Matt

  • Gamification of Everything

    Gamification is the process of adding game mechanics to things that are not games. There are really two motivations for the use of gamification.  The first is that people who develop games have learned a lot about what makes a game engaging, fun and addictive and we can take what they’ve learned and apply it…

  • ABT: Always Be Testing

    Sales teams often have the letters ABC plastered somewhere next to their weekly leader boards and top salesman photo. It stands for Always Be Closing and it’s a motto that keeps sales people laser focused on their goals. Marketing teams should have a similar motto: ABT – Always be testing. Lately I’ve had the opportunity…

  • Doing Hard Work

    There are several hard problems in computer science that seem to be getting solved in a real way. Google’s Driverless cars are perhaps the most recent example of computers taking on a challenge assumed by many to be impossible just a few years ago. And they’re doing a good job. In 2015 they will have…

  • Migrating to Amazon RDS

    I’ve been suffering from some scaling issues lately and since my system administration skills are fairly rudementary I decided to opt for Amazons RDS services for providing a MySQL server that is properly built with the appropriate block devices and automatically kept up to date by Amazon. Moving my existing database over to an Amazon…

  • Steady Growth

    I’m finally seeing some steady progress on the iPhone/iPad app side of my business.  It’s been growing for the last few months rather steadily and with the latest updates I’ve further optimized the monetization and am now making a stable cash flow. The goal I had starting out was to make $200/day which would roughly…

  • An Easy VPN on EC2

    I’ve become a little bit more paranoid over the last few weeks about computer security. I used to think I will be fine – why would anyone want to hack my computer and find my personal files. But after a bit of reading I’m more concerned about the far more likely situation of mass spying…

  • First Experience Scaling Web Apps on EC2

    Last week I had a bit of a crisis situation with my apps.  After several mornings of waking up to find the server not responsive and 700+ emails waiting in my inbox something had to be done. When starting out I leaned towards keeping the costs as low as possible.  That meant putting several virtual…

  • Writing another (short) book

    I have a book available in for the kindle that I wrote several years ago. It’s been doing ok for sales considering that I have never really done anything to promote it. This past week I have been following someone who is selling a course on kindle publishing and I learned a few things from…

  • Using tmux and Vim

    Working on the same projects from multiple computers can be difficult.  There are lots of solutions for this problem such as using Dropbox to sync files between computers. but that leaves your workspace to start from scratch ie when working from the office last I had these 10 files open, and a couple of things…

  • Write a lot of Code

    I write a lot of code.  I love it.  The challenge and creativity of solving problems along with the hope that the right program could save either myself or many other people their valuable time or provide them something better to do with their time is a great reward. There are about 5 software projects…