Matt

  • Creating Platforms

    Creating a really great piece of software is a lot of work.  Yet no matter how great it is it will not appeal to everyone.  Take a look at the hugely successful Tiny Tower game for iPhone.  The game mechanics are solid but the 8 bit graphics may turn some people away. One of the…

  • Importance of Marketing

    There are a number of vital components to any business. You need great people – which is a result of a solid HR process, you need great leadership, a solid vision, and a great product or service. But I believe that perhaps the most important component is the marketing. A business can have an excellent…

  • One Week into Sauerkraut Diet

    It has been 7 days since I picked up 2L of sauerkraut at Costco and thought the results so far have been interesting enough to make a post about. I have a morning ritual. Every morning I weigh myself – after using the washroom, before eating or getting dressed for consistency. Since January I have…

  • Programmer vs Entreprenur

    I went to school to learn how to program.  In fact I went to one of the best Computer Science schools in Canada – University of Waterloo.  While there I took all of the hardest courses I could fit into my schedule including 2 of the “big three” – Graphics and Real-time Operating Systems –…

  • Schrödinger’s Programmer

    Schrödinger’s Programmer is a thought experiment. A real-life paradox which comes as a result of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The thought experiment presents a programmer that may or may not have written software. You have a closed office. In this office is a computer (with internet access) and a software programmer. She is…

  • Entrepreneurship Skills and Phases

    Within the last week I have nailed down the final set of features and bug fixes for Automatic Blog Machine. It’s now in a stage where the development is finished and I can start focusing on the sales and marketing push and finally release it out to people like you who may be interested in…

  • Ben Franklin’s Daily Schedule

    Came across this today. The thing that struck me is Ben and I go to sleep at the same time, but he got up 2 hours earlier in the morning than I do. Two hour lunch breaks — good idea. Time to plan and time to reflect each day. I’m going to try to work…

  • Mark V Shaney

    Mark V Shaney was a fake Usenet user whose posting were automatically generated using markov chains.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V_Shaney I read about this a few weeks ago and thought that it would be interesting to try and create a Mark V Shaney twitter account that would be trained using the twitter fire hose.  The result was the twitter…

  • Python Imap Gmail

    Connecting to a Google Gmail account is easy with Python using the built in imaplib library. It’s possible to download, read, mark and delete messages in your gmail account by scripting it. Here’s a very simple script that prints out the latest email received: #!/usr/bin/env python import imaplib M=imaplib.IMAP4_SSL(‘imap.gmail.com’, 993) M.login(‘myemailaddress@gmail.com’,’password’) status, count = M.select(‘Inbox’)…

  • Bash Keyboard Shortcuts

    Bash is an incredibly powerful shell, and being proficient with it can make a massive difference in your productivity. Small tips and tricks can sometimes make a big difference in how you work. The shortcuts I’ve listed below deal mostly with what is actually readline functionality and so they may work in many other command…