So I’ve become a pretty big proponent of GitHub. Git has come a long way and has taken over SVN in my heart as my source control of choice. GitHub builds on top of Git to create an amazingly useful system for managing projects. I’ve recently pushed it on my boss at work but he hasn’t quite bought into my ploy quite yet.

Whenever I find interest in a company I tend to do a lot of research into them. I like to know  how they operate their business. This goes especially for companies like GitHub which have become wildly successful in a relatively short timespan. They must be doing something right, right?

My company research generally revolves around social media. I take a look at all of their company accounts on Twitter and Facebook and follow them. Then I check out the people who work there. I usually look for their Twitter accounts and follow those, too. Usually, if a company doesn’t have a presence on Twitter, I could care less about them. Luckily, GitHub has an active Twitter account and several of its employees are also regularly tweeting.

This is how I came across Zach Holman and his blog. And it was that day that I realized just how awesome GitHub really is.

I was reading Holman’s three-part piece on the daily happenings at the GitHub office. The company is located in San Francisco, fairly standard for a startup these days. The first bit of information about GitHub that struck me as absolutely fucking fantastic was that they do not have a set standard for work hours. Holman claims to wake up on a typical day at 10 AM. That has to be the most amazing thing I have ever heard. On my average work day, I have to wake up at 7 then leave by 8 in order to get to work by 9 AM. I am not a morning person, nor do I enjoy waking up and getting out of bed before my body says it’s okay. I’m also not exactly the most productive worker in the morning, either. GitHub definitely has the right idea of how to promote productivity. I would get loads more accomplished if I didn’t have to wake up so early.

The next marvel at the GitHub office is it’s Kegerator. That is genius. Simply seeing that thing would be enough to bring a smile to my face. I wish I could work in an office that had that sort of work environment, where employees are actually happy. It just seems so incredibly awesome.

I recently had to go to a meeting in a large corporate office. For the first time in my life I walked through a sea of cubicles. It was depressing. And absolutely silent. I was afraid to ask my colleague where the bathroom was. Who decided that such restrictive work environments were the right way to go? I work in an open office environment myself, but nothing to the scale that GitHub has created.

Overall, I have to say I am very jealous of the employees of GitHub. I wish I could work there.

Well, today marks my last day being eighteen; my birthday is tomorrow.

It’s been a really long year. Some of it was great and some of it was awful. It did, however, end on a positive note. That’s for sure. I’ve been mulling over the memories for a couple of days now and it’s become pretty clear that eighteen was a fairly significant year for me. I’ve learned quite a few lessons and made even more mistakes. But I think those mistakes are a major contribution to how I feel now. I feel far more confident in my own ability to be happy now than I did a year ago, because I know what mistakes not to make in order to keep my spirits up.

I also recognize that this is a phenomenon that reoccurs every year. Each new year brings new lessons and new mistakes that make the next year better and easier. I’m not claiming to be the most knowledgeable person on the face of the planet. Rather, I’m just sharing some insights for other stupid youngins like myself.

• Speak up. I am not a confrontational person at all, but the last year taught me that I need to stand up for myself, because the world can and will shit on you. This goes for all aspects of life. Don’t let teachers, parents, girlfriends, etc. take advantage of your unnecessary complacency. Be an adult and take advantage of everyone else! I’m not saying to be an asshole, but learn to (politely) take control of your situations.
• Be Expensive. Rather, don’t give yourself away for free. It’s all fine and dandy to be nice and generous, but selflessness plateaus pretty quick, depending on your tolerance for being used. This applies to friends, coworkers, significant others, essentially everyone. It’s not worth it. I’m a generous person, and I always have been. But I have a limit and it feels awful to be continuously used without any feeling of appreciation in return. Just don’t do it.
• Be Smart. Literally, don’t be stupid. Once high school ends, the world changes pretty quickly. If you go to college, you’ll be thrown into a world of of quasi-educated undergraduates who all think they’re the next Einstein (or rather, <insert famous individual for their given field>). They’re usually not. Acting smart doesn’t really get you anywhere, so pay attention, not only to what you learn in school, but everything. Read the newspaper, follow politics, etc. A knowledgeable person is interesting. Other people want to talk to that person. You can be that person.
• Be Understanding. Over the course of a year, several people will fuck you over. You will be upset. You will want to hate them. That’s cool; despise their very being. But let some part of yourself put effort into trying to understand their side. It’s easy to be subjective; objectivity is a much harder feat to accomplish. And if you still hate them after you’ve given them a fair shot, then fuck it, who cares. You meet so many people in life losing one isn’t nearly as dramatic as it seems at the time!
• Disregard Money. Money sucks. I honestly believe it’s the root of all evil. Try not to let money be a huge factor in decisions. Think about the outcome rather than the means. If something benefits you or makes you happy, it’s usually worth the money. It’s just paper, after all, representative of your time spent. And don’t spend all that time working not to make up for it on something adventurous or exciting. If you don’t have a job, get one. Now.
• Switch It Up. Life gets so boring when you do the same shit all the time. Try new things. This is one I don’t really follow myself, because it is absolutely the hardest rule to follow. Comfort zones are not easy to escape; that’s fair enough. But eighteen is too young to be attached to anything. Learn to be versatile. Be ready to do something new any day of the week. This goes for dating, too. Don’t punish yourself by being in a long-term relationship, especially through college. Plus, girls suck, but that’s a lesson best learnt on your own.
• Be Ready For Change. This is similar to the previous point, but it’s a little more complicated than that. Eighteen is difficult because in the course of twelve months, life is going to change in massive ways several times, before you even have any idea. You’ll be in the midst of one change before any realization of a previous one. It’s going to happen, so you can’t be afraid. This change is good; it’s part of growing up. And growing up is good. College is a biggie, and one you definitely should embrace. I didn’t. That’s why I’m no longer enrolled. Don’t be me. Think of change as a choice; your own will to better yourself. You’re not a kid anymore, it’s about time you start changing it up.
• Get a Credit Card. The process of getting a loan really fucking blows (I’m in the middle of write up about that, too!). Get a credit card; it’s the only way you’ll be able to establish credit early. Don’t use it too often, and ALWAYS pay on time. This will save your ass in the years to come. This was fast forwarded for me, so I’m already hit with the negative effects. Don’t let that happen to you.
• Get Fucked Up. This isn’t what parents are going to want to hear, but it’s true. Eighteen is a really stressful year. You should be able to relax and have fun. Alcohol isn’t the devil. It’s okay to be drunk. In the US, we’re taught to be afraid of it alcohol from an early age, but fear campaigns are very much outdated. Learn how to drink responsibly now, so as you progress through the world you don’t seem like an immature alcoholic. With that in mind, be safe. I’m not advocating stupidity, especially when booze is involved. But I like to party. And I highly encourage it as a means of keeping sane.
• Keep Time For Yourself. You don’t need to constantly surround yourself with people. Sometimes it’s extremely useful to spend some time alone. I like to take long drives and listen to music while I think. Or read. Whatever floats your boat. But you need to give yourself some time to regain your consciousness. Life will beat the, well, life, out of you. Take a break every once and a while and everything will be fine. It’s okay to do this on weekends, too. You’re not missing anything you won’t get to do again the next week.
• Be Happy. Try your best. It’s hard. I struggle myself. But it’s worth it when you keep a positive attitude and manage to achieve it. Being depressed sucks; try not to let it happen. A lot of times, especially at this age, it’s a choice to be upset. Take the punches, they’ll be useful in other aspects of life.

Don’t take any of that too seriously. This is all honest advice from experience, not fact. Just spreading it around.

Here’s to nineteen!

Sincerely,
Julius Parishy

So a lot has happened lately, some good and some bad. On the bad side, I will no longer be moving to San Francisco due to some health issues and a matching job offer here in New Jersey. It sucks, but ultimately I’m okay with it. I do love New Jersey and all my friends and family are over here, so I should be fine. My goals in 2012 will remain the same, however, and I can’t wait to accomplish the things I’ve set out to do.

I’m looking forward to moving into my own apartment pretty soon. That is an extremely exciting prospect, whether here or in California. I predict 2012 to hold a lot of fun on my end. I have a lot to find and a lot to let go of, but nothing I can’t manage. Hopefully with the craziness of the last few months behind me I’ll be able to find time for my hobbies and post more interesting things here than my location.

Hello!

Just an update here. 2011 has been, without doubt, the craziest years of my entire life. In the last year I have taken up a software development job, been to Europe, graduated high school, transitioned to college, and partied in celebration of perhaps the happiest times of my life. On the other hand, the last few months (college) haven’t turned out so great. I’m not ready to go to school. My interest is not strong enough to warrant the price or the effort it takes for me to partake.

But 2012 is just around the corner, so where does that leave me?

It leaves me on an entirely new adventure. In mid-January, I begin a new job at a startup in San Francisco, California. I move about a week before that. I’m excited and terrified. But I’m also tired. The past year has been long, very long. My exhaustion has been getting the best of me lately and I’m looking forward to a fixed paced working environment. No traveling. Hopefully no intense deadlines. No 36-hour work weekends in a hotel in the middle of Paris. Catching up on sleep will be amazing.

I don’t know how long I’ll be there. I’ve chosen not to look further into the future than six months from now. Ideally, I try not to think past the current day.

In the meantime, since I’ll be moving three thousand miles away and living entirely alone, I wanted to come up with a list of things I need to do while I’m out there. So, without further ado:

1. Learn to cook. I’m going to have my own apartment with my own kitchen and no one to make me food. Granted, no one has really consistently made me dinner in over a year and I’m fairly used to buying my meals or making frozen dinners. I figure it’s time to learn how to make real food.
2. Go to Los Angeles. I’ve always wanted to see LA. I applied to a school there, but didn’t get in (and probably wouldn’t have decided to go there anyway because I thought I was tied to the East Coast for various reasons). I want to see a lot of California while I’m there, but LA is a topper on that list.
3. Learn to bartend. This just sounds fun. I love to create makeshift mixed drinks whenever I get my hands on a sufficient amount of alcohol. It’d be nice to know how to make some real drinks. Plus, as far as general, random knowledge goes, I think knowing how to bartend is something cool that I’ll be thankful for in the future.
4. Get big. I figure if I am going to have a lot of time to myself I can spend it running and lifting. I’m going to have to find a gym out there. Start running again. And maybe biking. Daily trip back and forth from the bay to the ocean? That would be pretty cool.
5. Read and Write. I haven’t had much time lately to work on Freshman. And technically since I won’t be in school I’m not entirely sure how appropriate it would be to continue working on it. However, I still would like to write more often. And to that effect, I’d like to read more often. I picked up the Steve Jobs biography in the beginning of November and I’ve only made it about twenty pages in. That’s just unfortunate. Reading is definitely going to become a regular hobby again.
6. Learn to play guitar well. I own several guitars. I have an old Squier Telecaster Affinity, an Epiphone Les Paul SPECIAL II (currently lent to a friend), and a Fender T-BUCKET CE-300 Electric Acoustic. My step-mother also owns an old Acoustic Research from back in the day, but its strings broke a while ago. I’ve been meaning to fix it up so I can play it. Anyway, I suck at guitar. I’d like to get better and now I can practice without anyone telling me to stop.

So Apple announced last week that they would be doing another round of Tech Talks for iOS this year. They chose nine cities around the world, three of which were accessible to myself (ie. they’re in the United States). Within minutes of receiving the email, I had myself registered for the Tech Talk in New York City on January 13th, 2012, the day before my birthday, no less. They only allowed developers to request a spot in a single city, and while I knew New York City was likely the most popular one in the US, I chose it anyway because of ease of access. Seattle and Dallas were just a little too far away when I could just request a spot in New York City. I received an email saying they would let me know later whether I was granted a spot at the conference.

This morning I got that response. And it was a no.

iOS 5 Tech Talk Admission Status  Dear Julius Parishy, Thanks for your interest in attending the iOS 5 Tech Talk World Tour in New York City on January 13, 2012. Unfortunately, we cannot accommodate your request. We share your excitement for iOS 5 and encourage you to visit the iOS Dev Center for more details on using the latest technologies in your app. Best regards, Apple Developer Program Support

I was actually fairly confident that I was going to be able to attend the conference. I fit the criteria. I am registered developer with an application on the App Store. I am developer actively engaged in learning the newest technologies. I think that puts me in a decent position to be considered for this sort of event. I am legitimately upset with the amount of information I’ll be missing by not attending.

What frustrates me more, however, is that I am a student. The iOS 5 Tech Talks are a free event as long as you receive a spot on the roster. It was the perfect opportunity for me to learn about the newest technologies in my field of work without having to break out my wallet for anything other than travel fare. It’s unfortunate that Apple isn’t valuing people like myself for these events. And if they aren’t accepting people like me, that means they are giving positions to people who can afford to attend other events: people with enough cash to pay for travel fares and conference fees or those whose jobs expense educational trips like WWDC and other developer conferences. Basically, I feel like they’ve given my spot to someone who either doesn’t need it or can afford to get the information elsewhere.

Not cool, Apple.

I’ve sent them the following email inquiring for further information. Hopefully, they’ll respond promptly.

Hello,

I’m curious as to why I was denied a spot at the New York City tech talk. I got my request in early and I have an app on the app store. I am a young developer without expendable fiscal resources that would benefit the most these sorts of talks on iOS technology. Am I not the ideal candidate for these conferences?

It seems Apple is playing a game of favorites. Not very fair, if I may say so.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
Julius Parishy

I’ll followup if I learn anything more. In the meantime, Apple has made my aggravation list.

Life is confusing.

Before I elaborate on that I’ll just note that I’ve published the first chapter of a short story I’ve been working on to this blog. It’s child page to the one labeled “Freshman” above, and is referred to as Chapter 1. The short story is partially based on life events and generally follows the direction of life since the end of Summer 2011. The second chapter is finished and is just in the editing process; it’ll be published fairly soon, and I’ll post about it here when it’s ready.

Now back to life. Boston is a really great city and I’m enjoying it for the most part. However, I miss home terribly. I never thought I would miss New Jersey; I’ve talked so much shit about Jersey for so many years that I’ve always considered it incomprehensible that I would ever want to come back. And, as it seems, that is exactly what has happened. The Garden State is calling.

Whether or not I go back for good is not exactly decided as of yet. My options more or less boil down to the following:

• Staying in Boston and attending Northeastern University, like I am currently doing.
• Transferring to Rutgers University in New Jersey for the Spring semester.
• Taking the Spring semester off and attending Rutgers University in the Fall of 2012. This would allow me another six months of full time employment.
• Research other schools in the New Jersey area, find a better match, and attend that university in the Fall of 2012.

Well it’s October now. Time flies. It truly does. I haven’t spent much time programming lately, like I was hoping. I know I said there would be a GMPlayer release by now, but there isn’t. Development setbacks and lack of availability have seriously affected my projected timeline. There are not enough hours in the day.

I have, however, been working on a new novella of sorts. I’m calling it Freshman and it the underlying content is mostly taken from my personal life, with a few twists thrown in here or there. To stick with that theme, the genre is a dark comedy. It follows the life of a freshman college student from shortly before leaving through the first semester (a feat I have yet to accomplish, actually). It’s a mix of honest and projected feelings and events. There is definitely something amusing of watching the shitty occurrences in others’ lives so hopefully some people will find it interesting and funny. Even I think it’s funny. And it’s an adapted portrayal of my own life.

I’m thinking of releasing it chapter by chapter here on the blog. I can’t really say when, because it is sometimes hard to know when a part is complete and concrete. Currently, the first chapter is complete, so it will be available soon. The rest is still up in the air, so I’m not sure; make sure to keep posted for updates.

I am still working on GMPlayer and Puff+, as well, but those updates are going slowly as I am very busy with school work and my newfound interest in writing this story. I promise updates on both soon, though.

Not sure how I feel about being here for school. Not sure if I really like Northeastern. Considered looking into the transfer process, today. Need to give it more time, for sure. But I’m truly unsure. I’m definitely not having as much fun as I wish I was or thought I would. I think the school has a lot to do with that, but it might be too early to tell. I’m going to keep it in mind for the rest of the semester while I figure things out.

’tis life

[Edit]
Okay, so I spent several hours today (4 or so) focussing on just this. Which, all in all, is frustrating since I’d much rather focus on the actual application, but this is necessary work… anyway, I think I got it programmatically logging in again. I was able to get it to work in my test project (but it’s modular so I’m going to push it into GMPlayer soon and see what happens) 

Fun stuff.

Google now encrypts the login process for Google Music. This is pretty normal and makes sense (and is even a good thing!), but is extremely frustrating for me, since I relied on the unencrypted traffic to figure out how to authenticate with the service.

Since the recent changes, I haven’t been able to get a valid session working with Google Music programmatically.

The easiest solution here, because I don’t have access to the SSL keys used for the traffic, would be to require logging in with the Google web login form. Honestly, this isn’t the biggest deal in the world, but makes the whole application feel a little less native. I’m going to look into it for now, and maybe it’ll work out nicely. Who knows. Either way it’s really frustrating for Google to keep trying to kick me out.

Been spending countless hours in the library the last few days working on this, and after class today I’ll be doing it again. Hopefully it’ll be worth it for you guys.

So Google changed something somewhere. Logging in is broken. My old cookies still work so music can still be downloaded and played on my device which remains logged in, but trying to login from a new device doesn’t work. Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to spend looking the problem (or the patience to break out Wireshark again…). I’ll fix it (if I can) as soon as possible.

[EDIT] Got bored 10 minutes later and opened the Developer Tools in Chrome. They only changed a URL for the login. It works again!

In the mean time, if anyone following this hasn’t seen that Google released an HTML5 driven player for iOS. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the drive for HTML5 applications because I think that creating fluid, well-designed applications with HTML5 and family is more difficult than the tools I have at my disposal as an Cocoa Touch developer. Native applications are prettier and faster. With that said, I will continue working on GMPlayer for the foreseeable future.

But just for the record: Google sucks. Not really; I love them. But they have managed to piss me off a lot in the last month or so.

In other news, starting to become acclimated with college life. Boston is an awesome city. Though, honestly, being a freshman guy is probably the downfall of all that is collegiate. Hopefully, it’ll get better. And, oh hey, for those interested in my personal life, this guy is now single. Get to live that bachelor life, yo.