I got my first tattoo on Saturday morning!
It’s a peregrine falcon-head encased in stone. Falco Peregrinus (peregrine falcon) is Latin for foreigner, or stranger; which is exactly what I was to Vancouver four years ago. Falcons are also symbolic of calculated risk, and adventure.

For me, this tattoo symbolizes the last four years of my life: the risk and adventure of moving to a new city, starting a new career (despite all the advice to the contrary), and then starting my own business.

It’s been a crazy ride so far, and won’t be slowing down any time soon. It’s exciting and scary at the same time. I guess this is the curse of aiming high? ;)

My first week as a startup co-founder was pretty good!

Working for myself is something that I’ve been thinking about for years, and now that it’s here, it really feels no different than doing homework at home. I love it! If I hit a wall, I take my dog for a walk, and if I’m suddenly not into it, I work in the evening instead.

And, next week will be even better, as Greg will be joining me for the “official” kick-off.

One thing that everyone warned me about, that still took me by surprise, is the excessive time that legal and finance can take up. Just thinking about how the daily processes of our company, how things will happen and how things will function is a lot to think about. I knew this, I just hadn’t experienced it… Until now!

What I took away from this week: Taxes alone can suffocate you

Today is my first day inside the startup bubble.

Greg Bell and I have decided to start our own company. Our primary focus for the next 3-4 months is a social community called, ScrnShots. ScrnShots is a place for people to upload, tag and share screenshots of inspirational design, usability or anything else of interest.

Everything still seems quite unrealistic at this point, but I’m sure that the long hours will bring a touch of reality with them.

Stay tuned, as I will be updating this blog regularly with interesting tidbits of acquired knowledge and grumblings.

I was at the Seattle Library this last weekend. I’ve been meaning to go for the better part of a year already, but just never got around to it. It was an absolutely amazing sight to see.

The building was designed by Joshua Prince Ramus. Check out this Youtube Video of Prince Ramus explaining his reasoning behind the design.

I have spent the last six weeks at Engine Digital. I’ve done everything from IA to development, and even some design.

Overall, it has been a good experience. Since most of my experience up until six weeks ago, consisted of working with teams of 6 people or less, I would have to say that the biggest lesson learned was communication among a bigger team.

In a group of 5 people, you can get away with verbal communication. But, when you throw an extra ten people into the mix, mistakes are easily made. Documentation becomes KEY. At Engine we use Basecamp for all our project management, todos, milestones, etc. However, even basecamp isn’t detailed enough to keep track of everything, and so for little bugs, fixes, or edits related to a project, we use Mantis.

Also just general communication among your team, is different too. With a small team, you can’t help but be involved in everyone’s projects. With a bigger team, you have to purposely ask people for feedback, make sure everything is going as planned, because time is easily wasted if you’re not aware of what everyone else is doing, and any twists that the project has taken.

Lesson Learned: Communication is good - Communication with Documentation is better

I have convinced my wife to start blogging.

She is a window display stylist for Le Chateau. She works on a team of 5 that do window display for all the Le Chateaus in the lower mainland. She has a formal education in fashion merchandising, and has a real knack for style.

Her blog is called Black is the new Black. It’s about fashion and lifestyle, and random fashion tips/gossip.

There’s really no good fashion blogs in Vancouver, so I think that there’s a real need for this, and I think it’ll be really good for the local fashion community. If you have any brilliant ideas for her, I’m sure she’d love to hear them.

Well, school is officially over for Christmas holidays!

I must say that the last week has been a little bit stressful, but worth it none-the-less. I think I learned more this week than I have the whole semester put together. I spent a lot of time with php, which is something that i should have done a lot sooner. It really helped me wrap my head around everything else that I’ve been learning, ie. ruby on rails, database design, and even helped my understand IA better.  I feel enlightened!

This next week, I am going to dedicate to RoR. Yippee!!

I was in Manitoba for a friends wedding this weekend.

As I was driving through the automobile city (aka: Steinbach), I saw a ‘99 Rav4. I decided to take it for a little test drive, and sort of accidentally fell in love with it. The dealership was asking a fair price for it, but i just didn’t want to buy a vehicle in Manitoba. But, the salesman was pretty sure that he could sell this thing to me, so he told me to make an offer that I thought was fair.

Since I wasn’t too keen on driving home to Vancouver from Manitoba (24 hr drive), I offered him a ridiculously low offer. Long story - short, they took my offer, and i bought it.

I ended up meeting some people in the wedding party from Bellingham, which is only an hour and a bit away from Vancouver, and I suckered them into also cancelling their flights, and making the trip with me. To my surprise, a 24 hour road trip with two complete strangers couldn’t have been any more fun!

my life is a madhouse. for some reason, i enjoy beating my body and mind with more events and projects than i ever thought i could possibly handle.

for those of you who don’t know, i am currently enrolled in the interactive media and web design course at capilano college (i’m sure there’s no one reading this that doesn’t know me). although some of the classes seem to waste more time than they do accomplish anything, we are taking a database course as well as a php programming course. between these two classes i have enough work to keep me busy and utterly stressed out most of the time.

However, that just doesn’t seem to be enough for me.

1. i just got a gym membership, that i intend to use at least three times a week.

2. i seem to always find myself doing another contract job that consumes more of my time than i expected

3. on top of everything, i also decided a to do my final directed study in ruby on rails (a framework that i know nothing about).

my conclusion: i’m a glutton for pain.

here’s my dilemma:

i have two books that seem to sit on my table playing devil and angel in my head. the php book is the angel; it says “derek, read me. i am everything that actually matters. i am what you’re supposed to be reading”. and the devil is my ruby on rails book. it says: “derek, i’ll make things so much easier for you. you know you want to… i love you”

for some reason the seductive devil always wins.
it’s definitely starting to effect my schoolwork, but the way i see it: at least i’m not wasting away my days watching people injure themselves on Youtube.