Each Morning Starts Here

Pausing, Logging and Keeping Up Momentum

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:53:00 +0000

A funny thing happens after a goal is reached sometimes - you naturally withdraw for some head clearing time. I've noticed this in my intellectual freedom zone that is my start-up. I'm motivated and pushed by my own actions and interests, so there's nobody else telling me what to do.
When I manage development groups, I'll usually do something following an accomplishment, take the group out to celebrate, skipping off an afternoon. Larger milestones often schedule a lessons-learned meeting to chat, vent and capture best practices. Even though there is much still to do, there's benefits of doing this take a breather approach.
I notice it in this free-form development work too. As I attain a goal, I seem to pull back and do some tidying, and do some big picture thinking. There's no shortage of next steps still required, but one seems to mentally need a bit of perspective after climbing a mountain.
That analogy is pretty good - it is like climbing a steep hill. When you reach a plateau on the way up, you tend to stop and take a breather in preparation for the next steps.
A downside though can be that it is sometimes tough to get back into the flow again. One should ensure that they know what the next steps are rather than waiting idly for divine inspiration. Just like the other development steps are planned, so should be your pauses and your re-engagements.
A technique that seems to work for me is to get back into the work by leading with to-do lists. I'm using this approach quite heavily. The rule of thumb is - if you're pausing, make a short next steps list in your log book or worklog file/blog/etc. It really has helped with productivity boosting, as you tend to make an effort to close off all the outstanding items before your next pause.

I run two worklogs these days - one is a private blog, the other is a text file in my core development area. When I'm working in the Eclipse environment I have a WhereAmI file that gets continually updated, in a very prosaic style. There I will often capture thought processes in trying to fix a problem, outlining my thoughts, the sections of code that are likely involved, even variable names and routine() names that are key. The result is that if I pause for some reason, I can quickly recover the area of activity. As well, I can recover the thought process I was going through.
The ancillary benefit is that the act of describing a problem will often evoke the solution. We see this as young engineers and scientists, talking to our mentors or supervisors. As we would start to describe an insoluble problem, you would come upon the answer half-way thru, and feel embarrassed for having brought it up. Later, I learned to have mock gripe conversations in my head to see if that turned up the solution, and often it would. The logfile/book does the same thing.
The file is also searchable, as is the private blog of course. The blog worklog I use for my other notes. Development that is not specifically in the Eclipse milieu, but also business building work, and broader interactions.

So those are just a few thoughts on managing the pauses, the tools associated with re-engaging, and not losing the threads of your engagement. Perhaps I should now turn to my task list at hand and try to make some progress following this last milestone achievement.

Researchinator reaches for the oars to find that they are still attached, functional and ready for action...

What Were You Expecting, Exactly?

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:12:00 +0000

On one monitor I'm watching a bit of NASA TV as an Ares rocket sits on the pad. Not sure what it's got on board yet, but it's fun to follow a launch of an old-school stick rocket again. NASA TV is great - they don't really care if there's a 20min shot of a rocket on the pad, with birds flying around. It's all content. No schedules to worry about for them, it seems.

Meanwhile, I'm working a bit more intensively trying to get through my latest pass thru the code for the next feature. A couple of steps forward yesterday... maybe one step back.

Still a bit curious about a VC contact last week. Reminds me of selling stuff behaviors. When selling things online, or even in the 'old' days in the paper, you'd often get a call asking if the item is still available. When you say yes, there is no other contact. One must wonder what answer they were hoping for.

Well, similarly a response from a VC, to an initial contact, was "Yes, we're interested in learning more, can you meet with us!" My response was "Sure, how about this date." Then there's no more response, and it's been several days. What answer were they hoping for?

Anyway, I won't worry too much about it. Building the business now, and that helps in the funding needs later on.

Researchinator displays some head shaking behaviour...

Spotty Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 21:17:00 +0000

Busy times, and I've been sketchy on keeping this part of the routine up. Must admit that the twitter universe seems to have filled that early morning niche.

A couple of networking events lately - a Montreal one, and an Ottawa one. While Ottawa has a large group of Start-ups, I've been finding that the networking events there are too often a sea of consultants and self-appointed start-up experts (who strangely are not doing a start-up themselves just now). A few too many self-appointed gurus.

The Montreal events have had a good mix of entrepreneurs, investors and media. That's a more enjoyable session from an entrepreneurial point of view. I should try to make it to some Toronto events, or heck, even a Kingston one perhaps. Will have to watch to see if there are any there.

Researchinator is here, just not always highly visible.

What's Cooking with Google Wave?

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 15:00:00 +0000

There's a lot of internet buzz about Google Wave today. I have to give credit to Google for the hype generated. That's free advertising that you can't buy. Then all the people tweeting and reTweeting about getting invites and giving invites. That' social approach to signing up your initial users is a good idea too.

The old approach was to announce a beta and wait for people who felt like debugging your service for you to show up. With the 'invite' approach, you make it seem like a privilege to be a beta-user.

The kick off for Google Wave, if you remember was a near hour long video'd demo, which was rather sleepy to my eyes, but created some 'peer-pressure' to tell viewers that the service is very cool, even if the actual demo didn't really seem that amazing. "But if that whole room of Californians is cheering, it must be cooler than I realize."

I do see some potential to move seemlessly from the asynchronous connection of email to the increased immediacy of chat, and the threading elements I saw for what I watched a few months back.

But I also think that email - for those of us who have used it for a good 25 years - has a role that is well understood. It fits into a spectrum of connectivity. Walking up to someone's desk is the most immediate and synchronous. There is a momentary delay in engagement if they're busy, but usually there's an immediate interaction. Telephone is the next step, where the user can selectively engage. Chat is similar, but has the other issue that once you engage, it's harder to disengage and hence the ability to manage your status. Still, once you disclose your presence, you get nabbed by chat-buddies.

With email there is a disengagement. Sometimes a recipient will shoot back a reply and a few messages will bounce around for a few minutes, rather chat like, but if there's no reply for 24 hours, that's not a shock.

Twitter fits in there too, now, perhaps slightly further up the asynchronicity spectrum, but slightly more disengaged. Some users ignore their @ comments. Some people follow people who don't follow back.

Google wave will open a new can of worms, frustrating some with a stickiness that regular email doesn't have. It may lower productivity because it converts an email into a stickier chat situation. But it might enable improved distance collaboration through enabling new group dynamics.

Then there is the complexity. With existing Outlook tools widely used, but confounding many non-technical users with cryptic, non-intuitive use of scheduling, resource booking and hard-to-use receiver-list management/creation, I have to wonder if the complexity of Google wave will penetrate beyond the geek crowd.

Regardless, there's going to be new cultural adjustment required to adopt it, and the jury is out on whether it will catch or not. I don't think this is a clear slam-dunk for Google, and could potentially be their Apple Newton - basically good, but unable to cross into broad adoption by the masses.

Researchinator will, for now, let it bake a little longer before opening the oven...

Titanic Global Economic Battle

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:46:00 +0000

Rainy day in the city, and several more of those to come. Weather has turned cool, averaging 15C for highs, and it's all feeling decidedly autumnal. It was around this time last year, give or take a couple of weeks that I embarked on this start-uppy crusade, and the economy quickly took note and fell apart because of it. Much like the Tech-bubble burst was in reaction to my last start-up launch.

Oh sure, the Goldman Sachs, AIG, FannieMae stuff is all well and good, but they were all in reaction to my endeavour getting on its feet.

So once again it's a battle of wills. Me versus the global economy. Who can hold out longer? Will I give in and take a job somewhere before the recovery hits, or will recovery happen while I'm still hammering away on my architecture and looking for angel funding?

Researchinator grits teeth and vows to beat this thing...

Managing Difficult People

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:43:00 +0000

From the annals of my people management skills, here's some guidance on managing an employee exhibiting a bad behaviour. This is actually from an exchange with someone who was asking for guidance with one of their kids, but in conflict resolution, it's mostly about people, regardless of what role they are in employee, friend, child, spouse etc...

A helpful concept from conflict resolution suggests that trying to ensure your 'opponent' has an easy way out is an important consideration in your actions. Sometimes you can make a problem bog down because you haven't given the other side an easy way to capitulate to your position without losing face.

They also say you shouldn't use the word 'opponent' - but whaddaya gonna do.

Given a person who is compulsively lying, for example, it's tempting to try and repeatedly catch them in lies, preferably totally undeniable lies. In reality, once you've confirmed that they are lying, there is no additional value in attempting to continually hammer them with further examples.

So while the lying is a problem, focussing on it too much, or always trying to set up the situation to see if she lies could fail by trapping her too much, as she gets into the lie then has no way out.

Think of the example of a grounded daughter, prohibited from using the computer, but who you discover has gone online to tell her friends the score.

While it's tempting to ask "were you on the computer last night" to see if she takes it to a lie, it might be more constructive in the long run (ie to get away from lying behaviour) to say, "I see you were on the computer last night - If you needed to let your friends know you're grounded, you should have asked first. We're serious about not using the computer."

By setting the other side up to repeat their bad behaviour, it entrenches the behaviour. If you can set them up to "model" or "act-out" good behaviour, it ends up building a path towards doing it on their own later on. Also, reinforcing the prohibition, indicating that there are plausible options around it, yet pointing out the right way to determine that, also helps to avoid trapping the person in a no-win situation.

For what it's worth, a bit of advice from the people-management lexicon.

Researchinator been there, seen dat...

Yep

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:44:00 +0000

Yep.
Researchinator sez, yep...

Getting The Week On

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:19:00 +0000

Some unexpectedly pleasant September weather, following a weekend with lots of outdoors time. A nice way to start the week. On the sched this week is progress on guiding a team of students, meeting up with a pseudo-colleague, and making progress on my app features. I wonder how many years will go into this, as I'm well past the first anniversary of initial exploration, and nearing the first anniversary of hard-core fulltime work on it.

Anyway, not going to blog all morning, so let's get down to it.

Researchinator is shovelling coal into the furnace and watching the pressure rise...

First Impression Management

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:57:00 +0000

It seems like every social networking service is full of bugs today. There seems to be this approach afoot of making changes on the fly without testing. Twitter seems to just throw up new loads willy-nilly to see if they work and pull them down when they don't. Suddenly text will be garbled across the screen, then it goes back to normal.

I'm not sure how I feel about that - coming from a "bullet-proof is the only option" background where we made sure our products were strong before showing them off, it seems very haphazard. Then again, nobody is scheduling surgery or controlling aircraft through twitter (yet) so perhaps you can get away with it. But it does erode the sense of a smooth, elegantly crafted-by-pros brand.

Then again, my service isn't even ready for prime-time, so I should talk. Fail early and fail often is the new mantra, but there is something to be said for making a good first impression as well.

Researchinator is a long way from a first impression, still...

Collaboration Time C'mon

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 20:45:00 +0000

Have some collaborating students that should help to move things along a little in my project. It's a good deal, but isn't free - takes a bit of my time moving forward as well. They seem eager, hope that keeps up.

Making some progress on my coding lately, for a change. Had some routine disruption with change of venue. A bit tough to adjust to the home office space again... but I'm persevering.

Plus the weather has changed. Cooler days mark the passage of time, and the passing of the nice summery time. Wearing a coat again today - yikes.

I'm shopping myself around a bit as well. Thinking about finding some paying employment, and moving the venture into the background. Need to both keep connected and would like to contribute to something funded again. My venture stuff can still progress on the side for a while. Hope to go-live with some features near the end of the year, in a very low visibility testing sort of way, with a handful of users.

Researchinator enjoyed the cool, schooly feeling day visiting students...

Diffuse Effort

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:00:00 +0000

Changing gears between consulting work and my venture development is a very inefficient time. As well, my shifting from leased office to the home office hasn't done me any favours, though I am progressing. The consulting stuff has very rigid deadlines, which motivates me better than a flexible, long term goal does. I really must return to my typical approach of setting some short-term goals for my days and weeks.

I've had people compliment me on my ability to be productive in a home office environment, but I'm afraid I'm still not very good at it. There are a lot of distractions, and for an unstructured project like mine, it can erode your effectiveness.

Still, I've done it successfully before, and will get back into the routine again. I need to invoice my previous work to get some cash coming in though. Oh and should check my investments to ensure I remain reasonably solvent.

I also have half a dozen other wanna-do simulation projects... but I will resist. When the urge overtakes me, I instead work on a description document for those other projects. That way I can capture the thoughts, but avoid getting into the rat-hole that is starting to render the code.

Researchinator tries to focus.

Distraction For Cash

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:25:00 +0000

Some contract work is providing income... well, it will in a few months when I can complete the billing payment received cycle. For now, it's mostly a drain on my energy, since it involves reviewing someone else's work. That alone isn't an issue, it's reviewing someone else's work anonymously, with no means to do a close inspection, and without any means to fix the huge gaping holes. Tough for a manager of complex technical projects to look at one from the outside and critique without opportunity to propose the repairs. But such is the life of a venture funding contract reviewer.

Making it tougher is that these venture folks tend to fund stuff regardless of the review process, so all I can do is stick to my principles, process, instincts and experience and let them do what they want with the info. I'll likely get the last cringe (not, laugh, I hate to see tech things fail) down the road when the venture fades away.

Meanwhile, my venture is fading into the background, but only as I'm distracted with this project. I think I'll be finished with distraction today, and be able to turn my attention back to my stuff tomorrow, finally. I'm eager to move forward under a new routine. I can again see a nice path rolled out in front of me. Even though it likely means funding opportunities for me are over a year away, I can at least conceive of a path that gets me there.

For now though, it's distraction for cash, and I should get onto it. The quicker I start the quicker I'm through with it.

Researchinator turns researchy eyes to someone else's mess, neglecting one closer at hand...

Free Form Week, With a Bit of Structure

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:32:00 +0000

Last week with office space before I shift to conserve some cash mode for the fall. I suppose if I came across somewhere with an office for 2 or 3 days a week, on a month to month basis for a $150 or something, I'd consider that. But for now, it's probably better for the wallet to save some cash.

I've got an actual deadline this week with a scoring and review document to be written for my consulting client. It's not going to put money in my pocket right away, but they'll pay up in the next few months. It adds a bit of structure to my otherwise flexible week. Meanwhile I'll make due with the tough life of total intellectual freedom and a flexible schedule.

Things could be a lot worse. You've gotta love economic downturns.

Researchinator runs frugal and free...

Still Holding On

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 19:53:00 +0000

So the doldrums seem to continue to a certain extent. I have been doing some application clean-up and some reach-out to funding folk, but everything is quite quiet. So, that means I'm also putting some resumes out to the usual suspects.

I guess in retrospect, the schedule I've kept over the past year has pretty much met my guess of the most likely path forward. I still think my venture concept is a strong one, and look how much stuff I've accomplished. However, my inability to find other collaborators has in large part been due to the pervasive fear people with families have about the economy. It's not very common for someone to want to drop their job and throw their lot in on a new venture once they are over 30 I think. People get too comfortable.

That's a good lesson for the future too perhaps, find myself a new grad with lots of enthusiasm, and a short list of dependencies. My success in planning ahead gives me the flexibility to skip a salary for a year here or there without feeling it. My scales balance freetime for my own intellectual exploration pretty highly against my normal 6 figure salary. Some people don't see life that way.

Taking some chances certainly gives you more of a sense of being alive. I think about some of those six year stretches I've done in the same job, and realize it all goes by pretty fast. When you're doing something more risky, you notice every month that goes by and you feel like you've gotten a lot more out of it.

So I think if I count venture concepts I've pursued at least for a short time, this is probably my 4th or 5th, including a couple hardware concepts that I explored on the side. Hell maybe 6th. But there have been two with substantial year plus investments and teams. One with a small virtual team that didn't go anywhere, and a three that took many hours of my time over a year or two on evenings and weekends. What does that add up to?

Theoretically, the bandied-around wisdom is that one in ten attempts succeeds. So perhaps I'm due. I just would hope that I could get my one success somewhere in the middle of the ten, so that the next few to complete the group were well funded failures, rather than underfunded failures.

I'm certainly not counting this one out yet though. If nothing else, I'm sitting on a patent from the investigations involved. Perhaps that will get me fifty bucks somewhere down the road.

Researchinator hangs in but is looking for somewhere to land as well...

Monday Reflection

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:45:00 +0000

Spotty coverage on Summery mornings. Where was I at this point last year? I was working on the project already, and relating both an interest in archeology and analyzing the psyche of the average software developer. Well, year later, I'm still in that boat, working on bits of software, more system level issues.

But I'm squarely in the trough of my enthusiasm. Facing an economy where every day I hear another story about lack of venture funding, tough times for entrepreneurs. I realize that really the only path forward will be finding an angel with a passion for this space. And my social connections probably don't include the right people to scare up some wealthy sports folk.

I'll persevere for a little while, while starting to layer on some salary hunting work, and simultaneously trying to cut my costs somewhat. Nice that the stock markets are growing, but it's hard to take advantage of that without truncating the growth. Perhaps I'll pick up a bit of low risk stuff this week, while I have a some spare cash that is not immediately alloted to something pressing.

Researchinator faces the bumpy road ahead as seen from the perspective of a Monday morning...

Blog as Work Log

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:06:00 +0000

Blogger is not my friend today. Can't seem to go to my Dashboard and get into other blogs. I've been trying to use a blog as my work log, keeping notes that I would otherwise write in a lab-book. However, today, I am getting error screens from Blogger, and I can't even see my stuff. That's not a good thing.

Now I'm wondering if I should be keeping a local copy. Or maybe not using blogger at all? I mean what assurance to I have that all my records will not disappear? Does blogger do punitive stuff if you keep your blog private? I wouldn't think so, but who knows.

I'm sure it will sort itself out - er, I hope so anyway. I don't want to have to get into an argument thing with Google to get my own research notes out of their system.

Meanwhile I'm working on application build process, and associated file management. Not the most fun or glamorous stuff, but a necessary evil. Tomorrow I have some meetings about getting some student collaboration on facets of my project. Not sure it will lead anywhere but seems a good opportunity. We'll see.

Researchinator is grumbling about tools that let you down sometimes...

Days of Change

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:45:00 +0000

These are the in between days, I can feel it. Things are a-changin'. Compare now to 6months from now, and a bunch of things will be different. I'm going to give up my office at the end of the month, and switch to the home office.

Mostly it saves money, and as well, achieves a change of venue, which is always good to energize me a bit. Barring sudden access to funding, I will need to shift my work into background mode so that I can keep it going if I find some contract work or a salary somewhere.

But the good thing is that after achieving first prototypes and patent filing, I can progress at a lower burn rate, and move the concept into a demonstration that will get some attention down the road.

It's been a good year of intellectual exploration and realization. Hope it gets some traction beyond that though.

Researchinator is looking at the calendar creeping towards autumn.

Something Works

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:35:00 +0000

Wow, a strange morning on the internet, as it seems everything I try to do involves a failed website. Twitter is down. Who'd have thought we'd become so dependent in such a short time. Like probably a million other people I googled "twitter competitors" to see what else there is.

Plurk is another option, I think I even registered a few months back, but it seemed to be a sad convoluted attempt at the same game, without much success. My login attempt was even less successful. Entering my credentials as they should look if I had in fact registered, didn't bring me a failure to log on, but rather to a 404 page for the Plurk site. Have they been hit with the same alien death ray?

I google within Google news to find that Facebook is also having some problems. I spend very little time on Facebook, as it seems a bit irrelevant to me now that I've been on Twitter for almost 2years.

Well, at least Blogger is working just now. I'm cumulatively posting this entry paragraph by paragraph in case it is next to crash.

Finding out when Twitter is really down is a bit of a challenge. There is the Twitter Blog, but that seems to be strangely idle, with the last entry over a week old. There is also the Twitter status page. That one, at least is up to date, and not taken out when the service packs it in.

Meanwhile I have real work to do I guess. First phase of my sideline consulting gig is in the bag, and so I have a bit of breathing room for two weeks or so. I've also lined up a meeting with university folk to discuss some project research to move things along.

The big thing on my plate though, is to ensure my house is in order, and do some intensive shopping around, cold calling of VC's and angel groups. This is a push to see if there's anything out there... though my sense is that there isn't.

The other thing is a chain of stuff that has to happen. I have to sell or otherwise dispose of some junk from my garage so that I can get my office contents moved into there. I'm going to give up the office and conserve that money, as I shift to a three way press: look for salary paying work, scan for funding opportunities, and incrementally continue the advancement of the venture's core software.

As that evolves, and my patent bakes towards granting, I will at some point perhaps entertain shopping the patent around for licensing or sale as well.

Such is my plan moving forward. Not the optimal path that I had hoped for, but certainly not expected given the current economy.

Researchinator thinks it's about time to check Twitter again, and if still dead, turn back to some Javascript work...

Where are my TIny Shoes?

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 15:42:00 +0000

Dealing with workers block is always a challenge, but the baby steps strategy seems to have worked. The last week has been tough to focus, but my goal of even doing a few of the smallest things usually mushrooms into actually getting some accomplishments under my belt.

I have a few days of technical document reviews on contract to an occasional client, which is nice to get a bit of cash into my pocket, though the billing cycle is quite slow. The opportunity to be productive on another topic is nice.

Then yesterday, I also managed to spend a couple of hours on some javascript/AJAX stuff that was buggy and solved it, so that felt progressive.

Today I've been cleaning up environment stuff, doing some system upgrades, security upgrades and trashing some desktop litter. But now I've managed to open Eclipse and PyDev and am soldiering forward on development stuff again. This afternoon I expect to put in a few more hours on the document review work.

These are the tough days of entrepreneurial life, finding a means to push forward when the opportunity turn it into a going-concern are still pretty nebulous. So I'll keep on trying with the small steps to get to my near term goals, and not let the big hill I'm on wear me down too much.

Researchinator plugs forward...

Kick in Pants

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:49:00 +0000

Just saw an article about the competition. Big corporate effort at solving some of the same issues as my venture is dealing with, but luckily they are going about it in what I think is an inferior manner.

The good thing is that there is some good data in the article about how much money is changing hands in that space. Plus it should serve to illustrate the poorer alternative to my scheme.

This creates both eagerness to deliver my offering to the marketplace, but also frustration that the odds of getting funding are so low in this economy. Grrr.

The other big frustration is that I've so often had good ideas, which were captured and even sometimes prototyped by my staff in other companies or fleshed out on paper, only to see them arrive 5,6,7 years later. I really don't want that to happen again with my current venture, but you KNOW it is going to if I can't get it off the ground.

Ah, the challenges of technology on a budget.

Researchinator faces the cold clammy truth of the real world...

Perseverance and a Cuppa

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 18:54:00 +0000

I've been expecting this period for the year it took to arrive. I'm feeling low on motivation, and staring at the funding gulf trying to make the leap from concept to active venture.

Concept proven, patent filed, but a whole pile of work to do, and it's mid-summer, the bank account is getting lower and I have to think about probabilities.

I've recently got a line on a short term consulting contract - interestingly enough for a funding agency for whom I'll review some business plans. Of course, they are not in the area in which I'm searching for funding, so it's not to perverse, but still a bit ironic.

My concept has a pretty good shelf life, I think, and there are many things I can do while trying to get it to catch hold, little nudges forward I mean, so perhaps there will be something that comes out of it in the future.

For now, I'll dedicate myself to the next 6 weeks, but after that I may be forced to step back from the venture. Perseverance pays off sometimes, but for every story I know of someone who persevered to make their business succeed, I know 10 who threw their money and years away on something that never caught.

Regardless of the potential given the money to make it go, without the money the chasm still sits there, no matter how much you walk back and forth on the far side. Or in the more common parlance of the start-up world, no matter how much I taxi around my patch of asphalt, without the runway, there's no flying today.

Researchinator opts for a cup of tea...

Designing for Humans, the Technical Innards

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 14:39:00 +0000

So, part of the venture is this app I've been mentioning. Python apps under their AUI frame appoach (a set of tools that lets you make applications more easily by giving you all the common pieces - windows, menus, and mix-match capability within the window of other subwindows) are versatile, but complex.

The graphical elements are provided under a superset of tools called the wxPython suite. There, you create panels of stuff, and on those panels you use sizers which deal with all the flexible positioning hassels that other programming languages make you do by hand.

THe behaviour is not always obvious. And hierarchies of sizers within sizers, panels within panels all give you size setting opportunities, and all try to impose their own as well. So you can easily get behaviour you don't expect and can't easily deal with. So many hours of my programming life hve been dedicated to trying to meke these things behave how you think they should. Mostly I've made it through, but the effort...

THis morning, with my year of experience behind me I'm looking at juggling around buttons and panels on the infamous app. There's that dread you sit with before committing to it. When you start to rip stuff up, you want to be sure you'll be able to recover from when things go awry. And you know they will.

But the result should be a better organized app, so I have to do so. That will be be journey today and likely tomorrow as well.

Researchinator delves into the challenges of the geometric positioning and human factors sensitivity...

How To Turn 500grams of E-Coli Tainted Beef into a Weed Wacker Repair Kit

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:22:00 +0000

This morning I nailed a couple of chores I've put off for a few days. It's a bit of a convoluted story, and it has nothing to do with building a start-up venture. Well, it does in that it took me away from the job for 30min this morning as I managed the transmogrification.

It all starts back in mid-April when, while shopping we purchased some beef. Now, we're not huge meat eaters, though we tend to do it probably 60% of the time, though we're just as likely to have pasta and tomato herb sauce, or beans and rice. Not because they are vegetarian, but because they taste good.

Anyways, there was a nice sirloin steak in the freezer for future use. Then, recently the news reports carried a story about E-Coli contaminated beef produced in the US imported by Canadian grocery store giant Loblaws and sold to Canadians.

Curiously, when US stores imported well inspected and cleared beef that come from farms where a BSE cow was later found, the Canadian industry was decimated as the borders were closed to Canadian beef for I forget how long. Okay, this gets me off on a further aside, of how the meat packers went on to screw the Canadian farmers by lowering the price the would pay for their product to almost nothing, while wholesale and retail pricing on Canadian beef in Canadian stores stayed put at pre-scandal prices. But I digress.

Anyway, no biggy. Loblaws makes no announcement at all. The media however tells consumers if you have beef with certain labelling and dates in your freezer, throw it out. Well, thanks I'm not going to throw away a $8 steak. It's not me that messed up, it was the meat producer/packer who contaminated the product, and it's up to the retailer to take that up with them. This is not my fault, I am not going to pay for it. It's bad enough I have to take time out of my day to deal with it, and that my health was at risk while that tasty contaminated slab of beef sat in my freezer waiting for me.

Change of scene: it's the summer of 2006 and I dutifully trim the grass around our house and in doing so, the black and decker weed wacker (sorry, I don't recall their specific product name) tears into its work. Moments later, the handle breaks off into my hand, and I have to awkwardly hold the central shaft of the thing to get the job done.

It's about a year later before I finally throw the broken piece into my car, and many months after that before I finally hit the brakes while driving past the Dewalt/Black and Decker rebuilt product and parts store just near my neighbourhood, and inquire about a replacement. No problem I'm told, what's the model number of the product?

Cut to a year later and I've finally not only looked at the part number, but remembered to not just write it on a slip of paper, but this time onto a piece of tape which I affix to the broken part. That very same day, I make it to the Dewalt store again, and inquire about the replacement. The good news is that it's only just under $5 for the part. The bad news is that four of them have been on order for months, and it doesn't look like they are available.

I go to the shelf and grab a late model weed wacker and say, "This shaft looks about the same, can you get me the secondary handle that would replace this one." No problem, says the store clerk at this small industrial products store, who incongruously looks, dresses and sounds like the male fashion correspondent for the avant garde collection at Milan fashion week. It's also about $5 and we'll call you when it's in.

Flash forward a week, and we've just heard about the E-Coli contamination, and the advice to throw out the tainted meat, and similarly find nothing on the Loblaws website, but a list of the products on the CBC news website. Our steak is implicated in this mess.

A couple of days later a message on our answering machine - apparently from Fashion File, turns out to be from the parts shop, and my part is in.

The stage is set for a world class transmogrification. Okay it takes me a couple of more days, but this morning, I put the hard-frozen contaminated steak into a plastic bag, and that into my re-useable Loblaws branded pseudo-cloth bag and jump into the car. Behind me on the floor still sits the broken grass trimmer handle presaging my upcoming meeting with fate. I'm en route to the grocery store ready for an argument, and vowing to talk really loudly about EColi tainted products with the customer service folk if I have any trouble.

I feel a little guilty, as my little rental office, global HQ, is located equidistantly between the grocery store and the Dewalt store, meaning I will drive into the office on my way, eliminating the opportunity for the exercise associated with a walk in today. But I proceed.

At the store, I approach the counter, and a not-too-cheery looking customer service person arrives to take my return. She says nothing, but goes to a sheet of paper at the far side of the desk, and then tries first one computer then another (she appears to not remember the password to get past the first screen). I see her counting out money - it appears I will not need my loud speech about how "You sold me EColi tainted meat which was publicly recalled and will not take it back!?".

She comes over, gets a signature (I make nonsensical scrawls in these meaningless unidentified signature situations) and gives me my refund, while also jabbing me in the thumb with her pen, and leaving an ink streak on my skin. Ahhh, her revenge. That will teach me.

Then the magic happens.

I take my $7.57 and drive it straight over to the Dewalt shop. I enter and see a lady shuffling box and power adapter awkwardly back and forth on a pile, seemingly oblivious to my standing a few feet away. I wait, figuring that a few seconds for her attention is courtesy, and am about to give her an 'ahem' when she notices me with a start, the chime on the door not seeming to have fulfilled it's intended function. In the back I hear the lisped accent of the fashionista regaling the middle-aged gentleman with the plot of a recent movie he's seen.

The exchange happens, and I have in my hand a handle which will hopefully fulfill the needs of my handleless lawn trimmer. The conversion is complete, tainted meat becomes grass trimmer repair parts.

Somehow there is some universal justice in this tale. Had the poor bovine whose years of grass eating been present, he would surely have approved of the lawn that had gone poorly trimmed for a few years.

Friday Progress

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:46:00 +0000

Second Friday this week - or so it seems, with a mid-week holiday on July 1. I had some good success yesterday with my app. I've been adding a second function, one of dozens that should eventually be added, and just got to the point where the app's side of the process seems to work. The other side is a client side piece that works over the net. I'll have to start looking at that next. Should be reasonably fast.

Oh yeah, there's another piece on the app. It's a readback function that needs to render the same results as the client experience. I've got to make that work too. The good thing is that they use roughly the same algorithm. Well, AJAX/javascript on the client has a different real-time experience than the pseudo multi-threaded python experience on the app side, but the decisions are roughly analogous.

Meanwhile a rainy day, and wet feet, and I have a visitor to HQ later this morning. Potential collaboration if we can find a mutually positive engagement approach. I'm concerned about losing focus on the first piece of this. But we'll see how that comes about.

Beginning to see the end of the tunnel in terms of the HQ office. Either I'll give it up in September to save money, or give it up because I have money. Odds are it will be the former, but we'll see.

Researchinator is wrapping up the week.

The Week Ahead

noreply@blogger.com (Ross) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:35:00 +0000

It's going to be a short morning, as I have a lunch meeting and gotta squeeze a barber visit in before that. Plus, it's raining, so the chance of a patio table for lunch is shot.

I've been making some good app progress. Just when I think I can get to a plateau by the end of the week, I realize it's going to be a poor week for productivity. A mid-week holiday (Canada Day) and this meeting, and probably another with potential contributor to the project.

Maybe I can delay that meeting until next week? No, I suppose Friday will be okay.

Thursday I have to work from home in the afternoon as an appliance delivery is happening.
So that's the balance of the week laid out for me. My calendar is just beeping at me - actually sneezing is my alarm sound - to tell me about my haircut.

Researchinator is feeling lethargic...