The six-week-overdue commit

Emulate Showcase Kit. That little dropdown button is what the user sees, and that's what I added to reelyActive's core open source software product today. Of course adding the button was the easy part. Adding the functionality, which involves architecture-level decisions, was the challenging part.

I had been planning to complete this six weeks earlier, and the fact that I was effectively able to complete this in an afternoon made it frustrating that it hadn't been completed sooner. However committing the code provided me a real sense of satisfaction.

I wish I could write code and advance the core product whenever I'm motivated to do so (which is most of the time). Unfortunately, my role in the startup involves many additional responsibilities, and I'm not convinced that I've been able to strike a healthy compromise between the two. I think about this a lot and intend to dig deeper as Startical 2.0 progresses.

Note to future self: this was starling@1.0.1 and hlc-server@1.0.17

Reminiscing about last year's epic rail journey

Last year today I embarked on an epic rail journey from Montreal to Chicago via Vancouver and Seattle. This time of the year is pretty much the only time I can completely escape startup life (and Internet connectivity), and a year ago I seized the opportunity to do something I'd been dreaming of since childhood: take "The Canadian" across Canada. Sat down with a beer and watched my videos from that trip (see playlists below) which brought back very fond memories not only of the trip itself, but also of Startical 1.0 which involved a similarly ridiculous Montreal to San Francisco rail journey. The playlists: "The Canadian" - Toronto to Vancouver by rail "The Empire Builder" - Seattle to Chicago by rail Also reminds me of my Rails and Reels: History, Infrastructure and the IoT blog post from 2013, just after we had become "World's Best Startup". Somehow rail journeys bring out the philosopher in me...

Office painting continued

There was fugly wallpaper on BOTH of those walls... ...the last to (soon) be painted white. Only just today realised that our new office, which is on the corner of Sherbrooke and Parc streets (Parc is French for Park) could cheekily be called PARC. XEROX PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) is effectively the birthplace of much of the core technologies we continue to use today (tablet computers, graphical user interfaces, mice, object-oriented programming...). See this reelyActive blog post . I've been calling the office Sharc to date, but PARC is not only awesome, but also fitting since the intent is to use it as a living lab and showcase of all the emerging tech we have developed and continue to develop. It may seem silly, but this is the highlight of my day and unbelievably motivating!

Search This Blog