I’m pretty hesitant to post this. This is really really old (in MindTouch time, it’s actually only a year old) and is a throw back to when MindTouch was solely focused on building community and adoption. Well, we nailed that out of the park and have since layered atop our community-centrism a business and sales unit. Nonetheless, these are our roots and I’m sharing this Microsoft produced video against my better judgment, after all I think I sound like a total wanker…

I should point out that the message in the video about being the best open source wiki is qualitative and stale. In fact, MindTouch is the MOST popular open source enterprise collaboration platform in the world. MindTouch Deki enjoys millions of users and hundreds of thousands of installations…all in less than three years of a public product wow… According to Sourceforge.net (the most active open source repository) MindTouch Deki is the top .001% of all open source projects.

Here is the Bitrock video. I like there video better. 🙂 Daniel and Erica are wonderful…oh and they have a great product too.

UPDATE: For whatever reasons it seems Microsoft took the videos off YouTube. Got me. Here’s another instance of the MindTouch “documentary”.

Audible.com is so painfully slow. Nonetheless, it is the cheapest way to get audiobooks and I love me some audiobooks. Currently, I’m reading the classic “Stranger in a Strange Land” a recommendation from my buddy Darin R. McClure. I don’t usually read fiction, but this has been pretty good so far.

In addition to “Stranger in a Strange Land” I have on my iPhone:

• “Spark” by John J. Ratey, which was recommended by @MiikoMentz
• “John Adams” by David McCullough

I recently read “Guns, Germs and Steel“, which I thought was fantastic. For more information on books I’m reading or those that I have read recently look me up at www.Shelfari.com (I’m Roebot as usual). An interesting note about Shelfari, large parts of this site is actually built on MindTouch. 🙂

This is so funny! I release my Flickr photos under Creative Commons Attribution. Many of my photos have been picked up by various reputable publications including the Wall Street Journal. My new favorite is Building, a publication based out of the UK. The article: “World’s tallest tower to have ‘gravity free’ terrace” used a photo of me from my Flickr stream.

Note the text:

Visitors – or astronauts as the backers of the scheme hope to label them – will need to wear special protective suits

As if this outfit I’m wearing, a child’s NASA costume, were this “protective suit”. LOL. By the way, This is an April 1 article.

Four Noble Truths

1. Suffering exists
2. Suffering arises from attachment to desires
3. Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases
4. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

Three Characteristics of Existence

1. Transiency (anicca)
2. Sorrow (dukkha)
3. Selflessness (anatta)

Hindrances

1. Sensuous lust
2. Aversion and ill will
3. Sloth and torpor
4. Restlessness and worry
5. Skeptical doubt


Factors of Enlightenment

1. Mindfulness
2. Investigation
3. Energy
4. Rapture
5. Tranquillity
6. Concentration
7. Equanimity

I’ve been thinking how odd it is that I’m one of the very few 3rd generation Californians I know. My Great grand parents were Okies that came to California during the dust bowl and lived in the tent cities initially upon their arrival. So, when Sam Lawrence tweeted about Shorpy it was timely.

Here are some choice dust bowl photos.

November 1936. Arvin migratory farm workers’ camp in Kern County, California. “Tom Collins, manager of Kern migrant camp, with drought refugee family.”

“Children of Oklahoma drought refugee in migratory camp in California.” November 1936

“Destitute pea pickers living in tent in migrant camp. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two.” Nipomo, California. February 1936. Photograph by Dorothea Lange. The anonymous subject of this famous Depression-era portrait known as “Migrant Mother” came forward in the late 1970s and was revealed to be Florence Owens Thompson (interview). She died in 1983. Read more here.

Fantastic site. Thanks Sam!

I am SO damn proud of Tara. This last weekend my wife ran the Rock-N-Roll Marathon here in San Diego! I’m so proud of her! Ashby, Brenda (Tara’s mom) and I were there to cheer Tara on. It was very emotional. I freely admit I shed a few tears of pride and joy for her.

I don’t link to Tara’s blog here because that’s personal family content, but I’m going to excerpt Tara’s post about the marathon here.

…

The downtown part was great and more so because our families were cheering us on at mile 6. Aaron had a air horn so it was easy to locate my awesome family with their signs.

Somewhere around mile 11 on the 163 my knees started hurting and my little toe on my left foot was aching. At this point, Jarod and I are still together running and we decide to slow down our pace a little.

Right before segment 3/Mission Bay my knees are throbbing but the vibe from the fans was energizing. I liked the neighborhood feel and the view kept me distracted. Also, I tried a few new things which gave me a burst of energy such as chewing on ice cubes and bubble gum. This was around mile 18 and at this time Jarod was going faster so we split.

Around mile 21 I was HURTING beyond words and I began getting emotional – way emotional. I cut out a picture of Ashby the size of my ipod and had it taped to the back. It helped me to see my daughter however it almost brought a wave of unexpected emotion during this mile. I got it together and just focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Luckily, when I passed the corner I could see the end point way in the distance which gave me energy.

At Mile 23 I realize I passed my buddy Jarod somehow and my competitiveness creeped in (in a good way) which pushed me to the end.

At Mile 24 I walked a few steps, collected my thoughts, and pushed all pain out the door. I ran strong till Mile 25 and at that time I experienced the “runners high.” I wish I could find out how fast I ran the last mile because I would not be surprised to find out that I did it in under 8 minutes. When I made the decision to “haul ass” I looked down and I had goosebumps everywhere and I did not feel any pain whatsoever. I literally hauled ass to the finish line. I heard Aaron’s bull horn and saw the finish line all at the same time. I saw my mom and Aaron and I began crying because I was so happy to see them and to be finished.
I finished with a smile and both hands in the air.

Questions I have asked myself:

Will I do it again? Most definitely.

How soon? In the next year.

What will I do differently? I will build up my quadriceps because I believe my knees hurt so much in the long runs because my thighs are not as strong as they should be to support the knees. (my dad’s advice) 🙂

…

What is my goal? To get faster, stronger, and to finish the next marathon in 4 hours and 30 minutes.

4:50 am (my mom was up with me at 4:00 AM) 🙂

6 Mile Marker

Finish Line – weeping

Relief

Proud Daughter

Proud Husband (mom too but she was taking photos)

My Buds

Dressed for the post-marathon celebration at Jarod’s house – going through posters.

Ashby’s Poster

Aaron’s Poster

Poppa and Mimi’s Poster

The Day After – very stiff but itching to jog on Thursday morning 🙂

Once again, I would never have been able to accomplish this personal goal without my ENTIRE family.

Thank you Tara for inspiring me with your drive and ambition. 🙂 I love you.

I bike to work. Most days anyway. Recently I’ve been sick; so, I’ve not been biking as often as I was. MindTouch is headquartered downtown in Little Italy and I live in Mission Hills. This means I have to bike uphill on the way home. It’s not bad. The bike ride is only 2.5 miles each way and I really enjoy it. However, since I’ve been sick (for damn near 4 weeks now with 3 illnesses I think) I could really use some assistance on some days coming up the hill. Here’s an idea:

Turns out you can buy it on ebay. I wonder if that’s street legal. Probably not. There are several stop lights and signs on the way home. Taking this straight up Laurel Street would be pretty awesome though (steepest street to climb in San Diego).

Brita’s new ad campaign is…well…genius, if you ask me. It reads:

Last year 16 million gallons of oil were consumed to make plastic water bottles.

www.filterforgood.com

Also from Treehugger via the Aesthetic Poet:

“If just one in 10 Americans used public transportation daily, U.S. reliance on foreign oil would decrease 40 percent.”

One would think a stat like that would inspire government and citizens to do whatever they could to enhance and/or develop public transportation within their centers, yet the status-quo persists. In fact, it’s worsening here in Southern California where there is much talk about the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes (carpool lanes) that are being considered for sale to private companies to turn into toll roads. Hrmm…taking publicly funded infrastructure and making it private so a monopoly can be created that will guarantee an inferior product. That makes no sense. Or as his been the case for many years, the state government in California has been trying to pave over state parks to create unnecessary highways in a poorly veiled attempt to open up choice parks to wealthy developers.

Finally, while I’m on a green kick, this comes by way of The Tyee.ca:

North America uses 60 per cent of the world’s paper cups, 130 billion of them per year. Those cups require about 50 million trees and 33 billion gallons of water, which could sequester 9.3 million tonnes of CO2 and quench 550,000 drought-stricken citizens of the state of Georgia, without even asking them to lower their ridiculous consumption rate of 166 gallons per day.

I feel so dirty. I need a nice reusable mug that I can carry in my backpack so when I bike by the coffee shop on the way to work I’m not contributing to this madness.

Mårten is wonderful. SteveB and I just bumped into Mårten and his lovely (and equally brilliant) wife Anicka at the San Jose Airport. They were on there way to Phoenix to celebrate with MySQL..errr…new Sun execs. We were all delayed. Every time I speak with Mårten he impresses me. Now that I’ve met Anicka I’ll tell you I think she is even cooler. 🙂 Anyway, in usual Mårten form he made me laugh my ass off, one particularly choice quote, which for his sake I’ll not put into context was: “It feels good, like when you pee in your pants…it’s warm.”

I’m cross-posting this one for those friends and family who don’t read the MindTouch blog (all of you). I’m just so damn proud of what we’ve achieved. 🙂

Over the past few days I’ve been grinding away on the most comprehensive written explanation of MindTouch’s technology completed to date, at least, high level laymen explanation. I finished it today and then Steve polished it and added a couple sections.

Technology – MindTouch
MindTouch is the developer of Dream and Deki Wiki. Dream is a Distributed REST Application Manager that Deki Wiki is built on. Deki Wiki is a wildly popular wiki, but it is much more than just a wiki. In fact, Deki Wiki is a wiki interface to a composition of loosely coupled web services that serve as a distributed application platform. Meaning, users of Deki Wiki get the immediate value of a wiki: improved collaboration around text, file, and email, but are also able to connect and mashup systems, databases, external services, and Web 2.0 applications in the form of composite applications and data mashups. This is achieved while still allowing a site administrator, presumably an enterprise IT professional, to provide governance of the data and services that users can access. The end result is a user-centric interface to data that is dynamically generated from data silos and the ability to create business user specific applications (situational applications).

I encourage everyone to read the full write-up. The quote above is just the abstract and the article should be accessible even to the less technical reader. I’m amazed at how far ahead we are of anyone else in this emerging space. Our technology is easily a couple years ahead of anyone else and there are some very big companies entering this space including IBM, BEA, SAP, etc. I know we have a brilliant team, but in comparison to the big boys our resources are just a drop of water in an vast sea.

I frequently marvel at what we’ve built, but what I find even more amazing is how we’re dominating the market. Primarily because I’ve always known we have a team of amazing engineers, but I guess I never realized just how damn good we are about getting the word out. Case in point, there isn’t any vendor that is seeing the kind of distribution and adoption that MindTouch is driving. To be honest it is shocking when one realizes how much more market penetration MindTouch has. I knew we could build some bleeding edge technology, but I hadn’t thought we would be equally successful in marketing it to the extent and as quickly as we have managed. Especially since it’s been entirely organic. People find our software by searching for “MindTouch” and “Deki Wiki”. Our SEO is atrocious. Anyway, if you look at only our download stats at Sourceforge you’ll see we’re driving around 1100-1200 downloads a day. It is important to note that this only accounts for a portion of our total distribution. Deki Wiki is now in several build systems and other people are regularly redistributing our software from places other than Sourceforge. MindTouch Deki Wiki is being distributed well over 2,000 times a day! There is no other vendor even remotely close to this in our space. What about adoption? Well, I looked at some stats earlier this week and I was stunned by our total count of unique users. That is to say, it was more positive than I ever imagined. 🙂 Of course, we can only count a percentage of the total unique users of Deki Wiki, but we have a really good idea what percentage we’re counting. As I said, I was stunned and very very happy with what we’ve accomplished in this first year and half of Deki Wiki being public. I will announce these numbers at a later date.

Now it’s time for the obligatory “thank you”s. Credit to the Gardeners, these are the folks that have been spreading the word. It certainly wasn’t due to any PR or advertising efforts on our part because MindTouch just began these campaigns near the end of last year. So, MindTouch users and customers please continue to spread the word and we’ll continue to make kick ass software.