10 days till marriage

Today is December 5, it is approximately 10 days till my wedding. Yippee! My fiance and I have been waiting more than a year for this and have been making plenty of plans and finally after what has seemed like forever it will be happening. I wonder alot about what it will be like to be married. I have heard plenty of good, but probably more bad, which I must admit gets me a bit worried at times. But I know I love her and I really want to give this a shot. Look at me, I am a young man under the age of 25 and ready to pledge my life to one woman for the rest of my life. I must be nuts! But I cant help but smile with enthusiasm on the inside. I already wish the wedding was tomorrow.

Hello, world!

I am on the intarweb!

What I want for christmas

clicking through to the mozilla store I stumbled upon a cool t-shirt and decided it should go on my wishlist.

web 3.0

So web 2.0 is all the buzz, but what about web 3.0. As I have said many times I dont like the term web 2.0, and so I can not say that I am particularly enthused by web 3.0. But I atleast like the sentiment behind it, that is, that web 2.0 is just a passing fad and web 3.0 is where the real serious stuff will get solved. Here what Google's Eric Smidt had to say about it.

The problem of context

In reference to this article "What Orkut really needs", I have only one thing to say, and that in somes ways it reminds of the problem of context. Earlier in the year while mucking around the university of waterloo's website most notedly the Soshin Research group site, where my friend does research for his Masters degree I stumbled upon the idea of pervasive or ubiquitous computing. If you have never heard those terms before, they simply refer to the ability to embed more software into our environment and thus allowing our mobile devices to talk to the environment more effectively. To give an example this, it would be like stepping into a meeting and your phone knowing to change its status to silent or when listening to music answering your phone triggers the stereo system or TV to automatically lower it's volume.

How does this all relate to orkut? Well the problem outlined by the article is that orkut doesn't seem to be catching so well in the US but does much better in countries with other languages, most notably Brazil, which makes sense since allegedly orkut is a portuguese word that means "land of happiness". Should orkut be rebranded? Well in America, yes, but in other countries the name is just fine. Which presents another problem in context that is applications that are country aware or internationalization. You would imagine that your mobile phone should know that when you are in england you use pounds, and certain slang words mean different things and can talk to environment applications in england just as easily as it can talk them in whatever country you are coming from. The same would apply if you traveled to China or Israel. Interesting problem I think!

Gears, Zend and checkout!

So Its another weekend and I find myself battling it out with the Zend PHP framework. This has got to be the worse experience I have had using it, maybe I have been a bit too zealous seeking its wide adoption at my workplace. The fit is not yet over however. I still think I will pull off what I am trying to build with it. I need to, so I can present it to my group at work.

I did some more reading on google gears today and also am thinking that I might have been too anxious and giddy about seeing its wide adoption as well. It seems we might be a ways off from seeing a fully adopted standard towards offline browsing. I can cross my fingers and hope though. What was discouraging was that most of the nifty features in google gears like worker pools and local server caching were not available in the beta download. I had to get the development version from the project repository to get those working. Not very encouraging, but after I got that I still managed to like what I saw.

Google checkout was among the things I did some research on. I had in my mind started thinking about mobile applications that scanned RFID tagged goods that could suggest you purchase them online at cheaper costs. Such applications would then ask you to pay. I thought it would be cool if you didnt have to fill out any payment information but could just click a button to purchase and then I remembered that the google checkout project is aiming at doing just that. It seems someone is a step ahead of me.

Browser based apps that run offline!

People are really taking web applications a lot more seriously. Enter connectionless browser apps! So far there are a few frameworks and tools out their to give your browser the ability to run specially enables applications offline. This means we could see a lot of applications moving to the web. It makes sense though. Who really wants to download every application, especially those that are tied to the internet. I have to try out any of these frameworks for myself. I am thinking of giving google gears a whirl. So far it seems to be leading the back and they are pushing for an open framework for writing such applications that would be cross browser and cross platform. That would be nice!

Google Web Toolkit

Last night I had a date with google web toolkit. I have played with it before I was out to do a refresher course. So I got the latest version, now at 1.4 and I said I am going to figure this thing out and figure it out I did, well almost. I was able to use it to get a simple javascript application up and was trying to do some remote request stuff, which I was having problems with all the way up until I decided to quit and call it a night.

so what is GWT? Its a java framework for building javascript applications. Not everybody wants to take the time to learn how to write javascript, but just about everybody wants to get in on the new Rich Internet Application buzz. The solution is to create a compiler that takes Java (the most ubiquitous computer language) and converts it to an application that you can run in your browser with Ajax and All. I thought it was pretty neat. The interface for creating buttons and panels and labels and texboxes reminds of me of programming Java Swing. So if you are a great Java UI programmer you will have little trouble getting up and running with google web toolkit.

Google Tech Talks

One of my fondest discoveries on google code is Google Tech Talks. I just subscribed to the rss feed in my google reader. I have however noticed that some of the talks are really above my head or maybe just not relevant enough to me. I was just watching a snippet from "The Theoretical Limits of Statistical High Dimensional Nearest Neighbor Algorithms". I was suprised that I actually could make out some of the sentences in his opening statements, but then I remembered that I do have a B.Sc. in Computer Science. Thank God for that!

Google Code

At the beginning of 2006 I declared that I had 2 goals for the year and they were to work for google and become financially free. Financially free? ha! Work for google? ha! ha! I am always the dreamer. I did manage to post my resume on their website and it took them maybe 3 weeks to tell me that I wasnt suited for any of the positions they had open. I take this to mean one of two things. Either my resume actually made it past their filters and was reviewed by a pair of real human eyes or the backlog on submitted resumes was so much that it took their software that long to kick me back a response. I imagine it must have been the former since the computing power at google can handle millions of page views per day. It must mean that my resume was reviewed by a pair of eyes. As for financially free, well I did atleast became the richest I have ever been in my life at the time which means that my expenses were less than my income and my networth kept climbing upwards a trend which for the most part continues, but investing, I did too little.

All of this to say that the google code website is cool! Now, I really sound like I work for google. But I found code.google.com long before it got popular and have been tracking the development of all kinds of open source frameworks for google services. They even started a repository for open source development using google technology. Infact I think I will head over there now to see what I can dig up.

Frameworks

Frameworks are great I think. I have been spending the weekend working on a tool for work using the Yahoo UI framework for javascript client applications and the Zend PHP framework. Both take alot of the burden of writing certain tools from scratch. I am particularly pleased withe the Front Controller implementation in the Zend Framework. I have probably re-invented that wheel a million times over in my development efforts.

Web 2.0 Banana Boy

To be honest I was once in love with the buzz word "Web 2.0" and jumped on the band wagon of web 2.0 evangelists at the beginning of 2006. I was telling my friends about it and even introducing some of the related concepts to my work place.

Today I have jumped on the bandwagon of people who are more reticent about the buzz word. In fact, I now belong to the group of people who do not like buzz words in general. They make great marketing tools in one sense by getting the word out that something innovative is happening, but they are horrible at really getting people to understand what the implications are and in many cases people know the buzz word and regurgitate it profusely without knowing what they are really talking about.

An old friend of mine, upon realising that I was a web developer, coined the phrasing "web 2.0 banana boy" to describe me. I had a good laugh at the word and thought to myself that it was pretty novel. I am the farthest thing from a banana boy, as I think she meant by the phrase. She probably meant it in reference to my Jamaican background. I have never really been keen on being Jamaican and thats not just because I wasnt born there, but maybe its something in the air there that doesnt agree with me. But I must say Jamaica is a cool place. I don't mind being associated with the island and as most Jamaicans I take pride in hearing about all the great things Jamaicans are doing around the world. So web 2.0 banana boy it is! Sounds catchy I think.

Since I am a "web 2.0" developer and have found a certain level of sustained interest in it, particularly in "business 2.0" another annoying buzzword which simply relates to business models created around this web 2.0 buzz, I have decided to write more often on the subject as I attempt to sharpen my skills in these nascent ideologies.

Tagged!

I've been tagged by Adrian! The request is 8 things about me. This might be hard.

1) I live in Florida but my family lives in Jamaica. I say I left Jamaica because I wanted an adventure or maybe because I wanted less adventure.
2) I was born in Massachusetts but the last time I was there was when I was about 7 months old. I can't wait to go back. I was going this year but I had to cancel.
3) I think life in Florida is good, I am actually beginning to feel at ease here.
4) I go to church every Sunday and every Wednesday night.
5) I buy gifts for others more than I do for myself. Probably because half the clothes I buy I end up not wearing because it does not look good on me (It did in the store) and so I have an aversion to buying clothes and there are very few other things that I think I ought to buy. I don't even have a laptop because I don't really need one. I have almost 24/7 access to a computer.
6) I secretly want to be a billionaire, but I think everyone knows that now.
7) I read a lot.
8) I decided along time ago that I would be working with computers and I still am.

I tag Le

The software beast

Software, I believe, is one of the hardest things to get right! It requires a lot of optimism and whole lot of of realism. On the bright side, software is like bringing pure thought into reality which satisfies the human need to create, but the sheer complexity of the simplest things makes perfection almost unachievable.

Today I started reading the Mythical Man Month by Frederick P Brooks, which I have heard many a software pundit mention. One of the cornerstone philosophies of the book is that adding more developers to a late software project only makes it later. I am looking forward to reading to the end of the book in order to better understand this beast called software.

Changing habits

Lists!! Organization!! Efficiency!! Evaluation!! Crunching the numbers!! These words envoke the vision of a well-oiled machine that is well maintained and poised to make significant change. It would probably be an impossible feat to run ones life like this religiously, unless maybe they were disguised as joyful habits. This is what I find myself thinking about as I for the hundredth time try to organize my priorities while cleaning my room. I think alot of people live their lives inefficiently, except that they efficiently live it the way they live it. What I mean is that based on their expectations for life and what they want to accomplish, they dont put out the required effort and use the necessary leverage. Instead they give up on the dream, even if only subconsciouly and resign themselves to live in a way that makes only their current reality possible. Usually this mostly caused by ignorance and not a fault of ther persons genuine desire to acheive the dream.

But lists and organization and efficiency and evaluation, sure they sound like they would help. But I think its scary to live a life so calculated UNLESS such effective efforts were effortless habits. Now I understand why my Dad tried so hard to drill habit into our mindset. How do you develop habits that become effortless. Last I checked you had to do a particular activity over and over and over again. I have heard that it takes 30 days to establish a new habit. I have also heard it takes a renewing of the mind, probably through encouragement, meditation and replacing old activities with new ones using a sustained conscious effort

I know one thing and that is I have tried to change my habits for maybe a decade now and some habits just dont seem to want to give and some just wont develop. It makes one think that the task is impossible. But really I still maintain thats its possible. To me it isnt the goal that is unacheivable but more probably the approach to acheiving it. I have read many books on habit creation and I have come to one conclusion. At the end of the day changing habits lie in your own resolve to change or create them, subjecting your self to ongoing self discovery and renewal and having faith in yourself that change is just around the corner and worth fighting for.

Stress! You feel it? I feel it! Some of us groan about it. Some of us laugh about it. Some of us ignore it. I have done all of the above, but I believe the appropriate response is to learn from it.

Stress can be an indication of depression, dissapointment, working too hard and a myriad of other things which all center around the same concept, Change!! Stress is an indication that something has changed or that something needs to be changed!! Or both!! When I started the going to the gym it came with a center level of stress. I didn't see it as stress because I was having fun, but when I really analyze my emotions I see that at times I was unsure of the proper technique and my body was clearly telling me that it was not used to the new routine. That was stress, but good stress!

I also remember when I was at my previous job I was under a lot of stress and I groaned at the though of going to work in the morning. That was stress! It was telling me something. It was saying to me that it was time to move on. Once I realized this, I did my research, handed in my resignation and left the country.

In my experience change should not be ignored. The source of the stress needs to be identified and so opens the opportunity for learning and growth and appropriate change!

Happy stressing! Happy changing!

All men are NOT created equal!

This past weekend, I went to the 'Hard Rock'!

Now the thought crossed my mind that I should try my hand at the slot machine or at a game of craps, but really I was there for a public speaking competition at the Hard Rock Improv, here in Fort Lauderdale. The idea behind choosing the Improv as the venue was that the organizers wanted to create a professional atmosphere. One of the interesting things about public speaking is how the atmosphere can help to interfere with your confidence. As the main organizer said, 'If we practise speaking in more and more unfamiliar situations the more versatile we can become as speakers'. One of the challenges of speaking at the Improv is that the lights shine directly at you and the stage is small, so you are definitely at the center of attention. Talk about intimidating!

I thoroughly enjoyed the speakers. The competition was divided into 2 sections. First was table topics and then the international speach competition. For table topics, all the contestants are ushered outside expect for the first one. In succession, each is given the same topic, which they did not have prior knowledge of, and are supposed to immediately go into a well thought out 2 -3 min speach. Now that really does take skill. Even a 2 min speach needs to have strong structure, that is a intro, body and conclusion. The topic was 'The most important thing to remember is...'.

Most all of the responses were good, but the one that I will forever remember is 'The most important thing to remember is that all men are NOT created equal'. As an illustration, the speaker said something like,

"I could probably meditate and practise all day but I still wont be able to block Shaq O'neil as he pounds down a dunk on a poor basketball rim. Thats because its not my skill. I'm not equal to Shaq in basketball prowess or physical ability and never will be. However I do have skills he doesnt."

I think this is a very important lesson to remember everyday, it helps us not to envy or try to act out of our character. Its better for us to play the strengths we have and leave our weakness to played by those who have those as strengths.

As the for the speach competition, my favourite speach was probably 'Choose your battles wisely', the speaker ended with this very important thought 'Choose battles big enough to matter, but small enough to win!'

Everytime I go to a Toastmasters event I continue to remember why I joined the club. Its not only because I get the opportunity to practise my public speaking skill, but also because I get to see some of the best speakers do their thing and be inspired in the process!

Fearless!

Fearlessness! I was inspired by speech given at my public speaking club last night. The speaker opened up by saying that 'Toastmasters' is about becoming fearless. Instantly my spirit resonated with that. That is essentially why I joined 'Toastmasters', because I want to become fearless. Fearlessness is not to be confused with unfounded self-confidence or hauthy pride, but by fearless, I really mean bold. By working on my public speaking skills I am becoming bolder and bolder. I can hear it in the way I talk to people, even in the way I play basketball.

This chimes well with the book I am reading nowadays for dailing inspiration, 'Succeed and grow rich through persuasion'. This book is completely staturated with the message of being bold and growing boldness by postive mental talk. Last night, while I was playing basketball, I came face to face with the power of postive thinking. I have long touted myself as a basketball player, but in reality I am not that good. I can sometimes appear to be good because I used practice at length, but alas by myself, which really doesn't count for much. But last night I stepped on the court with alot less fear and the consequence was that I played a much better game. There came a point in the match when I said to myself 'I am going to score the next basket', I was so resolute in my conviction that I did score the next basket. Truly the mind is the source of limitless power. It is through the mind that we acheive fearlessness.

No more worries

Today is a good day!

I've been having alot of good days recently. It must be because I worry about alot less than I used to. Take for instance, about a year ago, I was really worried about losing my job. I was also rather upset about the way I let a car dealership take advantage of me when I bought my car. My girlfriend and I were having problems with the physical distance and I was ready to throw in the towel. But, today everything is completely different. I am still upset with my dealership and I have alot more reason for it. Apparantly, no one told me that picking a car dealership is like looking for a wife. You should be prepared to have to deal with your car dealership even a year after you buy your car and the relationship I have had with my dealership is a prime example.
I wont go into details, but the lastest is that it seems that although I paid for an extended service contract on my car, it is not in force and so I couldnt use it recently when a part on my car died. Im still tracking that down to see what recourse is available to me. But wait? I said things are different. Yup they are in the sense that I am just not worried about it. I will bother them and complain, but at the end of the day if I dont get recourse, life doesnt stop, so I dont have to worry about it. As for the job, I have many of the same problems I had then, but I am probably one of the more important employees in my department. What can I say? I put in alot of work and brought alot of new ideas to the table. And that is due in large part to my change in attitude. Instead of saying I cant do it, I say to myself, let me try. As for the girlfriend, well, we are engaged! So atleast that has changed considerably. But then again I do have to "worry" about the wedding arrangements, and other related activities. But we are planning and taking it one day at a time.

Every day when I think about something to worry about, I stop and then say, you know there is no point in worrying. I'll keep living my life the best way I know how and I when make a mistake, I'll learn from it. If I died today I would want to be content that in my last moments I wasnt worrying about anything and so I take the challenges that come with the best attitude possible.

Which is the most active pair?

I was searching the internet for some information on when the european forex market is most active and came across the following on a forum at http://www.babypips.com/forums.

Q. Which is the most active pair in the London session, Tokyo session and New york session ?

A. According to the BIS study called Triennial Central Bank Survey, the dollar is on one side of 89% of all transactions, followed by the euro (37%), the yen (20%) and the pound sterling (17%). EURUSD is by far the most traded currency pair, with 28% of global turnover, followed by USDJPY with 17% and GBPUSD with 14%. (details: Foreign exchange market turnover by currency pair)
I dont think the distribution can change significantly from session to session.

A. In London the most active pair is GBP/USD, which is also somtimes called, the cable. It is prone to huge breakouts and dramatic reversals.

In Tokyo session it seems to be the USD/JPY which is most active at the opening of the Asian session (6 PM to 9 PM EST) as well as during the early US trading session (7 AM – 10 AM EST).

As for the New York session EUR/USD is most actively traded, but most of the action is concentrated in the time when the US and European banking hours overlap, from 7:00 AM EST to 10:00 AM EST. Of all the major pairs, this pair best reflects how the US economy is doing compared to the rest of the world.

Saving and Investing

The stock market was down 400 points or so yesterday, which makes me slightly happy that I dont invest in stocks, but I am still thinking it might be time to start. My friend showed me his portfolio today and directed me to http://www.scottrade.com/ where he does all his trading. He says they are the cheapest online brokerage at about $7/trade. He also sent me a referral to http://www.ingdirect.com which is an online savings account that boasts 4.50% interest rate and is also FDIC insured. I get $25 if I fund it with atleast $250 and he gets $10. I like the fact that its FDIC insured and almost as nice a return as a bank CD. The other option is to trade foreign exchange. I recently took a course at fxcm.com that has given me good beginners knowledge of how fx trading is done. I am eager to finish reading the lessons, buy the book, get proficient at trading in the demo account so I can start making some real money.

Blogging in 2007

So the question is, how do I make my blog interesting? I have embarked on a personal challenge to make my blog interesting. Inspired first by dooce and now by Adrian , I believe that I can do it! I found a blog article recently filled with tips for marketing your blog in 2007. The first step is to actually have something worth marketing, hence my new found desire to make my blog carry more substance than it currently does. I'm thinking I need to follow some coherent theme but that might not be so easy since I by nature am not a completely coherent individual. I think the best thing I can do is to write about all the new things that I am learning. That will make my blog a very stuffy intellecutal kind of blog, but I suppose I am in expiramentation mode where no one is really reading my blog, so I can write about anything. So for the next 6 months or so I wont expect much creativity to come from my head, just random thoughts or musings to atleast quench the guilt I feel for not having written more often over the years.

Actualized NOT Marginalized

Just got an email from somebody associated with Ardenne High, my alma mater. It was inviting past male ardennites to give a talk on the theme The Ardenne Male: "Actualized NOT Marginalized". As I have begun to make huge strides to improve my public speaking I thought that would be a very good opportunity to present something of worth. I have dreamed of going back to my high school and giving an inspiring speach that would inspire some soul to excellence. A few problems with me doing that speach tho are, for one, I don't live in Jamaica anymore and the event is set for Feb 20, 2006 (I am sure he meant 2007).

Second, now lets say that I was able to be there, what would I actually say? The email specifically stated that the speaker should demonstrate how they have acheived actualization over marginalization. Sad to say, that is still a struggle for me. Of course I could give a wonderful speach about why one should strive for actualization over marginalization, but I just couldn't at length make it personal. What is the difference you might be asking? The difference is simply actualization speaks to excellence while marginalization speaks to sub-standard acheivement. Now I have definitely acheived much, by the grace of God, but no where near my potential and that is mostly because of my leanings towards marginalization.

marginalize:
to place in a position of marginal importance, influence, or power: "the government's attempts to marginalize criticism and restore public confidence."

actualize:
to make actual or real; turn into action or fact.

Talking with my fiance this morning, I told her of my plans for the next 2 years. I told her how I plan to develop my leadership and public speaking skills and how I plan to start my company based on exciting trends that I foresee for the next 10 years. She said, "Alex I love when you talk like that, but usually when you do, you lose sight of your goal and switch to something else in no time" The thing is I have had many a brilliant idea but have yet to convert. I have yet to stick to it! So really although I would love to give that talk to those young guys at Ardenne, I dont have the necessary experience to do so. But I will! Its my very nature to keep trying. Probably my problem is still being caught up in doing things my way and not listening to hear what God wants me to do. One thing is for sure, I will acheive actualization and I will one day be worthy to give such a talk.

Raise!

I got a raise! A fairly generous one too. I suppose I deserve it for working hard. I do try! Ive been promised another big raise in 6 months as well as a bonus, if I can manage to implement a feature list handed to me by the boss. Its a slightly hefty list, but very much doable. One thing that came out of my performance review that I thought was interesting is that my manager says I have a high potential for innovation and should be allowed to show this more. Also the CEO says Im worth atleast another 20k more than my new salary. I like the sound of that. Alot of good things are happening in my life, so to God be praised. Somehow Im not that excited though! But I am still very thankful. I cant wait to see my new pay check but ill have to endure atleast one more old paycheck before I see the new one.

Combatting nerdiness and anti-social behaviour

In one of my deep personal introspections recently I came to the conclusion that I really am a nerd. I am also moderately anti-social. I am friendly, yet anti-social. And as always when I come to these conclusions, its like an "ah ha!" experience and a light bulb turns on in my head. Its not that I didnt already know these things, rather I didnt know how to change them or I didn't understand the contributing factors to my nerdiness/anti-social behaviour. This spells good things for me as now I can concentrate on not being so nerdy/anti-social by doing differently than Ive done before. For one I have to accept that I can't know everything, hence I shouldnt attempt to devour every book on every interesting subject. It seems the pile will never be finished, so I might as well learn what I can and just be happy to know what I know. I need to develop a plan as to what I want to learn so that I can filter out what is not helping me to acheive my learning goal. Further more, what is that learning goal anyway! As for being anti-social, I just need to go out more, preferrably to events/places that are low in cost. I still think its important to be frugal and its relatively easy to be social and still be frugal. Heck I do it all the time, I just need to do it more often and in a more effective way.

I also think I need to go out with those persons I really want to build strong friendships with as the default rule and not worry about those who Im not so interested in doing such with. Up till now Ive just been going out at random with whomever, once the opportunity arises. I need to be a bit more selective and really seek out good friends.

I also need to go back to school, even if its just to take a course. I think that is very important in satisfying my craving for knowledge. As always let's see how long I keep this resolve up for.

I love this picture. I took it at work while testing out my friends camera. A nice camera by the way, its an Olympus SP-510 UZ. Its got 10x zoom among other goodies. I have few more pictures like this on my picasa web account. When I look at the scenery at work I realise that we should really have picnics for lunch.

XML and podcasts

Been doing alot of reading on xml lately. Built my first podcast today at http://media.3clicks.org/
Also I did some research on the xmpp protocol and google XEP (XMPP extension) jingle which allows for voice messaging using the XMPP protocol.

Currently listening to a podcast for learning spanish called coffee break spanish.

Django, Ruby on Rails, python, ruby

There has been alot of buzz about python and ruby. Especially ruby which seems to have jumped up out of nowhere over night! Jumping into the top 10 most popular languages on the Tiobe Index as of this writing. I've been quite curious and set out to learn more about these languages by learning about two of the more popular frameworks built on them 'Django' (python) and 'Ruby on Rails' (ruby). Quite interesting I will keep watching these languages and frameworks as they grow. 'Snakes vs Rubies' is a nice presentation of both frameworks by their creators