Time for a change

Well, I am now in the closing hours of my last day of work at my current job. It's been a challenging role and I have learnt a huge amount about the finance industry.

Looking forward to the future fills me with a huge amount of excitement mixed with a little bit of nervousness. It's not every day you give up a well paying job, pack up your life and move country. I have no doubt that the next year will be full of challenges, but I am really looking forward to it all. I can't wait to build my business into New Zealands best shopping comparison site.

But first, before anything else, I think it's time for a holiday!

BeforeYouBuy is online!

After a long time and a huge amount of hard work BeforeYouBuy is finally live! I'm very proud of what we've achieved and excited about what the future holds.

We've got an almost endless list of enhancements and improvements already, but the site is pretty usable and functional already.

It's been a great journey, learned a lot of new tricks, tackled a fair bit of new technology and hit more than our fair share of challenges. Now that we're finally online expect to see a few more posts. We're always interested in any feedback you might have too!

World continues to go mad but at least retains a sense of humor

A friend pointed this out to me the other day.



At first glance you'd either be inclined to shake your head at the depressing state of childrens toys today, or more likely dismiss it out of hand.

Instead head over to Amazon and check out the tags and reviews people have added to this product.

Absolutely priceless.

Amazons DRM free MP3s

A couple of nights ago I finally found some time to check out Amazon's new MP3 service and so far I'm pretty impressed.

No DRM

My interest in the Amazon MP3 service was piqued when I discovered all their tracks are DRM free (unlike some other crippled offerings). The songs are encoded at 256 kbps which is a pretty respectable bit rate.

Linux support!

I got even more excited when I went to the getting started page and in the "Buy and Download" section they mention they have a Linux version of their Amazon MP3 Downloader application. And they haven't gone for some budget "one size fits all" Linux solution, but they have binaries for most of the major distros.



It's really encouraging to see this sort of first class support for Linux by companies like Amazon.

What if I'm running 64 bit linux?

If like me you are running the amd64 build of your distro you will need to convince Amazons MP3 Downloader to run against 32 bit libraries. If you use Ubuntu then I suggest the excellent getlibs tool for installing your 32 bit dependencies. After you've downloaded the Ubuntu deb file, install it using:

sudo dpkg -i --force-all amazon*.deb

Then install the 32 bit dependencies with getlibs:

getlibs /usr/bin/amazonmp3

It's dangerously easy to use

Amazon certainly seem to have a great range of music on offer. To test things out I purchased

Shakatakadoodub

Shakatakadoodub

by Kruder & Dorfmeister using 1-click. The 3 track EP cost me £2.37, you can get full albums for around £6-7 (or $9-11 US). The Amazon MP3 Downloader is a simple but effective app downloading Shakatakadoodub to my machine in a matter of seconds. From there it was a simple job to import into Banshee. One mouse click was all it took to purchase and download a DRM free EP!

I'm a happy camper

Overall I'm really impressed with this offering and can't understand why it hasn't had more press. It amazes me that people stick with crippled solutions like the iTunes store when you have a DRM free alternative like this available. I know where I'll be buy my music from now...

Amazon MP3 Downloads

SpaceX Falcon 9 progress

Very excited to see SpaceX's progress on the assembly of their Falcon 9. Let's hope they enjoy as much success with the Falcon 9 as they have recently had with the Falcon 1.

Just for fun, here's the highlights of launch 4 again:

We're typists first... really?

I read Coding Horror on a semi regular basis, and generally Jeff has a pretty engaging writing style and his posts are fairly interesting. I was really surprised when I read this one though.

Jeff ascertains that "We are typists first, and programmers second".

Well, I vehemently disagree. While typing ability is obviously important in the job and a necessary skill, saying that we are typists first places very little value on the technical skills required of programmers to do their job well (not to mention the years at university most of us have spent earning our Computer Science degrees, Masters and in some cases PhD's!).

Personally I don't even like the label "Programmer". I feel it undervalues the skills I have. Software Engineer is far more accurate description of the job most of us do. Writing a non-trivial application these days requires an understanding of many challenging concepts.

Todays Software Engineers need to consider concurrency issues, network theory, efficient persistence mechanisms, efficient search algorithms (the volume of data we are dealing with is growing exponentially), but to name a few.

Let's not sell ourselves short by calling ourselves programmers.

Returning to Jeffs' typists first allegation though, one comment on his post summed it up nicely for me:

I’ve always really liked your blog Jeff, but this is a BS post

Thoughts?

The Big Bang Theory, the best thing on TV right now?

If you haven't yet seen The Big Bang Theory you should make an effort to rectify the situation immediately. It really is an excellent show based around intelligent witty humor rather than cheap laughs and tremendously funny.

The story focuses around two ubergeeks, Leonard and Sheldon and how their life changes when they meet Penny their new "normal" (and very pretty) neighbor. I love the fact that the show celebrates the geeky, ultra intelligent side of their characters and although most of the laughs come from their lack of ability to deal with normal every day social situations, the writers do it in such a way that is funny without making Leonard and Sheldon the butt of every joke.

The Big Bang Theory manages to mix in enough scientific content and references to keep us geeks happy while still being incredibly watchable and entertaining for those with less of a penchant for things science.

Check out a few snippets from the first show of season one:



If you haven't seen season one it's already out on DVD, grab your copy now, you won't be disappointed!

Why new website startups fail?

I've been under an enormous amount of self induced stress lately due to the fact that my startup business still isn't online. This is due to a number of contributing factors of course, but it got me thinking about some of the reasons why it's taken so long.

Manage Scope: Trying to do to much too soon

It would be my guess that a large number of failed business (particularly online ventures) are guilty of this one. If nothing else this experience has taught me that you need ensure your initial offering constitutes a realistic amount of work. You can then build on that by making small incremental improvements adding features and new offerings to your business over time with much less effort than trying to do it all in one go.

By all means, have a grand all encompassing vision, in fact I'd almost consider this a prerequisite, but break it down into realistic bite size deliverables. To make a software analogy; you want to take a rapid iterative development approach rather than attempt a huge waterfall model project.

It doesn't have to be perfect

There is always a tendency with geeks (myself included) to try and engineer the best, most flexible, and high performance solution first time round. Unfortunately this flies in the face of getting a new business off the ground. As a new start up you have limited time and money and you can't afford to waste either trying to come up with the "ultimate solution".

Any coder worth their salt is going to try and anticipate performance bottle necks and design and develop their software to avoid potential pitfalls. However you've got to keep your focus on the goal of delivery at all times and not get trapped in refining and improving your product without delivering. It doesn't matter if you have the best website in the world if no-one can use it because it isn't online yet!

Don't forget the business

Project planning, it's not fun and certainly not something most geeks enjoy. Unfortunately it is absolutely necessary to make your new business a success. You need to have a clear idea of what your deliverables and deadlines are, and what your outstanding tasks are at all times. There isn't much point getting to the end of development, having built an outstanding best of breed product and suddenly realising you don't have a company set up, bank accounts, tax registration, contracts, lawyers, accountants and all the other mundane things that are prerequisites to running a business.

Are you trying to get a tech startup off the ground? Do you have any advice for other would be entrepreneurs?

Starting your own business is hard

No one said it would be easy

Along the way you will encounter all sorts of barriers, obstacles and challenges and you are going to have to dig deep to find the drive to carry on.

So when your server blows up, someone you were planning to partner with vanishes of the face of the Internet without warning, a new competitor beats you market, you're working ridiculous hours, and everything looks like it's going pear shaped - remember why you are doing it.

Why are you doing it?

That is a really important question. Be honest with yourself before you start, if your only motivation is money then you probably going to struggle. There are all sorts of reasons people have for wanting to start their own business, change of lifestyle, want to prove they can, the desire to share a really good idea.

I'm still on the journey, but if all I had to pull me through was the desire to make a buck I'd probably have given up by now.

Still, I plan on making plenty of bucks!

Who wouldn't want to be Iron Man?

Or more specifically Tony Stark, I mean come on - the guy has everything a geek could dream of!

I saw the movie last night and although the super hero story and the wow factor of the suit definitely captured my imagination, my slightly geekier side couldn't help but be almost equally impressed by stuff that would have slipped into the background for most of the audience.

Take Tony's bachelor pad for example, how cool is that bedroom? Wake up in the morning and as you step out of bed, your room senses that you're getting up and throws up the news, weather, your daily calendar on transparent screens built into massive windows while simultaneously filling you in verbally on the really important stuff - that's cool. In fact, I thought it was so cool I did a little research thinking maybe there's a fun project there, but alas it seems that transparent display technology is still a few years away yet.

But wait, what about that workshop? It was rammed full of enough hi-tech toys to make any geek wet their pants. A robotic arm that you can give verbal commands to - awesome. A holographic 3d modelling tool - yikes!

The really neat thing is that some of this stuff really isn't that far off at all. Of course we are going to be waiting a wee while before we have a fully integrated AI in our homes...

A fun weekend.

Well another work week has begun but I had quite a fun weekend so am OK about getting stuck back into it at work. On Friday night Bruce and I watched Alien and Aliens back to back. These are possibly two of the greatest Sci-fi movies ever made. We did Aliens 3 on Saturday night, but didn't quite manage to complete the set. Well, I guess there's always next weekend for the Resurrection!

On Sunday afternoon Anthea and I visited the London Zoo. Now I'm a firm believer that Zoo's not only have their place but are absolutely essential to the continued existence of so many of the wonderful creatures on this planet. It was great to see the breding programmes are having a positive impact and are literally bring a number of the species that I saw back from the very edge of extinction. Hopefully one day those species will thrive in the wild again, but for that to happen their natural habitats must first be protected from deforestation and poaching. I took a few photos although I didn't have time to look at any of them last night. I might post a couple here if any of them turned out OK.

Been a busy boy

Well, so much for my good intentions to start blogging again pre Christmas. Life has been crazy busy as usual and this always seems to be one of the first things to drop off the list. I am hopefully on my way to being more productive now thanks to my new strategy for Getting Things Done. I'm only really part way towards fully implementing this program but I do feel that it's already helping me keep more on top of things.

We had a great trip around Paris, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast with my folks for Christmas. I am hoping to get the photos up on www.jamesfitzsimons.com soon.

I've been concentrating hard on my secret website project of late. I'll let you know more about the purpose of the site in the future when it's ready to launch, but for now lets just say it's great to get back into web development. I've been really enjoying playing with some of the new features of ASP.NET 2.0 (using Mono of course) and have also been discovering the magic of nHibernate. I hope to make more posts about the specifics of that in the future.

One of my recent discoveries while searching for information on some aspect of web development has been http://tropicalseo.com. This guy has some really interesting points to make about Search Engine Optimisation, but also about aspects of web site management in general. Oh, and it probably helps that I "share the dream"!

After a short break

On the train on the way back from a weekend in Stratford-upon-Avon and decided I have been remiss in neglecting my blog for so long. I often get overwhelmed by the pace of life in London and things like blogging seem to quickly drop of the list of priorities, however the other day while reading back over some of my past entries I realised that it is an important record for me as well as a way of keeping in contact with distant friends and family.

Anthea and I have certainly been very busy this year, and when I reflect back on what we have done this year I realise it has probably been the most social year of our lives, combined with the most travelling we have ever done - and for me at least - one of the most challenging working years of my career. I am very proud of what we have achieved this year and although I am very tired and desperately looking forward to our Christmas break I wouldn't have had it any other way. My goal now is to try and figure out how to fit more into next year!

I have been neglecting my vision project over the last few months. Making small progress by picking at it whenever I've had some spare time. What hasn't helped is that a couple of months ago I decided to build a Mythtv box to record the hockey (since most of it is screened in the middle of the night). This has turned out to be a far far more challenging task than I anticipated and has consequently stolen time from my other projects. The good news is that the end is finally in sight and I will hopefully have a stable system running in the next week or two.

I have spent some of this weekend reading the chapter on Structure Computation in my computer vision text. Essentially working out how to reconstruct a 3D scene from stereoscopic information. I think I understood most of it on first reading - which testifies to the fact that a lot of the revision work I have been doing on linear algebra has paid off. My plan is to implement a naive algorthim first, and once that is working refine it with an optimal (and much more challenging) solution. It is still my hope that once I have the reconstruction phase working the rest of the project will progress along very quickly. I am still amazed at how difficult the elementary concepts of computer vision are. I really had no idea of what I was getting myself into when I started this project.

bring on the weekend

I think I've just about hit the wall. I am feeling really run down at the moment and the last couple of days I've been sick with a nasty head cold - which is odd when you consider it's about 30 degrees outside. I think this is my bodies way of telling me I need some time out. This weekend Anthea and I are planning a very quiet weekend in London. I'll probably just sit down with my book and take it easy. I might do some hacking - I'll see how I feel. I should really get my monodevelop patch finished and submitted soon.

Over the last couple of days I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu dapper on my laptop and configured xgl. Man it is really cool! I'm loving the eye candy and am thinking about how some of that cairo/opengl goodness could be used in some other apps like f-spot for example. Maybe one of these days I'll have a chance to play with it.

life in the fast lane

Been a busy week so far and Anthea and I are off to Porto for the weekend tomorrow. Really looking forward to what will hopefully be a relaxing trip out of London. I'm planning on bringing back more than a couple of bottles of port as well ;-)

We went to Ben Harper on Tuesday night. It was a really amazing gig and he played for 2 1/2hrs which is pretty much unheard of these days. I would definately see him again if I have the opportunity.

I got some really good feed back on my MonoDevelop patch from Lluis. I got most of the bugs fixes finished on Monday evening, but he also suggested a couple of cool new features so I probably won't get the next version of the patch ready until next week now. I'm still hoping to have it submitted before I go to LugRadio live the following weekend. There's no hope of doing any work on f-spot in the near term though.

ask a busy man?

Well I managed to get some hacking done over the weekend. Spent the most of the time working on my website project. I have almost finished the user management stuff now. Took me a while to get my head around getting Mono, MySql and NHibernate all playing nice togeather but I am there now. I will probably do a post on that sometime soon as there are a couple of gotchas that would have been nice to know before I started so I figure I might be able to save someone else some time. I really need to get hacking on f-spot and monodevelop though. I wanted to get the features I'm working on for those two projects submitted before I go to Lugradio live and I am fast running out of time.

We managed to find a new housemate over the weekend which is great. It's one less thing to worry about and she seems like a really cool person.

Off to see Jet Li in Fearless tonight so I'm hoping that will be good. Anything's got to be better than the worst movie ever which I saw last week.

Looking forward to a quiet weekend

This will be the first weekend in ages that Anthea and I haven't been going away. I am really looking forward to chilling out, watching a bit of the football and maybe doing some hacking on the various projects I find myself working on these days. I also have nearly 1,000 photos from our recent trips to sort and label so that will certainly keep me busy. Perhaps it won't be such a quite weekend after all!

We are in the midst of interviewing prospective new housemates at the moment. Unfortunately (for us) Kirsty has been offered an amazing job back in South Africa and so will be leaving us at the end of July. Hopefully the next person we get will be as cool and friendly as all the previous inhabitants of that room!

back to blogging?

So it's been a long time since I blogged my last entry here. If I ever did have any readers I guess they are all long gone... Life has just been sooo busy over the last few months that I haven't had time to even think about blogging let alone actually put aside 5 mins to write an entry. In fact I've done almost no hacking over that time either. Summer arrived in London with a vengence and Anthea and I have been taking full advantage with the busiest social schedule I can recall us having since we were students. We have also been doing loads of travelling with trips to Morocco, Isle of Wight, Amsterdam, Brussels, and this weekend Leeds. In fact I am actually writing this entry on the train on the way back to London. GNER have wifi on their trains now and I took full advantage of a free trial on the way up. It was very cool to be able to hack on f-spot and download a bunch of ubuntu updates for my laptop while sitting on the train to Leeds!

Hopefully over the next few weeks I'll be able to find a few hours to do some hacking. I have a bunch of things on my todo list. I still want to get my compare view for f-spot finished. I have changed track on that one a little bit so hopefully with have some screen shots and a patch ready soon. I also want to rewrite my class browser patch for Monodevelop and get that submitted. I think it will be really useful and as I use Monodevelop a bunch myself these days it would be cool to be able to say that I contributed something useful to that project. I also have a website which I am building. That has a bit of a timeline but it's still a bit top secret so no more details on that just yet. Finally just for kicks I downloaded the latest version of dashboard from CVS on Saturday and built that on the train on the way up to Leeds. I really like what they are trying to do there so I might try and get involved in that project at some stage too.

Not too much planned this week other than a gig on Saturday night and some friends for dinner Wednesday so we'll see, might even catch up on some sleep!