Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

My First Philly Startup Weekend
April 24, 2012

Philly Startup WeekendLast Friday night was the start of my first Startup Weekend, and I didn’t know quite what to expect. In fact, the logistics of getting me into the city from the suburbs for such long days had me thinking I should just give up my ticket. But I manged to wrangle accommodations down the street from the University of the Arts where the building was held, and arrived just in time to join those gathering for pre-event drinks and snacks.

I grabbed my badge from the table and started talking to people. If you know me at all, you’re already thinking I’m making stuff up – I am not usually so social. But Startup Weekend, unlike most other events, is not an event that you attend passively. You interact with other people or you don’t experience it. Within the first 20 minutes of the event, I met and had great conversations with two people who went on to form teams that won second and third place!

Technical Books Are Broken
April 09, 2012

Write Your Own Adventure ProgramsOn a family trip to the Computer Museum in Boston I convinced my parents to buy me a copy of Write Your Own Adventure Programs for Your Microcomputer, since I was an Infocom junkie and had been writing my own “adventure programs” for some time already. I think this was my first technical book, and it was the first technical book that I met with disappointment.

I’m not sure how I picked up programming prior to books. Probably a combination of experimentation and entering programs from magazines. Unlike the other few kids I knew who also had computers, I didn’t spend a lot of time playing games. I mostly wrote code. Technical manuals that helped with this were rare.

Culture of Exclusion - A Response
April 05, 2012

Super Happy Block Party #shbpSkippy recently provided me a link to Ryan Funduk’s post on Our Culture Of Exclusion, which is all about how - in addition to the implication of women being excluded from technology by gender - technology conferences are exclusionary of anyone who doesn’t want to drink themselves into a stupor afterwards.

I have not personally ever excluded anyone based on their not wanting to drink. I have excluded non-drinking people based on their personality or other behavior, and have tried to be polite as possible about it. (Dude sat at our table while I was trying to chat with a couple of other guys about something not explicitly tech-related, like travel, and started yammering about his experience with Linux – time to get out of dodge.) But that they weren’t drinking wasn’t a factor in my decision.

My Bed Has a Remote Control
April 04, 2012

Logitech Harmony 650I currently enjoy operating my new Tivo via the iPhone interface. This is unusual because I’m very committed to the idea that remote controls should have physical buttons. I like being able to navigate the controls of my appliances using touch alone, and the iPhone screen not only doesn’t have any tactile feedback to let me know where the buttons are, but also has nothing to detect pressure, so merely placing my fingers against the glass is enough to trigger any of the on-screen buttons.

What I like about the Tivo interface is that it communicates bi-directionally with the device. I can see the TV guide along with what shows have been recorded, and instantly start any of those shows on-screen simply by touching them. Normally, I’d need to operate the controls to navigate through the Tivo’s on-screen menus, which is tedious and (ironically) not as well-designed as the UI on the phone.

In Search of Desktop Apps
April 03, 2012

I’m not sure why, but I crave more interaction with my desktop. The exact things that I can’t seem to get out of iOS and the things that happen more readily in WP7 are what I want on my Windows desktop. I don’t really want gadgets, per se, but I’d really like some applications that served specific purposes and worked really well.

For example, I’ve been complaining about the to-do list app forever. I realize that this can be done (to some incomplete extent) by using a web service. But the only gateway to that is via something like Chrome’s application shortcuts, which are useful, but are still a website inside of Chrome without complete access to desktop features (notification tray, integration with other applications, additional shaped window features, and on and on.).