Posts Tagged ‘My Life’

My Poker News Aggregator

My obsession with poker has returned. I had quit playing for about a year-and-a-half because I had gone on life tilt from the game. (If you don’t play poker, tilt is when something unbalances your game and makes you play poorly. Usually angrily.) I’m a smart guy and I thought I should be a winning player against the average small stakes player and I wasn’t. So I stopped.

Enough time passed that I had calmed down. Having a toddler will teach you a patience that playing a game never could. I was drawn back to the game. Initially playing only about an hour a week. Then two nights, then more. I was still a losing player but a trip to Vegas helped me sort that out (honest!).

But simply playing the game isn’t enough for me anymore. I’ve always wanted to combine my love of the game with my skills as a design technologist. As a result, I’ve begun to roll out my own poker news aggregator.

The Times They Are a Changing

I think my time with Project 52 has come to an end. The idea was noble: get a bunch of people to commit to blogging at least once a week for an entire year. However, the project itself seems to have fallen down on the job.

Writing is a personal goal of mine and one that I will continue, but the artificial nature of the once a week construct has inhibited me. I structured the blog around the concept and the way I feature the current post dissuades me from posting shorter content that my time allows. At the other end of the spectrum there is some longer form content I’d like to write that simply can’t be completed in a week.

It’s also hampered the other goals I set out for myself at the beginning of the year and, I suspect, making progress toward those goals will provide plenty of things to talk about. At the end of the day I simply don’t have much time to devote to my personal projects so if I pick one it’s at the expense of the others. Between my job and my family I struggle the way most everybody else does, but sometimes it feels like I struggle a bit more.

I’m Very Comfortable With Who I Am

The following conversation took place between Twitter, Facebook, email and in-person.
Me: The iPhone should be able to play random songs for ringtones. For confident people who aren’t afraid of ABBA’s Dancing Queen popping up.
Myshell: You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can [...]

Nothing to see here… Today.

No post today other than this update that I won’t be posting. I should have posts up this Wednesday and Friday.

Upcoming topics over the next month or two will include some infographics, me weighing in on the Adobe/Apple fight, a lesson on the stupidity of crippling browser functionality and images in order to “protect” them, samples of things I’m working on, a look at some WordPress plugins, and a few other topics. I’ll also undoubtedly weigh in on a few discussions as they’re taking place. Real-time web FTW.

Phototuts+ “Memories” Contest

Phototuts+ is running a contest this week called “The ‘Memories’ Photography Project,” and they’re giving away a Canon EOS 550D camera to the winner! You can read all of the contest details on their site but the short version is:

Upload up to three pictures that represent “memories” to you. Include 150-350 words describing each photo. Afterwards they’ll post the entries for people to vote on.

Summer Reading

I have a lot of books I want to read.

I always have a lot of books I want to read. But I’m going to let you in on a dirty little secret: I tend to buy them and not read them. I want to. I just don’t. It’s for a variety of reasons: I have a toddler, I work at a startup, I have personal goals to achieve in those rare moments that I have time to myself, and the list goes on.

A side effect of this is that my summer reading list involves a lot of books that I already own, including…

Flying by the seat of my pants

I really wanted to launch my new design before SXSW but life, job and sleep conspired against me. Now I’m at SXSW and I can’t get VMWare to recognize my local OSX web server. So… I’m just going to put the new design up there and debug it live. How exciting! If things look fucked up. This is why. Please bear with me.

New site design

I’m redesigning my site. If you’ve been around here at all, you’re probably thinking “but Chat, you just did that in December!” Well, yes, I did. But that was more of a triage. Taking a broken website and fixing it so that it had the bare minimum usability.

One thing I’m very proud of with the current design: total images for the entire site (not counting any images I add for specific posts, like this one) are about 3.7kb. You read that right. 3.7 kilobytes. Not 370 kilobytes. Not 37 kilobytes. 3.7.

SXSWi 2010: T-minus 12 Days and Counting

I’m getting more excited about SXSWi with each passing day. My wife pointed out to me yesterday that I’m now counting it down in days rather than weeks. We’re under two weeks now so I’m going to defend my geekness. Daily feels right. T-minus 12 days and counting…if you’re wondering.

2010 SXSW Interactive Schedule

I’m doing something a little different and self-serving today. I’m posting the list of SXSW Interactive panels that I’ve bookmarked for consideration. I’m kind of all over the map this year. I knew going in that I would be interested in all things iPhone and iPad this year. I have ideas for two different apps I want to build.

I surprisingly found myself bookmarking lifehacking sessions. Things like improving my memory, using social media to live cheaply, and building your dream life.

I’m also apparently still very interested in improving my design process and how I manage and work with project owners. And I apparently I want to become a professional blogger, except that I don’t, so those panels might get the axe. In theory I really like publishing content. In reality it’s damn hard work.

As usual some timeslots have half-a-dozen panels I’m interested in while others have none or maybe one.

Are you going to SXSWi? What panels are you going to?

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