Entries Tagged 'Work' ↓

Ever since I started doing Flex development my installation of Eclipse has been pretty pissed off. I guess having a big ass PHP project and a Flex project open at the same time is a recipe for disaster.

I’ve change the Eclipse ini file to allot more memory but that still doesn’t do the trick. My MacBook’s one of the earlier ones so I can’t expand beyond 2GB of RAM either

I guess I’m gonna have to get Jeff to pony up and buy me a new machine. Getting a new machine is 1/2 way exciting 1/2 annoying though but it’s easily better than having my IDE crap out 3 or 4 times a day.

I just setup mod_expires for Craig’s Little Buddy. It’s pretty nice. Now images, js and css files are only re-requested one month after their mod time.

The quick little lines of magic are:

Good times.

On page D3 there’s a big ass picture of me Here’s the interweb version:

Unfortunately the article isn’t about how awesome I am… it’s about music startups and how the up-and-coming bands use the interwebs to get themselves out there. Actually, The Hot Toddies got front page real estate… in those little squares up at the top of the front page. Tres Cool huh?

My friends from Maldroid, The Hot Toddies and Nothington were also in the article and/or had pics up on SFGate.com.

Not a bad start to the week huh? I also picked up my P Bass from getting a setup this morning… that’s kinda like icing on the cake.

We’ve got a new feature at Fuzz which is living on some secret URL. It’s pretty fucking rad. If you’re down to give it a whirl do the following:

1. make sure you have a fuzz.com account
2. make sure you have dan, me & ian as friends/favorites.
3. Email me and i’ll tell you the new feature’s URL.

Word

Sunday

1. Finish side project’s UI and backend code
2. QA a bit and get stoked
3. Go see A Wilhelm Scream at Thee Parkside
4. Talk to Brian Robinson after the show to confirm an interview w/ the band
5. Get home

Monday

1. Can’t sleep
2. Buy new bass
3. finally pass out
4. wake up dying
5. go to Best Buy
6. bought a video camera
7. read blogs at work
8. Off to oakland to meet up with the Wilhelm guys
9. Got pulled over
10. get to the sushi sport for the interview
11. its closed
12. walk forever thru oakland and found a pizza place
13. did interview
14. off to work to kill time
15. Off to Cafe du Nord to see American Steel and Alkalien Trio
16. got to meet the Alkalien guys… they’re super nice
17. watched the end of American Steel’s set
18. watched Alkaline Kick some ass
19. went home
20. passed out

Hey peeps could you please click here and Digg that story for moi.

Thanks

Arin

Yesterday Jason Calacanis wrote this blog entry with 17 tips for running a startup. I didn’t have his blog in my RSS reader and I think I stumbled upon this entry through Techmeme or Valleywag. Anyways the whole thing raised a big stink and he got totally ass raped by a bunch of other bloggers out there.

Honestly, I could care less about Mahalo or other startups he’s been a part of and am gonna give my impressions (for what they’re worth) on his 17 tips. I have never worked at a big company, only startups, so I’ll come at it from a startup employee’s point of view. Here goes:

I paraphrased tips from Jason Calacanis’ blog.

• Buy everyone a Mac to save on IT costs.
  I’m a Mac convert. I switched about 4 years ago and haven’t looked back. I totally agree with him here. Even if some of the “free for all” workstations happen to be a Mac Mini. Over at Fuzz we have a mix. All the engineers & marketing folks use Macs and a few execs have Windows boxes. Our Macs are all fine and dandy but the PC’s like to fuck up every once in a while for no reason. Also - a HUGE benefit to using a Mac is the fact that MS Office costs $325 whereas 5 licenses of iWork set you back a mere $78.

• Buy second monitors for everyone.
  I’ve recently switched to using 2 monitors (with my MacBook) and, eh, it’s not that different. The caveat being that I’m a power user and have religiously used some sort of desktop management software for the last 12 years or so. As an engineer the higher resolution the external monitor supports is nice. This gives my IDE more pixels to play in enabling more stuff (panels, views, drawers) to be open at the same time. However, maybe I’m a dick, but I see no benefit to someone having a browser or mail app maximized, occupying 1680 pixels.

• Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy.
  Long and lame meetings suck and are definitely a waste of time… but no meetings? Again, coming from an engineers perspective, I find quick powwow very useful. Also, discussing stuff with the marketing team is very useful and needs to happen. I couldn’t see combining all this talking into a 1 hour session over Happy Meals. If there was only an engineering team sure; but I highly doubt the marketing team wants to or needs to hear about some geeky stuff. Ya, maybe it would do ‘em some good but I can easily see them waxing down their McNuggets and heading back to their tasks before the eng. team was ready to discuss inter-team issues.

  But, I’m all about the free food and am lazy enough to get excited about not having to leave the office.

• Buy cheap tables and expensive chairs.
  Yes! This $40 chair is fucking up my back. And, as long as the table doesn’t fall over and smash my workstation I don’t give a rat’s ass what it’s made of.

• Don’t buy a phone system.
  Ya, I agree on this too. That shit’s a waste of $ and you always end up with some problems. With $99, unlimited cell service with the big carriers being introduced I figure just giving everyone an extra $30/month to upgrade their plans would work fine. Tack on a free subscription to Grand Central and you can divorce your personal number from your work number.

• Rent out your extra space.
  Depends on the space I guess. As a startup guys I’m conscious of the burn and all that but can also see having strangers around as a bit whacky.

• Outsource accounting and HR.
  Word up… but as an employee I wanna know who to get a hold of and when so the firm better be good and a clear contact person needs to be established. If something’s up with my dental plan I wanna know who to get a hold of and want an answer in a reasonable timeframe.

• Don’t buy everyone Microsoft Office.
  I touched on this above. If everyone has a a Mac then iWork is your friend. It’s cheap and can export to MS Office formats… and Flash and PDF. Its nice.

• Use Google hosted email.
  I’ve never used it so I can’t comment directly. At a previous job we used MailStreet and it was annoying as hell. I’d recommend getting your managed hosting provider to do this (assuming you’ve got a managed hosting service). We use Contegix and they’re amazing. They rock… can’t recommend ‘em enough.

• Buy your hardest working folks computers for home.
  This makes some sense. A few engineers fall into the “the mechanic’s car’s always broken” stereotype… but some/most don’t. It would suck if something went wrong, you get the call and realize you can’t do anything about it b/c your home machine is crap. So, it makes some sense and ya, I could see it getting people to work from home some more but why not just buy everyone a laptop since you’ve already purchased everyone a second monitor.

  Getting a free machine as a “signing bonus” would be pretty sweet though as long as it’s better than what you’ve already got.

• Fire people who are not workaholics.
  Ya, fuck ‘em. Seriously, fuck ‘em. I understand that people have non-work stuff going on in their lives but this is what you signed up for. It is… you took a job at a startup. It is what it is. It pisses me off if me and my team are working late and I see some people pulling the 9-5 bullshit. Sack up… work you balls off and do what you can to make our lottery tickets stock options worth something.

  If you wanna work 9-5 go get a job where you’re not 5-10% of the entire workforce. I’m counting on you to help make this into something. If you’re not up for it then go away.

  Ya, people have lives. I go to band practice and meet up with people for dinner and all that but I more than make up for it on other days. If I leave at 6pm on Wednesday to practice with my band I make sure my shit’s done and on time by busting putting in extra time Monday & Tuesday.

• Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office.
  This is nice and I’d use it… but I’m still gonna go to the coffee shop (assuming its within walking distance). There’s only so much I can stare at this monitor man. Plus, they won’t let me smoke in the office . A change of scenery and a quick 15 minute break to gather your thoughts is really nice. A coffee break charges me back up… and, no, not just b/c of the caffeine.

  I get a ton of thinking done during breaks. At A
  Spoke the whole eng. team would make a daily, 4pm pilgrimage to Startbucks. Guess what we talked about… WORK. How to solve this, or what problems we have,m we’d trade tasks, offer help, get a general feel for who’s doing what, trade tasks, come up with ways to generalize a solution for 2 problems etc. Those breaks were very valuable. I suggest anyone who thinks engineers go to Starbucks get waste company $ should cruise along some time. You’ll learn a ton about your team. As long as you’re not a douche they’ll act the same way whether you’re there or not and the insight will make you a better boss/leader/executive.

• Stock the fridge with sodas.
  Yes! No excuse for an empty fridge.

• Go to each of your vendors every 6-9 months and ask for 10-30% off.
  Sure, lower burn = more better. Worst they can say is “no”.

• Don’t waste money on recruiters.
  Word. We used a recruiter for a while and go nowhere. They actually talked to me about being “too strict”. It’s like “dude, bring me better people”. The folks we did end up hiring were either through craigslist or referred in.

• Really think about if you need that $15,000 a month PR firm.
  Ask our CEO. I have no idea if we have a PR firm.

• Outsource to middle America.
  Depends on what they’re doing.

So, FWIW, that’s my take on the 17 points. In generally I agree with him but there’s a few things I’m not quite sold on. Point #11 seemed to be the stickiest one but it’s the one I agree with the most. The chair thing is great too.

I dunno why people tore him a new one. He’s entitles to his opinion and can run his ship any way he wants… and hey, if you think he’s retarded, then don’t work for him.

Tizags: Jason Calacanis, startup life

My RSS search feed for “Fuzz.com” just turned up a job listing:

Social Networking Site developer needed to create a community for musicians. Studio Bum Recordings is looking to develop a site similar to http://mp3.com http://soundclick.com or http://fuzz.com

We are currently looking for someone who is skilled in PHP, CSS, & HTML. We are looking to either build a site from scratch or utilize a premade (template based) script depending on the rates and turnaround time.

Please provide your resume and examples of social networking sites you have worked on.

from this page

So you really think you’re gonna copy Fuzz with 3 people who earn ~$25 in 2 week’s time?

C’mon now. Maybe they’ll check out our new release in 10 days and pony up a bit more cash and time.

Being a software engineer is pretty cool. I spend almost all my daylight hours writing code, evaluating stuff, managing projects and making decisions at Fuzz… hell, I even do graphics sometimes. I think my current title is “Director of Engineering” but at a small startup it doesn’t really matter what your title is; you just gotta get shit done.

Its cool. I like it a lot but it’s a ton of work. You’d think after a bunch of tough days and long hours I’d go out ‘n get smashed w/ my band, chill with my rad girlfriend or just hang at home with my dog. I definitely do all of the above but about 1/2 the time (and as much as possible on weekends) I either plan out timelines or put in some coding hours towards the 3 side projects I wanna get done. Ya, 3… you could even call it 4 if you want.

I don’t wanna talk about the projects too much ’till they’re live (don’t wanna jinx anything) but here’s the jist:

1. a web site for… um, I dunno what to say about this w/o giving it away
2. an MVC framework for PHP (I’ve mentioned this before)
3. something regarding spam
4. a web-search site (nope, I’m not trying to do a full on search engine)

The MVC framework for PHP actually was “born” in order to make writing code for project 1 easy. The project doesn’t have any enormous, technical barriers but it is going to be a bunch of code. When I started writing code for the project I found myself writing a bunch of separate pieces of magic. Stuff like a transparent persistence layer, a mechanism for pretty URLs, a quick templating system etc. Again, nothing revolutionary but these pieces really helped make writing code for project 1 quicker.

Then it all came to a screeching halt. Why? B/C I started working at Fuzz. I was the first engineering hire and there was a ton of work to do. No existing code etc - I had to start from scratch. So, project one got put on the back burner (this was 18 months ago).

The first thing I did at Fuzz.com was to map out the site’s infrastructure needs. Makes sense. Once I had a decent idea of what that was going to be I started scouring the web for open source projects that would facilitate quick, efficient and scalable development. Honestly, I didn’t dig much of the stuff I found. Maybe our needs were specific, maybe I’m hard headed about stuff… I dunno. Either way nothing really suited our needs. Then, I thought: “huh, maybe I should cleanup the bits and pieces of magic I wrote for project 1 & bring ‘em together as a framework”. A few days later, after rewriting some bits, cleaning up other bits, etc project 1’s disparate snips of magic came together as a very usable and flexible MVC framework for PHP. It has served us super well.

While redoing the UI for Fuzz (about 5 months ago) a few needs rose up. The framework had to do a bit more, or things needed to be faster, bla bla bla. So, I added those in. Now, it does a ton of stuff and a bunch of lessons and gotchas have been ironed out.

The Fuzz engineering team thinks the framework is pretty sweet, same with any outsourced firms’ coders who have seen/used it. IMO it’s better than CodeIgniter and the other stuff we’ve checked out. I’m not overselling - but, hey, it works for us and we like it; but then again, we/I built it and have used it for over a year.

So, that’s where I am today with this ‘lil MVC framework. It started its life as a bunch of snips to make building project 1 easy but matured a bit to served as the base of Fuzz’s infrastructure & has grown up quite a bit along the way. Now I’m cleaning her up and will most likely open source it when it gets to a point that I’m happy with. This version I’m working on now is superior to the version we use at Fuzz but, unfortunately, it is not a drop in replacement (a day’s retrofit will probably be needed).

So, anyways - that’s the birth-tale of the MVC framework and project 1. Again, their development has taken a parallel path. I’m writing both at the same time. Hopefully it’s not gonna take too long to finish ‘em.

The other two projects I’ve got in my head have received no serious attention. I don’t have the bandwidth to tackle all these projects simultaneously but, once these two are done (especially the framework) I should be able to tackle them pretty easily.

Now, why the hell do I want to get so many things done? Why not? They’re cool ideas that solve real world problems identified through comments, wishes and observations by friends and myself. Also, as a web guy it’s 100% possible to “just do it”. All I need is an idea/goal, this laptop & some time.

Eh, that’s enough procrastination. I should get some of this shit done instead of “talking” about getting it done.