Jun

23

You’re Going to Suck

Filed Under creativity, life, recommendations | 1 Comment

Merlin Mann on Doing Creative Work; The Sound of Young America

Merlin Mann is an amazing speaker, and I’ve always found his talks inspirational. His theories have helped me through a ton of tough spots.

Jun

20

John Hodgman’s Speech at the Whitehouse Correspondents Dinner

Filed Under life | Leave a Comment

Mar

17

What am I Doing With Myself?

Filed Under life | 1 Comment

It has been a busy month. In less than thirty days, my life has completely changed, for the better. I’ve moved back to the south bay, from the east bay and am now currently living centrally in Menlo Park, right next to the train station. I had about a week to pack/move/unpack before I started my new fantastic job as web engineer for growing startup, Caring.com, in San Mateo.

Caring, Inc is a website dedicated to helping senior/elder caregivers and provides a wealth of resources for the caregiving community. At first, it seemed like a demographic/product that someone like me wouldn’t be too interested in, but I am very happy about the fact that I not only get to work on a fantastic team building a (suprisingly) complex CMS, but I am also making a difference in people’s lives. This is my way of changing the world today.

Caring from an engineering perspective is very cutting edge. We are a very very agile shop (our COO is a board member of the Agile Group or whatever they call themselves these days), we do stories, (real) scrums, sprints, and all that scrumy goodness. I am really into this workflow. I’ve worked for previous employers who don’t really understand how these tenents work together. Its very interesting, engineering is not the only agile team, the WHOLE company is agile, very neat!!

I love Menlo Park so far. Fantastic food, everything is walking distance, the train is right outside my door, perfect! I’ve never had such a perfect commute/living situation, everything (amazingly) just fell into place perfectly. I am also neighbors with my brother here which is hilarious, we have a walkie-talkie system setup, currently. The cats are also quite happy with my new place, much more socialble, less bitey.

I’ve also been doing a lot of research lately on scalability and some new software development techniques that I will definitely be writing more about very soon, so keep posted if you are interested in things like say, CouchDB.

Jan

27

Design Patterns For Creativity

Filed Under creativity, life, recommendations | Leave a Comment

I have a lot of respect for Merlin Mann. The Merlin Mann I knew 6 months ago vs. the Merlin Mann of today seems very different. Almost as if I’ve watched him shed an exoskeleton of “tips to be creative”, to really seeking what it means to be a creative individual. I really think everyone should watch this whole video. Its insipiring.

Jan

8

Why Twitter Makes FriendFeed Obsolete

Filed Under apple, business, life, recommendations, ruby, technology | 3 Comments

Anyone else out there tired of Twitter-spam? Every new web 2.0+ application that hits the web today asks you for your twitter credentials so they can post a 140 character spam about some various task you are performing at some website I don’t care about. However, there are times when I do care about those other various tasks my friends are performing on various websites, and that’s where FriendFeed comes in.

But I ask you, WHY BOTHER? Why am I going over to FriendFeed when I have a perfectly good Twitter timeline, full of friends I already know and trust, and chock-full of useless and semi-interesting pieces of information that I can’t seem to live without. Why are we duplicating all that information, when we could combine it into a master timeline (using Twitter), through a much more secure medium?

The as it stands today, If you want to broadcast your activities on a specific site through Twitter, you have to be ready to hand them over your username and password, that way they can essentially pretend to be you and make a post on your behalf. For some reason, that doesn’t seem to phase most people, but the ramifications of that act are sort of dangerous. As you may have heard, Twitter and the people who use it control many different spheres of influence, and that information falling into the wrong (and insecure) hands could be disastrous.

This is 2009! We’ve solved these sorts of problems in the past, lets put our thinking caps on! API, bitches. Twitter needs to introduce an API so that third-party vendors can post to your Twitter account without you having to fork over any nuclear secrets. Flickr has figured out how to do this very well…eons ago

“But Derek! Didn’t you start this post off by saying you hate Twitter-spam?”

Yes, I do. Thats why the next thing we need Twitter to do is setup “Twitter Feeds”, which will be where all of the twitter-spam is sent and categorized for when that information is sought after. Don’t think anyone will go out of their way to see that information? Friendfeed.com and its 5 million dollars in funding beg to differ. Twitter is the most natural place for this information to exist!

Why bother with FriendFeed at all when your “Twitter Feed” can say the last netflix movie you’ve watched, or that digg article about “the top 10 cats laying on their backs” that you thought was so awesome. This information, once officially supported by Twitter, can then be properly segmented and keeps my timeline about what it should be, you know, pictures of my cat and how many times I hate internet explorer.

This idea, however, is going to seriously impact the current load that Twitter is used to, even at 1.2 million new users a month (I read that somewhere, could be wrong). FriendFeed works through RSS, so the responsibility of that information’s existence is placed on the RSS provider, and not FriendFeed. So I could imagine their would be a substantial increase in data that is sent to Twitter, but having said that, they seem to be doing pretty good at handling themselves these days, and that would only make Google want to swallow them whole faster.

So basically, Twitter needs a ping API, and the pings sent by the API (that are theoretically web 2.0 spam) need to be segmented into their own grouping, that way we can do away with social networking social networks and utilize a popular technology we already love.

Dec

11

Changing The World, In Trivial Ways.

Filed Under Software, life, recommendations, technology | 2 Comments

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, thinking about how technology and the internet have been applied in such fascinating and unbelievable ways, ways that have absolutely re-written the fabric of how we as citizens of earth interact with information, but also each other. When I think about all of this, the truly astounding thing is the passage of time that has elapsed. Companies like Apple, Google, and Wikipedia are doing their best to make sure that the way we interact today, is nothing like the way we will interact tomorrow.

These are visionary companies, ran by some of the best and brightest of our time, can you imagine a world without Google? (your children won’t be able to). The internet itself has been the biggest catalyst of our 21st century evolution, providing a platform and foundation for limitless connectivity, where our ideas and capabilities are the only limitation.

Its not often that I feel so inclined to be nostalgic about an industry that hasn’t even been around for 50 years, but lately, I’ve been evaluating my place in the scheme of things. I’ve been watching the innovations and “innovations” that have hit the market in 2008, and frankly, I think we can do better.

But this isn’t new, people have been inventing solutions to problems nobody has had forever. I guess you could say, this is my letter to myself to make sure I am actually doing things and working with people who want to make a difference in the world, rather than “minnovate”. People say that times like this (referring to our economy) are when people sit down and do the most amazing things, not because its the hip thing to do, but moreso out of necessity.

So here is to a world changing 2009.

Oct

20

Crystal Head Vodka

Filed Under life, recommendations | 2 Comments

Listen to Dan Aykroyd discuss the importance of death and skulls in our world, and explain to you why he decided to embark on creating the “purest” vodka known to man. To be honest, this is actually a really really good vodka. I am no expert, but it tastes really good. Too bad you can’t get a full bottle of this stuff!

Oct

13

Need a Friendly, Experienced, Web Developer?

Filed Under Software, Uncategorized, business, life, ruby | 3 Comments

I have been rolling around the idea of starting up more freelancing to try to bolster my savings for the coming years, so I’ve decided to take on more consulting work. For an indepth look at my work experience and skills, please visit my linkedin profile, here are some highlights.

- 5 years relevant web development experience
I’ve worked a ton with the web, I’ve done everything from ColdFusion to my current favorite, Ruby (and Rails). I have a lot of experience working with JavaScript and XHTML/CSS, very comfortable doing frontend and backend development, as well as database work (although, I don’t want to use the term DBA). If you’d like to see my portfolio, contact me directly.

- Did I mention I love Ruby?
I have done a lot of work with Ruby in the past couple of years, I was highlighted on the RailsEnvy podcast a few weeks ago for a modest open source contribution I made called SmartMonth. I’ve worked on some medium-sized rails deployments, and am looking to grow my portfolio.

- Plays well with others
I love working on small, motivated teams. I always enjoy adding (and learning) from the synergy of a great team. I also test all of my code (quite thoroughly) and won’t break “the build”.

- UNIX Aficionado
I love UNIX, and its my deployment environment of choice, I’ve got a lot of experience working with Capistrano, and am very adamant about automating things wherever possible, and documenting things thoroughly.

- Entrepreneurial-Minded
I have a passion for growing things, I am a very dedicated team member, and am also very aware of the needs of startup-oriented businesses, I’ve worked with a few startups at this point, and have gathered a decent amount of relevant experience helping companies and products grow.

If I sound at all interesting to you, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line, or if you know someone who might be interested in hiring me, please forward my information along and I’ll send you a Christmas card.
Thanks everyone!

Sep

18

Edward Tufte Course In San Francisco

Filed Under conferences, life, recommendations, technology | 2 Comments

December 8th, 2008, I will be attending a 1 day course lecture and workshop on “Presenting Data and Information” by Edward Tufte. If you don’t know a lot about Edward Tufte, he has written a series of fascinating books on unique and interesting ways to visualize and present data. The fee for the workshop is only $380 and includes a copy of 4 of his greatest books. He will be covering the following topics in his course:

  • fundamental strategies of analytical design
  • evaluating evidence used in presentations
  • statistical data: tables, graphics, and semi-graphics
  • business, scientific, research, and financial presentations
  • complexity and clarity
  • effective presentations: on paper and in person
  • interface design
  • use of PowerPoint, video, overheads, and handouts
  • multi-media, internet, and websites
  • credibility of presentations animation and scientific visualizations
  • many practical examples

It should definitely be a day of fascinating study, and I encourage anyone who is invovled in user interface design and/or user experience design to sign up for one of his courses.

Sep

15

Drop IE6 Support.

Filed Under Software, business, life, technology | 10 Comments

Ask yourself, why are we still supporting Internet Explorer 6? Not as developers, but as people who use the Internet. If you are a web developer, you are one of the first people who will scream “I F#$@ this browser!”

So I ask the question, why are we still supporting this browser, 7 years later?

Everyone who is still using IE6 does so because we allow them to. We still add “degraded” support for the browser, we still make alternate stylesheets, we still make a ton of hacks that only work for the redheaded step browser. I dare you, tell me one time you said the word “happy” and “IE6″ in the same sentence! Enough is enough.

The Line in the Sand

I am proposing we set a day to “turn off the lights” for IE6. Much like our government has decided that on a specific day, over-the-air analog broadcasting will go away. Why not do the same? That glorious day, everyone who supports the “lights out” concept, will actively limit IE6 users from accessing their sites and applications. Now, I am not saying lets just let things degrade and look unprofessional, I am saying turn it off completely. Its a rash move right? Does that potential user base you are shutting out scare you? Not really. It doesn’t scare me. Take a look at the global statistics for its use, we are talking about a very small minority of people. But it is still enough to count, and for some reason we still support this aged code.

How can we ever hope to as a community of engineers hope to better ourselves and the things people are using if we have to worry about this sort of legacy. There is nothing beautiful about what it takes to support even the simplest of CSS techniques in IE6, and it just doesn’t make sense for us to keep wasting important dollars on it.

Now, the irrational part of me says, as soon as I hit publish, I am going to block IE6 traffic from ever viewing my blog again. But lets face it, that is not a solution that is going to help people understand the reasons they need to move, nor is it going to make you as a person look very wise. I want to set a date far in advance for existing websites, and for all new and upcoming websites and services, already have it off. Lets say, 10 months from now? That gives us a long time to be able to warn and let people know that they need to upgrade or move to a different browser. I mean hell, by the time that 10 months is up, we should be seeing IE8 in the wild, isn’t that a good enough reason?

Ramifications

Okay, lets be more realistic, the only people who are really stuck with IE6 are the people suffering in cubicles run by IT departments that are either lazy, stuck with legacy issues, or just uneducated about the real reasons to upgrade their company.

Well to that I say, too bad. You have had 7 years to decide what to do about this problem, and I think its unfair for developers to have to pay the price. Why should be have to bastardize our software, and invest a large sum of our time and money into something that has not even been updated since 2004?

I am definitely impressed by companies like 37signals and Apple who are putting their foots down when it comes to their products. Don’t think of it as an exclusive, elitist club, but a very important reason to educate and explain to people (well in advance) why it actually hurts their experience of the web today to be stuck in the past. Going forward our company is going to be following this mantra, educate and upgrade. I am entering a market demographic that will most likely be stale and out of date, but I still say its unacceptable, we as the developers need to help people understand.

Am I crazy? How do you feel about it.

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