My watches crowns post

By the way, for those who had bookmarked the link to my watches crowns post, the address has changed.

Instead of:

http://live.prokhorenko.us/2009/08/watches-are-all-about-crowns.html

it's now:

http://live.prokhorenko.us/watches-are-all-about-crowns

Unfortuntely, I don't know how to make this post "sticky", like people do with future-marking the posts on LiveJournal, to make them always visible on the top. Hopefully Posterous guys will tell us what's the best way to do this here.

P.S. And you can also find it on my Blogger at http://prokhorenko.blogspot.com/2009/08/watches-are-all-about-crowns.html

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Moving the domain name to Posterous

Finally I came to the point that I do not see much sense in keeping up my Blogger account any longer.  

Posterous became a great replacement, I found myself using only it, with broadcasting everything to all other points of presence, so why keep it secondary, while it's the deal maker.  And it keeps much more history in it, comparing to Blogger, which keeps only its own story.

I would keep my Blogger (prokhorenko.blogspot.com) account anyways, but it's not going to be serving my live.prokhorenko.us domain name anymore.

Have fun and don't be angry of some posts reappearing again in the feed - shit happens.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Customer Validation by Ash Maurya

At the end of Customer Discovery you should have identified a customer problem worth solving and started building your solution (MVP). During Customer Validation, you’ll test your finished MVP by selling it to earlyvangelists and in the process start developing a repeatable and scalable sales process.

via ashmaurya.com

One more great post by Ash Maurya on Customer Validation. Give it a look.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

What is the best blogging platform for occasional blogger (like live.prokhorenko.us) ?

I'm becoming unhappy with Blogger gradually day by day, so I'm starting to consider my options. Please, help me out.

Thanks!

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Engineering Your Way To Marketing Success

I visited Thomas Ptacek and the gang at Matasano (who are developing a firewall management product) over Christmas break and had a very productive discussion about marketing.  One of the things Thomas mentioned was that I should probably blog out how you can use engineering resources to improve your marketing.

via kalzumeus.com

Very interesting approach to marketing. Not much of engineering, but no doubts absolutely worth reading.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

The Smashing Book!

Wow, my copy of The Smashing Book is just arrived. It is much smaller than it looks, but hopefully, this doesn't change the content. :)

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Flickr pushes HEAD into production

Flickr is somewhat unique in that it uses a code repository with no branches; everything is checked into head, and head is pushed to production several times a day. This works well for bug fixes that we want to go out immediately, but presents a problem when we’re working on a new feature that takes several months to complete. How do we solve that problem? With flags and flippers!

via code.flickr.com

I really like this approach. It's definitely far from perfect, but gives a feeling of tech importance and value that is live. Every single moment.

Conclusion: worth considering for your project.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Shopping for watches movements

So I have entered into an alliance with Sea-Gull of China and Soprod of Switzerland, and will be offering their movements. Unless we offer a special Vintage piece, we will NOT be offering ANY ETA based watches. This is not saying I am limiting the range to these companies; other options are still being investigated.

While movement choice, as both technically and price driven, it is more, an ethical choice.

via watchandclockforum.com

Great post about making a movements choice by Orange Watch Company (ORANGE). What problems do small watches manufacturers face from the very first steps of watchmaking.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Must read books and resources

Books/Blogs for Startups

Must Read Books
Strategy Books for Startups
New Product Introduction Methodologies
“Marketing as Strategy” Books
“War as Strategy” Books
Marketing Communications Books
Sales
Startup Nuts & Bolts
Manufacturing
Product Design
Culture/Human Resources
Venture Capital
History
Must Read Blogs

via steveblank.com

One of the best lists of books and resources from Silicon Valley legend Steve Blank.

The only thing that could be better is to accompany this list with the list from the Lean Startup Circle discussion here:

http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup-circle/browse_thread/thread/56ed7bdf2b4450e

For my personal taste, I'm really interested in the Clara Shih's "The Facebook Era":

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0137152221/iwhite-20

I didn't read it yet, but heard a lot of very positive thoughts about. I'm planning to add it to my reading list shortly.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Mint's chronology

If you guys want to learn more about the early days at Mint. Check out
these posts:

Timeline: Mint.com - 2005
http://femgineer.com/?p=240

Timeline: Mint.com - 2006
http://femgineer.com/?p=245

Timeline: Mint.com - Spring 2007
http://femgineer.com/?p=251

Timeline: Mint.com - Summer 2007
http://femgineer.com/?p=263

These are written by the second engineer/third employee at Mint.com. A
lot of insight.

via groups.google.com

Nice chronology of building Mint by early employee.

P.S. Too much Mint for today. Despite the fact that I was really impressed by Aaron speaking at Founders Insitute, he already received a fair amount of discussions. :)

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Issues with RoR streaming from controller

Well, I am facing some issues with "on the go" streaming data from controller using Ruby on Rails. I've tried almost every instance to query about this problem and try to find an answer. Nothing works so far.

I've posted multiple questions on the Twitter. Previously, I was getting replies very quickly. But today is not my day.

I've tried IRC. I have to acknowledge it's dead now. Very dead, even that it keeps tens of people signing on and off every single minute, as well as keeping more then 500 of signed people on.

I've tried the discussion group on Google. I didn't receive any comments back to my issue, yet. But I still hope. :)

I don't know if my blog will be any better — actually, I doubt so as it's never been a RoR lair. But I'll give it a try and post my problem here. Hopefully, I'll get it nailed some day and share the solution with you.

So, I need to stream a lot of data from the controller and there is no need for a view. Data generates on the go, and can take pretty long time to complete (say, from 1 minute to 3-4 hours). I doubt that it worths generating a string (the output can be hundreds of megabytes) and pass it to the view (ouch).

The way to use render :text => ... is not going to work for me, as it can be called only once in controller, so not a real "on the go" streaming.

Neither store to file and then streaming it with render :file works. Several simultaneous uses of the controller can generate pretty huge files for every instance, which is no-go (tens and hundreds of gigabytes of free space for temporary files?). Anyway, it's not "on the go" as well. (Well, partially. It'll be streaming once the file is created. :)

The other way is to render :text = Proc.new { |r,o| ... }, however, somehow it doesn't seem to be working for my case. First of all, it complains about some random each ... do blocks (that work just fine when the blocks are not passed to Proc.new). When I'm commenting them out, I'm getting things like that:

Wed May 13 17:34:39 -0700 2009: Read error: #
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:414:in `load_missing_constant'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-2.3.2/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:96:in `const_missing'
/Users/white/repo/vurvimport/app/controllers/do_controller.rb:380:in `preparesql'
/Users/white/repo/vurvimport/app/controllers/do_controller.rb:630:in `rendersql'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.2/lib/action_controller/response.rb:153:in `call'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.2/lib/action_controller/response.rb:153:in `each'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.2/lib/action_controller/vendor/rack-1.0/rack/chunked.rb:37:in `each'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.2/lib/action_controller/vendor/rack-1.0/rack/handler/mongrel.rb:74:in `process'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:159:in `process_client'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:158:in `each'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:158:in `process_client'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:285:in `run'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:285:in `initialize'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:285:in `new'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:285:in `run'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:268:in `initialize'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:268:in `new'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/mongrel-1.1.5/lib/mongrel.rb:268:in `run'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-2.3.2/lib/action_controller/vendor/rack-1.0/rack/handler/mongrel.rb:34:in `run'
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/rails-2.3.2/lib/commands/server.rb:111
/Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `gem_original_require'
/Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
script/server:3

I think the similar situation is also mentioned in tickets. I'm not sure that this is really a bug though. I'll keep an eye on that.

Twitter is finally public!

No, I didn't mean IPO for Twitter. :) What I meant is that public can finally benefit from Twitter content. But let me give you an example. I'm following Ben Parr and few minutes ago I saw his tweet about the food:

I so desperately want Thai or Chinese food right now. I'm getting some tonight no matter what. What should I order?

Well, while I am not a big fan of Chinese food, I just found myself also wanting something like this. So what are my options? I can ping Ben in a few hours again, however, why should I wait? I can keep an eye on what is sent to Ben almost in real time. How's that?

Just an easy click at Tweeplies gives you a feed of all his replies, which you can keep an eye on. Yes, it's easy. Yes, it's nice. :) Bon appetite!

Blogging vs Twittering?

Alex talks.: Ever wanted to see all replies to some tweet?

My brother (once again :) wants to abandon his blog. While I can't say that I never wanted to do this myself, right now, I am very sure I'll never abandon mine. (Never say never, though, as this is too long for a mere mortal.)

Speaking on this note, do you agree that Twitter can replace blog? I don't.

Twitter is an instant messenger with elements of exhibitionism. Twitter s good for public speaking if instant messenger is your thing. Blog is blog. It's also public thing, but sends you to the next level of officialism. Blog is more a PR tool, than Twitter. (Please, don't start talking about new age marketing. I know. But whatever will you say, Twitter makes it personal.)

Twitter is here for news headlines. Blog is here for content.

So if you here more to follow the hot news, welcome to the Twitter-world. If you here to provide grounds for the hot news, you can't stay away from blogging. I want to take the best of two worlds, and I bet you I will.

One year round

I can't believe that my blog is staying alive for 1 year as for now. Well, it's not like I'm blogging for one year. I think I start blogging on regular basis starting 2004 or something like this, while doing occasional posts for a few years before that. However, I was doing a lot of more writing before 2004, being published at BYTE.com, BEA dev2dev, O'Reilly Network, etc. So, technically, posting to the blog didn't adjust well with my daily schedule. :)

However, my current blog is only 1 year old. It's a pretty new one. I wasn't very consistent in my relations with my own blogs. I used to try out different platforms, leaving old posts careless, I used to change design, change names and just removed blogs whenever I found them silly. (I constantly find my old posts silly, but I made a promise to myself not to remove them. :)

Hopefully, this blog will keep its right to live, in one way or another.

Starting my GMAT challenge

When I'm starting my GMAT challenge, I know absolutely nothing about what is it at all (except the abbreviation though. ;)

Few words about myself. I'm 28 years old, have more then 11 years away from my school-days. Although, I had math for a few years in the University, I was too busy to pay enough attention, as I was building my first company. (Never end up as a huge success, but was a great experience).

I'm not a native English speaker. My native languages are Russian and Ukrainian (in some kind). Although, I've got more then 40 articles published and working in the English-speaking environment for about 9 years, I have got less then 3 years of active speaking (living in California - so one can hardly call it English, but Spanglish :).

So all these attributes don't make me a lucky GMAT candidate. However, I plan to target 740+ overall score, plus high numbers for verbal (or whatever it is), as it could be important for admission officers (against non-native speaker applicant). I'm not a top-scores type of the guy, so I'll leave 780-800's for Asian and Indian robots (no offense :). Anyway, 740 is a lot as well.

I've been told that TOEFL would be extremely easy comparing to GMAT, so I left it for dessert. :) I may blog about it eventually, but from experience that my friends shared with me (who positively took TOEFL), not much to write about.

As for now, I have only three books on my table. The Official Guide for GMAT Review, 11th Edition, Quantitative and Verbal Reviews. They are known as must-have books, so it was sure-shot.

I'm going to use some abbreviations during the text. I'll try to make sure to describe them, at least once. :) I'm also using a sample testing grid, that I'm printing out (I'm going to make 50 two-sided copies or so, with 40 questions on one side) and filling out answers there, marking my errors and making notes.

After brief intro, I started the diagnostic test (p.19). First day I went through 24 Problem Solving (PS) questions, ending up with 8 correct answers (that is Below Average (BA) by the grading table at p.45). I've started Data Sufficiency (DS) and stretched them into the second day, making as low as 8 correct answers (BA). This makes me pretty sad about my current condition. :)

Third day I'm turning into Reading Comprehension (RC) and Critical Reasoning (CR). I was more confident about RC, but I scored it as low as 10 (stands for Average (AV)), but still better then the first two ones. CR made me really sick, and I was pretty disappointed of it, but I made 9 (Above Average (AA)) and this really amused me then. :)

My goal for tomorrow (or late tonight) is Sentence Correction (SC) (starting p.39). It's known to be one of the toughest, so I'll to stay away from desperation.

I've ordered two more books, Kaplan GMAT 2009 Comprehensive Program and Princeton Review's Cracking the GMAT, 2009 Edition. I have a gut feeling that I'm wasting money, but I don't want to wait for these books if this is something I really need. I'm also advised to get Manhattan's GMAT Sentence Correction Preparation Guide, 3rd Edition as it one of the best guides for SC, but I'm pretty pressed in cash for now.

Social commenting

Потратил полчаса времени чтобы попробовать на себе, что же такое "социальные комментарии". Не совсем уверен, что понимаю в чем смысл, за исключением того что я дарю контент кому-то другому, а мне взамен дают удобное (не готов утверждать) меню, и механизм для более простого оставления комментария, якобы стимулирующее к следующим подвигам. Все это крайне интересно, однако непонятно.

Постараюсь вернуться к этой тебе когда начну понимать. Не так чтобы я считал, что это не имеет право на жизнь. Что более важно - зачем это мне нужно? :)