I’ve been slipping back into old habits and that’s not a good thing. Been procrastinating and just generally wasting time.
I want to use the excuse that I’ve been really tired as well but I’m not sure how valid that is.
The first half of January is over already but it’s been a pretty productive half.
I’ve always had the problem of getting started. Once I get going, I can keep my momentum pretty well but it’s always those first few steps that have always been hardest. So this year is all about getting started. I don’t like the term new year resolutions because I’ve always believe that if it’s something you want to do, why wait for a new year. Just do it. I like to think that my starting so close to the new year is more coincidental than having anything to do with the new year.
It’s amazing what you can do with all these web services out there today.
I had an idea to do an exquisite corpse story telling idea through a phone number and I setup something using Twilio in a matter of hours. I had a phone number you could call and leave a message and a basic web page where you could come back and hear the message you left. The whole thing took maybe 200 lines of code and it’s done. Sure it’s basic but it’s great to be able to get up a proof of concept so quickly and easily.
I’ve been slightly lusting after the new Nexus One phone from google. Though I keep going back and forth from really wanting it to being meh about it. I’m definitely not willing to pay $530 for it.
I’m not eligible for an upgrade for another 8 months I think, after signing a 2 year contract for the G1 when it first came out. I really wish cell companies would offer 18 month contracts. That would be an ideal amount of time especially the speed which new phones come out. Either that or offer long time loyal customers some kind of upgrade path. I do feel slightly cheated at being an early adopter and then getting screwed when the next cycle comes around.
I think that’s also part of the reason why I’m not 100% sold on the nexus one, I’m sure something better will come along in a few months and then I’ll be able to pick up the nexus one for a steal.
It’s amazing what you can do with services like Amazon’s EC2 these days. Why run a server at home or a local copy when you can fire up an instance on Amazon and pay cents to use it. It also makes it easy to test server configs, practice sys-admin skills, etc. Screw something up, just restart a new instance.
I just started up an instance to do some scratch development on.
I’m configuring an instance with the tools I want on it, configured the way I want.
I save the AMI and it’s always there for me to use. I can hack some code and not worry about affecting other people like I would on a shared host environment.
It would also make a great teaching environment. I wonder if any schools are using it to give students their own servers to play with.