I just went down to Blockbuster Video (and had to re-sign up for a membership, it’s been so long), and rented 8 movies for a total of about 31 bucks (I got a free one).

I whipped out my trust copy of HandBrake (for the Mac).  Set it to iPhone, and hit rip.  My flight to Frankfurt is looking bearable already.

It’s a great time to be a techy. Here’s my top 5 run down of why:

1. The Apple iPhone. I don’t want to sound like a Apple Fan Boy, but of all the techno-gadgets out right now, it’s got to be the coolest. When I was young, I was enthralled with a show called “Beyond 2000” and in some of the interviews with the designers of the Flying Car, “they” said that by 2008, there would be many families owning these flying cars. Well, we don’t have flying cars, but we do have a tiny hand-held device that can hold GBs of music, movies, TV shows, and pictures, can take and share pictures, provide maps of the world on command, satellite imagery, directions, and is a full-fledged Internet device that switches from on demand edge to wifi seamlessly. Oh, and is the best phone (dialing, answering calls, syncing contacts, visual voicemail) out there. Truly futuristic.
2. Rapid Web Development Frameworks. It is truly easy to build rapid, effective, database-backed, web applications and deploy them on the Internet, securely or publicly for anyone and everyone to just plain “get things done.” Technologies like Ruby on Rails, the Django Framework for Python, Java (maybe) and PHP (possibly), simple open APIs, easy cross-platform Javascript libraries, the Open Source stack of Apache on Linux, and the excited-ness and open-ness of the “Web 2.0″ community makes building these kinds of things fun.
3. DVRs. Tivos and Tivo-like technologies are fundamentally changing how we view television. My MythTV server (I keep rebuilding it) can record HD over the air, and content from my DirecTV box, very easily. When I miss something I want to watch, I order it off iTunes, or simply watch it on one of the network sites like nbc.com or abc.com or maybe a torrent network (or friend). Oh, and I don’t watch commercials. MythTV automatically detects them (using black screen fades, logo detection, and other algorithms), and I hit one key to skip all of ‘em. Watch for social networking type functionality, like interacting with other TV viewers (my friends) to really bump this technology to the next level.
4. VOIP. Skype, Asterisk, Vonage, and others make it easy for someone (me) to have a phone number in almost any area code (or toll free) that rings to multiple phones, soft(-ware based), or real, and then rings elsewhere, turns voicemail into text/e-mail, and receives faxes turned into pdfs and delivered to my e-mail inbox. Hosted VOIP services will be very disruptive technologies in short time.
5. Social Networks. Yes, it’s true: MySpace enabled all teenagers (and tweens and twenty-somethings) with a computer to make the ugliest web pages in the world — the equivalent of rainbow HRs, dancing baby animated gifs, and MIDIs playing in the background (you remember?) — technology-one-upped as photo slideshows between text, youtube videos everywhere, and embedded mp3s in the background. But, despite my cynicism, networks like Linked In, and now Facebook are mingling business and pleasure, and connecting people presently (friends, classmates, work-mates), historically (old class-mates, old pals), and forward-in-time (in groups and ways they didn’t know exist) in totally new ways. I think they also show some ads too, though I’m not sure. Even if they have no intrinsic value to many people right now, the fact that a majority (or is it closer to 99%) of all college students are using sites like Facebook on a day-to-day basis mean they aren’t going away when they get into the workforce. This kind of connectivity and open-ness will be demanded and expected in the workplace, soon.

Hey alright, I made it to 5. It really is a great time to be into technology. Highgroove Studios and all our ventures are doing fantastically, and we are simply having a terrific time working on all kinds of fun stuff, like web development using Ruby on Rails, apps on the iPhone, Facebook integration, and maybe some top-secret stuff, soon to be revealed….

If you’re into techno-babble as much as me, there are some events (in Atlanta) coming up that you might want to check out, including the Georgia Tech College of Computing Alumni Association’s Net Neutrality Panel, the Ruby User’s Group and Python User’s Group meetings (meetup), Startup Weekend Atlanta, and BarCamp Atlanta. Techno-babblers, rejoice!

Last night I attended the Georgia Tech Computing Alumni Mixer at the new Klaus Advanced Computing Building.  It was a great event, and I’ll definitely be attending more.  I’ll also be dragging along all you GT folk who are reading this.

The new Klaus building is fantastic.  I gotta admit that the landscaping outside is still, quite horrific, but I didn’t actually notice until Jodi, who is the student liaison on the GT Planning and Design Committee, and architect extraodinaire pointed it out to me.  Nevertheless, the inside is just plain rad.  There are several nooks in between classrooms and offices with big plasma TVs with hookups freely available — making it perfect for impromptu Wii gaming presentations and generally just being able to say, “check this out” and fire up your laptop’s display on the screen.

I spoke with several people about possibly hosting the Atlanta Ruby User Group meetings at Georgia Tech, though it appears we have some space planned out at the ATDC, which should be great.

I’ll definitely be promoting and attending more of these events.  I am feeling very successful these days in life and in business, and much of it I owe to a great, challenging, and rewarding experience at good ole Georgia Tech.

I’ve been quoted about my car computer in the Atlanta Journal Constitution (the Atlanta Newspaper) for a story about a company here in town that’s launching a large in-car telematics business:

Dunwoody firm hooks up Chrysler’s computers

registration required, you can use the username: spam@seebq.com password: spam

I mentioned to Mike Pearson (the writer at AJC) to definitely ping a few of the locals (Matt Turner of TunerTricks, Jack Shakes, and some others at mp3car.com) in town who are more into this hobby than I am, but it was nice to see my quote as the very first line!

As an aside: When I first got out of school, I tried to start a little company doing custom in-car computer systems. A prototype built, a demo-presentation to Ludacris’ business manager in Luda’s driveway, and 6 months later — it was a miserable flop, but terribly fun. I later came to understand it was more like an expensive hobby, and it helped me realize that there’s more to starting a business than just saying you’re “President and CEO” and then doing all the incorporating and froo-froo stuff. This probably goes to show why I’ve been so successful in my newer ventures — I’m doing the opposite. I’m not doing any “company related stuff” like printing business cards or “incorporating” until I absolutely need to — two things I have already done, only now at the appropriate times. I’m just spending time focusing on the business itself (to be honest: on making money), and it’s working out great.

Reading the article made me realize that back then my marketing (among other things) was just too big for my britches — the automobile industry is a crazy one, full of a few big players and very large deals. The aftermarket industry is even crazier, and should have been the sole market for my failed company.

Come to think of it, I still think there’s a product and a market and a whole lot of money fun to be had. If you’re listening, Hughes Telematics, fund me as a spin-off company and let me build a team and an after-market product — software, hardware, the whole-nine yards for in-car-computing and we’ll see how that meshes with your new big deal.

In the mean time, I’ll be focusing on my wonderful day jobs.

Some shameless self-promotion is going on at my favorite techno-babbling blog, CleanAir.

It’s our Top 10 Highgroove Moments of 2006. Enjoy!

I am super excited about my newest gig, as an Instructor at the Big Nerd Ranch here in Atlanta.  I’ll be teaching a course on Ruby on Rails, a web development framework (and an opinionated development style) that is very near and dear to me.

I was looking back at my previous blog posts on how much I enjoyed teaching and instructing, and it’s clear that I am passionate about sharing knowledge and helping others — and enjoy the challenges of explaining complex concepts in simple, easy-to-understand ways.

The Big Nerd Ranch style of a retreat with intensive, hands-on training has to be the best environment to learn that I’ve come across.  As a former corporate instructor, having taught enterprise-grade software products at large Fortune-x00 companies, I know from experience that there are about a billion distractions to “students” on-site (e-mail, meetings, support, phone calls, etc.) that detract from the learning experience, and in some cases can disrupt the entire learning process.  I’m excited to be a part of a great team and concept.

p.s. we blogged it on CleanAir.

In my daily blog-roll, I came across this posting by Griffin Caprio on Domain Specific Languages = The Long Tail of Programming Languages? ( Part 2 ). Griffin gives a good analogy for software engineers and their specialization of programming languages compared to the music industry where artists specialize in styles/genres to all produce very different, but great things.

I relate to this completely — as someone who has always called themself a “software engineer” when the need arises, I couldn’t agree more with his assessment of choosing the right tools and specializing when needed.

As much as I hate to admit it, a teacher at Georgia Tech, the revered (and often loathed) professor who had the hardest (read: weed-out) class, stressed that the more tools you have in your programming toolbelt, the more specialized and exact the tools, the better software developer/engineer you’ll be. I agree.

My pal Bart’s TrainCheck just got put on Google Co-Op. Congrats Bart!

It took me a while to figure out what this Google Co-Op really was. It appears like the google services that appear on searches, now can be somewhat company/user provided based on matching search terms. It almost, to me, started to sound like tagging (do I hear “labeling”) somewhere in that massive schpeel of documentation they got going. I have yet to see the google version of tagging, but it’s kind of like that little chinese guy in a gang fight. He just sits there, not doing anything, but man oh man, when he does, you know it’s gunna be something cool.

Things are well — I just got back from snowboarding for the first time:

http://www.seebq.com/gallery2/v/denver

and we’re re-re-launching Meople: http://www.meople.net/ — this time it survived the “great ruby rewrite” [1]

In other news, Derek Haynes and I have found a way to make a lot of money, starting a company to promote a new sport: hand-tennis-ball. It’s like Tennis, but with no racquet, and of course team-dynamics and “flair” are integral parts of the game. It’s revolutionary, no doubt.

[1] Joel on Software pegged us good. He knows too much!

I have to welcome two new members to the elusive MacBook Pro club. My buddy (and Meople cohort), Tung Chan, couldn’t let me have the best computer for too long. He let me have the honors for about a week before he forked out and got an even better one than mine. Thanks a lot Tung, thanks a lot.

Also, my good pal Derek Haynes of Highgroove Studios, founder of an amazing AJAX and Ruby on Rails Development and Consulting company, just joined the elusive MacBook Pro club. I’m actually a little nervous about this one. I thought Derek was incredibly productive before with his old laptop with 256MB RAM — but now, with the MacBook Pro in his hands, we’re about to see some crazy, crazy stuff. It’s like an anime cartoon/movie where the super-hero gets the ultimate power sword weapon, and all of a sudden the foreground stops, and the background goes crazy scrolling as he leaps into the air and charges up, charges up, charges up….. then…. a commercial break.

Welcome to the club, fellas.

My database migration kept failing, and I couldn’t figure out why:

Turns out, that name was too long.  Maybe I shouldn’t try to be so funny in my code.

This table was a Single Table Inheritance in Rails, with a type column incorrectly set to int instead of a string.

p.s. the wise ass was me.