Jonathan Grimes
Currently viewing the category:
"Life"
With all the pending legislation like Protect-IP, SOPA and the DMCA before it, I just have to wonder how long we as humans will go until we realize you can’t control something that’s not yours to control. So long as people want things there will be theft, piracy and what have you.
The intent of these legislations (publicly at least) is to stop digital piracy and stimulate innovation [insert "Road to Hell" quote here]. So how about instead of making more laws and making more things illegal, how about we go in the other direction.
Continue reading »
My wife (who names things) anthropomorphized my car last week:
Sasha has decided she doesn’t want to be called “Sasha” anymore. She wants to be known as Nicolette. I’m worried that when she turns eighteen she’ll actually do it.
While I let my wife worry about what “Sasha’s” cosmetic surgery will do to “her” adolescence, I sit back and enjoy the ride.
Cars are not generally considered to get better with age, actually depreciating in value over time — not like a fine wine… or, in my wife’s opinion, the male half of this marriage — however, my three year-old 135i just did.
It was my first public offering to the world of freeware! My high school after-hours project is now on github. I don’t know why I haven’t done this sooner, but I thought it would be a fun git-to-know git activity.
Just looking through all these files brings back memories — my, how far I’ve come. My first rendition of this project mostly used the MFC classes Microsoft shipped with their Visual C++ 5/6 projects (this was before Visual Studio .NET). I eventually released this gem as Simply Transparent 6.5, and was the version that was honored as the “Free file of the Day” on TechTV’s “The Screen Savers” with Leo Laporte and Megan Morrone, post Kate Botello era. Right around that time, I kicked MFC to the curb and rewrote the entire program with nothing but the Windows bare API at my mercy. I had grown as a programmer and found a new love of strait-up-no-hand-holding raw C++. Those were the days… learning something new every day, and digging for more — constantly digging — knowledge in software development and the art of UI design.
Continue reading »
To say that this has been a busy year, would be a gross understatement. I began the year as the point-man on a rockin’ team where we developed & maintained RiskManager 4 — a financial risk management application built atop a fantastic platform, an in-house project at RiskMetrics. However, the changing atmosphere at the company (RiskMetrics was acquired by MSCI mid-year in 2010) left much to be desired. Loyal to the core, I stuck it out and even plowed ahead with re-architecting the user interface; moving from an in-house server-side HTML/Widget generation toolkit to ExtJS.
Around the beginning of the second quarter of this year, I was invited to join a few colleagues that had left the company to start a new company, and I couldn’t resist the opportunity to start something – something BIG. It was just too enticing.
Photos
