iPhone Stencil


iPhone Stencil 172/365
Originally uploaded by bump
I have been primarily working on iPhone development for the last couple of months. It's a very different product space than the other consumer products I have worked on over the last couple of years. I recently ordered the stencil to the left to help with product paper prototyping for next NBA season.

August to December

It's been an amazing year in my life, and this blog has suffered as a result. I don't feel guilty about it at all, but I am sure I will wish I had more writing from in between some of these large gaps in time.

Since the last post here, let's see, some things have happened in my life. I got married, that was in September. I turned forty, that was in October. We launched League Pass Broadband, the product I had been working on since June, that was in late October/early November. We also adopted a lovely little pug, named Puka, in November. Each of these things deserve multiple posts here. I learned so much this fall. I have so much to be thankful for, and every day I hope I don't find some way to screw it up.

I don't think I will mothball this site, but I am much more active on Facebook, and Twitter, both of which are linked from this page. It is likely that I will update more here now that I have broken the seal, but you will get a lot more volume over at each of those places.

Some links from the future, or something.

  • Some great music to check out from Ian. The Ratatat remix of Party and Bullshit is the most listened to item in my whole iTunes library. I am checking out the rest now.
  • Chandler 1.0 ships Interesting. I am wondering how it compares to the ones I use. Email integration seems like a great idea that other ones don't have.
  • Datacase Launches. I still maintain that this is something that the iPhone should do natively.

Some Obvious Notes

I'm updating Twitter, when it decides to be up, more than this blog right now. Between my guild's pursuit of finishing Sunwell, my work on this NBA project I am on, and getting married in September, I have very little time to write, even though I want to. Today's winner links worth sharing:
  • Everyone likes the newest Apple Keyboard. Me included, literally.
  • Sad to hear that Randy Pausch passed away. As I have said to anyone who would listen, you should read The Last Lecture, and watch the video. Make sure you have tissues around, I cried more than once.
  • I am going to be up in Manhattan next weekend. Ping me if you want to grab a cup of coffee, or a bite.

Friday, the End of My Work Week links.

Some links from my new desk

  • Mini_Review: I have started using Plurk some. For the most part, I like it, but it needs an API, and other visualization options. Mobile Interface It supports more contact granularity than Twitter, and even groups. Flickr integration is decent, although they don't link to the photo page, just the raw picture.
  • Finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union last night. I was entertained by it, but I guess I don't connect well with Chabon's writing style or something, it was a 3/5 for me.
  • Mac OS X SVN users have a new choice today, Versions is in beta. Looks really nice, I will have to give it a shot this afternoon.
  • Great Tip: Extract Icons using Preview.app

I don't sit at the same desk anymore

So, as I think a lot of people know, Super Deluxe is being "folded into Adult Swim." I feel like Super Deluxe was based on a fundamentally good set of ideas. I also think that we were learning as we went, and had demonstrated a great ability to learn from our audience, and make good decisions from that learning. However, companies as large as Turner make decisions that they have to make, and they make them based on a variety of reasons, not all of which are apparent or logical to someone outside the decision making process. I am sure that, for the senior management team, this was the right decision to make, and that's their job.

I do, however, lament the fact that my amazing team of developers was dissassembled. For those of you who were on that team who might be reading this, you guys/girl were some of the finest people I have worked with in my career. I honestly felt like we could have built anything we were asked to. I wish that the senior management understood the value of keeping a development team intact, regardless of the product that they were working on. This is water under the bridge now, and I can only hope that I might teach my superiors to value development teams more in the future. Building a team, building process, and learning how to work with a large team of bright people is a challenge, and starting from scratch is a little discouraging, but I have so much learning to apply that it is also exciting.

I am working now for Turner Sports. I will be working on technology related to the NBA.com licensing deal. It's a pretty exciting project, with agressive deadlines already, and some new technology that hasn't even been created yet. There are going to be a lot of new faces here in the coming weeks, and I am looking forward to making the most of this opportunity to learn and do more.

Finally, to my Super Deluxe peoples, you folks are really unique interesting people as a group, and I just hope that I get to work with all of you again at some point in the future.

Wednesday Means I posted Every Other Day Post

Once a week minimum post.

  • I have been trying out the Evernote beta today. As a long time user of DevonThink and Yojimbo, and someone who has tested a variety of other options, I think it's great at the simple end. The advantage of being able to access all my notes via my phone is insane. Too many information managers. I still have a couple of invites, shoot me a note on Twitter.
  • Video: Using Skitch with Evernote
  • I spent some time today learning more about OpenID. This article, which is over a year old, helped me quite a bit. It's a lot simpler than you would think, and I am going to start using it for everything.
  • This video had me laughing quite a bit on Friday. "Just two men, cruising the Castro for delicious, salty nuts."
  • Rafe's Analyzing Git piece was along the same lines as I was thinking at the time. Hoping to get a chance to do a "deep dive" on Git this week. More importantly, I discovered The Thing About Git from the article. It's an excellent read.
  • You Look Nice Today is my favorite new podcast this week. It's definitely an acquired taste, based on me testing it in the car while Sue was with me.

Day of the Mystery Bag Links

Cool Links I found or stole.

I had Tacos for Lunch today

Tidbits: Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software?

Tidbits: Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software? "I do not recommend desktop antivirus software for the average Mac user, but you need to take other precautions."

I don't run antivirus software on any of my Mac OS X machines. In reading through the other things he says, I think that this article is something that Mac OS X users of all levels need to read. Most of this stuff is common sense to me, but it may not be common sense to you. The single most important thing to keep in mind, which he does not come out and explicitly say, is that you should not immediately trust anything online. That email that seems to be from your bank, or ebay or paypal probably is not. Look carefully at links before following them, and don't trust any source of information or software without first verifying that they are legitimate.

This can sometimes be very hard for a non-technical user to figure out, but I recommend that you err on the side of caution.

John Malkovich in a bathtub.

Post Tornado Weekend Links

The bump clubhouse was spared this weekend. It's amazing how much damage the tornado did to downtown Atlanta and the neighborhoods directly East of it. Here's some Monday surfing links:
  • Weekly Resolution: I am going to try and make a weekly resolution every week from here on out. This week's is to swear less.
  • Video: Internet Commenter Funeral Funny funny stuff.
  • The Pitfalls of Your Constant Complaining and How to Stop It
  • Things updated to 0.9. This has become my todo list manager, and this update added recurring tasks, which I really appreciate.
  • My Favorite new band of the week: Grand Archives
  • Return to Dark Castle Released The original Dark Castle game was one of the first really addictive Macintosh games in the late eighties. I am very tempted to buy this just to relive those dorm room days.
  • Pro Tip: Use Gmail to filter out that unwanted spam from your non-Gmail POP account. I was getting 900+ spam messages a day at my oldest active pop address. It's as easy as going to Settings: Accounts in Gmail and adding your account information under "Get mail from other accounts." So far Gmail's spectaculor spam filter is batting 100% on filtering out the spam.

Post SXSW Link Post 1

This will be updated a bunch today as I find more stuff going through the 13.5k articles in my copy of NNW. New Links at the top.