halfdawn

My Paradox of Tri Training In Texas

jcorkran — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 04:09:36 +0000

The triathlon season officially runs from late March through October. For much of the country, fall and winter actually present themselves, and play a major role in a triathlete’s training outdoors. For those of us in much of Texas, however, that is not really an issue. Part of me is excited by the fact that I can head out on the bike at 8AM on a Saturday in January and only require arm warmers and maybe some thin glove liners to be warm for a few hours. But the other part of me really likes the idea of a proper winter, with snow, icicles and strange winter skies.

So, this weekend, we hit both days hard, with me having a good long ride on Saturday and a long trail run on Sunday with E and friends. That, I enjoyed, although with the extra 10 degrees, it was what is best described as an…omen…of the summer to come. So, I will be basking in the chilly weather that remains over the next couple of months, and desperately trying to recall it when July rolls around. Please don’t tell me that you are tired of the cold, because I guarantee you will be much more tired of the heat in just a few months and wishing you had that biting chill on your cheeks when you walk out of your house in the morning. I know I will.

2007 is done. Good riddance.

jcorkran — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 07:09:40 +0000

‘Nuff said. On to 2008!

Climbing - It’s good to be back. It’s tough to be back.

jcorkran — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 04:02:29 +0000

Tonight was the fourth or fifth time in recent months I’ve been to the climbing gym after a hiatus of several years. It has been fun, but it has also been hard. Tonight was also the first night I went simply to boulder, do some laps and just get a sense of where I stand (pun intended) on the wall. Elisa has been coming with me the last few times, along with our friends Katherine and Ashley. Tonight I flew solo. Elisa was tired after a hard week of end-of-semester projects and tests. It’s like coming home again, but also like starting over. I’m lucky to be in a place where some of the faces are still the same, and where you literally recognize a lot of the holds, albeit in infinitely different route configurations. We’ll see how it goes over the next few months. I would love to be back at Reimer’s soon, and before the rock turns drippy come summer.

Facebook Developer Garage Dallas

jcorkran — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 21:50:14 +0000

Join local (and not so local) Facebook app developers and app fans at SMU for a full weekday event charging through ideas, implementation and realties of getting your Facebook app out there for one and all. See the signup page for the latest info on speakers and program:

http://facebookdallas.eventbrite.com/

Event Info from Facebook:
Event: Facebook Developer Garage Dallas
“fb platform peresentations & app expo”
What: Convention
Host: Blake Burris
When: Tuesday, November 13 at 9:45am
Where: SMU - Umphrey Lee Center

To see more details and RSVP, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=754100482&k=Y3F625P5323MZ1BBUGWZQ

Dallas Typo3 Users Group

jcorkran — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 20:19:22 +0000

Ron Hall put together another successful Dallas Typo3 Users Group today. A few new people showed up, and I got some good suggestions on moving some extensions forward, as well as an opportunity for us to get possible user experience/usability involvement on some core changes.

DemoCampDallas 2!

jcorkran — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:52:23 +0000

http://barcamp.org/DemoCampDallas2

DemoCampDallas 1 was great and drew a good-sized crowd to see some of the most innovative work and innovative thinkers in Dallas. DemoCampDallas2 is coming up on Monday, April 23, so make an effort to get there and go signup on the wiki. You won’t be dissapointed.

Typo3: CMS, App Platform, Kitchen Sink

jcorkran — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 06:09:19 +0000

‘Nuff said.

Mind Mapping for Team Management

jcorkran — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 23:18:17 +0000

This week I’ve been trying out Mind Maps as a device for managing all of the people resources (and their skills) I am using right now on all our projects, as well ones I am in conversations with. I really like the format, and the tool I am using makes it very easy to extend and edit. I’m new to mind maps but not new to project management, information architecture and all the fields that utilize organizational tools, both visual and otherwise. This may make a believer of me.

Yugma. Awesome Service. Difficult Name.

jcorkran — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 04:38:59 +0000

I can’t stop gushing about Yugma. (Thanks to Blake at Voodoo Ventures) It’s finally broken the barrier for inexpensive, interactive screen sharing between Macs and PCs. It’s fast, it works, it’s cheap and seems to have all the core features of the big guys like Webex and GoToMeeting. It amazes me that it took so long for someone to develop a product like this. Java has been there all along, VNC has worked across platforms for years, and Citrix, whose technology is behind both GoToMyPC and GoToMeeting, has had a Mac Winframe client that works fine for years. Yugma provides a conference calling number with each session and in the slightly more expensive paid version (starting at $10/month and $100/yr.) allows shared control, session recording, etc. I’ve heard that Leopard iChat is supposed to have screen sharing but nobody has made it this easy to share between platforms and the new iChat won’t either. Use iChat for video and Yugma for screen sharing and you have a home run for remote conferencing, UX/Developer team reviews, QA sessions and more. My only problem with this service is the name. It is difficult for me to remember the last few days whether it’s yugma, yumga or something else, and my brain doesn’t seem to easily wrap around that word. I appreciate the sanskrit reference and think it’s cool, though.

Twitter as Application Platform

jcorkran — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:12:37 +0000

I’ve been using Twitter for several months, along with several of the local Dallas webnorati. Come SXSW in Austin last week, Twitter went supernova. It’s somewhat surreal to get immediate, alternative perceptions of the same panel, or event, via your phone, in realtime. The brains were abuzz with new ideas, and my own experience was flavored by all of the mobile panels I attended (which were great, by the way.) Anyhoo, with a couple of buddies and one new friend, hiding out form the rain at Ironworks BBQ, I brought up the idea of using Twitter almost as a command-line UI to do all sorts of things, at a SSH/VNC level. Think about extending the ‘D’ type commands across the entire alphabet! Today, I’ve seen the combined mention of both Twitter and home automation in the same article over at Ars Technica, which also references this article by Gordon Meyer Now that’s what I’m talking about! I’m still very interested in exploring this idea further, perhaps even connecting Twitter + iChat + Applescript + Automator?

Apollo AlphaBits Released Today

jcorkran — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 05:02:38 +0000

Post-Apollocamp, Adobe released the Apollo SDK and runtimes for Macintosh and Windows today. The majority of airtime has been positive, but there are a few dissinters so far regarding the introduction of another locked environment. At a minimum, there promises to be an interesting game to watch over the next 18 months between Microsoft’s WPF/E and Apollo. Microsoft recently released Expressions Blend as well. I am very interested in finding a project to develop in Apollo for. Nothing like diving into a new project to leanr new technology. How will this affect the UX side of things?

BarCampAustin 2 Sponsors

jcorkran — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:13:48 +0000

Innerecho is an official sponsor of BarCampAustin II. It’s shaping up to be awesome. Kudos to Whurley, CKS and everyone else for keeping up the momentum. We’re big fans of the BarCamp spirit.

CS3 - Exciting Potential

jcorkran — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 04:31:21 +0000

I was just reading Ryan Stewart’s Universal Desktop blog. He was dropping a little knowledge about Adobe Creative Suite 3 and how it may be much more integrated than everyone expects, making the designer/developer workflow that much more efficient in the production of RIAs. I find myself pretty excited by the one-two punch of Intel native + RIA focus/convergence.

Aptana - Kicking the Tires

jcorkran — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 03:55:51 +0000

We’re starting to take a serious look this week at Aptana as our general team IDE. It’s looking pretty good so far. It’s built on, and optionally works within, Eclipse. It’s also free and there is a huge amount of video content at Aptana.tv. More later.

Amazon Web Services - Mechanical Turk Uptake & Innovation

jcorkran — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 19:36:22 +0000

I think one of the core issues around really accelerating the the Amazon Mechanical Turk ecosystem and HITs is the adoption and uptake by both HITs operators and developers in general. The most important activity that can happen right now is not the HIT creation itself, but the creation of drivers to the service itself. This means creating tools or ideas that create and evangelize mass awareness of the Turk and AWS. When the ecosystem is there and when there are enough people doing the work, some amazing ideas and solutions can be implemented. The other side of this is encouraging developers themselves to begin thinking about “humans” as an optional point in traditional software business logic/workflow. To be continued…