I’m a bit of a hardware geek. I tend to keep up on what’s new and neat. I’m a bit conservative when it actually comes to buying the latest and greatest, but that doesn’t stop me from following the trends.
I’ve been eyeing solid state disks for the last year or so, speculating that they could have a huge impact on developer productivity once all of the major gotchas were worked out. I specifically though that pairing a decent laptop with an SSD would be awesome, since laptops generally have significantly slower hard disks than workstations. They’re also a bit slower across the board (cpu, memory bus, etc), so I thought the IO boost from an SSD might even things out.
In December I decided to end the speculation, so I bought an 80G Intel x25m (Gen 2) SSD for my 15″ Unibody MacBook Pro.
Continue reading ‘Solid State Disks’
We’re excited to see that the Aardvark iPhone app is now available on the app store. Since handing off an earlier version of the app to their internal team we’ve been waiting with baited breath for its release.
It has been very well received with TechCrunch claiming it the best way to use Aardvark and 4 1/2 stars from over 100 ratings in just a couple days.
Working on this project with the Aardvark team was great. We love their intensely user-driven approach for designing and validating features through iterative development. We also pioneered our own best practices for test driven development to the iPhone platform, something that seems to be rare in the iPhone development community.
Every year we donate a portion of profits to organizations and causes selected by the employees of Carbon Five. We neglected to update our site with the list for 2008 until today.
Personally, I am particularly psyched to be supporting the San Francisco Bike Kitchen in their move to a beautiful new space at 19th & Florida in the Mission. I have been volunteering as a mechanic with the Bike Kitchen for almost four years and have been continually impressed by the dedication and innovation of the all-volunteer staff and board. The bike racks at Carbon Five are full every day and the Bike Kitchen keeps many of us rolling smoothly to work.
This week the San Francisco Bike Kitchen opens its doors at its new location in the Mission at 650H Florida Street. The SFBK is an entirely volunteer run organization that provides the tools, parts and instruction you need to fix or build a bicycle yourself.
Carbon Five is proud to be a Titanium Sponsor of the SFBK and a supporter of their efforts to keep San Franciscans safely commuting and playing on their bicycles.
Read more about the SFBK’s plans for the new shop space and the recent move from their downtown location entirely by bike trailer in the rain. SF StreetsBlog’s coverage of the move also provides a good overview of the history and mission of the organization.
We chose our office location in downtown San Francisco so that our staff in the city, south, east and north bay could commute to work without driving. We get to work by MUNI, BART, Caltrain, Golden Gate Transit buses and ferries, by bike and on foot. Supporting the Bike Kitchen is a natural extension of our desire to create a sustainable workplace and work life for everyone Carbon Five.
