Yesterday, we had a team breakfast quite early so Austin (one of the co-founders) could talk to us about TED since he got to go (I want to go!). He also brought with him a big box, which I thought came back from TED too. I remember he tweeted that he stopped by the TED bookstore to pick up some goodies. When came the time to open the box, there was a lot of filler material like old newspaper. My mind was wondering how small were these books. But a Wii came out to a lot of oohs and aaahs. Hahaha. Pretty funny ^_____^ Austin so nice.

It’s not that I haven’t been writing, it’s just the blog posts are sitting in draft mode still. I thought of writing shorter entries, but have been busy with a few side projects. And then I just micro-blog about it and don’t feel the need to blog anymore. Discipline I need. Yeah, I know. Anyway, timing to leave work so I can catch my train right now, so I’ll write something quick.

One of the side projects involves possibly starting a video podcast about cooking, so I have to actually know a bit of that. That keeps me fairly busy.

I’ve been tempted by starting a t-shirt business too as a hobby. It is funny, but I was out of ideas the week before, but now I have several. Which is cool.

Another project is organizing a road trip to NYC for Easter. I’m the one that wants to go the most, so it falls on me to do the planning, the coaxing, the writing. Easter is only a month away! Yet my friends do not seem to share the urge to get all this done earlier rather than later. I’m all for more agile planning, but I suppose some things such as travel planning cannot be as agile. (Was also planning a huge trip to South East Asia for next Fall, but that will be delayed until next year or something). There are web 2.0-ish apps to help, but people have to buy in the concept, and I’m having a hard time getting people to use a mailing list and replying to questions. And we’re talking about friends here.

This is not to say that a service to help organizing trips could not help. I’ve got to organize a few trips recently (bitten by the travel bug). However, it doesn’t get any easier in terms of effort. We have changing variables such as the people involved, the places to go, logistics. Most of the people I travel with do not see the value in the web. I’m guessing it is still too complicated for them.

Maybe this is a human nature problem that the web cannot solve. Doesn’t make it any less frustrating… That I haven’t found the solution ^_^.

The guard cat has some cattitude! And I made that cheesecake ^_^. Was a bit rusty after not baking for a month, while trying to work at the same time (this was the Friday before launch). I just put the cake in the oven that I completely forgot the water bath. Still came out all right, but not my best work.

I think I broke an unwritten rule that text in lolcats has to be white. It was hard to see the text on such a light background, with no options to give the text some outline in Picnik (free account at least and maybe I’ll write a short review for this, as I like it).

-_-;;;; I just tried to read the terms of use at icanhazcheezburger to know whether I can blog about this and submit to them. I guess I can. They could use an FAQ or something.

Update: I submitted, so please go vote for it!

I set out to blog, because first, my entire team blogs, and they keep reminding me that I’m not a team player if I don’t. And micro-blogging does not count (Twitter and Tumblr) to the point it has become an inside joke. And second, hearing Jeff Atwood’s keynote presentation “Is Writing More Important Than Programming?” at CUSEC 2008 was the tipping point.

Yet I did not start until just before Reception was going to be released. Obviously, we were in crunch mode. Blogging was not a priority. But I did take photos to try to document the weeks leading to release. My plan was to try to help promote our company and product via the help of the cat and the unicorn (seen in action here [maybe NSFW, but come on, these are stuffed toys]). Maybe it could be the start of some viral marketing campaign. Hahaha.

My impression with blogging so far is that it is a heavy process. I am spending too much time on this, but looking at the blog stats is addictive. It actually motivates me to find something to write well about. Nevertheless, I prefer micro-blogging. We’ll see how it goes from here. And maybe a pattern will develop. Should I write every day? Or just short posts and one larger one per month?

When it comes to reblogging, I find myself to be a bit slow. Reading is not an issue, and I would put myself in at the bleeding edge when it comes to acquiring information. Analysis and synthesis isn’t as easy. And then putting it to words. I suppose practice makes perfect.

I think I can answer to the who is my audience question. I write for myself. Whether people read or not, it does not affect me yet. But the views counter is compelling! What about my voice? Hmm, I think I write a lot better than I speak. I tend to think very fast, and spoken words cannot keep up. The writing you see here tends to be a distilled part of me. Maybe I should write about the emoticons I use, eh?

When Flickr got acquired by Yahoo!, I was both happy and wary. I was glad to see Flickr recognized for being a great photo sharing community, but feared that its identity would be diluted. Before the acquisition, Flickr was a sister project to Game Neverending, which I had the chance to beta test. The community was amazing and we got to hang out with the people that worked on the game too. When it was shut down, it was very disappointing to the extent that I refused to sign-up on Flickr. Time passed; I eventually did and could see the spirit I loved to be around. What I am trying to show here, is the DNA of which a team is made of is not easy to transplant. The passion bleeds and permeates the service they build. In fact, I think I looked at Yahoo! more favorably after this. Despite a few bumps, Flickr has fared well since Yahoo! took over. I have also been satisfied with del.icio.us.

On the other hand, Microsoft doesn’t seem to be able to get much going on the web. In my opinion, its most successful service is Xbox Live, but is accessed via a game console. Maybe MSN Messenger? But I’ve moved on when there were alternatives (it was funny how almost overnight, the majority of people I knew jumped from ICQ to MSN, and some of us created a Hotmail account solely for this purpose). Perhaps Microsoft just doesn’t hang out where I do.

Yahoo! has had failures too, but there is effort. They did some consolidation in the area of tagging. They have an interesting Javascript library. And they are embracing OpenId. I do not blame them for lack of trying. We live in period flush with golden opportunities on the web, with many many smart people out there. Now, why can’t I name something Microsoft did that excited me?

I cannot picture how joining these two organizations together can make them stronger, even though on paper it can seem impressive. It’ll just be Meh!oo?. The most important point is probably in the area of advertising, because there seems to be so much money in this. Google was fortunate, and now has the money and the clout to do what they want.

If anything, Microsoft and Yahoo! should be shrinking. They are not agile enough. There are too many divisions, too much hierarchy. Plus, not everyone is rowing in the same direction. But also, perhaps not everyone agrees with the direction. Lack of leadership and vision? Weak glue to bring everyone together? Google’s culture is often overshadowed by the lavish perks, but is one of its hidden strength.

And the culture! The two companies are quite different, and with Microsoft trying to take over, there could be a lot of friction. Yahoo! is stronger in communities. Microsoft shies away from such. Is that why they had to come up with welcome to the social? This is why the deal can look complementary.

And the brands! What to do with these? The biggest headache will be Hotmail vs. Yahoo! Mail. Will they blend? Already, there is talk of a Flickr rebellion.

Regardless of my feelings on the matter, I think someone will have to step in to challenge Google. The industry will be more healthy with some good competition. Much like when Gruber wrote about Apple needing a Nikon.

Update: Gruber also wrote about this. I think it describes my feelings better, and with more technical details. I have a long way to go on blogging and writing.

One would expect weather news sites to be intuitive at presenting information. Unfortunately, they are not, but that didn’t bother me, since I mainly use ForecastFox, a browser add-on.

^_^ Until I saw this Japanese weather site! The information is compactly displayed, as well as being pleasing to the eye. The art style is just cheerful enough to keep me going on a rainy day, I am certain.

I want to use this site, notwithstanding the language! Navigating without understanding the Japanese was not frustrating at all; it was actually enjoyable to explore (the reward of a streaming video for the weather guy/girl in 3 different langages was entertaining). The controls in the top left corner are pretty easy to grasp, with the forecast, temperatures, and wind velocity, and a 7-days forecast. It feels like a design Apple would do. I never felt lost. And I don’t begrudge that it is implemented in Flash.

There are other portals part of this network, but they seem to serve a different purpose. Hehe, I tried to see if there was an English version for Canada. ;_; None.

weathernews.jp has supplanted the 6 Weather site as my favorite (haven’t looked at this since my budding interest for standards-compliant/CSS-based table-less layouts/Zen Garden stuff just because I do not live in Kansas ^_^).

Are there other intuitive weather sites I’ve missed?

I must say I am a bit nervous. Most of us are watching the live stream from DEMO for our entertainment. This is at the expense of some companies’ unconvincing or cheesy presentations, even silly. Still, a few look quite impressive. But taking a step back, I think this is a good thing as long as people are trying to come up with new useful products. Even our product has received some criticism already, and it will go into improving it.

Got in the castle, and just made some tea (red with lychee if you were curious), but the sky is cloudy this morning. I thought I’d share some of our excess sunlight from yesterday.

Our castle has a very nice view, overlooking the Mount Royal. In winter, it looks like we work near a ski resort ^_^ But this also means we get a lot of sunlight reflected here. It kind of sucks having to pull the blinds down and waste all of that energy, so we made our own DIY light diffuser. No duct tape! Wait until we do it for every window.

In a side note, -_-;;;; I also wasted time wrestling WordPress trying to get the image to float for this post. Anyway. Back to defending the castle.

I haven’t had the chance to blog about this until now (sleeping soon), since I am trying to increase the acceptance test coverage of our product. I wonder if my bosses have had any sleep yet; they are in California right now preparing for DEMO08, making sure the media knew about Reception being released and writing about it, as well as gearing things to production leading up to this morning.

Things have been hectic for a few weeks already. Although we have been in crunch mode for some time, I only really felt it last Friday. Perhaps the stressful faces on the founders have rubbed on me. Nevertheless, things are very exciting and I do not regret this. Swearing is good for team morale! Remember this.

What is my role in all this? I’m still the new guy at the company, having started only a week before the Christmas holidays. My tasks so far were to expand on the Selenium prototype one of the guys started and make it work with virtual machines (VM). I also had to migrate our build server to a VM, which allowed me to get intimate with Ubuntu. I suppose a bit of everything to whet my appetite, but there is obviously so much more to learn. Moreover, I’ve worked with Ruby on Rails on personal projects, but it did not prepare me to the size and complexity that Reception is. Impressed at the team ^_^. And lately, I am putting some effort into increase the acceptance test coverage. Sometimes, I feel I am not contributing enough to the war effort, as there are bugs to fix.

We still have good laughs here and there. ^_^ If only you could peek inside our Campfire chat logs.

Having a hosted version of WordPress is of great value. I’ve put off writing a blog for so long, because setting one up to my liking would be almost work… among other reasons (I will re-visit this in a future post). WordPress.com makes it quite easy to start. However I found that I hit a wall quickly, since I am probably part of the minority of folks who will want to tweak things more precisely. Some of the spacing in the minimalist themes have been nagging me a lot, for instance.This is possible, but at a cost. There are a lot of themes already to choose from, and for something that is free, I suppose this is fine.

The dashboard contains many features and options, which can seem daunting. It isn’t the breeze that I expected. I think there is room to simplification in the menu system. A few weeks ago, I signed up on Tumblr; that suited me more. I’ve also thought about having my professional blog there too, but comments were necessary, so here I am.

Most of my time with WordPress today has been in tweaking it, personalizing it. I suppose once all this up-front effort is done, it will be much easier later. Probably should have set up the weblog last week.