Category: Personal

Hitting a home run in a Chilean Mine.

~ rbonini

The capsule carrying a rescued miner arrives to the surface from the collapsed San Jose mine where he was trapped with 32 other miners for over two months near Copiapo, Chile on Oct. 13, 2010. (AP Photo/Roberto Candia)

(picture from the Big Picture Blog’s constantly updating post)

By now, everyone has seen the awesome pictures of the (currently on going rescue) of the Chilean miners.

The Phoenix capsule, built by the Chilean Navy and partly designed by Nasa is a remarkable feat of engineering. The fact that it works, not just the first time, but the 23nd time and counting is astounding.

As a programmer – where engineering software is my day job – it puts things into perspective.

Very little of what I write works the first time (or the 23nd time, for that matter). I can’t imagine what it would be like to have to engineer something that 33 lives (more if you count the rescuers who went down in the capsule) would depend on, never mind that little intsy bitsy requirement of having to work the first time. The pressure must be immense.

I take off my hat to those engineers.

Earlier this week I listened to Episode 5 of This Developers Life. The episode is entitled simply “Home Run.”

That and these awesome, moving, emotional, heart-wrenching scenes got me thinking.

The home run those engineers just hit out of the park (I’m mixing sports metaphors up here, aren’t I?) with the Phoenix Capsule will be told and retold as if they were Babe Ruth legends.

In truth, it is a feat far, far more awesome.

Coming to a realization

~ rbonini

I was doing some work last week with tropo, the cloud communications platform.

To start myself off, I did a quick IVR app – “Welcome to X, please press 1 for y….” etc.

That took a couple of days to get working properly. Literally, this is 5 lines of code with the Tropo C# API. And it took days.

But I got there in the end.

Then, the current screencast series is progressing well. I was reviewing things and it does seem that its getting a little slow and tedious. Episode 6, hopefully out tomorrow, may well be the most tedious.

But it struck me that there was something in common with both projects. Both are going slowly, tackling problems one step at a time.

In contrast, there are other projects of mine that promised loads, but never went anywhere. like my WHS2Smumug add-in. there reason was simple – I tried to do too much too quickly.

Thats somewhat the trouble with being a software developer. They say that genius is like lightening across the brain. And when I get an idea, I tend to see the whole thing, the entire feature set. I see all the plumbing required to get these things working, and before I know it, I’m immersed in a thousand and one technical details about standard and formats and API’s – to paraphrase the Big Bang Theory, its chaos in my head.

But because  I tend to do that too often, I bite off more than I can chew.

This screencast series has really slowed down the pace of development, forcing me to consider issues and problems one episode at a time. In a sense, I’m taking small bites and chewing them thoroughly.

Like writers and musicians, software developers need to find their own style, their own rhythm. I guess I’m still finding mine.

On the Value of Plans

~ rbonini

Now, bear in mind that as I write this, a few years ago I was absolutely sure my next big project was going to be a two-book science fiction series told as oral history, and even signed contracts to that effect, only to have Max Brooks come out with World War Z, and corner the market on science fictional oral histories. Two years ago, I was pretty damn certain that I’d be in the middle of a five-book YA series right about now, but then things fell apart when it came time to negotiate payment, so now that YA series lives in one of my office drawers. One year ago,Fuzzy Nation wasn’t on any publishing schedule anywhere, and now it is.

So when I say to you that I have book plans that stretch out through 2017, that doesn’t mean any of it will actually happen. It just means I have plans. However, plans are useful. You at least have some idea which direction you’re going.

–John Scalzi

Thought it was worth sharing.

Managing Feeds

~ rbonini

I was just adding some new feeds to Feedly. While this is not in itself a statement of earth shattering proportions, I did something I’ve never done before: I changed the title to reflect WHY I was subscribing to that feed.

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Frasier Spiers is doing this really cool thing with iPads at a school in Greenock, Scotland (just up the road from me, as it turns out) called the iPad Project. So i changed the title from “Frasier Spiers” to include “The IPad Project”. Now i can remember why I’ve subscribed to that feed.

Hopefully you can see where I’m driving with this. I’d love to have some formal way to remind myself what I’ve subscribed to a particular feed. Some feeds will be self explanatory, such as Scoble or Scott Hanselmann. But feeds from others less well known (or at all) such as Frasier are a tad difficult to remember.

Not sure what form this may take, but it would make life an awful lot easier.

In closing, it strikes me that twitter follows have much the same problem. But its entirely the wrong medium for requiring explanations when you follow.

Picture of the Day: Volcanic Sunsets

~ rbonini

The ash cloud (side note: the twitter hashtag was #ashtag – still makes me chuckle) a few months back did more than stop flights and ground passengers the world over. It gave photographers some brilliant sunsets.

Such was my luck that i never really managed to get out and shoot properly those few weeks.

However, I shot this out of my bedroom window, perched precariously on the window ledge.

Heres a wider angle:

From that set, I draw my current iPhone wallpaper as well:

I experimented with some manual focus and I’m sure you’ll agree, the result was excellent.

Feel free to use it too!

Quick thoughts on the AppleTv rumours.

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

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The rumours are:

  • Supposedly will be priced at $99 which isn’t too bad of a price
  • It will basically be a little, iPhone 4 without the phone or screen…
  • The insides supposedly will be iPhone 4 like:  A4 CPU, 16GB of flash storage
  • Supposedly can only handle up to 720p video
  • Apple will be officially changing the name of the device to iTV…

I just left this reply to this post on the GeekTonic blog discussing the AppleTv rumors that will not die.

Well… 1080i or p is only really viable if you have cable internet… and its a really small market. So 720p is pretty much a good bet as the default res.

I don’t care what anybody says – I ain’t streaming movies. Not with a 15gb fair use download cap. I’m getting a local copy of everything. Download once re-use all over the house. However, a 16Gb capacity is barely enough for the photos I have on the Apple Tv. Currently I play all my TV shows off the server rather than sync them. So while not being able to cache much content locally on the device, as long as i can download a copy to the server, I’m happy.

An App Store would be great – though I would assume it wouldn’t be backwards compatible with older AppleTvs – since it would require apps to be recompiled ( or even re-written) for the older hardware/CPUs.

The $99 price point is also awesome. It does open up the market. Its under the psychological $100 barrier – so people will be more likely to buy it.

The form factor is a persistent rumour – however I don’t see the logic of it. Given the clutter in the TV closet, there’s a real chance of me loosing it. However it will be a boon to those who already have too many set-top boxes in their Tv closets – look out for Steve to mention this prominently in any event. I still think its possible that Apple may keep the current form factor in some way.

However, unless the new Apple Tv ( or as you say, iTV) launches with some really awesome apps that will be worth the outlay of $99, I can’t see myself rushing out to buy one. Since we got satellite Tv installed with the accompanying HD-PVR a few weeks back, the use of the AppleTv has declined a lot – like 2 or 3 times a week as opposed to every day. Purchases sinc3e can be counted on one hand.
So a bit of a mixed reaction to this.

WHS – Setting up a VPN server

~ rbonini

I’m away on holiday next week and thought, like any good geek, I’d set up a VPN connection to my Windows Home Server.

The thing is that there are Add-Ins that will set up a VPN server for you.

However, by way of The MS Home Server Blog, there is a delightful little walkthrough that is remarkably simple.

This is for when the WHS console just won’t quite do it.

I configured my iPhone with the VPN details, and will probably just RDP in through it. I setup the laptop with it as well – so being able to work remotely now makes this little holiday a little less likely to be relaxing 🙂

I’ll let you know how it goes.

The difference between Facebook and Twitter

~ rbonini

I just left the following comment at Shel Isreal’s latest blog post (read it first – the comment makes more sense in context):

I’d sign up for that.

Facebook is too unpredictable for my tastes. Even though i have people constantly asking me to friend them on it.

Twitter is a good example of balancing users and advertisers interests. Their private accounts are private. And advertising is only now becoming more of a piece of twitters strategy (@earlybird, promoted tweets etc). However, it is not being done at the users expense. Its an explicitly opt – in thing.

In other words, Twitter has respected its users, working its business model around them.

In the end, everybody wins.

I think it makes sense. Any thoughts?