After spending the last two weeks on the road in Canada – going from Vancouver to Mount Robson to Banff – we reached our last step of out trip: Calgary, Alberta. This is the last post on our Canada trip, I am looking forward to hearing from you and your experiences, if you did anything similar.

Olympic park

We were lucky to be able to stay with family in Calgary (Thank you!), so no review/recommendation for a hotel in Calgary from us. We stayed really close to the Canada Olympic Park (COP) and had a great view on Downtown Calgary from there. Calgary is a pretty young city when you compare it to European cities. It grew due to a lot of oil around it. I am kind of curious what will happen when the oil is running low.

Downtown Calgary

The view and the landscape around Calgary is just fabulous. On a not foggy day you can see the Rocky Mountains. Of the 5 days we spent in Calgary there was one rainy/foggy day. Guess which day we picked to go Downtown and visit the Calgary Tower! Yes, the rainy one. It was still impressive. They have a glass floor which really feels wrong to step on and although it was raining you were able to see a good amount of interesting things around the tower.

Due to the rain we were really happy about the mall structure they have in Calgary. There is a what I would call maze of different malls inside other buildings with corridors spanning between different buildings which made the shopping in Calgary a unique experience. Make sure you plan some time to check this out when you are in or around Calgary.

Saying goodbye to Canada

The last 3.5 weeks have been one great experience. It was first time camping for us. It was the first time in Canada. Definately not the last on both points. Camping gives you a certain amount of flexibility and the chance to stay at different places every night. You could do that with hotels as well, but with camping you can go places that are not too over crowded and see parts of the nature that stayed untouched by humans so far.

Everyone in Canada we talked to was really nice and tried to make us feel welcome in their country. And we will definately come back. So if you are looking for a recommendation if you should / should not go to Canada (especially the western part), do it! You will not be disappointed not matter what you are looking for. Be it action and sports, or nature and silence, or a mix of both!

This is part 3 of 4 of our trip through western Canada (see part 1: Vancouver and Vancouver Island and part 2: Sea to Mount Robson for the first two parts). So far our trip has been a blast. Though we had some bad luck with the weather and lots of rain, the landscape was incredible.

The last part of our camping trip takes us to the next province of Canada: Alberta. There we went to Jasper, Lake Louise and Banff.

Heading to Alberta

Starting from Mount Robson we were off to our new destination – Alberta. Alberta is the size of Germany but only X Mio people live there. Entering the Jasper National Park. So far we have only camped in provincial parks but now we were about to enter a National Park. There is a booth right after you cross the border where you have to buy your Park ticket (telling them how long you are going to stay there or if you are just transitting through). For us it meant 5 days in the park – the ticket included the Jasper, Yoho and Banff National Parks. At first we were kinda shocked by the price: ~ CAD 100, but well, there was no way of not paying and getting into the Park (I am sure people have done this before, but not us).

We soon realized that the landscape – domintaed by the Rocky Mountains – is a lot different than what we have seen before. And it was impressive. But see for yourself:

Camping in a National Park

There is a slight difference between the Provincial Campgrounds in BC and the campgrounds in the National Parks: the size. The first campground we went to was almost full and there were only a few spots left without electricity. As we had our batteries fully charged before we did not need that the first night, but already made reservations for a campground with electricity for the second night. You also have to buy a so called fire permit if you want to have a camp fire, as for the campgrounds we went to, that permit (~ CAD 8) included wood for your fire. So it was about the same as in the Provincial Parks where they would sell you firewood for the same price.

Alberta is for tourists

After arriving in the Rocky Mountains there was a lot more traffic with tourist busses and other RVs. And by “a lot” I mean “A LOT”. In BC we would not come accross other people / cars for 100-200 kilometres. That was the total opposite for Alberta, there were people everywhere. I could imagine that these places are really packed in July/August when the main season hits its peak. For us it was still OK, though we had to leave out a few view points and waterfalls because the parking was full and with the huge RV that we were having there was no chance of getting a parking spot anytime soon. So instead of waiting we headed to the next viewpoints which usually were not too far away.

The Icefield Parkway

This was again one of the most famous routes one could drive. Closed in the Winter because of snow, open for us in the summer ;-). When heading towards the Icefield Parkway we were hoping for better weather than what we had when we were taking the Sea-to-Sky-Highway (there it was only clouds and rain).

Lake Louise to Banff

After spending 2 nights in Lake Louise and traveling to the Yoho National Park, we left for Banff early in the morning. Our goal was to get to the campground, make reservations for the night, go check out Banff and its surroundings and then meet family in Banff. Two kids were going to spend the night with us in the RV which was an adventure for them – and for us ;-).

You have two options to travel from Lake Louise to Banff, we decided to take the Eastern route, which is a little longer and slower (look for the Bow Valley Parkway), but you get to see more.

Rain to finish our RV adventure

Two weeks went by fast and we had to return our RV before noon so it was an early start for the last part of our camping trip. And guess what, it was raining all the way until we reached Calgary. We dropped of the kids and left for taking the RV to the renting company. It was not too far but we had to go through Downtown Calgary which was packed with cars and constructions. Imagine a large RV going through a narrow construction zone. I am glad this was the last part of our trip and I was familiar with the dimensions of the vehicle. We returned the RV without any accidents / scratches or something broken.

I was kind of sad when we had to hand the keys in. It was a fun trip. But, it was already over. We were tired and really happy to get into a real and privat shower and were really looking forward to sleep in a real bed under a roof. Sounds weird, but it does make a difference.

This is the second part of our journey through Canada. After a couple of nice days in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island it was time to head back to the main land. Our route took us from the ferry terminal to Whistler on the Sea-to-Sky highway, passing a few small villages until we got to Pemberton where we spent the night.

Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay (the ferry)

On Vancouver Island we spent the majority of our time on camp grounds without full hook up, which means that we did not have external electricity connected to the RV. Without external hook ups to electricity you can not charge your devices using the plugs that a available. As we were taking a lot of pictures the two batteries I brought for the trip werde both running low (actually one was empty and the second one at like 5% remaining power). As we expected to take one of the more beautiful drives in the world (Sea-to-Sky highway) we needed to recharge. Lucky us, the ferries offer terminals (originally made for business/work desks) that we used to recharge during the 90 minutes ferry trip.

Due to a little (translate to a lot) rain and clouds we did not see anything apart from the street we were driving on on the Sea-To-Sky Highway. Which was a pitty. Same was true for Whistler, there was so much rain and clouds we did not see the mountains. Taking a gondola to the top of the mountain did not make any sense for us as there were clouds everywhere, so we skipped that, too. So we just kept going and were hoping to escape the rain and clouds. When we reached the Nairn Falls provincial park we called it a day and stayed there for the rest of the day and night:

Next stop Okanagan Lake

The next day we started our journey to the Okanagan Lake area. Our route took us through Lillooet and Merrit to Kelowna. On the way there was not a lot to see. Locals told ust that the rivers going through the area a around 8 meters higher than usual which was due to lots of rain (we knew that ;-)) and melting ice and snow from the mountains. We did not go through Hope which was part of the movie Rambo: First Blood in 1982. The Okanagan area felt like 10 degrees celcius warmer than where we came from and we spent the night at the Okanagan Lake North campground.

As the are was nice, there was not too much rain and we had some time, we decided to stay in the area for another day. Although the campground was nice we decided to spend the night in a different campground. Checking the BC parks campground maps we found one in Salmon Arms, right at a lake that sounded pretty nice.

Of course while driving there the weather changed just a little bit and it started raining, not as much as the days before on the Sea-To-Sky Highway. As we checked into the campground we met a German park keeper who went to live in Canada some 20 years ago. His job is park guide in the summer and ski guide in the winter. Sounds like a not so bad job to me.

The next stop was still kinda close to the Okanagan area. We stayed at the Juniper Beach campground which is close to the Thomson River. There is full hook-up at not too high costs compared to other campgrounds. The river was really high and got close to the campground. Not in a dangerous way though. Something that we realized that night is that there are a lot of campgrounds that are close to railways. And at night, you can hear them. Most of the time it was not a problem for us as we were tired enough not to hear anything ;-).

Waterfalls and mountains

Sooner or later we had to move on and get closer to the mountains and Alberta. On the way there we stopped at the Clearwater lake. Unfortunately for us, it was too cold at every lake that we saw/stopped at for us to go swimming. The Clearwater lake was in the middle of the Wells Gray Provincial Park which meant taking a dirt road for 30 km which was muddy and slippery. It was well worth it as we saw some amazing waterfalls and interesting wildlife.

As there was only one street into the Provincial Park we had to take the same route out. It was not raining that hard anymore and we got used to the missing pavement so the way back felt shorter and smoother.

After the Well’s Gray Park we were headed towards Mt. Robson. There we went for a short hike and in the middle of the forrest on some rocky path we met someone jogging – barefoot. No shoes. That guy still has my depest respect, it was not an easy path and I had trouble on some parts with my hiking shoes on. There are two campgrounds at Mt. Robson, both are kinda big and parts of our campground were closed because they were not even close to being fully booked. This was our last stop in British Columbia and we would spend the next night in Alberta – in the Rocky Mountains!

We enjoyed British Columbia

In retrospect British Columbia was a nice area to stay at. The campgrounds were really quiet and we rarely saw any people. We had to get used to this at first but I think we enjoyed it as all the other places we have been to yet were always kinda crowded. So if you are in Canada and happen to be in British Columbia, make sure you rent an RV and check out places outside of cities. Also do not only stay in your RV, get out and hike around to see more/other sights that are not reachable by car! It has a great nature. Be careful with on the trails and stay on the trails as well. Watch for wildlife and respect it, give wildlife enough room to breathe and stay out of their life as much as possible.

Wow, what a trip. That’s a summary of the last 2.5 weeks. This is part 1 of a four part series of our camping trip through western Canada. Part 1 will cover Vancouver and Vancouver Island. How the rest of the series will be split up is not yet decided, so stay tuned for updates. As pictures say more than words I will post some of the more interesting pictures we took and focus less on written words.

Frankfurt to Vancouver

Our trip started in Frankfurt on Thursday the 9th of June 2012. British Airways was our carrier for our flight to Vancouver with a short stop in London. I was surprised by how well the flight went and also kinda surprised by the service and on-board entertainment on our flight. Big plus point was definately the possibility to use ones own headphones (noise cancelling) as opposed to the crappy ones you get by the airlines (at least in economy class). That made it actually possible to watch a movie AND understand what they actors were saying.

Vancouver

Upon arrival in Vancouver we went straight to the hotel and used the public transportation system to get downtown. The first impression of the city was a little bit disappointing, but that might also be due to the weather that was welcoming us (rain). We did most of the ’standard’ tourist attractions but unfortunately missed out on the Stanley Park which is a pity.

Whenever you make it to Vancouver, try doing the lookout, that is definately a big must. The steam clock, well, watching a video of it on YouTube and you know what it is, I would not call it really impressive. Vancouver also has one of my favorite places to eat chicken: Nando’s

Saturday morning we got picked up around 9am by the rental company at our hotel and were taken to their offics to take over the RV. That would be our next home for the next 14 nights. We were kind of surprised by its size. Well, we knew it would be big, but actually seeing it was surprising at least. It also did come with sime extras that we were not aware of: Navigation system, clinch hookup (if I only brought cables for that), USB port (sigh, no micro USB to charge my phone with me) and a slide out that increases the size of the interior by quite a bit. We were pretty happy with the RV though it looked kinda used inside after just 33k kilometres.

As soon as we got the keys (took around 1-2 hours including paper work and demo of how things are working) we hit the road. It felt kinda weird at first but one gets used to the size pretty quickly. And hey, there is plenty of room on most streets in Canada.

Vancouver Island

To get to Vancouver Island you need to take a ferry (takes approx. 90 minutes but with a great view on a couple of islands). Well, that could be fun with a 3.5 metres high and around 8 metres long vehicle for the first time. But it turned out to be no problem at all. The ferry is kinda expensive though (~100 CAD each way). There are waiting terminals at the ferry stations which offer free wireless internet that you will also find on the ferries themselves. Big nerd plus point for that.

One of our highlights of the island was the drive from Parksville to Tofino which takes you through skme really cool landscapes, you pass giant trees and see so many things allmg the way that just the drkve theere was a highlight for us.

Wie took the ferry from Tsawassen to Swartz Bay/Victoria to get to the island and went for the Departure Bay/Nanaimo to Horseshoe Bay ferry on our way back.

Dos and don’ts

If you are renting a RV make sure you rent an axe from the vehicle supplier. You can buy burning wood at every park/campground but those giant blocks of wood can be hard to get burning. I also think the water plane (actually called float planes I guess) airport in Vancouver was really nice to watch for a while if you are interested in these kinds of things. It is one of the largest water airports of the world.

As a don’t for camping here, before going to one of the private campgrounds, check the provincial parks (at least in British Columbia), we found some really good ones that were a lot cheaper than private ones and even nicer, more beautiful and closer to the nature than private ones. We actually only spent one of our 14 nights on a private campground and regret it. There are also some provincial parks which offer full hook up at lower rates as the private ones. Think about if you really need anything that a private campground would offer and if not, support the BC parks and go to a provincial park for camping.

Summary

We wish we would have had one more day in Vancouv to check out Stanley Park. But with only 2 nights in town we did not have enough time for that. Vancouver Island was fascinating and one could spend at least a week there tk discover it and then hike, bike, surf, whale watch, or do some other outdoor activity while there. We had 3 nights on the island and think that for a first impression (and only the southern part of the island) that was enough.

You might have read my previous post about the upcoming trip to Canada. One thing I will do there for sure is taking pictures. I was meaning to upgrade my camera, which is a Panasonic Lumix TZ7 (the name for the American market most likely differs). This is a really nice camera and for its compact size I think the quality of the pictures is really good. Nevertheless I somehow wanted to step it up a notch. I wanted exchanable lenses, but still a smaller form factor than a DSLR.

Olympus makes digital cameras?

That might sound a bit naive, but for a long time I did not even know Olympus was making cameras. Maybe I just did not care enough about the whole camera thing, but yes, they do make cameras. And let me tell you, some really nice ones, too.

I think I have to thank Adam Jackson for hints on the type of camera I could like. Adam takes great pictures and shares them on his flickr account. He uses the Olympus PEN E-PL2 with different lenses and highly recommends the camera, too. Of course it is always up to the photographer to get the best out of a camera, but I needed someone to recommend a camera or at least what cameras to look at and his blog was one of the first I found / stumbled over.

The Olympus PEN E-PL3

So the day came when I needed to make a buying decision. I did not want to base that decision on just one guy (who would do that) so I went out and checked photography magazines, blogs, photography communities, online customer reviews and asked a couple of friends that are into photography for their opinion. The more advanced recommended going for a DSLR right away. As those cameras are kinda big and heavy they were no real option for me. All I wanted was a small(ish) camera that had the possibility to change the lense. Therefore nobody said to not go for the PEN and as there was a somewhat good offer for a kit containing two lenses on Amazon I ordered it:

• Olympus PEN E-PL3
• 14-42mm M.ZUIKO f3.5-5.6
• 40-150mm M.ZUIKO f4.0-5.6
• 16 GB memory
• second battery

As reliable as Amazon is the package arrived at my place a couple of days later and I was anxious to unpack the camera. I was a little surprised by the size of the smaller lense, to take pictures you actually have to zoom in a little bit to ’unlock’ it. Other than that the surprises were more than positive. The camera is solid and does not feel like a cheap plastic thing but like a well manufactured piece of hardware. Putting it around your neck, it feels kinda heavy at first, but I quickly got used to that. The quality of the pictures the camera makes when using the Auto mode is – at least for me – a big improvement from my last camera. Changing the lenses is as easy as it could be and as stable as it should be. One thing with the lenses is that their lid is not attached to them by a string or something similar. In that way they could easily be lost when not taking care of them.

As a picture tells more than a thousand words, here are a few shots. Keep in mind I am still new to photography and those pictures are not processed in photoshop or anything similar, they are straight from the camera (and resized to better fit into this blog post).

To find more pictures taken with a PEN E-PL3 take a look at this flickr search. You can use that to find out about other cameras, too. I think this is a great way to see what a camera can and can not do. Actually, that search only works for the E-PL2, but you get the idea. Weird, I thought I used that search for the E-PL3, too. Sorry about that.

Other cameras I considered

When buying such an item you should neb just look at one piece of hardware. I took a look at several other models and manufacturerers before making the final buying decision. Here is a list of the other final decision round cameras:

• Nikon 1 (dismissed due to limit on available lenses)
• Olympus PEN E-PL2 (cheaper than the 3, yet I decided to go with the current model)

Every camera had there pros and cons. To be honest I am not quite sure if I would see a difference in the pictures if I went for a different camera. So I am now a happy Olympus user.

Conclusion

I definately recommend this camera, it is a great piece of hardware that takes great pictures. The number of lenses one could get for the camera is near endless. At least that is my impression as a photography newbie. I am so far using only the two stock lenses but a pancake lense is definately on the list of addons I have.

I will take this camera on a 3 week camping trip and after that I am sure I can give you more pictures and a better look into how it is using the camera every day. So stay tuned!

What’s your photography equipment?

This is your chance to tell me about your camera setup. What brand / model / form factor do you prefer and why? If you have a flickr account or something similar where I can check out some of your pictures, please let me know.

Thanks for reading and atay tuned for some fine Canada camping trip pictures.

There are a few things one should do while on this planet. Travelling and seeing different places and meeting different cultures should be pretty high on that list. One of the things I always wanted to do was going to Canada, rent a camper and just go camping at the most beautiful camp grounds on the way. If you find a reallyw nice place, stay a little longer, if you do not like it, hop on the camper and go somewhere else.

The trip

The only thing on that trip that we know for sure is that we are going to fly to Vancouver, stay there for two nights and then head out with a camper for 14 days and drive towards Calgary. Among the possible destinations are places like Vancouver Island, that would involve a 90 minutes ferry, too, or Whistler – a mostly known for skiing in the winter area. The final stops will most likely be Jasper and Banff, which are supposed pretty beautiful, too. Our estimated route will take us around 2’700 km (those that we will be hiking/walking not counted) through Canada.

The one place that I already know we will not have enough time for, is Vancouver. We will arrive in the afternoon, spend two nights there and will probably leave on our third day in the morning, which means we only get to spend one full day there. Any recommendations on what we absolutely have to see/do while in Vancouver?

The camper

I have never been on a trip with a camper and am definately looking forward to this experience. I think there will be plenty of room for us in this 8m long vehicle (which will be interesting to drive, too). The standing height inside is a little above 2m, which should be fine. We are renting it from Westcoast Mountain Camper and asked for a newer model (C24 vs. V24), which means the oldest it would be, would be one year. Have you been on the road with a camper yet? Any hints what we should definately think of?

Campgrounds

From what we have read so far, there are two kinds of campgrounds:

• Privately held ones, which in some cases offer full hook up service. They are supposed to be a little nicer and better equipped, but also they are a little bit more expensive.
• Public campgrounds that are officially supported or run by Canada or one of its states.

We will definately check out both or said differently, we will check into both types of campgrounds, depending on where we get a free spot. In most cases it is possible – and some even recommend – that you make reservations. We are not sure about this yet, because we do not know how much local SIM cards are and if it is even possible to get one as a non-resident. That is something we still have to figure out.

Recommendations

So do you have any recommendations for us? We will be in British Columbia and Alberta and are still looking for things to see and do while there. We are grateful for genral hints on camping and cruising around Canada and other hints related to such a trip. Maybe you have a good blog or website that you could recommend? Maybe some not so common touristy places!?

This will be an adventure for us, I am sure. And I am so looking forward to this trip! We are going to make it awesome! ;-)

A few days ago I came accross a blog post regarding a so called bucket list. It’s a list of ideas by Emad Ibrahim, goals that you want to accomplish – targeted at your development career. I found that pretty interesting, so here we go.

My bucket list

• found an open source project that others use and find useful
• hold a talk in front of a tech group (no matter small or large)
• get a blog post referenced / quoted by better known devs
• develop, release and sell (no matter how cheap) a game on a mobile platform (probably Android)
• compete and finish a coding competition (Djangodash and/or railsrumble and/or node knockout)
• win a coding competition (see above)
• develop software for handicapped people to make their use of technology easier

There are quite a few goals and ideas, some are more realistic than others, but one can dream, right?

Going crazy

Now to the even more out of reach goals – though I think probably all goals can be reached if I would put in enough resources:

• Bootstrap a company and make enough or more money to live on its outcomes (though I think I will find way too many reasons not to do it, so I probably do not have any really great ideas yet or I am just not an enterpreneur)
• Build technology that will help poor countries/people

Well, I think that turned into a mixed list that might not make sense to a lot of people. Are you ready to share yours?

Graphic source

A few months ago there was a new platform released for group communication. The goal back then was something like the next step of message boards / forums. As a result, Convore was born.

Convore and their API

Convore was developed by a team who is known for their open source work and their commitment to transparency. So it came as no surprise – at least for me – that they would offer an API right from the start. In fact, they were using the same API for most of the stuff they were doing. One of the more interesting features of the API was the Live API that uses a technique called long polling: “A request to Live can hang for up to 30 seconds so be prepared to wait. The response will return sooner if there are new updates.”

One would place a call to a certain URL and receive messages as they were entered in Convore. Then, when the request ended you would just place another call, you could do this in a loop and have realtime updates to whatever you were using the data for.

Fun app idea

I did not come up with an actual business idea, but a little app came to mind that would probably be fun to implement: A realtime map of the world updated with data from the API, so you could track the activity on a map. At least I thought this could have been fun. I put that idea into my idea backlog on May 16th 2011. That was like only a few months after they opened for business and were added to Ycombinator. What do you think of the idea?

The end is near

Just a few days ago now, the Convore team issued a blog post that it will be shutting down on April 1st. Though this is a weird date to be shutting down, I believe that they are serious about this, as they seem to already have moved on: grove.io. So now I might be sad and/or mad that I will not be able to work on my lovely idea, others have reason to be really mad, as they have already put work into apps for Android. I do not want to speak for them, so no further judgements on shutting down.

It is of course the Convore team’s right to be shutting down, on the other hand, I found their platform fun and easy to use and it is sad to see it leave. Now I think there are a few possible solutions:

1. Release Convore’s source code, so others could run ist for them or others could just have their internal Convore
2. Sell it. But I am not sure, if and who would buy it and what they would do to/with it

Be prepaired

As a devloper nowadays it is easy to find APIs to build products on. There are several new and old companies opening up their data for others to use. One just needs to be prepaired that this is not a guaranteed service and it might be shutting down any other day. Though I think this is unlikely for bigger companies, it might more true for startups, that are being bought or that just run out of business. All I am saying is: be prepaired!

To the Convore team

In case you read this, it is not my intention to make you feel bad about shutting down. The Convore API is not the only one that was getting shut down after a while, and it certainly will not be the last. This is just an example that was currently known to me while writing this post. I wish you all the best for your new adventure!

A couple of weeks ago I watched basically all episodes of Foundation – a series of interviews conducted by Kevin Rose. He talks to several entrepreneurs and startups and gives you an idea of how they got started and what kept/keeps them running.

One of the startups covered was kiip.me which offers real rewards for virtual achievements:

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I thought this is a great idea, but how can one make use of this?

Fast forward 10 days. I was watching a movie (I do not actually remember what movie it was) when I saw a couple of ads in the movie. Those are not TV commercials, but signs of brands in the real setting of the movie (could be put there on the movie set, too). Think of unintentional product placement of billboards, a scene on Picadilly Circus would be a good example for this. Another example would be someone drinking a certain beverage (Coca Cola, Pepsi, Insert popular brand here). Then I thought to myself wouldn’t ist be fun to make a game out of this?

The idea: brand spotting

The idea is a game. If you follow Twitter while watching a movie or a TV series you will soon find out that you are not the only one watching. Now to the game idea:

1. Users can set up game rooms (to which they can invite friends to play with)
2. Points are given for each brand one is spotting on TV
3. the one who discovers the most brands wins
4. Points are kept accross multiple game rooms, after each milestone players get rewards (1000 pts=Price X, 2000 pts=Price Y, etc.) – rewards handling could be done via kiip, maybe!?

How does that sound?

Possible problems

I see two main problems. One are the users. I don’t want to be one calling on prejudace, but the more users you might get, the higher the chances there will be players trying to cheat. The second problem, which is semi related to the first problem: how can you be sure to find out which brands were actually visible in a show/episode/movie? Suggestions in the comments please.

A different problem is the rise of streaming services, so the idea of schedulable game sessions according to the TV program maybe needs a bit of rethinking. Well, one could still be playing on his own and have his score compared to others lately. I kinda liked the idea of a real time game though. This would be a Lot easier to accomplish if it is a movie/show that has a fixed time that ist is running.

Making money with this

With this idea I am sure one could make money, too. Though I am not a marketing expert, I could see companies being interested in the crowd sourced data that would be collected in the form of a game to see how and where their brand is being (mis)used outside of their official marketing campaigns.

This could also be interesting for ad agencies to figure out ways to improve product placements and such.

The platform

There are several platforms this could be a success on. One could just have it as a web application. In my opinion chances for actually getting people to play, is by integrating it in a social network, maybe as a Facebook app? Most important though, it has to be usable from mobile devices, in an ideal case even as a native application for iPhone, iPad or Android phones!

Would you play?

Let me know what you think of the idea and especially if you would actually play such a “game”? Recommendations, ideas, hints, critics, everything is welcome! Even let me know if this is the dumbest idea you have heart yet! ;-)

Would you like to work on it?

If you are a developer of any kind, frontend, backend, mobile or web or whatever and you would like to work on this, let my know. I currently just do not have the time to work on this, but maybe someone else has!?

I have decided to intensify work on private projects that I call micro projects, because usually they are small. Though I have a few ideas that would result in bigger projects, the outcome would be less successful because my time is already kinda limited. And that is intentional, because I do not want to spend the whole day and then the night in front of a computer. At work we use J2EE. I do not want to use this for private projects, because a) I use it every day b) I want to learn something new c) other programming languages widen your horizon which I think is important for a software developer. So here I am wanting to work on smaller projects using Python – a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively.

For development one needs an editor, I chose to use Vim (a while ago) because, well, actually I do not remember why, but I got used to the keyboard shortcuts and got to like its two modes etc. This post will not be about Vim, though if you have not tried it, give it a shot. Now to use Vim there are a gazilion plugins that make it easier / more fun to work with. A couple of days I stumbled upon a link tweeted out by (not sure) @jezdez about Janus – a distribution of plug-ins and mappings for Vim, Gvim and MacVim.

Meet Janus

To install Janus follow the instructions provided on their homepage. Once you got that done chose a color scheme that you want to use, for me it is Molokai:

$ echo 'color molokai' >> ~/.gvimrc.after

Now when I start up gvim to do some coding my screen looks like this:

And I actually do like that a lot, makes it fun to work with. You can see the Git branch this is on, you can use CTRL+T to search for new files (similar to Textmate’s Open File) and many many more features. I am sure I will figure out new features when I use it even more.

Install on Debian

As I am using Debian on my main Desktop machine, that I also use for development, I had to make a few adjustments to get Janus and its installation script to work:

1. Add the current user to the sudoers file, as the script will try to run something with sudo you need this and by default this is not the case on Debian.
2. I guess Janus was developed by/for Ruby/Rails devs mainly. It requires Rubygems to fully function. I got that working with doing: apt-get install rubygems
3. Well, a kind of a general requirement, though I already had taken care of it: git.

What do you use and why?

I would be interested in what you are using for your #micro projects? Do you have any? What kind of are these? Programming, hardware-“hacking”, building something, beating some kind of computer game? Tuning your car? What are you doing and what tools are you using to accomplish your goals? Let me know in the comments or @skohler me.