Blogging


24
Sep 11

Piwik and jqPlot

This took me waaaaaay longer than I wanted it to, so I’m making a point of posting it.

In order to take an API call to Piwik and use the returned JSON to generate a custom graph with jqPlot, do this:

    $.getJSON(url, function(data) {
        var i = 0;
        var line1 = new Array();
        $.each(dates, function(x, y) {
            line1[i] = [x,y];
            i++;
        });

        $.jqplot("chartdiv", [line1],
        {
        // the rest of your jqPlot options
        });
    });

The part that took me a while to wrap my head around was that jqPlot requires an array of arrays for the data points. Hopefully this is helpful to whomever finds it.


5
Aug 11

Why I’m in Chile

A friend of mine, Sean Collins, as me this morning about why I chose to apply for Start-Up Chile. He asks

“I’m messaging because I’d love to pick your brain a bit about SUP as I’m smack dab in the middle of the fence on applying. I’ve got a few questions that I’d appreciate you taking the time to answer as there really is no other way to get clarity on the situation than to talk to someone on the inside, actually living it.

As with every time I ask for people’s opinions, the most blunt and honest you can be, the better. Continue reading →


27
Jul 11

Arrival at Start-Up Chile

Some background: We’ve been running Mesh Canada for a little over two years. Our company realized that we would rather be writing the software tools to manage wireless hotspots rather than physically deploying them. There’s simply too much red tape to cut, hoops to jump through, and truck rolls to pay for when it comes to running a company based around physical hardware management. Software as a service, however, is relatively painless since we can manage everything from wherever we are and our potential market broadens to almost every country on the planet.

We mashed together our own minimally viable product for a client and when I heard about Start-Up Chile (SUP) we decided to apply. The next iteration of our product, Surreal, was somewhat planned and we thought it would be a great opportunity to focus if we were in a foreign incubator. Continue reading →


6
Feb 09

Cheap Vinyl Cutting

Running multiple businesses and being friends with similar people we all know how expensive it is to have any sort of signs made. We’re very much do-it-yourself kind of people, so we bought a vinyl cutter.

First off, this thing was cheap. We shopped around and found a cutter from US Cutters on eBay (don’t buy from their website). After negotiating my own shipping the end price door to door was around $505. Not too shabby for a 36″ vinyl cutting monster.

The cutter itself is about 50″ long and it comes with a stand. Along with the tiny little cutting blades there is a pen plotting attachment that you can use to draw with.

We’ve cut a few things already, mostly stuff for Rob’s farm as you will see in the pictures.

Applying vinyl is pretty straight forward as long as you think things through in advance. It’s really sticky and once it’s on whatever surface you are using it’s not really coming off without being destroyed.

Anyway, with the amount we spent it’ll save us a fortune in sign making costs. Since cutting a few yards of vinyl ourselves will cost about $4/yard and having a shop do it would cost 10 times that.


23
Jan 09

Turned Off Delicious Updates

The Delicious auto-blogging was getting annoying so I turned it off. If they ever add a “forblog” tag I would definitely turn it back on. However, right now I just bookmark a ton of stuff that I don’t want to have to question having on my blog!


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