Life & Research Notes

This Monday I’ll join up full-time with Swivel, a social data aggregation, analysis and publishing platform. They are a startup in downtown SF, and I’ll be acting in a dual role as both designer and engineer, collaborating with some very talented developers to push the app to the next phase.

I actually learned about these guys quite a while back, as data aggregation and visualization was an area of interest for me when I applied to the lab, and when they got their first round of press I definitely noticed them. It’ll be fun to pick back up on this trail, well armed with my PLW and ML experiences. Eventually Swivel aims to act as an open bazaar of data, not only of static sets as it is now, but also live, dynamic feeds via the upcoming API. On top of the core services, they are also working on publishing tools for people to weave the data into consumable narratives.

No doubt the web industry is hot again, and I’ve seen a lot of interesting opportunities. Yet since I first contacted them, Swivel has solidly stood out from the crowd with an original and powerful underlying idea, combined with a fun, fast, smart, hard-working, and cohesive team. Needless to say I’m excited to dive in to the tasty data goodness.

Update: Swivel is also in the news today with pieces on TechCrunch and O’Reilly Radar about their recent success at the OECD World Forum.

Things are a little rocky right now. Work prospects are great, and the bay area is treating me well with some beautiful weather. But ten days ago I was blindsided by some unexpected personal issues. After three years of what I thought was a solid, special relationship, I’m single once again, by a unilateral decision not my own.

There’s not much to do about it right now, just cope, and look for strategies for moving forward. I didn’t intend this blog to be a repository of emotional baggage. I’d rather keep it outward facing and optimistic. But at the moment it’s difficult to find that voice.

I realized today that I’ve been subscribed to a false belief that great creativity often comes out of intense, painful life experience. With this thick sadness clouding my vision, creativity is on hold, and I’m just concentrating on keeping one foot in front of the other, and navigating all the other parts of life that suddenly seem a lot harder. My most creative moments have happened in my happiest periods, times of intense confidence and feelings of endless possibility. Sadness doesn’t make me create. It numbs.

So for the few people who actually read this thing, thanks for sticking by me, and apologies for the naval gazing introspective stuff here, but my past few weeks have warranted it. This is my material now. This is my life. So I’m going to learn from it, the same way I learned from the lab. These changes are forcing me to go back to basics, making lists of what I need or want to achieve, and trying to make some plans about how to get there. These aren’t ambitious by most standards, but they are a starting point. I’m training at altitude here, where it is harder to breathe and think straight. If I can nail this, if I can keep moving and even grow now, when I come back down to sea level I’m going to be in good shape. That’s when I’ll really make things happen.

Phew, just arrived back in the bay area late last night. I’m in Mill Valley at my parents’ house for the time being, and it is such a gorgeous day. The weather here is a very immediate confirmation that I made a good decision to come back out. I’ll be in the city tomorrow for some meetings, then hopefully some time to wander around a little.

I just received word that my ftp account on Dreamhost has been hacked. Some of the stuff was copied, some other stuff maybe even modified. It apparently wasn’t just me or something I did wrong. 3500 other FTP accounts were compromised.

I was already becoming frustrated with them for being slow, but this is way beyond that level of badness. I had some sensitive stuff in there. I feel foolish, but even more I feel angry. Time to really start looking for another host.

Excerpt from the email I received:

We have detected what appears to be the exploit of a number of accounts belonging to DreamHost customers, and it appears that your account was one of those affected.

We’re still working to determine how this occurred, but it appears that a 3rd party found a way to obtain the password information associated with approximately 3,500 separate FTP accounts and has used that information to append data to the index files of customer sites using automated scripts (primarily for search engine optimization purposes).

Our records indicate that only roughly 20% of the accounts accessed - less than 0.15% of the total accounts that we host - actually had any changes made to them. Most accounts were untouched.