New Stereolab & a Fond Farewell to Tatsuhiko

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I received the new Stereolab box set today.  3 CD's of goodness and 1 DVD of video content.  I rushed home from work to pick it up and immediately watched the entire DVD.  By the time it was finished, I needed to get ready for a night out on the town.

I drove out to Portrero Hill for the first time and picked up Randy and Ezra, then headed downtown to collect Tatsuhiko from his hotel.  Tatsuhiko had been in town on business and tonight was his last night so we decided to show him a good time.  We had a lovely dinner at Kiss Sushi (with a bottle of Louis Jadot Pouilly-Fuisse) and then cruised the J-town mall for some drinks.  Afterwards we hit the Boom Boom Room and met up with Garth.  Some Dave Matthews-like band was playing and it was pretty painful for me, but I stuck through it.

We adjourned to Garth's place (which was just a few blocks away) for some Karaoke Revolution and I got my first real taste of Katamari Damacy.  Honestly, I don't see what the big fuss is over it other than the music (which was top notch).  I'll give it more of a chance when I can afford to pick up my own copy.  Oh, and when I get a better TV.

So yeah, a nice day.

Oh, the songs I had to sing for Karaoke Revolution were: Billie Jean, Bizarre Love Triangle, and Son of a Preacher Man.  Though I came in second place on each round, I still feel I need to apologize to the guys for the pain of my off-key, off-tempo, off-off performances must've induced.

Why U-Haul Sucks

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

I search the uhaul.com site for U-Haul locations in my zip code.  I get six results.  Half of those aren't open seven days a week, and it's Sunday.  I call the first that claims to be open.  Closed.  The second?  No trucks.  The third?  On hold.

Five minutes later...

Representative: "Hello, in order to best serve your needs and find you the most affordable solution, I need to take your name."

Me: "My name?"

Rep: "Yes, your name."

Me: "I'm not giving you my name, I just want to know if you have any trucks available."

Rep: "Well I need your name."

Me: "Well you're not getting it.  Do you want my business or not?"

Rep: "Well, ok.  Where do you want to pick your truck up?"

Me: "San Francisco, zip code 94105."

Rep: "Ok, please hold."

...and then she transfers me to a different pickup location altogether.  In Oakland.  Wow.

The DMV

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

The only thing more soul-crushing than wasting an entire day at the DMV is finding out you have to come back again tomorrow.  On a weekend.  And then again next week.  To quote one of my fictional heroes, Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth: "tell them I hate them!"

Full Circle

(originally posted at crw.livejournal.com)

Quick backstory, for those who are unaware: I've recently moved to San Francisco to work for Six Apart as a software engineer on TypePad.  More and more of my time has been spent poking at and learning about web services, APIs, and publishing applications, it only made sense to make it my job - to get paid for it.

Since I've been here, I've made friends with a handful of people on the LiveJournal team and my interest in their app has been renewed.  They were kind enough to reclaim the stagnant "crw" account for me, so I'm going to try to put it to use each day.  What I write here are my own personal thoughts and feelings - hell, I may even restrict it - make it friends-only.  We'll see what becomes of this space.

My Wanderlust Dream Fulfilled

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

It was sometime prior to 9/11, on a particularly disparaging day of work. A couple co-workers and I skipped out to lunch early and headed downtown to sit in the shadow of the WTC and have falafel. Though the wind was quite strong, it was still a comfortably warm and sunny day. I sat between the towers, listening to whatever MP3 player I had at the time. An unfamiliar song came on; it resonated with me and filled me with a sense of wanderlust. I wanted to get in a car and just go. Just drive. Explore.

During all the major turning points in my life since then, it's been a theme. Is now the right time? I remember sitting in my aunt and uncle's new house in DC, the night of the 2004 elections. As my heart sank and I realized how out-of-touch I am with the majority of the voting public in my country, my desire to explore grew.

Well, now's the time. As in, today. I set out in a few hours.

It'll be an adventure in the true sense of the word. I have but one or two set stops to make en route, and the ultimate destination has no mailing address - simple, San Francisco. Like the song that originally inspired me, I've got myself a Trucker's Atlas, and I'll see where it leads me.

One way or another, I'll be in San Francisco to start work on March 1st.

Music Meme via Suw

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

I've been pinged by Suw with a music meme that's being passed around. My initial reaction was just to post a link to my last.fm profile, but that doesn't really answer the questions being asked. Here goes:

1. Total amount of music on your computer? Egads, I've got music spread across many computers, iPod, backup DVD's and firewire drives. My core set of music is 30gb and it lives on my iPod.
2. The last CD you bought is: Margerine Eclipse by Stereolab
3. What is the song you last listened to before reading this message? Had to consult last.fm for this one. Last night the last song I heard before unplugging my iPod to plug in my iSight was... I'm Deranged, by David Bowie.
4. Write down 5 songs you listen to or that mean a lot to you: Come and Play in the Milky Night, Glass Museum, Clockwise, Your Signs, Trucker's Atlas, People Eating Fruit (bonus, sixth!)
5. Who are you going to pass this stick to? (3 persons) and why? Hmm, I think I'm not going to propagate this meme and let it quietly die.

I've also come across some interesting bugs in ecto when dealing with nesting lists. I've had to compose this post in HTML-view and hope that it turns out alright when I publish it.

Working for Six Apart

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

I have just formally accepted a position with Six Apart as a Software Engineer on the TypePad team. I'm more than excited and still catch myself giggling, sighing, and feeling completely overwhelmed at the prospect of moving west in less than a month.

After being hired by Technorati, Niall Kennedy wrote a wonderful post about the interview process he went through. I enjoyed reading it so much that I decided then and there that I'd craft a similar post about my experience interviewing with Six Apart.

Round One: The Application

Per the job posting, I sent my resume with a brief cover email to jobs@sixapart.com. I cc'd Ben Trott, who I'd had brief prior contact with during the MT3 alpha/beta period and whose job title was listed as the manager of the position I was applying for. Within a week I'd heard back from Ben directly, suggesting that we chat a bit more about the position.

Round Two: Instant Messaging

I was sitting in Amtrak's Acela loung in New York City - en route from DC to Rochester - when I received an IM from Ben. He told me a bit about the company, but I was already pretty familiar with their products and services. We chatted about my work history, my current consulting work, and my history as a blogger. We talked a bit about Six Apart's move from San Mateo to San Francisco and the new office space they were still setting up at the time. At the end of the conversation he said he'd like for me to chat with some other staff members - but as the holidays were approaching, we had some scheduling difficulty.

Round Three: Phone Interview

After the holidays, we scheduled back-to-back phone calls with three staff members:

• Byrne Reese: Product Manager, TypePad
• Randy Reddig: Software Engineer, TypePad
• Paul Lindner: Server Engineer

The night before, however, news broke about the LiveJournal acquisition. I was up all night reading community reactions in both the blogosphere and the journaling community and chatting on IRC about the ramifications of the deal.

Byrne called first and we had a nice chat about what TypePad offers and some potential future developments. Randy and I talked about the development process of the TypePad team and the tools that they use to get things done. Paul and I discussed the back-end of things and the tools used to manage them as well as some of the projects I'd be interested in working on. Each conversation had an obligatory mention of the LiveJournal deal.

Each discussion went longer than the last as I began to wake up and not feel so groggy. After the last conversation I was thoroughly excited at some of the things we'd talked about and some of the pending product developments.

Round Four: Face-to-face Meeting

About a week after the phone interview, I received an email from Ben asking if I could fly out to meet the team. Of course, I jumped at the opportunity. After being unable to escape the Boston blizzard, I returned to Rochester where it was still snowing. I was ready for some sun, and boy did I get it.

I met with Ben first, right after a staff meeting. We talked for a bit and he showed me LifeBlog and we discussed the structure of the rest of the day. He showed me around the office and introduced me to Jay, Ezra, and Brad from the MovableType team. The latter two and I split off into a conference room and chatted a bit about MT. I was then introduced to the TypePad team - Mark, Garth, and Randy. We moved to the "make love not war" room, and discussed the TypePad app, my development history, and I was quizzed on things like regex and debugging methods.

When our time was up, I got to have a quick break before meeting with Byrne. We chatted about his function as TypePad Product Manager and how he interacts with the team. He gave me a couple of brain teasers that reminded me of the kind of interview techniques I hear Microsoft uses. They provided me with a nice mental change of pace and gave him an opportunity to witness my problem-solving skills.

Byrne then took me to meet with Mena. It was about three and a half hours into the interview process that day and I was beginning to burn out. Thankfully, Mena insisted on me removing my tie and relaxing a bit - she even made me a cup of green tea. Her office had the most comfortable chairs on the premises and I immediately sank into one of them.

Mena wasn't really interested in my technical capabilities. She wanted to know more about me as a person, and gauge whether or not I'd fit in with the slightly off-the-wall Six Apart crowd. She surfed my Drupal blog and checked out my musical taste at last.fm. She'd mentioned her upcoming trip to Japan and I informed her of my fondness of Japanese culture and my desire to learn Japanese. I found that it's quite hard to sum yourself up into a few easily digestible nuggets of information and I probably ended up just seeming awkward in attempting to do so.

Mena took me to meet with Ben again. I recapped all the conversations I'd just had for him and then we discussed compensation packages and availability. He asked if I had any questions for him, but not having signed an NDA, I was unable to ask any questions that he'd be allowed to answer - so that concluded this round of interviews. Interesting fact: Ben's mobile phone has a Hello Kitty bangle on it - and if it's not Hello Kitty, then it might as well be. Grin.

Round Five: The Offer

What are you, nuts? I accepted it. Six Apart offers a competitive salary with great benefit plans available. My start date is the first of March. The interview process was the most rigorous one I've ever been through and lasted just over two months. There has been no talk of a "probationary" period - which I think the interview process was meant to nullify. They have a pretty good idea of my technical capabilities and shortcomings, and have been exposed to enough of my personality to make sure I'm not completely psychotic.

The Future

I'm a firm believer in eating your own dog food, so this TypePad blog will be seeing quite a bit more use in the months (and hopefully years) to come. I'm not sure if this will become the new ninjafish or not, or whether I'll be able to continue a development role on the drupal project - all that remains to be seen. In the meantime, I've got quite a lot of preparation ahead of me for the move and will likely be around a lot less. I'm still available via IM or email - ping me if you need someone whose good mood may be contagious.

TypeKey Pushing TypePad

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

Last month on ninjafish I mused about comment tracking. Through chats on #joiito, #suwcharman and IM, a number of people identified the need for an easy and transparent way for users to keep track of the comments they leave scattered throughout the blogosphere. This lead to pie-in-the-sky fantasies about everyone having a web space of their own and the current practice of commenting giving way strictly to trackback pings.

Naturally, with all this talk of commenting, thoughts eventually turned to TypeKey - Six Apart's centralized identity service for comment authentication. It dawned on me that 6A had a golden opportunity with TypeKey: they could use TypeKey to drive TypePad sales if they educated their users on the difference between comments and trackbacks.

If you go to the TypeKey site, however, you'll find no mention of other 6A products at all. I believe this to be because 6A would like to see mass-adoption of TypeKey across other blogging platforms to maximize its usefulness. Turning TypeKey into an advertisement for TypePad would be counterproductive to this goal.

Potentially Working for Six Apart

(originally posted at crw.typepad.com)

I've applied for the Software Engineer position at Six Apart.

This comes after two long months of stumping for a job in the defense industry in the DC area.  There, I was wooed by the promise of steady work at decent wages, with no chance of having my position outsourced.  The trade-off would be the potential of my work being immoral and possibly repetitive and boring (which I would consider immoral as well).  It quickly dawned on me that such work just wouldn't suit me.

Enter Six Apart.

While helping AKMA with an oddly-borked MT upgrade, I serendipitously found the job opening at 6A.  MT was the first blogging app I ran on my own hosted server, and I'd spent a good chunk of time testing it during the version 3 alpha and beta phases and playing with the new plugin architecture.  It's a good codebase surrounded by a great community - who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to get paid to hack on it?

I applied and soon found myself in contact with Ben Trott.  Ben and Mena have a reputation in the blogosphere as being a ridiculously cute couple and as such I find myself tempted to give in to a false sense of informality when chatting with or about them.  It's quite disconcerting and will probably only disappear once I actually get to know them.

After initial contact, Suw was kind enough to hook me up with a 90 day free trial for TypePad.  Luckily she was able to attach the TypePad account to my pre-existing TypeKey account - which at first glance seemed an entirely non-obvious process.  TypePad auto-imported my profile data from TypeKey and I was off - ready to explore!

breathing new life into...

(originally posted at pixeljuice.livejournal.com)

into nothing, really. i'm just testing out ecto with various web-based publishing platforms. i remembered i had this old livejournal account and wouldn't you know, it seems to still work.

go fig.

Nintendo's New Portable

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

The Register has an interesting story about what could be some leaked specs on the new Nintendo portable system - possibly dubbed the Nintendo Nitro.

It had been confirmed early on that this would be a double-screened device, which led me to question where the buttons would reside if it were a clamshell design.  The possibility of a tri-fold device dawned on me, but just didn't seem too likely.  The leaked document claims the device will have at least one touch screen.  This makes a whole lot of sense, but I'm not sold on whether it's a good idea.  Let's explore...

Nintendo's GameCube controller has one main "A" button and on diminutive "B" button which are the basis for most menu-driven game controls.  The "A" button (cleverly colored green) accepts a selected menu item and the "B" button (just as cleverly colored red) cancels selections or backs out of the menu.  During normal gameplay, these buttons (along with X/Y support buttons) take on a "virtual" quality - where their use is context-sensitive.  Their current context is usually displayed on the screen in the form of "A will now attack!" and the like.

Couple this with Nintendo's use of the GBA as an input device and support screen for some GameCube games.  In Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, the GBA is used as an extra menu system, but also shows maps and meta-data that you wouldn't normally have access to in the game.

So ask yourself, what lessons might Nintendo have learned from these experiences?

It sounds to me, that with the use of a touch-screen, Nintendo is looking to take input to a completely new level by making it completely virtual - an experience to be programmed by the game designers, not limited to the hardware.  You'd have a clamshell device with a main screen on one side and a support/input screen on the other.  This would allow developers to create input zones of arbitrary size and number, and at the same time use the input screen to display gameplay meta-data.  Sound neat, sound innovative?  You bet.

Here's the problem: people like the tactile sensation of mashing buttons with their fingers.  No, I don't have any evidence to back that up other than common sense and a myriad of gameplay hours since I was young.  What's more, with the GameCube's controller and virtual button setup, you could instantly pick up any GC game and almost instantly know which buttons do what.  If developers are allowed to go wild on interface design, that level of cohesion is lost.

Also in the specs are shockers like 802.11 and hardware-accelerated 3d graphics.  But those are side issues for me.  What's up with the touch screen, Nintendo?

iChat Wishlist

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

About a week and a half ago, Apple responded to my iChat feature requests.

First and foremost I asked them to support XMPP-Core now that it's an IETF proposed standard.  This would effectively make iChat a multi-protocol instant messaging application.  During development of the first rev of iChat, the developers used the Jabber protocols as a model while the biz-heads worked things out with AOL.  Here's a post iChat's history.

Secondly, I asked them to fix their implementation of buddy groups.  Currently they use a drawer with checkboxes for the displaying of buddy groups.  Most other clients on the market use a tree-view, folder-list metaphor.  With their innovative implementation, Apple "fixed" something that wasn't really broken to begin with.

They responded by calling both items "known issues."  Obviously the lack of XMPP support is "known" - as it was simply a design choice.  But calling the current state of the buddy group implementation a "known issue" really surprised me.  Either they didn't really read what I wrote, or they're admitting that they made a mistake.  Either way, I hope I don't have to wait until 10.4 for the next rev of iChat.

OS X Application Roundup

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I've just finished updating my newly-serviced 15" Powerbook G4, and now I have the fun task of downloading the newest versions of my favorite applications.  Here's what makes my OS X experience so much fun:

• BBEdit (text editor for programming projects)
• Firefox (mozilla browser)
• iChat AV (latest beta does AIM vidchat)
• iPulse (graphical system monitor)
• iRoster (rendezvous browsing)
• iTerm (tabbed console/terminal)
• iWork (time-tracking and invoicing)
• MacStumbler (wifi detection)
• mplayer (does divx better than quicktime)
• NetNewsWire (rss/atom newsreader)
• OmniOutliner (mind-mapping, outlining)
• OmniWeb (innovative web browser)
• OSXPlanet (xplanet front-end)
• Psi (jabber client)
• SubEthaEdit (rendezvous-enabled text editor)
• Teleport (software kvm)
• Vim (for quick and dirty text edits)
• VideoLAN Client (yet another movie player)
• WeatherPop (menuling with local weather info)
• X-Chat Aqua (irc client)

I'm not linking to them right now because I plan on adding each of them as nodes to the wiki when it's up, that way I can document my usage.  If you want to find them, head on over to google and slap an "osx" after the application name.  Quite a list, eh?  Who says there's not enough software for the Mac platform?

iTunes Error

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

I ran out of RAM, the iMac crashed hard, and my iTunes Music Library file became corrupted and unusable.  I'm not a big stickler for application-specific metadata, but tune ratings are an important part of my iTunes/iPod experience.  A quick trip to google yielded this tip page, which is a bit dated but still valid.

What it boils down to is: if you have a valid .xml file but not an iTunes Music Library file, import the .xml file and you'll be fine.  If you've got a particularly large .xml file (mine's 16 megs!) it'll take quite a while to re-import.

On the one hand, it's a pain.  On the other, Apple could've easily kept the file format totally closed.  By choosing XML, they saved me quite a lot of time and effort.

Quickies

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

iPulse upgrades to 2.0.2

Unannounced iSight update to 1.0.2

Zengobi announces a sketchboard app Curio, which looks nice in theory but not something I could find much use for... at least not until Apple releases a tablet...

MacXWare announces LogoCreator - which I could've used just a week or two ago.

Teleport

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

This Teleport software is amazingly useful.  It allows you to control two Macs with one keyboard and mouse entirely through software.  It even has Rendezvous discovery for quick and painless configuration.

First come across a month or so ago over at the tao of mac, I found a review over at macosxhints and decided to give it a whirl.

Installation was easy, just drag the supplied .prefPane file to a PreferencePanes folder either in /Library or ~/Library (depending on if you want all users on the computer to have access to it).  It took two minutes to configure and to my surprise and delight even required authentication when connecting the two machines for the first time.

This is fantastic for me, because it allows me to clear up the clutter of a keyboard/mouse on my work table.  I've got a large table with a Powerbook dead-center, an iMac just left-of-center, a television to the right and peripherals to the left.  This doesn't leave much room for open books or half-full diet coke cans.

Now my table has some free space and I can control my iMac simply by "throwing" my cursor off the left-edge of my Powerbook.  Once I'm better-equipped, I may need to switch to osx2x which has similar functionality, but also lets you control machines with VNC and/or X server running on them.  Hot stuff.

Firefox 0.8

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

By now you've heard that Firebird has been renamed Firefox and a 0.8 release has been, well, released.  Here are a few first impressions for the OS X user:

• Startup time is not noticeably faster than Firebird 0.7, but it is noticeably slower than Safari 1.2.
• Yes, you still get that tiny phantom window when you use Apple's Expose feature.
• Woohoo! They've included DOM Inspector, I now have no reason to have the full version of Mozilla installed.
• Yes, the new Pinstripe theme is that cool.
• OS X hotkeys like cmd-m to minimize and shift-cmd-left/right to switch tabs still do not work.  Bummer.
• about:plugins shows they're still working with Java 1.3.1, so still no Newsmonster support.  Argh.

Enough to get me to switch?  I dunno.  It's tempting to want to use a cross-platform browser, but I'm really only using one platform on the desktop these days anyway.

AppleScript and Airport

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

The goal was simple, create an AppleScript to automate some of my daily functions - but only to do so when joined to a specific wireless network, and over a specific signal level.

As a newbie to AppleScript, I tooled around in Script Editor for a while and tried opening different dictionaries. I got online and searched through Apple's knowledge base, versiontracker, macosxhints, all the usual places and only came to find references to "Airport Scripting Application" - which appeared to be an AppleScript library to allow you to interface with Airport. The library was bundled with Airport software version 1.3. The current version is 3.2 and the library is no longer included (I braved the download and checked the manifest).

All was not lost, however, it only took a few minutes in #joiito to learn that the functionality was bundled into the new Internet Connect application, and that I should be checking out the associated dictionary - which I did. It's got everything I need, now it's only a matter of writing the script I want.

BBEdit Discovery

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

It started when I wanted to create a User Friendly plugin for iComic.

iComic has an "open architecture, supporting plugins written in perl." Neat. So I found one of my plugins in ~/Library/iComic/Plugins and dragged it to TextEdit. No dice, didn't open. Odd, I thought, the plugin should just be perl. So I dragged it to BBEdit, which launched a type of window I hadn't yet seen - the Disk Browser. Come to find out, the plugins are more like application packages.

Disk Browser mode is a two-pane window with file navigation on the top and text editing on the bottom. Looks great for switching back and forth between resources and property lists. Neat.

Debugging Feeds Apps

(originally posted at bigbadgeek.com)

Turns out there were three sites that were the problem. One site has a bump php script that yields an XML parser error instead of the expected RSS and two sites had invalid RSS by not specifying the DOCTYPE, thus creating undefined entities.

I've culled them from the database, and hopefully cron will rest easy this evening.