You may remember me blogging about wanting a Chumby day before yesterday.  Well, I couldn't resist and I ordered one, a latte one.  Then last night I get a shipping notification, my Chumby has shipped.  So of course I click through to the tracking page on UPS.  I guess I've just never seen an item direct shipped from Shenzhen, China, but there it was 7:18 PM today (wait, that's the future) it departed.  Come to think of it this makes two firsts, I've never had something from the future.   Here is the UPS tracking page:

The New York Times has an article about the basics of blogging and some tips from the 'pros'.  I want to score a link to my blog on the New York Times site.  I guess I should put some ads up if I'm going to Mahir like that. (Don't remember the verb to Mahir.  Well, I blogged about it here)

So You Want to Be a Blogging Star?

By PAUL BOUTIN
Published: March 20, 2008

Successful bloggers with successful non blogging careers offer ways to think about getting into the business of blogging.

This actually is pretty straight forward and interesting. If I were to add my own tip, which is something that really helps me keep up a regular pace, it would be:

Post Ahead - When I have time to compose a couple posts I'll take one of them and kick it out into the future.

By posting ahead I can keep up my pace and also have "new post insurance" where I can skip a day or two and keep you on the line. This also gives me the ability to publish a longer post midweek when I usually have time for as I slog my way through the week

To keep this all above board, I st-borrowed this photo from The Whole Enchilada: Thoughts on life, work, tech & biz and the whole enchilada.

This issue is really close to my heart right now, and I thought I'd pass along what I am reading on Get Rich Slowly.

The advice in the Ask Metafilter thread seems very practical:

• Don’t take it personally. Many commenters noted that employees can lose their jobs for any number of reasons unrelated to performance and ability. Try not to let your job loss eat at your self-esteem.
• Don’t panic. Any sudden life change can seem like the end of the world. It’s not. Take time to breathe. Gather your wits and move forward.
• Maintain network connections. Reach out to your professional and social networks for support. You may not find a job through them, but you may be able to derive other benefits.
• Buckle down financially. When you lose your job, it’s especially important to practice sound personal finance. Cut any unnecessary recurring expenses. Watch the discretionary spending. Make a budget.
• Job hunt methodically. Take your time. Don’t just take the first job you’re offered. Look for a situation that will draw upon your strengths, a job that will make you happy.
• Be open to change. If you live in a rural area, you may need to move closer to a city to find work. If you were working in a career that is disappearing (videotape duplicator?) then explore new lines of work.
• Consider becoming a consultant. Depending on your career, freelance consulting work may be a viable option. It could at least provide some temporary income while you look for long-term employment.

-from Get Rich Slowly

They make mention of this in the post, but It is worth bubbling up.  A really (some might say "the") great book on finding a job is What Color Is Your Parachute? 2008: A Practical Manual for Job-hunters and Career-Changers.  I as a matter of practice get a new copy every few years. And, I'm thinking I'm about due. The author, Richard Nelson Bolles, does a really good job of cutting through the FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) about how to look for a job and what approaches work best. Since looking for a job is always a transitory state for most folks, we all tend to doggy paddle frantically to then next job and not pay too much attention to the mechanics of looking for a job. Bolles brings a lot of information about the process of finding a job to light, both from the employer and employee point of view, in a clear methodical (numbers driven) way that eases the mind. And, while you will never feel like you're in control of the situation entirely, it's always easier to at least feel like you have a grasp of the mechanics of your current situation is. All right, now back to cowering under my desk in fear.

A friend of mine writes the blog A Cannoli in Seattle which is lots of fun.  She had this post a bit ago that I thought was just fiction.  Well, after some checking, turns out its an account of recent events (but it sure reads like a story).

"Jessica? Did you want me? Are you ok?" she said as she rounded the corner to find her roommate collapsed on the couch - half sitting with her upper body half laying on the cushion next to a large bowl twice the size of her face.

"I threw up in the peanuts..." Jessica murmured in a faint whine. "It's rather tragic."

I was rolling with laughter. Have a look.

Okay, I'm trying to to gush here cause my wife only emailed me this about 30 minutes ago and I'm in love.  I'm sure she saw the appeal from a lot of angles, not the least of which is I use my cell phone as an alarm clock and it has an annoying alarm sound. What I'm gaga for is the Chumby and I've really on begun to investigate.

I'm not going to last the week without ordering one.  Here is what Small Space Living (where my wife found it) has to say about it:

Chumby is tricky device to classify. There are not many other devices that have the multifunction of Chumby.
Chumby is a small Wi-Fi compatible device with a 3.5 inch touch screen and a soft leather case. The Chumby is intended to replace your clock radio. But to call it a clock or radio would be so short sighted. It can be loaded with a number of widgets — the list grows daily.
There is no end to the multifunction goodness of Chumby. The Chumby can be a clock or an internet radio. It can track EBay auctions or display photos form your Flicker account.
The device sells for $179, which is the hardware break-even point for the manufacturers. It’s an unusual thing for a manufacturer to sell a product for no profit, but the intention is to make money by selling advertising on the Chumby units.
Chumby could fit well into your small space life — it’s little and has a multitude of uses.

I've created a virtual Chumby here to get a animated look see. But you really should click through and see what their site shows about this little sucker.

Just FYI, I have no association or relationship what so-ever with the Chumby, I'm just loving the concept

A bit ago I blogged about my unfounded theory that the writer's strike was good for online advertising as television watchers, short of options, would turn increasingly to the Internet for their content.  Well, Silicon Alley Insider has a post about how surveys show "TV Viewer Ready to Come Back"

Survey: TV Viewers Ready To Come Back

Michael Learmonth | March 18, 2008 11:41 AM

Remember how the writers strike was going to change everything -- beginning with viewers' TV habits? Think again, says media agency Carat: A survey of TV watchers this week says 95% are ready to resume their old schedules as new shows come back on the tube.

But surely some people have abandoned their remote control for their mouse, right? Maybe, says Carat: Of the 5% of viewers totally turned-off by TV, a whopping 11% said they'd be watching more shows online.

One grain of salt: For the TV business, this is an unusually optimistic report. TV ratings have been in steady decline for years, and that only accelerated during the strike. Given that ratings for ABC, CBS and NBC dropped by double-digits during the strike, reclaiming 95% of its pre-strike audience would be great news

If you're really looking to dig in there is a related interview piece with Avenue A/Razorfish SVP Jeff Lanctot which picks up on his assertion that "the strike ended before there was any significant wholesale shift. It sort of ended just in time". The interview goes on to talk about Avenue A/Razorfish's new owners Microsoft (MSFT).  It's worth a read and it's fairly short.

So, I guess according to the Surveys I was wrong, but I guess according to the salted answer, I might not have been too wrong.

Turns out the web IS a small world.  A few years ago when Jonk and I started working together he read this blog forgetfoo.com (NASFW).  Over the last few years we've started referring to the content of Foo's site as 'Web Tits'.  It's sort of a mash-up of web tips and, well, tits. 

So, a couple weeks ago I run into Dylan at Mix08 (under miscellaneous) who works at ClearSpring with Foo.  I mentioned to him that I read Foo and that we referred to his site as 'Web Tits'.  He got a kick out of it and obviously passed the word along because Foo threw down a little shout out (Not entirely safe for work).

Actually, a few years ago when I was interviewing for my job, the last person I interviewed with was a Vice President of Engineering.  He asks a simple yet tough question, "What do you read to get your information about new technology and or web trends?"

Seems innocuous enough, but you'd be surprised how many engineers freeze up or have no answer at all.  Well, not me.  I actually cited Foo's blog as one of the places where I get design inspiration and tidbits about what's hot on the web.  Then I proceeded to navigate the veep over to Foo's blog having not seen what the current post was.  Don't remember what it was that day, don't think it was tits, but I got hired.

And before I forget, top set of tits.

The Saitz has an interesting post about how a tribute video to his deceased dog Cookie got picked up in the YouTube copyright dragnet and how he dodged doing hard time in the hoosegow.

He does it better than I could so leap on over then roll on back for my two cents.

I guess I knew that they were doing some form of copyright violation trolling over there, but it never occurred to me what that might mean.  It has to be automated right, they can't possibly have offshore low wage workers watching YouTube videos that can identify what pop song has been stolen.

I remember that Verizon launched a music recognition service on their phones using software Song IDentity by Rocket Mobile.  You remember the cheese ball commercials where a chick is walking by a store blaring music out the front, holds up her phone for 10 seconds (I think they shortened the time for the commercial - I mean 10 seconds in a commercial of someone doing one thing, no way).  Her phone recognizes the song, she downloads it to her phone (who thought that service would be a good idea? - maybe I'm just in the wrong demographic) presses play and walks away the song magically picking up where it left off from the store.

This stuff is all circa 2006.  Actually, there is a CNET article about same (YouTube, your copyright and Google, by Harry Fuller; October 2006) that is somewhat interesting about how they were looking to automate this (sure I could find an article that is more recent, but isn't it interesting what they were planning to do and where they are now).  What I find fascinating is the database and processing power you'd need to scrub all the incoming videos to YouTube. 

More to the point, let's say I post a video today with a song by my favorite artist Raffi which is not in the You-Can't-Use-My-Work database when I upload it.  Then two months later Raffi gets wise and adds his stuff to the You-Can't-Use-My-Work database.  Does YouTube continually re-scan the massive library of videos looking for new violations as their database grows.  I'm guessing they must.  Well, I'm going to a talk on MapReduce next week - maybe I'll find some answers there.

Thanks for the inspiration Ben.

Smashing Magazine had a tidbit about HDR. They do it best so I'll let them give it to you:

Applied carefully, High Dynamic Range-technique (HDR) can create incredibly beautiful pictures which blur our sense of the difference between reality and illusion. In graphics HDR imaging is a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to the deepest shadows. This is usually achieved by modifying photos with image processing software for tone-mapping. And the results can be really incredible; in fact, many artists and designers come up with some pretty fancy results.

I keep coming back to look at the pictures because they appear both totally false and too real.   Here is one.  Be sure and click through and check out the ones they have in the post.

This post is long, but I've divided it up into sections so if you're only curious about specific portions you can find information, or you can consume a section at a time.  Otherwise, charge ahead.  I've tried to keep it compact and dense.

Keynotes:

Both Keynotes were good, but the Ballmer interview was the highlight. Now that I've had a few days to let my thoughts coalesce I am more impressed by Ballmer. Ballmer spoke with candor about key subjects to the future of Microsoft. Noam pointed out how impressively Ballmer answered audience questions about fine details of Microsoft's operations.  Another poignant moment was when Ballmer, addressing the crowd of software developers directly, said "I know you have a lot of choices out there.  Please pick us."  Reuters picked up the story of the keynote if you're looking for a quick upshot.

Sessions:

I did pretty well session wise this year, no real stinkers.  Here is what I attended with links (if it's worth seeing).  Here is a link to the Mix08 sessions page if you want to explore on your own.

Remember when I blogged about the LED Light bulb and the Airzooka? Well, for Valentines day this year my wife got me an Airzooka - Yes, I married the right woman. Well, we've(read I've) been using it to torment our intern and my co-workers. It's really pretty fun to shoot at someone and score a direct hit. (Thanks for being a sport Hunter).

Hunter, as the good intern he is, has found someone who has taken this idea to the next level

Good job Hunter!

Okay, that's really just a hook to get you in the door. Let me complete my thought:

TDD is total crap if you don't really do TDD, but get stuck on Faux-TDD

In the last four weeks the project I'm working on has grown from 3 libraries to 12 (it's probably a bit bloated).  It has gone from 30% unit test coverage to about 75% unit test coverage.  (The white-papers I've skimmed more or less say 70% to 80% is good and that getting above that is not cost effective unless you're writing fighter-jet or medical device software.)   We're successfully implementing an MVP based on the in-depth work Vijay did looking into approaches.  We are coding against interfaces not implementation classes, using an IOC tool and writing unit tests using a mocking framework.  And, most importantly, we're trying really hard to implement TDD.

I'm going to go ahead and say, we've done everything we can in he way of employing tools and patterns to make TDD happen - save one thing: writing tests before we code.  This is kind of the classic Software Engineer response: learn a tool, get some numbers, bang some stuff out to get it going.

Dinner at Telly's, originally uploaded by astoriahermit.

Had dinner tonight at Noam's favorite Greek joint in astoria. The whole red snapper was great. You win Noam, your greek place is better.

Telly's Taverna
2813 23rd Ave
Astoria, NY 11105-2707
Phone: (718) 728-9056