That was a great one. Exactly at midnight The Prodigy came on stage and gave a great gig. Not much to say about it that I haven’t said before. My favorite of the new tracks played is Get Your Fight On, but there isn’t a decent enough recording of it yet.
First Vine Post – Going Back To Work After A Not-So-Great Weekend
אנ-וולופ – משתלם בשמחות
אנ-וולופ (Unvelope) הוא שירות שאני מעורב באופן חלקי בפיתוח שלו. בבסיסו השירות מאפשר לאורחים בשמחות לתת את המתנה באמצעות כרטיס אשראי, אפילו בתשלומים! כדי להשלים את החבילה, אנ-וולופ גם נותן שירותים של אישורי הגעה, ניווט לאירוע, תזכורות ובקרוב גם סידורי ישיבה.
היום אנ-וולופ הופיע פעם ראשונה בתקשורת. הנה הוידאו:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNbXpguAwWE
לפרטים נוספים בקרו באתר הבית.
9 Years Of Working Out
I’m very busy so I’ll make it short :)
This is the 9th anniversary of me going to the gym for the first time. Same as last year, I’m running 11+ km (in about one hour) twice a week with the addition of some simple workouts at home for the upper body.
This has become part of my routine, so it’s not such a big deal. And that’s a good thing :)
Unemployed (Again)
After shutting down Playrock I tried looking for a job outside of Israel, but eventually decided to go work for an Israeli storage startup. The job was interesting and the employees were great, but I had to quit because of differences of opinions I had with the CEO and CTO about what I’m allowed to do on my spare time at home.
So I’m unemployed again, which isn’t too bad. I hope to find a job pretty soon, but being at home right now for a short period of time isn’t too bad.
I’ve been working lately on a new side project called Unvelope (Hebrew link). I’ll probably write a longer post about it in the future.
Other than that, life is calm, which is good :)
My 14th Prodigy Show – Kiev, Ukraine, 4-Jun-2013
Last week I went to my 14th Prodigy show. It was one of the best ones I’ve ever been to. The Kiev crowd was intense but fun, and there was a fan zone so there was a lot of room to move around. The sound was great and new beats were played.
I also went with a very good friend, so that always makes it a better experience. At first she made fun of my enthusiasm, but after a few tracks she was jumping around and pushing people into the mosh pit. Now she wants to go again :)
I managed to find a video someone else shot during the show, where you can briefly see me. Here’s a screen grab of me and my friend.
And here’s the video. See if you can spot us in the mess between 1:20 and 1:30 :)
My So-Called Productivity Method
Every person has a different way of getting things done (e.g. Jerry Seinfeld’s Productivity Secret.) My method uses a calendar. It’s simple: Every task is a calendar event with a date, time and duration. Even if it’s something that doesn’t have a specific date and time, you have to put it somewhere in the calendar.
When a task’s time is due, you have three options:
- Do it and be done with it.
- Ignore it, thereby committing not to do it(!)
- Push it forward in time (postpone.)
Obviously when you assign date, time and duration to a task, they have to make sense. For example, if the task requires you to be at home you can’t assign it to a time slot when you’re at work.
This system also allows for continuous tasks, for example if you made a call and someone now needs to call you back – you move the task to a time when that person should have already contacted you. If they didn’t, you act on it. If they did, you’ll be happy that you completed this task already :)
Playrock Is No More
My two partners and I decided to close down Blenure, the company we set up to create Playrock, our mobile, social and local gaming network and infrastructure. Our failure to execute taught me a lot, so while it’s a shame it didn’t work out for us, I’m happy that we gave it a shot, and I enjoyed working with quite a lot of people like contractors and developers that saw the potential in our idea and invested time in integrating Playrock’s SDK into their games.
We all still think it’s a good idea. Seems like some other people think so too, as Google is rumored to start its own Playrock clone :)
In the meantime I found a new job here in Israel, for a promising startup that I can’t say much about. The people there are great and the work is challenging and therefore a lot of fun.
Happy Birthday To Me. I’m 36
When I look at last year’s birthday post I realize how quickly time has passed. It’s like I wrote it yesterday. Compared to last year, 36 doesn’t come with thoughts about choices, but with a look to the future.
It’s been two years now working on Playrock. We released as beta without advertising and are improving it all the time to make it better and more appealing to our users. I think Playrock is a great idea and we get very good responses from people that hear about it.
However, if Playrock doesn’t do well enough, I will be forced to look for a job. It’s not optimal, but not bad either – it will be a good time for me to explore overseas job opportunities, as I previously wanted to but never had the chance.
I traveled to see The Prodigy for the 13th time in September and had an amazing time thanks to some new friends in Belgrade, Serbia.
As for side projects: I haven’t had much time to work on those. My ideas list is growing and I might start working on one of them soon. As always, it will probably be a niche project that won’t appeal to many people, but it’ll be fun to code. I didn’t manage to find a designer for the website I built for my online will idea that I already implemented, which is a shame because I was hoping to progress with that.
My workouts are still the same and I’m relatively happy with my fitness and health.
So for the upcoming year I hope that either Playrock will be successful or for a different kind of adventure outside of Israel. Other than that… life is pretty good as is :)
New Playrock Movie
We created another movie for Playrock. This one is aimed more at investors and developers, not users, to better understand what we do.