Personal

Sometimes I post things that are kind of personal, so I make sure to put them in this category. If there is a password on any of these posts, then the password will be my date of birth, in YYYY-MM-DD format. If you know me reasonably well, then you should know that (or just ask me and I’ll tell you).

I Want to Love My Pebble

It’s true, I really want to love the Pebble that I got from being a Kickstarter backer. I want to, but right now I can’t. I can only like it. And I can like it a lot — there’s a lot to like!

  • I have a computer on my arm!
  • I can read text messages without taking my phone out
  • I can control music that’s playing on my phone
  • WordPress notifications on my wrist? Yep.
  • Calendar alerts? Got ’em.
  • The form-factor is slick: it’s slim, super lightweight and IMHO, looks pretty darned cool.
  • Nice backlight, which I can activate by shaking my wrist or tapping the watch
  • It’s waterproof! (although I’m too nervous to actively put that to the test)

So why can’t I love it? Let me count the ways (biggest reasons first): (more…)

Technology Startups As Military Special Forces

Anyone who works in a remotely corporate environment has no doubt heard a bunch of (often ridiculous) military metaphors describing business-as-usual. We’re divided into “squads” and talk about “strategic thinking” and “tactical mistakes”. We develop “mission statements” (more about that later) and managers demand that we “go in for the kill”, all the while referring to their top executives as their “Generals” and modeling the hierarchy of their companies around the command structures seen in the military. While a lot of this is just the strange glorification of business (and war), it turns out that some of it makes a lot of sense (on a very metaphorical level), and might just be evolving right along with military tactics. John Robb has done some amazing work analyzing the application of open source concepts to warfare, I’m going to do something like the opposite and look at applying special forces operating concepts to technology startups.

I recently finished reading Spec Ops: Case Studies in Special Operations Warfare: Theory and Practice, by (Vice Admiral) William H. McRaven, who credited as organizing and executing the mission that brought down Osama bin Laden. He is now the Commander of US Special Operations Command, so he’s somewhat of an authority on the subject. While reading the book (which is a really interesting read in its own right, I highly recommend it), I couldn’t help but notice a lot of corollaries between what I was reading and the structure and function of tech startups (and perhaps smaller units within larger technology companies). Let’s look at how Special Operations Warfare compares to working at a startup.

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Exploring a Neighborhood Like an Engineer

When I moved to Brooklyn in June, I decided that I wanted to get to know my new neighborhood reasonably well, reasonably quickly. Being an engineer, I figured a methodical approach was the best solution, so I got a map and got to work.

Based on a rough understanding of what was where, and letting the nearby Prospect Park somewhat dictate the area I wanted to cover, I drew out a grid with my new home roughly at the center, covering the bulk of the surrounding area that was of interest. The grid looked like this: (more…)

Ready Player One — Ernest Cline (Book Review)

NOTE: I am fully aware that at times in the review below, I sound like a ridiculous book-critic or something. I do not care. Also, links to Amazon contain my affiliate id.

Ready Player One

A few weeks ago I attended the New York Times‘ TimesOpen Open Source Science Fair on behalf of Automattic/WordPress.com. As part of my “thank you” bag, I got a copy of Ready Player One, by Ernest Cline. I left it on my bedside table in a stack of other books which I’d thus far neglected to start, let alone finish (not to mention all the unopened titles on my Kindle).

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TimesOpen Hack Day/Readtrack

On Saturday, I attended the 2012 New Times/TimesOpen Hack Day. It was a long day, but I had a lot of fun. I sat in on an intro session to Arduino which was pretty cool, and also a session on the EchoNest API, which I ended up using in my project. You can find out all about my project on the Readtrack project page.

It’s a bookmarklet-powered little app that analyzes the page you’re looking at (using the AlchemyAPI) and then tries to find related music (using the EchoNest API) which it then plays back to you in your browser (using rdio). I got a “runner up”/honorable mention prize 🙂

One of the most visually-polished projects was “Story Arc”, which showed a visual representation of the frequency of mentions of keywords over the NYT archives. Probably the most fun one was a set of drivers for a DDR pad, hooked up to commands for things like deploying code!

Hurricane Sandy Aftermath

Right now, I am considering myself very lucky. I’ve just lived through not only my first ever, but the most intense hurricane in New York’s history. Hurricane Sandy.

Within less than a few miles in 3 directions (North, South, West) homes are destroyed, roads are flooded, power is out. Right where I am (Park Slope) we have a lot of leaves on the ground, a few branches down and some minor damage on buildings. It’s pretty amazing how little impact we’ve directly had. It’s definitely not completely over, but we’ved fared a lot better than folks very nearby. Now we see how long it takes for NYC to get back on its feet and get things running again.

Subways are still all out of commission. 7 tunnels between Brooklyn and Manhattan are flooded. Buses will hopefully start coming online later today. What’s left of Lower Manhattan is a mess. It will be a long time before things are “back to normal” for everyone. Here’s how it looked from my perspective:

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Where is Your Digital Hub/Home?

I’ve been using WordPress to power my own website for a while now, and working with it in some way or another for even longer. Over the years, I’ve developed the belief that it’s a pretty perfect platform for people to build their own “digital home on the web”, considering the range of plugins and themes available, the flexibility of the publishing options it offers, and the fact that it’s completely open source, so you can do whatever you want with it.

That last bit is important in more ways than you might immediately think. Apart from just being able to write my own plugins or tweak my themes, this also means that I own my own data. I think in this MySpace/Facebook generation, people are all too loose with the data trails they create — giving up ownership of their digital self at the drop of a hat. In case you didn’t realize, when you use something like Facebook, it is not the product, you and your data are the product.

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Standing Desk, The 6’4″ Edition

I’m pretty tall — 6 ft 4 inches (193cm) when I’m not stooping. I’d been wanting to try a switch to a standing desk for a while, and a recent move to New York meant I needed a new desk anyway, so it was the perfect opportunity. I had a few requirements for my new office-space:

  • Must be able to support an Apple Thunderbolt Display (23.5 lbs or 10.8 kg)
  • Need some space (didn’t have a specific lower bound, but saw a bunch that were too small)
  • Adjustable workspace height, of primary concern being that I could put the main one at (my personally determined height of) 47 inches (119 cm)
  • Storage space for random “desk stuff” that I’d prefer wasn’t on my actual desk, but would like nearby.
  • Not crazy expensive.

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New Wheels on the Road

I moved to Brooklyn recently, and I got a new bike, which I’m loving. Brooklyn (especially Park Slope) is pretty bike friendly, with bike paths/lanes (site powered by WP!) all over the place.

It’s a Cannondale Bad Boy 9. It’s a hybrid, which is new for me (I’ve only ever really ridden mountain bikes, and used to ride downhill a bit). I’m getting used to a fully rigid frame, and feeling every bump in the often-times-pot-hole-filled-roads around here. Disc brakes are neat, and having a thin, hard wheel means you can go really fast with much less effort. Fun :)

I went for a nice ride last week around the park that’s right near my new apartment. I rode reasonably hard for the first half or so (once I got inside the park), and then tailed someone else who was going a good pace for the rest. It looked like this on RunKeeper:

Stroll in the Park

It is now 12:04am, and I just got back from a walk.

There are a few things about this walk to make it notable:

  1. I got up from my desk at 11:35pm and headed out for a brisk walk, mainly so that I could try to get over 6,000 steps today.
  2. I measured my steps using a Fitbit, and had the specific target because it’s part of an internal fitness challenge Automattic is hosting through Keas.
  3. I took the chance to compare Fitbit to RunKeeper for measuring walking (mainly looking at distance accuracy, but also at calorie burn).
  4. A guy (probably high) most definitely lined me up to attempt to mug me, he even tried to walk with me/talk/engage to distract me and get me to stop, but I out-walked him and he kind of gave up.

So; fun stuff all around. Here’s the data, from RunKeeper:

and for the same time period from Fitbit:

What’s interesting here?

  • FB reports that I burned 163 over RK’s 126; that’s a 23% difference.
  • FB reports that I covered 1.22 miles, while RK reports only 0.76 miles. Almost 40% difference.
  • Pace is barely even worth comparing when distance is so differently recorded. Time even shows as 40 seconds different, although I’ll give FB the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s rounding.
  • You can actually see the part where the guy approached me, because I sped up. If you look at the map from RK, it was on Larkin St, between Broadway and Pacific. He tried to “walk with me” so that he could get me to stop, but instead I just walked faster. I topped out right there at 14.4 minutes per mile according to RK (just over 4 miles per hour).
  • If I hadn’t been trying to meet a daily fitness goal, I wouldn’t have been walking around at midnight, making myself a target for getting mugged 🙂

Maybe I should run instead of walking, since high/homeless/whatever people are even less likely to give chase?