Google Wave

Seeing as I have a lot of time on my hands and limited resources as to the projects I can undertake, I spend a lot of time surfing the internet. I have a blog, a facebook page, a website, but the one thing that I had wanted was a better way to stay in touch with friends and family.

Right before I left home a friend of mine mentioned that he thought it would be an awesome idea to start a blog and give all our friends the password to it so that we could tell each other stories without having to check 50 blogs or deal with app requests in facebook that offer the incredible ability to send all the people you're not really friends with a smiling face. It was a great idea.

The main problem I have with facebook is that it has become so bloated. It's no longer a website for people to stay in touch with friends. It's become a way for people a world away to pester people they've never met. But this, this could be cool. Something streamlined. Most importantly this would be private. We could restrict the people who could add to it.

Back to me having too much time on my hands. I started to develop an idea of what this could look like as a new social networking site. One that doesn't allow apps or any of that other crap. Almost like a private forum. I thought and thought and thought. And just as I was about to contact a friend of mine who is very into venture capitalism...Google unveiled Wave.

This is the next big thing. Mark my words. You heard it here first. This is going to revolutionize not only the way people communicate on the internet, but also the way that businesses are run. There is no limit to the possibilities.

Wave is a real time email/chat/document editor web service. You start a wave (similar to an email) send it to your friends and they can respond by simply clicking reply when they receive it (just like email). If it happens that two people are on at the same time they can chat inside of that wave in real time. You literally see the words as the person types instead of seeing "suchandsuch is typing". You can upload rich text documents (similar to word or excel) and each person that you allow to see the wave can edit the page simultaneously. In the demo that I saw, eight people were editing a business document at the same time. What would take days to get done now only takes as long as you need to type.

Ok, so this sounds cool. Yeah! I can do my email and chat just like gmail, but with a little document editing thrown in. But this is where the kicker comes in. It's open source protocol, which means that you can host it on any server. You don't have to log into google to use it. Any website with a server can host there own private version, allowing those they want to participate to participate and being invisible to people outside of the group.

So I'm a little disappointed that my friends idea and my additions to said idea didn't make us millions, but I can't wait to get my hands on Wave. And you better believe it's coming to thisisthacarter.com

Abu Dhabi & Dubai

I've already talked about my trip to Abu Dhabi and Dubai a little. Now you can see what it's like. Enjoy.

On possibly biting off more than you can chew

In my last post I talked about my difficulty learning to write html code. It was a fun and simple project to undertake, but I tend to be excitable about things I get interested in. Sometimes this is not a good thing. Other times it leads to me see things through that I normally wouldn't. I think it's a fair trade.

What does this have to do with my last post? Simple, I took the next logical step. I started my own website. I researched how difficult and expensive it is to host a website through a webhosting provider. I finally decided, through a friend's recommendation, on dreamhost.com. I paid my $90 for the year and I was off and running. Or so I thought.

Immedidately there was a problem. Somehow Dreamhost had charges me for two accounts. So what should have been an expensive, but doable, $90 turned into an outrageous $180. A quick email and and hour later and the problem was fixed. I pieced together a little code and through it up on the website (after another little bit of trouble, which was again resolved quickly). Boy was I proud. I couldn't believe it. I had my own website.

Imagine then my shock and heartbreak when I discovered the next morning that it had disapeared. I checked my panel at dreamhost and could no longer see my website. I didn't feel heartbreak in that moment, but it must have something like it. Thankfully another quick email resolved the problem (if you ever commit to owning your own website, I highly recomend dreamhost.com, their support is outstanding). Apparently they had erased both accounts instead of only the extra one.

Now the real fun began. My friend who recomended dreamhost also told me about worpress templates and how I could use them to quicly throw up a website. "Nah," I said, "I want to design one from screatch." That was the point, I think, where I went from enjoying my project to completely choking on it. I'm pretty capable with computer programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, but designing a working webpage was much more complicated than I intitially thought. I spent the past week designing, troubleshooting, getting so frustrated that I contemplated throwing my computer against the wall, and then eventually, finally, finding a way to make it work.

If you had asked me two hours ago. I probally would have said that I wanted my money back (dreamhost actually has a 30 day warranty where you can get a full refund if you're not satisfied with your account). But I really wouldn't have. That would have been quitting. I'm glad I saw it through to the end, and hopefully, as I spend more time with it, it will grow and become something I am really proud of. Now I am simply content to have it exist for the time being.

Oh, and you can check it out at www.thisisthacarter.com.

Custom email signature

This is going to seem like a weird post. That's because it is. I got the idea to create my own email signature from scratch for use with gmail. The problem is, I don't know how to write html code (html code is the computer language that comprises about 99% percent of the internet). So with plenty of free time at work I got started learning what I could. I got pretty far, but eventually ran into a snag in finding the images I wanted to include in the signature on the internet. I wanted to include a symbol for my google profile:
A symbol for my blog:
and A symbol for my youtube channel:
I didn't want to start a flickr page or something along those lines, because really I don't take that many pictures. How to find the exact images I wanted without uploading them to some strange website? Simple, upload them here. From now on, hopefully, the images you have just seen above will be referenced in my email signature. Problem solved.

Baku City Wall

A few weekends ago my roommate and I decided to do some exploring in the city. Two months of spending your weekends in the same places caused me to become a little bored and resentful of Baku. The city has such potential, but they just don't really put forth the effort to make this a marketable place to visit.

Anyway, I had wanted to visit inside the original city wall for a while, and so we made our way down through the city to the main gate. Inside the wall was peaceful and quiet. The government restricts the car traffic through the wall and as a result the environment lends itself much more to exploring. Back through alleys and over the top of buildings we made our way through the old city, enjoying every minute of it. Overall the experience brought about a new found love for the city of Baku and coupled with it a heartbreak that they do not make the effort to clean up the rest of the city and make it more like the old city.

Azerbaijan II: Azerbaijaning Harder

Here is another little video I threw together showcasing some of the interesting things I've found around the city of Baku. My favorite part was getting to go to the Azerbaijan National Auto Show and seeing the tremendous amount of european cars there. Just see for yourself. Also featured are my roommate Thomas and our translator/fellow engineer Volkan. I'll be posting another video soon showcasing the inside of the city wall, so stay tuned.