firemyst demistifying

facebook.com/firemyst

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 07:22:00 -0400

facebook.com/firemyst

Back from NYC in Europe for 1 month

Tue, 26 May 2009 20:29:44 -0400

Back from NYC in Europe for 1 month

Hosting fred and annika in my Lyon apt

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 10:33:40 -0400

Hosting fred and annika in my Lyon apt

From iphone

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 08:59:11 -0400

From iphone

Tradeshows or not

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:18:00 -0500

I fully agree with Apple stopping tradeshows (Re: Macworld Expo). In the course of my work I managed million of dollars related to tradeshow fees and related marketing expenditure. My company loves tradeshows and the buzz they create. They love to host golfs and business poker tournaments in tradeshow times. Be it in Las Vegas Sandsexpo, NYC Jacob Javits, Basel Fair or Hong Kong Wanchai Convention Center. We spend thousands on booth setups, invitations, staff models, keynotes, breakfasts etc. Every single year we rely on tradeshows to fuel our employees motivation and our business partners excitement. Now that the times are hard we’re also cutting spending on this just like Apple.

Certainly today tradeshows are just too mainstream, too wide and too expensive. It’s just throwing money out of the windows (no pun intended). Many companies can spend less by hosting their own summits and inviting their target customers. Ebay started hosting their conventions in 2002, IBM does the same. Many smaller companies host their own events, have better ROI and create a stronger company culture yet prone to innovation.

Tradeshows are fun, but they just suck if you look at how expensive and bigger they became. It’s catch 22. You need to spend more to beat competition and it hurts everyone. Too big is not good. Too big attract the small and believe me if I encountered thousands of small booths every year struggling with ROI on the large sums they spent on exhibitions they thought would make magic in their business bottom line.

While customers used to stop by, now we’re hiring 2 full times and a handful part times just to take care of inviting and handling prospects at the show. Making sure they come. Making sure they buy in. Customers hate big shows, exhibitors as well, sales just as well… so who’s making money? Show organizers (VNU, Reed etc.) of course and they have trade magazines as well to dump in their multilevel schema. This is going to be the end of an era.

about what i currently use

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:24:00 -0500

mac apps:

evernote
emacs
org-mode
fluid
transmit
path finder 5
utorrent
delicious library
spaces
address book
iCal
iChat
iTunes
iPhoto
iWork
terminal
chrome (pc)
medialink
handbrake

web SaaS:

dropbox
netsuite
basecamp
highrise
campfire
google apps for business (mail, docs, calendar)
google reader

web networks:

del.icio.us
trippit
facebook
asw
internations
squa.re
tumblr
plurk
socialthing (more)
bkite
twitter (replaced by plurk)
jott
voisineo
deezer
LStyle
dial2do

providers:

godaddy
site5
broadvoice
amazon S3

languages:

ruby
smalltalk
xml
html
apache
css
unix shell
sql
pl/sql
bind
php
C
ssh
lisp

first compiled early 2008. last updated 12/17

TaskPaper OpenContact add-on howto screencast

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:37:29 -0500

TaskPaper OpenContact add-on howto screencast

TaskPaper Address Book Integration

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:14:00 -0500

i love TaskPaper it’s so far the best project/todo manager of its class that i’ve found. as most of my work is around people i needed a way to link an address book contact to a task in TaskPaper. so here you go, i’ve been able to code this in AppleScript which i’ve never used before.

This one opens up a contact card without altering anything in the task TaskPaper-OpenContact-v0.1.scpt

This one adds the the task the address book URI in front of the contact name TaskPaper-Addressbook-v0.1.scpt

SSF2T HD Remix

Thu, 27 Nov 2008 04:30:46 -0500

I’ve first played SF2 on a coin operated arcade machine in ‘91, that makes the game 17years old or so. this new release is a HD redesign of Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo with remixed sounds. It’s beautiful, it comes with 2 games the original as it was released in 94 and the revamped HD version (mostly graphics and sounds were touched and a couple adjustment in players damage structure). Note that it’s possible to play online through the PSN and the playability in the multiplayer mode is stellar (only glitch is the life meter than sometimes don’t synch but it gives you visual confirmation of this)

PS3 Home

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:19:33 -0500

yesterday was the mega meeting at the plaza, it was fun. i will be posting a full review of home in the next days.

recovering mac freezes

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 07:40:00 -0500

i’ve been testing alot of apps lately looking for a good mediaserver on my iMac to stream photos, videos and tunes into my PS3 using my private local network. i finally got everything working fine (check the list of apps i use). the problem was that my iMac was freezing at times during the testing process and the hard restart option bothered me a bit, what i did was enabling sshd[1] and securing it (AllowUser directive[2]) so that when i was hit by a system freeze i could ssh into the iMac and kill -9 the freezing factor from the console (terminal) and if nothing worked kill Finder and/or WindowServer to restart the GUI without hard reboot. it works like a charm.

# kill/force quit an application
$ sudo kill -9 {pid of the buggy app}
# kill/force quit/might restart Finder
$ sudo killall Finder 
# kill/might restart the GUI
$ sudo killall WindowServer
# reboot system
$ sudo reboot

[1] System Preferences - Sharing - Remote Login -> On
[2] edit /etc/sshd_config and add new line AllowUser example:

AllowUser rdd@192.168.1.15

where rdd is my iMac user account and 192.168.1.15 the local IP of the machine I’ll be using to ssh into the iMac

Resisting an economic downturn

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:52:00 -0500

Staying compact, being frugal, focusing on just a few core things at a time, quick wins, eliminating abstractions that lead to miscommunication and complexity, only doing what you need to do instead of everything you could possibly do, delivering real added-value etc. Companies that live these ideas are better off all the time — but especially when times get rough. —Edited from 37 Signals/Getting Real methodology

Didan-CH Relaunch

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 21:44:00 -0500

Didan-CH Relaunch

Advice from Obama

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 11:18:57 -0500

This is the advice Stanislaw “Stas” Gunkel - a 7yo blogger got from Obama

I leave you with three bits of advice that will make your life more fulfilling: Look out forother people, even when it does not directly benefit you; strive to make a difference everywhere you go; and get back up every time you are knocked down.

new glasses

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 06:39:34 -0500

new glasses

Contact Photos in Mac Address Book (OS X Leopard)

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 14:40:00 -0500

File Format: any not necessarily TIFs, JPEG will do fine

Filename: yourfriends@email.address.com.tiff
i.e. steve.jobs@mac.com.tiff

Destination: ~/Library/Images/People/.

I got like 900+ contacts with pix and address book is fast enough on the new iMAC.

LEADERSHIP: The 10 Commandments

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:49:00 -0500

Adapting to change: To be supportive to company change and understand the opportunities that change can bring. To be flexible and adaptable.

Cost & Financial Awareness: To be able to use the tools for achieving financially challenging goals such as drawing up business plans, ability to read financial data, perceiving ways to increase revenues and profitability.

Initiative & Drive: To act quickly with a great deal of autonomy and applying maximum energy to the task in hand.

Insightful & Smart: Using a mixture of intuition, experience and fact to quickly grasp information before anyone else. To apply one’s understanding to generate fresh insights.

Inspiring Others: To have a vision of the future, which is encouraging and exciting for others in the business. Behaving in a way that makes other feel positive.

Market Sensitivity: To be attuned to changing market dynamics. Commercially oriented, motivated by the desire to beat the competitors.

Openness: To be frank and open in discussion with others. Openess in the skill to not be afraid to speak up and to be honest about complex business situations and to admit one’s own mistakes.

Personal Resilience: To be able to handle stress and pressure at work. To listen to and accept feedback from others without “loosing one’s cool”.

Self management: Actively Planning own career. To take responsibility for learning and growing. Understanding that self-development is the key to high potential.

Strategic Thinking: The ability to analyse and understand the connection between “business opportunities” and market forces. To be able to hypothesise competitive strategies for the company, taking into account potential internal implication for the business.

POKER: nail it one card at a time

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 05:47:00 -0500

ugt1 call
ugt2 call
dealer call
sb 76 raise 4bb
bb fold
ugt1 call
ugt2 fold
dealer fold

flop 776 ( 13bb )

sb check
uu raise 15bb
sb all-in
uu call all-in

before all-in thought 2 sec probably what made him call i guess
whether or not i'd call to better sense him
full (7-6)
full draw (high card + 7)
full draw (top pocket pair)

but didn't want to show him another card without punishment

turns out he had ace six

mac or pc?

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 05:05:00 -0500

the new imac’s are woth every penny as you get a huge bump in productivity and the price is sweet. macbook air’s on the other hand are quiet expensive I recommend the Dell’s inspiron and Latitude for laptops/notebooks, the lightest you can get is the best you can buy.

How high are your standards

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 08:43:00 -0400

In business, I’ve discovered that my purpose is to do my best to my utmost ability every day. That’s my standard. I learned early in my life that I had high standards. —Donald Trump