Fighting the Distracto-Matic on my Shoulders

Mid afternoon, and it's been a productive day for once. Many times I've gotten up during the day after a small bit of progress and paced around, usually refilling my tea-cup, and then persevered in spite of my brains tendency to want to run away from these tasks at hand. But persevere I have, and I seem to have crested that wall.

I can see the world on the other side (hmmm, looks like more walls over there - lol). But it's nice to have achieved this stage. Tomorrow will be a massive clean-up and document and back-up day.

This task was one of dealing with large amounts of interleaved data, which ended up not interleaved in a logical order. The remedy was reverting to a dynamic object which I could sort before dumping out to storage. The process was made much more easy with Python than it would have otherwise been.

For now, I have some other businessy chores to do, including writing a first substantial cheque for some office space. But, I will backup some stuff first.

Researchinator catching breath, can't quite believe I'm thru this task finally.

Morning Zips By, Painfully

Cutting into my lunch break now. Just getting into the day on keyboard after a meeting with a potential contributor to the project. The snow is falling in earnest now. Falling here too (lol). Everyday seemed to be the same slight drift down of flakes, but we're in for a good dump today. That means I'll have to take a break later this afternoon, say in about 4hours to clear the driveway.

I also woke with a nasty crick in the neck. On the right so I can't turn that way much. The worst thing about realizing it's there is that you also know you get to wear this for days. Why doesn't one just wake up upon finding that uncomfortable position, rather than sleeping through and getting the muscle damage that must result.

There seems to be little info on what causes it - most things say it's a spasm. That sounds like a non-destructive thing, whereas the recovery is usually days, suggesting that something is healing. As well, a simple spasm seems to me it would be relaxable through sleep, or NSAIDs or something. But while ice, heat, massage and aspirin seem to dull it a bit, it seems to need nothing but regular time duration to deal with it.

Oh well - at least I can still type and go on with my stuff. Must remember to take lots of breaks today though. Perhaps a mid-afternoon nap.

Researchinator is well aware of what's going on to the left, but is oblivious to the world at the right...

The Day Ahead and Fostering Distraction

Hey there's actually a bit of sun shine this morning. A high energy senior cat is rapidly touring the house, and I've got a ton of work to do. Meeting around noon to work out details of my office space rental. Another meeting tomorrow to discuss a possible contributor, and I'm also hoping to spend some time with a friend who may contribute some on the doc's side of things, if I can just get my stuff in order enough to set him up to collaborate with me.

I'm also getting a bit of fame for a crafty thing I worked up on the weekend that I forwarded into another blog, which is kind of fun. Just what I needed - more distractions. 0 to 216 hits in a few hours. Fun.

Anyway, I hope I can someday get similar action going on my biz. Which reminds me, I should rattle the twitter side of that biz again to keep it reasonably active.

So onward ho...

Researchinator regrets the use of the word 'ho' in the preceding sentence...

The Stark Cold Stone of a Wall Still Blocks My View of the Other Side

Nice dinner for Chinese New Year last night... though it took an incredible 2hrs to get the food. That would have been painful were it not for being with friends and a lot to talk about.

The day dawns cold here again, and I have some volunteery get together in the afternoon, so it's a limited day's effort today. I'm really eager to put this next step to rest. This 'wall' has been looming in front of me for ages, and my scaling attempts have mostly ended with half-assed scaffolding strewn around its face. Another assault shortly.

I'm gaining heads on my project - almost holding them back now. My big issues, this programming challenge just now and my lack of progress on the patent front. Annoying to be delayed by someone else - bad enough to be delayed by my own un-sustained focus. However, I keep thinking of urgent biz-side things I need to do. Particularly on paving the way for potential funding.

So that is how the day starts out. Best jump into it.

Researchinator gathers sticks and rope for another scaffolding attempt...

Barriers are Thick

Okay I think I'm officially in a rut. Well, I did pose a key question on a programming site and get some helpful responses about the path forward,potentially. But the weight of things on my shoulders has slowed me down a bit. Every day seems to have something hanging over it that deflates my ability to pack in some solid hours of programming and get to a conclusion of this phase of my work.

This morning I needed to make some bread, so that's in place. Plus I've got thinking to do about office space and some collaboration that initially looked like an out-of-the-blue freebie, and now looks like it might need cash from my side. On the one hand, it's a resource for pretty cheap, on the other, it's cash, and I really need to control my burn rate.

So what do I do? I think I should put them off, and suggest perhaps a later engagement. It represents perhaps 30% of the capital I want to cap my contribution at. Given office space and patent costs, that might be too much, in fact probably blows it all right there.

I'm always thinking about worst case scenarios, as those so often seem to be the end of the spectrum that one needs to deal with given Murphy's law. That would be no path to funding, and I need to find work, and so I continue to push along this concept in my spare time for a while. That's not so bad I suppose. I sink a lump of cash into it, and it's gone. I'll just pretend I put it into Nortel Stock, or Madoff's ponzi scheme and it will be the same thing, except that I got some learning value out of it.

So with that, my dough is rising and I've got about 25min before I need to spend 15min making loaves. So lets see if I can set things up to be reasonably productive today.

Researchinator sucks it up and deals with it...

Inaugural Interruptions

Morning was toasted a bit by the Obama thing. Switching to BBC audio, and trying to make some progress. They're obsessed with his fumbles during the swearing in. Crazy scrutiny. Glad nobody is watching my path to getting my job done.

The experience was quite cool, in that I had two video feeds going, and watching the twitter feed live, where one-liner comments were flowing fast and furious from around the world. Fun stuff. That's the future of the live event - a meshing of main event, and broad commentary from the plebes.

Anyway, back to work... after I find some lunch.

Researchinator checks to find that recession continues...

Launch the Week with Snow

Light snow all morning, makes me think of my work. Even though I've cleared the driveway this am, it continues to get slowly filled in. My work is like that. Even though I've made some progress, the longer it sits the further back it seems to slide.

Had my call that was so elusive over the past couple of workdays. Nothing too positive, but some path for working forwards as well. Need to provide some summary of status for their gandering, and see if it can turn into some path forward to partners, funders etc.

Still no opp to work on crossing that wall that currently sits ahead of me. Oops, there's the door. Off to lunch...

Wrapping up the Week, Productively I Hope

Yesterday was a bit of a waste - I have an eagerly anticipated wall to cross in the coding side of my project, but it requires some serious brain focus. I put off jumping in because of a pending call that was supposed to happen, which had been bumped from the previous day. It never came, of course, so I had a less productive day than I'd have liked.

I hear it should come this afternoon, now. How much you wanna bet this guy puts me off again? Thing is, I don't expect this guy to be the one I need to talk to - I contacted him to get the name of the guy I should talk with. And even once I speak with them, I expect disappointment as I find out that they are a bureaucratic bunch without a real clear path to help me according to their goals and charter.

Oh well, such is collaborative work when government gets involved.

Theoretically I have a couple of hours here. Lets see if I can make good use of it.

Researchinator pushes along...

Ranting in Anger and Frustration

This is a frustrating day. The call that was bumped from yesterday to this morning still hasn't happened (and it ain't mornin' anymore). I didn't ask this guy to call - I just asked him for the name of the guy who's in my space, and I don't think he is. Oh well, maybe he's trying to be nice and is busied out.

But most frustrating is that I've been trying to use Apple's Keynote application as an alternative to Powerpoint. I'm a big mac fan, and most things are well thought out, but this is frickin P-ing me O.

First things first (I may as well go into full rant mode). First, they've called the thing Keynote. Try and search google on that and their app is lost in a sea of websites about keynote speeches and speakers. Even "Apple Keynote" buries you under every speech Jobs ever gave. They should have called it iWorkPresentoMagicThingy at least then I could find some discussion about it.

Next, have they never used powerpoint? Other than novices, if you are a power user on powerpoint, you cannot live without the style paintbrush, or the "Repeat Last Action" CMD-Y shortcut. It is insane without those! Now granted, you usually need the paintbrush 'cause PPT is so lousy at formatting that is screws things up and the brush lets you repair quickly.

But jeeze - I needed to make 5 references superscript. That took bloody forever without CMD-Y For each one, it's mouse up to the menu select font, baseline, superscript. And it's never easy to find. It was probably 2minutes as opposed to 15sec on PPT.

Also, worse was changing the font on a bunch of Titles. Man, picking the font replacement out of the long scrolly list of hundreds of fonts each time was like torture! Much swearing was heard. Yes, I know I could go create a new master slide for this one situation and apply that, but it would have been even longer. Yet with a 'repeat' shortcut, or hell, even a pull down menu item that evokes a 'repeat' I could have done it in seconds. I did later find a copy style function under format, but where is the repeat!?

The pain is palpable. I feel like my legs are tied together and I'm walking through molasses. And I'm not either a novice user nor am I an anti-change type. I'm all for embracing new apps. This is just too painful though.

The thing looks much nicer than PPT, and finding the different ways of doing things is fine - I can live with different yet available. But when fundamental quick working elements are missing in favour of long laborious steps, ughh...

Maybe Keynote 2009 is better than 2008, but I guess I need to go back to MSOffice 2003. Sheesh.

Anyway - when is that phone call going to come. How lame is that.

Researchinator returns to the angry removal of hair from head...

Progress Reflection for Wednesday, and the Week

My week is not going too well in terms of accomplishments. Last week was much more productive. Yesterday it was a volunteering commitment and a office space peek. Today a lunch and a phone call, the latter of which got shifted, though my prep's still had to happen.

Monday, I made some progress, but got up to that wall of tough stuff, for which I need a solid block of a few hours to make progress.

Tomorrow morning, that call happens, and I still would like more prep for it! So, am I going to get through this current wall? I think I see the path, but just need the time. Now I'm drowsy - morning has turned to afternoon, and I might take a nap and a cup of tea.

Researchinator needs the clonerator to make some self-duplicates...

Launch Your Week with a Big Banana

The smell of banana bread fills the office, as I get down to work this morning. A lonely old banana (I've been called worse things) beckoned me to cook up a little something before getting my work started, so that is in the oven as I get started in the home office.

I'm eagerly looking forward to my project this week. I may actually get to a stage where a production-like activity is possible. The application I've been crafting as one part of the venture is an authoring tool for some very complex data. With the next steps coming through, I may be able to finally author some content that really works out the whole system. Of course there are large chunks that remain to be developed, but this will be one of the pivotal steps forward.

If I can ignore the banana bread smells for a bit this morning, I will jump back into it. Outside it's not too brutal, and snow is on the way for tomorrow. I have a lunch meeting this week on Wednesday and plan to get out for some snoeshowing at some point with another dude. Plus my SO is off on a business trip, so she'll be removing my only non-self-imposed structure... well, other than the rising and setting of the sun which, this time of year, isn't too cooperative.

Researchinator considers his platitudes and decides to go with onward and upward...

Productive Lately

Several days in a row of progress. Today being Friday, I hope I can bring the new-mode functions I'm working on into some sense of completion. With that I will reach a good plateau from which to start to think about clean-up and documentation. I'd love to do a UI specific beautification as well, maybe reorg'ing a bit in the direction of user experience.

Meanwhile, we are also getting low on bread, I noted as I made my breakfast toast. So I took the first 45min of the morning to make a few loaves. That's away rising now, so I can do a bit of coding while the yeasty monsters do their munching.

A cold day outside. Some break in the snowing, so I may try and get out for a bit of a walk/ski/snowshoe or something to get the heart rate up. Goodness knows I could use it with the weather these days, and my many sub-4000 step days!

Researchinator is seated...again...

Plodding forward

Migraine morning. Strangely shovelling the snow made it feel a bit better. Anyway, just jumping back into it, and trying to turn my screen brightness down a bit...

Researchinator does some stuff....

Next Steps and the Stuff That Beckons

Yesterday I managed to get my app to load several fields from files that were created by the app, and pre-populate the corresponding fields in the GUI. It's tedious work, but nice to see that working.

Today I need to move further into the combination mode work. Things from a previous file combined with things newly created, all dumped into a new file. There's timing and synchronization stuff to do which is also tedious. It's also very human factory. Gotta make sure it's usable. Sure we'll be doing a massive rewrite no doubt, but the closer I can get this stuff to something usable the better.

Meanwhile biz side stuff continues to weight heavily. People, my boy, people. They're your biggest strength and the biggest hill to climb. Do you go with the devils you know or the devils you don't? I certainly don't want to load up on some of the people I like, but know would be terrible in a biz situation. Plus so many of my friends have obligations (and a lack of risk taking) that would preclude them from jumping into something risky.

Then there's the battle where they expect to have a prominent ownership chunk even though the didn't come up with the idea or sacrifice a year of income to get the thing started. So finding reasonable people who can contribute and won't be a burden. Those are the challenges.

Researchinator considers the convoluted interleaving of stuff to be started to do today....

Incrementing Forward Again

Got some stuff done yesterday, both on the biz side and the coding side. Writing SW is such a crappy use of my time, but it's really the only way to keep focussed on the vision so that I can demonstrate some functionality that illustrates the biz opp. Meanwhile, reading a bit about operating an incorp entity. I've not done much other than register it, and that leaves me an easy out if I need to wind it down. But at some point, if I accidentally succeed I'll need to throw together everything from payroll to share capital to bylaws to tax returns. Hopefully I can find me a good CFO to do all that stuff at some point, but until then, it will become a sudden load on me just doing day-to-day operations stuff.

Oh well - a good problem to have, 'cause that means there is some traction. Until then, just keep plugging away.

Researchinator powers up the plugificator 5000 XL...

Taking Stock of the Venture

Well, the real start to the year now. And I've been lamenting over the challenges facing me. I retrospect, it's only been 3 months since formally launching this, though there were a few months of moonlighting in the previous job in Big Oceanographic Corp...

I know pretty much what those are, and any other entrepreneur will have been here before too. Building the team is so important - and in my last go around, I built up to about 9 people pretty quickly, but they weren't the right 9 people. A couple of them would have been fine, but within that group was some dead wood. A marketing guy who was incapable of even writing a single page of text, unaware that there were decisions such as font size and titling involved in putting together a 1 page document. Small things, perhaps, but a marketing leader?

Multifaceted people are needed. A marketing guy should be able to write a one page document without coaching required, and should also know how to attach a keyboard to a computer and heck, even a monitor perhaps. But also they should be game to sweep the floor and make a brochure for a show, and maybe even load and run the demo. Multi-dimensional people are key.

Other people challenges were more about getting some serious contributions in, and forming a contiguous group. Office space would have helped at that size for sure, and for that money was necessary and that wasn't going to be possible in mid-bubble-burst economy. So the best decision there was to abandon ship at the right time.

This time, I've held off the growth until I have myself created some demonstrable concept. That allows for some superb focus, but it really hamstrings the business side of the venture. I've made progress there, but I should soon be focussing 100% on that element.

I also have been let down by my attempts to find a patent lawyer - well and unforseen illness I guess, but that has set me back by a month or two on that goal.

The other biggy is funding of course. But I don't want to knock on that door until I have something to show that illustrates there's more here than chartware. So I plug on forward.

Thus into the year, and I will try to push toward getting some of the above monkeys off my back.

Watch this space - between inane commentary on the weather and how many cat visits my desk has suffered, you will perhaps see some progress.

Researchinator tries to decide whether to get another tea, or a some acetaminiphen...

The Distracted Entrepreneur

It's always interesting to see how I will get distracted in starting off my day. Today it started with trying to assess the asphalt market growth, and getting distracted from my distraction by reading about the carbon black market. There's an area most of us have never heard of before. I mean, I know the term, but I never thought about there being a specific, trackable market for the stuff.

On the asphalt side, it looks like a company called Valero sounds interesting. I was originally thinking about Husky Energy, but I'm not too wild about their whole hog involvement in the very dirty and nasty oil sands business.

Either way, I anticipate a big boom in infrastructure work as stimulus to our marginal economy, plus, oil can't go much lower, so that double whammy should result in good numbers for the asphalt guys. Not too wild about investing in a US based company either, these days... but Valero, and maybe a further stake in SNC Lavalin would be a good move in anticipation of the coming couple of years.

My Tax Free Savings account setup is another chore that I'm almost done. Most annoying is my banks need to have me fill out a form to add the TFSA account to my existing 3 trading accounts. And you fill it out as if they've never heard of you before. I want to say - just take all the crap you know about me and add another account you goofs. Bureaucrats are not just difficult to spell, but they represent so much wasted effort and irrationality in our world.

So I've successfully distracted myself from real coding work that I thought I might spend an hour on today, the first pseudo-work day of the year. Lets see if I can get something happening now anyway.