The Vaccines - Wetsuit

A new year, a new me

It would be a lie if I said 2011 wasn’t a great year. There wasn’t one great activity that made it great - although buying the GTI was a highlight - it was all the little bits that made it fun. Baseball games with Tina, learning how to make sushi and delicious mac & cheese. Visiting LA and Disneyland again. It was great.

I’ve succeeded and failed in certain things over the course of 2011. Two things that didn’t work out: a proper exercise routine and planning a monthly budget.

I tried jogging in the mornings and some evenings but I didn’t stick with it. Maybe because I found it boring or because I didn’t have an end goal. A few weeks ago things changed and I decided to start running with Tina and train for the San Francisco Half Marathon. Having a running partner definitely helps with motivation since we both push each other to get up early and get running. We’ve already totalled up over 43miles in the past 3 weeks and I’m getting excited to reach my goal and finishing the SF Half Marathon.

The other change is working out a proper monthly budget, this amount for dinner, that amount for lunch and figure out where I might be spending too much or too little. Instead of buying lunch at work I’d make something healthy the night before. It will take a while to get into that routine but so far so good.

I’m excited for what 2012 will bring, both personally and professionally.

Siri might not be a gimmick

Going from the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 4S didn’t seem like that big an upgrade. Though I went from Black to White, it still felt like an iPhone 4. Until I started using it.

The first thing that felt different was its speed increase in opening and using applications. Browsing is faster, opening your text messages feels faster. So all in all you feel a little more productive looking at the updated scores for your sport of choice.

But the thing that really struck me was how nice it is to use Siri for some simple tasks. The feature of setting reminders became really useful when making a pizza tonight. I asked Siri to set different timers and to remind me to take out the dough when I got home.

It’s wonderful and useful.

Goodbye, Steve

I’m typically not affected by deaths of those who I haven’t known or met personally.

Today it feels like I’ve lost a friend, one I’ve known for a few years now. A friend I’d listen to and read about. Steve Jobs not only helped shape the world of personal computing, and disrupted the phone industry, but he also showcased what it takes to create one of the greatest technology companies in the world.

My thoughts are with his friends and family.

Google+, maybe Yammer should be worried?

Over the past few weeks that I’ve been playing around with Google+, I still have no clue whether it’s useful or not. It’s a nice refreshing take on social networking, but it’s definitely not the “next Facebook” by any means. But that doesn’t mean it’s not better.

At Academia.edu we use Yammer as one form of communication, kind of a nice repository for saving links or general topics that we’ve discussed. But as a product it’s somewhat of a strange fit. It’s trying too hard to be Facebook like that, at times, it feels like it’s less focused on creating a network for coworkers. And I think this is where Google+ should step in and take charge.

Google is already half way there with Google Apps for businesses, why not just combine Google+ with some “business features” (or whatever that may be) and boom, you have an awesome competition for Yammer.

Why not just create a circle for coworkers? Well there’s too much noise from your other circles, it’ll have to be some isolated (or at least default to coworkers when using Google Apps) so that you’re not distracted.

Feel free to add me on G+

Introducing HN+

A few months ago I released my first Chrome extension called Readable HackerNews. It was meant to give HN a slightly different look and feel, with the end goal being to make it easier to read. It went through a few updates and I left it at version 2.3.4.

Last night I decided to create a separate Chrome extension for HN, design based off of Google’s new styles and named it HN+

This extension is separate from Readable HackerNews, I would recommend uninstalling RHN if you would like to try the new one.

Install HN+ from the Chrome Store.

If you’re running Safari, you can download the extension here.

We all need to recharge our batteries

I’m a strong believer in taking time to recharge your batteries and stretching your legs outdoors. Having a busy lifestyle, especially in a city environment, can be tiring and you can easily burn yourself out.

After searching, traveling and a few visits I found Yosemite in California to be the place where I can recharge. Get out and get some fresh air. I’m fortunate enough to only be about 3 hours from this gorgeous place.

I took a recent trip with my grandparents visiting from afar. Their reaction made me realize what a beautiful place it really is, and how amazing California can be. I was also able to finally take my 7D to Yosemite and get some photographs, ended up filling all of my CF cards.

You can view some of the photographs on my Flickr page.

Did we forget about HTML-emails?

Over the past few weeks I’ve been carefully converting all emails sent to Academia.edu users to a new HTML-email format. Gone are the days of ugly plain text and we celebrate the arrival of beautiful emails.

But it came at a price: slight loss of sanity. The biggest problem that you’ll encounter when creating HTML emails is the lack of standards. GMail will accept this and Mail will accept that. SquirrelMail will strip it bare and Outlook will probably screw it up completely. They have their own way of working with elements and CSS, so you will be testing your emails to death and then some.

Some of the bigger mail clients presented slightly different problems when it came to displaying HTML emails - Gmail, Apple Mail, Yahoo - but that’s where the fun ended. It’s near impossible to find every edge case in terms of email clients and webmail apps. Only today, after a few weeks of having HTML-emails in the wild, did I get a notice of SquirrelMail not displaying links properly. 

That very important question

I’m sure there are plenty reasons why email hasn’t grown up in terms on web standards support. You can’t allow some arbitrary code to run in the user’s mail client, we already have enough security problems in emails. But one question I haven’t found an answer for: Why aren’t there any modern standards when it comes to HTML-emails?

I would love the day where I can create an HTML-email with some of today’s HTML goodness.

Cooler than an astronaut

For the past few years I’ve had a great relationship with my dad. He’s been supportive of everything that I’ve been wanting to do and things I want to accomplish. He’s there when I need some bro time, he’s there when I need to vent about girls. But most importantly: he’s there.

We didn’t always have a great relationship. During parts of my teen years, like most teenage boys, we had our disagreements and small fights. Up until a point where we literally yelled at each other for a few minutes. It was that night where we sat down and talked about why we aren’t getting along. And now we’re best friends.

Even during my teenage years we had fun. He would be at my rugby games, drive me to the hospital after fracturing my shoulder blade during a game. My mother never liked the sports I played, but it made my dad proud that I could run my ass off and score a touch down. He even helped me build a PC, driving over an hour with me to buy the parts. After a few failed attempts (motherboards were faulty), he drove all the way by himself while I had class, just to buy me a new motherboard because I was frustrated. I’ll never forget that.

We also had some fun with my mom, sneaking up on her or pulling small and harmless pranks. I also had the crazy idea of getting a buzz cut after watching Rambo, and he happily made it happen. Only to be yelled at by my mom because she didn’t like it. (It was Rambo, c’mon!) But he loves her, like any couple they too have their fights but as long as I can remember they’ve been best of friends.

I also remember the days of hooking up an old broken go-cart (a metal frame with wheels, actually) to his pickup truck and driving around my grandparents’ farm. Dangerous yes, but it was fun. Some people think that as you get older you’re supposed to be a bit more mature when hanging out with parents. I believe the opposite. You will always be your dad’s son and will always do things to keep life exciting, and you should. Granted it’s been a while since we tried to put together an IKEA desk only to come out bleeding afterwards, but I still have fun when spending time with my dad. 

Since we both have a pretty busy schedule, we now only really spend time together every other weekend and mainly around the BBQ. But just standing there with a beer in hand, talking about cars and random things we learned over the week. It’s damn fantastic.

I hope every man, boy and son can have a great relationship with their father. I hope that this short story will make you realize how much that man should mean to you, just how big a part of your life he should be. I want you to really appreciate him this coming father’s day, take him out for a burger and a beer, or a steak with some red wine.

If you’re a dad reading this, love your son. Motivate him, encourage him in whatever he sets his mind to. Guide him but don’t control him. 

Happy Father’s day dad. I love you.