Train of Thought

I’m making this post to document the informal conversations I’m trying to have as often as possible with people I know.

A lot of my former colleagues and friends are going through a period of turmoil at Symbian and other places. Whilst the Nokia takeover and the birth of the Symbian Foundation are creating lots of opportunities, the change means I’m aware lots of people are looking around at their options.

If you’re thinking of doing something new, I can recommend the self funded sabbatical. I enjoyed mine last year, and the progress Transmission Begins has made is a direct result of that time.

Transmission Begins is not in a position (yet) to hire employees and offer salaries. That will come later, if mine and Morgan’s plans come to fruition. There are lots of other options though. If you’re based in London, are a skilled software engineer, and thinking that some sabbatical time spent on a ‘busman’s holiday’ is a good idea, I’d love to have a chat:

john@mcaleely.com

I’m not the worlds biggest fan of Valentines day, despite being a bit of a romantic at heart. meish.org says it so well!

(and yes, I have re-used last year’s post)

I recently discovered that my ISP provides handy statistics about the internet traffic to my house. Here, as a historical curiosity, are the figures for 2008:

As background, we don’t make use of P2P for content that the original owners aren’t happy distributing, so I imagine there are heavier users of the net out there. We do use Miro though, so I imagine a fair amount of that traffic is video. The peak in October certainly is (I watched Democracy Now during the US election), and I imagine that was what Jan and Feb were too.

The eagle eyed, or keen, reader might have noticed that most pages on this site have a date on them, often at the bottom of the page. This is automatically generated, and reflects the last time the page changed in any way.

One date, however, I update by hand. On the site’s about page, you will find a copyright notice, together with a year range. This I update manually, once a year.

I’ve considered automating it a few times (it would be trivial) but I like it – as a signal that I’m still maintaining this site, and it is not quietly bitrotting away.

It looks like I’ve done this 14 times now.

Happy New Year!

Many of you will know I have a Mac Mini connected to my TV, to provide internet TV (via Miro) and a PVR for broadcast TV (via Elgato’s eyeTV). Several people I know have similar set ups, and there seem to be three schools of thought for controlling it from the sofa:

• Use the apple remote.
• Use a bluetooth Apple keyboard and mouse.
• Use some non-apple keyboard/trackpad combo.

Of the three, I like the last – there are too many times when a keyboard is needed on OSX to make the first work for me, and trying to find a flat surface for the mouse means the second drives me mad.

So when I set my mini up, I tried to source a suitable keyboard. Here in the UK that seems to be a hit-and-miss affair, with stockists varying each time I looked. When I noticed a wireless USB keyboard intended for a PS3, I snapped it up. It’s by Logitech, and called the Y-RAN77 (snappy!). They don’t seem to make it any more, but amazon lists something similar.

The only remaining problem is that some of the keycaps weren’t resulting in the right character when pressed. Some people prefer that – relying on their typing ‘muscle memory’ to get the right character. I use so many different keyboards, I don’t really have a subconscious recollection of them all, so I used this tool to remap the defaults the mac used to the correct items.

If you also need such a thing (unlikely), the file is here. Just copy it to /Library/Keyboard Layouts, and then pick ‘Logitech Y-RAN77′ from the list of ‘Input Menu’ options in the international prefs pane.

Seasons greetings to everyone reading!

It’s time for another update on my sabbatical year. It’s time to declare it over.

At the start of the year, I posed two questions to myself:

• Do I want to integrate more cycling into my habits?
• Do I have the capacity to start my own software company?

The first, I can answer with a resounding no. As I wrote in the last update, I haven’t cycled any more than I did when I was working at Symbian. Whilst I’m a little disappointed with myself, I certainly hope to revisit this question some other time in the future. I certainly love cycling when I do it.

The second is a qualified yes. And qualified only until the company becomes a going concern, since I’m confident I’m on the right track. Transmission Begins was founded during the year, and after a flurry of activity while I wrote the first version of the My Own TV Channel product, things have been publicly quiet for the last few months.

Well, I was busy delivering Transmission Begins’ first income generating contract. (Perhaps I owe myself a couple of months sabbatical in the future!). Who I contracted with is a confidential matter (at their request), but to those of you who read this, thank you for a very enjoyable few months.

Now that is done, it is time to focus on Transmission Begins again. Today I’ve launched a blog on Transmission Begins website, and if you’re interested, I hope to see you there.

I’m a fan of typography, and this is a wonderful rendering of a great document – the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I’m now about half way through my sabbatical year, so I thought a progress update would be in order. You may recall that I wanted to see if I could do two things:

• Integrate more cycling into my habits.
• Find out if I have the capacity to start my own software company.

Taking the cycling first, I haven’t much. Indeed, I cycle as infrequently as when I had a full time job. An early start has fizzled out, and my main activity has been to watch this year’s Tour de France. However, I got a nice new cycle computer for my birthday last week, so perhaps the trick of ‘new equipment’ will get me going (it has worked in the past).

On the software company front, I have made more progress, although I don’t claim to have a going concern yet! I have formed Transmission Begins, and developed its first product, My Own TV Channel. This is now just starting to be used by people other than me. It’s well received whenever I discuss it, so my current plan is to improve it somewhat and then focus on building a service business around it. The software itself is available for download with an open-source licence.

Apologies to those of you who don’t know a speaker of a little known language, ook. Clearly there is a sufferer in Grantham.

No pixels were photoshopped in the creation of this post.