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 h...
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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...
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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 ass...
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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.
Th...
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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...
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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.
...
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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 mad...
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