through sewell's eyes

Sites I Can't Live Without

2009-01-06T22:32:00.002-05:00

So, on TechCrunch posted their list of 2009: Products I Can't Live Without. I decided to evaluate websites that I visit on a regular basis and wouldn't know what to do if they didn't exist.

Google - do I have to explain this?
Facebook - connecting with old friends and relatives.
LinkedIn - business networking as well as understanding people's background.
Google Docs - helpful sharing documents with people.
Google Reader - a MUST have for reading blogs.
Google Analytics - great for understanding web traffic.
Meetup - helpful to find new clubs around NYC.
Wikipedia - great in researching/learning about things.
****** - my stock trading account.
****** - my banking account.
WSJ - I love reading business and finance news.
Hulu - great way to catch up on TV shows I miss.
Twitter - starting to become a big user of this service. Need some more followers --hint, hint.
booksmoothie - finding cheap books online (shameless plug)

First Post of 2009

2009-01-04T21:40:00.004-05:00

My first post of 2009. I have been quite negligent about my blog for the last few months of 2008. I hope that I will be able to post a little more regularly even if that just means one post per month.

Now since it is the beginning of the new year, I'm listing out the planned changes that will occur this year.

Love Life: I'll be getting married during the second half of the year. It will be an exciting day.
Health: Shed a few extra pounds, hopefully in time for the wedding.
Job/Financially: Something will happen in this area. Not exactly sure what, but definitely a big change is needed.

There is always going to be unexpected events that will occur during the course of the year, and plans always will need to be refocused.

How old do you have to be?

2008-08-02T10:05:00.001-04:00

If thirty isn't old enough, that what age is?

Off To China for Vacation

2008-08-02T02:20:00.004-04:00

Well, I'm off to China for vacation. I'm going to be in Beijing to see part of the Olympics -- that is going to be awesome! I'm trying to post some pictures while I'm there for people to view, assuming I can find Internet access. If I'm successful, you will be able to see them at http://flickr.com/photos/sewellt/tags/china.

Wish me luck.

Password Overloaded

2008-05-05T18:44:00.002-04:00

I've had it was passwords!

10+ passwords the various servers at work. 5+ passwords for various personal servers I maintain. My different email accounts have their own passwords. And don't forget the various other stuff I need to have passwords for: facebook, linkedin, google, yahoo, online banking and a whole mess of other online apps.

It just drives me nuts!!!!!!!!!!

Photos

2008-04-24T11:53:00.002-04:00

Recently, I have started posted various photos to Flickr. Here are a couple collections that have been posted up in the last couple of weeks.

Link to all my photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sewellt/

BarCampNYC3 Wrapup

2008-03-17T00:02:00.005-04:00

Got home from BarCampNYC3 and took a nice long shower.
I had an awesome time at the event. I learned a lot of new things and meet a lot of great people. I definitely will be attending other BarCamps in the future. In the coming days, I plan on putting up some of my notes from the different discussion topics I sat in on.

In the meantime, check out the pics on Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/barcampnyc3.

Off to bed now -- sleeping in a nice soft bed is going to be so much better than last night's Wunsch great looking HARDwood floors.

Time to dust off the C/C++ books

2008-03-06T13:32:00.004-05:00

With the announcements of iPhone SDK today, I'm definitely jazzed about doing some development for the phone just even if it for fun. Can you say 3axis accelerometer!! Now, I just need to get my Mac now...

Also, I noticed that the SQLite is going to be a core piece of the iPhone now. I wonder how that will affect Sybase's marketshare for their mobile db solution, SQLAnywhere, as well as their other mobile SDKs in the future. Chen maybe should chat Jobs up at the next Disney board meeting. =)

BarCampMoneyNYC 2008

2008-02-21T15:01:00.003-05:00

We finally set a date for BarCampMoneyNYC. Below is the PR blurb about it. As one of the organizers, we are looking for a couple sponsors for the event. If you are interested, give me a shout.

BarCampMoneyNYC 2008 is an ad-hoc gathering for the people who work in, cover or seek to revolutionize the finance industry to share and learn in an open environment will be held on Saturday April 12th, 2008 in New York City.

The event is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from all attendees focused on the trends and future of the Financial Industry. It costs nothing to attend, but there is a price: all attendees must lead a discussion, give a demo, a session, or help with one. With BarCampMoneyNYC based in the heart of the Financial Capital of the World, organizers expect a diverse group of individuals and companies from the Financial Industry to participate at this unique event.

BarCampMoneyNYC Event Details:
Date: April 12, 2008
Time: 9am - 5pm
Venue: Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, 1301 Avenue of the Americas (between 52nd & 53rd street), 40th Floor.

For more information, please visit http://barcamp.org/BarCampMoneyNYC

Webcomic - xkcd

2008-02-10T22:45:00.000-05:00

Recently someone introduced me to a web comic called xkcd. The comic deals with math, technology, love and other wacky topics. It is quirky but VERY, VERY enjoyable. Below are some of my favorites. Hope you enjoy them.

Geico
Sudoku
Pointers
Movie Seating
Donald Knuth
Open Source
Cat Proximity
Online Package Tracking
Compiling
Mattress
Couple

BarCampNYC3 - Registration

2008-01-27T21:59:00.000-05:00

BarCampNYC3's registration has commenced. Please register if you are interested in attending. It will be held at PolyTech, Brooklyn, NY on March 15th and 16th.

Don't know what BarCamp is, read it about here.

BTW, along with volunteering to help organize with BarCampNYC3, I'm also involved in organizing another BarCamp called BarCampMoneyNYC. BarCampMoneyNYC will be focusing on innovation within the financial industry; more information on that soon.

Eve of MacWorld '08

2008-01-15T00:43:00.000-05:00

As the world ~~patiently~~ anxious awaits Steve Job to give his keynote speech and tells the world the latest products that are streaming from Apple, I am somewhat undecided on whether I should get an MacBookPro or not for my next laptop.

I have been in need of a new laptop for the last few months. I have started to do some development work on my laptop again and realized that the 512MB of RAM IBM machine isn't going to cut it. I'm being holding off waiting for Apple to announce their refresh of MacBook Pro line before I decide what to get. But as I think about it more, I'm not really sure why I want a MacBookPro. We all know that Apple is kool and all that. What else?

MacOS has a really nice interface for applications and easy to use. Since I use the web/browser the most of my work, so it really doesn't matter what the base OS offers.

Form factor/design is the best. Totally agree with that, can't argue with that.

It runs unix. That is nice, but I'm happy with the command prompt that Windows offers.

With that said, I still will end up getting an MacBook Pro. I want to make it clear to myself, that the only reason to get one is to say that I own one and I'm drinking the Apply kool-aid.

Another Blog

2007-11-21T18:49:00.000-05:00

I started working on another blog, more specifically a tumblelog. With the amount of reading I do, I thought it should be put to good use somehow. This blog will still be active, since they serve kinda different purposes. Hopefully I'll update this blog soon. Let me know what you think.

Without further ado, I present Quick Eyes (http://quickeyes.tumblr.com)

Sybase, it's your turn.

2007-10-14T00:55:00.000-04:00

So, a few days ago I saw Oracle's offer to buy BEA. One of my first thoughts was to Sybase. Sybase is really in a unique place. It one of the last few independent software companies left. With SAP, Oracle and a small degree Microsoft and HP, trying to buy the major mid-size enterprise companies, Sybase is going to find it squeezed out of fortune 500 companies unless it goes on an acquisition rampage to bulk up on its offerings in terms of breath and depth -- a good application server, applications(ERP, CRM). Another option is really to look for a buyer for the company. A 2.5B dollar market cap isn't that much for SAP or someone to spend on a company. The wireless/mobile stack would probably be worth spending that much.

Anyway, what prompted this posting is this press release from a hedge fund. While I agree that the directors need to do something, I question spinning off the mobile assets. If they do that, Sybase will be only left with a database that doesn't have great growth, IMHO. In either case, Sybase, it's your turn. Roll the dice.....

Disclosure : I own a little bit of Sybase stock acquired when I was an employee

Startup Weekend NYC recap

2007-09-29T11:27:00.000-04:00

I had a blast. Coding marathons, learning about new stuff, and meeting new people was a great experience. While I probably preferred either of the other two apps -- fashion mashup/geocoding or internet scavenger hunt, the group decided on the Greatest Meals Facebook app idea -- FavorEats. And since I'm a team player, Full Steam Ahead...

With most of my work experience us been on the back end infrastructure stuff, watching and listening how the UI teams work together with web developers was eye opening.The initial requirements that came out of UE were probably for a 5 day project instead of a 1.5 day hackfest. There was definitely push back by the development team and requirements were cut. But I think anymore cutting probably would have rendered the app unusable.

On the developers side there was one guy who deserved the credit. Without him I thinks the startup would have been in huge trouble and had no chance to launch. He really knew what he was doing - architecting, back-end development, front end
design, sys admin. He was helping everyone else while still trying to keep us on schedule. [I was trying to keep up but I wasn't doing a good job. My java is rusty and I hate parsing XML Documents. And by Sunday night I was ready to throw my laptop off the table.] The development team had to break up into different groups learning about the piece that they were going to work on -- Facebook API/FBML, Facebook JS(FBJS), Spelling/Restuarant APIS, EC2. These were all new things to us since no one really had real experience with and we needed to learn and understand to some small degree before start coding the application.

One thing about developing on such short time frame, even the smallest mistake can cause havoc on the schedule. For example, when doing db design on a regular project, you get at least a night to think about it what you designed and make modifications as needed with any impact to anybody. However on SW, people need to start developing on that scheme right away; And if someone finds an issue with it, BOOM! - a chunk of code just went down the drain.

Unfortunately, we weren't able to get something out the door. I think everyone was burned out by Sunday night and just wanted to rest. I still want to push out a product, so we will see what happens.

Anyway, it was an awesome experience and something I would love to do again. Someone mentioned startup weekend 08
- definitely sign me up! A big thank you goes to Andrew Hyde for organizing it. I'm curious if you could wonder how you actually can turn it into a longer event -- I guess that would be a real Startup. =)

Links about startupweekend :
- Ryan's blog on SWNYC
- Andrew Hyde's recap
- Another recap with video -- you can see me in it, sort of!
- Flickr (mine isn't showing up)
- Startup Weeked NYC
- FavorEats

iPhone Review

2007-09-25T23:31:00.000-04:00

So I broke down and bought an iPhone . After having it for a little over 2 weeks. Here are my thoughts on it - all typed via the iPhone (cleaned up a little tho before posting).

Keyboard-non issue. took me about a day to get use to it still have some typos, bit it is a Non issue.

Spell checker- a pain in the ass! While it works, it gets in the way of typing.Wish there was a way to disable it.

Edge - very slow.the wifi helps but still you aren't always around a place to connect to.

Accelerometer- while it is a useful to be able to view the web via wide screen,it is too sensitive moving from portrait to landscape viewing mode. Every time I want for a page to load, I relax my arms/hands/wrists. this slight movement,triggers the screen to rotate. when trying to go back to portrait mode it isn't as sensitive and takes some twisting to trigger the accelerometer to change viewing mode.

Games-i just believe that apple didn't put any games on this thing!!!! Even the iPod Nanos have some.

Battery life- I get about 1.5 days on a charge-on what I think is medium-high usage on it. Based on what others PDA users experience the iPhone is an efficent user of the battery.

Phone- I'm not a big fan of how the phonecontact list works. While the interface is simple to use it actually makes my life harder. Scrolling to find names and numbers is quite cumbersome. Also, your favorite contacts are lists and not hot keys like on my previous phone so you have to switch to a specdic screen to call a favorite person.

SIM card- need to test out - see below.

Mail-very easy to use. Even loaded my gf's email account on the iPhone. When she wants to check her email she just enables her account and is able to access her mail via the iPhone mail interface( versus needing to load up safari and such).

Camera - the shutter is a bit slow which results is blurry pictures. I knewing going in that the camera didn't have a zoom feature,but I didst realize how much I was going to miss it.

Notes- love it! It let's me draft emails and blog postings (like this one) for both personal as well as work.

Safari- aside from the accelerometer, I haven't had any issues with it too much. Not having flash support is probably a good thing, since it is a huge download on the edge network.

Overall, I'm happy with what I the iPhone. I just wonder when version 2 will come out and what it will have -my predictions is jan with no 3g support.

Things that have happened since I got my iPhone :
- lost it on the subway (9/21 10:30pm) - don't get the speck belt clip for the iPhone!
- recovered my iPhone (9/22 3:00am)
- SIM card goes bad (9/25 7:00 pm)
- get SIM replacement ( hopefully tomorrow)

Startup Weekend Project Selection Advise

2007-09-25T09:53:00.000-04:00

I thinking about why Startup Weekend NYC wasn't able to launch the product into beta by Sunday. Everyone on Sunday was going full steam trying get it done, but alas it didn't happen. I think it was due to selecting a project that was a bit ambitious. The concept was a great one, but once you got beyond that, the functional and tech specs started to become a complex beast. [more in another posting -- wanted to get this out before the next Startup Weekend]

Advise when considering choosing a project:

Functional Specs: You should be able to list out all in 3 to 4 sentences OR even less.

Design Specs: If it takes more than about 6 sentences, you are in trouble.

People Skills: Ask who is actually coming back for Saturday and Sunday and their skills set and level.

Starting too much time on Facebook...

2007-09-24T23:20:00.000-04:00

and I don't even know why. So, if you are on Facebook, look me up.

Joining a new startup

2007-09-20T23:54:00.000-04:00

No, I didn't quit my current job. I'm got a ticket to an event called Startup Weekend in NYC - http://nyc.startupweekend.com

The concept is that a bunch of people (developers, sys admins, lawyers, PR, cooks, etc) get together on Friday night, come up with a idea, create a company and launch the product by Sunday night.

Sounds interesting? It is occurring in other cities as well - http://www.startupweekend.com.

I'm curious what we'll come up with. =)

Help Desk Ticket System

2007-09-12T23:03:00.000-04:00

I've been spending the last couple of days looking for a free and simple ticket/help desk system to use at the my company. Don't really need anything fancy, just a nice clean UI to take the customer information and track the issue.

Surprisingly I can't find anything that matches my criteria. I initally found a a RoR based system called SimpleTicket. Unforunately I found it a bit buggy to use and actually had to go in the db backend to get it working correctly(it assumes id =1 is your company and I had to add the record in there -- otherwise it just crashes). The code base is a bit dated as well and the company behind it seems hesitant about putting out a new release (per their blog).

I also looked at some other solutions, including PHP and Java based system but all the interfaces on them look pretty ugly and alot of dated projects. I'm starting to think I might just have to roll my own. I think that is what most companies end up doing so they can tailor it to their internal processes and system. The basic concept is pretty easy - name, contact info, product and description of the problem. I really don't want to go that way but might be a better overall solution as I could integrate it so that bugs can be directly added into the bug tracking/project management system. Maybe I can even convince my boss to let me open source as it.

iPod Touch ~= iTouch?

2007-09-05T16:24:00.000-04:00

iPod Touch. It is an iPhone UI/Touchscreen minus the phone part.

Now that we got that out of the way.... I was talking to my gf about the iPhone and iPod Touch that was released [ thinking about getting the iPhone now that they dropped the price $200] and she starts referring to it as the iPod Touch as the iTouch. I start thinking that iTouch actually probably would have been a better name for it. iPod Touch just seems to be just too long of a name. Just a thought.

Barcamp NYC ????

2007-08-03T10:45:00.000-04:00

Recently, I got interested in the barcamp . I had seen it before, but I didn't really have any interest in it so id didn't looked into at that point. But now that I'm interested in it, and want to go to one, there isn't any being held near me.

Grrr..

I'm hoping someone organizes one towards web2/related topics soon in NYC. The last one in NYC was about a year ago. Probably time to do another one -- hint, hint, hint (not sure who I'm hinting at tho). I want to attend and see how well it works. I would even be willing to help out.

Update (8/17/2007): BarCampNYC3 is in the planning stages.. Woohoo!

Facebook

2007-07-20T00:22:00.000-04:00

If you haven't heard of Facebook, then consider yourself completely out of the loop. You might have not have an account, but you probably read about it in some magazine or newspaper.

Did you know that about 50% of its users are above 25 years old? Granted most of its users are active college students, but in a few years once they graduate college, they are going to continue using Facebook to keep in touch with their friends from HS and college.

And now with their first acquisition, I wonder if are starting to take some of the wind out of Google's sail. Based on the information on Parakey, their product/service definitely fits the core Facebook audience (students). Being able to work on a document remotely and share it with multiple people (like on a class project) and then have it sync'd to your PC makes is an invaluable service to have. (it definitely would a great tool for business travelers as well.)

With students already logging into Facebook multiple times a day and now the Parakey acquistion, Facebook is turning into the "destination" site for web users. Does Google really care and just keep focusing on search or will they try to counter Facebook with their own FREE integrated platform? (currently it isn't)

No iPhone for me

2007-07-01T23:46:00.000-04:00

at least for now.... I spent this past weekend flipping and flopping about whether to get one or not. I played with it over the weekend at several AT&T stores and I love the interface. It is very fast and responsive and being able to take your finger and fling it to move to the next screen is so cool!. I even loaded up booksmoothie on one of them to see if the iPhone render the site correctly. And it does =)

So why didn't I pick one up? There are a few different reasons. One being is cost. Since I'm on a budget right now, I don't have that much spare cash at the moment. I rather save up to buy a new laptop soon. Since I will only consider a Thinkpad or an Apple machine, I need all the cash I can save.

Another reason is the missing features that I would to see on the iPhone.

Removable SIM card (so that I switch to a "junk" phone when the need arises)
Zoom in camera
3G
Word Processing software
GPS
Removable battery

I probably won't wait until all the features are added, but most of them probably need to get in place before I buy one. I hope that v. 2 will hit in on the mark.

But for the next few weeks, I'm going to be doubting my decision..........

Latest Update from Work

2007-06-18T23:49:00.000-04:00

Last week we launched the latest version of our core product, E-Board. We added some new features to the product as well as migrated it to a new platform (RoR). The new platform will make it easier for us to roll out updates/new features to the product on a regular basis. The new release took about 3 months and near the end there was a few long nights to get things completed on time. (What project doesn't have a crunch period?) It was well worth it since we were able to announce the product launch at a convention and got some great feedback on the launch.

Also, we finally revamped the company website and created a Monetary System blog as part of the launch of E-Board v3.0.