Today I found a Web 2.0 Innovation Map — a list of innovative companies on a Google Map — but there were none in Utah. We need to fix that.
Utah 2.0
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Monthly Archives: January 2006
Judge others by intentions, yourself by results
Great quote from Guy Kawasaki today:
“Judge others by their intentions and yourself by your results. If you want to be at peace with the world, here’s what you should do. When you judge others, look at what they intended to do. When you judge yourself, look at what you’ve actually accomplished. This attitude is bound to keep you humble. By contrast, if you judge others by their accomplishments (which are usually shortfalls) and yourself by your intentions (which are usually lofty), you will be an angry, despised little man.” (From: Hindsights II)
I’d like to do this more myself.
Eventful month in technology
It has been an eventful month:
Macworld
We went to Macworld in San Francisco last week and had a great time. We woke at 4:00 AM to get in line for Steve Jobs’s 9:00 AM keynote. We made it in, and sat 6th row from the back. Does any other company build this much loyalty [fanaticism] from its customers? We also heard from David Pogue, who spoke (and sang!) at both Macworld and at the Apple store off Market street; from Guy Kawasaki, who was promoting a new company called FilmLoop; from Rob Griffiths; from Andy Ihnatko; and from Lesa Snider who taught a Photoshop class, then got married at Macworld.
We spent some time passing out business cards to promote our website of freeware for Mac. We even ran into Chuck Joiner who interviewed me previously and was kind enough to do a follow-up interview. I’ll post it when it’s available. On the expo floor, Apple had a gigantic “booth” (larger than a house) promoting their new Intel-powered iMac and the notebook formerly known as Powerbook. Google had a tiny booth in the corner of the room promoting the new Mac version of Google Earth. Research in Motion was also there, promoting their Blackberry phones and a partnership with PocketMac to provide syncing between a Blackberry and a Mac. I asked an Adobe guy about their partnership with Macromedia, and while he said the two suites of software will eventually be combined, it won’t be for a while. I’m glad that Apple’s switching to Intel will force Adobe to rewrite their apps in Xcode, which will fix some of the ugliness of Dreamweaver for Mac.
Utah Geek Dinner
On Tuesday night I attended the 3rd Utah Geek Dinner. Attorneys Nathan Nelson and Dave McKenzie presented, respectively, on how to start your own business and on patent law. Dave Turnbull spoke about the Software for Starving Students package, an awesome compilation of freeware for PC or Mac. Afterwards, all 40-50 of us introduced ourselves and what we do, and then there was time for various announcements by employers, people looking for work, and user groups. It ran slightly long, but it was a good event for meeting new people and putting faces with the people I’ve “met” on mailing lists. Thanks to Phil Burns and company for putting it on!
Utah PHP Users
Thursday night the Utah PHP Users group met. I spoke briefly about MVC frameworks for PHP. Rails is probably the most famous of the MVC frameworks and has gotten a lot of press, but it is for the programming language Ruby. In answer to Ruby on Rails, several frameworks have popped up for PHP. One of the most promising of the PHP frameworks is PHP on Trax, written by local programmer John Peterson to closely imitate Ruby on Rails. I invited John to speak with me at the PHP users group meeting, and frankly, the best part of my presentation was when I sat down. John gave an awesome presentation on how easy it is to develop a web app with PHP on Trax. John Taber, whose company has been trying Ruby on Rails, said PHP on Trax is similar enough that you could probably learn it by reading the Rails book. He said they’re going to try Trax. I was impressed with PHP on Trax and all the work John Peterson has done. I’m going to begin using it at work too.
My presentation: MVC Frameworks for PHP [pdf]
John Peterson’s presentation: PHP on Trax [pdf]
Most important technical book I ever read
While I was home for Christmas, I found a book I hadn’t seen in a while: a computer programming manual for Power C, a C compiler from Mix Software. My parents sent away for it when I was about 12 years old. At $19.95 it was quite a steal since it included an ANSI-compliant C compiler and a printed manual with a good tutorial. I remember poring over it trying to take it all in. I learned pointers, memory management, and linked lists. For an additional $19.95, we bought the debugger. I could see the values of variables in real time and step through programs. It was fun.
My proudest programming moment was creating a Terminate and Stay Resident program that helped me play an online game. The game was Flash Attack and it ran on Galacticomm BBS‘s. (Despite having to dial into a bulletin board system to play it, that my computer was slow, and that the game used primitive text graphics, it was pretty fun to play with other people.) The game would let you shoot a laser beam at oncoming tanks, but you had to type in the trajectory of the laser beam in degrees and that obviously wasn’t easy to do in a hurry when tanks were attacking.
So I built a program that ran in the background, looking for oncoming tanks by watching for the diamond shape in the video card’s memory area. If it saw a tank, it would calculate the trajectory of the laser beam, type it in, and press “L” to shoot the laser. It was like having a bug zapper for my base; any time a tank came near it would automatically be shot. (Including my tanks, so I had to be careful where I drove.) It was a big project for me because I had to learn direct memory access to the graphics system, hook into system interrupts to stay resident in the background, how to “stuff” the keyboard with keystrokes, and a little trigonometry.
That Power C manual taught me everything I know about C. Since I now make my living as a PHP programmer, and especially because PHP is modeled after C, I can safely say the Power C manual has had more influence on me than any other technical book! Thanks, Mix Software!
NOTE: I had never searched for Mix Software on the Internet, but while writing this entry I was surprised to find that Mix Software is apparently still in business and Power C is still available at the same price!