Happy Birthday TickerHound!

It's been a year since we officially launched TickerHound!
It's been a year of sleepless nights, antisocial weekends and caffeine induced coding sessions.
It was/still is a hell of a ride and I love (almost) every single moment of it. This is by no means the end - far from it! Like Wayne said: "we're just getting started!"

Here are some memories, lessons, highlights:

• Outsourced Indian firm: getting the project back from them with most of the code - a couple thousand lines or so - in ONE file. We had to take it apart and pretty much redo the whole thing from the ground up.
• The Crash: the site crashed 15 minutes into the launch. We should have cached like I suggested; I should have stepped up and made us cache. We've gone a LONG way since then. We're now on an auto-scaling architecture at RightScale, leveraging Amazon Web Services (EC2/S3/SQS).
  
• Workspace: our apartments to Starbucks to SunShine Suites. Upgrades at SunShine: the small dark cubicle space (4th floor) to the slightly bigger, brighter but noisier and smellier cubicle space (6th floor) and finally to the nice 3 cubicle space by the window.
• Hired Help: I want to thank everyone who's pitched in and contributed. Good or bad, we wouldn't be here without you.
• Lou: Our third official hire. With him on board, we took TickerHound to the next level. The first time Lou was meeting us, he was late. He was late because he missed the bus. He missed the bus because he passed out on top of a sugar silo in Montreal the night before.
• TickerHound Members: we definitely wouldn't be here without you. You ARE TickerHound. Thank You!
• Software: I no longer get laughed at by the tech community for using DreamWeaver. I'm usually using Eclipse and sometimes VI.
• Hardware: I still get laughed at for having my variety of gadgets: curved keyboard, logitech revolution mice, laptop coolers, headphones, monitors. At the center of it all: my MacBook Pro - still trucking!
• Wayne: Thanks for fishing me out of the menial 9-5 job (no disrespect to my last job, nine to five business casual is just not my thing). It's the most fun I've had working. There's no other way to do it. "It's your world squirrel - I'm just trying to get a nut"

m'sk m'sk m'ks

Florida in December

TickerHound (Wayne, Lou and me) are in South Florida for two weeks to do meetings.


We got a pimping condo: big kitchen, hot tub, hd flat screen, high speed internet... the works. The TickerHound mobile (rental car)... not so much. It's a Dodge Magnum (I didn't want to drive the Celine Dion car; Pacifica).


I'm not really complaining considering I took this picture when it was about 20 degrees in New York (yes, I did check the weather, just so I can rub it in my friends' faces)


Dinner impossible night: I had to make food for 5 people but only had enough material for 3. Starter: Almond Crusted Goat Cheese on Salad of Arugula. Main: Rigatoni with Meat Sauce


Used everything on hand. Added an appetizer and used white bread crumbs and cheap wine to stretch the sauce.


Lou and I grabbed our cameras and drove down to South Beach for a day trip.


Seriously, the following conversation occured right before me seeing that...
Me: This beach is frickin empty! Where are the topless chicks?
Lou: I don't know what they're doing over there but we should be part of that action.


One more with boobies


Obligatory shot of palm tree and coconuts


This guy loves the water.


We sat at a cafe type thing along Ocean Ave. and sucked down giant fruity frozen drinks while waiting Chris to drive down for dinner.

We had dinner at Nemo (sorry, didn't bring the camera with me so no pictures). Nemo had one of the best Chilean Sea Bass I've ever had: crisp on the outside, perfectly cooked all over, great sauce. After dinner Chris took us to The Florida Room in the basement of the Delano hotel to check out the live band. The Fox Brothers Band was playing some wicked latin jazz.

China - Part 10: Email from Wayne

Wayne is an expert when it comes to China. He spent a good amount of time there a couple of years back to study and went on vacation back in May.

Beijing:

Essential Websites:

http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/ (use this to look up the spots below)

Food:

Ding Tai Fung - incredible soup dumplings

Horizon in Kerry Center - dimsum

South Beauty - sichuan (in basement of Kerry Center)

Li Qun Kao Ya ($) or Made in China ($$$$$) - peking duck. Both are great, one's a awesome hole in the wall in a hutong the other is in the Hyatt

Best sichuan hotpot (handmade noodle): http://www.cityweekend.com.cn/beijing/listings/dining/hotpot/has/hai-di-lao/

some hotspots

Bed, Bar Blu, Suzie Wong, Mix/Vics are going strong and still great places for a night out. Alfa not so much.

Nan Jie - to get completely trashed or to start the night. Mixed drinks start at RMB10, and you can get 12 shooters for RMB100. ridiculous right?

Block 8 - the hottest new club/complex in town

Centro - great jazz lounge in the Kerry Center, one of my fav chill spots in the city.

Q Bar also makes up some of the best cocktails in teh city (rooftop bar too)



Shanghai

Websites:

http://www.smartshanghai.com
http://www.shanghai-eats.com

Food:

Yuxin Sichuan Dish http://yuxin1997.com/
location 1 - 021-52980438
location 2 - 021-63611777

How Way Sichuan's # 64282777 (I think they have 3 locations)

Goto Jiajia Tung Bao by Park Hotel.. across da street is Fry's Dumpling..
eat @ both places. 1 shot. and the chicken is up to you..that's next door to jiajia tung bao on the same street.

Jiajia Tangbao (Near Park Hotel)
Address: 90 Huanghe Lu (by Fengyang Lu)
Phone: 6327 6878

http://www.shanghai-eats.com/portal/1548_0/Jiajia_Tangbao.aspx

Yang's Fry Dumpling
Address: 54 & 60 Wujiang Lu (near Shimen Yi Lu)

Another Locatio is across the street from Jiajia Tangbao @ 90 Huanghe Lu (by Fengyang Lu)

http://www.shanghai-eats.com/portal/1527_0/Yangs_Fry_Dumpling.aspx

Places:

1. Xin Tian Di -- lots of places to drink and stuff, lots of touristy ish too...Ding Tai Fung is there as well.

2. There's a "new" type of xin tian di area that's much cooler...intersection of Taikang Rd and Si Nan Rd. (gotta walk into an alley way and you'll see a bunch of shops begin to appear).

3. Clubs galore!

Tech: Wayne's hard drive crashed + Importance of Backup

Wayne has one of these here Lenovo ThinkPads. Which one? I'm not sure. It has a 15 inch screen and doesn't double as a heating pad like my MacBook Pro.
As much as I like to point at his blue screen and laugh while shaking my head once every 2 weeks, THIS IS NOT FUNNY. Like most paranoid tech (or used to be tech) people, I'm sure he constantly saves while typing. OS crashes are recoverable - if he's consistently hitting CTRL + S all the time (who doesn't right?), the most you'll lose is that couple of seconds / minutes of data. A Hard drive crash is another story. Data is a lot harder to recover.
That totally blows. Wayne is the shiny head of this outfit - lots of important data.
Time to upgrade to a Mac or XP (he was using Vista - and IMHO the hardware couldn't handle it).
This episode reminds me of the importance of back up. I should really be backing my data up more often. I do have that extra layer of protection because most of my important stuff sits in a repository somewhere else as well as several iterations across our servers (production, staging, devs, etc.). Even so, there are some files that are localized to this radiator of a laptop of mine.
Maybe it's time I upgrade to OS X Leopard + Time Machine?

Google Custom Search Engine - Part 2: What's What is

Part 2: What's What is

Back in part 1, I ended with Wayne mentioning "mad bugs". Since it was only a text message and not a phone call, I still had time to jump on the bus and head down to the office.
I need to get into the nature of our site and our search strategy before I can get into the bugs. You'll understand why after the explanation.
Tickerhound.com is a Question and Answer site based on finance questions. We launched with a couple of thousands of questions AND answers from one of our partners, Investorwords.com (they're the questions asked and answered by StaffQuestion and StaffAnswer. The Answers also give credit to Investorwords.com ).
This way, the site will have a wealth of information and be more useful for the first wave of users at launch.

The bug: when users type in "what's" (apostrophe s) as part of the question, questions that start with "what is" doesn't show up in the results. As you can imagine, a lot of the questions start with "what is" - no good.

Getting there: After more testing and probing, Wayne the MasterBeta.... tester, found than using "what is" in the query will pick up questions with "what's".
We did more testing with "what is" as the baseline for good results.
I tried doing "what's OR what is" then the question as a query but got bad results.
The next one I tried was both the "what's" and "what is" version of the question, like "what's blah blah OR what is blah blah". It generated the same result as just using the "what is".

Solution: convert all questions that starts with "what's" to "what is" before sending the query to google.

Egypt - Prologue

Prologue: Whys and Wherefores*
more or less the actual order of the thought process spanned over about 2 weeks


Why a vacation?
I've been feeling a little burnt out from work, the city and everything around me in general. The 3.75 product launches last year took a nice toll on me - especially the last one: tickerhound.com, but that's for another post. Wayne insisted that I took a vacation before things get REALLY crazy in the summer - oh, you just wait and see what we got coming. Anyway, he's probably right - a vacation should be good for me, not being attached to a computer / interweb and all.
Besides, I haven't really taken a real vacation for 3 years, I need to get out! (the last one was Zurich, Prague and Amsterdam 2 years ago).
The weekend trips (Lake George - pictured, Ocean City) are nice but don't really count and I mostly worked during the day when I was in Seattle.


When?
Sometime in April, as mandated by the man with the shiny head.


Who with?
Of course, I'd hate to go on a vacation or travel by myself. I get paranoid and wouldn't mind someone watching my back (at least the illusion of it - not pointing fingers, really!). Naturally, I started recruiting.
John - since I traveled to Europe with him - twice. But he just got bumped up at a new job and can't leave.
Al - he was going to come and he also suggested going to Sweden/Finland but as soon as he finished mentioning it, his project got dumped on.
Gim - ah.. the childhood best friend. So what if I shanked him with a pilot pen back in 7th grade during class (he did start it with a Bic pen to my leg), we're still cool! I didn't think he had any vacations left... but he did!
Sarah - she just got back from Seattle. I mentioned that we're going and she said she's down to go if we didn't mind. In my mind - don't you want to find a job first? Her reply: since the trip is so soon, it'll be ok. As of this post, she's not 100% yet.


Why Egypt?
The original plan was to just take a week off and go somewhere that JetBlue flies to so I can use the free tickets. I couldn't really put a finger on a city that enticed me. Maybe San Francisco, but can I really spend a week there? I don't know - I've never been there before. Whatever.
I was on the 6 train and saw an ad that said something like "Delta Airlines, non stop to Cairo", with pyramaids in the backdrop. Lightbulb lit up! Why the hell not! I've seen enough Stargate (yup, all 10 seasons plus the 2 movies) to want to go. It'll be like one of those once in a lifetime deals.



* I took the title from "Y The Last Man" #55

Google Custom Search Engine (Business Edition)

Part 1: The Set Up
We decided to use google's custom search engine to do the search for our "similar questions" feature and for our regular search feature a while back. Fulltext search just wasn't cutting it. Who does better search than google right?

I finally got around implementing it last week.
It was a fairly painless process:

1. sign up and pay (Wayne took care of this part)
2. grab the URL from the admin panel page.
   the URL is only available to the admin or the person who paid.
   adding me as a contributor didn't work and you can't add any additional admins.
   
3. read the doc. this took me a while to find for some reason:
   http://www.google.com/coop/docs/cse/resultsxml.html
   it seems the doc for the google application is similar but NOT the same as there are more functions that can be used (like meta data filtering) in the application.
   
4. stick the URL in my existing search object, in a new function:
1. send queries to google
   
2. get xml back
3. parse and style xml
4. display results
   

It returns pretty good results, comparing to the old fulltext search.
There was a lag time of about 24-48 hours (this still needs more testing, but that's the general consensus on the interweb). New questions do not come up in the results. That's ok though because the older questions usually have more answers. Who wants to look at questions with no answers?

Everything was peachy then I get one text early next morning from Wayne telling me there are "mad bugs". uh oh.

to be continued...