January 2005 Archives

Noting more Mac Mini excitement, Mathowie writes:

…the challenge of working in a limited medium and constantly finding clever innovation as you bang into the walls of constraint is an attractive place to work for many engineers and designers.

How true. This is something I love and relish in my work. I've always been a zen minimalist when it comes to design and firmly believe that less is more, so his post really strikes a chord.

I always look to optimize the the balance between doing as much as I can with as little as possible. A solution is never quite complete until I do. Its a challenge that I think takes real skill and far more creativity then having an open canvas and virtually no bounds. The challenge is not the only factor though. There are persuasive practical reasons to it also. The most important is that the less you can put into a solution or system, the less risk there is to it failing to provide a return on the investment of time and resources. Conversely, it provides the potential for a higher margin if it is indeed successful.

Limits can be taken to far though and understanding that balance in design is what requires skill and creativity. With the right balance of simplicity and features (cost) comes flexibility that can pay even larger dividends then a more full-featured one could ever achieve.

I think the Mac Mini will prove to be an excellent example of this balance. It is not only a great machine for those not sure about switching to the Mac, or whose computing needs are relatively modest, but with its cost, size and features (or more appropriately lack thereof), it can and will be applied in many different ways. Many ways which have yet to emerge and it is in this were the excitement lies. Apple has opened the door to a whole new realm of potential and opportunity for technology and invited us in by giving us less. For many of us who relish the challenge and benefits of limits, we all want in.

We're getting blasted back into the ice age here. I won't be making it out to Seattle to attend the Blog Business Summit that my consultancy is sponsoring. My flight was cancelled as was about everything else.

Mike Doughty writes that he is depressed that he is missing the blizzard in Manhattan while playing some shows out west in San Francisco and Utah. He says, I adore a blizzard, especially in Manhattan, where the whole city shuts down and becomes eerie and pristine.

Yes, I agree and miss them not living in that fine metropolis. It is a very surreal experience to see a city that is always bustling and in motion get painted white and go silent like it does during a blizzard. A bit of snow doesn't cut it though. NYC is always running at its limits – the sidewalks, the streets, the trains etc – so when it snows a bit its like an added crowds of tourist that slows you down and annoys. No you need a blizzard. When one of those hit all is lost and you stay home if you can. That is unless you have an apprecaition for the city at its most pristine.

I'm in New England now were people don't see to enjoy a blizzard as much. I suppose landlords and building maintenance are apprecaited when it comes time to shovel the sidewalks and garage driveway. Still I'm enjoying the sight and coping with the shoveling.

Apple gave me a lot to write about these past few days if I had more time. For now I'll stick with the Mini and an interesting post I read.

First let me say, I'm pretty enthusiastic about the Mini and have begun mentioning it as a viable option to a few people I know are getting around to picking up a new machine for their home. Tim Bray posts an interesting analysis of the Mini using his mother as the target audience. Bray figures for less then $700 and reusing her monitor and printer she would be set.

I would expect that a few vendors will come out with a less expensive options that looks good with the Mini.

I'm not in Apple's intended audience for the Mini, but I think it does give dorks like me a nice little no-nonsense (sorry, built-your-own-machine-linux wonks) file/web/whatever server for the home network. However that could just be the beginning to a broader mainstream use.

Now think of Mac Mini as a “home media server.” Last month when rumors were flying thick and fast, Jonathan Greene very rightfully pointed out the true potential of this device. Mac Mini is perfect sitting next to your Sony FlatScreen TV. I think just like an iPod economy sprang up around the hit digital device, it is time for peripheral makers to bring to market add-ons like TV connectors, remote control modules and the sort. Elgato can turn your Mac Mini into a nice TiVo replacement. All it needs is a little imagination. Om Malik via B2Day

I was thinking the same thing. Really I was.

Anyone that has looked into the technology behind a PVR such as Tivo's knows that the device is really just a specialized computer running Linux which is why its so hackable spawning numerous books and its own weblog. (PVRBlog already picked up on this same angle here.)

At $499 and with a TV converter, remote and a bit of specialized software you are there. A 40-80 GB hard drive is a fair amount of storage and with Ethernet, USB and Firewire jacks on-board the options for expanding that capability are many.

What would be more interesting is if the software also enabled Peer-to-Peer distribution of movies and TV shows via PVRs – through in a legal and equitable manner of course. (Software developers aren't the only one who need to eat.) Netflix and Tivo have teamed up to explore digital distribution of movies and serial TV shows though I wouldn't be surprised if P2P is being avoided though. My guess is that the entertainment industry would have nothing to do with it because of the bad vibes previous incarnations (Napster and Kaaza) left with them no matter how cost effective or applicable it would be.

My younger brother Kevin gives me this career advice:

You're screwed. If you get in a bind and they call a meeting make sure
the room has a skylight. That way you can use the 'ole Batman smoke bomb
and spear gun escape. no one could ever hold poor work against someone who
escapes a pressure situation in that fashion.

I now know why he was recently promoted at work.

It's that time of year again. While last year's attempt at public humiliation didn't have much of an effect on my motivation – this year my ego ran away from home and is still missing – I'm still compelled to think about the new year and (re)set some goals. They don't seem like pre-planned disappointments like some, perhaps its because I'm a mental masochist, however I do think there is some value in occasionally setting goals even if not all of them are achieved. Besides, as one mentor once told me, if you are achieving all of your goals you aren't setting them high enough. Fair enough. Let's take a look at last year's.

• Balance coding and writing.

Funny how the pendulum has swung from when I started this weblog. If writing means publishing then I failed miserably. I spent the better part of the summer researching and writing a book that got indefinitely postponed quite suddenly. Still I didn't make nearly as many weblog posts as I would have liked. I'm hoping some of this has to do with needing to shift styles and making a clear separation between the personal and the career related postings.

• Release more of my code.

Made some headway here, but too much of it is going out rather hastily or taking too long. Still I put out a number of modules into CPAN I am quite pleased with overall.

• Keep working on getting in shape. Let's add flexibility to reducing body fat.

Regressed in a big way. (ugh.) Since we closed on our new house I haven't been to the gym once. I'm at my heaviest ever and while many comment they can't tell, I can really feel it and it makes me sad, very very sad.

• Read more books – particularly non-technical ones. (again)

Well at least I won't have to rack my brains writing new resolutions. I even gave up reading non-technical magazines. If it wasn't code or how to code I probably didn't read it.

• Catch-up and get more organized.

In a sense I made some headway looking at the things I had last year at this time BUT with the quantity and speed that new work rolled over the past year I have even more to catch-up on and organize as before. (Did that just make sense?)

• Don't work so much.

HA!HA!HA!HA!HA! It seems that is all I ever do except sleep occasionally. If it wasn't coding it was home renovations.

• Figure out what I want to do when I grow up. (again)

Well I some idea of this, mostly in the area of what I don't want to be. Now its figuring out how to make a decent living at it.

By all accounts this year was a pretty dismal one in general with a great deal of upheaval (we had 4 different mailing addresses in 2004) and multiple simultaneous mostly domestic crisis to work through. It wasn't all bad news and misery though.

We relocated and bought our first house – a diamond in the rough of a classic 60's split-level. I found out I will be a dad again this April. I've became an uncle three times and a godfather of one as a bonus. Our first baby started kindergarten. The home team of our newly adopted turf won the world series – finally. The non-profit organization my wife helped found really picked up steam even though we were derelict in our duties. Perhaps most importantly, no deaths in the family (just one close call) and we all generally have our health.

Enough of the past though. I could just repeat all of last year's essentially, but I think a different go at it is needed.

• Take care of my health.

In addition to getting my fat arse back to the gym and eating better, I have a flotilla of medical professionals I've been putting off seeing. This is getting too important to blow off again because I'm not getting any younger.

• Balance coding and writing. (again)

This hasn't happened in the last two years, but I have some optimism because my first booked projects of the new year is a large all-writing assignment. I still have too many coding projects, but perhaps this will get me in the mood.

I think retooling how I communicate my thoughts and knowledge. When I started this weblog, it had more of a professional slant. Over time I wanted to write about personal and fun topics. I suspect this contributed to my near weblog paralysis these days – a lack of focus and purpose in what I was doing. I've been meaning to get my business site in order for some time and despite a lack of time and a yearning to relax, it is becoming very important on both a personal and professional level.

Technical writing isn't too far removed from what I do already. Writing for fun again would be nice. I've been threated to bring back the music and arts 'zine I used to run as a weblog and a digital music guide that never quite took off thanks to Napster/RIAA tussles and the bursting dot com bubble. How I miss those days. (sigh.)

• Seek Stability.

The past year was one of great change for us. The past 4 years before that were pretty rough also. I've come to realize that stability is a valuable commodity that I need to find and hopefully some normalacy will follow. It also should help me…

• Relax. Be Human.

All this work has made me dull and put a lot of strain on me and my personal relationships. I've been MIA to too many people for too long and have a lot of making up to do with friends, family and colleagues.

• Involvement.

I'm a board member of a non-profit organization called Friends of the Birth Center. For personal reasons I can't explain in this space, this organization and its cause means a great deal to me. I need to step it up a notch here.

Happy New Year all!