And Relax... (for the weekend at least)

I've just finished uploading the first update to Oriador Rota in a little over 4 months.

By any traditional standards, it's not a milestone release, just an incremental update. There are a few new reports, I've fixed a few minor problems, and most importantly it now includes Excel export options. To me though, it feels like a massive release, the last few months haven't exactly felt stable. I had all the personal distractions and the travelling, we've also changed our servers and I'm using a new PC for development.

If you add in the fact that, because I'm not personally working on Web Helper Browser any more, I can focus all my attention on improving Oriador Rota after about a year of product hopping, we're really talking landmark release here! It feels great, I'm expecting the update cycle to step up a little now that this one has made it out of the door, and I already have a nice list of new features to get started me started on Monday morning.

As well as improving the software, I'll be adding a forum to the Oriador site over the next few weeks- and that's just part of a major overhaul I'm planning.

I think not having a forum on the Oriador site earlier was a major oversight, but hopefully I haven't completely missed the boat. If you're an Oriador user who also happens to read my blog, I'll look forward to seeing you there. If you're not an Oriador user, you'll be welcome too! Every opinion helps.

Reveries - Cool News

I don't sign up for many email newsletters or mailing lists. Mostly because I'm too lazy to cancel them, so I tend to get into a routine each day of cursing the day I ever visited their site and quickly deleting the emails as they come in.

Cool News of the Day, from Reveries.com, is one of only two email newsletters that I actually stop and read before deleting. It almost never fails to bring something interesting to my inbox each day. Even when I'm busy, and the temptation to just delete it is higher than ever, I manage to hold off because I know I want to find the time to read it.

In a recent issue I found out more than I ever wanted to know about the Michelin man (did you know he was white because tires weren't black until 1912, when carbon was added as a preservative? I didn't. I'm not sure if I needed to, but it's cool to learn something completely irrelevant now and again). Today brought an article about distilling economics into simple stories that everyone can understand, and a great introduction to Yiddish insults.

They're moving with the times too, you can now view their articles as a blog or by RSS instead of signing up to a mailing list (just in case you have the same problem as I do).

Dignity is Deadly

A great post on the Creating Passionate Users blog, reporting back on a Paul Graham speech.

It's about the advantages that a small start-up has, and how they lose those advantages when they try to grow up and act the way they think they're supposed to.

I completely agree with all of this, the phrase "seems more professional" has bugged me for a long time, I feel my blood boil each time I hear it used as justification for a suggestion. I even talked about it myself in Micro ISV Mistake #4.

I don't think I've linked to Creating Passionate Users before, but I should have. Add it to your blog roll today.

Read: Dignity is Deadly.

Something Different

My latest Codesnipers post just went up on the site, and it's not even about a mistake. I guess I should be happy about running out of mistakes, but I was enjoying writing the series, and it meant I needed a new topic.

I decided to write about adding Microsoft Excel export support to Oriador Rota. The upcoming release will have a few new options in the Export menu, mostly for Excel based timesheet & payroll data.

It's the first time I've written a vaguely technical article (it has my very first <code> block!), so I hope it turned out okay. It's just the first part of the story, so I'll be following it up next week.

Read: Excel from C#: An Introduction

Incidentally, if you missed last week's summary of the Micro ISV Mistakes series, you might like to check it out: Mistakes So Far.

Are you worthy?

Is this the hardest game ever?

GodTower: The Skill of God, is certainly extremely difficult. Each level is nothing more than a riddle, you have to solve it to progress. The riddles are made up of images, a little text, possibly a helpful page title, but nothing more. You need to figure out the precise solution, then use it as the password to take on the next level.

I'm not really sure how much fun it is, but it definitely appeals to the part of me that used to wish I was in the shoes of Indiana Jones or The Goonies when they had to solve puzzles or riddles.

Check it out if you think you're up for a challenge, but bear in mind that no one has beaten it yet.

Courtesy of Kotaku.

Quality Control

It happens to the best of us, but apparently Electronic Art's just let one of the most comical bug's I've ever seen through their net.

An online roster update to their Madden 06 game accidentally set the height of an NFL player to 7 inches.

Via: Press The Buttons.

Warm and Fuzzy?

Today I'm just passing on a great link courtesy of Bob Walsh over on the JoS Business of Software forum, Steve Friedl's So you want to be a consultant?.

This is a great read; long, but extremely thorough. There's a lot of useful advice and pointers in there, and I'd definitely recommend it to anyone thinking of going it alone or starting a Micro-ISV.

Long Live Paper!

I'm a big fan of paper. No matter how many tools or gadgets I've had over the years, I still get the best results and the most satisfaction from jotting something down with pencil on a piece of paper.

So Pocketmod made me smile. I found it last week via WorkHappy, and it's a neat little use for a sheet of paper. It has a quick and easy drag and drop web interface, you just select 8 pages from a range of templates, drag them into the order that you want, and click print. When you fold the resulting printout the right way, you have a little booklet to use as a task list, calendar, shopping list, graph paper etc.

It's not perfect, but it's cool.

Don't be weird

A couple of weeks ago, I linked to one of Seth Godin's free ebooks, Who's There?.

It was just tucked away in a summary post, so I thought it deserved more attention. The book talks about blogging, in particular focusing on how to make a successful viral blog. It's full of useful tips, and great advice that seems amazingly obvious once you hear it- the type of advice that Seth seems to be able to churn out effortlessly. It really made me think about why I have this blog and what I want to achieve with it. I'm still thinking, and I'm still not really sure.

I suppose in cold hard business terms, I want this blog to be successful and spread so that more people will be exposed to my software. Seth calls that a Viral blog. The thing is, some of my posts tend to fall into what he calls the "Cat Blog" category, when I just write about what I've been up to, or personal issues like my house or my wife's court case. There's a third category, the "Boss Blog", which is basically used to co-ordinate a team and keep everyone up to speed, I don't think I'm in that category, although I guess when I post about new software releases I'm heading there. I don't really know what category I'm in when I talk about video games, maybe a bit viral and a bit cat?

Anyway, there's no point over-analyzing, the basic fact is I just like having a blog. I try to keep most of the posts related to my business, useful or interesting links, and interesting game links. I hope that I pick up some regular readers and maybe an occasional user for my software, but as long as there's something interesting to read, a human face for my web sites, and a way for me to share links and ideas, I'm already happy.

My favorite line in the book was:-

Remember the most important rule of all: I'm busy. So if you weird me out or confuse me or disrespect me, I'm out of here.

I'm not planning to change the themes of this blog, but I am going to try a little harder not to weird anyone out.

One of the ways I'm going to do this is to start a blog or feed purely for announcing software releases, so that I can point customers to an RSS link without having to worry about filling their feed reader with my random thoughts. Anyone interested in only my serious, work related posts already has the option of following my blog on CodeSnipers instead of this, and I've just recently added a "What kind of blog is this?" link to make it easier to find out what to expect from me here.

I'll let you know how it goes...

Yet More Grow

It was the site logs that gave it away, earning this wonderful series of games an unprecendented third mention on my blog. I often get traffic here from Google when people are searching for solutions for Eyezmaze's Grow games. I noticed a sudden surge this weekend, and that a lot of the searches now included the word Cube. Sure enough, as of yesterday, there's a whole new puzzle on the site, Grow Cube.

If you've already played Grow, or Grow RPG, the format will be similar to you. If not, it's very simple: you have a number of items, and you have to use them in the correct order. The items interact with each other as they grow, so there's a lot of variation in the results you see, but there's only one perfect solution. It probably doesn't sound very exciting when I put it like that, but it is, and there's an amazing feeling of acheivement as you sense yourself approaching perfection.

I Can't Resist

I try not to devote too much time here to video game news, I usually try to restrict myself to occasional game links and even more occasional reviews or recommendations. I figure anyone interested in the gaming news will already be following it elsewhere, and I don't have the time to try to keep up.

But I couldn't let this one go by, I've been waiting for the announcement of Nintendo's revolutionary controller for their next console for a long time, and it's finally here.

I don't think I'm alone in being surprised that it looks like a TV remote control, but having watched the teaser video, I was blown away by the possibilities. It seems to operate like some kind of VR handset, tracking movement, rotation, positioning, so that you can control the game with your hand movements. Attachments for traditional and new control methods are promised- a control stick attachment is shown in the picture.

So next time you see someone tilting and rocking in their chairs as they play, as if pleading for more response, remember they're just ahead of their time.

If you want to see the videos, or what the major gaming news sites are saying, I'd suggest you start at 4 color rebellion. (UPDATE: Kotaku posted this nice list of links to articles on all the big sites.)

Bob's Interview

Bob Walsh has posted his interview with Eric Sink on his blog, ToDoOrElse.com. It's a nice read, I don't think I've ever read an interview with Eric before.

I wonder what his alternative term for a "Micro-ISV" was.

Gates vs. Dynamite

According to this Yahoo! news story, Bill Gates and Napoleon Dynamite have teamed up in a promo video for developers. Napoleon stars as a new hire who manages to depose Bill Gates by demonstrating his various "skills".

It certainly sounds more fun than listening to someone explain the 7 different editions of the next version of Windows. Or to someone trying to convince corporate IT departments that the lack of a "classic" mode in the new look Office 12 doesn't matter.

What's he up to?

Seth Godin wants us to find him a new Chief Engineer, and he's offering a reward.

I obviously haven't been paying attention, this is the first time I've noticed this bounty hunter style recruitment. A quick look at Yorz turned up a couple of hundred more examples. It seems like a good idea in theory, quality referrals are valuable, so you encourage and reward the referrer. But can the system hold up, and is there a risk that it will ultimately cheapen the referrals process?

Of yet more interest in Seth's post:-

This job is for my new project, which I hope we'll be ready to talk about in four weeks or so.
...
This is the biggest thing I've ever worked on, and it's working.

Given the buzz that Seth already has, and his seemingly effortless understanding of marketing, this could be worth watching.

What kind of blog is this?

A few months ago, I read a post on David St Lawrence's blog which called for blogs to have an obvious link to a "What kind of blog is this?" page. The page would explain the basic intentions of the blog and the kind of content that the reader should expect. I thought it was a great idea, but never got around to doing it myself.

Blogger tells me that this is my 100th post, so that seems like as good a time as any to try to figure out what it's about.

Surprisingly, I almost nailed it in my first post. I explained that I'd be writing about my software business, and that video games would probably be a feature. I also predicted that I'd write about flooding, employment tribunals, and the differences I noticed when I was in LA. I was a little off the mark on some of the personal topics I mentioned, but that's probably not a bad thing.

I didn't predict my contribution to CodeSnipers. I started writing a regular weekly post mid-August, and so far it's been a lot of fun. I like that it forces me to take some time each week to write something work related.

I've no plan to change any of the main themes, but I do want to write more about my software. I want to take some time to explain, explore, and figure out how to improve existing features and to validate new ideas. The only personal event which is sure to feature when it happens is moving back into our home.

What kind of blog is this? It's mostly about running a software company, sometimes about video games, and I like to link to anything interesting or cool I find online. I usually post 3-5 times a week and, even though there are occasional exceptions, usually only once a day. I don't want to turn it into my online diary, but I do probably include more personal information than most readers could ever be interested in.

Last Mistake?

My latest Micro ISV Mistake post is up on CodeSnipers, and I introduce it as the "fifth and final."

I'm sure I've made more than 5 mistakes, and I'm sure I've got it in me to make plenty more, but this was the last one I had on my list when I dreamt up the series. Unless #6 and beyond suddenly come to me, the counter will stay at #5 for a while.

Read Micro ISV Mistake #5.

Games for the Brain

I usually like finding and posting links to fun web-based games, but a quick look back over my posts tells me it's been about three weeks since I did anything like that. It's been a long, serious period for me, so I think it's time for a change.

First up, if you need some justification to play, an interesting article I read about how games make you smarter: Civilisation Watch - Brain Training.

If you're more like me (ie. you know you need and deserve a break, so you don't need any justification), you can probably skip that and move on to Games for the Brain.

This is a great site, there are almost thirty fun and simple to play games on the site, based around themes like attention to detail, memory, and math. Most of them don't even look like games, so a casual observer would never know any better.

New Server

It seems that the Oriador.com server may have breathed it's last... I'm sorry to say that the problems we've been having with the server over the last few weeks, and particularly since yesterday morning, have continued.

As a result, I'm going to move the site to a brand new server, which hopefully will be up and running in time for Monday morning. That should mean less problems, faster pages and downloads, and more features for me to work with.

It's exciting news really, it's just disappointing to lose a couple of days this week.

UPDATE (Sunday): Everything seems to be fine now on the new server. I'm sorry for any inconvenience this might have caused.

A Triumphant Return?

• Kind of. "Winning" the preliminary appeal hearing only means the case is worth arguing, and that it will continue to the next stage of the appeals process. But it still felt good. The barrister who argued the case was very helpful and supportive, and really helped me understand the reasons why the CRE suggested an appeal.
• I found out that there are still some problems with the server for the Oriador site. Fortunately, I'm still contactable, and sales and software download pages are still available. It's times like these when I'm glad I don't run any hosted services, I hate letting people down.
• Seth Godin has released another free ebook, this time about blogging. As you would probably expect from Seth, it's to the point, effective, and it just makes sense. It really made me see some areas where I'm probably going wrong with this blog, whether it prompts me to correct them or not will take a while to figure out.

Logout [ Gavin ]

I'm going to be offline for a few days, but I've left a lengthy post on CodeSnipers. It's a continuation of my Micro ISV Mistakes series, and advises against blandness.

Read: Micro ISV Mistake #4

I'll be offline because I want to support my wife in her employment tribunal appeal; see Too American for some background on this one. We're going to London tomorrow, and will be away until Thursday night.

This past Saturday was notable for both our second wedding anniversary and for the passing of my grandmother, Isabella Bowman. I've read some very eloquent eulogies from bloggers after the loss of a loved one, but I'm not sure I'm up to it, and I'd hate to shortchange her. Briefly, she was probably the most honest person I could ever know, and I'm going to miss her.

I've been planning to take the next few days off for a while, but I didn't expect to need them.

Knock Knock

Seth Godin released one of his ebooks for free yesterday, Knock Knock.

It's a great little read for anyone interested in trying to make their website (sorry, web pages) work. Seth has a lot of useful ideas, adds some great examples, and most importantly, makes it all very easy to understand.

It might be worth checking Seth's Blog over the next few days for reader-submitted sequels.

I want something like...

Well, I guess we must be doing something right. In the style of "I want something like ebay but I only have $50", yesterday, I found this on Getacoder.

I am looking for some one to develope an application like the following: Oriador Staff Rota http://www.oriador.com/staff_rota_software.htm

1) It must be in Delphi 5 but also run complied as a standalone app in Delphi 8. As we are moving platforms to 8 next year

Interestingly enough, I had an email around the same time as this from someone who claimed to be starting a project similar to Oriador, in Delphi. He wanted to know if our software was developed in Delphi, and if so, whether there was a standard control to replicate all our custom rota & scheduling controls... I wonder how it all panned out.

Taking a complete detour, Joel Spolsky posted some photos from a New Orleans trip. Having been without our home since January because of flooding, albeit on a smaller scale, my heart really goes out to everyone affected. I had felt like I was having a bad year, but, after the last couple of days, I feel very lucky.