Nick Bradbury

The Bradbury Family's Rocking Weekend

This was a rock-and-roll weekend for the Bradbury household.  It started when my coworker Darrin Long let me know that Rush was playing at Red Rocks this summer.  I mentioned this to my wife, who suggested we both go, and bring our two kids with us.  I was able to get four pre-sale tickets, so fellow NewsGator-ites be forewarned: there will be a Bradbury invasion in June!

The musical mood continued the next day, when I broke down and bought a copy of Rock Band for the Xbox 360.  This turned out to be the perfect game for our family: I was on lead guitar, my son played bass, my daughter banged the drums, and my wife courageously handled the vocals.  It was a blast, although I have to admit, it was weird hearing my lovely wife singing Radiohead's "Creep."

That night I took a break from Rock Band to attend a Foo Fighters concert here in Nashville.  I like the Foo Fighters, but I'm not a huge fan, and I wasn't expecting too much from the show.  It turned out to be a great concert, though, especially the acoustic section.  And I believe it was the first time I've seen a triangle solo :)

The following morning the Rock Band fun continued after I bought a bunch of new songs on Xbox Live.  My son and I blistered our fingers playing Metallica's "And Justice for All" and "Blackened" on hard several times in a row.  We're both itching to play again, but we'll have to wait until next weekend, because we have a "no video games during the school week" rule here (a rule I'm cursing as much as my son is right now).

Another Weekend Eaten by Guitar Hero

Once again a weekend's big plans were tossed aside by Guitar Hero.

This time it was the brand-spanking-new Guitar Hero III that laid our plans to waste.  We picked it up on Friday, and didn't stop playing until the kids went to bed last night.  Oh, alright, I'll admit it - my kids stopped playing at bedtime, but I kept thrashing away long after they were asleep.

Overall I like the set list in GHII better, but GHIII does have some great additions like "One" (finally, Metallica on Guitar Hero!) and "Cliffs of Dover" (one of my favorite guitar instrumentals).  We had a blast getting through the final "boss" battle, and even struggled our way to the end of the finger-crippling "Through the Fire and Flames" (on medium, of course - and we never did better than three stars).

Today we're soaking our hands in ice water, hoping to be healed well enough to play again next weekend.

I Should Stop Taking My Kids to the Toy Store

Want to know why? Because I always end up coming home with more toys than they do.

Today is the perfect example. I drove my daughter to the toy store and told her she could pick out one toy. But I came home with two, both of them decorations for my office desk:

God help me, I'm a sucker for goofy toys.

Don't Trade Your Life for Tech

Those of us in the technology sector see it all the time: co-workers who put in incredible hours coding away as though they have nothing else in their lives.  And quite often, they don't.

I used to be one of those people.

When I was working on HomeSite over a decade ago, I rarely left my desk.  If I wasn't coding, I was answering email or doing some other work-related task.  I hardly slept, ate far too much junk food, and traded my health for what I thought was a successful career as a software developer.

If that sounds familiar to you, do yourself a favor and stop living this way.  It's not worth it.  Eventually you'll look back and wish you would've spent more time getting out and meeting people (non-geeky people, that is), and you'll look down at your pizza-filled belly and wonder how you let yourself get so unhealthy.

A friend of mine plays for the NFL, and despite the obvious differences in our chosen careers, we've also noticed some similarities.  When they're in their 20's, football players often have their youth eaten up by their jobs, and they reach their mid-30's with little to show for their lives outside of career-related highs and lows.  By the time they hit 40, their sagging health reflects the stress and damage they did to themselves when they were younger.  Sounds an awful lot like the world of software development, doesn't it?

These days, I have a great wife, two wonderful kids, and a nice social life that doesn't involve anything remotely tech-related.  Sure, I still have late-night coding frenzies every now and then, but for the most part I stop work at a decent hour and de-geek myself by spending time with my friends and family.

And you know what?  I write better code because of it, and I make better decisions at work because of it.  Not submerging myself in tech all the time actually makes me more productive when I'm sitting in front of the keyboard.  Wish I would've know that when I was in my 20's!

Did I Sell Out (Part II)?

When I asked "Did I Sell Out?" yesterday, I was more than a little worried about the response I'd get.  So I'm both flattered and relieved to see so many positive comments.  My thanks to everyone who took the time to reply.

Of course, there were some negative reactions, mostly about TopStyle.  I want to make it clear that TopStyle's stagnation was just as much my fault as it was NewsGator's.  It would be easy to blame everything on the "big company that swallowed me up," but the truth is that NewsGator has been exceptionally good to me.  As Ian Landsman points out, being acquired can be a horrible, demoralizing process - but that hasn't been the case with NewsGator.  They've been very hands-off with my work, enabling me to feel like I'm still an independent developer despite working for such a huge corporation (that's a joke, folks - we're a fairly small company).  I won't say that the acquisition has been easy, but I can't imagine it being any easier.

Before the acquisition, I was already struggling to find time to update TopStyle due to all the attention that FeedDemon required, and that situation worsened after the acquisition, in part due to the extra work required to enable FeedDemon to support NewsGator's synchronization platform (and synchronization was the key reason I sought the acquisition).  Really, the bottom line here is that I bit off more than I could chew (both pre- and post- acquisition), and TopStyle suffered as a result.

As many of you know, we've been searching for a developer to take over TopStyle for quite some time, and that proved more difficult than we anticipated.  Apparently it's not easy finding someone (1) with several years of Delphi programming experience and (2) with strong UI skills and (3) who deeply understands the needs of web authors and (4) has the ability to take over such a large project by themselves :)

This search delayed the next version of TopStyle far more than we would've liked, but the good news is that we have found someone who meets all four of the above criteria.  I don't want to announce who it is just yet because he hasn't officially started, but once he's up to speed, I'll introduce him here.  In the meantime, I'll be working with him to take over TopStyle and define TopStyle 4.0's feature set - yes, there will be a TopStyle 4.0!

Did I Sell Out?

Every now and then I'll receive a comment like this one from someone claiming that I "sold out" when I was acquired by NewsGator.

On the one hand, I'm a little flattered by these comments, because they mean that someone relies on my software enough to get pissed off at me. And I try not to take them too seriously, since accusations of "selling out" happen all over the place - for example, every time a rock band changes direction, they're accused of selling out, regardless of whether that change was for artistic or purely financial reasons.

But it's hard not to be insulted, and it's especially stinging when someone suggests that I have "zero attachment" to my software. I'm personally attached to every application I've created - I sweated over each one for a long time, and feel personally responsible for every bug, missing feature, and usability problem in them. And to think that my reason for being acquired was just to make money ignores the fact that I was doing just fine financially by selling two fairly popular applications as a one-man show.

Of course, I can understand why TopStyle customers would think I sold out. After all, TopStyle has stagnated since I was acquired by NewsGator. My hope is that making TopStyle 3.5 - which includes some fairly significant new features - a free upgrade will serve in some small part as an apology for taking so long between releases.

Given that I'm a somewhat-independent developer, my reputation means everything to me, and my name would be tarnished - perhaps forever - if I really did sell out at the expense of my software and its customers. Are these accusations of my selling out limited to a few disgruntled customers, or do a lot of people believe that I sold out?

I'd honestly like to know, so please feel free to comment here.

One Fish, Two Fish, Dead Fish, New Fish

Yesterday we had a funeral service for a goldfish that belonged to my six-year-old daughter Hannah.  She won it at a carnival recently, and it never really adapted to the non-carny life.  When we looked in the goldfish bowl yesterday, it was clear that her now-floating fishy had seen better days.

So I took her to a nearby pond, and we had a brief but touching ceremony which ended with her plopping the ex-fish into the water.  I asked her if she wanted to wish him well wherever he's going, and she responded, "I wish he could go to Disney World and have a chance to ride all the rides."

Not a bad thought, really.  After all, who wouldn't want a quick spin through the Haunted Mansion after they pass away?

Guitar Hero II Ate My Weekend

Instead of going to Gnomedex this past weekend, I chose to stay home with my kids because today is their first day at a new school. So I had big plans for the weekend, plans that involved spending "quality time" with them making sure they were comfortable with going to a new school.

But then my son asked to play Guitar Hero II, which he received as a birthday present. And every plan went out the window. Holy crap, what an addictive game!

We'd already played all the way to the end when we got to try Freebird (on medium), so my son, my daughter and I spent the majority of the weekend re-playing our favorite songs. My daughter decided that Jane's Addiction's Stop was her favorite, while my son preferred YYZ and Pyschobilly Freakout. Me, I liked 'em all.

All I can say is, after a weekend of Guitar Hero II, I got blisters on my fingers. And I guess my kids are well prepared to enter the school of rock :)

Hot Enough to Boil an Entire Monkey

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, I'm happy to report that as of 10am today, our air conditioning is finally working again.

But going two days and nights without air conditioning hasn't been fun, especially given that temperatures have risen above 100 degrees this week.

I have to agree with Shelley Powers - I can't imagine living without air conditioning, and I feel for those who do. I admit it: I am spoiled yuppie scum when it comes to staying cool. As critical as Internet access is to a techie like myself, I could live without connectivity longer than I could live without air conditioning.

Air conditioning is more important than Internet access - imagine that!

Hot Enough to Boil a Monkey's Bum

Like much of the U.S., we're experiencing a heat wave here in Nashville, and the 100-degree temperatures are expected to last throughout the week.

So it's a bad time for my air conditioning to fail, which unfortunately it did yesterday.

My office, which is on the top level of my house, reached 98 degrees before I shut everything down last night.  I discovered that my computer misbehaves at that temperature, throwing up a nice assortment of BSoDs.  Needless to say, I'll be working elsewhere until the air conditioning is fixed.

PS: Just in case you're wondering, the title of this post comes from a Monty Python sketch.