NonGenre

Give Back Black Friday

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 07:52:00 +0000

I went out tonight to witness some of the craziness that is Black Friday. Consumerism at its best/worst. We all know I'm a huge fan of deals, but when I saw the 200+ people lined up in front of [insert mega-retailer here], all I could think was, "Imagine how many starving people in Africa could be fed by this money that's going to televisions people don't even need."

The average American spent $365.34 dollars last year. I think that money could be put to better use. That's why I'm donating that amount to charity instead of shopping this year. It would be cool if other people joined too (even if you can only afford to donate half of that). I'm calling it "Give Back Black Friday". I don't expect it to be huge this year on late notice, but it could be a great tradition to get going.

Note: I'm not boycotting retailers, saying "you shouldn't buy anything", or trying to start a riot. I just think it's a cool way to raise money for charities.

What's different here? Nebraska Global style

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Thu, 06 Oct 2011 20:16:00 +0000

Cross posted on the DPL Blog.

There are many things I love about working at Nebraska Global/Don't Panic Labs, but one of my favorites is how we don't get caught up in hype, PR, and buzz.

A little while ago, we completed our capital raise of $37.3 million. We actually overshot our target of $30m and turned down an additional $10m. This speaks some to our ability to raise capital and help others understand what we're trying to accomplish here. More than that, I think it shows just how much people in this state care about it. Our investors and supporters are incredible and we are extremely grateful for them.

You might think they misprinted the part of the story about our huge "Funding Completed Party", but they didn't. When the story hit at 5PM, 90% of folks in the office were still hard at work on their projects. It might be partly that we've known about the funding for a while, but it's more about the mentality of folks here. What's more important than getting funding? Getting customers and revenue. That is what we are focused on right now. We love a good party, but our philosophy has always been, "Getting funding doesn't mean you've actually done anything". It's hard work, but that's when the real work begins.

We've also won a few awards for our efforts in entrepreneurship, business, and (more importantly to us) community service. We are extremely grateful for these awards and really hope it encourages others to do great things, but they aren't the goal. The goal is to do those great things, the awards are byproducts along the way.

Nebraska Global, despite our color scheme, is surprisingly "green". We aren't posting articles about this and getting tons of PR, but ask the person at our recycling company who has to take it all down the elevator, we recycle a lot of stuff. Our recycling room fills up at least once a week with crushed pop cans, boxes that come in, and everything in between. We don't require folks to do it, we just do it.

The recycle room at low tide

There's no official "health program" at Nebraska Global, but we do encourage health in many ways. Most of the food here is fairly healthy. Simple sandwiches, fruit cups, pistachios, and peanut butter are staples. We also have a number of employees who take a little longer lunch break to go workout or play basketball. Sometimes people think that we made the elevator slower to encourage taking the stairs :).

Don't get me wrong, we definitely have a great time at work. Whether it's fun side-projects, pinball, cheeseballing, lunch'n'learns on new technologies, FAC, or the newly formed "DPL Pickers Circle" jamming on guitar, we strike a good balance of work hard, play hard.

Nebraska Global is different. Doing things the right way from day one is what we set out to do. When I see what the people here are doing, their reasons for doing it, and just how much work they are putting into it, it makes me incredibly proud and excited about the future. We're all very lucky to be where we are, doing what we're doing, when we're doing it. It's great to be challenged to do great things every day.

Amazing Scooters & Cherry On Top!

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:13:00 +0000

What are you doing this Thursday (9/29) from 4-8PM? Come down to Scooters in the Haymarket at 8th & P for some coffee or to Cherry On Top for some yogurt and you will be helping out for the Amazing Chase! If Guitar-O-Grams aren't your style, certainly coffee or yogurt is.

Music will be provided.

Windows 8 on the Eee PC T91MT

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:31:00 +0000

A while back I picked up my multi-touch Eee PC from Woot. It isn't terribly powerful or useful with the base OS (I think it tried to run Vista maybe?). Installing Windows 7 on it helped some, but it wasn't much of a tablet.

Windows 8 to the rescue!

The Developer Preview of Windows 8 is available for download here. It's an awesome step forward for Microsoft in this space. It's based on the Metro design language seen in Windows Phone 7 and is awesome. It keeps things simple and just looks slick.

Oooohhhh....Aaahhhhhh

A couple tricks I had to employ to get everything working on my machine. First, I had to download the USB/DVD Tool for Windows 7 to create a bootable USB image. It's a pretty straight-forward, wizard based process.

The second one was a little trickier. Once I got Windows 8 installed, I could do everything!...except run the Metro apps. Settings was about the only thing that worked. It turns out that Metro apps will only run at resolutions of 1024x768 or higher. Unfortunately, the Eee PC would only run at 800x600.

A quick Googling first pointed me to a registry change that didn't end up working. Another round of Googling found the latest drivers would support 1024x768. If you have a T91MT, select Windows 7 and grab the latest VGA drivers here (or try this direct link). You'll need to get the driver files onto the tablet after you install Windows 8, then manually update it (using "have disk") by selecting the INF file from the update wizard.

Note: If you have a different model, this might not work. Try it with your specific drivers.

I'm still exploring and of course it's alpha software, but so far so good. It actually runs pretty well on a 1.33 Ghz Atom and 1 GB of ram.

Enjoy the 8 from Nate!

St. Monica's Amazing Chase - Singing Guitar-O-Grams!

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 12:11:00 +0000

Quick Link: Donate Here!

Last year, a challenge was cast out upon the land. All those who entered donated valiantly, and a winner was declared. The Amazing Chase was awesome. Why wouldn't I sign up again?

This year, my hair is much shorter and more damaged from the bleach and dye. So, we're going to try something different.

Awesome blue guitar included

Get your Singing Guitar-O-Gram!

Wait...wait...what's a Singing Guitar-O-Gram?

I'll come to your workplace, home, jail cell, wherever, to play and sing some tunes for you. Make a donation of at least $20 to my chase page and I'll play 3 songs. Want more music or just feeling extra nice? Donate more! It's Nate from the band Nate & AJ!

What songs? Make your request for a specific song off this list or just give me a genre. Some suggestions:

Third Eye Blind - Jumper, Semi-Charmed Life, Wake for Young Souls
Live - Lightning Crashes
Cross Canadian Ragweed - Alabama
David Allen Coe - You Don't Have To Call Me Darlin'
Jason Boland - When I'm Stoned, Mary, Comal County Blue, Tennessee Whiskey
Stoney LaRue - Idabel Blues, Solid Gone, One Chord Song
Three Dog Night - Never Been to Spain
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under the Bridge
Garth Brooks - Friends in Low Places
Travis Tritt - Great Day to be Alive
Randy Travis - 3 Wooden Crosses
David Nail - Red Light
Gospel - This Train
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
Andrew Norsworthy - Smokestacks
Kenny Chesney - Anything But Mine
Justin Townes Earl - Harlem River Blues
Matt the Electrician - Osaka in the Rain
Eli Young Band - When It Rains, Small Town Kid
Jason Aldean - Amarillo Sky
Spin Doctors - Two Princes
James Taylor - Fire & Rain
Brad Paisley - When I Get Where I'm Going
Nate & AJ - Well Drinker, Brodeo, Flyin' on Airport, The Job Song, Song About a Song, Silence Says it All

If you don't need the music, you can always just donate. St. Monica's is a great organization helping out women in the community that struggle with addiction and other issues. The Amazing Chase is one of the most creative and fun fundraisers I've ever been in.

Right now I have some time slots open, but can add more if needed. Please email me at nate.lowry (at) gmail (dot) com to set up your time or find another time that works! (I could even play over the phone or Skype if needed)

Current openings:

Friday, 9/16, 4PM-6PM
Tuesday 9/20, Noon-2PM
Tuesday 9/27, Noon-2PM
Friday, 9/30, 4PM-6PM
Tuesday 10/4, Noon-2PM

If you have Google Calendar, you can make an appointment for Tuesday or Friday.

Please think about giving to this cause. Even a little, tiny bit helps.

Thanks!

How2: Get to KC from LNK

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 12:13:00 +0000

We made it down to Kansas City this last weekend to catch some Blink 182, Renaissance Festival (must see), great food, and, my favorite, shopping :). Unless you live under a rock or on stilts, you probably know about the Missouri River Flooding this year. It's closed countless bridges and miles of interstates, highways, and roads.

Photo of I-29 near Council Bluffs, IA via gordilly

We knew we would have to change our normal route (NE-2 to I-29), but didn't do much research before we left. We followed the "best" directions that missed the river. This took us on our K-7 adventure through Fall City, Atchison, and Leavenworth. A friend mentioned a windy road on his way back and we found it. It's a cool, scenic highway, but the 35 mph curves aren't the best when trying to make a concert.

View 2011 Missouri River in a larger map

On the way back, we took a slightly better route. Coming back through Leavenworth, we went up to Atchison then went west on US-73. This took us through Huron, Horton, and Hiawatha. Stay on that and you'll be right in Falls City and basically home. It's most 65 mph which helped too.

This might not be the ideal route, but it worked for us. I'm sure people that make that drive more than twice a year have better suggestions.

Polar Bear Plunge, Bowler Pear Lunge?

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 04:42:00 +0000

Brrrrrrr. It's that time of year again. Time for the Polar Bear Plunge. Here's my recap of the first one with a couple pictures.

This year I got a few friends/coworkers to sign up as Nebraska Global-Warming. Donate to someone on the team or my individual page. I'm shooting for $500.

This will be my 3rd year plunging. I'm looking for a good costume idea too...

Hey...At least I would float in this :)

What Search Will Get You

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 13:48:00 +0000

Search for "search".

Google says Bing. Bing says Yahoo (for me). Yahoo says Search.org (for me). Search.org says July 2003 Minutes. The July 2003 Minutes say SEARCH. I was hoping for a loop :).

The FSM:

Old-School Machine Learning

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:21:00 +0000

I love a good buzzword as much as the next person and machine learning is a great one. It involves machines (computers) that learn. Creative, right? How do they learn? From sensors or other forms of feedback.

We're hosting a Christmas party for CEDARS this week and while "working" with Tyler and Steve (BoK) on some pinball machines at our office I stumbled upon an early version of machine learning that is literally in action. It's just simple enough to use as an example to explain machine learning to about anyone.

On the Addams Family pinball machine one feature is for Thing to flip for you to try to hit your ball into the swamp. The technical term is a "game-controlled mini-flipper". He hits the shot sometimes, but sometimes he doesn't. That's cool, but the amazing part is that the machine will get better at that shot as time goes on. On either side of the swamp entrance is a target that can sense if the ball was flipped too early or too late. The game adjusts the timing to improve its accuracy to better than human!

Here's a video showing that feature (@ 2:05):

The game also has a set of electromagnets that will erratically fling your ball around during multiball. It's sometimes frustrating, but always entertaining.

This game is incredibly addicting and it's really cool to see how it all works. Come by the office and play a game!

Lessons from JFK

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 02:16:00 +0000

In lieu of other news, our minister shared an interesting story on Sunday. It was a short bit about Ted Sorensen, one of JFK's speech writers. He noted that whenever a tough decision was to be made (in this particular case the Cuban Missile Crisis) JFK would always listen. He listened to some advisers say, "We need a preemptive strike on the missile sites before they become operational", and others asking to wait for action. Although the aggressors were the majority both in number and volume, Kennedy would wait, asking "What do you think?" and "What are other options?" After all present had their say, he would come up with a decision. Luckily for us, he chose a blockade.

I talk too much. That's easy to see and anyone who knows me will echo that. That's not necessarily a terrible thing, but it can definitely stifle creativity. Only through disagreements does progress come. If you walk into a room and everyone agrees with you, why even walk into the room? Your ideas aren't good until they are challenged. They can't be challenged unless people are listening.

Everyone knows the importance of building a good team of people around you. I always try to hire people that are much smarter than I am (and have so far succeeded). When you get this great team assembled, it's your job to listen to them. They may not be "right", but the overall idea will be better because of challenges. In order to accomplish this you also have to have an environment where people can be challenged. Everyone should have a mutual respect and not take anything seriously. Easier said than done, but with the right people, this is easy...even free.

The Tweet Goes On

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 04:51:00 +0000

Here's a draft of my first, non-serious attempt at a web comic. I guess these usually go through a bunch of revisions, so I figure this is good for my first one.

Lol...or not...

Thoughts on "Nebraska's Innovation & Entrepreneurial Ecosystem"

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 04:10:00 +0000

Nebraska Entrepreneur had a good summary of the report prepared for the Nebraska Legislature [pdf]. It looked intriguing, so I dug through it for myself. Again, for myself. This is merely an opinion and doesn't represent my company/coworkers/etc.

On the overall layout of the document, the executive summary is great. You don't realize just how important those are until you really need one. The report was compiled from a number of surveys sent to people around the state. It compares Nebraska's results to those of neighboring states. Obviously, comparing us to a state on the coast wouldn't do much good. The results were broken down into the following categories:

General Entrepreneurship Statistics
Business Cost, Tax, and Regulatory Environment
Access to Capital
Innovation
Workforce

The summary brought up what they deemed interesting findings and finished with a list of 17 recommendations. The details of these included pretty nice metrics. I liked the idea for more business plan competitions (even though we did terrible in ours). It gives people a deadline and, more importantly, makes them think out and simplify their idea to put it on paper.

Here are some things I found interesting:

From 1980-2005, firms less than five years old accounted for all net job growth in the US.
The highest rate of entrepreneurial activity belonged to the 55-64 age group over the past decade. The 20-34 age bracket had the lowest.
The "Nebraska Enterprise Fund" is creating jobs that on average pay $11/hr or $22,880/yr.

These aren't the type of jobs that "stimulate the economy".

For students and aspiring entrepreneurs, fellow entrepreneurs and universities, state colleges, and community colleges accounted for the least prevalent source of information 11% and 13% respectively.

The first category seems low. Most entrepreneurs are happy to share their story,
The school system just doesn't get it yet about entrepreneurship. Having a class or department doesn't cut it. You have to bring in experienced people who have actually done it before.

Nebraska is dead last for venture capital...20x below average.
The Nebraska Angels suggest they lower the Angel Investment tax.

As a recent college graduate, I suggest we lower the tax on recent college graduates :).

"Economic Gardening". Cute, but I don't buy it for more than a buzzword. It's not something you can really promote or encourage. It's a fact of the environment and those in it. Most "Economic Gardening" and local development brings in low-quality jobs. People at the Verizon call center, Dell, and Cabela's aren't out buying houses, cars, and other big-ticket items.

A lot of this seems like people trying to pile rocks with their minds. They see a success, say, "See, they had ____", think that ____ causes success, and wait the whole time for the actual entrepreneurs and small business to do all of the actual work. Just because Colorado has a entrepreneurial guidebook and did well doesn't mean the guidebook made that happen. A lot of missing numbers in this report were how many people actually used the services.

If you need a guide to entrepreneurship, you're probably going to fail. You'll learn, but you'll probably fail even more. I'm not saying everyone who wants to start their own business is on their own, there are tons of resources out there. If you can't google them, you can't handle running a business. I compare it to Nebraska Hall for UNL's Engineering College. If you can find your classes in Nebraska Hall, you passed your first intelligence test.

I really like this chart. It shows the normal timeline for funding a business. So often we read about VC, VC, VC, Angel, but we forget that this is how it usually goes. Normally, you can't even get time with a VC, or, if you're in Nebraska, they don't exist.

There was also a terrible chart thrown in the mix. The chart was supposed to show the percentage of people who had heard of a certain term. That's not something you put in a pie chart. Most of the time pie charts add up to something significant (usually 100%). This one might take the cake for worst chart of 2010:

Overall, a somewhat interesting read, but a lot of academic info here. People who want to start businesses will start businesses, people who want a 9-5-life job will do that. Take a look at the summary if you're interested.

How The Kinect Senses Depth

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 22:42:00 +0000

After working with the Kinect for a few weeks, I finally understand how it actually works. I hadn't really asked or wanted to know how it got depth information, I just accepted that it did. Last night though, we had to know. After a quick search pointing us in the right direction, we went off on our own. It's a very clean, easy, and elegant way to sense depth and it's actually not too different from how you and I perceive the world around us in 3D.

The three sentence summary goes like this. An IR emitter projects a pattern of dots out into the space. The position of the camera is offset a couple inches, so from its perspective the pattern will change whenever objects are encountered. The device calculates the depth of that dot based on how the pattern was shifted.

Don't want to drudge through the patent?

Let's simplify.

A very simple depth sensor could be made with two laser beams being projected out from a point. The further apart these dots are, the further away the object is. Check it out in the figure below.

Simplified Depth Sensor

The blue dots are closer together and on the closer object, the brown dots are farther apart and from the distant object.

Lost you yet? Don't worry, it took me a couple ~~hours~~ days to somewhat understand it.

Getting more technical, we can see the dots with night vision mode on a camera.

IR dots on a piece of paper

The Kinect uses a grid with lots of dots.

Notice anything strange in there? There are 9 reference dots that are significantly brighter.

The grid also makes a tic-tac-toe board-like pattern. It's tough to see in this image.

We got up close and personal with a couple of those dots and watched what changed when an object was in front of it. Our camera is offset just like the Kinect's is, so when something gets in front of it, the dot changes position from our view [animated gif].

Original with dot on the whiteboard

Paper moved up, dot now shown in a different location

See how the dot used to be in the black circle, but is now in the red? When the depth sensor sees the difference, it's thinking is something like this: "That dot isn't where it usually is in the pattern, but based on where I see it, the object must be x depth." The dot will change position in a predictable pattern based on depth.

Here's another example with two dots [animated gif]:

The first and most famous Kinect demo object: The Kinect Box!

How is this like human sight? We use one eye as the "pattern" of what we expect. The other eye's image is compared. The differences are what we see as the "depth" of our world. Ben pointed out that the technical term is a Parallax shift as described in this post by Stephen Hobley. "It does this by projecting a pattern of dots with a near infrared laser over the scene and using a detector that establishes the parallax shift of the dot pattern for each pixel in the detector."

Hopefully this gives you a better idea of what's going on in that tiny, black box. I also hope it doesn't ruin the fun of it :). Props to PrimeSense for coming up with this and Microsoft for bringing this to the masses.

Boys & Girls Club (Klub Kinect)

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 05:36:00 +0000

I'll try not to make this a community service only blog, so I'll emphasize the technical points. Today we spent an afternoon at the Boys & Girls Club of Lincoln/Lancaster County. It was pretty chaotic with 50+ kids in a small after-school program space, but we persevered. A couple of us "helped" with the cooking class making yummy pasta, a few got stomped in NCAA Football on PS3, and a couple of us helped in the Kinect room. Microsoft donated a Kinect to every Boys & Girls Club in America! And, I've been doing a few projects with it as well (see the bottom of this post).

Between playing traffic cop by keeping kids out of the playing area and teaching kids how to play, we got some good insight on how people (kids) approach this new, innovative technology. Most of them had not spent a good deal of time with a Kinect and none of them had been spoiled by understanding the technology like we had. (I'll never really fully "enjoy" the Kinect because I'll always be thinking "How did they do that" and "They're probably using ".)

There were a few surprises for me. First off, they understood it almost instantly. It was incredibly natural for them to play the games and run the interface. There's nothing to break or lose! You don't have to worry about batteries, theft, or throwing things through your TV. Finally, their mental model of the system was severely flawed. At no fault to them.

It appeared they thought that the square of tape on the floor was somehow magic.
They didn't understand the concept that the Kinect needs you to be at a certain distance to best operate
Their instincts fought against them to reach into the 3rd dimension. On boxing games, bowling, and even javelin, they would make short, jerky movements, often out to the side instead of in front of them.

Microsoft is doing quite a few experiments on Kinect owners right now. The easiest to spot is navigation. Look at the first three games we played:

Kinect Dashboard/Adventures - Point at the element and hover over it. A circle will fill up over a period of a second or two as long as your pointer stays over the element. Fill the circle, select the element
Dance Central - Put your arm straight out to the side. The angle of your arm selects the menu element in the list. Swipe your hand across your body to select that element.
Your Shape: Fitness Evolved - Select an element by pointing to it. Confirm your choice by moving to an element slightly below and to the side of the element.

All three of these are viable menu options and better than I would think of, but none of them are perfect and certainly none of them are cultural standards yet.

Aside from that, there are tons of variables when doing noise reduction, smoothing, image thinning (skeletonization), and everything else you could think of that Microsoft has the money and man-power to test out to get just right. I've said it before, but I really think the Kinect will revolutionize gaming and probably the PC industry as well. Even if you're not a huge Windows fan, think of all the software that was written on the platform and where we are because of it. I hope the same sort of things happen with the Kinect.

Demo Videos (Huge thanks to Ben for all the help with this, he's doing the tough stuff, I'm just having fun):

A box is chasing me!

Our logo is following my head (+ juggling!)

Red Light/Green Light with Chad

A simple PowerPoint Kinect Plug-in

Decorating at CEDARS

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 18:19:00 +0000

Last week we helped a great organization in Lincoln get into the Christmas spirit. CEDARS helps kids in crisis by offering them a safe place to stay and many counseling services. Thinking of the homeless makes you feel sad, thinking of homeless kids makes you feel terrible.

Our company service outing was to help them put up their decorations for the holidays. They had nice, mostly new lights, ornaments, and hooks to make the place shine. Be careful that you don't get into a fender bender when gawking at it around 66th & Pioneers :).

Another great fact is that 95% of their funds go directly toward the children. Only 5% is used for administrative and fundraising! Keep up the good work!

Butterknife R & D

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 23:45:00 +0000

I've been doing a lot of R & D tasks at work in the last few weeks and found an interesting pattern with some of the projects. It's certainly not a new or unexpected pattern, but it's often a topic for discussion. In one sentence, one person does the cutting-edge research on something and is followed by a few who help teach it en masse.

The bleeding-edge person generally has some characteristics:

They are smart...really smart.
Because they move so quickly, documentation is at a minimum.

It's essential to have someone on your team that is documenting, shoring up code, and sanity-checking the front runner.

The second person (maybe a fast-follower) is very important. They need to know how to balance the trailblazer with catching the rest of the team up. Bug the lead man can bring his research to a halt (and annoy him). Following too closely can leave the rest of the team in the dust.

I'm not usually smart enough to be the first person, so I've tried to work on being a good second. There are many techniques I use to accomplish this:

Explain things. Use analogies like crazy. The farther away from the actual subject, the more likely the person will "get it".
Document efficiently. Goldilocks it. Not too much, not too little.
Find your "Threshold of Banging-your-head-against-the-wall". You can work on something for hours, or get it answered by the expert in seconds. Find the right balance.

Any thoughts? Is this bad for team learning?

Academy of Rock

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 05:24:00 +0000

This year I get to rock...in an academy...Academy of Rock. It's an after school music program run by the Northeast Family Center in Lincoln. It allows all ages of kids to learn to rock (they also have Blues). There are three nice practice rooms, a plethora of guitars and amps, drum sets, microphones, and everything else you need.

So far, it's been awesome. The staff and other volunteers are great. They are knowledgeable, fun, and really bring the best out of the students. The kids are incredibly talented. I thought I was pretty good at guitar...until I saw a middle-schooler that could school me. These kids have to have a lot of musical training. They can shred as good as anybody I've seen.

Why rock? It lets me expand my musical tastes (I mostly listen, I couldn't really teach them anything about playing). I can appreciate some stuff I like but haven't heard in a while (a la Eyes Catch Fire). I can also see a lot of similar situations I've run into with bands I've been in along the way.

The many bands play regularly at the Zoo Bar and other places around town. I'd highly suggest checking them out. They'll play some classic and new hits along with some rockin' originals.

Also, their new space is spacey, but has a lot of echo. If anyone has any extra acoustic wall tile or knows where to get it cheap (I'm thinking a school auction or something) please let me know. Thanks and keep rocking!

UnDealR: How I did it. From nothing to prototype in three weeks.

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 04:35:00 +0000

For recent college graduates, the first step outside of the classroom is always the hardest. This is a tale of that journey.

When we were slightly intoxicated it sounded like the perfect idea. This simple site could change the entire internet. Zuck would have nothing on this. But, there were two definite challenges to our plans: one, we didn't really remember anything, and two, we sure didn't want to work on it the next day. The outstanding results are easy to see, but we'll take you behind the scenes.

Shots

We talked about it over two shots of Wild Turkey. We started with some classy jokes about hipsters, then quickly turned to raunchy political commentary.

Starting with liquor before beer turned out to be the right choice. We were well on our way to success.

Drawing

I drew it on a 3.7"x5" notecard that I bought in 37signals' Essential Startup Minimalism iPad app.

Code

The site is based entirely in the latest install of JavaScript. It fully utilizes the jQuery framework for maximum productivity and separation of concerns.

Release/Scaling

Soon after releasing the site to the world, we ran into scaling issues. We'll have a future post on this later after we fix these problems next week maybe.

That’s it. We did all of that and came up with a prototype in a few drinks: a miracle in software development.

Nate Lowry can be reached at theboss@roadofcode.com, or tweet with him, @natelowry.

Ninja + Haigler Show

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 12:04:00 +0000

A couple of weekends ago the band made a road trip...and what a trip it was...

We were headed to Haigler, NE, home of the world-famous drummer, AJ. We had a great outdoor show lined up for Saturday night. The drive was a little over 5 hours one-way, so we left after work on Friday. We were rolling through McCook at about 10:00p that night when we got a crazy idea. Let's play a show tonight. A Ninja Show. (via @nespron)

We stopped at two bars whose names have been omitted to protect the innocent, but they wouldn't have us. One had a hard-rock atmosphere and both needed to "talk with management first". What small town bar "manager" isn't there every night?

We tried one more place and then made our way to Culbertson, NE. Here we found a little slice of paradise known as the The Bear Cave. The bartender thought we were pranking her at first, but then we actually showed up. We told them to call all of their friends, but we just ended up playing a set to the 4 people there (+Lutz). It was a great warm-up and a great time.

We finally made it to Haigler and had an awesome show there. It was outdoors on a flatbed trailer with firepits in the crowd. The sound was awesome, crowd was fun, and the time-change was a non-factor. We even got to show off our new shirts!

Need your Nate & AJ fix? You're in luck. We're playing The Pub Friday, Sun Valley Bar & Grill Saturday (mmm...steaks), and Duffy's Sunday. See you there!

Results from Beer && Code - Lincoln

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 13:00:00 +0000

Tuesday was the first Beer && Code in Lincoln. Nick, Rich, and I were more worried about the beer than the code, but we still managed to pull together a working project and finish a pizza and two pitchers in those couple hours.

We took our first idea and ran with it. We made a mobile-friendly page that takes your current location, finds foursquare venues with no mayor, and plots them on a map so you can easily find them to start your quest for mayorship.

HTML5 Geolocation is very easy to use. Just a couple lines of javascript and you have a user's latitude and longitude (if they allow it of course). One problem we ran into while testing this on PCs was that it sometimes only gives you city-level accuracy. Phones with wifi and GPS are much better.

The foursquare API was also surprisingly easy to work with. We made a call to get "nearby" venues based on the current latitude and longitude. Unfortunately, "nearby" != closest. I'm not sure what criteria they use. Also, this call gives you some information about a venue, but not mayorship status. To do this, you have to make a call to get the venue details for each venue. Another small hiccup was the Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) protection preventing us from directly calling foursquare's API. We used a simple, one-line PHP proxy.

Calling the API 11 times (nearby + first 10 venues) helped us find the API's rate limiting :). You're limited to 200 requests per hour. They highly suggest you utilize caching (which we weren't). It makes sense, as venue information isn't likely to change very often.

Finally, we used the Bing Maps API. This uses about 10 lines of javascript to create the map and place all the pins.

This is a quick and ugly solution, but it works. We proved that we can use the technologies for what we want and hit all the integration points with relative ease. V2 might include the ability to easily check in to a place without a mayor. (Yes, we realize this is what ruins foursquare, but that's ok).

Because of the rate limiting we mentioned, it doesn't make much sense to post a link here. If you want to check it out, email/IM/tweet me and I can get you a link.

HTTP Requests with App Inventor for Android (hack)

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 21:44:00 +0000

After playing around with App Inventor for a bit, I have to say I'm impressed. Creating and running simple apps has never been easier. One shortfall I ran into was the ability to make a simple web request. The target audience for this product doesn't include those who are likely to do something like this, but I would still like to see even a simple implementation.

After looking around online for a bit, I found TinyWebDB. This component actually allows you to get and store values from a web service. There are also implementations using the Amazon API. This looked really promising, but after trying a few different service URLs, I soon realized that every request would tack on a "/getvalue" or "/storevalue" to every request (because that's how it works).

I needed it to just hit a normal URL, so I started experimenting (hence the hack in the title, this is a hack). My first attempt was to put a "?" at the end of the service URL. This would cause the "/getvalue" to be interpreted as a query string and ignored by my page. This actually worked!...only slightly different than how I expected. My only surprise was that it was actually using a POST instead of a GET for the request.

Granted, you can't do anything with the response, but since ours was just used as a trigger, we didn't need to.

I'm sure a better way will come out soon, but in the meantime, I'd highly encourage you to check out App Inverntor. I haven't had that much fun coding in quite some time.

Addiction is Real

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 03:39:00 +0000

Last night I realized something. It's something I've never truly understood or accepted as an excuse for behavior. Addiction is real. Even after Sway, I didn't quite think it was real...until I caught myself.

A few weeks back I started a stint as a project manager with the help of our resident expert. He explained to me what he did on a daily basis, what types of fires he responded to, and some of the gotchas. I was the proverbial excited greenhorn ready to tackle three, count em, three projects (with his help).

The first week was great. So much input! So much to do! So much progress!

The next week was OK. Three projects turned into four+, some changes were made, some schedules were...adjusted.

The next week didn't work. I was behind on progress, was forgetting to do all sorts of tasks, and couldn't hang. Luckily, the expert pulled me aside and said, "You're stretched too thin." I somewhat agreed (even though it was blatantly obvious). We scaled it back so I wasn't really managing any projects and things worked out. :)

So what, that happens all the time, right? The difference here was that I thrive in and actively seek out those distraction-ridden, schizophrenic roles. I hate being idle and love being busy. I kept taking on more and more things. Maybe to feel more valuable to the company, maybe to gain experience, maybe because I just cared about things. It ended up biting me pretty hard.

Now that I've seen how a harmless addiction can take hold, I really empathize with tougher addictions. Einstein said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” Without someone to pull you out, it's easy to get caught in those traps.

Moral of the story? Be sure to surround yourself with competent and attentive people who actually care. Also, make sure to take time away from what you are doing to reflect. Maybe, just maybe, you can catch yourself.

UnDealR

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:59:00 +0000

Think of the last item you bought. Was it a Groupon? Woot? Speakers? Chances are you "got a great deal on it", or else you wouldn't have bought it in the first place.

Many times we suffer from AJ-economics. People think that the amount of money they saved on an item's purchase is actually money gained. You certainly don't gain any money when you buy something, but sometimes it's not that easy to figure out. Well...now it is.

Introducing: UnDealR. This revolutionary web app will tell you exactly how much you are really gaining on a purchase. With an intuitive user interface and a flawless algorithm, let UnDealR take the hassle out of saving money.

I expect it to be at least as popular as Minecraft, so we should make a mobile version.

IgoogleU

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 02:30:00 +0000

I was basically this + Red Bull

Last week was career fair week. I was a booth babe and got to sift through resumes this week. It feels weird being on this side of the table and I certainly don't consider myself an expert, but here are my thoughts.

I Google You. Unless I know you personally, I'm checking a few places:

Facebook
Google Profiles (Reader)
LinkedIn
Google (Web)
JDEkipedia

I know we are in a minority as far as work culture and hiring practices, but if you're looking for a job with us...let us find you. Yes, those pictures of you passed out in a pile of red cups after the Boland concert doesn't look the best, but not finding anything also hurts you. How can I factor you into our first round of selections if all I know of you is a list of activities and previous jobs?

Working with your social brand by locking down and wiping your tracks from everything you've done is bullshit. I'm looking for someone who can produce. I'm looking for creativity. I'm looking for someone not afraid to take a stance. I'm looking for someone not afraid to be wrong. I'm looking for someone who welcomes public scrutiny of their ideas. Being a nobody only gives you no chance to stand out against the crowd.

Get out there. Be bold. Make it a goal to be the first result on Google for your name(dang insurance agent) or someone else's.

Quit Building the Bike and Run (sometimes)

noreply@blogger.com (Nate Lowry) — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 13:03:00 +0000

via @gtn80

This is one of those "power entrepreneur", GTD, Crush It! posts, but it's been on my mind for a while. Sometimes you have to quit building the bike and just run to win the race. It has a little to do with the bikeshed too.

All too often, we get so caught up in elaborate plans and good intentions that we "lose" because we weren't going anywhere. Sometimes, you have to scrap the bike idea and just use your feet. For example, sometimes you are working on a really elegant solution for a particular method. You don't want to hard-code or brute force it. Even though it's a tiny portion of the code, we'll often spend days "getting it right". After an hour, we should probably give up. Hack it, surround it with unit tests, put "//this is a hack" in the comments, and move on. See Timeboxing.

There are of course many times when a little planning will pay off tons, but from what I see, people are glad to plan and plan and plan. Very few people will actually take on the work and get it done.