mattgornick’s posterous

I recently had been getting the error "A signed resource has been added, modified, or deleted." everytime I wanted to install an application from source on my iPhone.  I ran into this blog (http://blog.tapmode.com/post/127796473/how-to-move-code-signing-certificates-to-a-different) that recommended:

1. Xcode > Build > 'Clean' and then 'Clean All Targets'
2. Xcode > Build > 'Build and Go'

After that everything worked out and the app properly installed on my iPhone.

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2 things I hate:
1. Standing in lines that exceed 3 minutes
2. Wasting time

Yesterday, I was asked to see an opening day movie (Harry Potter) with a group of friends.  I was indifferent to seeing the movie and would normally not have gone if it wasn't for friends going.  As you may guess, the lines at the Harry Potter movies are long and filled with tons of dedicated fans.  I have nothing against people dressing up as wizards, movie characters, etc., but its not my cup of tea so if I can prevent myself from spending several hours waiting in line I'll do it.

(9 p.m. + opening night of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) I needed to fill up my tank of gas.  Show starts at 12:01 a.m. My friends will be getting to the theater around 11:15 p.m. to get tickets for the showing (while waiting almost an hour in a line filled with thousands of people).  I was not entirely sure that they would be able to get tickets at this point as this is a highly anticipated movie with tons of fans: the movie can easily sell out if you aren't in line earlier enough.  At this point, I recalled that I used Fandango in the past when I was in New York City to see the recent Batman movie.  I loaded the Fandango app on my iPhone, purchased a ticket for the movie, and received the email confirmation. 
(9:30 p.m.) I swing by the theater and to my surprise the line for the Harry Potter movie had already started and was outside the theater!  I walked in the regular entrance, grabbed my midnight showing ticket at the Fandango counter and drove back to my apartment.
(11:45 p.m.) I call my friend to find out that they are in line for tickets and they'll get in to see the show tonight.  They mention that I need to hurry up if I want to get tickets.  I left my apartment.
(11:57 p.m.) I arrived at the theater, casually walked in past a few thousand people inline to get tickets, and comfortably got my seat.  At this point, my friends are still in line trying to get tickets, worrying that the show my start without them, and potentially missing the movie.
(12:01 a.m.) Typical movie start
(12:15 a.m.) Moved to where my friends were sitting, watched movie, enjoyed time with friends, etc.

The reason I bring up this story is that so much uncertainty surrounded this event. 
1. If I get there at this time, will the show be sold out?
2. If it isn't sold out, will I miss part of the movie because the line is too long/slow?
3. How early should I get there to get a good seat?

I had made the decision that I will stay at my apartment as long as I could to optimize my utility (getting things done, knocking out email, relaxing, etc.).  I'll go ahead and buy the Fandango tickets not knowing if my friends will get tickets (if the show sold out) and simply wait until either:
a). My friends get in the ticket line about an hour early and do in fact get tickets.  I will drive over to join them.
b). My friends didn't get tickets because the line was too long and now I don't have to waste my time in line but loose the cost of the Fandango tickets.

These decisions are seemingly reminiscent of financial stock options at expiration.  After retrieving the tickets, I had socially hedged my night for either outcome: I am guaranteed to come out ahead or at least protect myself from downside risk (of not knowing what to do or to do nothing).  I try to keep up with the standard life hacking and productivity news, but I feel that combining the right tactics and planning with a mixture of life hacking can be highly effective. 

I'm going to experiment with other strategies as they present themselves as I don't think this is an isolated event.  If you have any other social hedging or life hacking ideas, let me know.

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I finally resolved an error I've been having with CruiseControl.rb with our Ruby on Rails project in Subversion (SVN).  Currently we use RoR with Cucumber for our BDD and CruiseControl.rb as the CI environment.  Below are the steps I've taken and the final resolution to fix the problem:

1. Setup Ubuntu Server 9.04 (grab all the necessary gems, subversion, db, etc.)
2. After downloading the source from http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com/
3. cd ~/cruisecontrol-1.4.0
4. ./cruise add ProjectName --repository 'https://projectpath.com/trunk' -s subversion --username cruisecontrol --password secretpassword
At this point, the code properly checked out of subversion and I didn't receive any errors.
5. cd ~/.cruise/projects/ProjectName/
6. edit cruise _config.rb and uncomment project.rake_task = 'features'
This will build using the 'cucumber features' tests
7. cd ~/cruisecontrol-1.4.0 and run ./cruise start
At this point the CruiseControl.rb server is supposed to startup, svn update your projects, and run a build if necessary.  I notice that I received errors:
svn --non-interactive log --limit 1 --revision HEAD:1 --verbose --xml
Host not found

I went into the ~/.cruise/projects/ProjectName/work/ directory and ran a svn update and it would intermittently work and other times return "host not found". 
8. Since this appeared to be a DNS issue I modified the DNS entries via:
sudo vi /etc/resolv.conf
modified and added a line for 4.2.2.2 (Verizon's public DNS server).
9. I reran step 7 and magically my CruiseControl.rb build ran successfully

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Decided to take some more shots of the office in use. As you can see,
we are running low on computers.

           

Click here to download:

Our_office_space_part_2.zip (2097 KB)

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Today a bunch of UIUC entrepreneurs met up at Za's on Green St. to
grab dinner and talk about the stuff we're working on. I can't wait
until the next meetup.

   

Click here to download:

Entrepreneur_Dinner_Meetup_1_a.zip (1072 KB)

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So 2 weeks have passed since we first started working on OrangeQC. I
wanted to post some random ideas and opinions about stuff at OrangeQC
and starting up in no particular order.
 
Early Mornings:
I love getting into work first thing in the morning (5 a.m.-). I can
knock out all my email for the day, catch up on some last minute
tasks, plan out my day accordingly, etc. It is a lot easier to get
things done when you don't have distractions to divert you from work.
Also the sunrise out of our windows is pretty nice in the morning too.
 
Test Driven Development:
Should have started with this. Writing tests afterward is a pain and
defeats the purpose of agile development. I think I'm going to find
myself writing more tests and fixing more code than if we just started
by writing tests.
 
Food:
Eating healthy. Enough said.
 
Afternoon workout:
This is a must for me. Getting in early and working till ~noon is
pretty exhausting and I need a break in the day. Hitting the gym and
doing a solid workout has been great in clearing my mine and helping
me solve problems that I couldn't get before. After the gym, I grab a
healthy lunch and head back to work.
 
Deadlines:
You work fast when you have a deadline to meet. You work even faster
when the deadline is set by the customer.
 
Dual monitors:
This is a productivity must. I've found myself programming and
working much more efficiently than with just a single monitor. The
SongAlive team has a pretty nice 24 inch monitor. I might look into
one after we get a few sales. Right now, we'll use the free 17 inch
monitors.
 
Fire at Five (Event):
Fox Development Corp. has a once a month event for all the tenants at
Research Park and EnterpriseWorks. Fire at Five is a time to relax,
enjoy a bonfire, grab some food, and socialize with employees at other
companies. This being my first Fire at Five, I was pretty impressed.
There were a ton of people, great food, and a very social atmosphere
(not to mention the weather was great).

           

Click here to download:

First_Few_Weeks_at_OrangeQC.zip (2095 KB)

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After spending a good portion of my life not caring about keeping track of my exercises, calories, weight lifted, miles ran, etc. I've come to the conclusion that that just doesn't suffice anymore.  Without a doubt in my mind, I'm pretty healthy: I eat good, excercise frequently, and enjoy rock climbing.  When trying to enact change like gain weight, losing weight, run a 6 minute mile, and climb harder routes one must properly measure the progress being vs the goals.

Generally speaking, one can't efficiently change something they can't measure.  The same holds true for workouts, health, lifting, you name it.  Students gain a clear understanding of their performance by receiving grades on homework and tests.  Although debatable, this is an objective way for students to tell if they are meeting their goals.  I'm going to test the methodology and apply it to my physical activity.

I read an article by Tim Ferris that described his "arguably exaggerated" journey in gaining 34-lbs of muscle in 28 days.  Despite this incredible feat, he brings up some very interesting points; namely, he says "6. Record every workout in detail, including date, time of day, order of exercises, reps, and weight. Remember that this is an experiment, and you need to control the variables to accurately assess progress and make adjustments."  I'm also keeping track of food (carb, protein, fat) intake as they are useful measure to gauge progress of change as well. 

I'm attempting to keep track of the variables by using a service called Gyminee (www.gyminee.com).  It does a pretty decent job of keeping track of food, workouts, and personal goals.  I'll be experimenting with the service for the summer and see how it works out for me.  Initially, I can tell that it doesn't have some basic excercises in its database and it has been ridiculously slow for some reason, but I'm going to stick with it and see how it works for my lifestyle.

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I am finally finished with final exams for the semester. Taking all
CS theory classes was difficult as I didn't get a chance to do some
solid programming. Luckily, that will change this summer.
 
The summer is here and it is time to hustle and get OrangeQC.com up
and going. I'll be getting situated and moving everything into the
office space this weekend. The team officially starts on May 18 and
will be "crushing it". Stay tuned for updates.

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http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/04/30/pirates-go-for-their-next-target-apple.aspx
 
I read the recent article by The Motley Foot on "Pirates Go for Their
Next Target: Apple" and started to think how to apply their strategy
can be applied to startups. To summarize, the article describes how
piracy is a problem in industries such as music, movies, software, and
hardware. The music and movie industries have taken the stance of
suing everyone and everything they can. Software developers (such as
game makers and Microsoft) try to add more complex copy protection and
varieties of product registration. Oddly enough Apple is quite
different by selling software without protection as well as building
hardware that takes years of expertise to design. Because of this, I
see many different avenues for startups to apply these tactics to
their own brand (slighted to B2B software startups, but they should
apply across the board).
 
1. "Hard to copy": Pirates had an immensely difficult time replicating
the latest iPod Shuffle because "[the] basic components, like
resistors and capacitors, are too tiny to even identify." [1] As a
startup, if you're building software to run locally on a computer
their is little one can do to protect your software. The solution
(and buzz word) is cloud computing. Amazon, Microsoft, Google all
have their own cloud resources for people to use. Running your
startup on the cloud or integrating a critical component with cloud
resources is immensely beneficial. People can't pirate something they
can't install (most of the time).
 
2. "Be Open": Apple touched on these ideas with no protection on their
OS X packages and much of their consumer software. I would venture a
guess that they are hoping people will pirate it so people are more
inclined to purchase higher end Macs. They opened up their software
so it can become viral and ubiquitous. Startups should take the same
route. Twitter is famous for providing an open API and toolset for
developers and look where they've gone. Now everyone on different
platforms, devices, etc. are all using Twitter. Startups should try
to build there idea as open as possible. B2B startups should
definitely take this route as products like Salesforce.com, SAP, and
Quickbooks can always bring in feeds of data that can be of use to
them. If you allow companies to utilize the data in a way you never
thought possible, then you will have created a long-term customer (and
beta tester for new features).
 
3. "Customer Service": In a B2B startups, your customers are directly
paying you for the service you provide. It is easy to see the
connection between exceptional customer service, support, and
assistance and how likely these customers will stay with your product.
 (Especially in a startup) if a customer requests a feature, small
change, etc. we need to give it to them. If the feature pertains to
the industry you're marketing then it will be immensely useful to more
of your customers that haven't thought of it yet. For example,
building small features (possibly for a fee) for some customer and
providing them to other customers down the line. Your startup looks
like it is in tune with their customer industry and fast-paced;
whereas, you literally learned of the idea from your users. Also,
most companies fail miserably at customer service. If you can provide
an easy way to talk to a person, you'd be surprised how customers
respond.
 
The basic principles that Apple uses to compete with piracy, startups
should use as a template to attract more customers and keep their
competition at bay!

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So, I decided to experiment with my new Vibram FiveFingers KSO at the
gym today. I've worn them almost exclusively for 2 days in order to
build up the endurance I need to work out with them.
 
Lifts: Squats and leg press were great as I received more feedback
from the KSOs and my contact with the ground. It was much easier to
focus on correct form, stability, and using a variety of muscles to
stabilize.
 
Running: I was a sprinter back in high school so I was used to running
on the balls' of my feet, but the design of the KSO's pretty much
force you to do that. Running heal-toe isn't possible as the shock
runs up your ankles, knees, etc. for each stride. Instead, your body
becomes pretty comfortable running on your toes/balls' of your feet
which shifts the shock to your calf's, Achilles, and arch which
actually feels quite comfortable. I ran on both concrete and a
rubberized track surface for a variety of 100-m sprints and 400-m
strides. Both felt very comfortable and didn't cause any pain. I did
notice being sore after running on concrete, but I'm assuming that is
to be expected. I will continue to use these for my short distance
running and training.
 
Balance and Stability: Balancing on plates, planks, balls, and such
varied in difficulty. I found myself engaging a wider variety of my
muscles to stabilize and balance. I think this is going to greatly
help with rock climbing where flexibility and balance are critical.
On certain exercises where balancing on a plank (with a ball folcrum)
I performed quite poorly. I believe this was because using flattened
shoes push the stabilization and center of mass higher (possibly
knees); whereas, with the KSOs I felt that any slight change in my
ankles or specific points on my feet caused me to lose balance. This
was definitely a better workout with the KSOs than my Sauconys.

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