It has been a few weeks now since I launched the “unofficial” Type Aloud beta and I have been quietly working on improvements after having some good friends and family pound the site. My aim is to have announce a bigger and better version within the upcoming weeks (sooner, if possible) as I believe there are only a few kinks left to work out of the system. At this point I am going to take some time and actually write some content for the site and work on promoting this bad mamma jamma.
This week’s work schedule includes:
- Getting the commenting system on stories and chapters working properly.
- Finalizing unpublished for stories and draft mode for chapters.
- ‘Report this story’ (and chapter) button for flagging either spam or inappropriate content.
- Fixing some minor style and navigation issues.
Some longer term issues will be working on proper poem support as well as permissions on story and chapter viewing. I hope to have the beginnings of these worked out in the upcoming weeks after the unpublished, flagging and draft modes are completed. Some improvements that are in the pipeline but aren’t dated yet: user (crowd source) tagging and descriptions, badges and search.
For the past week or so I have been making an active effort in changing how much crap food that I eat. The problem is that there are very few “junk food” items that I eat, so cutting them out is actually a bigger pain in the ass than I originally thought it would be. But I decided (about a week ago) to start blogging about some of the items that I cook (and eat) for breakfast and dinner, hopefully each day, which will possibly force me into getting rid of those foods that ail me.
Part of this whole change is to keep on a daily vitamin regimen and drink lots of water. As a software engineer I sit at my desk ten hours out of an eight hour work day. I answer emails, respond to tickets, and if I am a really lucky someone graces me with the time to write some code. When I first started at my employer I bought a rather large, washable plastic cup to drink water out of throughout the day. The problem with this is that, well, I drink a whole lot of water and sometimes this can get a little annoying. But the real issue is that I do not know how much water I am drinking a day because there are no markings on the cup to indicate that.
So I started looking on Amazon and found, what I believe to be, the perfect water bottle for the job. I was originally attracted to the Nalgene “On The Fly” water bottle because of the locking lid. One problem that I have had with some of my water bottles is that the lids, even though they have some fancy plastic push-lock mechanism, always seemed to wear out after a few months of use. This would lead to it not being reliable to put into the side sleeve of a backpack worry-free. Also, each and every single water bottle I have owned claims to be “leak free” but none of them have ever lived up to the test.
I have only owned the Nalgen for a couple of days now, but the tight seal around the lip of the bottle actually makes me feel like this may be a long term winner. My previous water bottle finally broke after about a year of use (which is actually pretty damn good) but the problem with the Kor ONE is that it is just so fucking big. It holds a 3/4 litre of water (or cola) [750ml] which is a whole lot of space! On the other hand the Nalgene caps off at about 650ml, is much smaller and the best thing: has etchings on the side of the bottle to indicate how much water you are drinking!.
This post was going to go in a little more detail about my planned diet and vitamins, but I am looking at the time and realizing that I need to get my day started. So tonight I’ll possibly write up some more posts outlining what my plan is.
I have been waiting a very long time to be able to say these words. For the past couple of months I have had a bottle of champagne sitting around, waiting, for me to finish the site enough to launch it to the public as a beta. I am glad, honored and relieved that the day is finally here that I can crack open that bottle and drink it (actually, finishing up the last bit of it now). My close group of friends have been pounding away at the site already reporting bugs that I promise I will get on top of as soon as I can.
Type Aloud has been a dream of mine for at least four years now. I envisioned a writing and reading community where people will not only be able to share their stories (and poems) but also get collaborative feedback for both editing, and hopefully, print publishing. Some of the most intriguing writing I have read came from people that were not published professionally. I look forward to being able to read (and write!) much more than I have in the past with this service. My primary goal is not to be profitable: Type Aloud is a service that I want to use myself. I am a lucky man if I am able to break even.
If you have a couple of minutes, or even better some writings that you want published, please take the time and head on over to the open beta page and sign up for a free account. Remember that all work posted to Type Aloud you retain ownership to. In the coming days I will have a proper copyright agreement up on there which will basically amount to you giving us the permission to publish it on the website.
There is much, much, more to be done, but I feel as if the first hurdle has already been past.
Last year I wrote a little blog post about my New Year’s resolutions. After the beginning of the year getting off to a rocky start I was going to forgo the whole official post thing, but I feel that tonight may be the night that I needed to write a little bit. I only achieved some of the items off of last year’s list. Instead of recapping my failures for the year I think I am just going to dive right into the good stuff.
- I will travel outside of the United States.
Last year I made a note to take a proper vacation. This is something that I do not believe that I achieved, but there are reasons for that. So my first resolution is that I will travel outside of the United States this year. I do not have an official plan on when (or where) but some of the ideas that are floating around include either Mexico or, better, Europe.
- I will finish what I start.
Last year saw many beginnings for me. I started a new career with a great bunch of individuals, I got nearly done with my writing community and there are many other things that I could go into. This year I want to finish some of the short-term projects that I have started. My plan for the first month of the year is to get an initial beta up of my my writing community, Type Aloud, which has been in the making for several years now.
- I will find someone that understands and accepts me.
I enjoy writing software. I talk about technology, watch movies, read and write, and cook food. Any person that comes into my life needs to completely understand and accept me, for me. No substitutes.
- I will take the GRE and apply to graduate school.
I have not decided yet what my major will be, but while doing that I need to prepare by taking the proper tests. Once I decide where and what I want to study I need to (obviously) apply and get accepted. The short list includes NYU and Columbia University in New York City.
- I will continue to eat healthier and live a more active life.
Last year I did not achieve my weight loss goal, but I did get half-way there. I stopped eating junk food, started eating more fruit and vegetables, and began cooking meals at home more often than I had before. I also started packing my own lunch a few days a week to save myself some money.
- Write more words, play more video games and enjoy life.
My passions include many things. Last year I said that I wanted to begin writing a book. For me, the first step in that is getting Type Aloud out of the door. I have several ideas for books (and short stories) that I want to start penning as soon as I have a website to write them on! Some of my other modes of relaxation include playing video games. I can probably count the games that I played with friends on one hand. This has to change.
- Drink more beer and open source more software.
For some reason last year I drank less beer (alcohol in general) and wrote less software, especially open source. These two things I want to change, and I feel that they’ll both contribute to an overall, better, me. All of you should hold me to it.
- I will find someone who will stay here, and not move away.
I don’t need to explain this. Anyone special in my life needs to be here, in my life.
I think that’s the list. Right now I am going to head to bed and hope that there isn’t too much snow here in the morning so I can get to work and end the week on a high note. Peace and happy New Year everyone.
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Enough said.
The holidays always seem to creep up on me.
This is the first holiday season I have been at my new gig and we’ve been quite busy busting our asses to get everything in line for next year. So the past few weeks I haven’t had a lot of time to get work done on Type Aloud but that all changed earlier this week.
For the past couple of weeks I have been sitting on the code and focusing on getting the design done. That meant learning a lot of interaction in Rails that I did not know before, working on some CSS beautification and generally cleaning up the god awful standard forms that are generated through the Rails scripts. I decided earlier in the week that I would send out an e-mail to all of my testers and let them know I am planning on pushing a release candidate for their testing.
After some successful UX testing tonight I am going to try to push a new candidate each night for the foreseeable future. My plan is to release to beta on New Years eve flipping the switch on-or-around midnight in a ceremonious occasion which will involve the consumption of a lot of booze. But all that hinges on the UX and integration/functional testing that myself and my testers are going to perform.
Next week the goal is to send out the invite to everyone who has signed up for early access and shut off the form in preparation for the switch. So if you’re a writer, reader or poet and you’re interested in getting involved and helping me out feel free to sign up with your e-mail address. Its free, and I won’t sell them to some clearing house.
Good times are ahead!
After several months of tinkering I have finally, successfully, gotten my hackintosh setup complete with working sound. Last night I got home from Food+Tech Hackathon in SoHo and decided that I was going to make it my mission to get this heap in working order. After about an hour, a shower and some Jameson, the bad mamma jamma was running smooth like butter.
Some other not-so-awesome achievements was finally installing Outlook 2011 on my MacBook after being embarrassed because I was unable to open up a spreadsheet while working on Milk Hack. Which, in and of itself, deserves a little bit of explanation. I decided to go to this food hackathon hosted by the great Danielle Gould and one of the ideas that was proposed was her own: to find get some visualizations in pricing information released by the USDA.
Now most of you that know me can attest that I absolutely hate the process of wrapping my head around statistics, but I love information and data hacking. Luckily enough I was joined by the R guru Drew Conway and what he was able to produce was a sweet animation that we threw up on vimeo. After pouring through several spreadsheets of data I then went to work on what is now the design of http://milkhack.com.
All in all it was a great day spent outside of the cold day in New York City. Big props go out to the Gojee team for hosting the event at their offices. I had a blast, met some great people and ate some amazing food. Who could ask for more?