Natural Habitat

Have you ever met someone who is just so in their element that you are in awe of what they can accomplish, all with a smile on their face?  I'm having that experience now.  Sahil Lavingia of One Week App fame is rocking it the way all software developers should.  It's that perfect Zen coding experience.

I signed up as a beta tester for his app, Dayta, and spent a couple days back and forth with him getting his app to load on my iPod touch.  I felt like I was getting in his way, but he kept at it, and we got it working this morning.  I clicked around, got a crash, found a couple of minor tweaks he could make, and sent him my crash report and suggestions.  He emailed me back that he fixed those in an hour.  How many of you can sit down and space out at your desk for an hour?

This experience got me thinking... what Sahil has created is his own little slice of the world that plays to his strengths.  You can call it finding his passion, being in the zone, or whatever slick phrase you want to use, but he's got it.  His website is a model for how good software developers work.  He's showing constant progress, getting regular feedback, and getting into the heads of his customers.  Granted, his app is targeted at geeks that get into this kind of thing, but you can still make a decent living targeting that group.

Watching his website is like watching the making of special feature on a DVD while the moving is still being shot.  What a ride.

OneWeekApp

As a wannabe iPhone developer, I have been following Sahil Lavingia's One Week App experiment with great interest. He's building an iPhone application this week, from scratch.

The most interesting part is that he's doing all of this in public, and asking for feedback along the way. I'm picking up a lot of useful tidbits in both his design and coding process.

And the App, it's looking pretty interesting -- data entry and tracking. Go check it out at oneweekapp.com.

Relief

The Apple Store was down a few minutes ago. That usually means they are updating their products. Since I just bought an iMac a week ago, it's hard not to imagine they will be offering a new model at half the price with twice the power.

Whew! It was just an update to Aperture.

Destiny Revealed

Originally uploaded by ryandobson

I've had a curious relationship with my Mac's. Each one has been dubbed a new name. I sort of feel like Chaos Manor, in this respect. I remember reading Jerry's column in Byte, and he was always talking about some computer with a new name.

The new iMac's name is Destiny, because it's my fourth Mac, I like Stargate Universe, and I hope to turn a new corner on this Mac.

My first Mac's (a dual-USB iBook) name was "Apropos", and I just always liked running that command on Unix. The next, a PowerPC Mac mini, is named "Babylon", after Babylon 5, the best Sci-Fi series out there. Babylon is still running strong. My third, "Campbell", named after Bruce Campbell, is a 15" MacBook Pro that I use at my day job.

Funny naming, but it keeps me creative. Here's to a new Apple rising.

How to Report the News

And this is why I don't watch network news anymore...