Cafe Bucky

Someone has amassed a collection of photos of the NYC Starbucks. I joke with friends that you need a GPS device in NYC to keep them separate. This is proof that I’m not kidding :-)

Nice piece on Nellie McKay in the NYT today. Talent talent talent.

It’s easy for me to write about some goals that have to do with
programming, or photography, or some techy project.

It’s harder for me to articulate goals that have to do with people.
People are cats that do what they want (well, the Right in America are
a bunch of sheep that do what others want, but that’s another story).

I do pay attention to the news, and don’t do enough in the form of
action/money to address causes. The least I could do is balance my
blog a bit more in the direction of politics and society. I don’t
want to be “just” a Silverback Nerd of some sort. The whole bit about
how the US government (and most major corporate web sites I am seeing
today) is so slow to respond to the Tsunami disaster is pretty
upsetting. How come Japan, Spain, and France (to name three quick
examples) can get this so right, so fast, yet we haven’t?

So that’s one example.

Another bit about all of this is just networking and keeping up
contacts. I’ve been way too flaky at this. I apologize for that, and
want to focus more on friendships and other contacts in 2005. I’m
always advocating the use of Instant Messaging to folks, and it’s
sometimes frustrating when people “just don’t get it”. My preference
is going to be videoconferencing, instant messaging, and email. So
anyway, I promise I will do a better job of keeping in touch
(especially if you are online!)

Aside from the programming projects I do for fun and pay, there’s some
online and offline projects I want to pursue in 2005. If I had to get
into categories, there’s Photography, and Everything Else.

Ok, let’s try that again.

There have been years where I told myself that I wanted to average one
creative output every day. A photo. A bit of writing. Maybe an
interesting bit of web hackery in JavaScript/CSS (doing my resume taught me a useful technique.) Since I’ve been blogging, I can at
least say that I have managed some writing, and have shown some photos
(such as Election Night, 2004). I haven’t checked to see
if it averages out to one per day.

And since this blog is way off in the cul de sac of what gets read by
the netiverse at large, I don’t expect that anyone is going to step up
and call me on it.. “hey Daniel! where are your damn photos!”

Right. On with it.

Photography

What started me on FlexiPhoto were two things.. a love of photography,
and a desire to get back into programming (this was in 2001, after I had
spent some time away from coding)

A couple of fave genres are motorsports (American Le Mans, Formula 1), and
urban/architecture. I want to get to a few races in 2005 and snap away…

I want to keep doing zoom blurs. It’s a bit like
making a movie in 1/4 of a second. New York is well-suited for this,
as a zoom blur seems to fit into the energy I get from so much of
Manhattan. It also lets me put a bit of anonymity in my shots. To
me, a zoom blur is a bit of impressionism.

So a grand plan emerges.. to get FlexiPhoto situated so that I can
start a web site that makes great use of it. I want others to be able
to really slice and dice their way through my photos (keywords, time,
location)

But back to Photography - I want to shoot quite a bit more. My main
camera is a Nikon D1, which is long in tooth but still quite a tool.
I will likely swap out my Nikon Coolpix 950 for something smaller,
like a Canon S500. I’d like to get into the habit of having something
with me much of the time (besides the the poor quality of my Nokia
3650 phonecam)

Writing

I amuse myself by doing this blog. I don’t expect it to make me
famous or anything like that. It would be cool to get more readers
and comments, but I know that we all have only so many words we can
absorb every day. JavaJoint is some ongoing writing practice.

I’ll say a little more about blogging. I’d love to figure out an
intersection between Wikis and Blogs. Wikis are great for easily
building up a lot of interlinked bits over time. I also want to start
using something that lets me post without having to worry about so
much HTML (I usually just write straight text these days, because I’d
rather get the content out there and get on with my day, or night …)

But I do other bits of writing. I’ve written tech stuff for O’Reilly,
and I may continue doing stuff like that farther down the road. I can
easily write documentation (VoodooPad is a favorite tool). I don’t
expect to do much tech writing this year, outside of my work and
FlexiPhoto (primarily the blog for that and docs).

But a couple of other writing passions are there! I’ve always enjoyed
the Hitchikers Guide books (Douglas Adams), Lord of the Rings
(Tolkien), and a fair bit of Cyberpunk (William Gibson), among many
others. “Science Fiction Comedy” would be my leaning, if I were to
get into something more substantial than blogging.

What is far more likely is that I will start writing extended bits that go
with my photos. I’m looking for ways to complement skills, and get
some creative output, uh, out there!

Other

In between my DV cam, an Alesis DG8 digital piano, an Edirol keyboard, a
Strat, GarageBand, and iMovie, I may just come up with a little
surprise :-)

I’ve loved programming for over 25 years. I’m sure I’ll be doing some
form of it 25 years from now. Something I fret about is that I want
to point to even more tangible (read: completed) projects. I’m going to make
a concerted effort to really focus.

A goal in 2005 is to do a lot of high quality work for pay, and have
some cycles left over to make progress on FlexiPhoto. I have some
other programming / configuration projects, but want to be careful
about letting them absorb too much time.

Flash Stuff

I’m working at Metaliq, which puts me into the Flash universe. I’m
happy to be learning ActionScript and the Flash environment from Beau,
Grant, and Matt. It’s a steep learning curve, but I love it. It’s a
full circle thing, having gone from traditional application
programming (AutoCAD R12) to the web (stateless), to the Flash mode of
things (RIA).

FlexiPhoto

I did get a preview release of FlexiPhoto out there last year, and fully
intend to return to it in the Spring (as soon as I am over the initial
hump of ActionScript & Flash). My plans are to migrate it to PHP 5
and Apache 2, and to supplement the HTML front-ends with one in Flash.

A specific goal for FlexiPhoto, aside from an open source photo db, is
for it to be a front end for my own photos at SnapSmith.com.

Another goal would be to make steady progress in little chunks,
instead of holding off for large blocks of time which rarely
materialize.

ThereThen Addressing

Haven’t forgotten this one! The initial plan is to get a proof of
concept out there, and to tie it into FlexiPhoto. I think I can show
an easy way to do Location and Time based searching of photos.

Other

No, I don’t want there to be an “Other”! There’s a bunch of west
coast/east coast config stuff I’ll get done, and there’s always new
software and tools to check out. I don’t want to get sidetracked into
a coding project that would take me away from work, FlexiPhoto, and
ThereThen. Gotta sleep too :-)

Well, one “Other” is redoing my websites. daniel.org is stale.
JavaJoint.com will migrate to an up to date version of Movable Type.
More on that in the “Creative” post.

Coffee. Eggs. Write.

I am so happy to be rid of 2004. Oh, wait! Don’t trot off … I’ll
vent a little, and then get on with a series of posts that look ahead.
Promise.

Yes, it was a good year in many ways. I’m a Californian, and now I
think I can safely say I’m a budding New Yorker. I got back in the
groove of working (for pay :-), after having taken a lot of time off,
and am especially happy to be at Metaliq.

It was also a year of being off on my own quite a bit, which is not
the easiest way to get going in Manhattan. It was a transitional year
of going from “oh shit, I’m rapidly running out of money” to “yes, I
will keep learning and drawing upon my experience, and get paid to do what I
love”. It’s still a struggle to stop second-guessing certain stupid
financial decisions (not buying a house in Seattle a few years ago
tops the list).

It was the year where over 50 million voters reelected an idiot -
where a huge swath of the American population showed just how
ignorant, fearful, and misguided they could be. It was a year where
it became glaringly apparent that there are two Americas - the Red and
the Blue. I miss Clinton.

The year ended up with waves that killed many, waves of support from
companies that care (Apple’s home page is a perfect example), and
waves of apathy from many large corporations that couldn’t be bothered
to express their social conscience on their sites (shame on you).

That’s the tip of my iceberg. I’ll just say that I’m happy 2004 is
over, and that I’m anxious to crank out a few posts that look ahead.