zacharyc

zacharyc :: Oct.31.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

zacharyc :: Oct.30.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

zacharyc :: Oct.29.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

This picture was also taken during my cross country trip, I believe somewhere in Nevada.

zacharyc :: Oct.28.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

This weekend was full of cheerleading related exercises for me. Friday night was our homecoming game. Saturday was the dance, so we had setup, concessions, coat check, and tear down. On top of that, it was our 50th anniversary, so we had a few obligations there as well. Bottom line, I spent the entire day at the school, from just after 9:00 am (I was a few minutes late), to just before 11:00 pm.

So Sunday was my day. It started off as all Sundays do, with my cheerleading team’s practice, this week at the new and improved time of 9:30 am. This meant I should have left my house by 8 am. I was late, left at 8:30, had to drive fast, but I made it just in time.

Practice started out with us warming up some tumbling. I’m doing a very limited amount of tumbling in this routine: two to a tuck and a toe touch tuck, nothing too hard. But I wanted to warm up my running so I hopped in the running line, and threw a few basic passes: a round off handspring tuck, a punch front round off hand spring tuck, and a few roundoff handspring layouts. Then came the moment of truth. I’m old, and haven’t thrown in about 6 months, since tryouts for the team, but out came the full. My timing was on, so I wasn’t too worried about getting over, but I’m getting old, so landing wrong scares me. The roundoff was on, the handspring was long and strong, that’s when I committed to it. I went up, put my arms to the side (I don’t think I remembered to set) and pulled and looked for the ground. It wasn’t pretty, but I did it. Landed it.

You can’t image the adrenalin that was flowing through my blood at that point. I started hugging Chaz every two seconds until she finally said something. Honestly, I don’t remember too much, it was just great to throw it again. I really love that trick, and it makes me feel young again.

Then we got to practicing. All in all it was a good practice, we improved a lot and I think came together more as a team. However, there were a couple of injuries, including some people landing on my head that made me quite dizzy for a while.

I spent the rest of the day up at Stockton for a Jamz region competition. It was interesting to see where so many teams were in their routines. Some of the routines were really amazing. I’m consistently impressed with All Star Elite’s choreography. They have a lot of people on the floor, but they do some very interesting stunts. I remember seeing them at GSSA and being impressed with them there as well.

Got to see Rebels Elite compete for the first time. They are a strong program, and I’m surprised at how many teams they have competing given the size of their facility.

All and all a stacked weekend of cheerleading. Good fun for all.

zacharyc :: Oct.27.2008 :: Cheerleading :: No Comments »

This is Bird Island at Pebble Beach.

zacharyc :: Oct.27.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

zacharyc :: Oct.24.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

Much of the popular media these days is dubbing the iPhone App store and Apple’s process as:

• Unreliable
• Close Minded
• Capricious
• Rejection Filled

After thinking about this for a couple of days, I think that the people writing these claims have some valid points, but I’m actually really in favor of the model Apple has set up with their store. I feel that many of these complaints aren’t actually with the process or the store, but really with the execution of the process.

The process that you must follow to develop for the iPhone is more demanding that most developers are used to. You have to come up with an idea, submit it to Apple, be approved, develop an application and then submit the application to be reviewed by Apple. During any point in this process Apple can choose to reject your application for any arbitrary reason.

Why would Apple require such a process?

Lets start with Apple’s brand image. In 1984, during the Superbowl, Apple introduced the Macintosh with a commercial that said “we are against complete control over, we are the company of rebels.” In an age where big companies were completely dominating the market, Apple was trying to change things up. That is what they did the Macintosh. The message presented in that commercial has resonated through the halls of Apple from that day to today. Joel Spolsky mentions this in his book: Smart & Gets Things Done.

The App Store for the iPhone go against this. They require developers to submit their designs and have them approved before they can start selling them to clients. Apple can look at the code, design or any other aspect of the application and decide to deny them the right to sell their App to the public. Apple is taking control over their device, the opposite message of their original premise with the Macintosh.

But the iPhone isn’t the Macintosh. The Macintosh is a computer that sits on your desk and does a bunch of computing, using custom applications and manipulating data in any way choose. You have the freedom to build your own Apps, customize the machine in any way you want to make it work better for you, with a small set of limitations from Apple.

1. You buy Apple hardware to use Apple software
2. Certain components of the operating system are protected from developer manipulation
3. There is no 3rd rule

That is a large amount of freedom, but if your computer breaks, there is usually someone you call for assistance, either Apple, or the guys who made the software you are having a problem with.

The iPhone is a completely different product. Its a phone replacement. Phones are important, they allow us to communicate. Also the standard for using them is different than a computer. Computers have crashed since the day they were created. It is somewhat expected that the computer you are using will crash and you will have to restart it. You hope you remember to save every once in a while, so not too much of your data is lost (I’m saving this post right now), but crashing is a fact of computing. When was the last time your touch-tone phone crashed?

The expected level of performance for a phone is significantly higher. People use phones to call their family, or the hospital. The process of navigating a phone menu can be tedious and annoying if forced to do it several times. Now cell phones, loose reception, and that is something that a cell carrier has to worry about, but if a phone in the middle of an important phone call needs to restart, we have a concern.

When the team at Apple started to develop the iPhone, I’m nearly positive that one of their top priorities was reliability of the device. Apples goal was to build that phone. As the demand for the iPhone out stripped the supply when it was released, I’m pretty sure Apple itself was surprised by the success this phone made. When people started calling for the ability to produce software for the device, Apple had to rush to put something together. Their first answer was web page based. This solved the initial problem of letting people develop for the phone, but not the bigger issue. Developers wanted to put their Apps on the phone, use the phone information, like contact info, location, other pieces of info that weren’t available to web clients.

So Apple made the SDK, and started building out ways for developers to write software for the iPhone, but they still had to be concerned with the reliability of the device. Again, we can’t have this phone crashing because people install bad software. So, Apple created the process: You submit the App, we review it and test, and make sure it fits with our concerns and then we’ll let you sell it. Heck, we’ll even help you market it through our store. Reliability is now mediated by Apple itself.

Here’s where the problem gets sticky. How does Apple decide which Apps should be allowed through? It needs a process, with a team of people reviewing these Apps, making sure they are safe, and then notifying developers of this process. Okay, so that was one sentence, but it is actually a lot more complicated than that. Many eyes need to see his App before it gets approved or released. That is a ton of work on the part of Apple. This is where the breakdown happened.

My guess, and this is just a guess, is that the amount of people working on this project is: 1) not enough for the amount of apps coming through the door; and 2) too large for people to keep up on which other apps are being approved. That is why some apps that seem to be replicating functionality of other approved apps are rejected. Also, because there are so many Apps coming through the doors to this organization, I would guess that default choice is to reject the Apps for anything small, even has a way to reduce the amount of code the reviewers have look through.

The App Store is still young, though. My guess is that Apple is beginning to see the problem and starting to take steps to mitigate it. It won’t happen over night, and those of you expecting this are dreaming, but in time, I believe it will work out. In the mean time, I’ve a got a portable phone with a high reliability factor.

zacharyc :: Oct.23.2008 :: Apple, Technology :: No Comments »

This picture was taken in my parent’s backyard in Westport, CT during a wonderful fall day.

zacharyc :: Oct.23.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

zacharyc :: Oct.22.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

A friend recommended I check out this band:

Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband

They are a bit bluegrass but also a bit country. I highly enjoy their music. I have been listening to them straight since yesterday afternoon when they were recommended to me. I would check out “Banjo Boy”, “Be the One”, and “Corn Dogs”. You can listen to the songs on their website.

zacharyc :: Oct.21.2008 :: General :: No Comments »

zacharyc :: Oct.21.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »

Random post about nothing important

For the past 5 years Sundays have been about cheerleading for me. It started when I started working for LCI in October 2003 as a gymnastic coach. We were open on Wednesdays and Sundays. Sundays we would get in around 11 AM and would work until after 9 PM. The reason for this schedule was that we were at a local sports center and it was the only time we could take over one of their rollar hockey rinks.

When I moved to CT, I started working for a gym in Greenwich, CT (Greenwich Tumble and Cheer), and cheering for a team in Woodbridge, CT(CT Spirit). I would go to my practice in Woodbridge and then drive all the way down to Greenwich to coach. Eventually the traveling just became too much for me and I moved to working exclusively at CT Spirit. I would get to the gym by 12 and be there till 9. Long days, but fun days.

Now that I’m out in California, I am on an open team at CheerGyms.com, and we practice on Sundays from 10 to 12 in the morning. It’s early, and about an hour and change away from where I live so that is a large time commitment and I can’t hang out with friends too late on Saturday night, because I have early Sunday commitments.

Yesterday was especially tough, I had my open team practice, followed by a visit to Premier Allstars to meet Coach Morgan, and capped off the evening with a two hour practice and a one hour gymnastics session at Woodside.

What I find so interesting is the connection between Sundays and my passion. I live in a society where religious activities tend to happen mostly on Sundays. Its the day of the week for rest and reflection. What I tend to reflect on is how we are going to do a pyramid, how how to improve my tumbling or where to go to competition. In some ways I’m beginning to wonder whether cheerleading might actually be my religion (instead of Judaism)?

zacharyc :: Oct.20.2008 :: Cheerleading :: No Comments »

I’ve been trying very hard to post a new photo every week day to the Photo of the Day category. It’s not always easy deciding what I want to post, so sometimes I miss it. Today I spent about 30 minutes looking through my photos trying to decide where I wanted to go today. I finally found a photo, went to upload it, and boom: SmugMug is Down. While this post is dated yesterday, I can only assume that this is the issue still persisting.

Very not cool. I pay for this service, and while I don’t depend on Flickr for hosting images, I haven’t seen my hosting over there go down. While I’m happy that SmugMug is trying to preserve my data, if I were a professional photographer who used their site for my material, I would probably be pretty frustrated if I couldn’t upload a bunch of images. On top of which, if you are going to be down, post more updates to your status blog. Keep the users informed. I know you are busy trying to fix it, but let me know what is going on, more information == happier customer.

zacharyc :: Oct.17.2008 :: Photo, Usability :: No Comments »

This picture is very dated, it was taken back when my family visited Italy about 6 or 7 years ago.

zacharyc :: Oct.16.2008 :: Photo of the Day :: No Comments »