13 Dec

How to make Brazilian North-eastern Couscous in Ottawa

Posted by igorsales in Food.

By popular request, here’s my recipe for North-eastern Brazilian Couscous.

Ingredients and Implements

This is what you’ll need:

1. A Couscous steamer, or a 2-stage vegetable steamer. Here’s mine (an Authentic Brazilian Couscous Steamer).

It has three parts: the shell, the steamer grate, and the lid.

2.Pre-cooked polenta. My wife and I like Divella’s Polenta Instantanea, from La Bottega Nicastro.

3. Un-sweetened shredded coconut.

4. A soft cheese, like Havarti or Cheddar.

5. Salt

Preparation

1. Fill half the bottom of the steamer with water (as shown above), replace the steamer grate.

2. Mix 1 cup of the polenta with a 1/4 cup of shredded coconut and about a 1/2 tablespoon of salt (or to taste).

3. Mix well. Then add a 3/4 cup of water, and mix until thoroughly moist.

4. Fluff with a fork or spoon until dry ingredients absorb all the water.

5. Transfer half the couscous to the steamer, and top it with thin slices of cheese. Push on it gently with the back of a spoon to pack the couscous a little.

6. Transfer the rest of the couscous to the steamer. Pack the couscous a little.. Top it with more cheese.

7. Close the steamer and cook it on medium-high (position 6 out of 10 in our stove)

7. Cook until the cheese is bubbling and the wonderful scent of cooked polenta comes out. Serve immediately.

Cut into quarters or eighths. Spread some butter (which melts and adds a flavour), or top with cottage cheese, or just eat as is. It’s delicious any way!

28 Nov

The Leader’s Lair

Posted by igorsales in Biz Observations, Business, Ideas, Uncategorized.

The premise

If you live in Canada, you’ve probably seen a TV show called Dragon’s Den. For those of you who never heard of it, it’s a show where a panel of 5 investors listen to business ideas from people seeking capital to take their idea or business to the next level. The format is very straightforward: Candidates ask for a certain amount of money in exchange for a percentage of their business. These candidates would use the cash to grow the business, so both them and the investors share the risks and the profits.

As part of the Ottawa Startup community, I think it would be awesome if we had a “Dragon’s Den with Human Capital” show. I call it Leader’s Lair. We have lots of technology talent in this city (including myself), and many of us are trying to start our own thing. However, it’s hard to move a mountain by oneself, and many times, one just needs a hand, not employees.

The Pitch

Create a web-based show (Leader’s Lair) with a similar format to Dragon’s Den, where, instead of money, the currency is Human Capital!

Let me explain: Money can buy things and pay for people’s time. That’s wonderful. However, I find (and I’m sure many of you do without even realizing it) that to get where you want to be, you need another type of capital: Human Capital.

Human Capital can give you feedback, connect you to the right people, show you the ropes, and most importantly, care.

Most Leaders I have met through the Startup Ottawa community want to share their experiences. So much that they take the reigns of our very own “Ottawa Start-up Community” and keep it alive and kicking. It’s a lot of work, for really no compensation. It’s fantastic! They do it because they care. Unfortunately these people become really busy and sought after. Naturally, the amount of feedback, connecting, showing, and caring towards any of us tends to zero rapidly.

We can bridge this gap and have fun doing it. How? Read on.

Leader’s Lair, the show

An innovator presents her business idea, and offers a part of her start-up business in exchange for a Leader’s expertise, in front of a panel of 5 Leaders. Examples:

  • I need Business expertise – Where is the money in my idea?
  • I need Marketing expertise – How to make my idea appealing?
  • I need Sales expertise – How to price and sell my product or service?
  • I need Execution expertise – What do I need to make this idea happen?

Discussions between Leaders and the innovator is encouraged. If a Leader finds the idea is interesting, he can offer his expertise as a commitment (e.g. half a day of his marketing expertise every two months), and negotiate the terms (e.g. for 5% of the profits for the first year). If the idea is of no interest to him, the Leader should explain why to the innovator.

The commitment from a Leader to an innovator keeps the communication channel open (helping her succeed with expert advice). And the promise of something in return from an innovator to a Leader is an added incentive for him to care, which leads both to success!

Call to Action

The concept is pretty simple. A couple of cameras, a panel of committed Leaders, movie editing software, an internet connection, a handful of wannabe innovators, perhaps even a volunteer M.C., and we have a YouTube show worth watching.

Are you in?

10 Oct

TeamCamp – Year 1

Posted by igorsales in Biz Goals, Biz Observations, Business, Peopleware, Software dev.

It’s been almost one full year of TeamCamp (led by our fearless leader Chris Schmitt) for me, and I have learned some invaluable lessons.

Execution, execution, execution

You can have a million dollar idea. If it doesn’t leave your head, it’s worth nothing. It’s that simple. Like many people, I had the misconception that they are ought to get me: Other people are out there to steal my ideas, screw me over, climb on my back, and then sue me. Ok, perhaps not quite as dramatically, but you get the point.

My advice: talk to people. If you have an idea, share it. There’s people out there willing to listen, to give you advice, to help you, and best of all: waiting for you to execute on it, so they can use it!

Most importantly, when you try to execute your idea you will realize why execution is so much more important (and difficult) than the idea itself. Thomas Edison had realized this way back (1% inspiration vs. 99% perspiration).

Network

Ok, so executing your idea sounds wonderful right about now. I learned that part of the execution is to share the idea and listen to feedback. Who is willing to listen to your idea?

Like-minded people.

Find working groups of interest to you. Join mailing lists, start a blog, get a twitter account, listen and be heard. Surround yourself with peers that want to achieve similar goals.

That became the one of the main reasons I kept going to TeamCamp. First I got to know the venue, The Code Factory. Quickly I learned about all the birds-of-a-feather groups and meetings taking place in the region. Then lots of well connected people connected me with other well-connected people. Someday, I hope I’ll be as well connected, and pay back the favour.

The power of examples

Winter was starting to settle in. It was still one of my first TeamCamp meetings, and many new faces were present. We weren’t discussing any particularly interesting topic amongst techies, so there was almost a look of apathy on everyone’s face. We turned to the second half of the meeting, where John Nash wanted to talk about something he had built on his spare time. He didn’t have a fancy presentation. He just did a brief introduction, a demo, and suddenly it clicked. The look on our faces changed immediately. On all of us. On another meeting about how to present to customers, months later, Allan Isfan reiterated the same concept.

I have no scientific evidence of this, but it’s easy to observe the empirical evidence. It’s much easier to explain something when you see it working rather than to talk about it. A mock-up, a very simple implementation of a concept, that’s all it takes.

MVP

No, not Most Valuable Player, but rather Minimum Viable Product. Since you’re building a demo version of your idea, why not think about the absolute minimum you need to get it in front of customers? Fact is, MVP is so simple, it doesn’t need further explanation.

The MVP will allow you to get feedback quick, and show it to potential customers. It will also provide some insight into how difficult it’ll be to implement the full-featured product. It may also help you land the first customers, which can help fund the second round of implementation and so on.

It’s been a great ride, and I’m looking forward to the next year of TeamCamp.

13 Sep

Image Processing with Quartz Composer

Posted by igorsales in Image Processing, Software dev.

I was certain to find on the internet many people, and their respective blogs, performing image processing with Apple’s Quartz Composer. Quartz Composer is a great tool for creating stunning visual effects with Core Image, visually programming. One does not write code,but rather draws it by dragging and dropping boxes and connections between boxes. It’s my favourite kind of programming: Focuses on the idea, the implementation is just an artifact, an afterthought.

Well, a few Google searches later, and guess what? I could find great sites on Q.C., such as Sam’s Quartz Composer blog, but nobody processing images with Q.C.

What I needed was a Core Image Filter to calculate the Mean Square Error (MSE) between two images. Sure, Q.C. didn’t have one out of the box, but that was easily fixed by using a generic GPU-accellerated Core Image Filter. This generic Core Image Filter is based on the CIKernel language (a subset of the OpenGL Shading Language, OpenGLSL). That was all the code I had to write. About 10 lines of C-like code, and a tiny amount of javascript (mostly modified from the Core Image Filter template).

Then I used an averaging filter, to compute the average of the square error. Tada! There I had my MSE calculator. Re-factoring was a bliss, by simply selecting the MSE boxes, and clicking on “Create Macro”. That selection became a box with its own inputs (original image, estimated image) and outputs (each component of the averaged pixel). Sweet, really sweet!

MSE patchBut, this still doesn’t close the gap to this post’s title. How do we use Quartz Composer as an Image Processing tool? Well, it can be employed quickly as an Image Processing lab. For example, I created a patch to compare two images, side by side, taken with the Mac’s built-in camera, where you would compute the MSE between the images.

MSE between two shots

The original image is stored on the left-hand side. Every time the user left-clicks on the Viewer window, the original image is updated. The estimated image (camera’s output image) is shown on the right-hand side, masked with the original image. At the middle bottom of the viewer there is the computed MSE. This lab allows you to develop your image processing algorithm, and see that it works before trying to code or optimize it.

To play with this small lab, download the Quartz Composer file.

Please comment if it this helps, or if have other cool patches or filters in Quartz Composer to share.

8 Sep

WordPress backup with Automator

Posted by igorsales in Automator.

To all the WordPress bloggers out there that got hit by the worm: You should backup regularly, and here’s how: You can easily backup your WordPress blog with a simple Automator (sorry Windows users) workflow.

What you will need

  • A WordPress blog
  • Apple’s Automator
  • OttoMate – Web Test Automator Actions
  • Be logged in to your blog

The workflow

The workflow to back up  your blog is pretty simple. Once it’s setup, all you need is to run it.

Picture 3

  1. Ensure you have the OttoMate actions installed in your /Users/<username>/Library/Automator
  2. Create a new Automator Workflow.
  3. Add a variable called “Blog Export URL”, and set its value to http://<mywordpressblogdomain>/wp-admin/export.php
  4. Add a “Get Value of Variable” action to the workflow, and select the “Blog Export URL” variable.
  5. Add a “New Safari Documents” action. That will open a new Safari window pointing to the “Blog Export URL”
  6. Add an OttoMate “Click Link or Button in Current Page” action
    1. Select “HTML button” and “text” in the drop down widgets.
    2. Type “Download Export File” in the text field. Note: If your WordPress installation is in another language, enter the appropriate text for that button.
  7. Add a “Pause” action, to allow Safari enough time to download the blog XML file.
  8. Add a “Find Finder Items” action to find the wordpress XML file in the Downloads folder.
    1. Select the folder where downloads go (by the default they go into the “Downloads” folder).
    2. Set the file filter. In my case, I wanted files that start with “wordpress” and end with “.xml”
  9. Finally, add a “Move Finder Items” action to copy the files selected by the previous action, to their destination location (“/Users/<username>/Documents/…/blog backups” in my case).
  10. Run the workflow, and watch it back up your blog.

Notes:

  • WordPress export does not export media. Keep a copy of the media you push to your blogs.
  • You should program Automator to run your wordpress backup action periodically (say every day, or twice a day).
  • You still need to close the safari window after the backup, since there doesn’t seem to be an action to do that. If you know one, please comment.

7 Sep

People I want to meet

Posted by igorsales in High "Fan"-In, Peopleware.

There’s a lot of people I would enjoy meeting in person. My list has been changing over time, and some of the ones I had some hope of meeting passed away. Here’s a list, in the hope that they’ll see it and at least get curious to meet me also ;-) .

May happen soon

  1. Amber MacArthur, from CommandN and net@night. Her shows are awesome, and through her I became a fan of The Guild, with Felicia Day.

May happen some day

  1. Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, and The Logic of Life.
  2. Leo Laporte, the Tech guy. Big fan of his show.
  3. Sarah Lane (maybe Martin Sargent?) from This Week in Fun. At first she seemed to be like an extremely high maintenance chick. But now I enjoy the TWIF show in almost a masochistic way.
  4. Andy Ihnatko, just ’cause he seems like a fun wacky guy.

Will probably never happen

  1. Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple. I wouldn’t know what to tell him, especially after what I heard on TWiT 212. I give him money, he gives my great products. Let’s leave it at that.
  2. Steve Wozniak (the Woz) (In fact I rubbed shoulders with him when I went to hear him speak on Aug 19 2009, at the Brookstreet hotel in Kanata, Ontario, Canada).
  3. Eddie Vedder, the voice behind Pearl Jam.
  4. Stephen Fry, Comedian, Author and active twitterer/blogger.

Famous People I could have met

  1. Donald Sutherland. We shared a flight from Toronto to Washington, DC one time.
  2. Bob Rae. Got into an elevator with him at the Ottawa airport.

22 Aug

Where vs. What

Posted by igorsales in Biz Goals, Business.

I know where I want to be. I can almost smell the air in my future office, the work environment, and the type of people I’d hire to work with me. I can picture the office layout and the location. It would have to be within cycling distance from my home, and it would have to have showers. I really want to be more environmentally responsible, while staying in shape.

I could go on and on, but there is a catch: the what.

Knowing where to be is the easy part to figure out. If it were the only step necessary, I think there would be many more happy people in the world. Unfortunately the what, and effectively the how are what’s keeping me from getting to where.

But there’s hope, and that’s why I’m starting this blog. This hope is what’s driving me towards finding a solution, or better, a problem, in which I really believe I (and those surrounding me), will find a profitable solution for customers and for myself (and my team). A kind of a win-win situation, where I can contribute and live off it.

Since I’m the CEO (Chief Everything Officer) of my life, I took the executive decision to blog about my goal, in the hope that I can help the community as much as the community can contribute towards achieving my dream.