woof

In the dog house here -- been a few days since I posted here!

Progress is slow on my ipod app. Running into an issue of memory allocation. Need to reevaluate how I built my sample.

Got out for a run on Sunday. It went well. I need to really build up for that second wind. Having my trails ice up didn't help my progress much. Going to start hitting up the bike more to help build more lung capacity. Started working the body weight 100 to get used to doing squats again. Will be building that up shortly. I'll start doubling the workout soon, the bodyweight intervals do me good. Still doing the 100 pushup challenge. Making good progress on it. On week 4 now. Writing more offline now, but I will try and balance it out a bit more.

interesting..

Something to think about:


Design process

The design thinking process has seven stages: define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement, and learn.[1] Within these seven steps, problems can be framed, the right questions can be asked, more ideas can be created, and the best answers can be chosen. The steps aren't linear; they can occur simultaneously and can be repeated.

Although design is always subject to personal taste, design thinkers share a common set of values that drive innovation: these values are mainly creativity, ambidextrous thinking, teamwork, end-user focus, curiosity. There is considerable academic interest in understanding design thinking or design cognition, including an ongoing series of symposia on research in design thinking.[2]

[edit] Define

* Decide what issue you are trying to resolve.
* Agree on who the audience is.
* Prioritize this project in terms of urgency.
* Determine what will make this project successful.
* Establish a glossary of terms.

[edit] Research

* Review the history of the issue; remember any existing obstacles.
* Collect examples of other attempts to solve the same issue.
* Note the project supporters, investors, and critics.
* Talk to your end-users, that brings you the most fruitful ideas for later design
* Take into account thought leaders opinion

[edit] Ideate

* Identify the needs and motivations of your end-users.
* Generate as many ideas as possible to serve these identified needs
* Log your brainstorming session.
* Do not judge or debate ideas.
* During brainstorming, have one conversation at a time

[edit] Prototype

* Combine, expand, and refine ideas.
* Create multiple drafts.
* Seek feedback from a diverse group of people, include your end users.
* Present a selection of ideas to the client.
* Reserve judgment and maintain neutrality.

[edit] Choose

* Review the objective.
* Set aside emotion and ownership of ideas.
* Remember: the most practical solution isn't always the best.
* Select the powerful ideas.

[edit] Implement

* Assign tasks.
* Execute.
* Deliver to client.

[edit] Learn

* Gather feedback from the consumer.
* Determine if the solution met its goals.
* Discuss what could be improved.
* Measure success; collect data.
* Document.
Address : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking

Slowwing down on my postings. Got to get back on track with that. The sad part is the posting decrease is proportional to the amount of progress I have made on my goals. I hit a bit of a rut this week so fighting my way back to making progress. (To be fair, one of my goals is trying to get that work life balance thing. I've watched two movies and finished two really good books.)

I have started my next iPhone application. Targeted around building a tool to manage my reading lists. I have large piles that need to be worked, either in the purchase phase or the to be read. I'm overthinking the process so far building a cadillac in my head, rather than a volkswagon in the real world. (Or as real as one gets when talking about software). I am overthinking my persistance models, when I should prototype and see where that gets me. Simplicty is hard.

Making progress on my pushup goal, I've managed to keep the routine going well for the week. Prepping for the race is not going quite as well. I need to figure out a concrete plan for that this week.

Trying to refocus my head on where I want to go. Recognizing that I'm not in the right place, but struggling to understand what will be the right place for me. I'll keep working it.

Keep it moving

"Keep comin on you know we keep comin on
Keep comin on you know we keep comin on
Keep comin on you know we keep comin on
United as one a de revolution"
- Coming On : The Shamen

Trying to keep in motion with all the different ideas. Exploring and progressing. Trying to find my balance as I stumble forward. It goes...

Success!

Got my first app working and deployed on my iPod. Still lots of polish I'd like to do with it and then I need to decide if I want to try and publish to the AppStore, but overall really happy to just get something started. It has inspired me for a few other projects, but I am enjoying developing for this platform! Very easy compared to the day-to-day, but still interesting and fun.

Committed to the Pittsburgh Half Marathon today. I did my registration and now on to training! I started with some work on the exercise bike. Just an easy pace with a little bit of tension to get a feel for my condition. Didn't do too bad. I hit it up for 30 minutes and I'm feeling ok, broke a sweat but didn't push too hard. Will try and hit the bike for longer and with more tension. I need to see if I can do this for an hour and then for two hours. It's not the same as running, but it should help a little bit towards my cardio conditioning on days when I can't get out.

A little inspiration

Something More by Sugarland
Monday, hard to wake up
Fill my coffee cup, I'm out the door
Yeah, the freeway's standing still today
It's gonna make me late, and thats for sure
I'm running out of gas and out of time
Never gonna make it there by nine

Chorus:
There's gotta be something more
Gotta be more than this
I need a little less hard time
I need a little more bliss
I'm gonna take my chances
Taking a chance I might
Find what I'm looking for
There's gotta be something more

Five years and there's no doubt
That I'm burnt out, I've had enough
So now boss man, here's my two weeks
I'll make it short and sweet, so listen up
I could work my life away, but why?
I got things to do before die

Repeat Chorus

Some believe in destiny, and some believe in fate
I believe that happiness is something we create
You best belive that I'm not gonna wait
'Cause there's gotta be something more

I get home 7:30 the house is dirty, but it can wait
Yeah, 'cause right now I need some downtime
To drink some red wine and celebrate
Armageddon could be knocking at my door
but I ain't gonna answer thats for sure.
There's gotta be something more!

thursday already?

Not sure I'm happy or ticked that the week is going by so quick. To business.

115 days until the Pittsburgh Marathon. I hope to hit the Half Marathon. I have ~16 weeks to get myself in good enough shape for this event. We'll see how it goes. Getting back in the exercise groove is hard, but working on getting it going.

Trying to get an iPhone Developer's Kit. Still working thru the activation process. Not going very badly, but not exactly a smooth process either. I might be late for this goldrush, but it is an interesting space and doing mobile application development is something I've been interested in for a while. I've built WAP based sites before but mobile device programming would be a good thing to play with. Learning Objective-C and reminding myself how to do stuff in C is also a good challenge. Slow progress, the past few days, an the opening of the Situational App contest may delay making many more changes, but we'll see. Thinking about strategy for developing new apps. My plan is to start with a few free applications, and depending on adoption and feature requests, I may look at adding a paid version.

As I mentioned the Situational Application contest is back on so trying to get a sMash application out there. Also looking at moving an old PHP application to Zero, updating it to use ZRM instead of PHPDB. There was some AJAX items I wanted to add, and this would be a good way to handle that. I've got sMash running on my OSX box, going to reinstall it to my linux system.

Getting my feet wet with Portlet Factory, trying to update my Portal development skills. To date I've been heavy with portlet programming using the IBM Legacy Portlet API, JSR-168 and starting JSR-286, but as the tooling changes so to shall I.

ah... back to the grind

First day back after 2.5 weeks of vacation. Lots to do and have to hit the ground running. Eight hours of phone calls is a rough way to start back from vacation!

On the plus side got further with my iphone application. After trying to do some debugging realized that I had not associate the text entries in the nib/xib file with the Application Delegate. Once I got that straightened out it worked just great. Now that I have some basics working I want to fiddle with the app a bit more. I'm writing a basic financial calculator. There are a few things I always keep checking and it would be nice to have a quick calculator to do the work for me. Planning out some other ideas of things I would like to try.

Did a little more basement cleanup this evening. Still have more to do, but I do think it is shaping up now. Going to try and get some pushups in before bed.

today's progress

Almost have my first iphone app going. Having some strange times with basic math in Objective C, but at least I have the UI working. I suspect I'll have this wrapped up tomorrow.

Made good strides in cleaning the basement. Trying to organize the shelves, and toss as much junk as I can. I've made good strides consolidating like materials, cleaning out some space and trashing material I didn't even realize I was keeping. The space looks better, but still has more work to go. Something to continue chipping away at.

a touch at a time...

Built my first iPhone Application tonight. Only targeted the simulator, and it was an out of the box example. But I got it to work. Going to try and go back and fix my botched application next. It is essentially a very raw hello world, but it is a start. Getting the hang of Xcode and the tools associated with it.

Also made it out for my first run in a few months. Only hit up a mile, and I was hurting at the mile mark. Did about a 10 minute mile, but I have a lot of those to put in before I can get to the half marathon. Did find an appropriate amount of clothing so that felt good. Also tried to get some pushups in. That went ok-- I'm following the hundredpushups.com program. My baseline was 27, I have the option of starting at Week 3, but I think given my general conditioning from the last few months, I may roll back to Week 1 and build slowly.

Project Spotting...

Projects I am currently working on:

- Project A at work. Major releases due this year. Not much posting about that here. I may find other places to play with that.

- Fitness -- I plan to run the Pittsburgh Half Marathon in May. I have 18 weeks to get ready. I plan to mix up running with biking to build cardio conditioning. I want to try and get my Great Race speed to a sub 8 minute mile. We'll see how it goes. I have some consecutive pullup (25) and pushup (100) goals that I want to reach as well for general fitness

- Coding -- Lots of sub projects here: iphone and android development, WebSphere sMash, some skill retooling and growth as I look towards the future. Building some skill with Python and Javascript won't hurt either. Going to do some plugin improvements for Quoteurltext.

- Writing -- A few articles I would like to write and I want to get started on writing a book. I think I have it in me, just need to focus and push it forward. Blogging and journaling will also be good to bring forward.

The big emphasis is getting things done this year. Work fast and get some completion marks.

Welcome to 2009

Let's do something great! I will be building some blogs and posting a bit more requently as I make progress on different speheres. Expect more posts!

Thanks to everyone for a great 2008! Let's do better with 2009!

Jay