Free Form Week, With a Bit of Structure

Last week with office space before I shift to conserve some cash mode for the fall. I suppose if I came across somewhere with an office for 2 or 3 days a week, on a month to month basis for a $150 or something, I'd consider that. But for now, it's probably better for the wallet to save some cash.

I've got an actual deadline this week with a scoring and review document to be written for my consulting client. It's not going to put money in my pocket right away, but they'll pay up in the next few months. It adds a bit of structure to my otherwise flexible week. Meanwhile I'll make due with the tough life of total intellectual freedom and a flexible schedule.

Things could be a lot worse. You've gotta love economic downturns.

Researchinator runs frugal and free...

Still Holding On

So the doldrums seem to continue to a certain extent. I have been doing some application clean-up and some reach-out to funding folk, but everything is quite quiet. So, that means I'm also putting some resumes out to the usual suspects.

I guess in retrospect, the schedule I've kept over the past year has pretty much met my guess of the most likely path forward. I still think my venture concept is a strong one, and look how much stuff I've accomplished. However, my inability to find other collaborators has in large part been due to the pervasive fear people with families have about the economy. It's not very common for someone to want to drop their job and throw their lot in on a new venture once they are over 30 I think. People get too comfortable.

That's a good lesson for the future too perhaps, find myself a new grad with lots of enthusiasm, and a short list of dependencies. My success in planning ahead gives me the flexibility to skip a salary for a year here or there without feeling it. My scales balance freetime for my own intellectual exploration pretty highly against my normal 6 figure salary. Some people don't see life that way.

Taking some chances certainly gives you more of a sense of being alive. I think about some of those six year stretches I've done in the same job, and realize it all goes by pretty fast. When you're doing something more risky, you notice every month that goes by and you feel like you've gotten a lot more out of it.

So I think if I count venture concepts I've pursued at least for a short time, this is probably my 4th or 5th, including a couple hardware concepts that I explored on the side. Hell maybe 6th. But there have been two with substantial year plus investments and teams. One with a small virtual team that didn't go anywhere, and a three that took many hours of my time over a year or two on evenings and weekends. What does that add up to?

Theoretically, the bandied-around wisdom is that one in ten attempts succeeds. So perhaps I'm due. I just would hope that I could get my one success somewhere in the middle of the ten, so that the next few to complete the group were well funded failures, rather than underfunded failures.

I'm certainly not counting this one out yet though. If nothing else, I'm sitting on a patent from the investigations involved. Perhaps that will get me fifty bucks somewhere down the road.

Researchinator hangs in but is looking for somewhere to land as well...

Monday Reflection

Spotty coverage on Summery mornings. Where was I at this point last year? I was working on the project already, and relating both an interest in archeology and analyzing the psyche of the average software developer. Well, year later, I'm still in that boat, working on bits of software, more system level issues.

But I'm squarely in the trough of my enthusiasm. Facing an economy where every day I hear another story about lack of venture funding, tough times for entrepreneurs. I realize that really the only path forward will be finding an angel with a passion for this space. And my social connections probably don't include the right people to scare up some wealthy sports folk.

I'll persevere for a little while, while starting to layer on some salary hunting work, and simultaneously trying to cut my costs somewhat. Nice that the stock markets are growing, but it's hard to take advantage of that without truncating the growth. Perhaps I'll pick up a bit of low risk stuff this week, while I have a some spare cash that is not immediately alloted to something pressing.

Researchinator faces the bumpy road ahead as seen from the perspective of a Monday morning...

Blog as Work Log

Blogger is not my friend today. Can't seem to go to my Dashboard and get into other blogs. I've been trying to use a blog as my work log, keeping notes that I would otherwise write in a lab-book. However, today, I am getting error screens from Blogger, and I can't even see my stuff. That's not a good thing.

Now I'm wondering if I should be keeping a local copy. Or maybe not using blogger at all? I mean what assurance to I have that all my records will not disappear? Does blogger do punitive stuff if you keep your blog private? I wouldn't think so, but who knows.

I'm sure it will sort itself out - er, I hope so anyway. I don't want to have to get into an argument thing with Google to get my own research notes out of their system.

Meanwhile I'm working on application build process, and associated file management. Not the most fun or glamorous stuff, but a necessary evil. Tomorrow I have some meetings about getting some student collaboration on facets of my project. Not sure it will lead anywhere but seems a good opportunity. We'll see.

Researchinator is grumbling about tools that let you down sometimes...

Days of Change

These are the in between days, I can feel it. Things are a-changin'. Compare now to 6months from now, and a bunch of things will be different. I'm going to give up my office at the end of the month, and switch to the home office.

Mostly it saves money, and as well, achieves a change of venue, which is always good to energize me a bit. Barring sudden access to funding, I will need to shift my work into background mode so that I can keep it going if I find some contract work or a salary somewhere.

But the good thing is that after achieving first prototypes and patent filing, I can progress at a lower burn rate, and move the concept into a demonstration that will get some attention down the road.

It's been a good year of intellectual exploration and realization. Hope it gets some traction beyond that though.

Researchinator is looking at the calendar creeping towards autumn.

Something Works

Wow, a strange morning on the internet, as it seems everything I try to do involves a failed website. Twitter is down. Who'd have thought we'd become so dependent in such a short time. Like probably a million other people I googled "twitter competitors" to see what else there is.

Plurk is another option, I think I even registered a few months back, but it seemed to be a sad convoluted attempt at the same game, without much success. My login attempt was even less successful. Entering my credentials as they should look if I had in fact registered, didn't bring me a failure to log on, but rather to a 404 page for the Plurk site. Have they been hit with the same alien death ray?

I google within Google news to find that Facebook is also having some problems. I spend very little time on Facebook, as it seems a bit irrelevant to me now that I've been on Twitter for almost 2years.

Well, at least Blogger is working just now. I'm cumulatively posting this entry paragraph by paragraph in case it is next to crash.

Finding out when Twitter is really down is a bit of a challenge. There is the Twitter Blog, but that seems to be strangely idle, with the last entry over a week old. There is also the Twitter status page. That one, at least is up to date, and not taken out when the service packs it in.

Meanwhile I have real work to do I guess. First phase of my sideline consulting gig is in the bag, and so I have a bit of breathing room for two weeks or so. I've also lined up a meeting with university folk to discuss some project research to move things along.

The big thing on my plate though, is to ensure my house is in order, and do some intensive shopping around, cold calling of VC's and angel groups. This is a push to see if there's anything out there... though my sense is that there isn't.

The other thing is a chain of stuff that has to happen. I have to sell or otherwise dispose of some junk from my garage so that I can get my office contents moved into there. I'm going to give up the office and conserve that money, as I shift to a three way press: look for salary paying work, scan for funding opportunities, and incrementally continue the advancement of the venture's core software.

As that evolves, and my patent bakes towards granting, I will at some point perhaps entertain shopping the patent around for licensing or sale as well.

Such is my plan moving forward. Not the optimal path that I had hoped for, but certainly not expected given the current economy.

Researchinator thinks it's about time to check Twitter again, and if still dead, turn back to some Javascript work...