We had a late night last night so we decided not to head to Puerto Varas today. We will go in tomorrow. We slept in and were greeted with an absolutely gorgeous day. We even saw the elusive Volcano Yates which is much more shy and rarely seen than Osorno and Calbuco. If the sky holds we will have some stunning pictures to come from the sunset this evening.

Below are a series from last night as the last batch of rain left. Again pictures just do not even come close to the magic that was on display.

The event was at CreateHere in Chattanooga which has a very hip and modern facility. The staff was always helpful and friendly even at 2am on a Saturday night. I’ve said it many times, but I’ll say it again if it wasn’t for the great work of Sheldon Grizzle, Ben Johnson, and Alex Lavidge this weekend wouldn’t have been as successful or fun as it was. Also there were so many people who floated in and out of our team offering help, ideas, and moral support through out the weekend I wouldn’t know where to begin. To all of you who helped, thank you so much!

For a good break down of the projects that came out of 48 Hour Launch go to CreateHere’s post about the weekend. There are a few mistakes and misspellings, but it will give you an idea of what came out of this weekend. The projects range from the power houses that were FloBuckle, HyvMynd, and the extremely intriguing non-profit chattanooga3d.com to smaller scope projects of mStrandz, AllMyStitches, FarmWars!, and our little project, Lokewl.

The whole experience was very positive and extremely collaborative. I had a chance to meet a lot of really fantastically, enthusiastic people from all walks of life. We came in with one idea, left with something related but definitely different.  I think it is a much more solid project and will allow us to expand in several different directions.

It was a fantastic event and even if you don’t have an idea or business you want to try out, you should check out the infectious buzz that happens when there are that many creative people working together in one place. It’s worth a look. Where else can you go to lend your imitation of a farm animal getting zapped by lightening for an iPhone game? Nowhere else, really. If there is a 48 Hour Launch in your area, I whole heartedly suggest you go.

If you are coming with an idea to launch, I offer one caveat. Have your idea down. No, no, no, I mean it really. Know why the people you’re going to try to sell it to would want to use it. Have the market research done. Do as much up front work as you can. Otherwise you’ll spend almost half your time scrambling and readjusting. Trust me.

We came in with a good idea, an iPhone app where people can make to go orders to local restaurants, anything from Mom and Pop to mid sized local restaurants. It’s in the same vein as the Pizza Hut or Dominos apps, but on a local level.  It’s simple, very straightforward, but there was really no initial impetus for a merchant to buy into it other than the cool factor. They would either have to enter in their menus themselves or pay for us to enter it for them. Of course the iPhone would be free for users. We would charge the restaurants a subscription service to be on our system. That would be a tough sell when they can simply take orders through phone or fax today.

Our problem was that we didn’t ask the right questions when we latched onto the orders to go idea. Other than the coolness/high tech factor, why would our target customers want to buy into our product? Even better, why would they not want to buy our product? What problem or pain point was our production going to solve? We didn’t answer those questions. It’s a cool idea and it’s on this really hot, stylish gadget, so why wouldn’t anyone want to try it.  Well, not everyone is as enamored with  technology as people who do nothing but eat, sleep, and breath it everyday. Duh!

That realization came crashing down on our heads around  9pm Friday night. Luckily we had a table full of really smart, passionate people who know to ask those questions. We started looking at it from a different angle and figured out what would be useful and valuable to our customers. Hopefully valuable enough to pay for it.

We took that idea and for the next two days ran with it. We flushed out our use cases. We did market research. We mocked up some screens for both the web site and the iPhone app. We even began putting down the core tables of our data base, but we didn’t have any code to put with our UIs.

We ended up collaborating with HyvMynd that had a database framework that was looking for an front end site. We were a front end site looking for a database. I was a bit hesitant at first to do this, part of this was simply my ego, part wanting to finish this ourselves, and another part not wanting let go of the control of the project (which probably goes back to ego). I’m glad we did work together and I think the end products for both of our teams were very well done.

So what’s next? Well, first rest and sleep then back to the daily life of family, work, and friends. There are a few loose ends to tie up with the name of our project and the business but hopefully those will be tied up within the next week or so.  Let everything settle in. Then get together to see where we stand as a team.

What is 48 Hour Lauch? It’s a chance where developers, graphics artists, entrepreneurs, and other hangers on come together to make a large push to get an idea/project/business off the ground within a 48 Hour time frame.  It’s quite open ended and everyone is welcome to try to get their idea going.  I’ve assembled my team from friends old and new,  previous co-workers, and hopefully some new folks tonight after my pitch.

Our idea is quite simple and straight forward.  Allow customers to make to-go orders with their iPhone or through our website, OrdersOnTheGo.com. Viola! That’s it.  We wanted to keep it relatively simple for this launch. I plan to post updates here and via twitter.

That is all. Now off to go finish some more last minute work before this weekend begins.

Honestly, some days are better than others.  Really some weeks are better than others, but over all I’d like to think that I’ve done well with my self imposed limitations.  I check Facebook a couple times a day and Chess.com only once a day maybe a second time at night before I go to sleep.

My email is a little bit more tricky.  Sometimes my job requires me to check my email quite a bit to stay up to date on things that are going on at the site.  For the most part though I feel really good about what I’ve been able to do.

Now for the flip side. I’ve found other ways to waste my time. I now search out more articles to read. A lot of them are about software development, entrepreneurship, and business development so I give myself a walk on those, but I still look up a lot of crap.  A lot of crap that is not Facebook, chess, or email (gold star for me!).

I figure I am like a lot of people and I tend to procrastinate.  If there’s something I dread or that I’m really not looking forward to I tend to find something to divert my time.  Like looking up old John Prine performances on YouTube, planning (read: daydreaming) for our trip to Chile, hunting down music videos of my new internet crush, or writing a blog post instead of working on my teams pitch/presentation for 48 Hour Launch this weekend. *cough**cough*

To recap, I’ve done well within the parameters of what I defined as success.  Yay me!

The bad part is that I’m still a lazy procrastinating slacker. Dangit!

Who knew?

When my friend, Darryl, pointed me to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcasts I was immediately hooked.  He’s covered everything from plight of the Apache Nation, the Punic Wars, and the complicated events after Alexander The Great’s death.  They don’t usually last more than an hour per podcast.  They are easily digestible and I can listen to them while I work or drive.

His latest series has been absolutely riveting. It’s about the Eastern Front (the Ostfront) during World World 2. In the U.S. we know all about the death and destruction during the Invasion of Normandy and our struggles to get a foot hold onto the European Continent. We know very little about what happened on the Eastern Front. Dan goes into great detail about the battles, planning, and strategy between Germany and Russia along that front and exactly how ruthless and cruel it was.

It’s a four part series.  I’ve listened to them over the past month and I just finished the last one yesterday.  Just really good stuff.

Ghosts of the Ostfront I

Ghosts of the Ostfront II

Ghosts of the Ostfront III

Ghosts of the Ostfront IV

If you’re even just a little interested in history, go listen.  You will not be disappointed.

• Book hours for my contract work
• Work on getting my name out and more exposure around Chattanooga and the Internet.  Which this blog is part of.  Self marketing at it’s finest I’m sure.
• Work on projects that will hopefully bring in money down the road.  Projects that I’ve been wanting to do for quite sometime.
• Prep for our trip to Chile in December.  I’ve got my list of things to do and there’s still a lot of things to do still.
• Keep up with running, biking, etc.
• What else… oh yeah spend time with my family!  Yeah that….

Over the years I’ve dabbled with all the cool and nifty self improvement productivity movements.  GTD, The Seven Habits, etc.  Granted I’ve not had great success with any of those systems.  I’ve taken a few things here and there but it’s still just a mish mash pieces of each that have no really rhyme or reason.

I also regularly read ZenHabits.net another generalized productivity site.  They, ok really he – Leo Babauta, talk more about making small and increment changes within your life.  Small little changes that you can actually succeed at doing, like these posts about making lasting changes, focusing on willpower and simplifying your life .  That is exactly why I am such a fan of this site.

So with that I’m trying to cut out the just obvious time sinks in my life.  Of course there are a ton little distractions throughout my day but I want to start out looking at the big ones.  They are as follows email, Facebook, Twitter to some extent, and depending up where a particular game is Chess.com.  Over the next few days I’m going to try to limit my time on all of these sites. Email will be checked 4 times a day only at predetermined times.  Facebook and Twitter 2 times a day cause I still want to  post and see what’s going on at those sites.  Chess.com is regulated to 1 a day.  Period.

Let’s see how this goes.

One thing that has helped my day go quicker a bit more than otherwise is Pandora. I know I am very late to the party on this, but so far I’m making up for lost time.  So far I’ve got a Pixies/Nirvana/Super Drag station, a Wilco/Ryan Adams station, and a John Prine/Steve Earle/Todd Snider station.  I’m sure I’ll make more as I my moods and days change.

I’m thinking seriously about paying the $36 for a year subscription cause I like it that much.  I’ll let you know.  I like to support things that I use.  If I keep up my patronage of Pandora, I will.

I spent some time installing a bunch of software to get the Django framework running on my windows box.  It’s quite a bit actually.  From Python, databases, version control software, and a web server, I’m hoping it works fairly well.  I’m using John P. Mulligan’s how_to page to walk me through everything that I need.

This is all on a Windows Vista box so I’m thinking I’ve got a little bit of work left to try to get this going correctly.  We’ll see how it goes.

I hate chickens... except this one.

Here’s a photo for today.  Now for a little back story.

Berry has been trying to raise chickens for a couple of years now.  Unfortunately, Mother Nature has had other plans and have shown us and our children all about the circle of life.  And she’s shown exactly where chickens are in that circle in the most gruesome ways.

Anyway, I’ve fought against the chickens since the first day.  Don’t ask.  I have deep seated issues with chickens.  I love them for breakfast, lunch, or dinner, but caring for them is entirely too much for me.

Right now we have six.  Only two from the first early Spring batch have survived.  The photo is of the rooster, Sugar, and he’s one of the two older chickens.  I think he’s the favorite of the family, including mine.  The kids have handled him so much that he’s pretty mellow.

I made the mistake of admitting that he was a handsome bird to Berry who promptly told the children.  I’ve not heard the end of it.  Oh, well, what can I say? He is a handsome bird.

We had a fabulous time while we were there.  Granted, ten days was entirely too long to be gone from The Bear and The Mouse.  Chile now is such a fantastic place, different, but still absolutely stellar.  We want to thank all our friends and family who helped make this trip happen especially our host family, the McLeans.

We can’t wait until we can go back.