i’ve learned a lot working there; it was the first venture-funded startup i had worked for. i got to see the team grow from around 5 to the current 20-something. my co-workers and teammates were all immensely skilled in areas different than i, so it was a great experience to witness how they did what they did. we worked like mad to get twine launched. i now leave it in their capable hands to allow it to grow and mature. keep an eye on it, there are a lot of cool ideas that should be surfacing in the next few months.

the completely different thing is going to work for a gaming company, electrotank. i’m not much of a gamer myself (aside from lots of mario kart. comment if you’ve got it on the wii as well so we can play!),

it will be an opportunity to learn about an entirely different industry. what i’ll be doing is of course what i’m good at, helping architect/design/build the back-end systems for maintainability and scaling. their core product is built on apache mina, so this will also allow me to spend more time with the community than i had in the past year.

i wish all my past radar colleagues the best, look forward to meeting all my new teammates, and tackling the fun challenges ahead!

something is missing. but is it? i just found a recipe at the cubamania forums, and its quite similar… simpler, in fact. it tastes like a missing spice to me, but perhaps its far simpler, just the natural taste of the vegetables not obscured by anything? this is going to require additional research.

paul graham’s talk was a motivational one to debunk (or support) one’s desires to either start a startup (or not). i’ll admit i haven’t read all of his essay’s, but i’ll guess that you can probably divine much of what he said from them, even though its not all in one single essay.

max levchin was easily the most entertaining speaker. his best advice: organize your work so that user’s motivations align with one of the seven deadly sins

the partovi brothers gave a time-constrained talk about do’s and don’ts…

• FOCUS
• don’t be distracted by the press
• politics will set it at ~20 people (if its going to happen). hard to extricate.
• don’t let crappy team members stick around, it’ll be bad for morale

rahoul seth talked about the financial details of startups. he described the financing stages, what the various types of stock are, and then some tips about various types of capital. founders goals should be to end up with 5-10% of the company at liquidity. the take-away? DO NOT FUND WITH DEBT.

mitch kapor had the “keynote” spot (the only 1-hour talk). spoke about his experience starting lotus. i didn’t take many notes here, but one interesting tidbit was about how startups say they are a great place to work, and then in the offer letter, put in verbiage about how you’re an “employee at will” and can be “fired for any reason”. he said how he’s always remove that language, and put something softer. for under-performing people, put them on a remediation plan, as it’ll be better for the health of the company overall. he also mentioned some research in the late 90’s his wife did about startup cultures, and found that overall, startups have more bullying and public humilation going on amongst employees.

mark zuckerberg came off as dick. he had no slides, and just talked like a pompous ass on the stage. he had two points: the importance of being technical (good!) and of being young (bad!). he tried to categorize innovation as only happening during youth, giving some examples. this contradicts what david galenson has postulated, that there are two types of innovators, and only one type occurs during youth. i’m sure facebook has plenty of public humiliation going on based upon his attitude.

finally, joel lehrer did his best to make a somewhat try topic (patents) interesting. intellectual property law has always been interesting to me, so i enjoyed it. i just would have appreciated a faster-moving pace though the material.

(there was a “recent founders panel” as the last thing, the most enjoyable thing being a hilarious slideshow from the reddit crew about their adventures)

overall, a very educational day. totally worth my time. i’d highly encourage everyone to attend next time it rolls around.

in other news, this morning is my last in brooklyn. in a few hours, tricia, mike, the cats and i fly to san francisco. (mike is coming to ferry our 3rd cat, since jetBlue has a one pet per human policy). here’s to this new chapter in our life being a good one!

Intelligent design ‘not science’, says Vatican astronomer: “While Cardinal warns of evolution-as-dogma”

(Via The Register.)

Even the Vatican doesn’t believe that claptrap. However, they did learn their lesson with Galileo

What is Web 2.0? You redefine the paradigm: “Friday Poll Results Collective intelligence – It’s not just for badgers”

(Via The Register.)

I think the your brain on LSD bit in the pie chart might be a bit too small..

thankfully, someone took the time to setup a website, The Netflix Settlement Sucks. it has some explicit details on the shittyness of the settlement, as well as a PDF of the letter you need to send to opt out.. so go do it!