I had made tentative plans to go to the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C. this summer with my friend Tish. Now that I have a "real job" it looks like that wouldn't happen, so I decided to make the trip before starting my new job.
Since D.C. is a pretty good haul from the north-central Jersey boonies, I headed down on Thursday afternoon. I arrived just in time to go to "game night" with Tish and her brother Mark. We ended up playing a couple of hands of The Great Dalmuti. Afterwards, we got some pizza then headed back home where we sat around drinking wine and shooting the breeze until 3:30 AM.
Up way too early the next morning, Tish and I headed down to the Metro in the rain. That part of Maryland/Virginia reminded me a lot of a New Jersey landscape with more modern infrastructure: better and wider roads, no construction, etc. The other drivers on the road were just as bad as Jersey drivers though.
So we got to D.C. around ten-ish and headed over to the East Wing of the NGA. I hadn't been in D.C. since I was a teenager but I hadn't been in this area. I was impressed with the architecture in this part of town, for example the Department of Agriculture's North Building; the architecture exudes big-bloated bureaucracy and power.
Even though the East Wing of the NGA is dedicated to modern and abstract art, the best exhibit was the illuminated manuscripts. The artwork on some of those were incredible and I couldn't believe some of them were over 500 years old and still so brilliantly, well, illuminated!
Next to the illuminated manuscripts, the best part about the East Wing was the Multiverse light tunnel you traverse to get to the West Wing. Other than that, I was meh about the East Wing; I expected more...important works, or at least more works that I would recognize.
The West Wing holds more traditional, or should I say classical, pieces. I liked it better then the East Wing but still had the same thought; I expected to see more "famous" paintings. There were a few, of course; Da Vinci's Ginerva de' Benci, Napoleon in his study and a couple of Monets come to mind, but still, I expected more.
Don't bother eating at the cafe in the West Wing. The cafe was called "Cafe' Amsterdam" and I assume it was themed to go along with the Dutch Cityscapes exhibit. They had a nice blonde Belgian beer and the stew was good but the rest of the food was meh. Of course, because it was in a museum, the price was a bit much ($20 for the buffet).
Afterwards we walked around some more. I think we covered about 80% of the West Wing's exhibits. By that time, I was just tired of it all. Oh, the noisy high-schoolers who were on some sort of artsy scavenger hunt didn't help my mood either.
By this time the weather had turned beautiful, so we walked across the National Mall and made our way over to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. As we approached, it looked like there was a throng of people waiting to get in; think Ruby Tuesday's on a Friday night. Turns out most of the people were coming out of the museum although there were long lines to get in. The lines were due to everyone having to go through metal detectors to get in. I thought it was mostly security theater; after all, the other museums don't make you walk through metal detectors. Tish pointed out other museums don't have wingnuts running around saying that Picasso never existed.
I have to say I was pleased to see that the Holocaust Memorial Museum is not the Jewish Holocaust Memorial Museum; unless they were talking about specific incidents related to the Jews, the museum made it a point to mention that the Roma were also targeted for extermination.
I must say the museum is the quietest museum I've ever been in.
Sure, the lobby is loud and noisy, but once people got off the elevator on the top floor (you start on the fourth floor and work you way down) their mood suddenly changes and, if they say anything at all, it's in a low whisper.
There were some exhibits in the basement that were overlooked by most people unfortunately: a small display talking about the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the 1994 Rwandan genocide was mentioned in passing, a display about "The Protocols of The Elders of Zion" was interesting, and an elaborate exhibit on the Nazi's use propaganda was very good.
I highly recommend the Holocaust Memorial Museum if you're in the Washington, D.C. area.
Afterwards, we headed over to the Potomac basin to see the cherry blossoms in bloom. I don't understand the attraction myself. Then we headed to Reiter's bokstore which is an awesome bookstore; nothing but technical and professional books. If I lived in the area, I'd be there a lot just to peruse the math and computer books.
We finally got back home around 10 PM that night. It was a long day, but fun.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
My NYC Android Presnetation
A couple of you have been asking me how my presentation at the March 24, 2009 meeting of the NYC Android Developer's Meetup went. Overall, not bad, but it did have its rocky moments.
The point of the presentation was to demo the mini eco-system I've been writing that uses Google's App Engine (GAE) and Google's Android phone. There's nothing really special about it (other than I wrote it ;-) but the group needed someone to present something and you know how much I like to stand in front of a technical audience.
For those of you in the audience that are new, you can read what my little eco-system does here.
The meetings are held at Fast Company's NYC headquarters, 29th floor of WTC 7. The meeting room has an awesome view of New York and the Hudson but this was the first time I had seen it in the light (due to Daylight Savings Time change). With the sun setting behind skyscrapers, it was even awesomer [sic].
I got there early and started setting up. Of course, the hardware didn't want to cooperate: the GPS on the phone wasn't kicking in; the Macbook display was doing weird things until one of the other members pointed out I had to put it into "mirror" mode; and Droidex, the application that displays the phone screen on the computer in real-time stopped working! Without Droidex, my presentation was worthless. Eventually, though, I got everything working (except the GPS).
There was a good turnout for the meeting, probably 25 to 30 people, over half of them new. We introduced ourselves and mentioned why we were interested in Android. When the last person finished speaking, Rana the Assistant Organizer looked at me like "Well? Go for it" so I did.
The presentation was called "Scratching an Itch". The phrase "scratching an itch" is used in programming to describe the act of a programmer writing a program ("scratching") for his need (an "itch") instead of someone else's need, like his client or boss.
So the first thing I had to do was explain my "itch". I did it by tellning the story in a Lessig-style presentation. The story revolved around me missing Banksy's NYC exhibit in October 2008 but first, I had to explain who Banksy was, so I showed several of his art works. Things were going well until I showed this one; about half the audience (mostly the older people) didn't appreciate it for some reason. :-)
Anyway, I got through the "describing the itch" part and started demoing my programs. That could have gone a lot better! I think I'll practice that some more before trying it out on some more audiences.
Afterwards, I got to talk to several cool people about how to do things in Android and even got into a discussion about AWS.
At that point, there was nothing left to do but head home.
I want to put up a screencast of my presentation and demo, so if anyone knows of some decent [fF]ree software to do that on a Macbook or Linux, let me know.
The point of the presentation was to demo the mini eco-system I've been writing that uses Google's App Engine (GAE) and Google's Android phone. There's nothing really special about it (other than I wrote it ;-) but the group needed someone to present something and you know how much I like to stand in front of a technical audience.
For those of you in the audience that are new, you can read what my little eco-system does here.
The meetings are held at Fast Company's NYC headquarters, 29th floor of WTC 7. The meeting room has an awesome view of New York and the Hudson but this was the first time I had seen it in the light (due to Daylight Savings Time change). With the sun setting behind skyscrapers, it was even awesomer [sic].
I got there early and started setting up. Of course, the hardware didn't want to cooperate: the GPS on the phone wasn't kicking in; the Macbook display was doing weird things until one of the other members pointed out I had to put it into "mirror" mode; and Droidex, the application that displays the phone screen on the computer in real-time stopped working! Without Droidex, my presentation was worthless. Eventually, though, I got everything working (except the GPS).
There was a good turnout for the meeting, probably 25 to 30 people, over half of them new. We introduced ourselves and mentioned why we were interested in Android. When the last person finished speaking, Rana the Assistant Organizer looked at me like "Well? Go for it" so I did.
The presentation was called "Scratching an Itch". The phrase "scratching an itch" is used in programming to describe the act of a programmer writing a program ("scratching") for his need (an "itch") instead of someone else's need, like his client or boss.
So the first thing I had to do was explain my "itch". I did it by tellning the story in a Lessig-style presentation. The story revolved around me missing Banksy's NYC exhibit in October 2008 but first, I had to explain who Banksy was, so I showed several of his art works. Things were going well until I showed this one; about half the audience (mostly the older people) didn't appreciate it for some reason. :-)
Anyway, I got through the "describing the itch" part and started demoing my programs. That could have gone a lot better! I think I'll practice that some more before trying it out on some more audiences.
Afterwards, I got to talk to several cool people about how to do things in Android and even got into a discussion about AWS.
At that point, there was nothing left to do but head home.
I want to put up a screencast of my presentation and demo, so if anyone knows of some decent [fF]ree software to do that on a Macbook or Linux, let me know.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Android and ProximityAlerts: Have I found "the trick"?
As you know, I've been fighting with Proximity Alerts (PAs) in Android. The idea behind them is I can tell the LocationManager to notify me when I come within X distance of a geopoint (geographical point, a.k.a. latitude/longitude). There's is practically no discussion of this on the Google Groups, for the 1.0 version of the SDK anyway, and no one has been answering my postings.
My conclusion? PAs don't work, which is a shame cause it seems to be a killer feature of the Android framework.
Well, I Was running errands today and I decided to try something. I deleted every location in my Android save one. I then field-tested my app. The PA worked! I then drove to a local WiFi hotpsot (the local liquor store :-), changed the geopoint and tested it again. It worked again!
So my current theory is this: PAs work, but only one at a time. You can't load up several PAs becasue, presumably only the last one is read/active.
This means I have to write my own routine to determine what geopoints are nearby which kind of defeats the point of using PAs in the first place if you ask me.
Maybe I'll actually have a working demo for my presentation on Tuesday at the NYC Android Developer Meetup!
My conclusion? PAs don't work, which is a shame cause it seems to be a killer feature of the Android framework.
Well, I Was running errands today and I decided to try something. I deleted every location in my Android save one. I then field-tested my app. The PA worked! I then drove to a local WiFi hotpsot (the local liquor store :-), changed the geopoint and tested it again. It worked again!
So my current theory is this: PAs work, but only one at a time. You can't load up several PAs becasue, presumably only the last one is read/active.
This means I have to write my own routine to determine what geopoints are nearby which kind of defeats the point of using PAs in the first place if you ask me.
Maybe I'll actually have a working demo for my presentation on Tuesday at the NYC Android Developer Meetup!
Monday, March 9, 2009
Musings for a rainy day
All throughout my consultancy, my business model was "build it and they will come" and sure enough, for ten years, people kept finding me and hiring me for projects. Well, that's not working any more; the market has moved and I need to find another market and/or business model.
The question is "how?" How do you find something that is both profitable and enjoyable? I've been told by marketers "Pick an industry. Anything. Selling dog food. Dry cleaning. Just pick something and focus on it." That is unsatisfying to me.
I also need to move "up the stack". What I've been doing is selling services (programing, admin, training); basically being a journeyman or, in your terminology, a non-full-time contractor. But what's above me in the stack? What skills or knowledge do I have that others would pay for that don't ential billing by the hour for slinging code or doing maintenance?
And then there's the technical side of it. I'm familiar with what's going on technically (Twitter and Facebook APIs, Google Android, the iPhone, Cloud Computing) but how do you form a business around them? A specific example: I have the docs and understand the Twitter API but what can I do with it? What can I build with it that others will find useful and, even better, pay for?
Suggestions?
The question is "how?" How do you find something that is both profitable and enjoyable? I've been told by marketers "Pick an industry. Anything. Selling dog food. Dry cleaning. Just pick something and focus on it." That is unsatisfying to me.
I also need to move "up the stack". What I've been doing is selling services (programing, admin, training); basically being a journeyman or, in your terminology, a non-full-time contractor. But what's above me in the stack? What skills or knowledge do I have that others would pay for that don't ential billing by the hour for slinging code or doing maintenance?
And then there's the technical side of it. I'm familiar with what's going on technically (Twitter and Facebook APIs, Google Android, the iPhone, Cloud Computing) but how do you form a business around them? A specific example: I have the docs and understand the Twitter API but what can I do with it? What can I build with it that others will find useful and, even better, pay for?
Suggestions?
Friday, February 27, 2009
Last night's presentation (2009-02-26)
Last night, I gave a presentation on my Google App Engine application at the NYC Cloud Computing Group's (semi-regular) monthly meeting held at Gemini Systems down in the Financial district (thanks for hosting us, Mick!). I must say, it went over much better than I expected.
I've been concentrating on my Android Developer's presentation slated for March 10th and didn't give enough attention to the NYCCC presentation, but then I never think I give enough attention to the job at hand. Anyway, I put together a NeoOffice (that's OpenOffice for the Mac, doncha' know) Impress presentation which was filled with bullet points. The difference this time was I showed each bullet point individually. Simple technique but it kept everyone with me instead of having some people listening to me and others reading ahead.
The original idea was to have a hands-on workshop, so I had planned to give the presentation, lead everyone in programming a simple app, then show a simple app that I had written to "scratch an itch"
However, given that I was sharing the evening with Dustin Whitney who was discussing Amazon Web Services and we each had only an hour, that idea went out the window real fast. Instead, I gave my presentation and then walked through my App Engine datastore for my Tag Your World program.
As I said, it went over very well. The audience was full of questions and kept me on my toes. I really like presenting to a technical audience.
At the end of my hour, there were still questions and comments, but I had to turn things over to Dustin. After a five minute break, Dustin gave a good presentation on the CloudTools that he has built and showed us some of the ways he uses Amazon Web Services in his day job.
Overall, it was a great meeting. Good presentations (if I do say so myself), good audience, and good food. I can't wait to see what John has slated for the next meeting.
I've been concentrating on my Android Developer's presentation slated for March 10th and didn't give enough attention to the NYCCC presentation, but then I never think I give enough attention to the job at hand. Anyway, I put together a NeoOffice (that's OpenOffice for the Mac, doncha' know) Impress presentation which was filled with bullet points. The difference this time was I showed each bullet point individually. Simple technique but it kept everyone with me instead of having some people listening to me and others reading ahead.
The original idea was to have a hands-on workshop, so I had planned to give the presentation, lead everyone in programming a simple app, then show a simple app that I had written to "scratch an itch"
However, given that I was sharing the evening with Dustin Whitney who was discussing Amazon Web Services and we each had only an hour, that idea went out the window real fast. Instead, I gave my presentation and then walked through my App Engine datastore for my Tag Your World program.
As I said, it went over very well. The audience was full of questions and kept me on my toes. I really like presenting to a technical audience.
At the end of my hour, there were still questions and comments, but I had to turn things over to Dustin. After a five minute break, Dustin gave a good presentation on the CloudTools that he has built and showed us some of the ways he uses Amazon Web Services in his day job.
Overall, it was a great meeting. Good presentations (if I do say so myself), good audience, and good food. I can't wait to see what John has slated for the next meeting.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
World Domination is one step closer!
I spent half of the day getting my Android app, "Tag Your World", to download locations from my Google App Engine application! And it works!
Okay, it's not perfect, mind you. I'm not authenticating or anything so I'm just pulling down the "public" info. However, Lenza just posted some code on how to do that so I should have no problem! Thank you, Lenza!
Now I can finish my presentation for this Thursday (although I'd really like to hack some more ;-)!
Okay, it's not perfect, mind you. I'm not authenticating or anything so I'm just pulling down the "public" info. However, Lenza just posted some code on how to do that so I should have no problem! Thank you, Lenza!
Now I can finish my presentation for this Thursday (although I'd really like to hack some more ;-)!
Monday, February 23, 2009
Not much to report, I'm afraid.
I had two job interviews last week. I'll report on those once I hear back from them.
I'm working on a presentation on Google's App Engine for the NYC Cloud Computing Group this Thursday (20090226). Problem is I can't find the right hook to make it entertaining.
Yes, you can make a technical talk entertaining. I'm also working on a presentation for the NYC Android Developers Group about my App Engine and Android ecosystem. The hook there is (I hope) very entertaining: a Lessig-style story followed by a functional demonstration followed by code discussion and Q&A.
I need to get at least two more functions working to pull off the demo. If I'm lucky, I might be able to demo my talk at the next ABE-PM meeting or even the LUG/IP meeting (although I think the next one is spoken for already).
I'll let you know.
I had two job interviews last week. I'll report on those once I hear back from them.
I'm working on a presentation on Google's App Engine for the NYC Cloud Computing Group this Thursday (20090226). Problem is I can't find the right hook to make it entertaining.
Yes, you can make a technical talk entertaining. I'm also working on a presentation for the NYC Android Developers Group about my App Engine and Android ecosystem. The hook there is (I hope) very entertaining: a Lessig-style story followed by a functional demonstration followed by code discussion and Q&A.
I need to get at least two more functions working to pull off the demo. If I'm lucky, I might be able to demo my talk at the next ABE-PM meeting or even the LUG/IP meeting (although I think the next one is spoken for already).
I'll let you know.
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