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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.

Me and my friend jumping around

And here’s the video. See if you can spot us in the mess between 1:20 and 1:30 :)

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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:

  1. Do it and be done with it.
  2. Ignore it, thereby committing not to do it(!)
  3. 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 :)

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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.

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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 :)

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Sometimes Select Is Broken

Coding Horror’s first rule of programming is “It’s Always Your Fault”. I’m a big believer in this rule.

That’s why I was so surprised to find a bug in GCC 4.7.2 that turned out to be real and not just a fragment of my imagination. I’m also surprised no one else reported it earlier. I guess it shows that there aren’t too many people (or companies) out there building C++11 code, yet.

So after more than 10 years of programming in C/C++, this is the one time I get to be affected by a compiler bug. From now on it’s going to be really my fault 100% of the time.

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8 Years Of Working Out

Again I missed my gym anniversary by a day.

My current workouts consist of running 11+ km (in about one hour) twice a week and some simple workouts at home for the upper body, which help me avoid some lower back pain I’ve suffered from lately.

For some reason around this time of year running gets harder for me. I’m not sure if it’s weather-related or maybe DST-related, but it’s definitely there. Today’s run was relatively easy so that’s good.

I hope I can keep this routine for another year and maybe even go back to running three times a week.

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We Released Playrock

Playrock icon To those of you who have been wondering what I’ve been doing over the past 18 months, I finally have something to show for all this time. We released Playrock, which is “a social gaming network where you can play with people who are next to you. Players can instantly create their own virtual spaces, select games that they like to their spaces, and start playing and sharing with other people.”

If you have an Android phone and consider yourself a friend of mine :), please take the time to download Playrock from the Google Play Store by clicking this image below:

Since this is a social app, contact me by email and I’ll add you to one of my “virtual spaces” so I can show you what it does. There is a small learning curve needed to use the app, but I believe it will be worth it. Also, any feedback would be appreciated. Write me to amit@blenture.com (or any address you have of mine) with your thoughts.

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Ace Kneading And Purring

Kneading is traditionally associated with juvenile behavior of domestic cats. However, it has also been observed in grown up wild cats, so there are quite a few theories to this behavior.

Here’s Ace kneading on a relaxed Saturday afternoon. If you listen carefully (or turn up the volume) you can hear her purring as well.

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My 13th Prodigy Show – Warriors Dance Festival, Belgrade, Serbia, 15-Sep-2012

A few days ago I came back from my short trip to Belgrade, Serbia, where I went to see The Prodigy for the 13th time as part of their self-organized Warriors Dance Festival. Needless to say, I had an amazing time, especially because it’s been two years since the 12th show in Athens.

With me were two new Serbian friends who took very good care of me and made a great night even greater. The Serbian crowd was ecstatic, there were multiple mosh pits throughout the entire show and the adrenalin was flowing at least as much as the beer.

I only have a few pictures from Belgrade. I don’t take too many pictures any more, which is probably a shame. But maybe that will change next time.

And here’s Omen Reprise/Invaders Must Die from the show. It’s one of my favorite parts where the crowd goes from listening to clapping hands to jumping in less than a minute: