I should blog about this now, while the imprint is fresh in my head.
1. I am moving from a laptop to a Samsung 30 inch lcd
2. It is big, huge, the way you use the computer will change.
3. Moving from a laptop, you have to get an external keyboard, get one you like. I’m typing this on my father’s iMac keyboard right now, it sucks.
4. Bump up your mouse acceleration, A mouse is necessary with this size screen, forget a trackpad, and even a mouse is innadequate.
5. Window management on OS X is severely lacking. I really want to get stumpwm working.
So far I like it.
I recently have read a couple of posts about people gracefully putting their startups to bed. I want to commend these brave writers. It is incredibly hard to give up on a business venture, financially and emotionally, I should know I have done so twice.
I think it says so much for these people, Russ, Eran, and JB. These are the types of people you want running software projects for your company. I can’t count how many times I have seen managers refuse to put an end to projects that just aren’t going anywhere. Even when killing the project would be the best thing for the company, it is often not done because of pride or political factors.
It is hard to admit defeat, especially when you phrase it like that. If however you look at it as an opportunity cost calculation, you can take a more optimistic view of the situation. I believe the oportunity cost calculation is the proper way to look at decisions like these. Say my startup is profitable, but just inching along, if I have the opportunity to join another more profitable venture, it is costing me the difference. That difference is the opportunity cost. I believe that for everyone in the list above, continuing their startup would have had a very high opportunity cost (they are very desirable employees).
Derik: I would like a world where the smartest people run the government.
Me: I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t want a world where we needed smart people to run the government. I want a government that is so unimportant that I’m not tempted to waste smart people on it.
This past weekend I caught the first two episodes of Axemen on this History Channel. I really enjoyed it. I used to work in heavy construction and I am still fascinated by it. If you enjoy Axemen, check out this site, Van Natta Bros Logging.
Last night I went to the advertising club of new york meetup at Microsoft’s office, with my girlfriend. The meeting was focussed on advertising on mobile phones. I had been to one of these events before, at google, that event was ok. This event wasn’t, it was horrible.
To start with the audience was full of dead people. Most of the people in the audience were 35+ year olds who worked in traditional media advertising agencies. They were confused by basic internet advertising metrics. I don’t know how to explain it. The room was full of the type of business people that tech guys hate. Full of people who would say “Let’s do a facebook app” and then spend $1m to build it because they chose a slick manager who is incompetent.
One of the presenters, Dean Collins, presented his Amatheon’s mobile analytics software. Early in his presentation he had a slide that said something along the lines of ” Traditional analytics don’t work on mobile phones. You can’t tell which handset visitors are using. You can’t tell where they are coming from. You can’t tell what resolution they are using” he then said “Does anyone disagree?”. I raised my hand and answered “I do. The only browser in the mobile space that matters is the iPhone. And all of the traditional anayltics work on it”. He replied “I don’t care about the iPhone, its only 4% of the market and not what we are aiming for.”
I was embarrassed that I had attacked Dean so viciously. I think it was the way he challenged the audience, saying “does anyone disagree”, it just set me off. It is hard to get attacked when you are presenting to an audience. Given that, I feel that my statement was correct.
Collins went on detailing how his software provides analytics for the mobile space. He went on to describe his software pretty well, it looked impressive. The software also is inexpensive for what it does. The quality of their software aside, I think the working with amatheon would be helpful for a company, because amatheon knows the mobile analytics space.
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/how-to-fix-nvidia-acceleration-in-feisty-nvidia-8800-and-legacy-users.html
Well it is 3 short days until practice starts in Australia I can’t wait. Will be joining this fantasy formula 1 league with some of my friends.
Thinking about F1 my thoughts turned to Formula1db , my Formula 1 results database that I built a while ago. The data is about to be three seasons out of date. I’m strongly considering open sourcing it, possibly along with the php for the site too. I might release the code for the python screen scraper too, if I can find it.
my iPhone drops a call, again, the third time in a conversation.
Scott:You need to get another phone, the reception on that is horrible
me: Your just not cool enough to understand the iPhone crackle.
After lunch I was a bit down. I was having a hard time meeting people at the conference. I called my girlfriend for a peptalk. She said “You did this all the time in highschool and college, just act like you belong”. I hung up on her in mid conversation because I saw someone from Dow Jones walking by. I started talking to him and he was nice.
Emboldened, I decided that I was going to buy a pack of cigarettes and stand outside the hotel smoking (I quit smoking 3 months ago). Smoking was always a great way of meeting people. When I had a cigarette with someone, I was normally good for a 3-5 minute conversation, much better than an elevator pitch. While I was walking towards a conveince store I saw Tim O’Reilly walking with another O’Reilly employee.
Me: Tim, Hi I’m Paddy I’m a big fan of yours. Thanks for putting on this conference.
Tim: Thanks. What do you do?
Me:I’m the founder of chartWidget we build licensable interactive charts.
Tim: We might need some charting work you should talk to […] at the conference, Brady can introduce you. Thanks for coming to the conference.
Me: Well, I didn’t exactly come to the conference. I’m hanging out in the lobby. I don’t have tickets.
Tim: We can take care of that. Brady can you get him registered?
Me: Wow, thanks.
That made my day.
I spent the next day and a half at the conference and met many many people.
Thank you Tim.
Here are some pics of me from Canada.
