Author

Sean Chin

Technology

November 13, 2013

Get Shit Done: The Worst Startup Culture Ever

It’s bad management. Poor communication.

Telling them to just get shit done is like telling a fat person to “just lose weight”. It’s like telling a wide receiver to “just catch the ball”. It’s like telling a kid to “just get better grades”.

It shows a disregard for the actual context of the situation.

A true manager will actually seek out the root cause of the problem, and solve for those issues.

This is such a great article for any kind of director or manager. Getting shit done is worse than getting nothing done.

How Long Do Disk Drives Last?

Imagine you have a disk drive supplier who provides drives that are 100% reliable for six months, but then all fail at that point. What’s the annual failure rate? If you have to keep 100 drives running at all times, you’ll have to replace the drive in every slot twice a year. That means that you’ll have to replace 200 drives each year, which makes your annual failure rate 200%. So, in theory at least, there is no worst possible failure rate. If every drive failed after one hour of use, the annual failure rate would be 876,000%.

I always have multiple backups. Time Machine on an external hard drive , a redundant NAS RAID-5 array and cloud backup. My data and photos mean everything to me. Make sure to back up what you cherish, because you never know.

Jony Ive and Mark Newson Talk About Design for Product (RED)


Its truly brilliant to see two of the best industrial product designers today team up for such as worthy cause to fight AIDS.

Apple’s $10.5B on Robots to Lasers Shores up Supply Chain 

“Their designs are so unique that you have to have a very unique manufacturing process to make it,” said Muthuraman Ramasamy, an analyst with consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, who has studied the use of the machinery. “Apple has so much cash that they can invest in cutting-edge, world-class machinery that is typically used for aerospace and defense.”

This is great. Put that cash hoard to good use for innovative production versus only pleasing investors with buybacks. I can’t wait to see what Apple creates next!

2013/11/13
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Technology

Moving From Gmail/Google Apps for Business to Rackspace Email

In light of recent infamous IMAP email issues between Gmail and Mail App in OSX Mavericks, I finally felt that I needed to make a change for the better. This isn’t the first time Google  has messed with Apple’s iOS and Mac users. They swiftly removed push email sync from Gmail accounts and making them use their subpar IMAP service. This was a surprise to many.

Yes, services like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo etc. are free and for many “good enough.” However, you get what you pay for. These are free so expect there to be ads, commercials and offers to buy more things so that they can afford their bills too.

Google is also going to be embedding advertisements into their Gmail system. Furthermore, Google broke their promise in 2005, to never show advertisements in their search results. I am sick of this garbage. I just want my content. I just want my email.

Google is known to “kill off” high quality services with little to no good reason. Google Reader was picked off ? and most recently iGoogle, which I used as my homepage. Now I have Reddit set as my home page.

Even the likes of respected entrepreneur and developer Marco Arment ditched Gmail for another good paid service called Fastmail.fm. For me, I required something a little bit more such as push notifications.

Personally, I decided on Rackspace because they offered something unique that I cannot find anywhere else. Instead of purchasing a Microsoft Hosted Exchange account for $10 a month. I am able to purchase their regular Rackspace email IMAP account for $2 per month and add their unique “MobileSync” feature for an additional $1 per month. This MobileSync is based on Exchange’s ActiveSync technology. Essentially, it allows me to get emails pushed instantly to my iPhone without all the extra fancy frill of Hosted Exchange. I think having this feature is a gigantic plus.

Captain DeadBones Chronicles also shares my thoughts on the superb services at Rackspace.

“We live in a ‘Zero Time Communication Age’. Internal and external digital communication has to be fast and reliable in order to succeed.”

The only downside that I can see of using Rackspace is that your order needs to be a minimum of $10 USD a month. I decided to go with 3 business email accounts and 1 personal. And adding Mobile Sync to one business and the personal addresses to reach this minimum amount.

Changing MX Records to point from your domain host to Rackspace email servers is simple too.

Assistance from Rackspace is top-notch. I can get a hold of anyone there within 20 seconds. Rudy and Haley (a few others as well) at Rackspace are amazing customer service representatives and promptly guided and answers by questions. Thank you!

Spam filters are pretty much spot on and just as good as Gmails in my opinion thus far.

Once you’ve fully migrated all of your emails over to your new account at Rackspace, they will let you know. And from there, It’s very easy to setup MobileSync on your iOS device and Mac Mail. Did I mention you get a 14 day free trial to test out their service?

In conclusion, there are a plethora of free services such as Gmail and Yahoo that can offer adequate email functionally. But all of them are cluttered inorganic content and an increasing trend of blasting ads in your face. And it will only continue to get worse. There is peace of mind in knowing Google doesn’t have control over your mission critical email.

This is why I love companies such as Apple and their philosophy of not needing their customers personal data for their business.

Rackspace believes in the same concepts and have a concern and care for their customers personal data. I like and don’t mind paying for high quality services that allow me to get through my business related messages in a secure, streamlined and organized fashion.

There is truly something special and liberating about “owning your email”.

2013/11/12
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Technology

November 11, 2013

Mobile is Eating the World

This is one of the best overviews on the “station of mobile computing” by Benedict Evans. The data and presentation slides are brilliant.
The final, big reason why young people are gravitating towards messaging apps is that many of these apps no longer do just messaging. They are social networks.
The trend for Facebook’s downward usage like every social platform before it begins.

Simplify, simplify. My online life is already cluttered enough, and I never did like Google+, so I deleted it, and perhaps you should, too. Now there’s one less egg in my Google basket, and I never have to pay attention to anything that has the word “Google+” in it again — just like I did with LinkedIn (stop inviting me, everyone in the world), Pinterest, and a number of other things I had no use for.

Agreed. I’m starting to see what platforms I can cut the fat from.

How a Blacksmith Learned to Code 

Everyone everywhere is pushing this whole “Learn To Code” movement, but is it actually possible? This former Blacksmith/Farrier says a resounding: “YES!”

Very inspiring. I have made a goal to learn as much as I can about iOS and/or OSX development throughout the next year or two.

2013/11/11
1345
Technology

Thoughts on the Nikon Df

nikon-df

 

It’s worth noting that the Nikon Df’s “timeless design” has more to recommend it than just aesthetics. In addition to looking like the beautiful F-Series 35mm cameras of old — with dedicated ISO, exposure compensation, shutter speed and mode dials — it is also compatible with Nikkor lenses made as far back as 1959, the year Nikon introduced the first F-Series SLR.

If Nikon was in a super good financial situation, then this would be an awesome thing to do. Unfortunately they are not. This camera caters to neither high end pros or general consumers.

I think they need to focus on making a Coolpix A body with a top notch DX sensor with a compact 24-120 f2.8 lens like the Sony RX100.

However, the Df is interesting as it has the sensor of the D4. So the quality is there. Also, the marketing for it is excellent with Joe McNally. I love that guy and his life story. However, these living legends keep referring to how the Df makes them feel nostalgic and what it was like shooting back in the old days. Well, that only represents a very small number of people. The majority of shooters these days have never even been in a darkroom before.

I don’t think the Df will help the company economically though. They need to put their resources and efforts in the ideal compact camera I mentioned above.

What do you think about it?
2013/11/07
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