I’ve had a long running mental list of things I want to eventually do, but I thought it might be fun to post a few examples. This is only an “includes but is not limited to” sample, my list is pretty much endless, No order of priority implied:
Learn to fly a plane
Get reasonably good at Parkour
Visit Antarctica
Vist Tibet
Go flying in a wingsuit
Become competively good at Chess
Get a Phd in Physics
Go on a non-religuous service mission
Release a Musical Album that sells at least 1000 copies
Publish a fiction novel that sells at least 10,000 copies
Visit the great wall of China
Perform a life saving feat in a medical emergency
Learn to Wind Surf
Go Skydiving
Free Climb a 100 feet vertically (just enough to be life-threatening)
It makes XML easy to use and easy to query. Gone are the days of parsing things with a SaxParser unless you’re really hard up for control of you text.
Also, I love the Ruby Nokogiri Gem.
XML is like violence - if it doesn’t solve your problems, you are not using enough of it.
- Nokogiri docs
But I do have to say that there is a lack of good examples and documentation for anything particularly advanced. I found a working solution to my issue, but thought I’d paste here what I wanted to do versus what I ended up doing.
Given the following XML,
123456789101112
<Container>
<Set >
<RecommendedCoverSong>Hurt by NiN - Johnny Cash</RecommendedCoverSong>
<RecommendedOriginalSong>She Like Electric by Smoosh</RecommendedOriginalSong>
<RecommendedDuetSong>Portland by Jack White and Loretta Lynn</RecommendedDuetSong>
<RecommendedGroupSong>SoS by Abba</RecommendedGroupSong>
<CoverSong>Kangaroo by Big Star - This Mortal Coil</CoverSong>
<OriginalSong>Pick up the Change by Wilco</OriginalSong>
<DuetSong>I am the Cosmos by Pete Yorn and Scarlett Johansen</DuetSong>
<GroupSong>Kitties Never Rest by Rex or Regina</GroupSong>
</Set>
</Container>
I’d like to grab two elements that include “Cover” in the tag, and then operate on each of them.
Nokogiri’s use of Xpath easily allows the first query expression like so: price_xml = doc_xml.xpath('Container/Set/*[contains(name(), "Cover")]')
I’ve selected all the elements (using *) in Set, and then used an Xpath Expression function:
contains, in order to specify that Adult must be in the name. This returns two Nokogiri XML Nodes in Nodeset.
What I wanted to do was then select one of these elements based on a pattern in the tagname use my favorite tool, Xpath.
But I just couldn’t get Nokogiri to give it to me, and several solutions ending up selecting way more than the 1 element I wanted. (Because the nodes in the Nodeset still contain relationships with their parents)
I’m cross posting this on StackOverflow as a question, just in case any Nokogiri Xpath enthusiasts want to recommend a solution that doesn’t resort to find()
Google is rolling out it’s experimental Gigabit Broadband FIber networks across the country in lab like experiments. One of the early locations is Kansas City and Think Big Partners, a local Incubator has sponsored a Business Plan competition worth 100,000K. The Gigabit Challenge.
I’m honored to be a part of the judging panel with some very esteemed folks from both local KC Enterprise like the Kauffman Foundation, and National players like Silicon Valley Bank.
I happened to be visitng KC for 2 weeks a few months back and thought: “Surely there’s a co-working space in town, or maybe even an incubator.” After all, I’ve recently discovered very vibrant startup scenes and icubators popping up in various parts of the midwest and hinterlands of America. (Take Note Silicon Valley, Silicon Alley, Silicon Beach there is an engine of innovation and aspiration all across this great big country). I stumbled upon ThinkBig via their relationship with Startup Weekend. The first week, I ended up working with a resident freelance designer on several projects and eventually spent some time talking with Herb Sih, managing partner and co-founder of the incubator. He turned me on to just how involved and important these local incubators can be to local business and entrepeneur communities. While Tech Stars really has changed the way everything in Boulder Colorado works, I can’t say that YC or 500Startups have had much impact on their local communities. That’s not part of their mission. But when you’re dealing with cities that are more regional and less “National” cities, the impact can be huge, and the presence, strength or lack thereof for a Local Incubator can make an enormous difference in a community’s business culture, economic health, and overall quality of life. I have a lot to say on this subject, but this post is actually about the Gigabit Challenge and not local Incubators.
I have 10 of the 100+ entries to score and I’m both delighted and disappointed.
Disappointed:
Of the 10 I’m scoring, only 1 really focused on the Network, and what opportunies Google’s Fiber creates. Of course, I’ve advised startups to enter as many competitions as they can in their early development phase so I suspect many of the entries are just entering a Startup Contest, and not really thinking about the speficis of this challenge, and how they can take advantage of new capabilties and access to consumers/business via the Hi Speed network. I was also disappointed to see that a number of local startups are suffering from the same Think Small mentatlity that seems to be frothing the pool of Tech Crunch lately. Little Bets! Build a feature/app that makes only incremental changes and keep iterating until you go viral. Hooey, Hogwash. That may be a successful project management strategy but it is fundamentally incompatible with Vision.
Excited:
Kansas City has been known for 2 major technical areas, healthcare IT and Telecommunications. I was excited to come across several companies working in Medical Data (I don’t think I can talk about the companies until after the competition) and it’s companies dealing with Medical Data that have the strongest fit for doing something interesting with Really Fast broadband.
Apologies:
To any panel judge I’ve ever slagged or insulted for being clue-less in the past, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize Judging Startups and Business Plans is hard work, and trying to find a way to provide meaningful critique without being a jerk requires a lot of effort.
Best of luck to all the entrants, I look forward to getting a sneak peek at the Semifinalists to be announced next week.
Hipmunk.com has a three-month global Alexa traffic rank of 15,128, and approximately 62% of visits to this site consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces). Visitors to the site view an average of 1.2 unique pages per day. The site is relatively popular among users in the cities of San Francisco (where it is ranked #1,325) and Seattle-Tacoma (#3,117). Compared with internet averages, Hipmunk.com appeals more to Caucasians; its audience also tends to consist of childless, highly educated men earning over $60,000 who browse from work.
Hipmunk.com has a three-month global Alexa traffic rank of 15,128, and approximately 62% of visits to this site consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces). Visitors to the site view an average of 1.2 unique pages per day. The site is relatively popular among users in the cities of San Francisco (where it is ranked #1,325) and Seattle-Tacoma (#3,117). Compared with internet averages, Hipmunk.com appeals more to Caucasians; its audience also tends to consist of childless, highly educated men earning over $60,000 who browse from work.
Hipmunk.com has a three-month global Alexa traffic rank of 15,128, and approximately 62% of visits to this site consist of only one pageview (i.e., are bounces). Visitors to the site view an average of 1.2 unique pages per day. The site is relatively popular among users in the cities of San Francisco (where it is ranked #1,325) and Seattle-Tacoma (#3,117). Compared with internet averages, Hipmunk.com appeals more to Caucasians; its audience also tends to consist of childless, highly educated men earning over $60,000 who browse from work.
So, I’m itching for a cliche of a tattoo (maybe on my left shoulder) and was thinking about using the Chinese symbol for Laughter but can’t figure out if there is just 1 unequivocal character for that. It’s funny how the symbol for Love seems to include the symbol for laughter. I just don’t want to end up with “Laughing Jack-Ass” without knowing it. On the other hand, that would be pretty dang funny.
> They have my email address, they know my identity. They even know WHETHER I READ THE NYTIMES travel pages or not > > Shouldn’t they know Im not a Ritz Carlton kind of guy? >
With all the talk about the Startup Bubble, one thing that is commonly lost is that we are MEASURING the wrong thing. If we’re talking about the Startup Financing bubble, then by all means, it’s likely to peak, or even pop, and soon, for sure. But today’s startups don’t require the same amount of capital to get going that the 1st DotCom Bubble’s startups did. It’s easy to bootstrap with low cost Cloud Computing, Software frameworks that let developers get apps or sites up & running in 1-3 months, and a new clean startup philosophy to focuses on Customer Development and Iterating (pivots) over large scale tech investment. These days, you never hear the phrase “If you build it they will come”.
This graph is from WallStreet Journal post in 2010 this time last year. Of course it can’t/couldn’t continue. I’ve read at least 10 posts in the last 2 weeks about the investment market peaking for Startups, and at a minimum that the Valuations are beginning to stablize or even decrease.
Now I’m glossing over an important point: which is
There is a lot to be said for this theory, but when you’re labor costs are 1 developer, 1 business development/sales guy, and 1 designer (most of whom are under 25 and don’t have families) then it doesn’t take a large amount of Revenue to keep the growth going strong.
It’s true folks, there is less money being sloshed around today than there was a year ago, and that’s going to have an impact on your next Round. Blogger’s typical end this kind of post with “Better go get that money now!”
