Cameesa - The Blog

The Brother GT-782 Garment Printer. Brother’s inks dye the material so the colors last the life of the garment. It’s hard to tell the level of quality of the printed shirt from the video. I think with a printer like this it’s hard to get creative with placement and push the boundary. Complex prints (belt prints, specialty inks, etc.) would obviously be out of the question with a machine like this. The unit will cost about $20,000 and inks are $200 per cartridge. It’s to be available in the Spring of ‘09.

Brother T-Shirt Printer from Geoff Teehan on Vimeo.

This past Wednesday, Andy and I were very fortunate to be interviewed by Jeff Woelker from The Chicago Tech Report.  This was our first video interview and we actually did not know what to expect.  To tell you the truth, I was a little nervous.  Andy says that I get really goofy when I am put in a serious situation (I guess it’s some sort of defense mechanism, a good one at that.)

Jeff did a great job as an interviewer asking great questions, and keeping things informal (nice work Jeff).  Since we were a little anxious, we stuck to the format of the interview and didn’t branch out to talk about much more.  One thing that we regret was that we failed to mention YOU, and we learned this very quickly.  YOU, our Supporters, our families, and friends……a huge reason why we are still running Cameesa.

So, we want to thank you all for everything that you have done for us.  From responding to forum posts and Buying Tees, to telling your friends about Cameesa and putting stickers on your MacBook laptops.  2008 was the beginning of Cameesa and we look forward to our first full year as Cameesa in 2009.  Thank you.

1. Watch the interview by clicking here, The Chicago Tech Report Cameesa Interview.

2. p.s. WE WISH THAT WE WOULD HAVE SAID THIS AT THE END OF THE VIDEO:

This is a geeky entry, so please read with caution.

I just learned some very useful information about Gzip, and enabled it onto our Apache servers.  This reduced our initial download size by half (of js and css files) from 366K to 180K.

Here is how to improve your site performance, it’s actually pretty simple:

1. Verify that LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so exists in your httpd.conf file
2. Create mod_deflate.conf file in your config directory, or just update your httpd.conf file.
3. Insert code below into file (mod_deflate.conf):
   AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/css application/x-javascript
   BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
   BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
   BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
4. Restart your apache server by executing the following command: httpd service reload

For more information feel free to check out another mod_deflate tutorial.

The coolest software since sliced bread.  Why?  Because it solves my problem.

How many of you use more than one computer? Let’s say you have a file KamilIsCool.doc, and you are editing it on the PC in your bedroom, but then want to work on the file on your Mac laptop downstairs while watching tv.  How do you go about doing this?

Probably in one of 3 ways: 1)  you e-mail yourself the document and then open it on your Mac; 2) you save the file on a USB pen and then load it on your Mac; or 3) you share a drive on your PC, and map this drive on your Mac (this is the geek solution).

Well, I will list a problem with all of the above solutions: 1) you have to be online to receive email; 2) to save it on USB, you must own a USB pen, and this method is time consuming; and, 3) you have to be on the same network, and online to pull the file from the shared drive.

Dropbox to the rescue.  This software: a) allows you to share the same file between many computers, b) allows you to edit the files locally from your hard drive (you don’t have to be online to do this), and c) synchronizes the file when you connect online again (so you have the most recent version of the file on both computer simultaneously).

There is a 2GB limit on the storage for the FREE version of DropBox, which is plenty for me, and I just wanted to say that I completely love this software and highly recommend it for those with more than one computer.

My wife, Ariel, and I went to CarMax tonight to sell her 1999 Oldsmobile Alero.  We’ve had the car about 4 years, and it is fully paid off.  I’ve attempted to sell my own used car in the past, and it was a terrible experience.  The biggest issue for me was determining value, and getting someone else to agree with that value.  There are things like the Kelley Blue Book, to use as a starting point, but the unique deviations in a car’s history make the price vary greatly.

In general, the CarMax experience was very pleasant.  Disclaimer: I am not a natural salesman, and I don’t enjoy haggling.  If you enjoy the thrill of talking someone down (or up), then CarMax is probably not for you.  What I actually love about CarMax is how systematic the entire experience is.  There are soo many human emotions present in a private party sale which are absent with CarMax.  This makes the transaction swift and painless.

You walk in and a receptionist greets you, puts your name in a salesman queue, and you go watch TV.  Five minutes later, you meet Steve who walks out to your car with you.  Steve doesn’t actually do the inspection and put a price on your car, he just makes sure that you have the keys.  You go back inside with Steve and he tells you how they value cars.  He enters an inspection work order in the computer with you, and someone who you haven’t met yet actually performs the inspection to value your car.  You go watch Dancing With The Stars on an LCD TV.  Twenty minutes later, Steve comes back and you walk with him back to his desk.

Now this is the most volatile (and well thought out) point of the transaction, because, chances are, you will not be pleased with the offer.  Here is how they reveal their price: you sit down with Steve at his computer and he brings up your car details.  Then he clicks a button to reveal the offer, and it seems like he is now seeing it for the first time with you.  If you don’t like the offer, you can’t really be angry with Steve, he has just received the same information you have.  In addition, he is not the person who made the estimate, so it doesn’t make sense to project your disappointment on him.  And the best part: if you don’t like the offer, then tough crap, there is no negotiation.

The point I am getting at is that CarMax has successfully systematized a once soft and wild varying process.  In the past when I was selling my own used car, it took 30 minutes to advertise it, plus four 40 minute meetings and plenty of awkward negotiations to actually sell it.  Then I had to deal with actually getting the money in a guaranteed form and depositing it.  Such a waste of time and brain power.

I think there are huge opportunities in developing systems which remove the guess work and systematize traditionally “soft” markets.  I love the thought of data acquisition and data mining of areas with currently little metering.   CarMax’s appraisal system is just one example.  I know plenty of developers who work at futures trading firms here in Chicago who develop automatic trading systems.  Is there a CarMax for homes?  Would any company be so bold to assume that many liabilities?  Can the algorithm be developed?  Does it make sense to remove the human element from all transactions?

Just thinking out loud, incoherently.  Time to sign off.

The first phase of any Agile project should be “Iteration 0.” During this time, all of your main decisions, in regards to technology architecture, should be made.

This post describes the different decisions that should be made during Iteration 0. The choices that you make in Iteration 0 are extremely difficult to revert in the future. For example, deciding which programming language you will use may curse you in the future. Imagine being 8 months into a project and finding out that your programming language is lacking a feature that is crucial in your project’s success. Good luck re-writing 8 months of code.

So, the next time you are creating a website you should go through each one of these sections and make wise decisions.

Crucial Sections (these are more difficult to recover from once 8 months into the project):

1. Programming Language: Do you need a light-weight language that is weak-typed (pHp), or one that is strongly-typed and requires compilation (Java)?
2. Database: Will you use an open-source implementation (MySQL) or will you pay for a database powerhouse (Oracle)?
3. Source Control: Do you have money to pay for user-friendly version control (Perforce), or do you need something that is free, and open source (SVN)?

Easier to recover from:

1. Operating System: Will you host your own servers and run a Linux box, or will you pay for web hosting and use a Windows server?
2. Build Tool: Will you use a formal process to build your source code (ANT, Maven) or will you run a script that copies your source code files to the server (rsync command)?
3. Continuous Integration: What type of system is going to automate your builds when you are sleeping? CruiseControl, or maybe Hudson.
4. Coding-style document: This will keep your code clean and consistent throughout. This is a preference and best-practice for programmers.
5. Bug/New Feature Tracking System: Where will you store your bugs and new features? Jtrac, BugZilla, or JIRA. This is not a crucial category but something that should be decided nonetheless.
6. IDE: Will you use a free IDE on a Linux server(vim) or pay for one with greater flexibility and a better GUI (MyJava)?
7. Testing Tools: Is there software that will help you with Unit, Integration, and Functional tests?
8. Code Coverage: Do you need to see that amount of your code being tested? Something like Cobertura or Clover will let you know how much of your code is actually tested.
9. Number of Environments and their purpose: Will you have two environments? A development one for you, and then your production environment or will you need three environments? Dev, Sit, and Prod, where your business clients view the code in the Sit environment?

Here is a great article on the decisions that EnergizedWork chose for their Iteration 0. Definitely some wise choices. Hopefully this gave you a brief description of what Iteration 0 is about.

I came across a t shirt search engine on Tech Crunch today called PleaseDressMe. The site lets you filter shirts according to keywords, tags, colors and price. Very useful. Some of the feedback I’ve received for Cameesa involved developing ways to search t shirts by color and type. I think it’s a great idea and will definitely more become relevant once our shirt selection grows.

Some of the positives of PleaseDressMe are the clear and simple focus of the site. A drawback is the small pool of t shirts that are indexed by their system. There have been some complaints that some keywords yield no results. I don’t see this as a major issue and I think this will slowly change as additional t shirt sites are added and selections on the indexed sites grow.

You ever curious who is blogging about you, or your company? Well, here is Gooooogle Alerts. In Google’s words, “Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results.”

How have I used Google Alerts? Well, I told Google to e-mail me every time it comes across the word ‘cameesa.’ Get it? So, I get an e-mail every time Google indexes the word ‘cameesa’.

Check out Google Alerts here.

My friend Charles was browsing around the flashy new website for the Samsung Instinct phone when he stumbled upon this gem. Apparently Samsung forgot that QWERTY keyboards start with the letters Q, W, E, R, T, and Y.

They spent all this money to get the crazy flash interface and overlooked the basics. How could something like this have slipped through the cracks?

To see for yourself:

• Go to http://samsunginstinct.com
• Skip the Intro, and click on Touch at the botto
• Click on Explore Touch next to the phone

I would just give you a direct link, but they chose to develop an all flash site, making it impossible. Let’s hope that we never do something like this with Cameesa. If we do, you have my permission to flame me for it.

Newsknitter is a data visualization art project that uses clothing to display large scale data. There are a couple of things I find interesting about the project. The first being the removal of the individual from the design process and second the use of computer technology to create the garments. Information gathered from political news feeds online are aggregated and converted into a unique pattern to be knit into a sweater. It is the aggregate information from multiple individuals that help shape the patterns in the shirts and not a single individual in isolation. Finally, a unique and innovative way to use news in clothing. This should help people forget once and for all that CNN sells t-shirts.