Weeks between

This is the first thing I’ve written on Office 2013 other than email.  Something about the movement of the cursor looks weird to me.  It doesn’t have the mechanical snap that I’d expect out of a computer.  Kind of creepy, but I guess I’ll have to deal with it.  

I’ve been thinking a lot about time management.  Really, it’s a wonder of whether the time being spent is worthwhile time.  I was listening to the Andy Andrews podcast (In the Loop #135, to be specific) and he started talking about “as a man thinketh, so is he”.  Thinking leads to choices which leads to action which changes families which changes societies. 

The other point he brought up is that when people don’t know what to do, they do nothing.  That is a simple, but highly profound observation.   If you do nothing, you get nothing.   If you get nothing, you go nowhere.  So you end up stuck where you are because you don’t spend any time doing anything that will get you out of the rut. 

Which based on all of this, it seems intelligent to pick a direction to go, and go there.  It may be the wrong direction, but it is a direction nonetheless. 

I don’t remember where I was going with this, but it seemed important, so I’ll keep it. 

Moving on to the current day…  I’ve been reading The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg.  I’d recommend anyone and everyone read this book.  More than anything else, I think his ideas on habit creation and formation are the necessary things to transform lives.  Habits are what take us through life without thinking.  If those habits that lead you are going in the right direction, then you will continue on in the right direction.  If they take you in the wrong direction, then the habits need to change. 

Either way, building habits to get you where you want to go seems to be a good way to go.  I’m going to have to experiment with that…

I should get back in the habit of blogging more often.  We shall see.  We shall see.

App Development

AI guess Marc Cuban was right.  Ideas are easy.  Execution is hard.  Though I’ve had a really good idea for an Android app, I realize I don’t have the Java skills to write Android applications.  So now I’m having to go back and learn the necessary skills in order to execute on the idea that I had.  I think the idea is worth the effort.  I still think it’s just different enough to be completely unique. 

Could what I write make it to the top of the charts?  I think so.  I downloaded several games last night, and they were crap.  And yet they were at the top of the iPhone free games chart.  On one of them the controls didn’t work.  The other was a basic shooter on rails, except it was the same level over and over and over again.  It’s like they spent all their time on the game engine and didn’t have any time or money left to create content. 

I guess this all makes me realize that although the application markets for Android and iPhone are relatively mature, the content itself isn’t.  Everything is still very much in its infancy.  Many of the games are roughly the same game, except with different graphics and sounds.  A large number of the games fit into the on-rails category where the character moves forward and the player does something to keep that player moving forward.  It’s really just Temple Run with some slight variation. 

And that’s really the issue.  Most things are just slightly varied in comparison with the rest of the markets.  You get Angry Birds, then you get ten thousand variants of Angry Birds.  Then you get Temple Run, followed by three or four thousand variants.  The situation is a result of many people playing a game, deciding they can make the game “better than the original” and then producing it. 

But then, that’s the games side of things.  On other sides, you get the Wal-Mart app.  And it’s really just a link to their mobile website.  And in lots of businesses, that’s what constitutes having a mobile presence.

I guess I’m being too harsh, but there isn’t much originality when it comes to the mobile markets.  The second obvious question to all this is: do you need originality?  Phones are designed for rapid, simple interaction.  A twitch reaction, if you will.  Twitch, look at phone.  Twitch, look somewhere else.  Twitch, and back to phone.  It’s very different from the console experiences where companies want you to invest three or four hours at a time.  In the mobile world, most are looking for a 15 to 20 seconds of interaction at a time.   It’s hard to develop buy-in when you only get 20 seconds. 

The other part is my idea is only slightly original.  It’s an extension of an existing idea, and therein lies its uniqueness.  But it’s not the “killer app”, nor is it the next best thing since sliced bread.  It’s just a slight variation in a theme.

IDE Failures

I’ve been trying to work on my idea for an Android app, but so far most of what I have been doing is fighting Eclipse.  There are several contributing factors.  The version of Java I need for work is different than what Eclipse runs.   Unfortunately, I’m using my work laptop for development.  My ability to sit down and work at a physical desktop is limited.  I run about 900 miles an hour, and when I am home I get distracted every three to five seconds.   It’s not intentional.  I have a wife and three kids, and one of them needs something from me constantly. 

I’d try to upgrade Java and leave it upgraded for a bit if it just required an install to get it working.  But it doesn’t.  There are a few settings in Java that I’ve never documented that are required to get things to work.  And it’s some of those critical things that would keep me at the site during an install longer.  So Java 6 has got to stay.

The second part of this is the emulator.  I know I’ve messed with the Eclipse Android emulator before, but I’ve screwed the thing up somehow so all it does is crash on me.  Joy.  It didn’t have any virtual device created, and the instructions I’ve seen for creating virtual devices are different than those on screen.  So I tried to fake it and that broke. 

So I’ve found myself fighting with everything except code, and it’s driving me up the wall.  I haven’t had a single chance to even try to look at code because I’m busy trying to set up the environment.  I’ve messed with Netbeans before, and as an IDE I think I like it better than Eclipse.  It also runs fine off Java 6, so I don’t have to install/reinstall every day.  Really, it would be every day.  I’m working on site upgrades for the next three weeks, and every single one of those requires me to get in something that only works on Java 6. 

So I spent some time this morning tracking down the location of the source file, and until further notice, it looks like my editor of choice is going to be Notepad++.  So much for the wonders of IDE.

Simplification

Running late this morning.  Not even sure what to say.  Yesterday, some knucklehead decided to do a denial of service attack against one of our sights.  I was setting the site up for failover network capability.  The failover worked, so the entire denial of service attack was a big joke.  It was one of those perfect storms where an attack occurred, but the attack was completely mitigated without any harm to the site. 

 I’d like to say it was intentional that it happened this way, but it’s not.  It was just pure luck.  But I will take pure luck. 

Despite all this, I keep returning to a realization I had over the weekend.  In the Bible, Solomon is considered the second most intelligent person.  The first most intelligent being Jesus.  But back to Solomon.  For all his brilliance, after his reign the country of Israel goes down the tubes.  Solomon had hundreds of wives, and he allowed them to openly worship idols, leading the country towards idolatry.  I guess the main point here is all can screw up, even the most brilliant around us. 

The more I think about it, the more I believe excessive intelligence becomes a hindrance and not a help.  Excessive intelligence leads to more thought and less action.  Action is the catalyst of change in the world, not thought.  And really, most lives don’t need more thought.  They need more action. 

I was asked yesterday if I had been told I was smart.  I told the person I don’t think I believe them anymore.  For all the “intelligence” I supposedly have, simplistic truths have always confounded me.  And in the end, it’s always the simplification that yields the best and most accurate results.  Back when there was a geocentric model of the universe, a man created a map of the movement of the planets.  It was incredibly complex, but still did not explain everything.  Sometime later, the heliocentric model of the universe was developed.  Suddenly, the things that it took a mathematician to understand could be taught to children. 

It really makes me think… if the concept can’t be taught to a child, the concept needs revised. 

a cascade of random

While looking to set up links for yesterdays’ post, I found the Amazon post for Seven Days.  I have to admit, it doesn’t look as bad as I’d thought.  I’m not going to say it’s the most beautiful thing in the world, but it definitely worked for what it is.  I guess the only question is whether it works to show off the story or to sell more.   We’ll see.

 Been a crazy last part of the week.  Worked all night Wednesday night, got three hours of sleep, and went back to work Thursday. 

Now it’s Saturday, and I’m eating lunch and listening to the Dave Ramsey channel.  Listening to some of the people, it makes me realize why raising the minimum wage will not do anything.   Why?  Because you get people on the show making $130,000 a year who are flat broke and people making $40,000 a year who are debt free and have their retirement care of.  The point is simple: if you are broke and in debt at $8 an hour, you will be broke and in debt at $800 dollars an hour.  It has absolutely nothing to do with income.  It has everything to do with behavior. 

There’s a false premise that people assume that comes with a change in income.  They assume that when the income changes, behavior will change.  This is false.  Adding more money to the equation just makes the behaviors larger and stupider.  Instead of a credit card, they get a bass boat or a vacation home.  Increasing income does not automatically change behavior.

While I’m  thinking about it, I’ve gone back to Java development for the purpose of making Android apps.  I’ve always said that one shouldn’t start until you have something to execute on.  Just trying to learn with no end result in mind is very difficult.  It’s different if you have a goal and a purpose.  Now, I have a goal and a purpose in mind.  I have an app that I want to make, and I think it’s just different enough to create a market.  It’s really simple and the idea is either stupid or brilliant.  Like I said, it’s just different enough to be unique, but not so unique as to be hard to sell.

Not as much oomph

Day two doesn't have quite as much oomph as day one so far.  I was up late working on securing a site from itself and didn't get to bed until 11:30.  I’m usually in bed by ten.  So 5 came awfully early this morning.  It’s at this point that I have to remember all the wonderful motivation I’d come up with earlier, because now it’s gone.  I can’t say it’s gone completely, but to say it has been highly minimized would not be an understatement. 

So, almost two and a half years later, Seven Days has a cover photo.  I kept thinking I ought to go wandering around, taking all sorts of pictures and then I’d finally come up with the perfect picture.  And I realized since I finished the story, I haven’t really thought of it.  I could probably read the first dozen pages or so, and it would all come back.   But I haven’t done that, and the memory of it is mostly faded. 

Let me tell you about that cover, though.  I combined a picture I took with some horrendous text in Paint.net and slapped it up there.  I’m sure there are Photoshop heroes out there, but I’m not one of them.  Much as I’d like to be able to draw pictures of the things in my head, it doesn't work.  I just don’t have the talent.

I couldn't find the kind of picture I was looking for.  I’d be honest if I said I couldn't describe what I was looking for.  It was always just some vague idea that never formed.  So I gave up on that and went with a picture my kids drew with sidewalk chalk on the patio.  I guess it seems like a stretch, but I have to realize Seven Days was released back on September 11, 2011.  That’s almost three years ago.  So That’s pretty crazy that it never got a cover, though I can see where the indecision of finding the perfect cover lead me to never develop a cover.

I can’t say it will be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it’s my first story.  And sure, it didn't sell even 100 copies so really why should I worry?   I've sold two copies in 2 ½ years, and I’m worried about whether the cover will be great or not.  There’s some misguided mind-trip crap for you right there.  

day something or other

Day one of waking up at 5 am was a bust.  Sure, I woke up at 5 am, but I woke up and had to immediately leave for work.  I guess that’s better than nothing. 

So, I got rid of Firefox and installed Chrome.  Chrome has a program add-on called Stay Focused.  Stay Focused has something called “the nuclear option”.  Under the nuclear option, it doesn't allow access to any website for a certain period of time.  I suppose this could be a bad thing, but the purpose of waking up this early is to spend time in learning and production.  You can’t spend time learning if you are constantly surfing the net for junk and cat pictures. 

I guess it all seems relevant at the time, but in the end it’s just a method to delay action.  I don’t want to delay action.  I want to produce something as opposed to just consume.  I’ve had that feeling before, when all I wanted to do was produce, produce, produce.    It was an excellent feeling, and I want to get it back. 

I guess part of the purpose of designing this system is to get some of the feeling out of this, though.  Sure, feelings are great but in reality you need to produce regardless of what you feel.  Timelines need to be met, and things have to get done.  You can’t wait on your feelings to get to work, or you will get fired.  Or you will get beat to market.  Or you’ll just lose.  And that is not what I want to happen. 

Hence the nuclear option.  Any research that needs to be done for this blog or anything else I produce has to be done and finished by the time I get up this morning.  Between 5 AM and 7 AM, my computer won’t let me go surfing the internet.  And I have to admit… that “shouldn't you be working?” message is fairly effective.  Simple, elegant, and basic.  It works perfectly to get your brain out of the wandering gear and back to the producing gear.

So here it is, not even 5:20 in the morning, and I've already produced greater than 300 words and the blog is done for the day.  I guess the only side effect to all of this is I will have to set up and schedule this post later today.  But that is a side effect I’m willing to take. 

I guess the point of Stay Focused is to give more power to something other than willpower.  Willpower alone doesn't seem to ever get me very far.  It works much better to have something that provides autopilot willpower.  Maybe autopilot discipline?  I don’t know.  Anyways, as for the first day…  I’m happy with the results.

Side note: I looked at my document on how long it has been since I worked on Causality Crimes, and it has been 22 days.  Before that, it was 20 days.  Before that, 24.  As you can see, the results of what I was trying to do previously show fairly obviously.  Even though you only have to write 300 words per day to reach 100,000 words, I was only writing once every three weeks.  That isn't even enough time to think about the story and get the thing moving.  

If you are only touching something every three weeks, then you have no idea where to even start.  Another good reason to follow this plan.  It will take five days to get the average period between writing under ten days.  That looks to be my goal for the moment.  Get it under ten days, at 300 words per day.  That is how you succeed.  Show up every day, and make effort every single day.