Evanalyze

Whether by chance or design, I usually have a far more pesimistic view of my own work than others. That’s probably not uncommon, but I still get a healthy thrill whenever I’m greeted by surprisingly good feedback.

In two separate meetings yesterday I was told by entrepreneurs I respect greatly that the web app I’m developing at work could be its own company. Ignoring the hurdles that come with that–that I’m not entirely interested in hurdling–it was really fun to hear that.

I love excel, but people with a lesser passion for it seem to be confused about what excel is and isn’t. Excel isn’t:

-A relational database
-A calendar
-Meant to display all the data from your hard drive horizontally on one screen
-Word with graph paper
-Meant to be copied into a powerpoint

Does this exist?

For instance, you have some even like a wedding going on. Lots of people are traveling and the guest list is big enough that there’s a good chance you don’t know or can’t think of everyone you’ve met that’s going.

If the host uploads the guest list somewhere I’d like to be able to see which members I’m friends with on Facebook or have in my Outlook contacts (or whatever). Then once I’ve found my relevant subset, pull in other data like where we all live from Facebook, when we’re traveling and staying from Tripit, etc. Then it could intelligently suggest activities like sharing a cab from the airport.

The high friction point is obviously getting the source of the list, but so much of that is done via Facebook, evite or some other system that has (1) very broad reach (2) naturally unique identifiers (3) a pretty good idea of who I know.

If this exists I guess I’ve missed it. If it doesn’t, then I hope someone makes it.

The folks over at 37signals, whom I respect greatly but often disagree with, have some very specific ideas about how you should design and develop web applications, especially in that order. They’re big supporters of the idea that the UI is the app, and I think that’s a really valid idea. They’ve talked a lot about how the interface is too often something that is “painted on” at the end and it hurts the final product, mockups should be html and css, not photoshop or (in my case) MS Paint, etc. They like design that they think is good (different from good design, as they often admit themselves).

One problem I have with this whole “design first, make it work later” idea is that it really lengthens the feedback cycle. The idea that a mockup made of things that can be clicked makes sense, but not when it comes at the expense of getting feedback on what you’re doing, which is useless until those clicks are functional.

If you give almost anyone a choice between testing ugly functionality or attractive emptiness, they’ll choose the former. That testing and feedback is crucial, even if you ignore most of it (which is another 37s dogma that isn’t really relevant).

They make the analogy to “paining on a UI” at the end and the “plumbing” behind it. It’s odd, because I doubt a lot of houses paint the walls before the plumbing is installed.

2009 is young but off to a roaring start. I’ve already got strong contendera for the yearly awards in ‘best lunch’ and ‘worst week.’. The former goes to a delicious lobster bisque and creme biscuit duo from whole foods. The latter goes to the last 4 and perhaps next 3 days.

I finally made the jump to properly using Subversion last night thanks to Stack Overflow.

There’s a marked difference in how flippant you can be about errors and data loss when other people are using stuff you make, and as my super top secret project for work is gaining a little more traction, it seemed time to cross my t’s and dot my i’s in the “don’t screw yourself” department.

I remember in elementary school once we did a whole bunch of excercises in estimation. One that sticks out is beingaskes to open a closed dictionary to a particular letter section. I thought these were really stupid, but now realize that people are often horrible at common sense things that come down to reasonable (or totally unreasonable) estimation.

I doubt that more time flipping through dictionaries would have helped much, but I’ve never thought schools put enough emphasis on basic common sense. Maybe this would be a good happy median for the educators among us.

This is a really good post that is awfully autobiographical for something I didn’t write.

I’d read several books on self-publishing and writing non-fiction, and I could have a really good conversation about them, but I’d synthesized the information for knowledge-sake, rather than to act on it. That made a big difference.

That line alone was pretty interesting to read. I’ve felt that way at a lot of points in my life–knowing a lot about something but being virtually clueless when trying to actually do it.

I do question the inherentness of the “consumer” and “producer” characteristics, but the post is informative and interesting nonetheless.

I’ve been hanging out quite a bit recently with some friends from Y Combinator companies. Yesterday we played as a 6-some on a par 3 course down on the peninsula. For a cheap, obviously low budget course (Mariner’s Point), they had some of the best views I’ve ever seen. I wish I had thought to take a picture at the time–several holes framed by the bay and Bay Bridge–really awesome stuff.

I’ve also been playing in a poker game with them. It’s really fun stuff. Reminds me a lot of high school.

Normally I would write something this short on Twitter, but Twitter is down now.

I just wrote some really awesome code that a lot of people have been asking for. Now time to get 3 hours of sleep.