Hello everyone. I am not making apologies.

So. Things going on here.

Three months ago we hired Jeffery D’Urso for a 3 month contract to get some line of sight and direction in technology.  He was great.  It doesn’t seem like it has been 3 months, but as of friday it was.   He is now heading off into the sunset riding his 18.5 inch laptop…

But huge things have changed, I will detail those in other posts. Now I just want to review the big ones.

• Work developments
  • Website almost fully redeveloped in PHP on the Code Igniter framework. Some highlights -
    • Completely redesigned data framework, much cleaner
    • New design, and complete content reorg
    • HUGE drop in processing needs
    • Much more streamlined code -  at least a 75% drop in code volume
    • 2x the features (including, integration with video chat, workflow tool, new CRM integration points)
    • re developed customer section for better usability
  • Brand New curriculum and tests!
  • Many Many More.  When the site launches live I will give you a better update and maybe a walk through.
• Musical Developments
  • Picked up the Bass guitar
  • Expanded horizons
    These are my last 3months of listening changes
    
    Compare to overall
    
• Extra Curricular
  • My bowling team wow the league championship.
  • I am doing crossfit.  My crossfit number is 925
  • I started eating outmeal and PB&Js again.

Those seems like the biggies to get out there.   I will post a work update on the site once we go live (hopefully for 2010)

New Outfit.

Hey Everyone. I know I have been doing a poor job keeping all of you updated with the most exciting stuff going down. So here is an update.

• I work too much.
  • About 100 hours a week
  • We have hired 300 people for the summer!
  • Just finished producing a 330 page book for our curriculum
  • Hired 4 new people in the office to manage things like phone calls day-to-day
  • Almost have finished some big externally developed projects
  • We are moving the office into the building next to my current house… like through the wall next too
• I am in great shape.
  • I go the gym 5 days a week
  • I am going to run a Half Marathon by the end of the summer
  • I have lost 30 lbs
  • I eat really healthy and really paleo
• Life.
  • I just cleaned (pretty well) my house
  • I am getting rid of my internet and TV at home again.
  • Just finished reading Bonk
  • Just finished reading The Universe in a Nutshell
  • Just finished reading Peoples History of the United States of America

So things are great here. It is beautiful outside and I have been getting to run outside by the Charles almost every day. I am getting tan too.

Oh man, Google is kickass.  They don’t just find a solutions to a problem (this time the problem is the curve of a book when open) they find kickass solutions to problems.  I kinda guessed that google just cut all the pages out of books, but turns out they don’t.  They actually have a set of infared cameras make a 3D rep of the pages so they can adjust for the curving.   “Dude!  Why don’t we just 3Demensionally render every page so we can make the perfect scan”  Sounds like stoner logic.  And a really cool piece of software.

Turns out, Google created some seriously nifty infrared camera technology that detects the three-dimensional shape and angle of book pages when the book is placed in the scanner. This information is transmitted to the OCR software, which adjusts for the distortions and allows the OCR software to read text more accurately. No more broken bindings, no more inefficient glass plates. Google has finally figured out a way to digitize books en masse. For all those who’ve pondered “How’d They Do That?” you finally have an answer.

The Secret Of Google’s Book Scanning Machine Revealed

Found this also very cool solutions for book scanning.

So I decided to be smart. I finally repaired my old D620, and i am using that. I would love to try hackintosh on it, but no one has gotten the wifi to work (and there are some other issues) but i am okay with that… It is a fine windows Machine. Might be a better Ubuntu machine though… hard to decide. I often need the simple windows functions.

Also, It is a beautiful day today. Really wonderful, Warm and sunny. I am so glad spring is here.

Work has been crazy lately, i just keep working and working… I don’t seem to ever catchup and I most assuredly never get ahead. Lately my big projects have been an online account management course, and developing the video courses we will use to teach online. Working with video is quite the new and exciting challenge… It is incredible difficult to get perfect.

Ps. Only 10 minutes after writing this post my laptop died again… Blue screen on boot….

I love this new idea.  It is called “The OfficePOD” (which Apple won’t like) and it is a self enclosed working space for people working from home.  It is a home office space: the idea being that if a worker doesn’t have to drive to work but has a place that is just work focused they will work harder while giving the environment a break.  You can read more and see more pictures after the break…. Read the rest of this entry »

I saw an interesting thing today as I was browsing through some of my Google Analytics… (I only have time to check them once year) but on our Analytics (my biggest site) has some really weird/abnormal browser results. Read on to see the chart. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been brainstorming on the ideas on how to best use the ideas in the Outliers… The idea that you need to find and foster opportunities at the correct time. The idea that Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, and Bill Joy were all born within 6 months of each other that that is the reason that they were able to change the world with personal computing is incredible interesting. He makes the case the success and change should come at a time when you are old enough to make things happen, but young enough to not be stuck in the old way. Read the rest of this entry »

I am a huge Cloud Computing Fan!  HUGE!  It is incredible.  I was just thinking this because of all the cool technology I use that sits on top of the Cloud. I have video streaming service built totally on the cloud from amazons systems.  I use the S3 to store my videos (50gigs) and then I use the Amazon EC2 with a WOWZA account to manage the streaming rtmp service.

To learn more, click the link…. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is the video up on YouTube as a whole.

We, the company I work for, finally have gotten the Branch Managers videos up and live on the site.  I think they look great.  You can check them out here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Let me know what you think!

We are working on about 100,000 things for the summer and are pretty excited about how everything is wrapping up. We have had over 600 applicants for the summer position (and this is just the first round) and have so much interest we might just have to hire all of them

On a personal note: It is getting beautiful here in Boston. It is 31 degree’s currently, but the days have been feeling much much more like Spring. More people are out and about.