David Crow

Geek Life

Kindle SF

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It has been 2 years since my Kindle arrived (September 2, 2010 to be exact). Sure not exactly an early adopter, it was more than 3 years after the initial launch of the device and part of the product and marketing blitz that allowed Kindle books to outsell print books in Q4 2010. And for the most part I have switched my consumption to digital books. Not including technical books (thank you O’Reilly), I have purchased and read 85 science fiction books on the Kindle (almost 1 book per week).

I started reading digital editions of Hugo and Nebula award winners. I started with John Scalzi’s
award winning Old Man’s War, The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony, and Zoe’s Tale. These books are amazing, they are a great romp through crazy military and technology. I continued with The Evolutionary Void continuation of the Void Trilogy (which was part of Peter F Hamilton’s Commonwealth Saga including Pandora’s Star and Judas Unchained possibly 2 of my favorite books in the past 10 years). I was waiting for new new releases from Charles Stross, Alastair Reynolds, Richard Morgan, Cory Doctorow and Orson Scott Card. While waiting I decided to switch strategies, I would try to find books that were $0.99-$2.99 in price. My reasoning, my engagement per book was just greater than 7 days, I figured like renting a movie (approximately $5.99 for 2 hours on iTunes HD) that would be my threshold. Unless a book was part of a series I had read previously, or an author I was following my limit was $2.99/book.

There are a lot of interesting books but here are my favorite series and authors. What are you reading?

Wool by Hugh Howey

Hugh Howey Wool Omnibus

This might be the best SF I have read in a long time. The Wool series is one of the most engaging dystopian futures I have read. I starting reading based on a tweet by John Lilly. It’s just an amazing series.

Spinward Fringe by Randolph Lalonde

Another Canadian. This one living in Sudbury. Like many others I’m waiting Broadcasts 7 & 8. This incorporated a lot of future tech I have seen elsewhere but it is the characters and the story lines that make it worth the read.

Spinward Fringe - Broadcast 3: Triton

Prides of Sol by Rod Rogers

Vaughn Heppner

Invasion AlaskaVaughn Heppner is a Canadian living in California. Hoping this counts as Can-Con. The Doom Star series is a little out there – genetic engineering, cyborgs, space battles, subterranean cities. But it’s a fun read, the characters are relatable

Evan Currie


Another Canadian. Hmmm, I wonder if there is a trend. The Warrior’s Wings series is one of my recent favourites. It’s great romp of military science fiction.

BV Larson Follow @bvlarson

This is a strange series. I disliked BV Larson’s Mech series, I disliked the books so much that for the first time I did not finish the series. But I have enjoyed the expanding Star Force Series. The simplicity of programmed circuits and logic for a species is very interesting, particularly when matched against the less than binary humans.

Maker’s mode

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It has been a long time since I built anything. I was trying to think through my last set of projects where I did the “making”.

  • Influitive – I started Influitive with Mark Organ (@markorgan) in the fall of 2010. We built the first set of mockups, screen flows, wireframes and prototypes with a very small team. It was a ton of fun, it wasn’t easy, but it was fun.
  • Spadina Optometry – I have the unfortunate task of being the cobbler. It’s nothing fancy, Wordrpress on Dreamhost but it’s HTML5, CSS and some PHP to keep me engaged.
  • StartupNorth/DemoCamp/Founders & Funders – StartupNorth is a blog, written, primarily, 3 guys about Canadian startups and the issues that affect high tech, high potential growth software/SaaS/mobile/etc. companies in Canada. This was about building connections and helping to facilitate a community in Toronto (and across Canada). But StartupEmpire was in 2008, the last DemoCamp was back in 2011. But no one expects that StartupNorth is set to be a game changing media play, it’s a regional blog about high tech entrepreneurship and emerging business models and technology.

I look at my friends that are all very successful in different ways:

They are all making stuff. Whether it is communities, sensor networks, conferences, software companies, it seems to be about making. And they are not alone:

What is making?

Authors produce books. Musicians produce albums (and tours). Vinters produce wine. Master distillers produce whisky. Developers produce software. Entrepreneurs produce companies. I think I need to get my head around making.

“MAKE unites, inspires, informs, and entertains a growing community of resourceful people who undertake amazing projects in their backyards, basements, and garages. MAKE celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your will. The MAKE audience continues to be a growing culture and community that believes in bettering ourselves, our environment, our educational system—our entire world. This is much more than an audience, it’s a worldwide movement that Make is leading—we call it the Maker Movement.” From Make Magazine

When  I look back on the projects, activities, and companies I had the most fun being a part of in the past 15 years since grad school, they all involved making. Undertaking projects in “backyards, basements and garages”. Some were successful, others were less successful but just as much, maybe more fun.

I’m starting to think rather than looking for a job, I need to start to look for what I’m going to make.

Time to undertake a new project.

Under-related Resources

 

My current tools

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I always found looking at the tools that others used a little voyeuristic, but often insightful. Check out the what Michael Arrington used in 2010. Here is my list, but I’m curious at what the indispensable tools and applications that John Lilly, Adam Nash, Mark MacLeod, Jevon MacDonald, April Dunford, Ali Asaria, Dan Martell, Dave McClure, and others. What are you using?

My List

  • Sparrow – Best GMail client for the iPhone hands down.
  • Calvetica – Great minimalist calendar replacement for the default Calendar app on iPhone.
  • Tweetbot
  • Evernote – It syncs across the iPhone, MacBook Air and Mac Mini I use regularly for notes and to do lists. Though I’m having to add more personal structure to my to do lists to make this work.
  • Dropbox – Feels like a shared file system between the different devices.
  • Rapportive – I have switched back to the GMail web interface solely because of the Rapportive integration.
  • WriteThat.Name – This is best behind the scenes application. It automatically updates your Google Contacts with changes in people’s signature lines.
  • Boomerang – Bring it back to your inbox. Need I say anymore.
  • Alfred – I switched from Quicksilver in the past year – see the LifeHacker review. I hate when I don’t have ⌘-SPACE mapped to Alfred.
  • RescueTime
  • Prismatic – This has replaced Summify for me. It is simply the best discovery application I have used.
  • SublimeText2 and TextMate though I’m very interested in Coda 2.
  • TweetDeck – I am underwhelmed with TweetDeck experience and performance. I am looking at Engag.io and Bottlenose as replacements, but neither offer exactly what I’m looking for.
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • WordPress – I have blogs hosted on EC2, VMFarms and DreamHost.
  • Hipstamatic – It posts to Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, Facebook, Tumblr and other sites. The lenses, films are just enough to make it look like I can be a fake photographer.
  • 1Password – I have been using the free version. I probably just need to suck it up and spend the $14.99 on the Pro version.
  • CardMunch – I try to upload every business card I receive before the end of the meeting.
  • Kindle – I seem to read 90% of my content in the Kindle app or on the Kindle.

There are a number of other tools that I’m enamored, but not currently using with including:

Keep on rockin’ in the free world

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Don’t go in to the light! A couple of days ago it was the 5th anniversary of my heart attack at DemoCamp. I am really luck to have friends like Jay, Joey, Sutha, Leila and Greg who understood the symptoms and were caring enough to protect me from myself. I’m very lucky we were at MaRS, because for the heckling I do, the first rule of real estate was my friend. Location, location, location. And I’m really thankful for the spectacular care I received at Toronto General Hospital.

I missed what was one of the most important early DemoCamps, it takes almost these 5 years to play out, but look at the schedule.

  1. Skydasher/Feedcache: Skydasher is Tucows latest super-secret attempt at bringing great services to Webhosters and ISPs and their customers. Feedcache is a big, queryable cache of syndication feeds that application developers can play with. Presented by Ross Rader and Joey deVilla, developer relations dudes at Tucows.
  2. BlogScope: Online analysis and visualization tool for blogosphere. By Nilesh Bansal, grad student from database group, University of Toronto.
  3. BumpTop: Next-generation desktop organization software powered by a physics engine. Presented by Anand Agarawala. Video also available.
  4. Joshua Wehner – Rails based web application
  5. semanticPAL – learnable natural language user interface from nSM Semantic Modules Presented by sasha uritsky

On the schedule were BumpTop and Blogoscope which eventually became Sysomos. Both of which were acquired approximately 3.5 years after their inital DemoCamp presentations.

I often get asked why I continue to do this: DemoCamp, StartupNorth, Founders & Funders. I’ve tried to write about my motivations about this community of crazy, under-appreciated technologists, designers, entrepreneurs. I think that this is a special place. I’ve met a lot of good friends. I’ve learned a lot about great people. I hope that I’ve been able to make Toronto a better place. And I wonder what my role should be going forward. This is my hobby. This is my passion. This is my distraction. I do it because it makes me feel better.  It’s just too bad that this isn’t a real gig. I tried at Microsoft. Mark Relph and John Oxley really understood the power of a strong Canadian emerging technology and startup community. It was time to move on. Others think they can manipulate, own and harness the power of loosely connected pieces where the only benefit is in providing a space for the collisions to happen. I like to think of my role as conductor. How do I get the right people to collide so sparks happen.

I’m left thinking I’m very proud of all of the entrepreneurs that I’ve met in the past 5 years. I’m thankful for how much each of you has helped me. And if you feel like I’ve been dishonest or untruthful, please let me try to rectify that. If I’ve ignored you, it’s because your message wasn’t what I wanted to hear. Help me hear you. And to everyone who has become a friend. My table, my bourbon bottle and my office is always open. Please keep on making Canada a place that I am proud to be a citizen.

185 Days Later

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Zombie Walk 2010

It’s been like a great zombie movie. There’s interesting zombies, lots of gore, non-cliche characters, man vs zombie, and at least one human idiot (hello, my name is David).

Actually it’s been an amazing 185 days (just over 6 months) since I announced that I was leaving Microsoft.

MSFT 9-24-2010 thru 3-24-2011

The good news is that as a Microsoft shareholder, my departure did not appear to greatly affect Microsoft’s stock performance (closed Sept 20, 2010 at 25.13 vs Mar 23, 2011 at 25.81). This means technically my leaving added 68 cents a share. While my giant ego would be incredibly bruised being the cause of $5.712B increase in value because of my departure (8.40B shares outstanding *  $0.68/share change). I am pretty sure that most of this change is unrelated to me, and more related to Kinect, Phone 7, and other product sales performance). But as an egomaniac, I’ll claim I’ve added $5.7B of value to the economy ;-). But I digress.

I found a co-founder. We started a company. We’ve hired a team. We’re raising money. We’ve built a product. Talked to potential customers. Threw that product out. Started again. Talked to potential customers.Listened. Formed a hypothesis. Gathered feedback. Iterated. Measured. Tested. Deisgn. Built. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

It is completely different than my experience at Microsoft. And completely worth it.

Don’t get me wrong. It has been difficult. There have been arguments. I’ve been sick as a dog, twice. Payroll is still a bitch. Dealing with government agencies full of red-tape. Trying to write here and at StartupNorth has been difficult.  I’ve been on planes. Trying to build products. Trying to raise my girls. Trying to stay healthy (unsuccessfully – see SxSARS below). I keep helping other startups: here’s looking at you BuzzData, Attachments.me, and TribeHR.

I’ve been heads down for so long that I forget that there are other things going on in Toronto and around the world. I skipped SxSW for the first time in a few years, though I still managed to get the dreaded #SwSARS. It is a very strange experience being sick and not being able to work, even when you want to, versus just taking a sick day when you work for a big company. The fact that I’ve been mostly unavailable because I’ve been stuck in bed and medicated, makes me wonder how long this will continue. I can’t wait to feel human again, and I can’t wait to get back to talking with customers and building. But since the team kicked me out of the office yesterday, I’m home again fighting this zombie virus.

It’s been a fun 185 days. I’m looking forward to the next 185 days and the changes it will bring.