You Gotta Try Out TriOut
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few months, you've probably heard of location-based check-in apps like foursquare, Yelp, Google Latitude, etc. The gist is that they let you "check in" to places that you go with your mobile phone, sharing that info with your friends and the Internet. It's a great way to connect with people, see what they say about a place, etc.
TriOut is a service in the same genre, but tailored specifically to the Triangle. It features the ability to check in to your favorite Triangle locations, share pictures and reviews, and connect with your friends. It's got a great points system in place that brings out the competitor in me, which is why it is fun.
So what does TriOut get you that other location-based services don't? That personal, hometown touch. Foursquare is growing like twitter did a few years ago, and they are going after the high-rollers like chain restaurants, national retail stores, etc. While that is great for them, foursquare seriously lacks that hometown approach. I found that many local restaurants, bars, and specialty stores just weren't represented. And if they were, most didn't run any specials for checking in. I believe TriOut has a different audience, one that cares MORE about those mom-and-pop places, and less about the Outback's and Wal-Mart's of the world. For example, this past week they ran a contest where the top point-getters would get $25 gift cards to Raleigh establishments. Great idea, and it seemed to get a lot of participation.
The whole idea for TriOut seems to cater to a more localized, targeted group. I believe they are on the forefront of where social media will be taking us in the next year or so, which is delivering micro-level news and connections specific to your area or neighborhood. I was lucky enough to sit down with the creators of TriOut (@waynesutton and @lawpower) last week, and I got to tell them in person how awesome I think what they are doing is. It's embodies all that is great about the Triangle: innovation, technology, entrepreneurship, communication, and love for the area.
So if you live in the Triangle, head over to TriOut, create an account, and then start hanging out with us cool kids 
Raleigh Restaurant Challenge 2010
One of my goals for the year was to get out and about in Raleigh a little more. One of the best ways to do this is to eat at new restaurants, so I went looking for the top restaurants in Raleigh. OpenTable.com puts together a great list, so here are the "Best Overall" restaurants in Raleigh according to them:
- Saint Jacques French Cuisine
- Bella Monica
- Red Room
- Second Empire Restaurant and Tavern
- 18 Seaboard
- 42nd Street Oyster Bar
- Vivace
- the Pit
- Glenwood Grill
- Ruth's Chris Steak House
Of those, I have been to the Pit and 42nd Street Oyster Bar. Erin's hasn't been to 42nd St. but they have had some sanitary issues lately, so it is coming off the list. We both LOVE the Pit, but this challenge is about exploring new places, so it has to come off the official list (doesn't mean we won't go get some of Ed's famous ribs though). In the place of both of those, I am adding Poole's Downtown Diner and the Angus Barn, both recommended to me by lots of people.
So our challenge is this. By 2011, we will eat at all 10 of these restaurants, and of course report back here. I kinda wish some of them were a little cheaper, but it will be nice for Erin and I to have a nice night out every once-in-a-while.
What Raleigh staple am I missing? Anybody care to join us on our quest? Anywhere I can get coupons so I don't spend a fortune on dinner?
Goal Update for January 2010
I posted a lot of my goals, both personal and professional, at the beginning of the year. To keep myself honest, I figured I would post an update for what I have been able to accomplish so far.
- iPhone Developer Contract for NC State is SIGNED, SEALED and DELIVERED!
After countless hours by a myriad of people at NC State, we finally have a campus-wide iPhone developer contract. I posted a blog post on our Outreach Technology Blog, and before the end of the day got messages from a few other schools inquiring how we did it. I think that just shows how inflexible Apple has been with regards to securing iPhone Developer programs for higher education. It really is a shame. Apple was all over higher ed many years ago, but now it seems they have essentially written us off as less important. Either way, NC State has accomplished this, so expect to see some iPhone apps coming from us very soon! - Lost Weight and Ran a Race
So far, I have lost nearly 10 pounds since the first of the year. I have tracked my food and workouts every day...working out 21 of 31 days in January. I also ran the Krispy Kreme Challenge and finished! I felt great about my accomplishment, and feel much better by losing the weight. Still have a few more pounds to go to get back to my Weight Watchers "goal" weight, but I am well on my way. - Mobile Committee Proposal Under Way
I wrote a first draft of a proposal for an official Mobile Committee and sent it to a few people. We have got it about 80% of the way there. Everyone in the current mobile group really embraced the idea, so we hope it will be well received by the higher-ups. It is an important step to take, but we are well on our way. - Big AmberCube Launch
This is something you will just have to take my word on right now, but we are about to launch a very big initiative with AmberCube. Garrison and I have been working nearly every night, with the hopes that we can launch the application very soon.
- First Web-Dev Meetup of 2010
This was in the first week of February, but it still counts. We had about 40 people at our first web developers meetup, where my friend and colleague Jen did a presentation on Web Usability. There were people from all over the University, private industry, and even other neighboring schools. It was well received, and we are already planning the next meetup next month. - NCSU Dining Mobile Sub-application
At the end of last year, we worked with the University Dining folks to get access to their menu data. A few weeks ago, we started working on the mobile sub-app so that we could make the menus mobile-friendly. We spec-ed it out, and our part-timer started working on the project. It should be done here in a few weeks. Good stuff all around.
That's pretty much it, but that is a whole lot of stuff. January was busy, and February has started out with a blaze as well. Gotta keep that momentum going...
COMPLETE – Krispy Kreme Challenge 2010
It is 7:40AM.
It is 31 degrees.
Ever so lightly, snow begins falling from the sky.
And here I am, with some of my best friends, getting ready to experience one of the most awesome traditions at NC State. The Krispy Kreme Challenge.
Going in, I knew I could handle the running. The course was about 4.6 miles in total. I knew I could do that, but outside? At 31 degrees? I have never done that before. The doughnuts were a different story. I figured I could eat them, but I learned a bit later just how much I had underestimated the power of a little, round chunk of doughy heaven.
There is a guy in front of us that is running in a speedo...and that's it. There's also a dude in a gorilla costume, a banana costume, and a guy running around with a giant doughnut on his head. I'm thinking to myself "These are my people! NC State friggin rocks!". Behind us are a few UNC folks. We all decide that if we were gonna puke, we should do it in their direction.
Finally, it's time to start. "On Your Mark. Get Set. GOOOOOOO". Bam, Andrew takes off like he was shot out of a cannon. I'm fairly sure I am running over people to keep up, but we're even before too long. The whole crowd is running at a very fast pace. We are a block away from Krispy Kreme and a guy, escorted by Raleigh's finest, is on his way back. That dude must have been running like he stole something. Time check...16 minutes down. Holy crap! We ran that fast! We run past mountains of doughnuts before some volunteer FINALLY hands me my box. I open it up and think to myself "Oh S**t, that's a lot of doughnuts".
I squish 2 together, and get them down quick. Next up, I squish 4 together and start chomping. I make my way around the building and get some water and start alternating bites with water. The bites are so sweet my jaw starts to hurt. I squish the next 4 together and start eating it. I look at Andrew with an I-don't-think-I-can-do-this look. He says "Don't think, just eat". I black out for the next few minutes and when I come to, I am on my last 2 doughnuts. Must. Get. Water. I dunk my last 2 in my water, shove them in my mouth and bam. I did it! 2400 calories and 12 doughnuts down, 2+ miles to go. Andrew and I chuck our boxes in a huge pile, right beside a guy projectile vomiting. Time check...35 minutes have passed. We start our jog back.
Dave find us as we are leaving KK. He's holding his remaining doughnuts like a football. He ate 4 of the 12. We call him all kinds of affectionate names 
Andrew and I are jogging pretty good and keep telling each other "follow the yellow line. We can do it". We turn to jog up the hill to the final turn onto Hillsborough Street. I'm feeling good. We're about 3/4 of a mile from the finish line and I tell Andrew the finish line is only a quarter of a mile away. He threatens me with bodily harm if I am wrong. Time check...50 minutes passed. We're good.
I see the finish line. I take off. Whoa buddy...too fast. It would suck to barf this close to the finish line. A few seconds later and I cross the line. Erin and Leah are yelling at me. I imitate Rocky, throwing my arms to the sky in celebration. Official time...56 minutes, 49 seconds. I made it under and hour. SUCCESS!
Andrew finishes right behind me. Dave is a few minutes back, but makes it in under an hour. None of our crowd threw up. We did it. Our wives are somewhat proud. We people watch a little bit. Saw a guy who recreated Justin Timberlake's SNL skit for "D**k in a box". Another dude is dressed like one of the Reno 911 cops. Wow...a chick dressed like Cyndi Lauper. Good times, great people. We are NC State.
I'm cold. Tired. Full of a whole bunch of doughnuts. But I couldn't be any happier. I accomplished something today and it feels great. As we walk back to the car, I am already thinking that I will do this again next year. And that there is no way I want another Krispy Kreme doughnut for a while
Open Source in Higher Ed – Give a Penny, Take a Penny
I love open source software. The sharing, the collaboration, the community around it. For those that know me, you know that is right down my alley. Working in higher education at NC State, there are many services that I know would not be possible without our access to open source software. Our campus homepage uses jQuery, we are a huge PHP shop, and MySQL provides database services for a lot of apps on campus. But open source is more about consuming, it's about contributing back.
I know you have all seen those little "Give a penny, take a penny" trays at convenience stores. There are a few pennies in there, and if you need one, you take it. But there is also an inference that if you have an extra penny, you should throw it in for someone else. Open source software is not really any different. I can't count how many open source solutions I have implemented, and without those solutions, I would have wasted valuable time and energy recreating something that was already done. Why not provide the code that I write for some other poor soul out there trying to solve the same problem? In my mind, that is just common decency, especially when my time is paid for by the tax payers of the State of North Carolina. If you work in public service and DON'T share your code, I may just call you selfish.
People really and truly appreciate the sharing of your code. As a perfect example, we have open sourced the code we created for the http://twitter.ncsu.edu site, making it free to download, implement, change, whatever. A few weeks after we released the code, I probably had messages from 5-7 other Universities who had downloaded the code and had plans to implement their own twitter site. Today, I got a message from one of those people that I had been helping over the past few months stating that they got their site up and going! Check out http://twitter.vanderbilt.edu! Then I also got this nice tweet from them:
I'm not saying that Vanderbilt couldn't have created this on their own. I'm sure they could have, but I'm sure they have better things to do than "re-invent the wheel". Now Vanderbilt's faculty, staff and students can benefit from the same code as NC State's, and that is a very powerful and meaningful thing.
Call this a plea. Call it a "call to action". But the fact is, if we are creating software at a public institution, we should be open sourcing it, no matter how big or small the codebase is. If you are creating software, realize the difference you can make for other developers by making your work freely available. Not only will it make you feel better, but it will probably make your code better because you won't want other people to see how you hacked some junk together.
The next time you download Wordpress, or Drupal, or jQuery, or Linux, or Firefox, ask yourself what you have given back to the open source community.
Bobcats game on NASCAR night
Last weekend, Erin and I went to see the Charlotte Bobcats take on the Orlando Magic. This was the first time that I had been to an NBA game since I saw the Charlotte Hornets in their first year at the Charlotte Coliseum. Erin's friend Ashley had gotten us tickets on NASCAR night, and they were really good. We were probably 15 rows back from the floor along the baseline.
I'm not really an NBA fan, but I am a fan of pretty much any competition, so it was entertaining. NBA games seem to be a lot more about the "show" rather than the game. Everything was sponsored by someone, the "cheerleaders" could probably be seen later that night at a local gentleman's club (not that I minded), and there were local celebrities everywhere. Ric Flair (NATURE BOY IN DA HOUSE) was sitting a few rows down from us, and one of the anchors for News 14 was there too. Not to mention half of the NASCAR drivers. It was all interesting people watching.
I had watched PTI the week before when Charles Barkley was on, saying that he was "disappointed in the product that the NBA puts on the floor every night" and I can totally see that. The game was about athleticism, not really about skill. Dwight Howard could NOT hit any shot more than 3 feet from the basket, but the dude is huge and dominates inside.
The game went into overtime, and the Magic ended up winning, but I didn't really care too much. Mostly because half the dang Bobcats played for UNC, and people all around us were obnoxious about rubbing that fact in every time one of them did something good. It was annoying. Probably the only time I will ever secretly cheer for JJ Redick (he once played for Duke, now plays for the Magic and was booed every time he touched the ball). At one point I told Erin "I hope the Bobcats win, but if JJ can hit a game winner and shut all these homers up, I'll be happy anyway".
Anyway, the trip was fun. Charlotte has a great environment downtown with lots of restaurants and a decent vibe. We had a good time and were thankful for the tickets.
Krispy Kreme Challenge
I may have done something stupid. I signed up to run in the 2010 Krispy Kreme Challenge. For all those that are not part of the NC State family or don't have a clue what it is, lemme lay it down for you. Run 2 miles, eat a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts, run 2 miles back. In under an hour.
Last year, ESPN was there to cover the festivities, so it's kind of a big deal around here. There were over 6000 runners last year! The event started in 2004 as a dare between some students, and it has quickly caught on. I have wanted to do it for a few years now, but never really had the nerve. Then one night, Erin and I were out to dinner with our bestest friends Andrew (my old college roommate) and Leah, and we started talking about it. Andrew and I decided we would do it, and as soon as I got home I registered online. No turning back now.
While not new to running, I have never run in a race before. And it's gonna be cold because the race is at 8:30am in friggin February! This should be fun. I will post my time, doughnuts ate, and pictures upon the completion
NC State Goal for 2010: Inventory the (NC State) Web
2009 brought a great deal of organization to the web development and design community at NC State. I played a large part in that by organizing the community, finding us an online home, and getting people excited about what we could do as a community.
The idea of inventorying NC State's web presence came from the community, and I would like to help push that through in 2010. My friend and coworker Nick started championing the idea in 2009, so I want to help support his effort and do what I can on my end.
I won't really get technical here and talk about implementation strategies, but I will tell you what I would like to see. I'd like an online repository of all the websites and applications that are owned and operated out of the ncsu.edu domain. This would have critical information about the site like who it belongs to, who is the technical contact, where do the files live, etc. Basically, a who's-who of NC State websites.
Just putting this in writing is scaring the bejeezus out of me. I instantly go to that place where this is impossible. What are the challenges? Oh lemme see...
- How do you gather all this data the first time?
- How do you keep it all up-to-date and relevant?
- There are tens of thousands of websites under ncsu.edu, how do you even get in touch with all those people?
- I'm sure there are more....
I'm not going to pretend that these questions are easy to answer, but I think we can get part of the way there. Nick is actively working on a locker renewal system, which will force everyone on campus who purchases web space from OIT to renew that space once a year. Perfect time to get some good information about who they are and the sites in that webspace! Will that be a complete list? No, but it will be better than what we have now which is nothing. And since there is a yearly renewal cycle, at least the data won't be years out of date...just months
So what are the possible benefits to having this data?
- We can track down sites that are orphaned or out of date
- Find a broken link on a web-page? We can easily automatically contact the right person so it gets fixed.
- We can see who is developing what on campus
- Easily transition ownership or responsibility of web space
- And again, I'm sure there are more...
At the end of the day, the best benefit I can find is related to a previous post of mine talking about branding at NC State. I am a firm believer that you can't start to improve on your brand until you know who is speaking on behalf of you, and right now we have no idea who is speaking, or what they are speaking about. This system will help us get a better grip on that.
I think this will be something that we can definitely achieve in 2010. This is also a goal where I am not really the lead guy on, but I will try to help Nick and the rest of the folks on campus working on the problem. What do you guys think? Good idea or foolish?
DISCLAIMER: These are my personal goals for NC State in 2010. None of this has been signed off on or anything like that, it is just what I hope to accomplish in the new year.
Strategies for upgrading webapps?
Calling all software developers! Garrison and I need some help...
Here is the scenario. We have to maintain a bunch of production web applications, most of which use Zend Framework. When we have created a new version of the application, we need to deploy it to production in as simple of a way as possible. We have automated the file version of this by using Phing to export the tag out of SVN, copy old config files, set write permissions in the correct place, etc. However, the database manipulation has happened manually and we are looking for strategies on how to automate this.
We came up with an idea to write a custom migration library which will execute php and sql files, but it seems like a problem that has to be solved better by someone else. Anyone have any tips? Anecdotes? Strategies? Anything to help us get going in the right direction would be much appreciated. I'd even buy someone a beer or two
Speaking at TEK·X
I had announced this on my twitter feed, but I thought it warranted a blog post of it's own. I have been asked to speak at TEK·X, an awesome conference for PHP professionals. My talk, "Lean Mean PHP Machine" was accepted! Flippin sweet! Here is the description of my talk:
Implementing software development “best practices” can be a challenging feat, especially if you are in a very small team of developers. Little to no budget, stress to just “get something out”, and lack of understanding from management of what you really do means you have to make sacrifices, right? This talk will give you some insight on accomplishing your goals of being a top-rated development shop, even if you are an army of one. From justifying those best practices to utilizing free services to hiring additional help, this talk will run the gamut of running a software development shop at a small scale.
Speaking at a conference is a great responsibility and honor, but then I took at look at who the other speakers are and I was immediately humbled. So many of the other speakers are the movers and shakers in the PHP community. Hell, some of them actually helped write PHP. As soon as I saw the speaker list, I instantly got nervous. But a few reassuring words from my friend Keith Casey helped. I am just thankful that people like Keith and the rest of the TEK·X organizers are willing to give me a shot to share what I have learned about working with PHP in a resource starved environment.
So if you are a PHP pro and want to get involved with a great community, consider coming to TEK·X in May. Knowing (of) most of the speakers, and meeting most all of them at one time or another, I can GUARANTEE that you are going to get your moneys worth.
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