One of the extensions I’ve come to love is Facebook Photo Zoom. It lets you put your mouse over a small image (e.g someone’s display pic) in Facebook and it’ll show a full sized (or as close to it as your screen will support) image.
Update : Another great Firefox extension is Download Flash and Video, which allows you to easily download YouTube videos, plus the Extended Copy Menu which lets you copy as plain text (great for pasting into other documents without the crazy formatting that you sometimes get).
Other recommended Firefox extensions :
Tab Mix Plus : Adds advanced control over how Tabs are used in Firefox. I love the ability to protect tabs, plus set it up to always opento the right and focus on the right tab on close. Makes it easier to deal with many, many tabs.
Xmarks Sync : If your like me then you’ve got multiple computers then you’ll know how annoying it can be to syncronise bookmarks between your different installs of Firefox.
Extensions for Web Developers
Firebug : Firebug is great for inspecting elements and the DOM, checking jQuery expressions, making live CSS, HTML and Javascript changes, viewing the console logs, etc..
DOM Inspector : A plugin for Firefox which is similar to Firebug.
Colorzilla : It’s amazing how often I need to find the right colour. Using Colourzilla I can use the dropper to work out what another colour is, use the colour wheel to select my own colour and easily copy the # or RGB colours for my CSS files.
Screengrab : Ever wanted to make a screenshot of a WHOLE page even though it was say 8 times longer than the screen? Now you can! I often use Screengrab to save screenshots at the end of the Scrum sprint (Friday’s) so that I can see a history of the sites I’ve been working on and their evolution.
WebDeveloper : This should be on every web dev’s toolbar. Whilst doing a number of features similar to Firebug it’s still incredibly useful, especially when trying to test the page with javascript disabled (or disabling those damn right click restrictions on certain sites). I usually like the inspect element tool when trying to write jQuery selector expressions, although sometimes also use Firebug or Google Chromes built in inspector.
Got some more Firefox or Chrome extensions you think should be on the list? Comment or email me.
After a discussion after the GA there was a great idea. Be solutions focused.
This is my proposal to the Occupy Movement
Proposal : Occupy should not talk so much about what we are against. We should primarily talk about viable solutions which we support and why. We should be solutions focused.
If there is an issue or range of interconnected issues without a viable solution then we can help help facilitate the discussions and education required to then come up with solutions.
Examples
As an example instead of saying we are against the 1%, it would be that we are for Income equality, power equality, and democracy.
Another example : We support the Beyond Zero Emissions stationary energy plan. A proposal by a group of volunteer engineers which aims to convert Australia to 100% renewable energy. Why? Because it means our electricity will be cheaper in the long run. It means we can replace the ageing, dirty coal fired power plants with Concentrated Solar Thermal Power stations. We can use wind farms and keep people in jobs (compared to transitioning to a gas power station) and won’t require environmentally destructive industrial processes such as Coal Seam Gas extraction which put our ground water at risk of being permanently destroyed.
We can have our power outlets running off 100% renewable, carbon free energy allowing for a new wave of electric vehicles.
In regards to income equality and the major issues with the economic and political systems, we are still discussing, debating and educating ourselves regarding the root causes and the alternatives available. We can attempt to make changes the current capitalist system or attempt to change to a new system such as Communism and Socialism or some of the newer options like Steady State Economics, True Cost Economics, Participatory Economics and Resource Based Economics.
We hope the public will take part in the discussions, bring their perspectives and help augment and enhance the final proposed solution.
We would like to hear and discuss proposals regarding everything from environmental to social to energy, economic, political to health, food and more.
Note : We don’t need to be locked into a single solution, in many cases it may be better to support/test/advocate a number of them.
Some new scientific evidence is emerging which actually brings into question some of the fundamental assumptions of Democracy, especially the belief that a well informed public increases democracy and that people actually care about social issues.
Together, these two studies may cause us to rethink the way we promote social activism and the future of governance structures. Especially in Western culture.
Occupy, with the focus on the 99% vs the 1% and the social and economic inequality between the two, whilst camping to force the issue to a head, are possibly making people want the occupiers to take the issue on and resolve it, but the majority of the 99% aren’t likely to be interested in helping unless changes are made. That said, it has been very successful so far in raising awareness and thankfully, Occupy seems to be undergoing a metamorphosis which may help bring engagement.
Well, it’s week 3 of me being in Sydney and I’ve been going through the dip. The part between when everything is new and novel to when you actually get something worth showing.
Talking about something worth showing. Here’s a manually placed version of the RaVis explorer tree view which we are using for the Films on the Fly Nodemap viewer. In this case it’s my version of what I’d like to see. What I call a ‘Story Timeline’ view. Unfortunately the software doesn’t work that way. Yet.
FotF - Orthogonal Tree View
The first week in Sydney was about finding my feet, the second was getting over my cold/hayfeaver and moving into David’s place whilst transitioning to my natural state. That of being a night owl.
Night Owl
During the past week at least 3 of the nights I’ve not gone to bed until 7am. The earliest night being about 3am.
I’m also developing callouses on my hand from carrying my briefcase around everywhere. If it’s not that then I’m walking around with plastic shopping bags.
Sydney is weird. Well, it’s at least different in a number of ways from Adelaide. Their bins being the most obvious difference, but their transport system is more subtly different. It’s certainly not as well integrated as the one in S.A. No Google Maps integration, very few bus timetables you can take with you and basically no train timetables (but they usually come within 10mins).
Instead of having multi-trip ticket where you can use the bus or train up to ten times and when you use the ticket you can re-use it on any other public transport within 2 hours, in Sydney you need different tickets for the train (which are split into a number of zones) and also different tickets for the bus service, which also has different zones. This leaves me with 3 multi-use tickets. A train and two bus tickets.
The annoying bit is that the train tickets are multi-day passes, not multi-trip passes. Whilst the bus tickets are multi-trip tickets and you can use them up to 10 times, I had a 1 week train ticket. This caused me lots of confusion as when the ticket expired and it wouldn’t let me through the turnstile. The turnstile machine simply said there was an error and to see the attendant. I went to see the attendant, but as I was holding a briefcase and a bag and they man the wide berth laneway, when I waved my ticket at them they just nodded and pushed me through, with 2 mothers pushing prams and a guy with a musical instrument behind me.
The next time my ticket failed I had to almost forcefully explain that my ticket doesn’t work. Only after repeated prodding from me did the attendant lady actually try it a couple of times, look at the ticket, then point out it was expired. Suddenly a light went on in my head. I didn’t have a ticket capable of ‘10 train trips‘, instead it was capable of 7 days worth of travel. Doh!
SA vs NSW tickets
Did I mention I’ve already been having days where I feel burnt out? I woke up the other day after it had been raining for nearly 3 days straight and I had been having sneezing fits (usually sneezing up to 5 times in a row). I felt burnt out. I’ve been trying to work on the data structures for the Tree view page. How does the Javascript or HTML/CSS use it? As a JSON array). How does the Server send it to the browser? JSON or XML.. I haven’t implemented XML yet. Also, using the jQuery data type in the page construction, or via an AJAX call (I’ve implemented both) I’ve not yet worked out the best way for the back end MySQL database to store the data.
Anyway because of all this it’s not really worth showing to anyone yet. Which means I can’t get excited by people looking at it and going ‘ah ha’ with understanding.
Also, whenever I try and work, I end up getting very distracted. After working on something for a while I’ll need a break, as does anyone. But I’ll jump onto Facebook, open up a bunch of links, start watching an hour long video and 5 hours later I’ll feel bad because I’m not working. Either that or it’s now time to go.
It’s not like I’m playing Angry Birds. Although, at one point I did watch a video about the making of Angry Birds. I also tried out the Angry Birds Chrome Web App. It’s kinda cool that they could make a game like Angry Birds that runs in the browser. It shows that Javascript and HTML5 have come a long way. Thank you Google Chrome and Firefox for making the Internet awesome.
I’ve also been watching a lot of the Google IO 2011 content. So far about 10 hours out of the ~45hrs worth that I’ve downloaded.
So. One of my greatest strengths is my greatest weakness. My hunger for knowledge, my passion for learning means that it is very hard for me to not want to watch something informative. Hence why I like documentaries but hate the news. I particularly love TED talks. I’ve watched over 500 of them and agree; they are Ideas Worth Spreading.
There I was again, getting distracted. Setting up something on the other laptop, waiting for my food to cook and missing my girlfriend.
I was feeling, not depressed, but burnt out and exhausted. But, I ate dinner, called my girlfriend and now I’m starting to feel better. To feel happier. Despite it being night, cloudy and dark, I feel like the world is brighter. Like the screen brightness has just been turned up.
So I finish off my call out for a Graphic/Web designer and some other emails, but as I didn’t go to sleep last night until after the sun came up, and I didn’t get to the office until 6pm, it’s now past half past Midnight. I race to the train station for no use. The trains stopped a while ago. Thankfully there’s a late night bus service. I spend 15mins walking to Town Hall, realise I have to wait on the other side of the road, next to the smallest, crappiest bus stop sign I’ve seen. The bus finally comes at 1:30am. I try to do some programming but the bus driver doesn’t know anything about gliding. They are either accelerating, braking, or going around corners. I start to feel sick and have to pack the laptop away. Thankfully I made it to Turramurra and found a taxi driver to drive me to David’s place as I didn’t want to spend 45mins walking home with my dark brown leather suitcase and blue hat (with white chequered stripe).
Portrait of Michael Kubler - Showing off 'The Hat'
2 days pass since I did the graphic designer callout and I still haven’t received a response. I’m contemplating making up a poster and plastering it around UTS (University of Technology, Sydney). Alternatively when David Zwolski’s got some spare time I’ll utilise his skills.
It’s not that I can’t do design work, it’s that I know it’s not my strength, it’s hard to switch between programming and design, but importantly, it’s because I want to bring someone else into the project. Get their perspective. Look at their face as they realise all the possibilities and opportunities. Because of the information intense nature of the work I need someone I can physically meet with and spend time with so we can brainstorm various iterations.
Michael's Office Desk in Sydney
I am putting $1,000 of my own money towards the project. $500 for a designer, who’ll hopefully help me create some example layouts for some of the Multipath, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure and also the RPG style interactive video interfaces that I have in mind. If there’s time I’d also like some illustrations to help explain the concepts during demo day. Assuming the platform will actually be ready for pitching to potential investors/the public.
The other $500 goes towards Google Adwords advertising and some of the other stuff (like MailChimp mailing lists) for testing the landing pages.
The idea is to try and determine what people are most likely to be interested in and which features to aim for first to gain traction. To achieve a great product-market-fit.
The Startup Triangle
The problem with doing the above is that I’m already stretching my financial resources pretty thin. I’ve got maybe $5.5K to last me the entire 3 months I’m in Sydney. This includes food, rent/utilities, transport and those annoying things like paying mobile phone bill, minimum credit card repayment costs, server costs and all that jazz.
That $5.5K is made up of my measly personal savings (I’ve been pumping pretty much everything I can into the company for the last 2 years); my last payment from ANAT, which was basically double my normal pay as it included my accrued annual leave (so ~$2k); plus up to $3K I can take out in a new credit card I recently received (just before I stopped working at ANAT).
I’m trying to use lean startup techniques. But even then, I’m trying to do something that even web startup incubators like Pollenizer wouldn’t expect to do for less than $150K.
When I get back to Adelaide I’m going to have pretty much no money, but hopefully enough of a platform that we can show it off to people so they understand what it is and get them excited about all the possibilities of what it could be.
FOCUS
The reason why focus is important (and I need more of it) is because otherwise I’ll fail. It’s pretty much my whole reason for coming to Sydney (I’ve got a nice office back in Adelaide, but when there, I make films, not program). Certain types of failures are good, you learn from them. But failing because I was watching YouTube video’s is not the type of failure we are talking about.
Who’s talking about it? Mick Liubinskas of POLLENIZER he’s pretty much the reason I came to Sydney, so if you’ve read this far please watch his short presentation.
Well, I’ve been in Sydney for about a week so far. The first week out of ~12.
It seems to have gone so fast, but also agonisingly slow.
It’s over a week since I saw my girlfriend. Since I got to hold her in my arms and kiss her.
It’s over a week since my last day at ANAT. Since I started the running jump which will likely end in Films on the Fly taking off, or myself falling flat on my face, without money, without a job and without dignity.
So far this week I’ve done some PHP coding on the Multipath platform. Not much, but just enough to get frustrated at my lack of Flex programming skills and also enough to remember that I’M CRAZY! What was I thinking? I don’t work alone very well, and I know this.
I need to be around people. I need to be working with people, bouncing ideas off them. Seeing them work and feeding off it, multiplying it and returning it back ten fold. But I can’t really afford to pay anyone.
Thankfully the reason I haven’t done as much coding as I’d like is because I’ve been networking and settling down. Meeting with people at the Push Start Mentors Live! event. Meeting with Peter at Fishburners (which is right next door… Like the exact next building). I met up with Katrin and Bart of Zero Mail, plus Marc and some other entrepreneurs at the Silicon Beach Drinks night.
I hung out with David Zwolski, Ziggy, Albert and other members of the Sydney Zeitgeist Movement chapter. I spent a lot of time on Skype and Team Speak talking to David, plus reading a lot of his emails and vice versa. But it was good to finally meet him. He’s a lot younger and taller than I expected. With his full length trench coat and long wavy hair he looked a bit like Neo from The Matrix.
He’s offered to let me crash at his place whilst I’m in Sydney. For the whole 3 months. The catch : It’s a 10min bus ride and 40min train trip from the Sydney CBD. I’m catching up with him tomorrow so will see what happens, although I’m still at the backpackers hostel for another week…. unless the Major General gets a little too ansy.
Dorm
In the hostel that I’m currently staying at is 3 other guys. The two young asians on the other bunk-bed are almost always on their laptops. One’s halfway through watching the entire 10 seasons of Friends. The guy in the bed below me is apparently a Major General in the Thailand Air Force. I’ll nick name him ‘KI’ for the moment.
He’s friendly…. too friendly. He somewhat creeps me out. It started with giving everyone a quick hug goodnight. The next night his daughter gave him too much food and as I was arriving late and just wanted something small I had a little of it to eat before he threw the rest out. It was nice general caring and sharing. He seemed to be a nice oldish guy that was culturally or personally a bit more touchy feely than what I’m used to.
The next night he not only hugged me goodnight he kissed me on the cheek.
The night after he wanted me to kiss him goodnight (and brought his cheek right up to mine). I resisted, but not overly.
Thankfully I got in so late the next night that he was already asleep when I arrived.
Tonight, as I got into the room he was already lying in bed. I was taking off my jacket (having walked 3km from the office) and he said he wanted to see my body….
All that said, I don’t know if I’ll stay at the backpackers. Ask for a new dorm (and risk staying with people who are more likely to take my stuff), or if I’ll take up David’s offer early. In the mean time, there’s programming to be done!
Today is the first day of a new chapter in my life. I’ve just travelled from Adelaide to Sydney and am about to take a leap of faith. I’m about to bet all my money and 3 months of my life on my own skills and ideas.
I’m an entrepreneur and web developer. I’m also a photographer and film maker. Because I’m both is one of the reasons I have to make such a leap. Because I need to focus.
The Points
The Goal : Create a collaborative community fostering platform built around the concept of Multipath Interactive storytelling.
The Problem : When in the Adelaide Films on the Fly office I am surrounded by people (like Sunny Wu, Amy Campbell and Tim Standing) who are talking about and making films. Mainly short films. This means that I also talk about and make films. I am (well was until very recently) the South Australian chapter co-ordinator for the Zeitgeist Movement. I also worked part time at ANAT, the Australian Network for Art and Technology, as their Technology Officer. All that together means I had no time to program the web platform.
The Solution : I’m in Sydney! I’m maxing out my credit cards, emptying my savings, pulling in lots of favours so that I can get a chair, desk and access to wireless Internet, plus somewhere to sleep for 3 months. The office I’ll be at also has other web development companies there, allowing me to be surrounded by people developing for the web… So I’ll be focused on web development.
Being Prepared
I’m armed with a netbook, a laptop, a massage cushion (to relax my back after those long nights programming) and a culmination of 2 years worth of ideas and concepts compiled into a 70 page master design document.
We’ve also got a starting point, an alpha prototype that is almost worth showing to people, hopefully by the end of the week I’ll be posting some more screenshots and video, asking for feedback.
Background
I run Films on the Fly. A small startup company that myself, Sunny Wu and John Willanski created a couple of years ago.
John’s no longer a part of the company as he’s been busy with his own stuff. Sunny does a lot of the video editing and we work together on the ideas generation and filming. Amy Campbell started as an aspiring actress and 3 quarter lawyer that came along to the 2nd Linkr film making workshop. She’s now my girlfriend, the general administrator/organiser and has recently done the directing for The Remainderman.
The Questions
I have a lot of questions for my future self. The two main ones being :
Is the world ready for this?
The other being, Am I ready for this?
The Films on the Fly platform that I want to create can go a lot of different ways and become a lot of different things. It might only work as a WordPress plugin, or it might work best as it’s own platform. Because we are trying to foster multiple collaborative communities, I’m expecting that we’ll need our own platform. The other side of things is that Films on the Fly is also looking to change part of the education, entertainment and economic paradigms. Not easy tasks.
On the flip side. I don’t know if I can do it.
I’ve worked at a service station, in the Air Force Reserves, done 2 years of Uni, spent 3.5 yrs on the Internode helpdesk and 16 months as the Technology Officer at ANAT. I’ve also gone through the MEGA (Mobile Enterprise Growth Alliance) course which taught be about entrepreneurship… and is how the directors first met, and where FotF and Multipath was born, out of what was Kino Portable and the Non-Linear Narrative concept. More recently I also attended most of the Innovate SA Investment Attraction course. I’ve spent the 2 years between MEGA and now learning everything from distributed, scalable computing and various programming techniques, including lean startup and testing-driven-development, through to management using intrinsic motivation, the biological processes of human behaviour and much more.
But… Can I hack it? Will I end up spending all my time watching TV shows and chatting on Facebook, or will I actually create a web platform that customers can not just use, but enjoy, love. A platform that people (almost) can’t live without.
This is my call to all programers who use, and especially those that make installer programs.
SHOW THE README FILE AS THE APPLICATION IS INSTALLING, NOT AFTERWARDS!!!
If it takes me 5mins to find and download the app, then 2mins to go through the installer and another 5mins to actually install the program, then before that 5mins at the end you could have easily opened up the readme file and showed the user something possibly interesting or required. At the moment only once the application is installed does the readme file get briefly flashed up to the user, who, wanting to actually use the program closes it and everything else down.
The biggest problem was when I went to install Nero 7. It took NEARLY AN HOUR, and at the end of it they opened up the readme. To me it’s just a bad waste of users time.
If you want to go another step then how about using the installation time to actually show something interesting and useful. Some computer games kinda do this, but not to the full extent they could. With the dual/quad core, 2GB+ ram, NVida/ATI graphics card nature of most computers these days it would be easy to show tutorial information as the program is installing.
Imagine this : As you are waiting for a big program to install it actually shows you a screencast of how to use the program. A getting started guide, or even a trailer.
Note : With Steam and the prominence of Internet download/preloading this issue isn’t such a big issue for computer games, but some apps could still do with an updated installer.
