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Apple Core Labs Business Indie iOS iPad iPhone

Diving into the deep end

Anyone that knows me, knows I love movies. I love to watch them, talk about them, I even quote movies. What in the world do the movies have to do with this post? I’m glad you asked.

In the movie The Sandlot there’s a young man in love with the beautiful older woman. His name is Michael “Squints” Palledorous, her name is Wendy Peppercorn. To make a long story short, one day while swimming with his buddies at the local public pool, Squints, reaches the point where he can no longer stand watching Wendy, a lifeguard, from afar. He decides to take a drastic approach to get Wendy to notice her. He jumps in the deep end of the pool, sinks to the bottom, and waits for Wendy to rescue him. She does.

“Michael Squints Palledorous walked a little taller that day. And we had to tip our hats to him. He was lucky she hadn’t beat the *crap* out of him. We wouldn’t have blamed her. What he’d done was sneaky, rotten, and low… and cool. Not another one among us would have ever in a million years even for a million dollars have the guts to put the move on the lifeguard. He did. He had kissed a woman. And he had kissed her long and good. We got banned from the pool forever that day. But every time we walked by after that, the lifeguard looked down from her tower, right over at Squints, and smiled.”

Squints and Wendy go on to marry and live happily ever after.

Get on with it man!

All that backstory, for what? Three years ago I formed Apple Core Labs to go indie. At the last minute I got cold feet and decided I’d do it on the side. In July of that year my brother, Jay, and I released RxCalc. Later I worked with my friends at Hundred10 to deliver the Fresno Grizzlies app and more recently I’ve done some work for a company in Washington state to help them create their first iOS application.

What I’m trying to say is, I’ve loved every minute of it. The thought of going indie has been my Wendy Peppercorn. After three years, I’ve finally decided it’s time to leap into the deep end of the pool.

Beginning May 1, Apple Core Labs will be my full time job.

If you need an iOS developer, get in touch, we’re open for business.

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week answer

I’ve become a bit lazy about posting the answer on Friday. Shame on me.

We do have a winner. Congratulations to Mr. Steven Vore. The correct answer was…

Up

See you next Thrusday, I hope.

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week

And.... ACTION!Good morning movie liners! This has been a crazy week around MLotW Central, but I do have a line to share.

Here it is, good luck!

My master made me this collar. He is a good and smart master and he made me this collar so that I may speak. SQUIRREL!

Ok, quick, what movie! Send your guesses here.Our youngest daughter can recite this film from memory. No, I’m not kidding.

Categories
Development

Instagram Stack

Instagram LogoInstagram Engineering: “We thought it would be fun to give a sense of all the systems that power Instagram, at a high-level; you can look forward to more in-depth descriptions of some of these systems in the future. This is how our system has evolved in the just-over-1-year that we’ve been live, and while there are parts we’re always re-working, this is a glimpse of how a startup with a small engineering team can scale to our 14 million+ users in a little over a year.”

Go read this post, if you haven’t already. It’s amazing how much the company has changed in just a little over a year.

I wonder how long it’s going to take to transition all this content to Facebook servers? Will they even attempt to do it? The integration of the systems will be fun to watch. From a DevOps perspective it’ll be a great challenge. Hopefully Facebook will leave most of the stack alone and move the parts that can be moved fairly easily. I figure the actual storage of photos is one area that could come over fairly easily. Facebook has some caching mechanisms that could work right away, but all-in-all I think I’d leave most of the Instagram infrastructure in place. Why? Because it’s working.

Their new infrastructure sure beats where they were on October 6, 2010.

“On Wednesday, October 6, 2010, Instagram launched its mobile photo sharing service for iPhone. In six hours, the back-end operation, which was running off a single machine in Los Angeles, was completely overwhelmed.”

That’s right, all of Instagram was hosted on one computer. Amazing.

Categories
Life

The Internet Generation

Fred Wilson: “Their generation grew up with a computer on their lap and now in their pocket. They were on Facebook before they were supposed to be. Their first phone was a smartphone. They prefer to watch a movie on their laptop lying on their bed than in the movie theater. And as a young woman said at Princeton last week, they want “life, liberty, and blazing broadband”.”

I don’t want to think how horrible the Internet will be if SOPA or PIPA are passed. Something organic, self sustaining? No, we can’t have that. It has to be controlled.

I don’t want complete anarchy, that’s not my point. The Internet is fine the way it stands today. The problem is always people. A few bad eggs ruin it for the rest of us, so the rest of us are punished for their bad behavior.

In the end the powers that be are afraid of us, afraid of change, and they can’t keep up. The world isn’t going to slow down. We’re not going back to VHS as a standard for video distribution, or cassette for music. It’s just not going to happen.

As Neo so eloquently put it.

“I know you’re out there. I can feel you now. I know that you’re afraid… you’re afraid of us. You’re afraid of change. I don’t know the future. I didn’t come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it’s going to begin. I’m going to hang up this phone, and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see. I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.”

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week answer

Our winner this week was none other than Mr. Steven Vore. Congratulations Steven!

The correct answer was…

E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

See you next Thursday.

Categories
Movies

Rob’s 2012 Summer Blockbuster Must See List

It’s hard to believe blockbuster season is upon us, which means it’s time for my list of must see movies. Enjoy.

Bad Ass April 13th Trailer
The Pirates! Band of Misfits April 27th Trailer
The Raven April 29th Trailer
Meeting Evil May 4th Trailer
The Avengers May 4th Trailer
Dark Shadows May 11th Trailer
The Dictator May 11th Trailer
Battleship May 18th Trailer
Men In Black III May 25th Trailer
Prometheus June 8th Trailer

Rock of Ages June 15th Trailer
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter June 22nd Trailer
Brave June 22nd Trailer
The Amazing Spider-Man July 3rd Trailer
The Dark Knight Rises July 20th Trailer
The Bourne Legacy Aug 3rd Trailer
Total Recall Aug 3rd Trailer
The Odd Life of Timothy Green Aug 15th Trailer
Paranorman Aug 17th Trailer
The Expendables 2 August 17th Trailer


Here are my lists from prior years: 2011, 2010 and 2009.

Of the films on this list the movies I’d most like to see are The Raven, The Avengers, Dark Shadows, Prometheus, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Brave, and The Dark Knight Rises.

Picking just one this summer would be impossible.

UPDATE #1 – May 4: Added Meeting Evil.

Categories
Business Weblogging

Posterous, writing on the wall?

Sachin Agarwal : “Hi- I’ve been emailing the support link for help RE the 100MB limit for a few weeks and haven’t gotten any replies. Does anyone do support anymore? Trying to figure out if there is a way to increase my total allowed uploads for the preschool blog I started to share photos/narrative with families of children I teach. Love the interface/look/functionality but not feeling the 100mb limit! help! thanks,”

This is a comment from the announcement of the Twitter acquisition of Posterous. I couldn’t find a permanent link to the post, so you’ll have to scroll to find it.

I like Posterous, it took a while, but I warmed up to it. It’s trying to compete with the hipster juggernaut, Tumblr. That is quite the uphill battle.

I really do hope Twitter does something interesting with the Posterous platform. It would be nice to see some sort of tie in between the two. This comment leads me to believe it’s going to go the way of the dodo bird.

I still think it was a talent acquisition, but I hope for more.

Categories
MLOTW

Movie line of the week

Cut, cut, cut!This is what they call “a slam dunk.”

E.T. phone home.

Ok, quick, what movie! Send your guesses here.

Categories
Business

Big Oil doesn’t need subsidies

Big OilLos Angeles Times: “Even if Congress can’t pass a bill to end them, those subsidies are worth focusing on. After all, we’re talking about somewhere between $10 billion and $40 billion annually (depending on what you count) in freebie cash for an energy industry already making historic profits.”

Exxon recorded $41 billion in profits. I don’t think we need to handout money to a company that is clearly on its feet and doing well.