was Java, and the demo accomplished a lot with pretty straightforward code.

On Weekly Review 2007-12-17 to 2007-12-21

Fall semester came to a predictable and unhappy ending: an 'A-' in my fun class, and a 'C' in my hard class. I'm not bummed, but exasperated that I didn't do better in Art. Maybe I should've put in a few more hours of effort.

The initial few days of break were everything I dreamed they would be. I wasted gross amounts of time, and dragged a few others down with me. There were romantic comedies, IMAX Will Smith running scenes, and mooching at various friends' house.

Now the 2nd week is upon me. I still feel fantastic! Granted, I'm not thrilled about the progress I've made on Yumify and other projects, but overall I'm still having a bitching time. Here are some accomplishments to cheer for:

• Yumify has rudimentary Google maps support thanks to Cartography
• Set up Playstation 2 for increased laziness during down time. GT4 is every bit as exciting even through a bad quality picture through a VGA box.
• Massive rewiring and cleanup of my room. It took approximately an hour, but as always, my room is sparkling and clutter free with a hint of orange degreaser in the air.
• Got my bro interested in web stuff. Did not complete a guide in CSS for him like I said I would. I realize I need more knowledge in that area before I could explain material to people.
• Documented Blogger variables. These will be useful when the time comes to redo the HTML for my blog template.
• Fiddled around with Photoshop and InDesign. I really had a good time in InDesign after I tried to layout a page in Photoshop. Big mistake.
• Learned a little thing called 'Clearing Floats' that beats using an superfluous HTML element to clear floated divs.

On Stupidity

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but saving up enough quarters to buy a truck just doesn't seem like the brightest idea to me. I may not know a lot of economics, but that much be a helluva lot of inflation on that money.

Now back to my regularly scheduled staring at my computer screen.

On Afternoon with Designers and Writers

A large chunk of my afternoon was spent reading A List Apart and links originating from there. The site was filled with inspiring and motivating articles about writing, web standards, and web design. Some articles criticized the current state of web design; Others were introductory solutions to how to fix some common problems. I picked up some unfamiliar jargon like 'vertical rhythm', and 'web copy'.

My favorite part of reading these articles was simply the act of reading them. It's been a long long time since I've read technical stuff for fun. Ars and Wired are useful, but they're more for keeping up to date in tech news than for fun. I tend to skim through those articles, with the exception of the luddite and 'Sex Drive Daily'. What I read today was different though. What made it fun was the good writing and foreign material.

Any writing reads like a psychological triller after staring all day at API. Something in your brain just snaps after you've seen a certain number of keywords like algorithm, module, or method. Jumping over to a page where you read from top to bottom and left to right was just fantastic. There were no prerequisites that I had to read to follow the story, so I could click on links at my leisure. The headers were engaging, there were pictures, and not everything was taken literally.

On top of the writing fit for general purpose reading, most of the articles I read were about subjects I knew little about. Previously, I only saw technologies like XHTML and CSS as specifications. I never would've imagined them to be as exciting and ever-changing. Many articles were even tied to specific technologies, but instead focused on people.

All of this reminded me that conciseness and entertainment aren't mutually exclusive. I'm not suggesting that all APIs should be rewritten to be non-fiction bestsellers, but it sure wouldn't hurt to throw us poor saps a few beautifully written words once in a while.

On Electronic Recycling

I ran across an article on Ars introducing Second Rotation. The goal of the site is to buy back used electronics and either sell or recycle them on your behalf. I absolutely love the idea of a service that makes a profit AND helps with the environment at the same time. Sure, I could go through the hassle of selling it on my own, but just as Ars said, I would much prefer having a printed shipping label sent to be house and have Second Rotation skim a percentage. Brilliant idea.

On Quia

I am fully burned out today. This interview was very similar to the one I got from Factset in that I woke up earlier than I naturally should, and I came back long after the free lunch had been digested.

I really liked Quia after meeting more of the team. Min-Hank was a fantastic first impression on me. Ex-Oracle, he was easy to talk to and encouraging in all his questions. Next I met Joe, who's also ex-Oracle. I felt pretty happy with my responses with Joe, mostly because they were questions I had never seen before, but answered with minimal fuss and maximal correctness. I related with with him since he was an undergrad at Cal and took many of the same classes that I did. I have to admit that Jen intimidated me a bit when I met her. She was definitely courteous, but I felt uncomfortable while she typed as I worked out the given problem. I tried to chit-chat, I got the impression she wanted to get to the point. I'll have to tackle the problem she gave me and submit it to Joe later on.

I loved talking to CEO Paul. He came in all smiley and that helped calm down some of the interview nerves. I thought I blathered a little too much about my summer internship, but I just really wanted to get to know the guy. I was also impressed that he started this whole outfit part-time while he was doing another job.

The up and down adrenaline rushes between interviews hit pretty hard. There was never quite enough time in between each section for me to tone it down, but at the same time, just enough time to remind me how tired I am. The problems aren't what's hard, it's taking enough breaths and slowing down your writing that's tough. When I underclocked my head back down to sane levels back in the car, I could barely keep myself awake.

On Consistent Development Environments

It's painfully clear how ineffective I am on other people's computers these days. There's muscle memory in my hands to do all kinds of common and not-so-common tasks. Launch an application? Alt-Esc (QuickSilver). Navigating text? Emacs key bindings. Email? Chat? Webbing? You name it, I've got some obscure keyboard sequence to go about it. I'm not the only one either, since it seems that everyone in rescomp has a very customized daily workflow. Dotfiles are pimped out to the limits of un-usuability by any foreign hands.

Now that everything's customized just so, you'd think productivity should shoot through the roof. Unfortunately, I've found this to not be the case. Once people get cozy, a whole new nightmare creeps up. Instead of people being very dependent on environments, CODE will become dependent on the environment. The code may expect certain environment variables to be set; It may expect certain libraries to be installed; It may expect to be put in a certain location in the filesystem; It may only work when just the right amount of sunlight hits it. These problems don't crop up as long as you continue to develop in the same environment as the code, but is really shortsighted and hard to maintain later on.

What solutions are there? Obviously, you can write out a ton of config files that are meticulously tailored and configured for every development and production box. But it's equally clear that this can get hairy and different combinations will eventually lead to deprecated configs and major rewrites. The other approach is to centralize as many things together and minimize the different places configurations can be made. I see this as a much better practice for maintaining consistent development environments. Instead of writing documentation that tells new developers the dependencies they need to install in order to build the app, simply bundle the dependencies along with the app. Similarly, when developers use 3rd party libraries, why not version it alongside the app code to maintain a _single_ consistent version of the library that all developers share? Taking this philosophy to the extremes, we can even apply this to deployment and production. Bundle the toolchain, OS, servers, hardware, and support software... Imagine how fantastic it would be to pull a VM from the net and be confident that a bug is a real bug, and not a bad configuration.

Oh, and zombies scare the crap out of me, especially when seen in IMAX form

On Winter Break

Two days until freedom arrives. I bet this is how Mel Gibson felt in 'Braveheart' when he was going into battle to die...

As far as plans go for this break, I plan to keep it simple. I'm going to cover all the basic necessities like eating and sleeping, but on a much grander scale. Coding in my room is also a must. Yumify!. I'd also like to get to know more Rescomp stuff. Somewhere in between those, I'll probably apply to a few jobs and buy myself a POS-mobile.

Update: AnimeNook might get worked on too. My ever-growing taller brother thought of some concepts for the jump pages. Hannah said she'd be interested and her art interests might be really helpful. I'm not sure if I'll have enough time to get to this one though.

On Sweet Credit Card Justice

Following the Gold's Gym debacle from over the summer, I think it's finally coming to an end. In summary, what happened was the following:

• Jerry wants uber *m*u*s*c*l*e*s
• IBM interns regularly go to gym
• Jerry joins Gold's Gym for *summer special*
• Jerry looks the same but gains 12 pounds (read: Austin's cheap cheap delicious meats)
• Jerry cancel membership with blood signature
• Jerry is pursued by Gym creditors for unjustified payments
• Jerry gets charged extra $100+ for idiot gym payment system
• Jerry SMASH
• Jerry gets back $43.29 (pending) for credit card charge back

On principle alone, I think that entire chain of gym needs to go down in flames. I blame every level of management and employee for not knowing basic customer service and taking a stand for a customer. A honest billing mistake I can understand, but a 3 month margin of error with complete lack of accounting is a different story.

On Desire

To be honest, the real reason I bought a use PS2 on eBay was so I could play GT4. I'm not into games at all, and I have consistently sucked at all of them. This includes ruthless hours of training for Tetris Attack just so I could lose, yet again, to Wendy. I'd like to think that GT4 would turn out different, but it's highly unlikely.

Here's a trailer about GT5 I saw on Autoblog.

Starting the video with an Alfa would make Clarkson proud

On Getting People to Work on Projects

Though I haven't made more than a couple of attempts to work with people on exciting projects, I've already noticed a few negative recurring themes. I'm not blaming these on any specific people either cause I'm just as guilty as the next guy. I've heard some of these a few times now:

• Can't, school. (totally legitimate, but doesn't apply to me)
• Can't, _insert_hobby_interest_here. (all the more power to them)
• Can't, not interesting enough problem. (then come brainstorm a better problem with me)
• Love to, then work on everything else except with me. (hasn't really happened that much, but I feel like it sometimes)
• Love to... never hear back again

Basically, what I have is a bunch of really cool and awesome people I'd like to work with. I don't care if I make money (at least for now). Even my elementary school buddy from Ohio has shown more interest in brainstorming with me than some of the people I'd like to work with. I understand school is hard. I get that work takes time. I sympathize with everyone's reasoning about everything. But when it comes down to it, there must exist SOME project which is exciting enough that you'll bump it up in terms of priorities. I don't even care if that project isn't something you want to share! I just want to see more people care or do projects for the sake of having fun. At some point, someone has to overlap with me right?

I was bitchin' to Andrew, and he gave me a great response. Something I'd like to ask people next time I want to do a project:

[00:13] Get a timeline, get that list together of people you want, go through each one, ask them for their schedules and where they see themselves in like 5 years, find out who's actually available to work on your project, poll each of them for their true interest and to see what they'd like to do, if their plans and personal interests line up with your plans, then it's a green light go
[00:13] put them in our team, get steady lines of communication with each of those that care
[00:13] with the timeline, have certain deadlines
[00:13] like, by day 40 of the launch, i will have a tentative team list of 8 or 9 people
[00:14] by month 3, I will have had an office or a code base or a proper code repository set up
[00:14] or hell, by month 4, all of the foundation will set up and true coding can be setup
[00:14] you can also have parallel timelines
[00:14] like one for business setup
[00:14] one for coding
[00:14] one for idea throwing around
[00:15] and one for, i don't know, staff development, a happy team is a strong team
[00:15] without visible goals, no one has a drive to do anything
[00:15] even if they're soft deadlines, they're better than nothing at all otherwise procrastination sets in
[00:17] I don't know if Im' relaly consoling you...
[00:17] I feel like I'm hitting you with a stick :(

As a last resort, maybe it's cause I smell bad. I'll go take a shower now :)

On Weekly Review 2007-12-02 to 2007-12-08

In the interest of making this a habit, here goes:

Projects

• Lots of high points when testing Yumify. Not fully tested, but good start. Code smackdown with Peter was fun, Jeremy was too dead from Rescomp video to join. Talked about having a presentation
• No sign of life from Mark's bank project. Dropping until he contacts me again
• More work done on justin.tv parser, but annoyed by parenthesis thing
• Committed rescomp bandwidth 'knob', but didn't do the exaddr field correctly :(

People

• Continued failure to give Bona origami paper
• Got the PS2 in Abe's hands, wrote in to visit him on Thursday after art final

Random

This makes me wish I had been an ME or knew more about working with robots... with CRAZY EYES o_o

On the Next Bubble

Courtesy of Alean:

I'm definitely far more optimistic about startups than the video's message, but I totally agree that some companies are overvalued and unhealthy for future startup growth. I also see some of these more well known startups as the result of a "Dot-com Cold War", where people and companies throw money at so they don't get shut out from the next big thing. For example, Microsoft's measly $240 million dollar investment is chump change for the Redmond giant. Sure, Microsoft may potentially use Facebook as an advertising outlet, or even as a platform for future development, but I can just as easily imagine the board of directors whispering, "we want to be in... just in case". I see many of the investments done by large companies as similar in tactics to the classic "intellectual property patents race".

The nasty consequence of these large injections of capital is how it changes the public mindset. All the naysayers from the last bubble have returned, ready to criticize. Those who were laid off may start being lured by stock options and inflated salaries again. Many people have either forgotten or intentionally *chose* to forget all that happened a few years ago.

What do I think of all this? I fear for when people start riding the next wave of venture capital. The potential fallout could crush many great ideas and startups who really do deserve to make it. On the other hand, it motivates me all the more to get my act together and establish some roots so I can weather through the worst.

In fact, I welcome the worst. A fallout would weed out all those racing in to make a quick buck. Just don't let it burst too quickly :)

On Weekly Review 2007-11-25 to 2007-12-1

I know it sounds corny, but I've been trying out some features of GTD in hopes of using less of my brain for remembering events and trivial tasks. I'm going for high-level conceptual changes, rather follow specific implementations. Basically, I've been trying to make TODO lists categorized by location context, people context, and time to remind me to do stuff. I specific hint I'd like to follow is to have weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews of how I'm doing overall at living my life. Yes, I understand how OCD and mental that sounds :)

Projects

• Talked with Randy about Bandwidth libraries, have an idea of where to start, will attempt Monday after 170 problem set
• Went to YCombinator startups infosession, had a great time and applying to justin.tv by writing a simple parser in ruby
• Talked to Kenny's friend Mark about his project idea involving financial institutions
• Talked to Arthur about helping out on his ajendu
• Started unit testing bits of yumify! scheduled a code smackdown for next Tuesday (12/4)

People

• Failed to give Bona origami paper back
• Helped Emily with CS. I think she'd enjoy it more if the grades pressure wasn't there. But then again, to love debugging requires a special type of messed up person... (yours truly)
• Got to chat with Justin of justin.tv Nice guy.
• Charles might be selling me his Civic hatchback