steve kwan user experience designer

The job, and what's coming ahead on stevekwan.com

(April 29th, 2007 - 11:46PM)

I've been really bad about updates lately. I've been busy with work, formatting my server, upgrading to Windows Vista, and going to the gym, but the real reason I haven't updated is pure laziness.

I certainly haven't run out of ideas. There are a wide variety of things I'd like to post about, but for the time being I'll provide some details about what I've been doing.

The new job has been going quite well. At Vitrium, we're constructing a new product for marketers. It's quite experimental and in the early stages. I'm consolidating requirements coming from a variety of managers with different ideas on our new product (name forthcoming). I'm also prototyping the interface and using that as a guideline to refine the requirements. If they decide to create a company or product blog, I might contribute there too.

I've also been watching the Canucks games. Tonight's loss to Anaheim was depressing, but there's a good chance we'll be able to take them out of the series.

for (;;) canucks.go();

I don't want this blog to focus entirely on my personal life - it's just that writing more useful content, such as user experience articles, is very time-consuming. But I've got some ideas I'd like to put forth shortly, including:

• A more detailed discussion of what I do at work
• A review of Windows Vista
• Discussions of this blog's architecture, and how it's powered by Web standards
• My thoughts on SEO (search engine optimization)

I can't guarantee that I'll get to all (or any) of the topics above.

Steve Kwan dot com: Stronger. Faster. Better.

(April 22nd, 2007 - 1:26PM)

At long last, I formatted the stevekwan.com server to fix the repeated crashing.

I installed Fedora 6 on the server, which seems to be working nicely. We'll see if the crashing persists - it might be a hardware problem.

I was previously running PHP 4, and now I'm up to PHP 5. The PHP upgrade was a bit of a pain, because PHP overhauled their DOM API in version 5, so I had to update a lot of code. But we're all back up and running now. There are still a few little things I need to tweak, but nothing you'll notice.

Happy Year Zero release day!

(April 17th, 2007 - 11:24PM)

Here's some NIN for you to enjoy.

That's Survivalism, by Nine Inch Nails. Their new album is Year Zero.

I think I figured out why the site is crashing

(April 16th, 2007 - 7:22PM)

It seems to be a problem with vsftpd. I've disabled the service, so hopefully that will minimize downtime.

I attempted to format my server and install Ubuntu, but the installation CD wouldn't boot. Don't get me started on Linux and ease of use. Anyway, I've burned Fedora 6 onto CD and I'll try installing that later.

A day of milestones

(April 10th, 2007 - 11:11PM)

April 11th will be a day of milestones for me.

First, it will be my last day with Eloquent. I've been doing a phased transition to my new job, so for the past two weeks I've been spending most of my time at Vitrium, but some of my time at Eloquent. I hate dividing my attention like this, so I'm looking forward to wrapping things up with Eloquent and moving on.

Second, April 11th is also my last day of my last BCIT class. After tomorrow, I've finished Humour Studies, my last course, and the only thing left is my practicum.

The new job has been excellent so far. The people are great and love my feedback. I love theirs. I'm in a position to spearhead a new and innovative product. One of my bosses can pwn me at Unreal Tournament. I should stop using the translocator. It's meant to be a tool, not a weapon.

I apologize for the massive downtime. I think my server needs a format. I've been postponing it for a long time, but these frequent crashes are resulting in stevekwan.com being down more often than it's up. Ubuntu, perhaps?

Server's back up

(April 9th, 2007 - 7:33PM)

It died unexpectedly, but it's back up again. Work's been going well.

First day at Vitrium

(April 3rd, 2007 - 11:17PM)

Today was my first day at Vitrium Systems Inc.

As soon as I sat down at my desk and looked out my window, and saw downtown Vancouver in front of me and birds flying around the buildings, I thought to myself, "This is where I want to be. No, this is where I'm meant to be."

Eloquent has been a great experience for me, and I'm a much better person for the time spent as their lead software engineer, but I never agreed with their software engineering methods and my departure was inevitable. The work I've done has positioned Eloquent to be a serious competitor in its niche, and I'm proud of what's been achieved there, but Vitrium is the next logical step.

When I told Richard that being Vitrium's user experience specialist was a dream for me, he told me that most of his dreams involve flying and women. He asked if Vitrium had flying and women. I pointed him to the Vitrium website, which makes it pretty clear that it does.