August 24, 2008 at 8:55 pm · Filed under General
I have a tendancy to take the path of least resistance. The middle of the road is where I’m most comfortable, so that’s where I tend to stay. When I buy something, it’s never the most expensive and never the least expensive. Why we built our first house, it was designed in shades of brown. In Street Fighter, I was always Ryu. With a few exceptions I’ve avoided risk whenever possible. Recently though, a few people in my life have exemplified the value of risk and it’s got me thinking.
The first is a coworker. He left Statusfirm to pursue his own ambitions. On the risk spectrum, leaving your job to pursue your dreams has to be right up at the top. Yet, to me at least, not following through is the bigger risk. There is certainly a lot to be said for a safe corporate job. It’s easy enough to sit back, receiving regualar paycheques, and watch the world go by. It’s easier still to sit on an idea and, years later when someone else does it, think to yourself “that could have been me, that was my idea. I should be a millionaire.” There’s no risk there, just self-pity and remorse. Chance are you would have failed had you tried, so it’s far safer to sit back gathering paycheques and waiting for someone else to try on your behalf. Failing is hard, and blaming others for following through on your idea is far too easy.
The other is my buddy Sean. Sean quit school, and moved from Edmonton to Vancouver to pursue his dream of making it in a band. School wasn’t making Sean happy, but had he continued on he could have comfortably passed (he had a high GPA). He could have easily gotten a safe job. He could have easily spent evenings strumming an acoustic, writing silly songs and wondering “what if.” There’s no shame in that, it’s what most sane people choose. But Sean chose to risk it all on the hope that he could find true happiness doing what he loved. It wasn’t easy (it still isn’t) and the chances of success are truly dismal. Yet, when Sean’s old and decrepid and he thinks back on his life, he’ll be able to say “I did everything I could to be happy, and chose an exciting life over a safe one.”
There’s nothing wrong with safety. There’s nothing wrong with seeking stability and going down the easy road. It’s how most people live their life. Sure you miss out on the highest of highs, but you never have to face the lowest of lows; for most of us that’s a fair trade. But I tend to reflect on the risks I’ve taken.
I chose to move to Edmonton, by myself, and stay in Canada while my parents went to live in Australia. My first time living away from home was in a strange city, and my safety net lived on the other side of the planet. I did this because I was in love with a girl. Such a silly, stupid thing to do. She even had a boyfriend; a surefire recipe for heartbreak if there’s ever been one.
I chose to drop out of the University of Alberta, to leave behind a few years of an Engineering degree because I knew it wasn’t what made me happy. I did this much to the chagrin of my parents, my extended family, and the Dean of the Engineering Faculty. It was unanimous that dropping out of school and forsaking a promising career was a really bad thing.
The girl did break my heart, and I probably broke hers. I ended up with a job I hated, making $12/hour (slightly more than my previous job at a grocery store). There were times when I thought to myself “this is too hard; I’ve made the wrong decision.” But I married that girl, and I love her with all of my heart. I’m passionate about what I do for a living, and I’ve managed to parlay it into a fairly successful career.
So while I tend towards the middle, without risk what would I have? Security? Safety? A different life, in a different world. The risks I’ve taken are the things that have made me the happiest. The risks that I’ve taken define who I am. So thanks to Sean and Ryan for reminding me that sometimes it’s worthwhile to gamble on happiness - even if the world thinks you’re crazy for doing so.
August 11, 2008 at 9:45 pm · Filed under General
A recent trip to Subway has left me with no doubt as to my lot in life. As part of a new contest we can win instantly with Subway Scrabble! Lucky me, instead of a free cookie I was presented with a learning moment:
Hey, thanks Subway… good to know that I’m not “winner” material. I’ve never had a fast food restaurant tell me - in no uncertain terms - that I’m not a winner, but I suppose it’s just as well that I learn my lesson now. Then again, Subway is no ordinary fast food restaurant; it’s the home of the “$30 Submarine Sandwich,” so I suppose they’ve earned the right to judge me.
At least they’re kind enough to take pity on me and encourage me to keep on trying. Though I’m not certain I read kindness in their words. I feel it’s the same “kindness” one sees in an overbearing football coach encouraging a fat kid to run one more lap, so that he can laugh at Fatty’s struggle prior to cutting him with a “sorry champ, but this is a winning team, and you’re not a winner.”
Subway, while I’m sure you stand behind your losing text, “Sorry, please try again” has never made me fee like a Father’s second favorite son. Excuse me while I go cry to myself.
August 6, 2008 at 6:00 am · Filed under iPhone
When the App Store was announced I was pumped. I seriously thought that this was going to be a game changer - especially when they started demoing their “built in two weeks” apps. This was some impressive stuff: accelerometers, phone, touch display, Mac OS; the stage was set for new hotness. So why are there no killer apps?
As of today (July 30, 08) the top ten paid apps are:
- Units Converter (Google does this for me, for free and better/faster)
- Brain Challenge (useless mini-games; this internet is full of them)
- Super Monkey Ball (admittedly, really fun)
- Texas Hold’em (yeah, I don’t know where I’d play poker for free without this…)
- Crash Bandicoot (haven’t played it, but the console versions were always lame)
- Units (again, Google’s got my back here)
- Tuner Internet Radio (might be okay, but pandora and Last.fm are free)
- OneTap Movies (almost a good idea, but again, Google is better and free)
- Tetris (wheeeee, if it was fun in ‘86 it must still be fun now, what with accelerometers and all.)
- A Level (literally, a bubble level. Why would I need this? Are there a lot of people doing construction using their $500 phones as tools?)
Top ten free apps:
- Labyrinth Lite Edition (it’s like Super Monkey Ball, but shitty!)
- Sudoku (well, at least I’m safe if the world runs out of newspapers)
- Facebook (their iPhone web app is way better, why would I want an app that does less?)
- Palringo Instant Messenger (no persistant applications + typing on an iPhone = crappy instant messenger)
- Tap Tap Revenge (admittedly, really fun)
- iPint (I can’t think of many things more useless than this)
- Apache Lander (*Keith shakes his head*)
- Remote (kinda neat - if you own a Mac)
- Showtimes (like OneTap Movies, but free! And not as good as Google!)
- Phone Saber (I’m a huge Star Wars nerd and I still think this is retarded)
There nothing in there that makes the iPhone a “must have.” Do you want to know what I think the best app on the iPhone is? Safari - because it makes pretty much every app listed above pretty much useless. If it’s already being done (and done well) on the web, why do I need a superfluous app cluttering my display? Where is the creativity and innovation? Why aren’t people making the most of this API?
The really cool apps all exist for JailBroken iPhones; NES emmulators, Skype, Qik, using the iPhone as a modem, Last.fm with scrobbling, etc. Now, many of these push the boundaries of the law (some more blatantly than others) but others can never exist on a legit iPhone because of Apple’s lame API. Things that instantly bother me about Apple’s API:
- Apps cannot run in the background (probably to save battery life, but how about we let me decide how I want to use my battery life? No?)
- Apps cannot access my music. Seriously? You’ve pretty much just added a phone to an iPod. Hell, the Touch is an iPod. Let the apps access my music. Stop copying, transferring, uploading, downloading, I don’t care, but let apps access my music. Custom playlists in games? Fancy pandora-esque apps that learn which band I like best? There are good ideas to be had there.
- A closed community. It’s an API that I can have full access to with an email address and a smile. Let me talk about it on my blog, ok?
- I want the ability to charge a licensing fee for an app, not just an outright purchase. Hook me up with some residuals people. Technically not an API problem…
As for good apps, I’d like to see some of these sooner than later:
- Voice memos. “How do I record audio from the built-in microphone?” is one of the first questions listed in the developer center. This cannot be overly difficult. Note: there is an app that does this now, I set this post to “appear in the future,” and while it was fermenting, someone launched YouNote. Thanks!
- Nuvi style GPS mapping. I know it’s coming soon, but I’m impatient.
- A simple photo editing application.
- A video camera app (Qik can do it, there might be a legit way).
- A physical training app (view my routine, videos of how to do the exercise, read descriptions, listen to music, enter progress, and be awesome).
- A decent time tracking app.
- Skype (I really doubt the telecos would ever let this one drop…)
- Putty (it would be really handy for we nerds).
That’s just off the top of my head! That’s 5 minutes of brainstorming! C’mon developers, we can do better than the twenty failures listed above!
To those of you who ask “if you have such great ideas, why don’t you build apps?” The answer is that I don’t own a Mac (yet). When I do, I will create apps which shame the shit heap currently available.
As a final note to developers around the world: Stop making apps that already have excellent web based equivalents. Safari already grants me easy access to them; you’re wasting your time! Focus on making something great and unique instead of something that’s already been done.
While I’m complaining about the iPhone:
- More storage please; the Touch fits 32GB, make the phone do it and we can be friends.
- For the love of all that is holy, when I’m typing and I rotate the phone 90 degrees rotate the keyboard. The wider keyboard is so much easier to use, yet the only application I’ve seen use it is Safari (thus cementing its status as the best iPhone app). My Blackberry has taught me to type with my thumbs, why are you trying to take this away from me? This cannot be all that hard!
- Copy & paste isn’t a feature. It’s a thing that ever device which accepts text input should be able to do.
- I can haz real battery life plz?
August 4, 2008 at 6:00 am · Filed under Internet
I’ve posted in the past about engaging in social networking. For some reason doing so has always rung hollow to me, and as such there was little lasting power. There have been a few which have tempted me initially, Facebook was briefly a blasty-blast, Plurk was a riot, and LinkedIn seemed like a good idea. Yet for each, the luster has faded and I am no longer engaged in the site.
Recently, I think I figured out why: I don’t like communicating with people I don’t know “in RL.” With all of the sites I’ve tried and initially enjoyed, there have been a group of people I know who used it first and drew me in. While there, I was just communicating with my friends via a new medium and it was a blast. Yet, with each there came a point where there would be strange voices in the conversation suddenly. Names I couldn’t place, and strangers I couldn’t put a face too. The sites which started out in good fun all became a place that was no longer “safe.” Of all the sites I’ve tried, Facebook is the only one I still visit occasionally, but it’s far easier to isolate myself among my friends on Facebook. There is a deep permissions system I can use to hide away where no one can see me. Facebook, for all of its privacy follies, is one of the safer places on the internet.
I’m not a overly private person. Google my name, or better still, my online identity, and you’ll find thousands of results. I’m definately out there - a lot more so than many people - but Google results aren’t engaging. They’re not a medium to communicate with me. To me it’s just a part of modern living. By and large, I am in control of the information that is available about me in those searches; it isn’t personally damning or embarassing. It doesn’t reflect who I am, or what I believe, and if it does, it’s because I’ve put it in this blog and I’m comfortable with people reading it. The rare exceptions are blog posts I wrote a long time ago and now shudder when I read them, but I leave them up, as a marker of who I used to be.
So with social networks, if I engage it’s because I feel safe to be myself. Once that safety is compromised, so too is my willingness to contribute. I wonder if I’m alone in this?
August 1, 2008 at 6:00 am · Filed under General
I am - by nature - unusually prone to avoiding sickness. So it’s with much confusion (and even more whining) that I’ve missed more days in the last two months due to sickness than in the three years leading up to it. The problem: mono (probably, it’s a long story). Seriously, what married, monogamous, 27 year old father gets mono? How did that even happen? I have a theory involving dirty utensils at a restaurant, but that’s irrelevant.
The net result is that I’m tired all of the time which leaves me feeling useless. It’s so super lame, and I don’t really like to whine, but seriously I feel really sorry for me. Poor Ali too, she now has to care for two babies full time, but mostly me; poor me.
It’s affecting every aspect of my life. I usually work from 0730 to 1730, taking an hour or so for lunch. It’s a nice, normal way to work. Mono-Keith works an average of five hours a day and is dog-ass tired when he drags himself home. To further point out how pathetic this is, it’s important to remember that I’m a web developer. I sit at a computer and make websites all day. Hell, I don’t even do that. I sit at a desk and help make sure that other people make websites all day.
I’m a fanatic about my lawn, and like to keep it neat and green. Now I don’t have the energy to mow it. I love to take pictures, but it’s hardly worth the effort right now. I’d like to take my baby to the park, or my dogs for a walk, but it’s just too much. I tried golfing and after 7 holes I was so tired I could barely drive the cart and then I was sick as a dog for three days after.
The good news, seemingly mono lasts forever as it’s been two months now and I still feel crappy. The better news is that the doctor told me it can last a lot longer still! Hooray! Being a useless tit forever, all of my dreams come true. The one big plus is that I don’t really have much of an appetite and I’ve lost almost 15 pounds (which needed to go).
July 28, 2008 at 8:45 pm · Filed under Internet
I have long been in the “Firefox is okay, but no better than IE7″ camp. I’ve even blogged that Firefox Sucks Too. My claim has always been that Firefox is better at some things than IE, but not all of them, and in fact IE was better at some stuff than Firefox. Mostly I’ve stood my ground and claimed that there aren’t any good browsers yet. Since that time, Firefox 3 has been released and to give it a fair shake I’ve been using it as my main browser. The verdict: it is hands down the best browser available today (yes, I’ve tried Opera, and no I don’t like it).
What makes it so great?
- It is scary fast. Noticably faster without having to do any benchmarking, etc.
- I love built in spell checking. Yes, it was in Firefox 2, but Firefox 2 was terrible so I was never able to benefit from it.
- It doesn’t crap out when you have a few tabs open (my number one most hated anti-feature of FF2)
- I can scroll in Last.fm smoothly. IE and FF2 both yack when they try that.
- Add-ons. They were always great, but now them improve a decent browser.
I suppose now it’s IE’s turn to up the ante (though I’ve tried the IE8 beta and it’s yet to impress).
July 6, 2008 at 6:56 pm · Filed under General
In the last few months, I’ve fallen victim twice to an overbearing display of panic in the face of misinformation. First it was “evil plastic” and now “killer tomatoes.” Neither of which constituted a real threat, and one of which was labeled by The Canadian Food Inspection Agency as “an abundance of caution.”
The “evil” plastic - Bisphenol A - has been made out to be the greatest killer since polio by some parties. Yet rarely do we ever hear of who is truly at risk; young children. An infant who’s parent use formula minght ingest up to 13 µg/kg/day of Bisphenol A; a full 37 µg/kg/day less than is specified as safe by the US Government. We see that at those rate there’s an “increased chance” of prostate or breast cancer. Nowhere that I could find is that “increased chance” quantified. It’s just “more.” 1% more? 10% more? 100% more? No one seems able to tell me. What’s more, how long have we been using Bisphenol A in food packaging? About 50 years. That doesn’t seem like a very long time for an involved study on the long term effects of its use.
Now I’m not advocating the use of plastics containing BPA - I even replaced my babies bottles (better safe than sorry after all…) - but to buy into the theory of the risks of Bisphenol A because people say I should drives me crazy. How controlled can the experiments to determine the long term consequences of heightened usage be? How many other factors are involved in creating a control for something this complex? How large were the sample sizes? For how long were these studies held? Most importantly: where is any of that information in any of the news coverage we’re exposed to? To my mind, the news these days strictly adheres to forgetting the facts and selling the fear. It’s absolutely appalling.
For the recent Salmonella scare, things are even more ridiculous. In Texas, Salmonella was found on some tomatoes from one farm. That’s a bad thing, the tomatoes from that farm should be pulled from shelves. But what actually happened? In Alberta, tomatoes from ALL farms were pulled from shelves. That is just silly. I will admit that I know relatively little about Salmonella, how it spreads, or any of that. What I do know is that a large percentage of the tomatoes that I purchase here in Alberta are grown in BC. Not Texas. So the tomatoes that were pulled from my grocer’s shelves were - in all likelihood - grown over 4,000km away from where the Salmonella ridden tomatoes were. Where was that little tidbit in the news coverage? Absolutely nowhere to be seen or heard.
My willingness to accept or respect modern news agencies plumments with each and every day they spend fear mongering with half truths and human interest BS. I don’t know which is worse; that news agencies hold no respect for facts, or that we - as their audience - don’t demand it. Have we really become so docile as to blindly buy into anything we see on the television?
June 9, 2008 at 9:08 pm · Filed under General
It started when I went to Nait. It was shiny and new, and different.
It continued through my first job as I used it more and more.
It built once I joined Statusfirm and I was given a one to test with.
The pretty pictures and shiny graphics burned their way into my consciousness.
And suddenly, today, my fight has ended. No longer can I play neutral Switzerland in this OS war. Mac, you have my blade.
OS X is awesome, the new macbook pro is incredibly sexy, the iPhone is something I need, developing apps is a necessity, and iTunes controls all of my music purchases. Jobs is a voodoo gypsie, masking his ways in jeans and a black turtleneck. I’ve been caught, transfixed by his gaze as a deer to headlights.
If you’re reading this; know that I am a lost cause. Cut up my credit cards, because if you don’t I will give every penny I have to Apple. I fought a good fight but it’s over now. Gone are reason and perspective - blind devotion shall rule the day.
Viva la revolution. Viva la Mac!
June 7, 2008 at 8:23 pm · Filed under Faye, General
I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among “kids these days.” When given a “thank you” they will return a “yup” or a “yeah.” It drives me insane.
When I was a kid, my Dad was a manners Nazi. Elbows off the table! Please and thank you! Ask before doing! And if someone said “thank you,” failing to respond with a “you’re welcome” would result in the look. A look so menacing that, without words, my Dad could convey that he fully intended to teach me what it means to regret. A look which would leave me with no doubt that my Dad could - and would - end me.
This makes it sound like my Dad was quite the bully and while I’m sure he thinks that he’s a bad ass, the truth is that he was a one trick pony. Never, ever in my childhood did my Dad have to escalate a situation beyond the look. He didn’t have to hit me, or spank me, or yell at me; he used the look to let me know that if I did not immediately reconsider my actions he would do something much worse. Mind you, I have no idea what, but the look made it pretty clear that I didn’t want to find out. The few times I dared to test the boundaries of the look and question its absolute authority, I was met with a somehow more menacing look, and the phrase “did you just lose your mind?” I never once pressed beyond that point for fear that if the look hardened once more I would catch fire.
Now I’m sure that most people in the world will tell you that threatening your kids is a bad thing, and I’m fairly confident that spankings aren’t really acceptable anymore. It’s just that it seems to me that kids, by nature, will test every boundary placed in front of them. If there are no repercussions for crossing those boundaries, there is no incentive to obey them.
The decay of manners bothers me. I fear that my own daughter will end up as one of those punk kids. Something so simple as saying “you’re welcome” makes a big difference in how people perceive you. I would be embarrassed to hear my daughter reply “yup” to “thank you”; so why doesn’t anyone else seem to be? All I know is that I think it’s time I start practicing the look in the mirror. I could never hurt my daughter, but she doesn’t need to know that.
June 4, 2008 at 9:37 pm · Filed under General
The other night Ali pointed out something that I’ve become increasingly aware of: my blog is getting really negative. I had intended to write about life in general, not just the bad stuff. It’s just that I don’t have a lot of spare time and it seems that the only things which really drive me to post are the things which get me a little worked up.
Lots of great stuff has happened in the last few months, but you wouldn’t know it if you’re reading this. The big upside to my acting like a petulant child is that some of the anonymous comments that I’ve received have been hilarious. Seemingly, the irony of reading a complete strangers blog post, and then taking the time to fill out a form to let me know how big of a loser I am is completely lost on some people.
I’d like to consider this a vow to turn things around and really focus on embracing life to the fullest. That seems pretty unlikely though; more likely I will consider this a message to any who choose to read my blog. I whine. A lot. If you don’t like that, go read top ten lists and articles about Barack Obama on Digg.
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