Emails Taking Over

16 years, 8 months ago
[ Office Gossip ]

Back to not doing what you know is right, I’ve managed to drift back into email hell. My intent is to gain back control which means I’ll be working my way back to checking email twice a day and once (maybe) over the weekends. That means that your best way to reach me, if you need immediate responses, is this little device we call the teleeefun.

It’s amazing how some deadlines and the need to be aggressively productive can quickly expose email for what it is, a massive waste of time. The point being I’m not doing this to be a recluse prick, although I can’t say that’s a ‘negative’ side effect, but instead to get better and more intentional at what I decide I need to do.

web versus desktop clients

16 years, 8 months ago
[ Software Development ]

Of late I seem to find myself ranting about the return of desktop applications. It certainly wasn’t intentional. Maybe I’m just bored of building applications for such a mess of a medium known as the web. In any case I’m excited about desktop applications which seems so 1980’s of me.

Moving applications to the web browser certainly fixed some things, however, it broke a bunch as well. First, let’s dispense with the notion of the web browser being web-based and traditional client applications being non-web-based. Upon closer inspection it seems that web browsers themselves exhibit most, or all, of the attributes of a traditional application. My point is, every trad application can access and do things ‘in the cloud’ so they’re web based.

A good example is the trad application I’m using to write this very entry. Drivel is a Gnome client “for working with online journals”. I no longer write web posts in a web browser. I was sick of losing posts by accidentally closing a browser, not being able to write or edit while offline like being on a plane among other annoyances. I now enjoy the rich features of a trad application, save posts locally etc, as well as being able to post directly ‘to the cloud’. As well, I use drivel to post to multiple blog applications which gives me a consistent writing experience regardless of the blog software I choose to run the blog on.

Further complicating this issue is that two giants are on either side of this. Microsoft owns the desktop, google owns the ‘cloud’. My 2 cents is that google will do everything they can to get you and your applications on the web as they don’t own your OS. The more you take off your desktop and put entirely on the cloud then the more of you they have.

Mozilla’s prism is now trying to help you “split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop”. I’m only getting more confused. Mozilla claims that the problem with trad apps versus web apps fixed was that they had slow installation, a verbose update process, and they didn’t have ‘data in the cloud’.

We’re already mentioned that the ‘data in the cloud’ no longer differentiates. So that leaves us with install and update. I believe I’m biased in that I’m an ubuntu user and therefore have access to synaptic. That means I’ve installed virtually every application by typing one line in bash or using the synaptic client. Once an application is installed I forget about it for the most part and synaptic handles all updates for me.

“Synaptic maintains a database of packages on your system in order to keep track of installed software. This list is checked against the software repositories to inform you of new packages or updates. Synaptic checks for new software packages when you launch Synaptic.”

This means I no longer suffer from a cumbersome install or update process for trad apps. Should we not just take the synaptic path and fix the real problem, making trad apps dirt simple to install and keep up to date? Cripes, I’m starting to feel old..

Cables as Art

16 years, 9 months ago
[ Geek ]

I hate to admit it but I do like these pic’s

cable.jpg

DemoCampGuelph5

16 years, 9 months ago
[ General ]

The date is set for the next DemoCamp in Guelph. If you can attend then put your name on the list here. If you’d like to demo then contact me asap.

If you work in anyway with software and live within driving distance then you have no excuse. People demo’ing at these events are finding great people to hire, getting funding, improving their designs, all while drinking free beer. Ok maybe there’s more of the latter than anything else but who cares.

Building multi-OS python apps

16 years, 9 months ago
[ Software Development ]

Caveat, I’ve never built and distributed a multi-os python application. I was asked recently if a python application would naturally be multi-os. Here’s my modified for public consumption answer.

It depends. Until I’ve done it, I don’t know. I believe it’s relatively painless to do it though. Python itself comes ‘out of the box’ with every major OS except windows so that’s a good start. As well, if you build your client application using dabo which is built on top of wxPython which is built on top of wxWidgets then you’re in great shape. Not to mention your apps look native to all Os’s which is handy.

“Dabo applications are known to run on all flavors of Windows, all recent flavors of Linux, and Macintosh OS X 10.2 or higher. Because Dabo is currently built on top of *wxPython*, which is built on top of wxWidgets, it probably runs elsewhere, too. It also suffers from the same display limitations on some platforms (most notably OS X), but these should improve as the underlying toolkits improve.

You can develop Dabo applications on all three supported platforms, and you can run your Dabo applications on all three supported platforms. Flexibility is a really good thing.”

There’s also pyGTK which promises your applications will be “truly multiplatform and they’re able to run, unmodified, on Linux, Windows, MacOS X and other platforms.” I believe that choosing between pyGTK and wxWidgets starts to get into questions of mobile device delivery etc. In terms of major OS’s I think you’re covered completely with either.

Epiphany II

16 years, 9 months ago
[ Linux ]

SOLD! One of the few reasons I’ve jumped to my vmware windows instance over the past few months has been to watch tsn highlights. The have a new slick looking beta video player that gives me nothing but “Sorry, there was an error
We are experiencing temporary difficulties downloading your lineup. Please wait another few seconds then try again. Thanks for your patience.”

I expected nothing but the same from epiphany but gave it a shot anyway and it works!! Finally, hockey highlights at my finger tips. I’m guessing this is somehow related to being a tighter integration with gnome? It’s a tricky balance. On one hand, it makes sense to build something like firefox to work across platforms but in other cases I just want something that works on my machine and I don’t care how tightly coupled it is.

New Browser Epiphany

16 years, 9 months ago
[ Linux ]

I’m starting to figure out that I’m flighty when it comes to browsers. I just installed and started playing with epiphany

“Welcome to the Epiphany wiki! Epiphany is the easy-to-use GNOME web browser. With Epiphany, you can Search by typing in the location bar and organize Bookmarks by category. Its clean Preferences window makes finding and changing useful options a breeze.”

So far I really like it. It’s just simpler and works better which is a rare combination in software. I was able to immediately integrate my delicious bookmarks and through the location field only I’m able to quickly navigate my bookmarks, search the web, goto a url etc. Currently in firefox I needed two fields, location bar and search box, to accomplish that.

This part’s cool if you like python. One extension is a python console that allows you to start messing with the browser itself through the epiphany api. There’s an example here that has you editing the browser title bar, browsing to a page, etc in one liners.

The Daily Task for a Solo Entrepreneur

16 years, 9 months ago
[ General ]

 

When you do things your way, you plan your day. When you want to reach a destination, you plan your journey ahead. When you call for a fitness program for a certain health trainer, you may need to enrol yourself to at least three types of workouts. Some build muscle and power, some focus on your body’s flexibility, and endurance. At times, they also overlap. The same strategy goes to business exercises.

When you start on planning on how your day should go, you also need to have the same type of balance exercise. Your fitness plan may also mean focusing on some business and technical issues. If you want to achieve great results, you may want to do anything.

 

Power in Business

Power is simply related to business. This will, of course, mean money for your business. Money will come in either in long run, or, if you are fortunate enough, it may come in immediately. This calls for the need to incorporate certain exercises that will focus on how to earn money faster. It may be about the acquiring of making sales and new customers. It may mean selling and pitching, but more than that may be involved as well.

The next workout set may build your business stamina. This can be done by incorporating brand awareness to your business. This simply means taking your message to the people to make it coherent and consistent. This acts in the same way when you need more consistency while training for sports events like marathon, and others. As a matter of fact, one round for jogging may not even be enough to prepare you well.

Another needed action is showing flexibility. In real sports, the muscles’ elasticity and joints do a good share in protecting your body from injury. This principle is same in business. As mentioned earlier, some workouts may overlap, similarly with sports. This can be applied in planning your work weeks, and even work days. This basic idea covers getting maximum results, with the least work amount.

 

Achieving Good Results

When all these exercises are implemented together with the right determination and motivation for work, it is quite easy to expect good results for your business. These days, many entrepreneurs have taken their stand, implementing these strategies while waiting for the results to come their way.

Some entrepreneurs have thought of very nice ideas to earn. Some of these businesses even exist online, using strategies such as SEO, and others. The main thing about online businesses is that it offers convenience to the potential customers. For example, online casinos, and bingos, are now available online these days, contrary to the physical casinos that people have to visit in the years past. Wink Bingo is one of those bingo sites offering fun, excitement, and earnings for different players.

The evolution of business can certainly be contributed to the way entrepreneurs react to the situation presented to them. But of course, the preparation ahead, the workouts, do a lot of tricks too.

 

 

Ignore Collective Intelligence?

16 years, 9 months ago
[ General ]

How do you balance the intelligence and stupidity of the mobs? Sure, smart things come from everyone but so do dumb things. Kevin Kelly has an interesting article on this thread titled The Bottom is Not Enough.

“It’s taken a while but I think we’ve learned that while top-down is needed, not much of it is needed. Editorship and expertise are like vitamins. You don’t need much of them, just a trace even for a large body, and too much will be toxic, or just pissed away. But the proper dosage of intelligent control will vitalize the dumb hive mind.

Yet if the hive mind is so dumb, why bother with it at all?

Because as dumb as it is, it is smart enough.

More importantly, the brute dumbness of the hive mind produces the raw material that smart design can work on. If we ONLY listen to the hive mind, that would be stupid. But if we ignore the hive mind altogether, that is even stupider.”

“The systems we keep will be hybrid creations. They will have a strong rootstock of peer-to-peer generation, grafted below highly refined strains of controlling functions. Sturdy, robust foundations of user-made content and crowd-sourced innovation will feed very small slivers of leadership agility. Pure plays of 100% smart mobs or 100% smart elites will be rare.”

Frozen people

16 years, 9 months ago
[ General ]

If you haven’t seen Improv Everywhere‘s stuff yet, check this one out. Make sure you watch it to the end to see how the crowd reacts, very cool.

Speaking of starbucks and wifi, peep this video.