Matt O’ Rama

The Year of Reinvention: Learning how to dress

The first real step I’ve taken in my year of reinvention is to try to figure out how to dress less like a lazy geek and/or slob. Since I’m a geek and know nothing about fashion besides that I like tshirts, I started like I normally do with new projects and researched the topic like crazy. I spent way too much time reading various websites on men’s fashion to see what the basics were and what I liked out of that stuff. I finally read a book I bought awhile back as well.

For my web research, I used my favorite new tool, Evernote, to keep track of what I found. Evernote’s Firefox add-on lets you clip parts out of websites and store them in a special notebook in Evernote. Then when I went to Old Navy (the first place I could think of that might have the clothes I was looking for despite never having had shopped there before, surely a triumph of advertising) and pulled up the notes in Evernote on my iphone. Yes, I’m a geek. They were having a good sale so I was able to go out on a limb and get a number of things I wouldn’t have otherwise bought for not too much money.

I’m still trying to get used to wearing long sleeves instead of my t-shirts and polos. But overall I’ve been happy with my choices. So far I think I look a little more polished without sacrificing my personal style and I’m fairly comfortable. I credit a pragmatic attitude and baby steps with this. If I had tried to jump whole-hog into everything I saw in my research, I wouldn’t have been as happy. So far so good.

Rands in Repose tshirts to support First Book

Rands in Repose bamboo tshirt – Supporting First Book!
One of my favorite bloggers, Rands, is giving 100% of the proceeds from his new tshirt to First Book, which helps give books to kids from low-income families. Like Rands, books are one of the most important things in my life and I’m more than happy to help give kids books. Please consider donating to First Book even if you don’t want one of the rad tshirts.

Gift Ideas For People Who Are Not Me

As everybody who might buy me presents has told me already, I’m very difficult to shop for since I tend to just eventually buy everything I might want for myself. So, here is a list of things I’m putting on my personal wish list I’ll be sending to Santa, disguised as a bunch of gift ideas for somebody very cool in your own life so I don’t seem like the kind of doofus who puts his christmas list on his blog.

Gift Ideas for Other People
Books (everything here should be findable on Amazon.com)
PulpHope
Heavy Liquid
Herbie Archives Vol. 1
Locas
Absolute Sandman
Scott Pilgrim Vols. 1 & 2
USA trilogy by John Dos Passos
Refactoring to Patterns by Joshua Kerievsky
Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks
Liberation by Brian Francis Slattery

Xbox 360 Games (again, on Amazon or a local game store)
Midnight Club: LA
Lego Batman

Blu-Ray movies
Godfather trilogy (the Coppola Restoration)
The Dark Knight

8 Years Late

The other day I was watching some reruns of The West Wing and told my wife that if things didn’t go right during this election, that show might be the last vision we see of government as capable, intelligent, and standing for something. I honestly think we’ve avoided that future with the election of Barack Obama as our next president. I’m looking forward to finally starting to move this country forward into the 21st Century the way we should have 8 years ago.

Merlin Mann on blogging

I started out trying to do this but got “too busy”. I’m done being too busy. I’ve written over 10,000 words for AgileSoftwareDevelopment.com and I’ve been neglecting my regular blogging for that and work and family. I’m done working extra hours at work for awhile so I’m going to redirect that energy to this blog again and hopefully Get Better. Thanks for the inspiration Merlin.

Mad Science Alphabet Blocks

Mad Science Alphabet Blocks | Xylocopa.

Mad Scientist Alphabet Blocks

I know what the Grommes kids are getting for Christmas now! Click on the picture and check out the detail on these, they are 100% awesome.

Typing speed test

Speedtest – how fast are you?.

Steve Yegge had a post the other day about learning how to type faster, a skill most programmers probably ignore. I know I did. I’ve never really properly touch-typed. I don’t use the home row or any of that stuff but I don’t look at the keyboard either and I type fairly quickly. I knew I could get better though so I was happy when I found this test. It doesn’t take too long and it seems like just doing this a few times a day will help. For the record right now I’m hovering right around 52 words per minute. I’m hoping to get up to 60 average in a month and see how hard that is to achieve.

Say yes.

No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message.

Awesome old Dave Eggers interview. It’s worth reading the whole thing. One of my favorites ever.

Exciting news

Exciting if you’re me (and possibly if you know me) anyway. :) I’ve been invited to start writing some articles over at the Agile Software Development group blog / news site! I’m going to be doing weekly posts on our project at work; what we’ve learned, how we’re doing things, etc. I’ve never written for another site before so it’s a great opportunity to get my name out there and to start communicating with other people about Agile. It’s also going to be great to have a deadline and have to keep writing regularly. I’m really looking forward to it.

The other news is that the Idea Propulsion Lab hardware hacker club I founded is going to be featured in the Weekly Alibi paper here in Albuquerque. I think the issue with the club in it is going to be out tomorrow (8/26). A photographer was here yesterday taking pictures of me pretending to solder and of some of the stuff I’ve built. I’m one of the least photogenic humans around so hopefully it’ll turn out okay.

My friends were joking around that I was going to need a PR person to handle my media before too much longer. :)

My new electronics hobbyist / hacker club

I’m in the process of setting up a club for hardware/electronics hackers and hobbyists in Albuquerque. It’s called the Idea Propulsion Lab. I’ve setup a site for the club at http://www.ideapropulsionlab.org. Check it out.

I’ve always loved the idea of getting smart people together and seeing what new ideas can be created. Everybody always thinks it’s weird but I always use the image of rubbing a bunch of brains together and seeing what sparks fly off, what fires can be created. The thing I really loved about going to New Mexico Tech was having a bunch of smart nerds in one place, building off each other, sharing ideas, challenging everything. So I want that to be a big part of the Idea Propulsion Lab, sharing ideas and teaching/learning about hardware, robots, electronic art, whatever.

We’ll be having regular physical meetings so people can show their projects or teach classes. I’d love to have classes where somebody can teach a bunch of people to solder, or make LED art, stuff like that. I want meetings to be live action Instrucables, if you’re familiar with Instructables.com (and if you’re not, you should be). My primary inspirations are MAKE: magazine and Instructables.com.

The most important thing to me is that I want this club to be for people of all skill levels. I just learned to solder in the last month and have only just started my explorations of all this stuff. I have no interest in just having a bunch of experts sit around and talk expert stuff that’s over the head of everybody else. I want club members to teach, to show people just how easy fooling around with electronics has become.

This is going to be fun.