Dzikipedia

I was just having a conversation with Mike, who is very cautious about online privacy controls (rightfully so).  During this conversation, he was asking what I set my facebook privacy settings to, because he couldn’t find me (as easily) using facebook’s search.

This led me to discover the Privacy Conundrum:  If everyone has their privacy set such that you can’t be discovered by non-friends, then how are you supposed to build your social network?

I guess that the easiest way is to allow networks to find you (which is an option on facebook, which I had turned off).  Another good method is similar to how linkedin allows people to connect with people, by providing an email address for the person that you want to connect with.  This shows that you either know the person on some level, or are perhaps a spam bot.

So not being an avid convention goer, I didn’t think to register so early for Google’s IO conference.  I was waiting for final approval, and realized that they had already sold out.  While that’s kind of a drag, it’s my own fault.  But now I have to go and look for something else, currently looking at ACM’s MobiCom or MobiSys.  Both conferences should provide me with some useful info, but probably wouldn’t have been as applicable as the IO conference.  I was told that the IO sessions would be posted to YouTube, so I guess I can always just review them afterwards.

So I’ve been recently looking into Android development, and have been abusing the internet searching for information.  I found that the easiest way for me to absorb the Android framework was to create a power point presentation as I went along with useful information.  As I was going through, I realized that the “stack” idea (explained REALLY well here) of how Activities are created and managed was familiar to me, and was trying to figure out how to best leverage this familiarity.  I determined that it was similar to creating index cards, and as you create new Activities, to put the new Activity “card” on top of the previous Activity “card”.  As you finish Activities, you pop them off of the stack, so you’d remove the Activity card from your stack (see the analogy here?).  You could certainly use a power point slide show to provide a similar model, but I feel that you get a little more use out of physical cards.  I’m still working on developing this model, but my card composition (currently) is as follows:[img coming soon]Front of Card:

• A label showing the name of this Activity.  This is merely used as reference between the different cards.
• A series of UI Components which display different Activities to the user.
• These components will show the layout, and will be represented in the appropriate layout xml file in your project.

Back of Card:

• List of Activity interactions.  These will outline which Activities on the front will spawn new Activities (push them onto the Stack).
• List of incoming parameters.  Might populate certain text fields, or retrieve data from a SQLite DB based on this info.
• List of Services, Content Providers, and Broadcast Receivers which will be called within this Activity.  Data from these objects might populate some UI Activities here.

Some other really useful utilities that I’ve found:

• Stack Overflow
• Android Developer Site
• Developer Life tutorials
•  and of course, Google

… is all you need.Last week, Rich Miner visited my school to talk about his life journey and how he ended up where he is now (Managing Partner of Google Ventures).  The talk was heavily focused on what it takes to start a business and to be entrepreneurial-minded.   Afterwards, it got my mind ticking, and trying to find the niche that interests me.  I’m going to start to try and write down my ideas and think more “big picture” rather than “this is a cool piece of software”.  Overall, it takes a little spark every so often to sort of reorient me to get back into focus, and we’ll see where that leads.until then, I’m stuck in a hotel room in Jersey for work, waiting for the drive home tomorrow night.  But there will be another good walking and talking demo tomorrow, so that’ll probably help me out a bit.

I’ve been busy with work, school, baseball, buying a house, etc, but will now try to devote at least 1 night a week to write something here.  I’ll be starting off with a display of the home renovation work that Julie and I have been going over after the home purchase, as well as some real estate thoughts from the point of view of a first time home buyer.

It’s been over a year since the last post, and I really do want to get back in the habit of posting.  Since then…

• I’ve taken 4 more classes, and am 3 away from my Masters in Comp Sci.
• I’m 1 day away from buying a house.
• I’m 3 days away from riding in my third PanMass Challenge.
• Julie and I have made it to the 2-year mark.
• Work and I have made it to the 3-year mark.
• My car is still quite fun.
• I’ve been working on a trip tracking website that I’ll post here in a few days (ok, probably after August 10th, when back from vacation.

Apparently, it’s been about 5 months since I actually posted anything here.  Funny thing is I’ve actually started writing 3 posts.  Maybe I’ll actually get those out.

In any event, some friends and I are going to Martha’ Vineyard for the 4th this weekend, and I get to come back Monday night to some baseball.  Baseball season is upon us again, and I’ll be keeping track of my stats once again.

Also, the PMC is coming near.  If you stumbled upon here and want to donate, feel free to help out!

Also also, got a nice new car.  2007 VW GTI.  There’s some nice pics over on my Flickr page.

Once I get back, I’ll set up that baseball page, till then, have a fun Fourth!

There’s this little barber shop in downtown Woburn that I go to, and they do the ol’ “Lather and straight razor” your neck thing. Normally, I don’t mind this. However, when he’s in the middle of shaving, and “Stuck in the Middle With You” starts playing, let’s just say that I was having some immediate fears. Mostly, I blame Tarantino for this random nightmare. In any event, you try being in that position and NOT being freaked out

Tonight I’m twittering the World Series Game 1 tonight. Feel free to check it out:

http://twitter.com/dzikipedia

Earlier today, the other Adam and I were chatting about how both of our names are pretty distinct, and that when you google either of our names, there isn’t very much variance in the people it returns. This sent me into a google frenzy.

First off, Google: Adam Dziki. This returns 2 distinct people (as far as I can tell). Myself, and a Polish proctologist. While I don’t believe there is a direct familial relationship, my parents told me that when I was born, they heard that there was a Polish doctor with the same name. Now, with the overall accessibility of the internet and information available on the ‘net, I can see exactly what he does, as well as w

hat he’s written and taken part of. The interesting thought is if this other Adam Dziki has sat down and googled himself, and thought “who is this American software engineer with my name?”.

Secondly, Google Image Search: Adam Dziki. The scary thing is that Polish Adam Dziki and my father, David Dziki, have the same exact hair. Straight from the 70’s! Here’s a comparison:

Adam Dziki	David Dziki

Now that I look at it, it’s closer than I thought. Freaky.

What was also freaky was that Adam noted there was another Adam Darowski out there who was also 29 years old.

I had a similar idea a while back when Joseph Dziki friended me on Facebook. Joseph was my grandfather’s name, so I was very confused to see that name friending me on Facebook.

Small things like this go a long way to show how much the world has changed with the invention and availability of the internet. 30 years ago, I might not have known about a Polish doctor with the same name as me, or the other contingent of Dzikis out in the mid-west.