
This is going to be a bit of an unusual post as it details a failed tinkering project.

I still want to write it however as I think its an interesting project that has promise and also has some relevance to my [recent](https://mikecann.blog/posts/chatter-craft-collaborative-art-with-just-your-voice) wo[rk wi](https://mikecann.blog/posts/tinkering-with-convex)th [Convex](https://mikecann.blog/posts/im-now-a-convex-developer-advocate).

# SpacetimeDB

What is [SpacetimeDB](https://spacetimedb.com/)? Well it touts itself as a "next generation serverless database."

It grabbed my attention earlier this year as it was focused on game development which is squarely in my wheelhouse.

The basic concept is illustrated in this rather rambling (and a little confusing) blog post: https://spacetimedb.com/blog/databases-and-data-oriented-design

[![](./spacetime-blog-post.png)](./spacetime-blog-post.png)

In summary they are aiming to create a realtime database that is a bit like ECS, but as (they argue) ECS can be thought of as a subset of a more traditional relational model, SpacetimeDB can be thought more of as a relational database.

So effectively think of it like Postgres but with some fancy sugar that makes it easier to work with.

In some respects this sounds a bit like convex except for that "realtime" part.

Convex is both an "application" layer and a "database" layer merged together combined with a bunch of developer-facing sugar that makes it great to work with.

The key difference between Spacetime and Convex is that spacetime is designed for stateful "realtime" applications (like games) whereas Convex is primarily a stateless serverless platform. It is possible to do things realtime-ish but as Convex [charges per function invocation](https://www.convex.dev/plans) it would get expensive really fast if you attempted this at scale.

# Pricing

This brings up the topic of SpacetimeDB pricing. Well its currently not mentioned. They have an open-source version of the platform that you can run locally (and presumably self-host) which is nice but if you dont want to mess with servers then they are going to offer a hosted version as is the database business model in vouge at the moment.

If I had to guess it probably wont be cheap to run, they might not even offer a free tier. Running multiplayer game servers has never been particularly cheap due to the high framerates combined with complex processing (such as physics) required.

# Tinkering

So onto the tinkering!

I had the idea I would build a realtime shared-cursor app where you can see everyone else's cursors move around perhaps click the screen and see pretty fireworks or particles or something. Very simple but should hopefully test some of Spacetime's features.

Before I get there however I felt it probably best to start with the quick-start tutorials and unfortunately this is where the troubles began.

You can develop the server-side component of your application in one of two languages, either Rust or C#. [Given my background](https://mikecann.blog/tags/c%20sharp) C# was the natural choice for me.

After copy-pasting the code (no ready-to-go example project unfortunately) from the [C# Quickstart](https://spacetimedb.com/docs/modules/c-sharp/quickstart) and running the `publish` command that pushes the built code to the locally running Spacetime platform I was greeted with the following error:

[![](./publish-error.png)](./publish-error.png)

Unfortunately I couldnt work out what this meant so I headed over to [their discord](https://discord.gg/SpacetimeDB) and posted about my issue. After a bit of back and forth of not fixing it it was suggested that I wait a few days for someone to look at it.

Sure enough a few days later they had [issued a patch](https://discord.com/channels/1037340874172014652/1134597033613869207/1183780061686546493) and the publish command now worked.

[![](./patched.png)](./patched.png)

Okay so now with the C# project in theory published I attempted to test it using their CLI:

```
spacetime call spacetime-sandbox send_message '["Hello, World!"]'
```

Unfortunately I now got a different error.

[![](./http-error.png)](./http-error.png)

I decided to move on, hopefully this was just a CLI issue I thought.

So I started a new [Vite project](https://vitejs.dev/) to get the client-side of the project working.

Spacetime provide client-side SDKs for a number of platforms: Typescript, Python, C# (Unity) and Rust. Although I suspect the most common usecase would be Unity or Rust I thought I would give Typescript a go as I have been using it most lately and I felt I would be able to debug any issues pretty quick.

So I started with the [Typescript Quickstart](https://spacetimedb.com/docs/sdks/typescript/quickstart) and unfortunately again they dont provide a ready-made example project so I went through and manually copied and pasted all the code as they described.

Unfortunately there were many issues in the provided code from non-idiomatic Typescript (use of `let` instead of `const` for example) and poor React structure (they suggest putting everything in a single component without any usage of Context or hooks) to simply not working example CLI commands (`--project_path` instead of `--project-path`).

The code required a lot of massaging but I think I had it all right, compiler issues fixed etc and attempted to run it.

I was now greeted with a new set of runtime errors in the console:

[![](./ts-errors.png)](./ts-errors.png)

Sigh. I suspect this might be something to do with the HTTP issue that I saw above.

I posted the problem to the discord once again but have yet to have a solution.

Just incase it was something to do with my local setup I decided to have a go and see if I could publish to their testnet which is their hosted version of the platform.

Unfortunately the [docs on the testnet page](https://spacetimedb.com/docs/deploying/testnet) were also not working as they say you should use the `spacetime server set "https://testnet.spacetimedb.com"` command but the CLI errors when you attempt this.

In fairness when I reported this to discord user "⚙ 3Blave" very quickly updated the docs so that it now reads `spacetime server add --default "https://testnet.spacetimedb.com" testnet`

So now you have to login to the spacetime testnet by calling `spacetime identity set-email <your-identity> <your-email>` but this command needs your `identity` which you get from `spacetime identity list` which again errors with:

[![](./identity.png)](./identity.png)

When I try to manually get my identity from the spacetime website (https://spacetimedb.com/login) I am greeted by a box that asks for my login email but nowhere to "signup" which is really strange. And when I attempt to put in my email I get another error.

[![](./signup.png)](./signup.png)

Quite frankly I was out of patience at this point and decided to end the tinkering here.

# SpacetimeDB Issues

I had planned to test out these things and make sure they were indeed issues before I wrote about them but as I was unable to get the code working correctly I only have reading the docs to go on. Apologies if I am off with any of these.

## Authorizations / Row Level Security

The first big issue I noticed with Spacetime is there is no concept of "Authorization" or "Row Level Security" that is there is no way that some information can be private from other users.

This is obviously critical for most (if not all) games. You need to hide some information from other players. For example in [BattleTabs](https://mikecann.blog/posts/battletabs-in-7-minutes) each player hides their ship positions from each other until the end of the battle, without this players could cheat by looking at the data that the server sends down or could directly issue queries to the database and retrieve that information.

When queried about this on discord I was informed that [that is indeed coming](https://discord.com/channels/1037340874172014652/1134597033613869207/1183210861700055150) and that there is a concept of "Private Tables" that you designate by prefixing your table with an underscore.

Without any docs on this im not sure exactly how this would work in a real game and how much work this might be for the user to implement.

# Migrations

I could find no mention of how DB migrations are supposed to work in their docs (despite their AI docs search assuring me there are 12 references)

[![](./search.png)](./search.png)

This to me is one of the MAJOR benefits of the way convex works you can very easily migrate your database by [changing the schema definition](https://docs.convex.dev/database/schemas) which then validates every single document in the the DB. This is a far more flexible way of structuring your tables than traditional relational databases but still ensuring the strong relational structure and type-safety enforced by your schema.

Im not exactly sure how SpacetimeDB works under the hood but they talk about replaying a Write Ahead Log, so im interested to know how you would go about evolving your schema over time

# Physics

I have big questions around how you would integrate this in a Unity project that requires server-authoritative physics or other game-engine features. Perhaps you are expected to implement those yourself? Perhaps you are supposed to run Unity headless server instances in parallel and query those from Spacetime?

Open questions for next time.

# Conclusion

This post is getting quite long and is getting quite negative. I dont want it to come across that way, I think SpacetimeDB is an interesting technology and is in a niche (realtime relational database targeted at game developers) that is very interesting to me.

I just feel like perhaps its a bit too early for the project and it needs to bake for a good while longer before its ready for further tinkering.

Keen to hear what you think if you have experimented with Spacetime, leave me a comment below :)



Its been a while since I have given a personal update so I thought I would take this month to talk about my recent move and some adventures with satellite internet.

# The Move

[![](./map.png)](./map.png)

So I have lived in Australia for 9 years now (cant actually believe that) and I have moved a total of 8 times. When I was living the UK I moved a similar number of times in my entire life. So its safe to say that im pretty comfortable with moving home.

One week ago however we moved house from Perth to Busselton (Western Australia) and this time was different. This time for the first time in my life we had furniture and a 3 year old to contend with.

We knew we weren't likely to fit everything in our revivalists van so we decided to hire a transit van for a day 2 days before the big move day. Fortunately my parents were on hand from the UK to help with the tetris-like packing.

[![](./tetris.jpg)](./tetris.jpg)

So then the big day came and most of the items fit in the van but unfortunately not everything.

[![](./van.jpg)](./van.jpg)

[![](./left-over.jpg)](./left-over.jpg)

So this meant that the following day I had to hire a trailer and drive back to Perth to collect the remaining items.

[![](./trailer.jpg)](./trailer.jpg)

With everything now moved we could finally start to settle in and enjoy the environment.

[![](./garden.jpg)](./garden.jpg)

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T4kaZX1ZzzM" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

# Starlink

So as I work from home on [BattleTabs](https://mikecann.blog/posts/battletabs-in-7-minutes) its essential that I have internet and preferably good internet.

Although Busselton is 3 hours south of the capital of WA Perth, it isnt a total backwater. It does have broadband connection in the form of the National Broadband Network (NBN).

The only issue is that when I called up to move my connection the customer support staff informed me that it was likely I was going to get poorer speeds that I was currently getting. I was paying $79 per month for a 50Mbs down 20Mbs up connection (50/20) this is unfortunately the limit of copper cable broadband and although Fibre NBN is rolling out across WA, neither my Perth home had it nor the new place in Busselton.

[![](./aussiebb.png)](./aussiebb.png)

Worse than that I was informed that I was likely not going to even get the 50/20, likely the maximum would be 50/13.

This wasnt great for me who lives on the internet most of the day, so I decided to look into alternatives. The only real contender was [Starlink](https://www.starlink.com/), Elon Musk's internet from space company.

I had reservations about going Starlink as [I had read](https://www.whistleout.com.au/Broadband/Guides/Starlink-Australia-Everything-you-need-to-know) that the upload speeds wouldnt be much faster than I was due to get.

It was a combination of speaking to a friend who assured me that was likely old information (Starlink speeds improve as more satellites are launched) and seeing the 30-day-money-back-trial paired with the 50% discount on the dish for rural customers (me), I decided to take the plunge and order one.

[![](./30day.png)](./30day.png)

So after we moved down here I got the NBN internet setup and it was worse that I had feared. The following was just about the maximum speed I could achieve over a couple of days of testing:

[![](./nbn-speed.png)](./nbn-speed.png)

Less than 5Mbs upload! This was definitely not going to cut it.

Time to crack out the Starlink.

[![](./starlink-box.jpg)](./starlink-box.jpg)

After a bit of faffing around with trying to find a temporary location for the dish that wasnt in the way but also still allowed us to lock the house at night I was ready to run some tests.

[![](./dish.jpg)](./dish.jpg)

So even though the dish is only in a temporary spot and is partially blocked by some stuff down the side of my house the speeds are far faster than I was expecting!

[![](./starlink-speed1.png)](./starlink-speed1.png)

[![](./starlink-speed2.png)](./starlink-speed2.png)

The speeds are definitely more variable than NBN, im assuming this is just the way it works as it swaps between satellites. Im hoping it will also stabilize a bit over time and once I have it mounted on the roof.

But my calculations it is on average 6-10 times faster than the fastest NBN I could get here and incredibly it even has lower latency!

So all in all I have been mightily impressed with the service so far. For $139 per month (plus the $300 for the dish) its more than I was paying before but not much more than the comparable NBN speed (250/25) thats assuming I would have ever been able to get those speeds.

I have received quotes from two TV / Satellite dish installers that it will cost me between $300-$600 to get it properly installed. I however noticed that we have an old satellite dish on the roof already so I might have a crack at just repurposing that mount myself and thus hopefully save some money.

# Conclusion

Im really happy to finally have moved into my new home and super excited that I have internet blessed by his holyness, Elon Musk :)


Wow how fast did 2021 go? Crazy! And we are already almost at the end of January.



I try to write at least one blog post a month but I have to admit, lately I have been struggling to find the time. A combination of more [family](https://mikecann.blog/posts/joshua-christopher-cann) and more [business](https://gangbusters.io) are the likely culprits. Whatever the reasons, it means my personal projects have taken a back seat lately.

Thats not to say that there hasn't been a heap of cool stuff that has caught my eye over the past few months and am itchy to tinker with. So I thought for this month's post I would list a few of the projects that I want to take a closer look at this year :)

# Cloudflare's DOG

[BattleTabs](https://battletabs.com/) is currently [Gangbuster's](https://www.gangbusters.io/) only title and has been in development for [a couple of years](https://mikecann.blog/posts/introducing-battletabs) now. Initially it was released as a concept. We didnt know if it would work or not so I chose the technology I knew I could get going with the fastest, which was Heroku and Postgres at the time.

Since then the game has grown and the requirements have changed as we added new features. We have faced a number of challenges on Heroku and it is a continual worry of mine that the servers will fall over one day or run out of capacity when im on holiday or something. There is also the significant cost associated with Heroku compared to the alternatives.

Ideally we would move to a tech stack that supported infinite scale and not have the same operational concerns. An obvious choice would be a serverless tech stack.

The issue with a serverless stack for us would be the lack of a websocket connection to the client for realtime game updates. We need these capability to provide a great game experience for our players without resorting to less-than-optimal (and expensive) rapid polling.

[AWS does have the ability to use websockets with API Gateway](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/announcing-websocket-apis-in-amazon-api-gateway/) but when I last ran the numbers it was going to be fairly expensive and there were some significant limitations.

So when I heard about [Cloudflare's Durable Objects](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/learning/using-durable-objects) and their [ability to handle websockets](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/learning/using-websockets#:~:text=%E2%80%8BDurable%20Objects%20and%20WebSocket%20state&text=Durable%20Objects%20are%20a%20coordinated,learning%20page%20to%20get%20started.) and could do it in a [cost effective manner](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/platform/pricing#durable-objects) (you only pay for the message handling time) I became excited.

[In October](https://mikecann.blog/posts/serverless-databaseless-event-sourcing) I tinkered with Durable Objects to build a serverless Event-Sourcing application. This worked well but I ran out of time to try the websockets potential of the technology.

Because a single server / Durable Object can only support a limited number of connections was I needed was a way to automatically "fan-out" incoming connections to "children" automatically so that each server managed only a few thousand connections while still able to communicate with the others in the Group.

[![](./fan-out.png)](./fan-out.png)

Fortunately thats when I stumbled across [Cloudflare's Durable Object Groups](https://github.com/cloudflare/dog) (DOG). This is an experimental project that does just that. It takes incoming connections and fans them out to multiple "Replicas", scaling up or down the number of replicas as a needed.

I was thinking it would be cool do make a really cheap version of [Pusher](https://pusher.com/channels/pricing) using this :)

# FaunaDB

I have had my eye on serverless databases for some time now. When working in a serverless context you generally cant use databases that have heavy permanent connections such as Postges or MySQL. [Cloudflare Workers use V8 Isolates](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers/learning/how-workers-works) which basically means that if it cant run in a web page then it cant work on Cloudflare.

So there are a number of alternatives out there such as DynamoDB, CosmosDB, Firebase, CockroachDB, MongoDB etc. They are all however either too simple (DynamoDB) or too expensive (Cosmos, Firebase) or I simply dont like using them (Mongo). [FaunaDB](https://fauna.com/) however caught my eye with its Document-but-still-Relational nature and its interesting querying options.

Thus far I have listened to a few podcasts on the technology and read a few articles and the following are some of the more interesting points for me:

## Scale & Cost

Even though DynamoDB is famous for its scaling potential there [is still a lot of operational complexity](https://docs.fauna.com/fauna/current/comparisons/compare-faunadb-vs-dynamodb#scalability) one has to worry about with scaling its usage. I like Firebase's fire-and-forget approach to scale but even it does have its limitations at upper bound of number of connections and key contention.

I havent dug very deep into this part of Fauna yet but im excited to see that [it scales](https://docs.fauna.com/fauna/current/comparisons/compare-faunadb-vs-dynamodb#scalability) with ease much like Firebase.

## GraphQL

Fauna has a number of interesting ways it can be queried including its own functional query language [FQL](https://docs.fauna.com/fauna/current/api/fql/). One option that has me curious is its [GraphQL querying option](https://docs.fauna.com/fauna/current/learn/quick_start/gql_quick_start).

If this works as advertised then it could indeed make some DB access operations much simpler. They have even solved [the n+1 problem](https://fauna.com/blog/no-more-n-1-problems-with-faunadbs-graphql-api) for access which is super cool tho I wonder what access patters it prohibits (joins?).

# SolidJS

I first heard about [SolidJS](https://www.solidjs.com/) a number of years ago and remember being impressed at its tiny file size and its [supposedly awesome performance](https://levelup.gitconnected.com/a-solid-realworld-demo-comparison-8c3363448fd8).

[![](./solidjs.png)](./solidjs.png)

At the time however I as perfectly comfortable with React and felt like its performance was just fine on my machine. Having worked on [BattleTabs](https://battletabs.com/), a large React app, for some time now I am feeling the pain of slow updates and large initial page load. Many of our users run on low-performance devices and thus experience this pain even more.

So the promise that SolidJS can both be a tiny download AND have incredible performance while staying familiar to the React-JSX-like way of developing has me very much intrigued.

I have worked my way [through their excellent tutorial](https://www.solidjs.com/tutorial/introduction_basics) and read a number of posts on the library and am ready to give it a shot.

The only thing I think it is missing is some NextJS / SveleteKit / RemixRun like server-side-all-batteries-included framework. [I hear that this is in the works however](https://github.com/solidjs/solid-start).

# Roc

[Roc](https://www.roc-lang.org/) is a programming language that captured my interest last year when I [watch](https://youtu.be/vzfy4EKwG_Y)e[d](https://youtu.be/6qzWm_eoUXM) a [num](https://youtu.be/cpQwtwVKAfU?t=75)b[er](https://youtu.be/ZnYa99QoznE?t=4790) of talks on the language.

Its a purely functional language heavily inspired by [Elm](https://elm-lang.org/) but unlike Elm intended to be multi-platform and thus run on the server not just the web.

I have been interested in functional languages for some time now and have tried to get into Elm on a number of occasions but other things kept getting in the way. I however really like the look of Roc which is taking the best of Elm and building on it in some pretty innovative ways.

I also have my eye on [F#](https://fsharp.org/) having [read much](https://www.amazon.com.au/Domain-Modeling-Made-Functional-Domain-Driven/dp/1680502549) on the language. Also [Clojure](https://clojure.org/) and [Elixir](https://elixir-lang.org/) are very interesting to me.

I have a lot of thoughts about functional langues and functional style in non-functional languages like Typescript but perhaps I should leave that to another post. Let me know in the comments if you would like to read more on that.

# Orleans

I have been interested in the actor model for quite some time and find it a fascinating way of building distributed systems that scale. I have read a whole heap about [Akka](https://akka.io/) and Akka.net and am keen to try both of those out.

[Orleans](https://dotnet.github.io/orleans/) from Microsoft Research takes many of the great concepts from Akka but expands and simplifies them. It touts itself as a "Virtual Actors" system and basically doesnt require explicit messages as Actors can communicate using simple function calls as if they were running as standard objects in memory with each other.

It reminds a bit of "true OO" like that found in [Smalltalk / Phaero](https://pharo.org/) but for the the .net ecosystem and distributed server-side computing.

Its a very interesting technology and I want to give it a try soon!

# Joshie

[![](./joshie.jpg)](./joshie.jpg)

Finally this one isnt a tech project at all but still something that I hold dear to my heart. This little man is growing up so fast and I am incredibly conscious about not letting these precious moments pass me by while I have my head stuck too deep into one of my projects.

Time is passing so fast it wont be long before he gets curious about what daddy does for his work and I hopefully will have a whole new set of projects to tinker with together :)

Its been a while since I have done a hackathon. I spent [half of the year](/posts/and-off-we-go/) camping my way around Australia so I guess thats to be expected. So when I saw that startup weekend was running again at the weekend I thought sure, why not.



# TLDR;

I had an idea, pitched it, gathered a team and validated an idea over the course of a weekend. I overcame some personal hurdles and came out the end with a potentially exciting business idea.

# What is Startup Weekend?

During Startup Weekend the objective is to go from idea to business over the course of just a couple of days. You form a team with total strangers and work together to validate your business and if possible build a prototype of your product.

The last time I did Startup Weekend was [back in 2015](/posts/startup-weekend-perth-2015-tuckr/) when I worked on a business called Tuckr that aimed to help people locate where those awesome food trucks are near you.

I remember ending the weekend that time happy but thinking that I probably wouldnt go again as it didn't really involve much technical work. It was more of an exercise in product validation than actually technical work and as I consider myself a highly technical person I didn't feel that useful.

# So why sign up again?

Often the only way to grow as a person is to get out of your comfort zone and do things that you arent good at or scare you.

I have always been scared of is standing up infront of people and presenting. Im much more comfortable sat infront of a computer in my own little word working on my own little problems.

So this time I decided I wanted to pitch an idea, form a team if people were interested and take it all the way through to the end and stand up infront of the judges and give a final pitch.

# The warm up

So friday rolls around, I rock up about 6pm, theres quite a few people there already. I have done this a few times before, I know what the deal is. I mingle around, grab a beer, chat to a few people.

Before I know it, its 7:30 and time for pitches. Theres about 90 people there and about 20 of those line up to take their turn to pitch their idea to those remaining in their chairs.

Im near the back of the queue because I want to see what other people are pitching just incase I want to chicken out and join one of them instead.

Theres some really interesting pitches from all kinds of different industries but none of them has grabbed my attention enough to stop me pitching, I guess the beer must have helped with the courage.

# The pitch

So I take the stage, I have 1 minute to explain my idea, I have practiced it a couple of times so I know that I should be able to do it in the time.

> Hi im Mike Cann, im a professional games developer but im also a blogger that has kept a blog going for over 10 years now.
>
> One of the constant problems with blogging is how do I get more people to read my posts?
>
> One solution to the problem can be seen on websites like Medium.com. At the bottom of each post is a "Reccomended for you" section that lists blog posts from other Medium.com authors.
>
> This circulates traffic between the authors on Medium.com and thus is good for everyone.
>
> But what if your blog isnt on Medium.com? Like mikecann.blog for example?
>
> I dont want to have to move all my posts over to Medium to take advantage of that post syndication feature.
>
> Fortunately there are alternatives. If you google this problem you will encounter Outbrain and Taboola.
>
> These multi-billion-dollar companies however are not targeted towards casual bloggers like me. You probably have seen them, they can be found at the bottom of websites like cnn.com and thewest.com.au. The recommended articles often have click-baity titles like "Details From The Set Of 'Bewitched' That'll Stun Fans" or "Mums, these workout hacks are just for you".
>
> This is not something I want next to my content.
>
> I want to build a click-sharing service for bloggers that shows relevant recommendations for my content without the clickbait.
>
> To validate this idea I need a designer and people with blogging or advertising experience.
>
> Thankyou.

[![](./whatIwant.png)](./whatIwant.png)

# Team formation

With the pitch over I couldnt relax just yet. Now I had write a poster to attract others to join my team.

[![](./theposter.jpg)](./theposter.jpg)

I tried to convey the basic business model in as simple a way as possible.

Well it seemed to work as I managed to gain 3 other members of the team. Ro, a fellow blogger and business woman, Alexis a writer with a bunch of blogger contacts and Andrew a designer.

So we had one developer (me), one designer to make pretty pictures and two business people with domain experience. IMO this is the perfect team!

[![](./ro.jpg)](./ro.jpg)
[![](./andrew.jpg)](./andrew.jpg)
[![](./alexis.jpg)](./alexis.jpg)

# Planning

The remainder of the evening was dedicated to introducing ourselfs and working out how we were going to work together, what our roles were and how we were going to communicate.

One thing that surprised me during this phase was that I had to re-pitch the idea to my team again before they fully understood what it was I wanted to build. Perhaps the idea was too complex? Perhaps I didnt explain it well enough first time? Either way I must have left some sort of impression as they joined me regardless.

# Trello

I like to use Trello for organizing a project during hackathons. Well I actually like using Trello for organizing just about any project but I particularly like it for hackathons because its really easy to get started, everyone can collaborate images, files, videos, whatever at the same time and most importantly its free!

[![](./trelloscreeny.png)](./trelloscreeny.png)

# Saturday

The following day was all about validation. I had a few things I wanted to cover.

1. Has this been done before?
2. How do Outbrain and Taboola work, what are their positives and negatives?
3. Do bloggers even want this?
4. What are we going to call our business?

Note, none of those points actually involve any development work. From previous experience I knew how time constrained we were going to be over the weekend so I decided early on all we were going to do is validate the idea, not actually try to build anything.

With me acting as leader / coordinator my time was going to be very limited for development work.

So I spent the day giving Andrew our designer direction as he began the work of building the website we would send people to try to get feedback and thus judge whether it was something that bloggers wanted or not.

I also assisted Ro and Alexis with tasks that addressed the other points. One interesting thing that came out of Ro's research into Outbrain was the fact that you needed a credit card just to sign up and get started. This is definately something I want to avoid with our business.

# Naming

We spent a little bit of time on the Saturday morning coming up for a name with ourself. We had a little bit of back and forth, we wanted something that gave a hint that we were a blog syndication service but without too many syllable.

In the end settled on "Syndi.me", its not perfect as it could be spelt in a few different ways but it conveys the information we want without being too long, and critically the domain was available!

# Syndi.me website

[![](./syndiwebsitescreeny.png)](./syndiwebsitescreeny.png)

By the end of Saturday evening we had finished the website: https://syndi.me and posted it to a number of blogger facebook groups and sub-reddits so hopefully over the course of the next day or so we will get a little bit of feedback to see if people are interested.

We used Squarespace to build the site as its quick and relatively low cost. Andrew was very familiar with Squarespace too so that cut down the learning time.

I found it tricky to work out what copy to put on the website. How to convey the idea without being too complicated right away. Fortunately Alexis was there to help me. In the end what we went for was a simple summary, followed by more in-depth information in an FAQ page.

# Sunday

By the time sunday rolled around it was all about preparation for the pitch. Building slides and practice practice practice.

We had a number of helpful presentations from the organisers during the weekend which really honed our pitch by encouraging us to present the idea as a story.

After the 10th time practising the pitch I was feeling pretty confident that I could do it. I knew things were going to be different when I actually get up there though.

# The final pitch

So by late afternoon it was the big moment. We all took our seats as the pitches began.

I was up 5th of 11 so I had a few to watch first which was both a blessing and a curse as there were some really great pitches. Infact as a whole the pitches were much, much better than any other Startup Weekend I had been to.

So finally it was my turn. I took the microphone and got up and stood infront of the projector and 100 other people and began my rehearsed pitch..

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/jPYgKR1hGlg" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Oh dear! Not good, I almost choked on the second slide. I dont know what happened exactly I think I was concentrating on the slide before which pushed out of my head what I was going to say next, then I started to panic and that then spiralled down into more panic.

I stopped, took a breath and decided to just move on and try not to think about it.

The rest of the pitch went well so fortunately it want a total disaster.

# Judging

Once I had finished my 4 minute pitch the whole team came up on stage while the judges asked us some questions and gave us feedback.

One of the first points mentioned by one of the judges, Charlie Gunningham, was that my back was to them the whole time, whoops!

The rest of the feedback was very positive, they all thought the idea was great and couldnt believe that it hasnt been done before and we should continue it on!

# The presentations

With that nerve racking experience out of the way we took our seats once more and watched the other pitches.

Once they were all over, the judges went into the back room and conferred for a few minutes before coming out and declaring the winner.

As I mentioned above I was really very impressed by the pitches this time. There was some really great ideas and some very well presented information. Some of the groups really did an excellent job portraying their information.

I wasnt expecting to win anything considering the mess I had almost made of the pitch but to my great surprise when Chloie stood up and announced that the runner up prize went to Syndi.me I was totally taken aback. Wow we had come second! (well technically third as there was a join first prize this year)

[![](./tshirt.jpg)](./tshirt.jpg)

We went up on stage to applause, was given a back of goodies, shook hands with the judges then took our seats with massive smiles on our faces.

# Conclusion

I am so glad at how the weekend turned out. I achieved what I aimed for. Pitch and idea, form a team and try to validate an idea.

I was super lucky with the team that joined me over the weekend, they were just the right mix of people with no egos. We worked together so well, and they were incredibly supportive of me even though I freely admitted I wasnt the best presenter but wanted to give it a go regardless.

So now I have to decide if I want to take the judges advice and continue our work on Syndi.me.

What do you think dear reader? Leave a comment below if you think I should continue on with Syndi.me and actually build a working solution..

[![argon](/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/argon.png)](/audio/artificial-argon-isotope/attachment/argon/)

I decided to take a little break from the coding and over the past few evenings I have put together a new mix.



Out of all of the mixes I have done [Argon](https://soundcloud.com/mikecann/artificial-argon) is probably my favorite and was pretty much the soundtrack to my  trip to Vietnam in 2011\. As that was two years ago now I thought it was time I refreshed and updated it with the my current personal favorites in the tech and progressive house / trance world.

Argon is a lighter element than [Iridium](https://soundcloud.com/mikecann/artificial-iridium) and hence the tracks have a smoother simpler progressive sound. Because this mix is in the same vein as Argon I have decided to call it Argon Isotope.

<iframe width="100%" height="180" src="//www.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?feed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixcloud.com%2Fmikeysee%2Fartificial-argon-isotope%2F&amp;embed_type=widget_standard&amp;embed_uuid=34002dae-cf25-44a9-b86f-7565999669dd&amp;hide_tracklist=1&amp;hide_cover=1" frameborder="0"></iframe><div style="clear: both; height: 3px; width: auto;"></div>

[Argon Isotope](https://www.mixcloud.com/mikeysee/artificial-argon-isotope/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=resource_link)<span> by </span>[Artificial](https://www.mixcloud.com/mikeysee/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=profile_link)<span> on </span>[ Mixcloud](https://www.mixcloud.com/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=homepage_link)

<div style="clear: both; height: 3px; width: auto;"></div>

Tracklist:

1\. N'to - Trauma (worakis remix)
2\. Microtrauma - Circulate
3\. Dominik Eulberg - Sansula (Max Cooper's Lost in Sound Remix)
4\. Unknown
5\. Breakfast - Through the Night (Naden Remix)
6\. Worakis - Souvenir
7\. Eleven.five - I Sense Danger
8\. Boom Jinx &amp; Andrew Bayer - To The Six (Matt Lange Remix)
9\. Parker &amp; Hanson - Afterthought (Soundprank's Deep 04 Mix)
10\. Andain - Promises (Soundprank Remix)

[![](/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Argon-Cover.png "Argon-Cover")](/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Argon-Cover.png)

First part in a two part mix, see "[Iridium](/audio/artificial-iridium-trance-electro-house/)" for part 2.



What I have tried to do with these two mixes is present two sorts of music that are really floating my boat at the moment. This first part is a much lighter, techhyer, houseyer affair than its counterpart, hence the noble gas Argon.

<iframe width="100%" height="180" src="//www.mixcloud.com/widget/iframe/?feed=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mixcloud.com%2Fmikeysee%2Fartificial-argon%2F&amp;embed_type=widget_standard&amp;embed_uuid=fde1588d-ca70-4e3b-b353-344b10183e4d&amp;hide_tracklist=1&amp;hide_cover=1" frameborder="0"></iframe><div style="clear: both; height: 3px; width: auto;"></div>

[Argon](https://www.mixcloud.com/mikeysee/artificial-argon/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=resource_link)<span> by </span>[Artificial](https://www.mixcloud.com/mikeysee/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=profile_link)<span> on </span>[ Mixcloud](https://www.mixcloud.com/?utm_source=widget&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=base_links&utm_term=homepage_link)

<div style="clear: both; height: 3px; width: auto;"></div>

01\. Nathan Fake - The Sky Was Pink (James Holden Remix)
02\. Petter - Everyday Balloon
03\. Delavari &amp; Rouzbeh - LaLaLa (Ozgur Can Remix)
04\. Who's Who - Klack (Inpetto Remix)
05\. Matt Lange - Bad Year Blimp
06\. Gui Boratto - No Turning Back
07\. Second Left - Traffic Lights
08\. Butch - Amelie
09\. Deadmau5 &amp; Kaskade - I Remember