Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Saturday, September 17th, 2005
DHH, the guru of Ruby on Rails, has a post about the lack of European web startups. He opines that the European social safety net creates a disincentive to strive for something better than a stable job at a stable company. There are really two things going on. One is that if the safety net is the right height, some will use it as a hammock. The second is that to have a safety net, someone has to pay for it, and the more you have to pay for the safety net, the more likely you’re going to want to use it.
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
I don’t typically dwell on any regrets, but there are a couple that have been nagging at me recently. When I think about regrets, I not talking about those whimsical high school regrets, like I should have asked that girl out, or I should tried out for the school play. Nor am I talking about those would’ve/should’ve’s like I should have bought Google when they IPO’d. I’m talking about decisions I made that have fundamentally affected my family and continue to do so.
I think it is the “continue to do so” aspect that is what is causing me to dwell on these regrets. Typically, when I make a mistake, I first admit that I made a mistake and then try to determine what caused it. Often, I actually made the best decision I could with the information I had, I just needed more or better information. Sometimes it was the case where I should have dug deeper, but it could also have been that I didn’t know that I needed some other information. I learn from these mistakes and move on (no regrets). Some people may wonder how I can just move on. I believe it is my faith in God that allows me to do this so easily. He has forgiven me for my mistakes, so I am be able to forgive myself.
So what are these regrets, well the first is staying in our townhouse for too long. We should have moved to a single family home as soon as we could have, or waited a little longer until we could afford one. Why do I dwell on this, because it continues to come up in the context of where we will send Emi to school. Did we make the best decision we could, well we weren’t sure if we were going to have children, and we really liked our neighborhood. I just don’t think we thought enough about the growth of our family, even if we had weren’t able to have children.
The other regret that nags at me is leaving Adobe. I know that this decision was sound at the time. It was one of the harshest work environments I’ve worked in. I was working 80 hour weeks for nearly 6 months, more hours than I’ve put in at any startup. They were also paying me at about 30% below market. Previously my regret had been that I should have left sooner and tried to go to one of the hot companies at the time like Yahoo or Netscape. Now, I wonder if I should have stayed and just accumulated the stock options and benefits. Once again, this comes up in the context of where we will send Emi to school.
So what do I do about these regrets? Nothing really. I just finished reading Assassin’s Quest and it reminded me about what I should do. Fitz, the main character was given a horrible game situation and he had to figure out how to win the game in one move. At first he moaned and complained about how the game could have gotten to this sorry state, but he finally solved the problem. What I need to do is understand where our family is today, and figure out the best way to get Emi the best education we can.
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
Well, I my blogging has fallen behind some due to focus on my work and personal projects, but I’m looking to change that. On a positive note, I’ve been exercising 5 days a week for the past 3 weeks now and I feel very good. Great will probably come in another couple of weeks.
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
My man Jacob Rosenberg of Formika Films did editing on the film Dust to Glory. It’s about the Baja 1000 (auto race through the desert). Retail DVD’s are a little expensive for me these days, so I’ll be checking for a deal at Fry’s or eBay.
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
Old news, but the 49ers signed the #1 pick in the draft, Alex Smith. I don’t really care about how much the guy is making except in terms of how it effects the 49ers salary cap and thus who else they can acquire. I’ve heard people complain about athletes making too much money. I don’t see how what they make has any bearing on my life. If they made less, would I be any better off? Nope!
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
I was doing some deep thinking in the shower this morning (one of my better spots for thinking), and I was pondering Apple and the Macintosh’s future as the hardware transitions to the Intel platform. I don’t have any information other than what I read on the rumors sites and I don’t even follow things as closely as I did when I was a Mac developer. I see things more from a user perspective both as one who has always enjoyed using the Mac and a developer who just wants to build great software.
There is one thing I’m sure of, and that is that Apple will crush anyone who attempts to get OS X running on a non-Apple box. They will have the lawyers out in force, going after any company, open source project, or 8 year-old in her basement in Brazil. They have to, or they have no reason to build Macs. If you can throw OS X on any old beige box, then Apple looses the premiums it charges and I don’t think they have the supply chain management aptitude to compete with Dell. If Apple doesn’t stop these projects, it signals some shift in business model that I won’t even try to predict.
I’m also pretty sure that some company or open source project will get Windows apps to run seamlessly or nearly seamlessly. Microsoft won’t stop it because for everything to be on the up-and-up, you would need a real copy of a Microsoft OS. Apple won’t stop it because it will help Switchers. And there is the rub, to keep people switching, Apple must keep the perception that OS X provides a better user experience than Windows even though they will be perceived to be running on the same hardware. I know people who switched to Macs because they were just tired of all the viruses and spyware their Windows boxes collected, if that changes Apple is sunk.
One big boost this could give Apple is that games will be more accessible on the Mac. Games that got ported 18-24 months, if ever, will be available if this seamless integration is done or in the worst case with a reboot. This would remove one more objection to Switching. However, this brings up the big wildcard, software developers. Will software developers continue to build Mac applications? If they expect or even bundle the emulation layer, why would they continue to support writing to the OS X API’s? I’m sure there will be Mac only vendors who will continue to write OS X apps, but what about Adobe or Microsoft? Why would Microsoft continue to support an entire development team for Office? Just have a team for the emulation layer and just one Office team. If they bundle, something Microsoft is very good at, Office and the emulator everyone gets what they want and Microsoft gets to save on head count. Adobe could do the same, just license and bundle the emulator and just write to the Windows API’s. Developers can focus on the application and not worry about any cross-platform issues.
Hey, I don’t know how this will play out, but it is a very important point in the evolution of the Mac. Probably even a make-or-break moment for the platform. As for Apple, I think they will continue to try to make the Mac just a portion of their business.
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
I picked up a couple Rubbermaid Paint Buddys. I’ll see if they are as useful as I would expect. They let you store extra paint to use when you need to do touchups. They have a vacuum seal that keeps the paint fresh. Should be perfect for the times when I’m moving furniture and I crash it into walls. (via Gizmodo)
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
The Warriors selected Ike Diogu with the 9th pick in the draft yesterday. He seems like a solid citizen and basketball player, which does not exactly translate to stardom in today’s NBA especially at the PF position. He doesn’t look athletic. He even looks like he might be a cheeseburger or two from eating himself out of basketball. I don’t know anything about Granger or Green, the guys most “experts” are saying they should have gone after.
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
If you don’t know your personality type you might want to try the Jung Typology Test. I am an INTJ and it is quite scary how accurate the analysis is. I read some of the other types and I’m pretty sure this isn’t some astrology type of thing where the analysis is ambiguous enough to apply to anyone.
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Sunday, September 11th, 2005
One of my goals is to create a game in Java. I have some ideas for a game and I know Java, but not specifically for game programming. So my next step on the road of this project is to read “Developing Games in Java”. I loosely follow the Getting Things Done (GTD) paradigm, so reading the book wouldn’t be a Next Action it would be more of a project or sub-project of the larger game development project. The Next Action would be reading Chapter 1. So that’s what I’m going to do.
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