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Skedu schedule for TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2010

I'm bummed I had to miss the TC Disrupt this year, as I was really in the mood for it. But while travelling between Claverack, NY and Williamsburg, MA today I scraped out a basic Skedu schedule for the conference. It's a little wonky since the HTML for the conf web page was a bit inconsistent and thus a bit of a pain to scrape, but it's more or less correct and complete I think. Skedu is a lot more useful for multi-venue events, but I think it's still handy to have the schedule for the single-track confs.

 

To use it, just download Skedu from the app store of course, then load the TC Disrupt schedule (it should be in the menu already, if not here is the direct URL: http://bit.ly/91ZYgw)

If anyone wants to clean up the json more, just send me an update and I can replace it. If I had more time I would have pulled in the speaker bios into the session descriptions. If you're curious here are the scripts I used for scraping: skedu.rb, scrape_tcdisrupt.rb and the kwalify json schema check: skedu_schema_v1.yml 

 

Sucking in some Vox

The nifty Six Apart community-oriented blogging site Vox is closing down this month, so I just imported all of my posts from my weblog there into AkuAku. I tended to use vox for more playful or trivial posts. It was sort of my Facebook wall before I started using Facebook much I guess. Not sure what to do now, but I'll probably just continue my tendency to not post quick little things to AkuAku directly.

CouchDB on CentOS

Here's how to install CouchDB on CentOS (such as provided by one of my hosting providers, SilverRack):

rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-3.noarch.rpm
yum install couchdb
/etc/init.d/couchdb start

I shaved a few yaks before I figured this out so hope this saves you some time. Note that there is a rare but serious bug in CouchDB 1.0.0, so if you install that version read the warning first.

Enabler

I had a professor at ECU who was a nationally ranked Scrabble player. He knew every Scrabble-legal 2 and 3 letter word. He showed me the word lists he studied; there were a lot of them. Things that didn't look like words. 

I am a bit of a Words With Friends addict. This is a Scrabble knock-off for the iPhone and iPad. There are quite a few annoying aspects of this implementation of Scrabble, but it's the best thing out there so far in terms of capability and price.

When looking at their support site, I noticed that the word set they use is the ENABLE2K word set. This is used by a lot of games since it is in the public domain. I found a copy of it and decided to make the Enabler iPhone app that lets me create word lists to study. It's working great. I know every word that starts with a Q but isn't followed by a U.  I know all the words that end in J, all the two letter words that start with J or U. Every 2, 3 and 4 letter word that starts with X.  That sort of thing.

It is a free download in the app store.

I have ideas for more features, and even a quiz function to help you study. If you have any other ideas, leave them in comments here, or even better fill out the survey you can get to from the information screen on the app (that's the little 'i' icon at bottom right). And while you're on it, click on an ad :) 

pOnd

My new favorite video game.

pOnd, a one-button zen relaxation game that celebrates the simple beauty of the natural world.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Loving my new iPhone 4

Retinal Display! Genius marketing name that is.

But I have to say, this video slamming the iPhone4 fanbois is hilarious. NSFW audio.

iPhone4 vs HTC Evo

Where is Camp Tipsy?

CampTipsySatPhoto

It's on Lake Lagoda, AKA East Park Reservoir. Culminates on June 26/27

Google Map link.

Facebook event page.

"Boat" Building 101

In preparation for this year's Camp Tipsy, I've started collecting buoyancy at my office. We go through a bunch of Vitamin Water (and bottled tea, orange juice, etc) each week. According to WolframAlpha, each empty bottle of Vitamin Water provides provides 1.195 pounds-force of buoyancy (or 5.315 Newtons) .

Here's how to build boat for Camp Tipsy:

Step 1: Get a bunch of empty bottles with caps. The photo above is about 3 weeks worth.

Step 2: Build a big box. Like a coffin. 2x4s and plywood work fine. Angle the front a bit for that boat-like profile.

Step 3: Put the empty bottles in the box.

Step 4 (optional): Cut a hole in the box. It doesn't matter. As long as the bottles don't escape.

Step 5: add an outrigger for stability

Step 6: Toss it all in the lake. You've got "boat".

Product Dictatorship

I don't always agree with Arrington, but I think he's dead-right here:

Product should be a dictatorship. Not consensus driven. There are casualties. Hurt feelings. Angry users. But all of those things are necessary if you’re going to create something unique.

If you really want to innovate, you need to establish an outpost in uncharted territory. Then you can start with the UX/optimization work to polish and refine your vision. Lots of people in this industry today start with a weak wishy-washy vision and depend on constant user/AB testing and/or funnel optimizations to build their product. This might result in a successful business, but it bores me to tears. I'd rather fail big and fast with an outlandish vision than plod along conservatively towards mediocre success.

stones in a field

Excerpt from Don DeLillo's novella, Point Omega.

He said, "Matter. All the stages, subatomic level to atoms to inorganics molecules. We expand, we fly outward, that's the nature of life ever since the cell. The cell was a revolution. Think of it. Protozoa, plants, insects, what else?"

"I don't know"

"Vertebrates."

"Vertebrates, " I said.

"And the eventual shapings. The slither, crawl, biped crouch, the conscious being, the self-conscious being. Brute matter becomes analytical human thought. Our beautiful complexity of mind."

He paused and drank and paused again.

"What are we?"

"I don't know"

"We're a crowd, a swarm. We think in groups, travel in armies. Armies carry the gene of self-destruction. One bomb is never enough. The blur of technology, this is where the oracles plot their wars. Father Teilhard knew this, the omega point. A leap out of our biology. Ask yourself this question. Do we have to be human forever? Consciousness is exhausted. Back now to inorganic matter. This is what we want. We want to be stones in a field."