Hello

hello

Image from my thesis.

After Brown, I went to work for Rhythm & Hues Studios, one of the main VFX houses, where I quickly learned that artists want control over algorithms – they don’t want a black box.

When I was writing a subsurface scattering render, based on Jensen’s paper, I exposed all the levers to the algorithm. The algorithm simulates how light bounces around below the surface of objects and has many non-linear inputs.

Without(L) and with(R) subsurface scattering. image via Jensen. 

By giving the artist all the levers, I overwhelmed them and took away their control. I went back and hid most of the inputs and the render is now constantly being used to add the right look to translucent materials.

We want to make users feel in control but not overwhelmed. The key is to find the right balance.

Apple is an expert at finding the right balance and Instagram is a great example of an app that gives us just enough control to make it fun to use.

Ask Questions I asked a classmate who works at Facebook what language he would recommend. He suggested RoR because how easy it integrated with DBs.

Use Online Resource  railscasts.com stackoverflow.com codeschool.com are great way to figure out how to do something. Just make sure they are talking about the same version of Rails as you are using. 

Start Small Build only what you absolutely need and focus on doing it well. For my current startup psbty.com a signup for for our personal beauty and grooming service is all we need. User account is something we will add in the future when we can answer the questions, what value will the customer get from user accounts?

Making Life Easier  Take advantage of all the great gems, frameworks, and extensions. I use sass, blueprint, haml to make styling my website easier.

Environment and Tools I use github for version control, airbrake for real time error,engineyard as my hosting platform. Engineyard is great and provide you will many free resources – new relic…