Tarballs of Ion! — zakame’s blog

I seriously lack originality on that title above.

Nevertheless, that gives some clues on what I’m up to: I rode my first airplane flight ever to Cebu with Jerome last Sunday to meet up with the rest of the pioneering team of Winston’s new startup, Morph Labs. Since it was a Sunday, there wasn’t much talk about work, but we did get to play with some of the new stuff we will be using, like Macbooks, iPhones, Airports, and a Mac Mini. Hint-hint indeed

Thus began the first day, on a Monday. We got up to speed (from a 3-to-7 AM hibernate,) configuring the rest of the Macbooks, getting the HSDPA modems to work, laying out an ad-hoc WiFi net for the moment, and starting to plan out the directions the company will take. So far, so good.

More to come, on Second Life Morphs.

(I seriously need to express myself better.)

I’ve been away from blogging. I’ve been away from doing Debian and Ubuntu work (although there has been a few package updates, as well as a new one.) I’ve been away from a lot of happenings (like how the excellent Knightlust got to convince my fellow townsfolk at Lourdes College Foundation to use FOSS,) but that’s fine, since I know there will be others who can keep up the flame burning.

I’ve been away because I’ve been looking at stuff. Lots of stuff. Various stuff. Stuff like Plan 9 from Bell Labs, and Inferno, and dabbling into distributed computing, working on an implementation of Plan 9’s file protocol. Stuff like thinking about programming, meditating upon it as an art, exercising a discipline of simplicity, clarity and frugality. All that stuff.

I first looked at Plan 9 last March, when I was wanting to go another round at the Google Summer of Code. While I was not selected, just getting Plan 9 to run on my machines (first as a qemu terminal, then as standalone CPU server replacing my old Ubuntu dapper install on my desktop) exposed me to `that other side,’ and that got me thinking about how software ought to be good. Of course, I could have just chosen to drop it all (after all, I wasn’t selected, so…) but I knew that if I stick long enough, I might just learn something.

And yes, I am learning something. Like how a lot of software isn’t really simple, just appearing to be. Or how sophisticated software development methodologies rob the clear picture gained from a well-thought, clear, and simple analysis of problems. Or when push comes to shove, I will have to make a choice, between tolerating software complexity and status quo, or facing it and attempt to simplify it.

Well, there’s much to tell, but I’m lazy, and I’d rather tell stories in bits. Anyway, I think I’ll have some time to spare, especially as I have accepted a new job at an up-and-coming company that, I hope and endeavor, will rock the local and international tech scene. And, while doing that, get around to make great tools to get my job done, and other people’s jobs too.

I’m getting back to the action.