MP3tunes and Project Oboe

Back in March, 2005 I joined MP3tunes, a new Michael Robertson company, to head up the development team. The initial site was developed by the Linspire web team, and soon after launch the site was spun off into a separate company. My initial team was pretty small. Including myself, the team consisted of, well, one person. The development team quickly grew to three, lost one, and has now grown to a half dozen or so developers.

The most recent addition to the team, one Jon Lech Johansen, has garnered us some media attention (and here and here, among other places). The most mystery was perhaps generated by Michael’s personal site, where he talks about our latest project, code named “Oboe.”

So what is project Oboe? From Michael’s site:

Oboe is the code name for a significant new project we have underway that will launch before the end of the year. It’s as momentous as anything I’ve ever done in my technical career, but I won’t say more since I despise vaporware. I know this project will be even better with Jon on board.

Indeed it is interesting, and indeed it will be significant. Although Jon has the highest profile of any member of the team, I can say first hand that it is only due to the effort of the entire team, which also includes the infamous Cody Brocious, that this project will succeed.

Stay tuned.

Suzanne and the Chernobyl Children’s Project

Last year, my wife Suzanne caught the HBO movie Chernobyl Heart. Brief synopsis: The worst nuclear accident in nuclear history occurred April 26, 1986. Roughly 10,800 square miles are still contaminated by dangerours levels of caesium-137 radiation. The country most affected by the accident is Balarus, just north of the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine. Chernobyl Heart tells the tale of contining effects of radiation on the children of Belarus.

After the movie aired, the Chernobyl Children’s Project International (CCPI) received a few thousand offers to help with their mission, including one from Suzanne. Her experience with compassionate touch and its positive effects on growth and development in children was intriguing enough that she was invited to join the group on their next trip to the children’s asylum in Vesnova.

Like so many others, I remember when the Chernonbyl Accident happened back in 1986, and have not given it much thought since then — until now. I don’t recall any details from the reports of the incident as it was happening, mainly because the seriousness of the tragedy was not fully discolsed. From the Wikipedia article:

Chernobyl was a secret disaster at first. The initial evidence that a major nuclear accident had occurred came not from Soviet sources, but from Sweden, where on April 27 workers at the Forsmark nuclear power plant (approximately 1100 km from the Chernobyl site) were found to have radioactive particles on their clothes. It was Sweden’s search for the source of radioactivity, after they had determined there was no leak at the Swedish plant, that led to the first hint of a serious nuclear problem in the Western Soviet Union.

Since the seriousness of the accident was not disclosed, I’m sure the event was quickly eclipsed by some other news event in the following days or weeks, and the significance of the accident was quickly lost on most of the general world population. After the accident, it is estimated that 60% of the radioactive fallout landed to the north of Chernobyl in Belarus.

Today in Belarus, there is an increase in the rates of cancer, particularly thyroid cancer and particularly in children, as well as increased rates of Lukemia and other diseases. Although there is some debate on how much of the increased rate of disease can be attributed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident, there is no question that the known radiation effects combined with the general poverty of the area have resulted in many health problems, especially in children.

Suzanne will be traveling to the Vesnova children’s asylum in Belarus around October 15, 2005. The first leg of the journey will take her to Ireland, where she will join a group from Chernobyl Children’s Project Ireland. From there, they fly to Minsk, Belarus (see map) and complete the trip to Vesnova via bus.

Are we concerned about exposure to radiation? Sure, but the radiation risk is minimal. She will be taking all her own food and water, and as long as the exposure is kept to a short period of time (she will be there one week), there is little, if any, risk of long term radiation effects. We also cannot ignore the fact that the risks, however minimal, are far outweighed by the benefits of introducing compassionate touch to the staff and orphaned children of the asylum.

Sibling Inspiration

Sure, there may have been a bit of sibling rivalry at times. Show me two brothers that grew up without a little sibling rivalry and/or conflict, and you’re probably showing me brothers that never met as children. Unfortunately, in many cases conflict between siblings extends past childhood.

We tend to inspire each other. I’ve been planning on installing a blogging tool for quite a while — why I’m not entirely sure yet — and bro’s work in progress over at chadreese.com has provided the motivation necessary to check one item off the list.

Now I’m working to move a few posts I have in a custom blogging type tool I started a couple years ago. Blogging software today has all the features I wanted a couple years ago and more, so that project is officially retired. Looking through the older posts, I’m actually surprised at the amount of stuff in there.

Ramona Mainstage Theatre

Designer: Matt Luckey Illustration & Design, San Diego, CA

Project Description:
A new site design featuring current and upcoming showtimes highlights the recently remodeled Ramona Mainstage Theatre. Theatre staff uses a custom set of administration pages to maintain movie listings, showtimes, and other content.

Technology:

  • PHP – used to generate html for movies and showtimes
  • Server Side Includes (SSI) – used to pull php generated html into pages created by the project designer.
  • MySQL – holds movie and showtime information.
  • Dynamically generated html pages and forms

www.RamonaTheatre.com

Xact! Resources – Confidential Document Access Revision

Designer: Red Leaf Design, Minneapolis, MN

Project Description:
A company name change from Xact! Collections to Xact! Resources prompted a site redesign and some new functionality for the client Confidential Document Access functionality. While the first release has proven to fulfill clients’ needs during its first half year of use, it became apparent that some automation would streamline the administration processes and eliminate repeated tasks.

To help manage the process of keeping online documents current, the current revision features a system to track the initial view date and time of a document, which is then subsequently deleted five days later. A tracking an auditing system is built into the administration portal, keeping administrators appraised of when documents are viewed, when they are scheduled for deletion, and when a document has been removed from the system.

Technology:

  • PHP – used to generate dynamic pages, validate login, deliver documents in a secure manner, and save uploaded files to the correct location
  • MySQL – holds user account information and document locations, first view and deletion tracking inforamtion.
  • Dynamically generated html pages and forms
  • SSL

www.XactResources.com