Simplicity Rules

I like to ride my bike into the office. We live about ten blocks from the east side of the river, with downtown on the other side. Most of my morning trip is downhill. I almost never have to peddle.

The ride back is much harder. Naturally, it’s uphill most of the way. Recently, coasting down in the morning, I realized that I would much rather have the easy ride on the way home. Even though it would mean some tough peddling at an early hour, I’d be leaving myself a reward for the afternoon.

I have no plans to swap my home and office yet, but this then got me thinking about projects. Like my ride to work, we don’t really have much of a choice of where the hard work comes, but what if we did? I would still take the hard stuff first. Consider this graph:

The blue represents my current roundtrip ride (where the easy stuff is in the first half, the morning). The orange is the reverse ride I wish I could have.

Perhaps it’s about delayed gratification, in which case I guess that means I have a successful mindset.

In terms of projects, I think it’s more about tempo. Getting through the tough stuff and “coasting” through the end would be lovely. Try as we might, the tough stuff is probably meant to be at the end. That’s where the details are.

If you had a choice, would you want the blue project or the orange project? Where do you want your hill?

I saw Harry Potter on Wednesday night, but that’s not what this is about. It’s about the new version of Unthirsty. The happy hour map has added some social features, and they’re good.

Oh, and they have an iPhone version for you. Ya digg?

Yes, I am still using the web to plan my binges. And remember how much I liked the first version of Unthirsty. They’ve done better.

Before you say how me-too and blasé social features are, take a look back at my social website rules. Unthirsty hits them all, but they especially get the part where they make it useful for me, regardless of whether other people are using the site.

Looking for what happy hours are happening right now has always been a great feature of Unthirsty. Now they narrow the scope, just to my few favorite spots. I can see at a glance which of my haunts is in happy hour.

Since the site is useful to me, and since happy hours are naturally social, I actually find myself wanting a way to connect to my friends. In this day when everyone seems to be asking me to add people as contacts, it’s refreshing to see a site where that feature would actually be beneficial.

Independence Day seems like an appropriate time to make an announcement about the future of our country. I’ve been surprised at how early my fellow candidates have started their ‘08 campaigns. Today, I am leaping to the forefront.

I have formed an exploratory committee and I plan to run for President of the United States in 2016, my first election of eligibility.

Be sure to check out my campaign site and add me as a friend/contact on every single social network that exists.

If you’re into patriotism, be sure to see why Bowlers Unite for America.

Though I’ve done a healthy amount of video production in my past, I haven’t been involved in the big online video push of the last two years, from a producer standpoint. As a viewer, it’s never been simpler. I haven’t worried about video codecs in ages.

Last week, I finally got around to uploading a video. Some friends and I create We Were Aces: A Che Gomez Wifflementary back in 2002. We always wanted to put it online, but getting it small enough and viewable by most browsers was a huge hurdle. For five years, it sat around on a DVD, but now you can see it here.

Producing web video, like watching it, is easier than ever before. But it’s still pretty hard. Since my copy is on a DVD, I had to find software that could extract a video file. I felt like a investment banker walking into a back alley looking for some smack, trudging the dirty web. One tutorial placed “home movie” in quotes, assuming I was ripping a hollywood movie. I chuckled, figuring I was one of few who was actually extracting my own work.

Finally, I remembered HandBrake, recommended by a couple friends in the past. It’s about as easy as it gets right now. Still, there are a million settings, none of which seem to actually affect quality of file size. And it still made me feel dirty.

I’m quoted in an article about Portland’s municipal internet. Among other things, I say, “For me ubiquitous access means I don’t have to base my life around wherever my office is.”

I have been working from coffee shops and cafes since late 2001. Even though I’ve had an office for several years, hotspots around the city have still helped me stay connected. No doubt, WiFi has simplified my life.

I create web programs that take user input and do something smart. Not every site needs to be overseen by someone with my skills. I’d guess 99 in 100 projects can be completed with off-the-shelf web software.

Still, there are programmers who want to shout from the kills the “dangers” of not hiring a good coder. These programmers are marketing from fear. They don’t want to be replaced by a packaged solution.

Every industry faces similar fears. The great people don’t market from that fear.

The TV news magazine 60 Minutes had a piece on low-cost real estate company Redfin. Agents go bonkers when someone talks about reducing commissions. One site took reporter Leslie Stahl on a fictional drive-along to show how much time and money it takes to sell real estate:

But now comes the fun part. It’s about noon by now and we get to go out and get our daily dose of disrespect and hatred from the FSBO’s and Expireds. So we head back to the gas station to load up the Jeep with gas…another $55.00.

It left me wondering why the author even wants to be an agent.

While I was reading up on reactions to the Redfin story, I noticed a lot of comments rolling into a site I never launched. My friend Jon and I started iPod Wedding after he had a good experience choosing the soundtrack to his reception. We haven’t made it past the first post, but a DJ forum found the site and DJs started leaving angry messages. Here’s one of the tamer ones:

Have you all lost you minds!!! I am a DJ, and I have to say that this is nothing short of complete stupidity!! Whoever wrote this how to needs some real education on what a Dj does. What about the intros, the events, when the food is served, where and how the best photos are to be taken. A DJ sets all of these things up, its the experience of the DJ that makes the entire party

This guy may be right. Jon and I met spinning CDs at the campus radio station. I’m sure good DJs can make a better reception. Marketing from fear of automation isn’t the right way to convey your unique value proposition. If you’re scared of it, maybe there’s a reason?

I should finally read Player Piano, a book my friend and fellow programmer Josh has long recommended:

Vonnegut’s first novel, an unforgiving portrait of an automated and totalitarian future, was published in 1952. A human revolt against the machines which control life was arranged by the machines themselves to prove the futility of such resistance.

Did you know we still have travel agents? My guess is that the ones who do it well don’t go on about how much they hate online booking.

Thanks to Lee Brimelow for the water bottle photo.

Three people have called it a pilgrimage now, so I’ll go with it.

Five of the last six years, I’ve gone down to Arizona in March to watch spring training baseball. This year I flew into Orange County so I could partake in the road trip to Phoenix with Jon. We picked Chris up at the airport and headed to game one of five.

We saw eight different teams, ate at Sonic twice, and played NES on Dreamcast until the wee hours of the morning.

It was an awesome four days. Next year couldn’t come soon enough.

Back in July, someone left this strange message (embedded and transcribed below).

This is the AT&T relay service… with a relay call for this number. This call is for Adam DuVander.

I would like your assistance in some web development. Some of my PHP has broken and I need some HTML to debug the JavaScript. Please call back at your earliest convenience to discuss this enlightening opportunity. You know want it. Hack it up, Adam. Hack it real good. Do you hear me? Hack like you’ve never hacked before. By the way, I know the street which is named after you. Go ahead.

It’s been an enigma, and I get the feeling the mystery person wants to keep it that way. But as I said at the time, if this was you, tell me. I probably owe you a beer… and possibly some PHP help.

If you’d like to try out the service this person used, here it is. Not that I encourage anyone to take advantage of a free service for the hard-of-hearing.

I can’t believe it took me nearly nine months to share this here. This is one of the best laughs I’ve ever had listening to voicemail.

If you care about your time, and I know you do, then you really ought to be using the Firefox web browser. To say it saves your life is not hyperbole. If you’re able to browse faster, you’ll be able to do more of the things you’d like to do.

There are so many things I love about Firefox, but I’ll keep this to one feature. Session restore was released in Firefox 2. I’ve never been a big fan of my browser crashing, but when it happens I no longer get that sinking feeling.

Instead, I know all my windows and tabs will be back open. It even logs me back in to sites where I was signed on. It’s automagical.

So, Portlanders, if you’d like to find out more about Firefox, come to the Portland Web Innovators meeting on April 4. The guy who added the session restore feature will be talking about Firefox 3. And I’ll be saying thank you.

I’ll be at SXSW interactive conference this weekend.

The last time I was in Austin, Clinton was president. I was in college. I didn’t own a laptop. I brought my non-digital camera to take pictures for my black and white photography class. Somewhere I have a great, grainy shot of a garbage can that, with the help of a well-placed bumper sticker, says “Keep Austin beautiful… elect George W. Bush president.”

It’s a different time now. Yet, in many ways, the feel in the air is similar to 2000. People are enthusiastic about the web, and we’re all getting together to talk about it.

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