By Kevin Marshall on Jul 18 2008
I was just reflecting a bit and thought I would share. I started this blog at the end of 2007 (a month or two after my Pro Active Record book hit book stores)...so that was just about seven months ago.
At the time I started the blog, I was looking to get involved in another writing project (eventually), was thinking about officially shutting down Statsfeed, and just starting to play around with Factor.
Draftwizard.com was heading into another off season and sort of sitting idle in my brain and heart. I had been 'working from home' running my two small companies (Falicon Programming Inc. and Statsfeed LLC) for about the past four years.
I recognized that I was at a cross roads, but I really wasn't sure what I wanted to do next.
It was around that time that I really started to wake up to the rest of the blog world as well...while I had been fairly active in my own little development world, I was also too closed off from what people outside of my two little companies were really doing.
Starting to blog motivated me to start following what other people were doing...and got me to start following groups like NextNY
Since that time:
1. I started and built this blogging software (including a small tangent to support both MS SQL and MySQL and incorporate semantic hacker technology so I could enter their semantic hacker challenge [and control my spam])
2. I started and built storyrank.com and integrated support for it into this blog (don't forget to rate my posts!)
3. I started and built www.botfu.com (including building a facebook application)
4. I started www.fubnub.com thanks to inspiration and help from Charlie
5. I took a full time gig with Bowker.
6. I continued to do consulting for www.reviews.com (usually between 5-20 hours a week)
7. I began to dust off and clean up some really old and deprecated Draftwizard code (I've got a handful of really big features 90% fixed up and about ready to re-release).
8. I participated as an 'expert' in the Fantasy Football Index magazine again (once again being one of the most controversial 'experts').
9. I started http://bar.ackoba.ma but haven't done much with it yet (I even forgot to add this to the orig. list of things I've been doing and had to come back to update the post!).
and probably a handful of other things that I'm just forgetting about right now...
I guess my point is that even though I don't feel like I'm accomplishing a lot day to day (none of my goals from seven months ago have been accomplished just yet)...I am doing things.
Of course, I didn't say I'm accomplishing anything of value or interest to anyone else...but at least I'm having fun right!?
Comments: 0
By Kevin Marshall on Jul 17 2008
Here's the thing about being a 'computer' person...people just assume you know everything there is to know about computers or anything that has anything to do with computers...but in truth, nobody knows all that.
It's sort of like going to someone that builds houses and saying "Hey you build houses...my house has a lawn, can you do my landscaping?". Sure some builders will be able to do it (just like I probably can fix your printer or help you install some rare bit of software), but the reality is that it's not their normal expertise.
The other related thing I'd like to rant for a second about tonight is the lack of specifications that people seem to think is acceptable.
Let me say it this way, if you give me crap on the way in, you are probably going to get crap duct taped together as a project.
Going back to my house builder metaphor for a second, it's like saying "Build me a really cool house."...then responding to most all questions (like how many rooms, what size, etc.) with "whatever is standard, just do the normal thing" or "What did the builder who built the Empire State building do? Just try to copy that."
Then going back and being really upset to see your new house is shaping up to be a 30+ story, gray, steel structure (because you wanted a 4 bedroom colonial house that was as structurally sound as the Empire State building).
OK - I'm generalizing, rambling, and ranting a bit here but hey in my defense I didn't get much sleep last night [but the Billy Joel concert at Shea rocked!] and it's been a long day of fixing issues mostly thanks to a lack of blueprints (I wasn't around for the blueprint phase, but that's a whole different rant).
At least I feel better having purged that ball of unorganized min-rant points from my brain.
As always, thanks for listening!
Comments: 0
By Kevin Marshall on Jul 15 2008
There's a reason that google became a house hold name, they are amazing at a pretty hard problem - search.
As simple as it sounds to write a good search system, it's just not. Not if you want it to scale, and not if you want it to be full featured with fast response times.
Take the reviews.com search...
On the backend:
On a predefined schedule Perl hits Oracle to build text files, which are passed off to a verity indexing program (all running on relatively closed Unix systems).
On the front end:
Coldfusion (on a Windows box) accepts a query string from an html post, parses the string to build the proper Verity query syntax, then sends an http request with the newly built query string to a verity web service (hostd on a Unix box), which in turn responds with an XML document back to Coldfusion. Coldfusion then parses the XML document and generates the proper HTML page that is displayed to the user.
That's a lot going on (with a lot of different languages, systems, and processes), for a simple little search of a fairly small data set...oh and before you ask, no it's not all that willing to scale, full featured, or fast -- but it's got more features than a pure SQL implementation could easily accommodate (and to be fair this is the same search process that reviews has been running for almost 8 years now!).
Anyway I bring this up, because tonight I'm doing a little updating/debugging to this process and find the biggest challenge simply in tracking down the right spot to focus on. As Indiana Jones once said...X never marks the spot (except when it actually does).
Of course this jumping between various languages and systems is one of the things that helps keep me interested in this career (I'm jumping through many of the same type technology hoops at Bowker during the day light hours)...but there are times when I have to step back, take a breath, and wonder just how I ever get any of this stuff done 
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By Kevin Marshall on Jul 14 2008
I spent a little time today doing some more research on the fantasy hockey market in hopes of kicking yet another project into gear quickly...and like most projects I find myself drawn to, I'm discovering a bunch of pluses and minuses.
On the minus side of things, I've already missed the deadline for all the fantasy hockey magazines I could find...
On the plus side, I couldn't find that many fantasy hockey specific magazines, and it looks like there isn't too much google ad words competition for the important keywords just yet...
All of this in itself is good and bad...
On the plus side it shouldn't be that hard to break into the upper tier of fantasy hockey help services...
On the down side, there probably isn't a very large market (yet), and it might be harder than it seems to build value into the market...
I guess it comes down to a few key questions right now:
- How profitable can it be to be a big fish in a potentially small market?
- How hard will it be to become a big fish in a small, under served market? What's the biggest thing missing in the pond right now?
- How much time/energy/money is it going to take to become that fish?
Of course answering even just these simple few questions is quite the journey in itself...and will lead to countless other questions and ideas that could consume a lifetime.
Personally I think some of this stuff is a big part of the fun of starting a new project...well that and just building stuff 
Comments: 0
By Kevin Marshall on Jul 11 2008
For awhile now I've had this idea to write a book about all the people I've met or that have influenced me in my life...each chapter would be about one person or share one story that taught me a life-lesson.
Actually, that was the initial idea, and after thinking about it for awhile I had decided to break it down into two books...one focused on friends and family, and one focused more on professional friends and acquaintances.
Of course this idea has been sitting in my brain for at least a handful of years and I've never done anything more than think about it from time to time (it sort of saddens me to think about how much time I waste just thinking about things I never act on...but I get the feeling that is a normal human trait).
The reality is that I will probably never sit down and write the book like I originally envisioned...but then it occurred to me the other day that one of the reason I started this blog was to collect ideas as potential content for future, yet-to-be-written books...and I want to write at least a little something every day to keep me in the content creation habit...so why not blog from time to time about the people who have helped to shape me into the person I am today?
I don't know how many I'll do, or how good any of them will actually turn out (none of my writing ever turns out how it sounds in my head)...but I think one of these days I'm going to start dumping out some of this type of stuff...
What 'ideas' have you had sitting around in your brain for awhile that are still lacking any action on your part?
Comments: 0
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Latest Comments »
Kevin Marshall wrote » Hey thanks for the link...I tried out wordpress for awhile back at the end of 2007 but had enough problems ... read more »
Kyle Brady wrote » In response to your concerns about Disqus...
I actually emailed them abou this yesterday. I use Wordpress, ... read more »
Charlie wrote » I have a feeling there will be meaningful projects in your future!! ... read more »
Kevin wrote » Sorry - I updated the post now...also it's funny but my semantic spam filter is working too good right ... read more »
Charlie wrote » What? No link love?
haha
Great meeting with you, too! Thanks for the compliment! ... read more »
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Kevin Marshall - Who's that?
I'm just your basic programmer. I can't spell to save my life, I'm not the greatest story teller, and I often ramble on about nothing. This blog showcases all of that!
Believe it or not I wrote a book (Pro Active Record) for APress and a PDF (Web Services with Rails) for O'Reilly.
If you're bored drop me an email at info at botfu.com or view my outdated resume.
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