On this coming Friday I will meet with my supervisor at West Neighbourhood House, Tom Namgyal (I'm a volunteer computer tutor). I have offered to help him develop a website for his drop shipping business venture. Drop shipping involves being a middleman between suppliers and consumers. I will offer to do the website for free, in exchange for two favours (the second favour is optional). The first favour is that when I approach Tom's employer, after the development of my AppaTeach.org website is a little further along, he must tell his boss that I'm a good tutor. He already told me that I'm one of their most talented tutors. The other favour is that he has first dibs on the AppaTeach Co-Founder position. Since that favour is optional, he doesn't have to become the Co-Founder unless he wants to. If he does become the Co-Founder, he can keep his present job at WNH if desired and even do his drop shipping business on the side. If he becomes the part-time Co-Founder than I will be running the day to day operations of AppaTeach and I can come to him for business advice when needed. I want WNH to help me hire the Core Curriculum Developer, who will write the AppaTeach literacy (and optionally math) curriculum based on the existing WNH literacy/math curriculum.
Correction: Tom having first dibs on the Co-Founder position is one of two favours I am offering him; the other favour is doing the drop shipping website for free. In exchange he has to tell his boss that I'm a good tutor, and he must forward my initial email approaching WNH to his boss. He is of course free to turn down my job offer.
Saturday, June 27, 2015
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Going with AppaTeach
Today I started learning something called Django, which is used along with a programming language called Python (which I already know) to create data-driven websites like AppaTeach.org. After I get up to speed with Django I intend to implement AppaTeach, regardless of whether Robin wants to be my co-founder. So I won't be implementing Lyvathon.org, which is a new programming language that I designed. Assuming that Robin declines my job offer, I will implement the AppaTeach website and then approach West Neighbourhood House (where I work as a volunteer computer tutor). After the core curriculum is developed, I will then approach Progress Place, and then I will recruit the co-founder. That involves sending emails to a bunch of organizations that employ volunteer tutors, asking them to post the attached job ad (for the co-founder) on their job bulletin boards. Bye-bye, Lyvathon.
AppaTeach or Lyvathon
I recently approached Robin, my former co-worker, asking her if she wants to be my co-founder (for my AppaTeach.org project). AppaTeach is a tutoring website. She only checks her email at the library about once a week, so I may not get a reply right away. If she declines, then I will implement Lyvathon, and put both AppaTeach and Captographics.com (a photo organizer) on the back burner.
Last weekend my brother and I went up to his cottage, and my friend John Newell and his partner Barb visited us there. I haven't seen John in over 40 years. That was a nice weekend, and all 4 of us went swimming. Yesterday I went with my friend Constance to Home Hardware to buy her a 2-door organizer (a cupboard), and I'm going to assemble it next week. The last time Constance and I went to the grocery store she peed on the floor, so she's not allowed inside that store anymore. Constance used to be homeless but she obtained permanent housing recently. I doubt very much that I will move to Vancouver, since I'm happy with my current housing and moving is a hassle. Today I must transfer money to my chequing account, cancel my next weekly meeting with Diane at Bang The Drum, reschedule my dental appt. (removing a wisdom tooth) for 2 weeks in the future, and remind my sister via email to check my blog once a month. Hi Cathy!
Last weekend my brother and I went up to his cottage, and my friend John Newell and his partner Barb visited us there. I haven't seen John in over 40 years. That was a nice weekend, and all 4 of us went swimming. Yesterday I went with my friend Constance to Home Hardware to buy her a 2-door organizer (a cupboard), and I'm going to assemble it next week. The last time Constance and I went to the grocery store she peed on the floor, so she's not allowed inside that store anymore. Constance used to be homeless but she obtained permanent housing recently. I doubt very much that I will move to Vancouver, since I'm happy with my current housing and moving is a hassle. Today I must transfer money to my chequing account, cancel my next weekly meeting with Diane at Bang The Drum, reschedule my dental appt. (removing a wisdom tooth) for 2 weeks in the future, and remind my sister via email to check my blog once a month. Hi Cathy!
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Moving to Vancouver
I may rent out my condo this summer or fall and rent a condo in Vancouver for a year. If I like it OK, then I will sell my condo and buy one in Vancouver, say in New Westminster, so long as it's at most one bus ride from a Skytrain station (I won't own a car). My brother (who has a tenant in his self-contained basement suite) can help me find good tenants and he can fix things if something goes wrong, like a clogged drain. If my tenants move in their own furniture, then I will put my furniture in storage in case I decide to move back to Toronto. If I buy a condo in Vancouver then I will sell the contents of the storage locker and buy new furniture. All I need when I'm renting is a bed, a computer table, an office chair, a kitchen chair, and a kitchen table. Cathy said I can use movers to move my desktop computer, printer, monitor, and clothes to Vancouver (just a partial truckload). Hopefully my Lexografix.com idea won't bite the dust, and will eventually be profitable (it's only about 24 hours old, so who knows?). Keeping my fingers crossed.
I thought it might be nice to live somewhere other than Toronto, where I've lived all my life except I went to school mostly in the Philadelphia area. Vancouver seems kind of trendy, almost like the Silicon Valley of Canada, although that's probably true more or less just for the gaming industry. Susan said Vancouver is nicer than Toronto, and my sister's family lives there and in Victoria. What the hell, my condo is 10 years old, having moved into a brand-new unit. Why not have some adventure in my life, for a change? This evening I will work on Lexografix. Today I started getting into the habit of going for 30-minute walks, hopefully every other day, and tomorrow I'll floss my teeth, also doing that every other day. Even though it's less than the minimum amount of recommended exercise, at least I will feel more responsible that I'm taking better care of my health, as I am 55 years old. Can making special trips to the supermarket for fruit, lettuce, and tomatoes be also within my grasp? Only time will tell. Hopefully at least depression will no longer darken my door as frequently (just 2 days, recently, in the past 5 weeks). So as they say, à votre santé.
I thought it might be nice to live somewhere other than Toronto, where I've lived all my life except I went to school mostly in the Philadelphia area. Vancouver seems kind of trendy, almost like the Silicon Valley of Canada, although that's probably true more or less just for the gaming industry. Susan said Vancouver is nicer than Toronto, and my sister's family lives there and in Victoria. What the hell, my condo is 10 years old, having moved into a brand-new unit. Why not have some adventure in my life, for a change? This evening I will work on Lexografix. Today I started getting into the habit of going for 30-minute walks, hopefully every other day, and tomorrow I'll floss my teeth, also doing that every other day. Even though it's less than the minimum amount of recommended exercise, at least I will feel more responsible that I'm taking better care of my health, as I am 55 years old. Can making special trips to the supermarket for fruit, lettuce, and tomatoes be also within my grasp? Only time will tell. Hopefully at least depression will no longer darken my door as frequently (just 2 days, recently, in the past 5 weeks). So as they say, à votre santé.
Project name change
I changed the name of my new project from Pixxshow to Lexografix.com. Much easier to implement than Lyvathon, and a big improvement on Pixmiles and the others before it. After lunch I will drink coffee and work on a bit more project documentation. No worries 'round here.
NSWICH has been enabled
Once again I'm in full-blown NSWICH mode: New SoftWare Idea Creator's High (didn't sleep last night). I thought of a way to monetize Pixxshow, and since it's now meant for a general audience, the potential to make a lot of money exists. It may end up falling apart like a house of cards (OSWICC: Old SoftWare Idea Creator's Crash), like most of my previous bouts of NSWICH. But you never know, since I have had 3 software ideas in the past in which I avoided OSWICC: Lyvathon (used to be my games program), Psybercity (database of mental health resources), and AppaTeach (tutoring website). I never actually finished any of those projects, and only with Lyvathon did I get a large amount of work done on it (not too much code, though).
In case the unthinkable happens, whereby OSWICC is avoided, I succeed in implementing Pixxshow, and thousands of users download it, I just might face a not at all very shabby dilemma. That is, if Pixxshow turns out to be very useful, then Google or Facebook may offer me a million dollars to buy my company. They have deep pockets and no major Big Data outfit worth its salt would waste time reinventing the wheel in order to duplicate the thousands of lines of code I will have written developing Pixxshow. In that happy event, my only dilemma is deciding whether I should hold out for someone to offer me ten million dollars. I can always ask either of my 2 previous supervisors: Arvin Daljeet or Stephen Bates, to advise me. Arvin's company develops software and Stephen is a VP of Risk Management at BMO. Or I can seek legal advice from a lawyer. Or even ask Ralph, my sister's ex. I might take a break now from Pixxshow. Tonight I have to make a phone call, and tomorrow I must make 2 medical appointments. Soon I must go for a walk. Some fresh air will do me a whole lot of good, methinks. Implementing Pixxshow can wait til tomorrow. I do love my Linux-based desktop machine, but must log off real soon now. Golly!
In case the unthinkable happens, whereby OSWICC is avoided, I succeed in implementing Pixxshow, and thousands of users download it, I just might face a not at all very shabby dilemma. That is, if Pixxshow turns out to be very useful, then Google or Facebook may offer me a million dollars to buy my company. They have deep pockets and no major Big Data outfit worth its salt would waste time reinventing the wheel in order to duplicate the thousands of lines of code I will have written developing Pixxshow. In that happy event, my only dilemma is deciding whether I should hold out for someone to offer me ten million dollars. I can always ask either of my 2 previous supervisors: Arvin Daljeet or Stephen Bates, to advise me. Arvin's company develops software and Stephen is a VP of Risk Management at BMO. Or I can seek legal advice from a lawyer. Or even ask Ralph, my sister's ex. I might take a break now from Pixxshow. Tonight I have to make a phone call, and tomorrow I must make 2 medical appointments. Soon I must go for a walk. Some fresh air will do me a whole lot of good, methinks. Implementing Pixxshow can wait til tomorrow. I do love my Linux-based desktop machine, but must log off real soon now. Golly!
Pixxshow
I'm going to develop an Android app called Pixxshow.com that lets you create 3-panel slide
shows (2-panel on smartphones), thereby managing your photo collection
and syncing it across multiple devices. Admittedly, my target market
consists of teenage boys and men who are single and unattached. Porn is
part of the equation. Most people think that porn is sleazy, but I say,
why not harness the male sex drive and make a buck while doing it. I can finish it in under 6 months, as opposed to 2 years for Lyvathon, and I don't have to team up with other programmers.
Saturday, June 6, 2015
Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel
All non-IT encumbrances are now out of the way, and I am faced with the task of starting to implement Lyvathon. My vacation is over, my 2 days of post-vacation depression are over (no other depression has occurred in over a month), and I'm all set for next weekend when my brother and I go up north to his cottage. Up there we will meet up with my childhood friend, John Newell (and his partner, Barb), who I haven't seen in over 40 years. Tomorrow evening I must make 2 phone calls, and later I must make 2 medical appointments.
Back to the present, I am faced with the software coder's equivalent of a hazy idea of what to write, along with a working title. Unlike a typical writer of fiction, I've spent the past 20 years (working sporadically) on the predecessors of Lyvathon, but have written very little code until now. Last winter I wrote a few hundred lines of code, but I can reuse only a very small portion of that code. Most code I must now write will be brand new.
Like Mr. Earbrass, I must find a way to get over the initial hurdle of being faced with a blank page. I could write, say, "It was a dark and stormy night," but my Java compiler would take a dim view of such a feeble effort. I could instead write several lines of code which would all boil down to the following-- 'system.out.println("It had begun to snow.");' --and would be rewarded with a clean compile, but of course it wouldn't do anything useful. At some point I must take the bull by the horns and start modifying my top-level code, deciding which low-level code to keep, gutting everything in-between, and get busy writing new code.
Having read the Saturday Globe and Mail, I will probably end up reading the news at cbc.ca (a daily ritual) before doing any work today. At least I've written a blog post about my current project, without getting any actual work done. Despite my getting-started woes, I'm lucky to have the financial freedom to do what I want. Most people are forced to do whatever their boss tells them to. Those who are self-employed are weighed down with responsibilities and must put in long hours, locked in a Darwinian struggle of survival of the fittest business venture. So I really can't complain. Hi ho, hi ho, my code is what must grow, da da, da da, da da, da da, hi ho, hi ho! Hopefully most of these posts will make more use of brevity, as unfortunately I can be long-winded at times. Pardon me while I continue my procrastination.
Back to the present, I am faced with the software coder's equivalent of a hazy idea of what to write, along with a working title. Unlike a typical writer of fiction, I've spent the past 20 years (working sporadically) on the predecessors of Lyvathon, but have written very little code until now. Last winter I wrote a few hundred lines of code, but I can reuse only a very small portion of that code. Most code I must now write will be brand new.
Like Mr. Earbrass, I must find a way to get over the initial hurdle of being faced with a blank page. I could write, say, "It was a dark and stormy night," but my Java compiler would take a dim view of such a feeble effort. I could instead write several lines of code which would all boil down to the following-- 'system.out.println("It had begun to snow.");' --and would be rewarded with a clean compile, but of course it wouldn't do anything useful. At some point I must take the bull by the horns and start modifying my top-level code, deciding which low-level code to keep, gutting everything in-between, and get busy writing new code.
Having read the Saturday Globe and Mail, I will probably end up reading the news at cbc.ca (a daily ritual) before doing any work today. At least I've written a blog post about my current project, without getting any actual work done. Despite my getting-started woes, I'm lucky to have the financial freedom to do what I want. Most people are forced to do whatever their boss tells them to. Those who are self-employed are weighed down with responsibilities and must put in long hours, locked in a Darwinian struggle of survival of the fittest business venture. So I really can't complain. Hi ho, hi ho, my code is what must grow, da da, da da, da da, da da, hi ho, hi ho! Hopefully most of these posts will make more use of brevity, as unfortunately I can be long-winded at times. Pardon me while I continue my procrastination.
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