Charlie Kindel's Stuff

Articles I've Written on Focus

I've been building software products for a long time. I've had some great successes and made a lot of mistakes. Here are a set of blog posts I've written that might help you avoid some of the mistakes I've made and be a leader who can make decisions and make them stick.

  • The 5 Ps: Achieving Focus in Any Endeavor
    This post is about focus. Or more specifically how to achieve focus in any endeavor you embark on. That endeavor could be a software development project, a job search, or a phase in your life...
  • Be Either an App or a Platform, Not Both
    If you think the thing you are building is both an “app” and a “platform” you will fail. Oh, and if you think it’s going to be a just a platform, you will fail too...
  • 90% of the Decisions You Make Don’t Matter
    The best, most effective, leaders are able to free their teams up to get stuff done by making lots of decisions quickly and enabling those decisions to stick. We all regularly hear criticisms of ineffective leadership voiced as “Decisions take forever” or “No decisions are ever made” or “We’re always flip-flopping; decisions never stick”...

Book Reviews and Authors

I read. A lot. Sci-fi, historical fiction, thrillers, non-fiction, ... you name it. Sometimes I write little reviews...

My Thoughts on The Kindle

I'm a huge fan of the Amazon Kindle and not just because they spelled it wrong.

  • Musings about the Kindle
    Blog posts I've written about tips, tricks & hacks for the Kindle, including the Kindle DX.
  • Kindle Tips & Tricks
    Here’s a list of tips, tricks, and hacks for the Amazon Kindle that I’ve uncovered. Some of these are valid for the original Kindle and some are valid for the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX.

Car Stuff

I. Love. Cars.

Ancient Freeware & Shareware

  • Premise to External Control Processor Bridge
    This driver for the Premise Home Control Software (written in C++ using the Premise HSDK) implements what looks to Premise like a set of RS-232 ports. Each device connected to an external control processor (such as a Crestron processor) can appear as a "virtual" RS-232 port within Premise. In fact, anything that can be controlled with your external control processor can be made to look like a RS-232 device to Premise.
  • MCE Controller
    MCE Controller allows Windows Media Center (aka MCE) to be integrated into an advanced control systems such as Crestron by enabling programmatic control of the user interface via a TCP/IP connection.
  • WinPrint
    A text file printing utility I wrote in 1989 which makes printing text documents in Windows incredibly simple. Still works on current versions of Windows!
  • INIedit
    INIedit is the quickest, most efficient way to modify Windows .INI files. Not that anyone cares anymore.

Random Stupid Stuff

  • Tig
    I composed a song. I hope you like it.