Paper prototyping success!

Over in CIM we are working on a major CMS overhaul based on Alfresco. Alfresco gives me the solid foundation of what I need in terms of content APIs, scalability and workflow. Unfortunately the UI leaves something to be desired. I’ve decided to focus my teams efforts on the Editorial interface of the CMS and really want to get it right. CMS projects in general are prone to dissatisfaction and most people using ‘enterprise’ CMSs don’t really like them....

May 22, 2009 · 2 min · Aaron Held

The Taking of Pelham 123

Taking of Pelham 123 on Fancast! I went looking for the trailer of the original Pelham 123 and was plesantly surprised to find the full lenght movie on Fancast! This was one of my favorite movies as a kid and well worth watching. There are some comments out there about how this is a well done film in terms of pacing, so I hope that they model that in the remake....

May 22, 2009 · 1 min · Aaron Held

I really enjoyed Taken

Just watched Taken and it was a well done film. It had a pace more akin to the Bourne movies with a better actor at the helm. I don’t know why it didn’t do so well at the box office, I thought that it had more emotional impact then any recent spy type movies I’ve seen. The action sequences were more of a desperate warrior then a calm martial artist and every scene imparted tension....

May 19, 2009 · 1 min · Aaron Held

Peeling back the onion of stupidity

I’ve mentioned the book Adrenaline Junkiesin a previous post and I’m not seeing the value in a common language for discussing problems. Today’s pattern is the ‘Onion of Stupidity’. This is a common pattern where you build up hack upon workaround upon compromise, inject a little shortsightedness and wind up seeing a good chunk of your effort goes into cleaning it up. A colleague here promoted the term “technical debt” to describe issues were we these types of issues and help us prioritize them....

May 7, 2009 · 2 min · Aaron Held

Just show up

Sometimes the answer really isn’t that hard. We were recently having a lunch conversation and talking about how to get involved in the local tech community. Kevin simply stated “Just show up”. It was a stunningly simple answer. To people that have had the great experience of being involved in the Philly tech scene this seems obvious. As a Gen ‘X’er that moved around the east coast during the dotCom days let me say this is an unual and fantastic community....

May 2, 2009 · 3 min · Aaron Held