Taking Another Chance. I'm Putting Together a Team - 03/12/2007 - 12:01 AM:

On February 11th, 2007 I got onto a plane and flew to Mountain View, California, planning on sitting in Google's lobby until they took the time to talk to me. They had no idea I was coming, no idea who I was, and the most likely outcome of the trip was that they would turn me away at the door. Getting on that plane was the first chance I took, and now I'm taking another one. Welcome to Chapter 2.

The quest in Chapter 1 was fairly simple: I had 15 days to get a big company like Google to pay attention to a good idea from a little guy like me. Now, new paths have opened up, and Chapter 2 has a slightly more epic quest: I have six months to turn Novel Projects, Inc. - a company with no money, no employees, and little more than a good idea - into something I can take back to Silicon Valley come summer.

There were many questions I didn't get to address in the video, but there's at least one that I have to talk about now or risk painful retribution at the hands of the crowd.

That question is: "What is the idea?"

When I started out on this quest, I expected it to be over in less than two weeks. I'd be heard or not. Instead it evolved. There will be a public announcement of the idea, and we will need beta testers - I'll be looking to our forums when the time comes - but the timing of that information now affects more than just curiosity. Deciding to take this approach means that the timing of the idea's release now impacts the success or failure of the idea itself.

In other words, you'll know what it is, but please be patient. Things are more delicate now than ever before.

Because Chapter 2's quest is longer, I'm going to try to limit myself to two blog posts per week to keep from flooding the page. The camera will still come with me when I go do cool things like crash the Computer Science Club at BSU while recruiting programmers. I'll keep you informed when big things happen. But settle in. This is a reality driven website that moves at about the pace of actual reality - the climax comes when we pack up and go back to California. Until then, you and I know exactly the same amount about how this journey will end. So wish me luck. :)

Aaron Stanton
aaron@cangooglehearme.com

A Call From Brian From My Date With Drew - 03/12/2007 - 11:57 AM:

I've been bottling up some cool news for a few days now. I didn't want it to get lost when we moved the original blog.

Remember how last week I mentioned that I got a call from the president of Imagination Worldwide, the company that distributes the movie that influenced this entire adventure, My Date With Drew?

Well, about three hours later, Brian Herzlinger - the star of My Date With Drew - called me himself to wish me luck! We chatted for about 10 minutes, and at the end, he told me he was proud me, and that Kerry, Brett, and Jon (some of the others involved in making the film) were cheering me on. Nice! :) His call came at the perfect time, right at the transition between one quest and the next. To me, it seems to somehow represent both the last word in Chapter 1, and the first words at the start of Chapter 2.

As I said in one of my other posts, it's somehow really gratifying to me that the people that inspire you, know that they've inspired you. So to Brian, Kerry, Brett, and Jon - everyone involved in making My Date With Drew - if you happen to be reading this, thanks. :)

Lots of Resumes and Our First Two Milestones (aka. a Mysterious Package) - 03/15/2007 - 9:10 AM:

I spent most of yesterday printing out and reviewing "e-mail resumes" from programmers that have stepped forward to offer help on the project. Since I'm a visual kind of guy, I went ahead and spread them out on the floor for a picture; there's about 30 serious resumes so far, which isn't too bad for a company that's only officially been accepting them for 3 days, and whose introduction mentions that we have no money. I mean, keep in mind that this time last month, Novel Projects, Inc. was nothing but me sleeping on my friend's couch in California hoping Google might notice I exist.

I've been really impressed by the quality of the programmers that have contacted me so far, both as people and their skills. They're good in every sense of the word. Apparently, starting out as we are, you get both the talented and the creative, exactly the people I want to be working with on any project. What I'm looking for is a variety of factors - location, skill set, why they're interested - and of course, the size of the team needed to get the job done without bloating.

So here's our first two milestones since the launch of Chapter 2. First, I expect to be introducing our first programmer on Monday, which I'm really looking forward to. Second, the first piece of specialized equipment that Novel Projects has bought for this project since my return arrived at the apartment today. That might seem small, but it was really important to the project - by the end of the day, we'd crossed one of our internal project milestones that we couldn't have done without it, and that's pretty cool. It's also interesting, because when I originally worked on this back in 2003, the system I needed didn't exist yet - this makes life soooo much easier.

On a final note, I've settled on a schedule. I'll try to post updates on Monday and Thursday of each week, unless something really cool happens that I need to talk about immediately. So if you check in on Friday and Monday of each week or so, you'll be able to keep up with things as they happen. That, and the RSS feeds are really useful.

So, see you Monday...

A Video Introduction to Brandon Zehm. - 03/19/2007 - 9:43 AM:

The video introducing Brandon Zehm, Novel Project's first programmer since 2003, is currently being processed by Google Video and should be here shortly. In the mean time, I figure it's time to introduce him in a written sense. Meet Brandon Zehm, an independent programmer that e-mailed me early on when I made a public request to talk to programmers living nearby. You might recognize him from a picture I posted on the original blog. Not only is a he an extremely nice guy, he knows his programming languages and has a portfolio to prove it, specifically PHP, Perl, Python, Ajax, some C, and MySQL. While not all of these will be useful to the project, some of them most certainly will be.

The video will do a better job of introducing Brandon than I will be able to in written form here on the main page, but within the next few days I hope to have a profile page where Brandon can introduce himself in a video or two, as well as some background on him personally and his skills. It's interesting to see how qualified the resumes I've been getting are - I'd guess that about 60% to 70% of them would deserve a serious look if they were applying for a paid position in a regular company. At the same time, I get the feeling that many of them are also exactly the types of people that wouldn't apply for a paid position at a large corporate entity - exactly the people I'm hoping to work with. Talented, good at what they do, but with a strong sense of independence and adventure. When you watch the video, I think you'll agree that traditional... well, traditional isn't what we're interested in.

We've gone from one employee to two, now, and it took less than three days. The main delay now isn't in finding applicants, but in taking the time to look them over carefully and strike a balance between project needs and a manageable size.

I honestly think this is going to work. Wouldn't that be something?

Aaron

P.S. Did you know that American Heritage Dictionary lists both "programmer" and "programer" as being accurate spellings of the word? How annoying.

Taking Our Time With Resumes. The Greatest Doormat Ever. - 03/22/2007 - 8:27 PM:

More resumes started coming in the instant I announced that Brandon had officially joined the team, and we were up at his house until 1:30 last night going over applicants. After some extensive discussions we now have a better idea of what languages we're intending to use, which makes narrowing down who we want to talk to a little easier; it's a combination of Java, PHP, and Perl. I must admit that Perl is Brandon's influence - I originally started learning programming on Perl before things like PHP existed, and I have bad memories of the experience. At the same time, it has some rapid prototyping advantages for what we're doing. Separately of that, we might be ready to introduce our next team member around Thursday of next week, but we'll see. We're not rushing anything.

I'm going to try to keep this update short, but there's something I really wanted to mention, because... well, it was a perfect gesture. I was downtown today at a pizza shop on 8th street called The Piehole, and I was talking to a fellow I met there named Jason. After hearing about my adventures, he produced two free pizza coupons from his wallet and handed them to me.

"Here," he said. "Give these to your programmers."

I thought that was an oddly fitting form of encouragement, because pizza has a strong history in nearly every technology success story in the United States, let me tell you. Pizza, and possibly Ramen Noodles, I don't know. :) I was going to say that it was important to every garage start-up, but as someone pointed out to me, we don't really have a garage yet. :) We're a living room start-up, for the time being.

Also! I didn't notice this the first time I went to Brandon's house, but his doormat reads, "There's no place like 127.0.0.1" I had to take a picture. :)

A Little Sunday Update: Pictures of Volume 1 of the Book of E-mails. - 03/25/2007 - 11:18 PM:

I know that I promised I'd keep myself from posting too frequently, but I had some pictures for you. The first volume of the book of e-mails arrived in the mail this weekend and it's pretty cool. In case you're not sure what I'm talking about, I promised during Chapter 1 that when I returned from California, I'd take all the good luck e-mails I had received from people that had come to the site and wished me well, print them out, and have them bound into a big book of good will for my personal shelf. Then, no matter what, the thickness of that book would be the true measure of my success.

At first, I had intended to just take the stack of printed e-mails down to Kinkos, but they couldn't bind a near thick enough compilation. So instead I used LuLu.com, which still can't bind a book thick enough, but let me do cool things like have a hardcover binding. This is the first of probably 7 volumes in the collection if I'm going to fit all the e-mails. You might notice that the cover is not the one I had originally intended to use - that first one was the wrong resolution, so I used a second cover that someone sent to me that could be centered easier. Don't worry! I still plan on using the original cover, which reads, "We can hear you :)" on the second volume - I just wanted to make sure I knew how to center it properly before I did.

You might notice the title of the book is, "This Book is 13 Inches Thick". That's how thick I calculate the collection will be in the end; not too bad, if you ask me. I've had a few people in the local Boise area contact me to ask if they could read through it, so I'll go ahead and mention this offer again: If anyone ever happens to be nearby and wants to take a look at it, let me know. I'll make the time if I can, because in many ways I consider this compilation the most significant part of this journey. Getting lots of e-mails is one thing, but getting lots of e-mail from complete strangers with no motivation but to pass on good will, with no hopes of anything in return... well, that's something else, and really doesn't happen all that often.

I'll Introduce the Next Programmer on Monday. A Comment on Team Structure. - 03/29/2007 - 9:23 PM:

I had intended to introduce our next team member today, but the video simply didn't get done in time. I was close - I almost posted it, but didn't at the last second. Instead, I'll introduce our next team member on Monday, after a weekend of tweaking lets me get it right.

In the mean time, I wanted to mention something about how we're structuring our team - a potentially dull but important subject. When starting a team from nothing, without resources to offer salaries, how you structure your team is very important. Considering our unusual start, I figure it's only fair that you know how I've chosen to try to organize Novel Projects. So, instead of a video today, you get a nifty little graphic that basically outlines how our team is and will be structured. You can click on the image there to the left to take a look - I hope it's not confusing. Since my official focus at University was Industrial Organizational Psychology, team structure is one of my biggest concerns. You see, you don't want the team to be too large, especially if you're working on a linear development path, meaning you can't start phase II until you have output from phase I. Not only does it kill enthusiasm when you don't have your team well matched to your workload, it can also become a managing nightmare that ultimately collapses under its own weight. Ideally, you want the smallest and leanest team capable of getting the job done.

At the same time, if your team is too small, then the project ultimately ends up resting on the shoulders of a single rockstar programmer. When you're not paying salaries, your project depends on the free time of one individual, and if life happens - as it always does - your project suffers. The approach we're taking tries to take into account the tremendous number of programmers that have stepped forward to offer assistance, and also balance out the size and flexibility issues.

It might not be the right way to do it, but it's how we're doing it, for better or worse.

Little fun note: Brandon sent me this link a second ago, and I'd never seen it before and thought I'd mention it. :) Apparently, if you ask Google Map for directions from, say, New York to somewhere in Europe, it'll give you directions something like this:

7. Continue on Central St. - .01 miles.
8. Turn right at Long Wharf - .01 miles.
9. Swim across the Atlantic Ocean - 3,462 miles.
10. Slight right at E05 - .05 miles.

Very amusing.

A Video Introduction of Paul Kreiner - 04/02/2007 - 7:00 PM:

When I first visited professors at BSU's Computer Science Department to see if they could point me towards the right people, they could only come up with one or two names. One of the names, it turns out, happened to be a friend of Brandon's. Small world. About two days after my initial meeting with Brandon at The Ram, he'd talked that friend into meeting me as well. Paul Kreiner is a Masters student at Boise State University, and comes across as one of the most levelheaded fellows I've ever met. I've been working with him and Brandon for a little while now, and they're an amazingly talented pair, with the right sensibilities and the right aspirations, I think. When you put us all into a room together, we seem to have fun and get things done, which strikes me as the seal of approval.

The important thing is to not only find people with the talent to make this project work, but with the personalities to keep it fun at the same time. So far, so good.

Something that didn't make it into the video is that both Paul and Brandon are cave explorers and rock climbers. Now I've had some experience with climbing - more than a little, actually - but never with going underground. Apparently, by combining these two guys I've sealed my fate; at some point as the weather gets nicer they've agreed to take me down into - and then hopefully back out of - some dark holes in the ground. I can't wait.

Also, this is pretty interesting: I got an e-mail from a fellow named Brandon (not our Brandon... another one) thanking me and the project for being an inspiration to him. He included a link to his site: CanYouTubeHearMe.com. He's apparently on a quest of his own, only his is just getting started and it's obviously based on our Chapter 1 quest. Quite frankly, his video editing skills are better than mine, and I wish him luck. :) It'll be interesting to see this adventure from the opposite direction. It'll also be interesting to see if this approach can work twice.

Hacky Sack in the Denny's Parking Lot at 11:30 at Night. My Parents Arrival. - 04/05/2007 - 10:48 AM:

It's my grandfather's 90th birthday this weekend, so my parents flew in from Kansas last night to spend the weekend with everyone as a family. What's interesting about that is that Wednesday nights are also official "programming nights" where Brandon, Paul, and I get together at Brandon's house and program into the night. They're productive, always fun, and normally don't get over until after 2 a.m.

Last night, though, I had to pick up my parents from the airport at about midnight, and so instead of leaving Paul and Brandon to get work done, I drug them to the airport with me to meet my parents. So here's my parents, getting off the plane after several hours and at least one flight delay in Denver, to find an entire crew of people waiting for them. :) Not only that, but the three of us had just spent the last thirty minutes playing hacky sack under a street lamp in the Denny's parking lot near the airport, so we probably looked a little bedraggled. So my parents got off the plane to be greeted by a bedraggled looking crew of programmers, one of who has spent the last weekend sick (Paul). Since a part of this entire quest started with my father, it was important to me that my parents got a chance to meet the programmers I'm working with locally. Important enough, at least, that we skipped out on two hours worth of programming to meet them at the gate. As everything has been with this adventure, it was fun.

I also wanted to clarify that I'm still reviewing resumes; with over 100 or so qualified resumes already submitted, we probably don't need anymore, but don't worry if you've submitted a resume and haven't heard from me yet. We're trying to be fairly careful, which means it takes time to respond. If you sent in a resume or a query about the project, you will hear from me, don't worry. :)

The Error of Believing in Purely Cut-Throat Business. My Grandfather is a Good Man. - 04/10/2007 - 10:02 AM:

I have connected two stories today, one about business and the other about my Grandfather. I've been thinking a great deal about the differences between the standard business mindset and what we're attempting here at Novel Projects. Traditional thought says that you should be very weary in how you make yourself vulnerable to the world - if you make yourself vulnerable, the reasoning goes, the world will eat you alive. Before doing anything, you must first wear your strongest armor.

I think that's only one way of building a business. For example, there's little room in that perspective to explain virtually any of the good will or experiences I've encountered on this journey. The accomplished businessmen willing to offer advice over a beer with no expectation of personal gain, for example, or someone that's willing to convert your site to PHP simply to help out. Everything in that mindset suggests that I should never have gone to California at all, and tends to assume that Google talked to me because of media pressure alone. It tends to overlook the fact that I had an invite for a meeting before anyone outside of Google knew the site existed. I'd have made it nowhere if not for the fact that my cause was championed by Google itself, first. Which leads me to believe in a second approach that's far less popular. It's exemplified by a story about my Grandfather, which is the second story.

My Grandfather has owned a number of small grocery stores over his lifetime here in Idaho. One day back in the 40s, one of his regulars didn't have money to pay for his food that month. This fellow owned some logging trucks, and my Grandfather told him that he could put off paying the account, but jokingly added that when it came to the point that the bill simply couldn't be paid at all, that he'd accept one of those trucks in payment. So one day the regular pulls a truck up to the front door of my Grandfather's grocery store, blocking the door, and on the side he's painted the grocery store's name. The man goes to my Grandfather and says, "Your truck is out front," to which my Grandfather says, "You take that truck out and you make some money with it." After a few months, there's two or three trucks in town with my Grandfather's store logo painted on the side. Then, one day the regular pulls his truck back up to my Grandfather's store, blocking the front door just like on that first day, but the side of the truck has been repainted to its original design. He then pays his bill in full.

My Grandfather used to joke that for a brief time, he was in the logging business, and it's true. But more importantly, for a brief time, my Grandfather was in the logging business for no other reason than that someone else needed him to be. My point is, just like every other element of life, business does not always operate purely on selfish motivations; believing too much otherwise can be paralyzing.

Windows Goes Poof. No More Resumes Needed. Next Programmer on Monday. - 04/12/2007 - 5:07 PM:

For years now I've had a dual installation of Linux and Windows, but I've almost never booted into the Linux partition. I don't care how colorful they make the text, no one really feels comforted seeing the command line scroll across the screen during bootup - it's just a reminder that the world behind your pretty desktop background looks very much like The Matrix underneath. All scary and alien like. But my Windows installation literally ate itself today, and after discovering that I have somehow misplaced my Windows XP CD... well, I'm taking a plunge and converting entirely to Linux. Paul and Brandon both use Linux pretty exclusively already, but I'm approaching it much more tentatively - settling on which build to use is like trying to choose what to order at a foreign restaurant; lots of cool options and only a partial understanding of what's in them.

The only reason you should care is that it means I'll be spending this weekend learning not only a new operating system, but a new video editing suite, which means that making predictions about how long it will take to get the next video up is difficult. We may or may not be introducing our next programmer on Monday, but that's the aim.

And speaking of programmers, I'm officially closing the call for resumes. For the most part, I think we have enough people who have put their hat into the pile to make this successful. Now it's just a matter of contacting everyone and figuring out who is doing what, in what capacity, and how everyone fits together. What's even more exciting to me is that Paul and Brandon have been busy coding for a while now, and we've made faster progress than I could have hoped. As the least useful programmer on the team, my job in many ways is to sit back and let people that know what they're doing tell me how everything needs to be done.

And yes, we're still having fun. :)

Journey Innocently, Even on the Dark Days. It's Counter-intuitive, But Do It Anyway. - 04/16/2007 - 11:24 PM:

I got a call yesterday from Brandon Fletcher, the fellow from New York over at CanYouTubeHearMe.com. He asked for some advice, and I wanted to repeat what I said to him, both because it is partly counter-intuitive and partly because it's important in the light of today's shootings at Virgina Tech. So here it is: Journey innocently.

By that I mean, don't be too afraid to start a journey as if you're a child walking into a new room - you don't know everything, you're certainly not in control of everything, but most importantly, you haven't learned yet to anticipate that the world will be bad to you. When a great tragedy like today's shooting occurs, I think we tend to remember the dangers of the people around us before we remember the community support they offer as well. We become afraid, and then we don't move until we feel like we have some control or influence over the people around us. Yet it is very difficult to force anyone to do anything, and it's better to approach as an alley than a conquerer. Doing it that way though, means that you have to rely on the judgment of people you can't influence - I had no power over Google's response to my journey to California beyond a belief in their good will, and an expectation that a reasonable request would be met without hostility.

Having faith in someone's good will without evidence of it is what most people would call both innocent and naive. Journeying in that spirit will get you punched sometimes. That's just how life is. But journey innocently anyways. I think you'll be surprised at how many more times that approach earns you something worthwhile instead of taking it away.

Obviously, the intended introduction of our next programmer didn't happen today. I spent all weekend going through Linux distributions, and finally settled on one yesterday evening (SimplyMepis). Now, I'm evaluating and learning new video editing software from scratch on an operating system I know little about. Hopefully I'll have the next programmer's video up by Thursday, but even then I make no promises. :)

My Poor, Sick Desktop and a Request for Your Advice - 04/20/2007 - 9:17 PM:

The crash of my desktop PC has made making the next video a slow process. Because of a number technical issues, the video isn't ready to introduce our next programmer. That doesn't cause any problems with our programming - we use different machines for that - but it does cause problems with the blog. I'm sorry about that. I'll upload the video immediately when it's done. A fellow named Matt is waiting to be introduced. :)

In the mean time, I wanted to ask for your feedback on an idea. A lot has happened recently to remind us of how scary strangers are - I'm thinking of Virginia Tech, here. The intimidating aspects of life are hard to miss, and it's sometimes more difficult to see how much strength can come from that same intimidating community in the light of such tragedy. Right now, we need examples of people doing kind things for strangers.

So here's my thought: When I got back from California, I started printing off all the e-mails that people had sent me during the journey - thousands of them - and started having them bound into books for my shelf. I've only printed one volume so far, and there's going to be about 7 more. That collection of e-mails, where strangers not only wished me luck but often relayed personal stories, is a perfect example of a community of strangers offering support. For a brief time, I lived through a strong reminder that - if given the opportunity - people overwhelmingly wish you well instead of ill.

Now it seems more important to share that then ever. So what I want your feedback on is this: If I were to take some those e-mails, combine them with a written narrative of my trip to California - an inside perspective from a day-to-day basis - do you think it could make an inspirational collection that others can draw from? I could make each chapter represent a day, and in each chapter I'll include some of the e-mails I received that day along with my anecdotal description of what was happening at the time. But a large part of the book would be your e-mails - addressed to every person with the guts to chase a dream - so it can act as a pat on the back to anyone needing reassurance that there is quality to the world before they step into it.

My approach would not be glamorous. I'd write the story, gather permissions from people to use their e-mails, and then have it printed through one of those print-on-demand systems. Basically, the book isn't printed unless someone orders it; if no one ever orders it, that means I'm not really out anything beyond the time it took to write and gather permissions. If people think it's a good idea, what I'll do is write the first few chapters and then maybe post them here in a Wiki so that the community can have a say in how it goes. I don't know if allowing a community to edit their own story will work, but I'm willing to give it a try. :)

I think it's a worthwhile endeavor if it helps to make the world a little less scary for the next person stepping out there. I want to know what your reactions to the idea are: aaron@cangooglehearme.com

Book Covers and Creative Works - 04/23/2007 - 9:38 PM:

People seemed to like the idea of putting the adventure down in written form, so now the challenge is figuring out how to write something worth reading. I've been pretty bad lately with public deadlines in terms of creative works, but I figure in two or three weeks I'll have enough of a start to put some online for general reactions. Let's hope I'm not a horrible writer. :)

People have e-mailed me to ask if I am planning on using the book covers that were sent to me through the site in Chapter 1. Those covers are going to be on the fronts of the full e-mail volumes I print for myself, but probably not the cover of this much smaller compilation. What I am going to do is this - somewhere in the book, probably the front, I'll include the different covers I received. So if you made a cover and sent it to me, you'll find it in there, just not on the very front. For the actual cover, I need to have control over layout and design, and I can't do that if I use someone else's graphic.

To that end, I need your help again. An old friend of mine from the University of Idaho named Noah Kroese, who also happens to be a graphic artist, has volunteered to take a crack at the cover design. After I asked him to, he drew up some concept sketches for me to look at, and I'd love to hear everyone's opinion on them. If you click on the graphic at the top of the screen, you'll see the three concept drawings, labeled A, B, and C. Like in the last post, if you want to e-mail me your thoughts about them, that'd be great. Which do you like better? Changes? Suggestions? Don't hesitate to throw out anything; he's an amazingly versatile artist. I have my own thoughts, but I won't bias you just yet. :)

aaron@cangooglehearme.com

P.S. The next post will be a video - if I have to forgo sleep from now until that happens, I will.

Hang Out With Us At Paul's Thesis Defense - 04/26/2007 - 12:10 PM:

When I'm putting together videos, I start thinking about things that - for the most part - I forget about day-to-day. Like how long it's been since my last haircut, for example. You start seeing images of yourself and you realize all sort of interesting physical imperfections; it's always fun. :) The video will be up later on today - it's rendering and such, now.

I wanted to get this post up earlier today, though, so that people will have at least a little time to read it and decide to drop by. On Friday (tomorrow) at 2:30 p.m., Paul will be doing his thesis defense, and anyone that's near Boise State University and felt like dropping by to hear it should do so. Why? Because you're bored, maybe. Because (I think) there might be popcorn available, though don't ask me why. This is just something I overheard Paul mention, but it might have been a ploy to trick me into coming. If so, it's a very South Park-like move; well played, Paul. Well played.

It's at Boise State University, MEC 309 at 2:30 p.m., tomorrow (Friday the 27th of April). I'll be there, along with a gathering of Paul's friends. It's a pretty big deal for him - it represents the culmination of a lot of hard work. Congrats, Paul.

Why Won't My Computer Let Me Sleep? :( - 04/28/2007 - 4:44 PM:

I've battled this computer for days now. I swore I'd not post another non-video item before I posted something with moving pictures - that I'd forgo sleep until I had - and I've basically done that. I haven't gone to bed before 3:00 a.m. since Wen., or gotten up later than 8:30 the next morning, and I haven't left the editing station for more than an hour at a time. Paul's thesis defense on Friday was the only time I left the house since Wen. night. Finally - finally - the kinks are worked out, I think, and I now know everything I need to know to make this system do what I need to do, but even then I don't think there's any chance of me getting the next video up before Sunday. In which case, I might as well make it Monday's posting.

So, I'm moving the video to Monday. Our next programmer gets introduced then. It's been weeks since the last video, and that's simply inexcusable, but hopefully this will be the last time that happens. Computer issues, hopefully, have been solved, and much of what I learned will go a long ways towards making the next break a faster fix.

Anyway, I broke my Monday/Thursday posting times to tell you that. In the mean time, Paul's thesis defense was fun, complete with sandwiches, cake, and drinks... oh, and something about Beowulf Clusters. It was standing room only. :) Here's a picture of it before it got really crowded.

Just wanted to let you know that we'll be back on task Monday. :)

A Video Introduction to Matt Davenport - 04/30/2007 - 6:39 PM:

So, this is the first video I've made using entirely open source software. From the operating system and the capture software, to the graphics and video editing software, all of it exists because of free community development. I don't know if anyone else cares about that, but I do. I'm oddly proud of it. :)

I've come to a general opinion about Linux and open source software as a group. It can be summed up in a simple sentence: "It works really well, sorta." That sentence describes most of the software I've worked with in the last few days. The open source video editing suite Cinelerra, for example, is far more potent than what I was using on Windows. Just the ability to overlay alpha graphics to make layered scenes is something that I'd have to pay a couple hundred dollars for if I wanted to do it on the Windows software I was using; it could do it, but only if you upgraded to that level. The potential features of some of the open source bundles out there are amazing. Which is what makes them work, "really well, sort of." They have far more potency than you could expect to find in an off-the-shelf editing suite, but they also have their own unique bugs to work through before you can actually use them. I spent more hours than I would like going through XML config files trying to find what resource was crashing the software every time it loaded the save file I'd been working on the last two days.

But at the same time, once I figured out the kinks all sorts of possibilities opened up. The next video won't be nearly as delayed by problems, since I now know most of the solutions, and the wealth of new tools should help to improve the quality of these videos as we go along. So it was a fairly intense upfront investment... but boy was it fun (even if frustrating). :)

Welcome to the team, Matt.

Missing the Spider-Man 3 Premier - 05/04/2007 - 11:43 PM:

So about 11:00 p.m. last Wednesday night - while Brandon, Paul, and I were going over code - Brandon gets a call from one of his friends. This friend is standing at the movie theater buying tickets to the 12:01 showing of Spider-Man 3 that premiers the next evening, and he wants to know if he should be buying us tickets. Paul and I sort of hmm and haa a little - I for one have to get up early the morning afterwards - and finally Paul looks over at me and says, "I'll go if you go."

So we do. I agree, he calls his wife and talks her into going, and we all decide that we're going to go to see the opening of Spider-Man 3 the next evening at 12:01 with a group of maybe 10 people, the first showing in the Boise area. Only I never make it. :) My girlfriend wasn't feeling well, and I ended up ditching the crowd and staying home with her in order to earn brownie points... which, I'm hoping, will later result in me getting baked actual brownies somewhere along the line. So basically, I talked Paul and his wife into going... and then I stayed at home and went to bed at a reasonable time. Opps. On the up side, I've since heard reports that they had a good time. :)

This post is a day late because I was hoping to post some more info about book cover recommendations I'll be making to Noah (our artist) based on your feedback, but I haven't had a chance to sit down with Noah and really figure things out... so, that'll have to wait until Monday. Matt is now stepping forward to help me with some of the basic site maintenance, so there might be some minor changes to the site soon - nothing big, but one or two things that you'll probably notice.

Oh, and in the mean time, I put the counter back up at the top of the site, sort of a reminder that this is an ongoing quest, deadline and all. It counts down to August 15th, which is not a hard and fast deadline, but is certainly a reasonable aiming point.

Relax and have a good weekend. The next video introduction will be a bit different than the ones we've seen so far.

Some Very Sad News of a Personal Nature - 05/07/2007 - 10:58 AM:

The project itself is moving along fine, don't worry, but I have some very sad news of a personal nature. We lost a friend yesterday. In college, my Mom and Dad were best friends with another couple, Bunny and Les; my father was best man at their wedding. Throughout the years, our families have grown up together - my brother and I are around the same age as their children, and we've known each other since I was too young to remember. They're the kind of people that you can fall back on. Even when things are bad, you always feel like you can go to them for help when there's no one else. If I were ever homeless and for some reason I couldn't go home to my family, it's their house I that I'd show up at. When my girlfriend was looking for an architectural internship, Les was the one that helped find her one. When we came down to Boise for her interviews a few months ago, we stayed at their home - their son Todd met us at the door because Bunny and Les were out of town; they just left us a key and food in the fridge.

When we moved to the area, it was Bunny and Les that drove us around town like surrogate parents while looking for an apartment. With our own parents living far away, Bunny and Les have served as our local family. We had Thanksgiving with them, and most of the furniture in our house - including the matching set in our living room - belongs to them, on loan until we can afford our own. When we had heavy things to lift, their son Todd was the one that came by with his truck to help.

Sadly, we lost Todd yesterday. I found out last night. My mother called me to say that he was no longer with us, and that my dad was flying here to Boise to be with Bunny and Les. I have to pick him up at the airport at 2:00 this afternoon, in about two hours.

I know in some ways this post seems off-topic to our project, but it's not. As much as anything, this story is about the people that are brave enough to go out of their way to help you when you need it, even if they don't know you. We lost one of them, yesterday, and he was taken from a family of them. It's worth acknowledging that we - a gathering built on community - just lost one of our own.

The Next Video Update. Making Changes to Our Book Cover. - 05/11/2007 - 12:07 AM:

After posting Noah's sample covers for the upcoming book I mentioned earlier, it was pretty evident from e-mails that cover B was the fan favorite. So I marked up Cover B a little and sent it back to him.

The changes I requested are based partly on your comments. Making the character on the stack of e-mails look younger is one of yours, for example; moving the character down to make room for a title above his head is mine. I asked Noah if he'd include a few people on the top of the castle lowering a rope ladder or something of the sort to show that I received support from Google itself, as well. There are a few other changes that I won't go into until I get another sample to show off, but it'll be some variation on the cover you chose. In the mean time, I went ahead and printed the cover and taped it to a book that I expect to be of similar size to the final. Take a look.



When will you see the first chapter? When will I post the next programmer introduction? Hopefully not too long on either. I try to get out a video post about once a week (my track record is spotty, yes), but Todd's death, my father's unexpected visit to attend his funeral (which was today at 2:00), the emotional stress of spending time with family - all these things presented an unexpected delay that far exceeds simple OS troubles. So, the next video introduction will go up either Thursday of next week, or the Monday that follows it. The 21st, I suppose that would make it.

The programming on the main project continues without issue. In fact, last night's programming meeting went very well; not only did my Dad attend until about 2:00 a.m., but we finalized some design elements that will speed things along greatly. We solidified our road map.

Oh, and on two final notes, my hint for brownies to my girlfriend a few posts back totally worked. After reading my comment on the blog, she stopped on the way home from work and bought brownie mix. She made them as a treat for the Wen. meeting with Brandon and Paul. Matt missed out being over in England - they were very, very tasty. :) Second, thank you to everyone that wrote to offer their support in light of Todd's passing. It means a great deal.

A Happy, Simple Post - 05/14/2007 - 3:51 PM:

This is just a happy, short, and simple post. Not every update has to be profound, right? I'm in a good mood. On Saturday, Brandon invited a group of friends out to a place called Jordan's Crater in Oregon, a cooled lava flow full of mini-caves that stretches for several miles. It's sort of odd, because the ground looks flat, but after walking for a while you'll suddenly find a tiny opening that leads to a large cave. I wouldn't exactly say that we did any actual cave exploring, but I - along with Paul and a few others - crawled around on our stomachs in confined areas for a few hours. Not to worry, some video footage of that is probably going to show up in the next video.

Before we went to Jordan's Crater that day (around noon), my girlfriend and I got up at 6:30 a.m. to walk in the 5K Race for the Cure with some of her co-workers at the architectural firm where she works. Topping that off with 8 hours on flat, barren lava rock that's determined to break your ankle... well, it leaves you worn out.

It was a complete, full day and I slept well that night. And beyond joking that we should consider having our next weekly meeting in one of the caves, we didn't mention the Novel Projects pretty much at all. Like I said, it was a genuinely good day off. :)

Like Minds on a Wednesday Night - 05/18/2007 - 10:38 AM:

When I was about 15 years old I participated in something called The Whittenberger Project. It was a two week writing project for high school juniors at Albertson's College; about 40 students selected from across the state were stuck together for two weeks in an empty college dorm, and we did nothing but study writing. Within minutes of my arrival on the first day, I found myself in an intellectual discussion about the artistic merits of Disney movies. Trivial? Perhaps, but I clicked instantly with the spirit of the project; it was a meeting of like minds. Not only was everyone at the project passionate about what they did, but they were extremely competent at it. That combination, being in a creative group with the ability to organically execute the ideas as they develop, was one of the more rewarding experiences of my life.

It occurred to me yesterday that our Wednesday programming meetings are somewhat similar. One of the newer members of the distributed team - one of the people to be introduced in Monday's video - came by one of our meetings this week and met Brandon and Paul in person for the first time. I realized that I was looking forward to introducing him to the group, partly because I find it to be a meeting of like minds much like the Whittenberger Project.

My point is, I guess, that I can't imagine someone coming to one of the meetings, seeing what we're doing and how we're doing it, and not wanting to be a part of it. The energy is infectious. In my mind, this project became a tangible reality the first day we sat in a room together and saw how much we got done, and saw how much we laughed while doing it.

But now I have to get back to work on Monday's video. Have a good weekend, everyone.

Truth is I'm Picky... - 05/24/2007 - 10:46 AM:

There really is a video - I know, because I've seen it. It's not a mythical issue of vaperware. The truth is, unlike past delays when the late video was the result of technical issues or time constraints, this weeks video is simply a result of artistic finickiness. I had it virtually done and ready to go at the beginning of the week; problem is, I didn't like it. It was boring. Simply that.

So Monday morning when I was supposed to be uploading the sucker, I started making small adjustments before rendering it the final time. Then I made some bigger adjustments. Then I started from scratch and threw out what I had earlier.

So now we're back to the start, again. It's virtually done. I'm making small tweaks and preparing for the final render. I just wanted to jump in and point out that the delay is not the result of lack of energy or competence - in fact, it's the result of artistic integrity, kinda. It's the result of that annoying little bug in the brain that keeps saying, "You know, that could be just a little better. Don't be lazy. Fix it."

Truth is, I'm too picky, and a bit of a perfectionist in some respects. Hence the delay. So, now that I'm mostly done with that, the video is very nearly done. Honest. Let's just hope that I can manage to tweak a little more without deleting any big scenes. Actually, come to think of it, the second half still isn't flowing quite like I'd like... hmmm...

:)

A Video Introduction to Another Part of the Team - 05/24/2007 - 8:55 PM:

So far, I've focused on the main members of the team, what I call the Core Team. The Core Team is made up of four or five of us - mostly local to the Boise area - that are investing a great deal of our time into the project. But there's a second layer to the team structure, too, what I call the distributed programmers, who you haven't met yet. These are programmers that have heard the idea in detail and agreed to lend a hand during crunch times if we need it. The idea is that the Core Team is small enough to manage effectively, but has the larger resources of the entire extended team as backup if it's needed.

So today's video focuses more on some members of the extended team, the distributed programmers. Mainly, Chad Jorgenson, Stephen Staver, and Mark Shvets. They're not the only members of the distributed team - in a way they're only the tip of the iceberg - but they're the ones that get introduced first. In a day or two I'll have a bio page up on the site so people can review information about the team members we've introduced so far. It should be useful, because in reality there are many people involved behind the scenes in one way or another. Matt, Paul, Brandon, and I - the Core Team so far - are the ones you'll see the most of, but we don't do everything alone.

Honestly, making this video was a little bit more difficult than the others. Since most of the distributed team is not local, raw footage was harder to find, and quite frankly, it became too busy. I wish I had more time to introduce more of Mark, Stephen, and Chad's back story, but the video is late already. :) Have a great weekend everyone.

Lost (the TV Show) Has Finally Released Me. Video Typos. - 05/31/2007 - 9:09 AM:

I realized something last night while I was at Brandon's house for our weekly programming meeting: I don't have to miss Lost anymore. My girlfriend and I have watched Lost together since we moved to Boise - that is, until I started going to the programming meetings on the same night that Lost came on. I haven't watched an episode of Lost on the TV since getting back from California; I leave the house with my backpack and computer about 30 minutes before it starts. Normally, this means that my girlfriend watches it by herself on Wen., then teases me the next day about how she knows something I don't, normally by telling me that someone in the episode died (whether someone really died or not), until I get a chance to watch it the next night on the computer. But that's all over now - Lost reached the end of the season, and I'm free. No more missing Lost. :) Now that the season has ended, we've switched to listing to Harry Potter books-on-tape in preparation of the upcoming film release. Books in general are cool - I highly recommend them. :)

I received a few e-mails pointing out that I had a typo in the last video, that I had spelled "Distributed" as "Destributed". Don't worry, it's since been fixed. What's interesting about it is that I think that's the first time in my life I've apparently felt the need to spell the word that way. Don't get me wrong, I spell things wrong all the time, just not normally distributed. It's not the first time spelling issues have happened; if you look back at the video archives you'll notice that there are spelling errors in the video where I introduce a number of your e-mails. In that case, though, it was 3 or 4 in the morning, I was still in California, and I was very, very tired. Mistakes were bound to happen. Probably the most embarrassing thing was that the spelling mistake this time around was in a Photoshop graphic overlay that was reused in the video, so if you missed the spelling error the first time, it got drilled into your head over and over. :)

All is well in the Novel Projects front. Next week, I think we'll have some sort of a rough date - at least a goal date - for when we'll consider starting beta testing. And I'll start prepping the next video, too.

A Hopeful Beta Testing Date - July 15th, 2007: - 06/04/2007 - 3:34 PM:

July 15th, 2007. That's the date I mentioned to Brandon and Paul at last week's programming meeting as an aiming point to start thinking about Beta testing. I mentioned it, and they all looked thoughtful and then nodded their heads as if that might be possible. It's not a hard and fixed date, but it's something we can use to pace ourselves, at the least. Right now, beta testing is merely a collection of e-mails in a folder on my computer, e-mails from people that have expressed interest in beta testing when we get to that phase. How many people we'll need to help beta testing and how we'll select them is yet to be determined, but there you go. July 15th, 2007.

Also on an interesting note, someone sent me a link to CanMySpaceHearAnyone.com. It's described as more of a parody of CGHM than it is a spin-off, but it's still semi-operating on a similar idea: getting noticed and having fun doing it. The site operator is sorta-kinda-maybe looking for a job at MySpace. It's interesting, but isn't punctuated by any desperate measures like getting on a plane and flying to the MySpace HQ. :) That's hardly a prerequisite for having something to say, after all. I find all such projects interesting to know about, no matter their purpose.

And on a complete side note, there's a white car that passes me every day I ride my bike to the coffee shop. I recognize it because the front left side is painted a rusty red and none of the rest of the car is. What's odd is that I have a very irregular schedule for going to the coffee shop - I leave around 7 or 8 o'clock each morning, plus or minus two hours. Yet it seems like every day I pass that car going the opposite direction at some point in my 10 minute ride. Odd. If I could figure out how to predict its passage, I'd take a picture of it, but since that's hard to do on a bike it may forever remain a mystery. Ah well. And on another up note, it's my birthday next Thursday (06/07/07). I'll be turning 26. Let's hope that my 26th year of life is as interesting as my 25th year has been. :)

I'm 26 Years Old. There Was a Cake and Everything. - 06/08/2007 - 11:08 PM:

And the cake had a picture of Tux on it, the Linux Penguin. My girlfriend apparently raided my computer at some point and stole a variety of images she thought might be pretty cool on a cake. So my surprise cake ended up having both the original Novel Projects logo from back in 2003, and Tux down in the corner. You can see him in the picture.

I apparently spent most of my birthday in the heart of a conspiracy. I'd asked Brandon to help me with a programming problem unrelated to our project, so we spent most of the day at a coffee shop in Eagle. Every time we thought about leaving, he'd come up with something else for us to do. "Oh, let's go visit Sky (another one of our friends)," he'd say, or, "Just let me fix this one other line of code." It turns out that he and Sky had been assigned the job of keeping me away from the house while decorations and food were prepared. My girlfriend, who was supposedly working late for her architectural firm, spent a lot of time organizing people via the Internet. I have to admit I thought that something was up when she spontaneously asked me to spend part of my morning cleaning my office - which she normally doesn't do unless company is coming over - but I was completely oblivious to Paul, Brandon, and Sky's involvement. That was cool. In the end, my girlfriend, Brandon, Sky, and Paul and his family all surprised me at the door of the apartment, and games and merriment ensued. It was a lot of fun.

And on top of it all, my parents bought me one of those food vacuums for sealing food into little bags - which we tested on a piece of chocolate cake at about 1 in the morning. The result was excellent - a condensed brick of chocolate cake that now resembles a brownie in a zip lock bag. I'm half tempted to go out and buy an Angel Food Cake just to see if I can vacuum the entire thing into something the size of a Rubik's Cube. :)

It's About Time for Another Video - 06/11/2007 - 9:34 PM:

I've been spacing out the videos lately because more and more of my time has been taken up with the actual aspects of the programming and development. As the weakest programmer - especially in Perl - of the team, my job has traditionally been organizational; I had access to the programming repository, but I almost never added to it. That recently changed as the project has moved forward, and I've been spending more of my time contributing on a more fundamental level. It's been my stance from the beginning that the project itself held priority over the storytelling element of the project - if things became busy, I'd delay producing a video in order to make sure we stayed on task in other ways. With a semi-set Beta testing date, that's more true today than it was yesterday.

That said, I think it may be time for another video. There's still another member of the Core team to introduce, for one thing. Plus... well, you'll see. I think it might be time to start work on the next video.

In the mean time, all is well, work progresses, and like many of you have e-mailed me to say, it's going to be interesting to see how it all turns out.

P.S. Thank you to everyone that e-mailed me to wish me happy birthday. :)

This Site Has No Malware, But Hacks Happen. - 06/15/2007 - 2:18 AM:

It's about 3:05 in the morning, and I just arrived home from our last programmer's meeting; I was heading to bed, but felt I should post something about this before I did. I'll make it short. About a week ago, CanGoogleHearMe.com was identified by StopBadware.com as containing badware, and as a consequence the site was blocked from Google search for a few days. To clarify, this site has no badware.

What happened was simple: our host, DreamHost, was hacked about a week ago or so, and the FTP passwords for over 3,500 of their sites were leaked. CGHM was one of them. The hackers went through many of those sites and added a single line to the ends of the index.php and index.html files; it turns out that one of those links ended up on this site as well. The link on CGHM.com did not seem to distribute code or viruses - I've checked this against several other accounts and found them clean, so you shouldn't have to be worried about that.

The link has been removed, but not before it was detected by Google, which labeled us temporarily as a badware site because of it. That's since been taken care of (they removed the block within minutes of my review request), all the old files have been re-uploaded, and I've subsequently installed a monitoring program that'll notify me within minutes if any files on the server change in the future.

So all is good again. Thanks, Colin, for pointing this out to me when you did.

Now I'm off to bed. We've moved our meetings up to two nights a week (Wen. and Thurs.) since we're approaching our July 15th beta testing deadline, so I need my sleep - I've gotten little of it these last few days. :)

A New Video Next Week. Meeting Two Nigts a Week, Now. - 06/19/2007 - 1:49 PM:

I mentioned it briefly last post - with the beta target date approaching quickly, Brandon, Paul, and I have increased the number of times each week that we get together. Normally, we get together on Wen. nights and program late, late into the evening. The rest of the time we work via online systems, like a source repository and instant messaging. As of this week, though, we'll be getting together on Wen. and Thurs., a little bit more face-to-face time as we approach our first public deadline. Matt is working on the framework for our interface (most of what we've been focused on to date has been technical, not UI), and things are moving along.

On top of that, I think I'll go ahead and commit to getting out another video by next week, most likely on Thursday of next week. There's some pretty cool things that have happened that I'll be addressing in the video - as this project progresses, I've been consistently impressed not only by the people that have stepped forward to help, but by the variety of forms that help has come in.

In the mean time, we be busy people here at Novel Projects. :)

The Wonderful World of Beowulf Clusters. - 06/22/2007 - 10:46 PM:

So we had a lot of data to process this week. Last night we entered a point in the project that... well, we had a lot of data we needed to run through our code. It was going to take time running through a single system - many, many hours worth of time. So, Paul and Brandon pulled on their experiences with networked systems (Paul's Masters Thesis was on Beowulf Clusters, remember), and before long we had seven computers processing for us simultaneously. Even then it still took a number of hours to complete - a fair amount of time for developing a web application, especially considering it was a relatively small chunk of data compared to the cumulative load we'll be running through in the next week or two. There's a Beowulf Cluster of about 30 machines that Paul helped set up at BSU that we're thinking about utilizing for the task.

Technology - and knowing the people with the skills to use it - is cool. That's all I'm saying. Plus, being able to make casual comments about how our Beowulf Cluster had to chug away at our data for six hours yesterday to provide the output we needed for the evening's coding session... well, it just sounds big and impressive.

Does that sound like I'm compensating for something? Hmmmm... :)

Also, starting Wednesday night I did the first outlines for the graphic look and feel of the project. Up until now we've focused almost entirely on the backend development; now I have the very first sample layout and early graphics close to done - though I still have to circulate them around the programming crew for approval. It's going to be an interesting process - I get to design and create most of the graphics, then describe how I think the final product should behave, and then I pass that information to Matt over in England. He gets to take it, build it the best he can to match my description, inject his own input, and at the same time make sure that Brandon and Paul produce output data from the backend that can he can take and utilize in a user-friendly way.

It's fun. We're starting to see the first shapes of what this is going to end up looking like, I think.

Junk Food and Programming Languages. - 06/26/2007 - 9:44 PM:

It started with Pop-Tarts. I'm not much of a junk food eater, except on Wednesday nights when we get together to program for the project. Then I turn into a junk food monster, buying goodies like Pop-Tarts to munch on late into the evening. Now that we meet Wednesdays and Thursdays both, I've come to a decision - I'm off junk food. From here on out, I buy fruits and vegetables before going to Brandon's to program. I can still snack all I like, but it'll be on cauliflower and celery. Cauliflower. I've chosen to snack on a food that I had to look up in order to spell - I'm not sure that's a good sign. :)

I passed the first draft of the user interface we're planning on using for the beta over to Matt today. At the next meeting, I'm forcing the poor guy out of bed at 6:00 a.m. for a conference call with myself, Brandon, Matt, and Paul about how exactly we'll interface their coding with the UI elements Matt's producing. Matt, of course, lives in England, which makes getting together with the rest of us at our 9:00 p.m. weekday meetings somewhat of a challenge.

You know, it's funny; Matt and I have worked together now for a few months. He's been invaluable in a number of different aspects to the project... and this will be the first time we've ever all sat down to talk to him in person. In fact, this will be the first time any of us have sat down to talk to him - in all this time, I've never talked to Matt via the phone. Such is the power of instant messenger and e-mail.

I wonder if at the end of all this, when we finally meet Matt, whether he'll be at all what I expect? Or us what he expects? That's going to be something worth finding out, I guess. :)

A Video Before the Fourth of July. - 07/03/2007 - 7:33 AM:

I promised a video, but this isn't it - this is a substitute. I threw it together last night when it became absolutely clear that the other one wasn't going to be done before next week. It wasn't a matter of timing - in this case, it was a matter of schedule. I need access to a certain location in order to film the footage for the next "real" video, and it simply wasn't accessible until the Friday after the Fourth of July. So instead of just posting that I wasn't going to have a video for a week or so, I put together a smaller, simpler video to tide things over until after the 4th. It's sort of a happy holiday video. :)

Also, it's interesting. This close to beta, you can never tell what's going to get in your way; I wouldn't have guessed jury duty. I received a notice in the mail yesterday informing me that I've got jury duty starting Monday of next week. So about 6 days before we're supposed to be in beta, my daylight hours get to go to the legal system. :) I don't really mind, but of all the times I'm probably going to need my daylight hours, those six days are probably them. To be honest, though - aside from the time commitment - I'm somewhat looking forward to it. I've never served on jury duty before. We'll see how it goes.

iPhones To Love and Hate. - 07/07/2007 - 3:00 PM:

My father recently purchased an iPhone, and it's amazing how much a person will go through in order to get a new toy up and running. For one, the iPhone pushed my father into getting a cell phone for the first time, committing to a 2 year service plan along with the phone itself. The up side for me in this is that he purchased a family plan for myself, my brother, my Grandfather, and my Mom - so I get a new cell phone that I don't have to pay for. It doesn't help my brother much, since he's currently traveling in Brazil, but it's a fairly cool deal for me.

Here's the interesting thing, though. The iPhone requires 10.4.10 to be activated on the Mac. Turns out that my father only had 10.3.9 on his system, so not only did he buy the phone for $500, he then had to spend an additional $100 something on the system upgrade to utilize it. This reminds me somewhat of Microsoft requiring you buy Vista in order to play Halo on the PC - there's no real reason it couldn't have run on the older system, but it was a forced upgrade opportunity. I can't imagine there's anything about activating the iPhone that couldn't have been included in the iTunes upgrade.

And after all that, he can't send pictures and videos back and forth with the rest of the family via MMS, only e-mail. So $6 - $700 in, not counting the service plan, and he can't participate in the video and picture swapping that the rest of the family can do almost as a habit. In fact, the video and picture sharing was why he bought the family plan, so here's to hoping Apple decides to add the feature via an update soon.

I'm watching Apple's move into the cell phone market with interest. As my father aptly put it, Apple is not moving into a friendly industry. They're moving into an industry that's made a living off the ability to trap users into confusing and nonsensical terms. We'll have to see if those dark tactics seep into Apple, or if they're strong enough to maybe exert a positive influence on the phone industry, instead. In terms of freedom of choice, Apple does not have a perfect record.

A Note About Beta. - 07/10/2007 - 2:44 PM:

So, it's getting closer. Our initial deadline for the first stage of beta is July 15th, so about 5 days. I wanted to make a quick note about how this is going to work. Sometime near or on the 15th, we'll start asking for volunteers to help us beta test the project. At first, this is going to be a fairly small and selective group - the initial phase is all about getting as much useful feedback as possible about functionality, not about stress testing the system. All that comes later. There are a number of different elements we'll be looking at in figuring out who will be in the best position to help us, individual interest levels being one of them. Obviously, we want our beta to represent our target demographic as best we can. Ultimately, phase 1 of beta testing is about refining the technology underneath the hood.

To those of you that have sent me e-mails over the last months about beta testing - if you've done so, I'll be firing you an e-mail soon with some instructions and possibly a beta code for when we open the door ever-so-slightly. That code will be useful to you.

Life has been busy, and is getting more busy. But, it's also getting exciting. It'll be interesting to see, when all is said and done, whether or not I was right when I started this quest with a claim to have, "a genuinely good idea." :)

Dodged a Delay. Troubles With Domains. - 07/13/2007 - 4:25 PM:

So turns out I did something that I'm not happy about; partly due to the fault of the company I use for my domain register, and partly as my own lack of paying attention, I lost aaronstanton.com. Yep, the domain that's based on my name and that I've owned for roughly 6 years got gobbled up by someone else. I can only hope that it at least went to another Aaron Stanton for actual use, but I don't see any indication that it did. Right now it's just advertising, which makes me think it fell to some squatter that felt it might be worth having. Apparently an error in my domain register's system stopped sending renewal notifications to me, so I didn't know my domain had expired until it stopped working suddenly. It's a bit more complicated than that, but let's just leave it by saying that I shouldn't have lost it at all, and I'm kicking myself for letting it happen.

All that to say that, while aaronstanton.com once mirrored this site, I am no longer connected to the content there. Just FYI.

On the up side, I was able to postpone a delay that might have caused some substantial troubles with the beta. The Jury Duty that started for me on the 9th turned out to be a three week trial requiring basically a full time commitment Monday through Thursday. I was allowed to postpone my service until late August, instead. This means that it won't get in the way of the beta beyond what it already has, but it very well might get in the way of our final deadline, a bit. It was the best I could do - again, partly because of my inexperience with the court systems - and I'll have to deal with it when I get there, I suppose. :)

Opening Beta Registrations. - 07/15/2007 - 11:47 AM:

So we're getting very close to beta, now. The process of selecting beta testers is going to work like this: We're opening the first round of beta applications today, and it'll stay open for 7 days before we close it again (it'll close on 7/22/07). After those seven days, we'll be in touch with those that have applied. We'll ask you to fill out a more detailed questionnaire, questions that we're not asking on the first round of the application. Basically, we'll take the chance to get to know you a bit and see how well your interests match what we're doing. After that we'll select a number of testers for round one, and then the testers get to give us feedback and work with us on what we've put together so far.

Should be fun. :)

So if you're at all interested, apply! After all, this part of the application is only one or two questions (contact information, really). It won't take you very long.

The video that's going along with this post isn't really anything much (and you've got to love Google Video's selected preview screen). I've been playing with my new cell phone, including the limited video capabilities. So this is just a 17 second video I recorded from my phone last week as an experiment. You'll notice some people in there that you've never seen before - they're just friends that dropped by to help as we get close to the deadline. Some of them are members of the distributed group, but others are just... well, friends that are hanging out and lending skills and opinions. :) Now that I have a phone that can utilize it, I might take over the Veeker cast as a little mini-video blog, just for fun.

As always, if there are any questions, you can e-mail me at aaron@cangooglehearme.com and I'll do my best to respond. If you have beta related questions, you can e-mail beta@cangooglehearme.com.

Thank you again to everyone that's offered your support.

Aaron Stanton

The Beta Deadline and Seeing a Dream Come True. - 07/20/2007 - 9:50 AM:

I'm extending the beta deadline to Wednesday the 25th of July. I've gotten several e-mails from people complaining that I never listed the link to the beta form (http://www.cangooglehearme.com/beta/beta.php) in the RSS feed, so they didn't have any idea that there was a button on the main page linking to the beta application. So, to keep the door open for people following through the RSS feed, I'm going to extend the deadline a few more days.

On the second note, I'd like to discourage people from submitting the beta link to sites like Digg.com or Slashdot. Several people have e-mailed to ask me about this. As I've said before, we're not trying to stress test the system at this point, so we don't need 40,000 applications. We'd much rather keep this a more intimate affair among friends instead of simply a flood of momentary interest. So if you're interested in helping, feel free to recruit people you know directly; I for one have no real desire to wade through the 40,000 applications in the next month that it would take if this were picked up on Digg. :)

These last two programming nights have been extremely exciting. Not only did we have a crowd around (we recruited friends and family to help with some of the brute force, hour intensive tasks to prepare for the beta), but we now have some really cool toys. Brandon and Paul put together some tools for testing different aspects of the project for me, and it is - in many ways - a very complex version of what I wanted built 5 years ago when I founded Novel Projects, Inc. Throughout this entire project I've set goals such that I could be happy without traditional success. Simple statements like, "Even if things don't work out perfectly, I'll be happy because I've made some good friends along the way." Each time I've made a statement like that, my expectations for success have been blown away.

In some respects, where we are right now is one of those landmark successes for me. No matter what, at this point in the project we've managed to follow through on the vision I had 5 years ago in 2003. We managed to take an idea that had formed years ago, been buried, and then resurfaced time and time again over the years, and do something with it. Honestly, the trip to Google in some ways was a final effort - I either had to give the idea a real chance to succeed, I figured, or move on. And now, last night, that idea took shape through a user interface and a functional framework.

The hard part now is to make the system ready for mass consumption, to take the project from being a technology demonstration to a usable product. We have a lot to do still, and our beta testers are going to help point us in the right direction, but I had a five year old dream take shape in reality last night, and that's amazing. I slept well. :)

Reminder: Beta Applications Close Tomorrow at Noon. - 07/24/2007 - 4:01 PM:

This is just a quick reminder that the beta applications will close tomorrow (07/25/07) at about noon, local to Boise, Idaho time. Then we'll start the task of getting to know those that were kind enough to apply to the project.

I've had a number of people e-mail me and ask if there would be additional rounds of beta testing, a second chance to apply. The honest answer is that I don't know. We've not been short of applicants, so far, but it depends a great deal on how well the later stages of the beta go, I suppose. It's possible that there will be later chances to join, but it'd be better to sign up now instead of waiting in hopes of a second chance. My goal isn't the have the largest group of people possible, but instead the highest quality.

Keep in mind that signing up now doesn't commit you to anything yet; it simply puts your name into the running, so don't be afraid to do so. And this list will not be used for any purpose outside of the Novel Projects beta test, just in case you had worries. :)

Best,

Aaron

Beta Applications Are Closed. On to the Next Step. - 07/25/2007 - 1:31 PM:

The Beta applications for the Novel Projects are now closed, and it's time to start moving on to the next step. If you threw your name into the hat for the beta testing, you can expect to hear from us in a few days with instructions on where we're going from here. The next step is to work our way through the names and introduce ourselves to you, and you to us. I'm excited. :)

That's pretty much the update, for now. We spent a part of last night gathered at Brandon's house tracking down a bug in our system. Hopefully, it's been successfully squashed. Tonight's programming meeting is going to be some fine tuning and tweaking of that fix, which is always fun. And on Thursday we're thinking about combining our programming meeting with a BBQ, since programming and food seem to go hand-in-hand as far as I'm concerned (blame Paul, it was his idea). :)

Project Deadlines and Driving a Really Big Truck. - 08/02/2007 - 12:15 PM:

I spent a good portion of the last week helping my father pack and unpack a very large moving truck, including renting and driving the 26-foot-long monster for 12 hours to and from. I'm not sure if you've ever driven a really big truck like that, but it was my first time and I'm glad to say that I survived. We were, after all, really big, so all those other little cars on the road just bounced right off. :) Probably more of an issue is that my father asked me to help him move in an area that didn't have an Internet connection. For the last four days I've been without life-support; no e-mail and no news. Not only did the trip interfere with the starting of the beta and programming meetings - which I missed last night after arriving back in town at 5:30 a.m. - but work has piled up. I found over 600 e-mails waiting for me when I got home, and not nearly as many of those are junk mail as you might think. :)

Exempting this last weeks untimely delay, things are still moving well with the project. Now that we're approaching our soft deadline, it's time to make more accurate predictions about the date of our return trip to California. Originally, I set the countdown by randomly picking a date in the general area we expected to be nearing completion. In this case, I chose the middle of August. Now that we're actually closer to the end of the project, we're going to modify that date to be more accurate. I can tell you right now that it'll be a little farther down the road than what it is now, maybe by 30 days or so. We haven't really started the beta yet, and we need some time for testing.

I'll bring up the issue with the team at tonight's programming meeting, and we'll come up with a more concrete deadline by tomorrow that we think we can actually meet. In other words, we'll try to move our date from a soft deadline to a slightly less wobbly one.

Project Logos, Data Points, and the Updated Time Line. - 08/06/2007 - 11:48 AM:

A few people e-mailed me after the beta application closed and asked about the graphic we had on the beta page. I can't think of any reason I'd be willing to put the image on the beta application and not here, so here it is again. This is the logo we're using for the closed beta. Those of you that are in the beta will see this a lot, probably. I personally resist the idea of "web 2.0" style - I think if you design elements around the current fashion, you focus too much on looking like you have substance, and not enough time on function.

Substance, though, is not something I'm concerned about right at the moment. Upon recent review, our project - even in early beta - currently tracks over 570,000 data points. By the time we get into the full swing of the beta, we expect to be tracking over a million data points that can be called on by the software. The difficulty at the moment is actually translating that into a usable form for general consumption, not giving it depth. In other words, user interface design.

Brandon, Matt, Paul and I also sat down and reassessed our time line, as I said we would in the last post. The original countdown simply pointed to the end of summer, mid August. After talking it over, we decided to extend it by 40 days. Then, we upped that to 42 days - 42 being the meaning of life and all that - settling on around September 26th for our return trip to California. That's the date (or near it, at least) when we'll try to figure out how to converge on California. It'll be the project's next turning point, hopefully. At the moment, it looks like we'll be able to bring Matt in from England, where we'll meet him in person for the first time.

As for the deadline, that actually puts us almost exactly on par with our original Chapter 2 quest: six months to take a company with no employees and no money and turn it into something worth paying attention to. Chapter 2 launched on 03/12/07, so six months from that point would be the middle of September. Good stuff. :)

Second Beta E-mails Have Been Sent. Contact Me If... - 08/07/2007 - 9:55 AM:

Just a quick note: If you filled out the original beta application, you should have received a second e-mail from me, along with a link to a second, more detailed application by now. I commented on the forum mentioning that everyone that filled out the original form should have received confirmation, and was immediately contacted by at least 3 or 4 people which had not. Since the forums are visited by a very small percentage of the total visitors to the site, I don't know how many others may be having this problem.

So, if you filled out the original beta forms and have not received an e-mail with a link and a password to the second beta application, contact me as soon as possible at beta@cangooglehearme.com, and let me know. After the second round of beta applications closes, we won't be accepting additional applications, so get hold of me within the next 8 or 9 days. After that, the door is closed for a while.

Aaron

Minor Beta Stumbles and a Nerdy Ring Tone to be Proud of... - 08/14/2007 - 10:46 PM:

The launch of the closed beta has faced a few delays, but not crippling ones. For the most part, we're nearly back on track to launching the beta. Right now, none of the beta testers yet know what the project is exactly, but that should change in a day or two. By the end of this weekend, much of the mystery will be solved for some of you. Others still have to wait, but hopefully all is on track to match that counter up in the corner. Brandon and I are going to get together in advance of our weekly meeting tomorrow around 2:00 with the intention of working until midnight on some of our interface issues. What's bogging us down now is not the technically innovative elements of the project, but instead the integration and presentation of data. After we clear that obstacle, things should get more interesting.

On a side note, I've been playing with ring tones on my phone lately, and I stumbled across one that I thought was pretty good. It was originally put together to be an answering machine message, but it was far too long. So, I took some liberties, cut it down to size, and now have a truly nerdy ring tone. So nerdy, in fact, that I'm a little embarrassed when it goes off in public. At home alone I delay picking up the phone so I can listen to it all the way through, and in public I smother it in my clothes long enough for me to turn off the ringer. Such duality.

Listen and judge for yourself. :) I'll upload it right now...
Here you go: Ring Tone.

An Upturn - 08/21/2007 - 7:26 AM:

Just after I posted about last week's delays, we went ahead and cleared a number of milestones. In fact, we cleared the biggest one of all, which is that the project worked. Oh, we still have a lot of testing and refining to do, some features to add, but the fundamental concept is now functional. Functional to the point that, while still being beautified, I used it yesterday and am now holding something in my hand that I wouldn't have been holding otherwise. All very cryptic, I know, but it is very exciting on my end. It's also good news, since we have a couple hundred beta testers very patiently waiting to be let in the door. So instead of spending a long time writing this post, I'm going to get back to work.

Oh, and speaking of which, I started Jury Duty on Monday. So far, I haven't been called, but I assume my number is coming. I have to call every day after 5:00 to find out if my schedule for the next day will hold firm or be shattered. It makes planning the day in advance very difficult, but it's all very interesting. :)

The Big Red Truck. - 08/27/2007 - 8:00 AM:

My girlfriend recently started the final semester of her Master's program here at Boise State University. The down side of that is that she's now monopolizing the use of my car, leaving me - aside from my bike - without much transportation day-to-day. So with infinite wisdom, we decided to purchase an older vehicle, use it for the 9 or 10 months until the need for it goes away, and then attempt to sell it for as little loss as possible. After a lot of research into depreciation and cost of repairs, complexity of the engine, and so forth, I'm now the proud owner of my very first truck, a red 1994 Toyota Pickup, as pictured above. Which is all well and good, except that I managed to break it in the first 24 hours of ownership. :)

The intention was to buy it and drive it to a friend's house who has experience rebuilding this exact make of engine, fix up the broken parts, and come away with a fairly good truck. That logic is fine assuming it actually makes it to your friend's house, which it didn't. Instead, it started leaking water, over-heated, and basically threw a rod. So now my cool red pickup truck looks more like this picture here. The engine is now at a machine shop being rebuilt.

I can take this all in good humor because we purchased the truck at about half of what I expect it to be worth once it's up and running. When we bought the truck, we expected to fix it up and maybe even sell it for some profit. Now, that has degraded a bit, but I still expect to be able to sell it at the end of its term of service for about the price I've put into it. In other words, I'll have rented the truck for six months for the price of gas and insurance. Not too bad a deal. By the end of the week I'll either have a good truck or it'll be dead, one way or the other. :)

Very Close to the End, Now. A Presentation to Orientate Us. - 09/06/2007 - 9:08 PM:

The countdown is approaching the end, close enough that we've been discussing when we'll shift our focus from feature development to presentation. We've been working so closely with the project that we decided we needed some additional perspective before moving forward, and so we gathered the immediate family and friends, sat them in a room, and gave them a presentation of everything we've done so far. Many of them have helped us throughout the project and have a vague idea of what we're doing, but none really knew in detail. Moreover, none knew how far we had managed to take the idea beyond the kernel that started it.

So, on Friday night we gathered with food and gave our first semi-coherent presentation of what we're doing. I have to say it went rather well. Being only close friends and family, we had a guaranteed positive response, but I didn't detect any strain in anyone's voice when they offered positive feedback. I didn't sense that anyone was struggling to keep from laughing, for sure.

The first picture is of us all gathering in Brandon's media room to start the presentation. You can only see a few of the people who were there - some were still downstairs and at least one was watching via Skype. This second picture, though, is just to show off how well we're sometimes fed during our programming meetings. Most of the time it's thanks to Paul's wife, who is the one baking cookies in the picture. Yum. We had a crowd over helping us with work the night that picture was taken; sadly, we didn't get to eat all the cookies ourselves. :)

I think that the project is certainly approaching a turning point. How it will turn is still to be seen, but a turning point it certainly is.

Inactivity That's Anything But Actual Inactivity. Farewell, Robert Jordan. - 09/17/2007 - 7:06 PM:

I'm going to have to start taking time out of each programmers meeting to make a blog post, because crunch has absorbed all the free minutes of my time. The fact that I've missed the last few posts is not an indication that anything is slowing down; quite the opposite, actually. I've been so busy I've barely had time to post at all. Much like when I was actually in California the first time, I've been basically without a full nights sleep for the last week or two. Going to bed at 2 or 3 in the morning, getting up to keep working at 6 or 7. It's exhausting, except I've now reached a bit of a rest point. The heavy lifting that's been needed for the beta test this last week is done, now in Matt's hands for implementation, and I get a second to breath. I sleep in tomorrow, in other words. A deep breath after hard work. :)

Hopefully, I'll have some actual feedback to report from beta testers in the next few days. That'll be interesting, I think.

In the mean time, I wanted to mention something that saddened me greatly yesterday. Robert Jordan, author of The Wheel of Time series, passed away. He and Orson Scott Card were two of the most influential writers of my early life, and I used to read the entire Wheel of Time series every time a new book came out. Of course I didn't know Robert Jordan personally, but I felt in touch with his worlds. It strikes me that somehow losing an abstract hero from your childhood hits you in an entirely different way then other deaths. Instead of losing a person, you lose an element of your reality - you grow up with these staples of your life, people you know are there no matter how unstable your own personal existence may be. And then suddenly that person passes away, and it's a blow to the world as you know it. So rest in peace, Mr. Jordan. And thank you for an excellent run in an excellent world. :)

Beta E-mails Away! - 09/21/2007 - 2:19 PM:

There was a bit of a mix-up at the very beginning of the beta process, and a few people missed a number of follow-up e-mails. Since then, we've all been paranoid that not everyone in the beta program always gets their correspondence. So as I promised, beta testers, I'm mentioning that the second round of e-mails have gone out. If you haven't gotten an e-mail with details about the beta program and you filled out the second beta application, you should let me know. Or check your spam filter, either one. Maybe both, who knows? :)

For those of you not in the beta, you're probably saying, "Well, wait a second. Didn't beta start a month ago?" Yes and no. We gathered our beta crew back then, but it's only about now that we're really starting to see how things unfold. So far, very positive response. Brandon, Paul, and I stayed up until 3:00 a.m. just watching web logs as people logged on for the first time.

Unfortunately, I then had to get up at 8:30 the next morning.

Fun, fun, fun. :)

Take a Look At That Clock Countdown. - 09/25/2007 - 1:40 PM:

Right now, it says 11 hours and 33 minutes. And the question you have to be wanting to ask me right now is, "Aaron, my friend, are you on a plane right now?" (My brother asked me that question on the phone just a few minutes ago). The answer to that is no, and you shouldn't be surprised - before we actually take off on our second trip, you'll probably see a flurry of activity about it here on the site. But are we close? Yes, I think we're very close. we've got some meetings tonight with a number of outside people whose opinions I respect; depending on their response, I'll start making phone calls and sending out e-mails alerting people that we have something we want to show off. Then, depending on the response to those e-mails, well... then we look into buying plane tickets and finding places to stay. Keep in mind that Matt has to fly down from England, which will be more difficult without a little bit of heads for him.

What the countdown does mark with fairly good accuracy is a transition from focusing on development to a focus on presentation and feedback, followed - most likely - by a transition back to development. At this point, our project could launch in several different directions. It's my hope that the next 20 days of our lives will be very interesting. In fact, I have little doubt that they will be.

So, we're not on a plane yet. But are we still inside of our six month goal? I feel comfortable saying that yes, we certainly are. What stands in the way now are logistics. Figuring out the details.

On a side note, the response from the beta testers has been very strong, and nearly universally positive. The idea is well liked. People have asked the right questions, people have made the right suggestions, and I'm happy to say that the most wanted features were ones we already had under development. What's more, we were not broadsided by anything - no concerns were raised that we hadn't already discussed. Speaking of which, it's probably time for me to send out another e-mail to the beta crew to thank them for their initial responses. If you'll excuse me.

Windows vs. Linux. A Quiet Night of Beta. - 10/02/2007 - 9:37 PM:

There's a constant battle between Windows and Linux, I think, and a lot of the discussion revolves around things like hardware support. So I have a little story to tell you about my last week or so. My Windows laptop has been running on its original operating system install for almost a year, and it was starting to slow down a bit. I decided to wipe out the partition and install fresh Windows and Linux copies. Not too big a deal, normally. Except, of course, it's Windows. Turns out that if you're installing a copy of Windows on a SATA drive (like most laptops) from a regular Windows XP CD (not a pre-made Recovery disk, which tends to be customized for your system), Windows simply won't recognize the SATA drives. The CDs don't have the drivers for them. That's not the odd part. You can press F6 during installation and it gives you the option to install the drivers.

The odd part is that Windows XP will only let you install those drivers from a 3.5" floppy drive. You can not load the drivers from a CD, a USB drive, a thumb drive, or anything that is not a 3.5" floppy disk. Seriously. Short of modifying the installation CD yourself to include the drivers, that's the only way. (note: I've had a reader point out that Vista allows you to load from any identifiable drive - so if you don't mind Vista's other faults, life becomes easier.)

So the simple and easy task of reinstalling Windows ended up taking me nearly three days, including having to buy an external USB 3.5" drive, and disks, so Windows could recognize the hard drive. So, installing Windows Tablet Edition on a system designed specifically for it took 3 days, included a $30 piece of hardware, and a lot of pain and suffering.

The end of the story? The Kubuntu partition on the same system took less that 30 minutes, including correctly identifying all the hardware components and importing my backed-up e-mail from Thunderbird.

Somewhere in there is a lesson of some sort.

As for the video here, well, it's just a little something from a week ago or so. It was shot with my camera phone on the night we opened the private beta. We were watching the system logs as people started arriving to the site for the very first time. We celebrated by eating ice cream and watching Samurai Jack episodes as we read the incoming e-mails. Talk about a gratifying night. One of many to come, hopefully.

Lawyers and Law, Fun and Games. - 10/11/2007 - 12:02 AM:

I've spent the majority of the last two days or so working with people earning far more per hour than I currently do: lawyers. Generally it's been a pleasant experience, comprised mostly of feeling out the personalities of people I may or may not want to work with. And it's interesting, because I find that - so far - there's been a few types of attorneys that I've met. A few have a very gritty, "I've seen the world, and it's a very dark place," attitude. These guys seem to enthusiastically support the belief that the world is continuously out to get you, that doom awaits all, and that - failing a higher power in oversight - no one is ever a "good guy". Instead, the world is full of bad guys.

Some would argue that lawyers are paid to think like that; I'd argue that any lawyer who considered that their job has the potential to sink a start-up far easier than any patent or copyright issues. A lawyer's job is to maximize horizons, not simply guard against failure. A subtle difference, but I have a point.

I've come to the conclusion over the course of this project that the death of enthusiasm is far more likely to kill off a project in the early stages than lack of money will. There's been several times that enthusiasm for what we do, for the friends we work with, has made the issue of money almost unimportant. There have also been times when simply having money wouldn't have held things together.

And let me tell you, a lawyer is in the unique position to either endow enthusiasm or squash it simply by being in the room. Which I guess brings me to the point of the post, besides mentioning that exciting things are happening - the kind that keep you up late at night thinking about the possibilities. The point is this: Find people to work with that catch the spirit of what you do, your legal council included. Find people that are smart and know what they're talking about, who will give you honest feedback, but who also are willing to hunt for the positives. I honestly believe that a person like that, capable of seeing both the hurdles and what lies beyond them, will carry you far farther than a person that only sees the hurdles by themselves. Sometimes there are strengths that add, and sometimes there are individual strengths that seem to drain from the total; try to find the ones that add. They are out there, I promise.

Moving Big Companies With Nothing But a Shoulder. I Have Recruited Help for the Blog. - 10/21/2007 - 9:41 AM:

I decide that it was time to take action on this blog. In these final stages of Chapter 2, which I'll talk about in a second, life has gotten so busy that the posting schedule, the storytelling of this adventure, has suffered. For example, that fellow in yellow up there at the top of the screen was meant to be introduced a month ago, but I didn't have time to do the video, and the number of posts these last few days has been lacking. So I recruited help. Albert is a friend of ours that just bought himself a brand new $9,000 digital camera, and seems to be eager to use it. So each Wednesday, he's going to drive an hour to Brandon's house while we're there during our meeting, and help maintain this blog. I'll still do the writing, but he's going to help with the backend stuff - prepping videos, taking pictures, and so forth. In a way, he's our biographer for the trip, which is fun. He considers it good experience and a good way to play with his new toy. :)

So, just for perspective, think about the progression there. When I first went to California, I'd bought a $500 digital camera for 30 days so I could film during the trip. I had to return it when I got home, much like My Date With Drew. Then, my friend volunteered to let me use his $500 digital camera for a while. Now, we've been upgraded to a $9000 HD digital camera. Wow. Cooooooooooool. You can see it - and Albert - in the messed up image there (data was corrupted by my camera phone).

Also, I wanted to touch again on why we are not currently in California yet - proper channels. You see, the first trip put us in touch with the people we needed to be in touch with, so this time when we have something to say we don't need to fly down and camp in a doorstep - though we would if we had to. This time, it involves much more mundane steps, like sending out an e-mail, setting up a meeting, and buying a plane ticket. The reason we're not in California yet is that all of that is still being done. Plus, we're flying someone in from England this time, so buying a ticket on short notice tends to get expensive. :) Trust me though, things will happen soon - I'd hoped to be in California by now, true, but as I've said before, this is an extended story being told over a fast medium - the Internet is fast, and life tends to take time. And life tends to take more time when trying to move big companies with nothing but a shoulder and some hard work.

The Art of Getting Things Done. - 10/26/2007 - 12:23 AM:

Every once in a while you get surprised by something; a solution shows up you didn't even know you needed. Brandon convinced me to look into an organizational system he's been using lately called Getting Things Done, based on a book by David Allen of the same name. I was resistant at first (I'm always a bit suspicious of self-help style books), but I listened to a recording of one of David Allen's seminars while I worked last week.

I'm truly glad that I did. It's too early yet to see whether my enthusiasm for the system - which I spent most of last weekend putting into place - is simply adrenalin fueled, similar to getting a new electronic toy to play with, or is actually sustainable, but I am willing to say that I think GTD has the potential to be revolutionary for me. I won't spend time on what it is exactly, because you can find all sorts of reference material on the Internet, but I will say that I've gotten more done with less stress in the last three days than I'd have normally gotten done. That's not very quantitative, I know, but I still have to gather data. GTD, in combination with a soon-to-be open source program called ThinkingRock (by far the best software implementation of GTD that I've found) has changed how I feel about the work I have to get done. Not that there's less to do, but somehow it's less scary now.

My problem lately has been a collision of multitasking; a traffic jam of all sorts of equally important tasks that all need - and demand - to get done at the same time. Posting to this blog is one of them, along with dozens of support items that help the project, either by freeing up Paul, Brandon, and Matt to get actual programming done, or by setting up meetings, arranging logistics, deciding design, and so forth. All of it needed to get done at once, and some things got dropped as a result - hence the unbalanced amount of blogging on the site these last few weeks. So anything that can bring that under control... well, as I said, it has the potential to be revolutionary.

But now... well... I'm in the mood to get things done. :)

Pumpkin Carving and Project Logos. - 10/26/2007 - 10:43 PM:

I was just having fun carving pumpkins this evening and wanted to throw the results up here. My girlfriend was carving an elaborate face on her pumpkin, complete with ambitiously large teeth, and I was struggling somewhat to figure out what I wanted to carve. Then, well, this just sort of happened. Hardly the height of artistic achievement, but I thought it came out at least resembling the source.

If you don't recognize it, the black and white image on the left is the logo for our project, or at least part of it. I showed it off a few posts back. Any kids coming to the door Trick-or-Treating will probably wonder what's wrong with me, but if you're driving up and down the street and happen to see this pumpkin out there somewhere, you'll know I'm nearby. Feel free to drop by and say hello. :)

In the mean time, have a good night.

Aaron

Fullmetal Alchemist - 11/06/2007 - 2:10 PM:

Sadly, I wasn't able to make it to PAX a few months ago, which is a large gaming convention in Seattle each year. It wasn't a complete loss, though, because I was able to ask a friend in attendance to pick something up for me. It was a Fullmetal Alchemist game cover signed by Caitlin Glass, who is the voice of Winry Rockbell in the Fullmetal series. Now, personally, I'm not much of an anime fan, but I happen to know that both Paul and Brandon are. In fact, I think if you look closely at one of those videos, you'll notice that Brandon has a Fullmetal Alchemist poster in his media room. I had my friend pick up one for each of them and mail the covers to me. I went ahead and threw them in a cheap Wal-Mart frame... so... yeah, that's what's in the picture. :)

My friend, Chris, didn't know who to have them made out to, so they address "hot stuff" and "stud" - names chosen by Caitlin - which is amusing in its own right.

Brandon and Paul have also done their part to introduce me to the series; I've finished off most of season one. It's pretty good, but I've been too busy to get around to finishing the rest of the series. Though, come to think of it, I have been watching The Big Bang Series lately. Too much of that show describes too much of my life, sometimes. Not so much the social elements, but some of the other elements remind me of my friends and I, from time to time.

I Bought a Laptop From the One Laptop Per Child Program. Do You Know a Child That Wants It? - 11/19/2007 - 11:36 AM:

I just bought one of the "Give One, Get One" laptops being offered by the One Laptop Per Child team on their website. Basically, for the next eight days you can buy two laptops for around $400, get one sent to you, and another sent to a child in a developing country. The laptops, of course, are tiny, durable, and terribly unsuited for most of what I normally do on a laptop throughout the day.

At the same time, the concept behind the program is fantastic; I firmly believe that educating the world will solve more problems than we can imagine. If you empower a child in the United States, they'll set out to solve the problems they deal with every day. That's only natural. But it means that a healthy, well-fed American child probably won't spend their time focusing on the everyday problems facing a child that's hungry and has no electricity.

Part of what makes the $100 laptop project so interesting is that it steps out of solving our design problems - like better graphics - and focuses on other people's design problems, like needing to charge and maintai