Elvis Montero

Back home

The long blogging hiatus has come to an end. In case you’re interested, I did very well in my MS project. RIT is sending my degree certificate in November. Yay!

I’ve been struggling to get back in the writing mood since I moved to DR. I can’t seem to find a quite, nice place to do this, mainly because I haven’t actually gotten a respite. Life’s been a constant barrage of chores and work, and I’ve only been back for a little bit over 3 weeks now. I expect this situation to change soon. There are a lot of cool ideas that I’d like to explore and share with you. The pusillanimous writer in me is not making more excuses though. I’ll be right back with some cool stuff.

Oh, I’ve picked up Twitter recently. So if you want to follow my updates, feel free to do so here.

View of the Dominican Republic from an airplane during landing. I’ve seen this view many times throughout the years. It never gets old.

Source: iconise’s photostream

Posted in Life, Travel | No Comments »

Drought and reading

The blogging drought will likely continue, as I’m very, very pressed for time (I’m supposed to defend my thesis in early August!). Before I go completely MIA, I thought it’d be cool to share a few of the interesting books and articles I’ve read recently. Let your mind dwell freely on the following list:

• The Fountainhead: I came to know about Ayn Ryand’s work after I read Mark Cuban saying that every hopeful entrepreneur should scrutinize The Fountainhead. I shared the following comments with a friend of mine upon finishing the book (slightly edited):

“The book is amazing! Ayn’s cogent ideas blew me away. At first, I thought Roark was nothing but a rebel, an antagonist, as I made clear to you in my previous remarks. Even as I found Roak’s ways charming, I still couldn’t really understand why he was so adamant, so unyielding and borderline stubborn in his views. ‘What’s up with this guy?’, I thought more often than not. But it all eventually made sense. Howard is not a second hander. Howard was, as you so adequately put it, true to himself. He wasn’t looking for recognition. He wasn’t looking for money. He just wanted to create. He aspired to create, and create, and create some more for the sheer sake of creating, as any other earnest creator in any field would naturally do. His devotion was not to other men or their approval, but to his true passion. This is one of the most important messages I’ve received from any book, fictional and non fictional alike, in a long time. I now understand why this book is a recommended reading to any aspiring entrepreneur. I’m glad I read it.”

• Sustainable Energy — without the hot air: The debunking of many misconceptions about sustainable energy ensues. From the free book’s section “Can we live on renewables?”:

“You can’t power  a TV with cat food, nor can you feed a cat from a wind turbine. Energy exists in different forms — chemical, electrical, kinetic, and heat, for example. For a sustainable energy plan to add up, we need both the forms and amounts of energy consumption and production to match up. Converting energy from one form to another — from chemical to electrical, as at a fossil-fuel power station, or from electrical to chemical, as in a factory making hydrogen from water — usually involves substantial losses of useful energy.”

• Silas Marner: I found Silas Marner at a Barnes & Noble bookstore when I was looking for a short novel to keep me busy during class breaks. George Elliot’s story was first published in 1861. The moral of this story is far from outdated though. I highly recommend it.

• When I’m dead, how will my loved ones break my password? I think this is a question many of us should entertain at least once to some extent. Doctorow’s overly sardonic tone is just a plus.

• Why do the rich keep working? Yet another interesting question. From the article:

“Some of the men craved the chance to keep proving themselves, perhaps to a doubting authority figure from their past. Others saw work as a getaway from a stale marriage. Still others said they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if they weren’t working. More time with friends? Many of them had no close friends. Hobbies? You can only play so many rounds of golf. Travel? “They probably want to burn their passports,” says Mintz.”

• How much of live are you actually living? The existentialist element of this list that’ll undoubtedly make you go “Huh?”. Forget about the author’s metaphorical twists and rethorical gymnastics for a second. Focus on the crux of the matter. And? You’re welcome.    ;-)

There you have it. Suit yourselves. Now, if you’ll excuse me, yours truly needs to log off and focus on some heavy-duty coding. Ciao.

Oh, hai! Wana codez too?

Source: ju.ju.bees’ photostream via Flickr.

Posted in Reading Material | 1 Comment »

“Strolling in the Cloud” number one

Strolling in the Cloud, one of my first Reporter articles, came about after I’d endured a few frustrating attempts at accessing my Gmail account. Surprisingly, I found out yesterday the article had the most positive votes for the 09.05.2008 issue.

So this is how it feels to have your work recognized… Let me tell you something, it feels pretty damn good! This makes me want to do a better job at future installments. Unfortunately, I won’t be at RIT next year. As a result, there won’t be anymore opinionated articles at Reporter from yours truly. I’ll now have to find another wacky, too-smart-for-her-own-good editor at a gritty college magazine willing to cope with my patronizing and overly satirical tone. Oh, wait. I can always blog!  

You can see Reporter’s People’s Choice 2008 – 2009 here.

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More options for all of us

Google introduced recently a wonderful set of options that would allow users to drill down search results. Here’s the official video explaining the nature of the new options:

I’m a big fan of the Wonder wheel and Timeline options. Good stuff!

Posted in Technology | No Comments »

Paradoxes of the freelance world

I started offering freelance software development services out of necessity. As a cash-strapped student, I’m always looking for fast, easy ways to make an extra buck. Roughly 6 months ago, while a few friends and I discussed how to increase our incomes with the occasional one-time project, Elance was brought up. Unbeknown to me, the site was a focal point for freelance activities on the web. After reviewing a few profiles, the site’s paying policies and the cost of the cheapest subscription, I signed up. My goal was to offer my Java and PHP skills to as many clients as possible. I was vying for some of those top dollars PHP developers were pulling in. As it’s often the case though, reality sank in fast.

4 days and 14 unsuccessful bids later, I realized this was not going to be easy. I also noticed something else was not entirely right. The way buyers and providers interacted most of the time seemed unconventional. Fortunately, it hit me soon enough. I came up with the following list 6 months after using the site with just a handful of successes. These are the contradictions that would make you utter profanities at a rate you never thought possible. They defy all logic and reasoning. Yet, one can find stuff like this daily at Elance. I call these peculiar inconsistencies in common sense the Incongruous Triad.

Experts = cheap labor

I’ve always thought of experts in any field as the personification of greatness. An expert is so good at what he/she does that it pretty much leaves the rest of us mere mortals looking mentally handicapped if we dare to emulate them. Expertise doesn’t come smoothly though. Dedication, patience and lots of hard work are a must if you aspire to transcend the barrier of mere competency. Naturally, one would be compelled to think expertise is anything but cheap, right? Well, apparently, that is not the case:

This buyer wants an expert in IT (whatever that means) to go through his code base and perform the outlined tasks. The “extreme complexity” of the project should not dissuade potential bidders. Oh, the buyer also wants the work to be performed immediately. All that for LESS than 500 bucks! Did I just teleport myself into Bizarro World?

Underselling yourself is beneficial to you

I find the prospect of charging 50 dollars for a project hard to fathom. Even if one’s costs are nearly zero (and they just can’t be), 50 bucks is a preposterous figure. Furthermore, Elance charges 8.75% of all the money you’re paid for a project. So, to be precise, we’re talking about 45.63 dollars. Hold onto that figure while we try to make sense out of the following project’s bids:

It seems that the best way to bid for a project is to charge virtually nothing. Who do you think is most likely to get the project? The developer charging 24,000 dollars or the one charging 50? You’re free to scratch your head now.

Unintelligible and pointless project descriptions are uber-awesome

The importance of requirements gathering cannot be emphasized enough. Anyone who’s ever done any software development at any level would rightly concede that the most difficult thing in the world is knowing WHAT to do. The HOW is just a matter of planning, coding and deployment; then the proverbial repeat, repeat, repeat, ad infinitum. Nevertheless, regardless of this “common knowledge”, gems such as this one appear more often than not:

The title for this posting was PHP programmer needed for system changes. No, your eyes are not deceiving you. You read it right. This buyer wants a PHP programmer to do some, er, system changes? System changes?! What is that supposed to mean? What IS a system change? How can you characterize a system change? Are we talking about scripts running as cron jobs periodically? Are we talking about PHP libraries used by aforementioned cron jobs? Are we talking about different scripts altogether? Did he mean something else rather than PHP? What’s the context here? What in the world is a system change?!

That’s not THE most interesting part though. Whatever it is you consider the most wonderful thing in the world is unequivocally outshone by this simple fact: this project had 2 bids already! Let’s put that in perspective. What do those bids mean? Well, it essentially means 2 developers read the buyer’s mind and KNEW, ostensibly a priori, WHAT to do and HOW, while also inferring out of thin air how much to charge. It’s all simply beyond me.

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You can rightfully claim situations like these are only abundant on sites such as Elance, where the bidding nature of the site favors the buyers greatly. That could well be the case. However, when it comes to software development services, the reality is freelance work is hardly free of difficulties. I would highly recommend the activity to anyone looking to earn the sporadic extra buck. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t quit my regular job in hopes of instant freedom.

If you have your own bizarre experiences from your forays into the freelance world, please do share. I’m always up for a good laugh.

Posted in Freelancing | 6 Comments »