Parveen Kaler

March Recap

March was a good month in terms of blogging. I was able to crank out 7 blog posts in March including a post with video. Look for more media rich content in the future. I’ll continue to focus on generating higher quality, unique, editorial and opinionated content.

I’m focusing on adding more positivity to the tone of my writing. I’m still not completely satisfied with the voice in my writing.

I’ve been trying to improve my public speaking skills. I did a speech for a group of friends last month and I have another speech scheduled for the same audience this month. I haven’t picked the topic of my speech yet. If I think it is valuable, I will post my slides here again.

I have another presentation scheduled at DemoCampVancouver. The state of iPhone development keeps evolving very rapidly. There were two public BETA releases of the iPhone SDK along with another private release. I would expect two more releases in the month of April. There have many developments in the jailbreak scene too.

There has been controversy about the features that Apple did not release in the official SDK versus the features available to jailbreakers. There has been controversy with regards to Java and Flash on the iPhone. There have been rumors of a 3G iPhone being released this summer. There has been controversy as to how Apple is rolling out their Developer Program.

My presentation at DemoCampVancouver will focus on the bleeding-edge nature of development. If I do demo something, it will be my prototype renderer running on a jailbroken device. It’s just too early to be actually showing off gameplay. There is no point showing something that is bound to change down the road.

A couple years back a friend passed away in a car accident. A few friends gathered together last weekend for a memorial. We celebrated hard and it turned out to be a very positive weekend.

In general, it has been a very positive month. I made a conscious decision this year to drop the negative cruft that had accumulated. Positive situations just seem to pop up all of the time. Last week, a friend called to say that he had the most awesome day and he just had to call someone. It was probably the most thoughtful thing I can recall in the last little while.

My website has been up and down over the last two weeks. Dreamhost, my hosting provider, has been going through a number of outages. Hopefully, they can sort everything out very soon. If it lasts for any longer, I will probably go ahead and switch providers.

I updated the blog to Wordpress 2.5. I don’t think the blog has been up long enough for anyone to notice any issues with the upgrade. From others that have upgraded, it looks like Wordpress 2.5 is solid.

I’ve published my shared calendar. There are only a couple of events on my calendar at the moment. As I attend more public events, I’ll keep adding them to the calendar.

The blog is also available in a mobile version. There is no special URL that you need to access. The blog does browser detection and displays a custom version of the blog optimized for mobile Safari.

I have been spreading my focus a little thin over the last month. I have been helping family members that moved this month. I really need to do a better job at timeboxing my availability to others. Sometimes a simple get-together seems to consume an entire day or evening. So, expect me to be more firm when I show up and when I take off.

I also have troubles saying no to requests. I keep saying yes to requests made by almost anyone. A lot of these requests are just not congruent with where I want to be in terms of focus. I keep saying yes to projects and contacts that I should have shelved a long time ago. Expect that to change this month too.

The Vancouver Half-Marathon that I’m running in is just over a month away. I read this great article over at ZenHabits on running. I am a firm believer of lacing up your shoes and just putting one foot in front of the other. This is true for running and this is true for other things in life.

In March, I was not as focused on my running as I should have been. I’ve been spreading my focus a little too thin. The plan for April is to wake up and go for a run or a walk first thing in the morning. The plan is to focus on writing code or managing business tasks for the rest of the day.

I plan on tightening up my diet over the next month too. So, instead of going out for dinner or drinks this month, I’ll be getting together with friends for coffee more often.