A Barrel of This • Blog

Job search restart

2011-09-15T00:00:00Z

I’ll be moving on from Railsdog at the end of this month (or thereabouts). If you are looking for a Senior Rails developer with an interest in interaction design and data visualizations then give me a shout. Here is a fresh look at my relevant details:

The Green Zone

2010-10-13T00:00:00Z

Instead of complaining about technology and poor design I thought I might take a moment to discuss a well designed item that I adore. I found this item in a thrift store in the DC area back in the early ‘90s. It tells the temperature and the relative humidity. What’s so great about that? Health and comfort. Health AND comfort.

I was asked at the start of my current work project to describe an item that should embody the characteristics of the web site we were going to build. I replied with a few items that I owned that I used on a regular basis that are dependable and not over designed. These included my Francis Francis X3 Espresso machine. In retrospect I wish it had occurred to me to reply with the Middlebury Electric Clock Corp. Air Condition Indicator. A thermometer and barometer with a unique design.

The patent indicates that the Air Condition Indicator was invented by Frank Bullock, filed for patent on November 7, 1934, and patented on June 16, 1936. I don’t know much about patents but, of the few I’ve glanced at this one seems particularly concise and brilliant. In fact, Mr. Bullock describes the intent of the invention in the first few lines:

This invention relates to improvements in air conditioning indicators.

Various devices have been provided from time to time in the past for the purpose of indicating to occupants of a room the temperature and relative humidity of the air in order to aid in the keeping of the air at a comfortable and healthy temperature and humidity. Such devices, however, usually comprise a hygrostat and thermometer, each giving its own reading of humidity and temperature, respectively, and it is therefore necessary that tables or charts be consulted if one is to ascertain whether the relative humidity for the temperature given, or vice versa, is most conducive to health and comfort.

It is, therefore, an object of my invention to provide an improved air condition indicator which will give by direct reading positive information as to whether or not the temperature and relative humidity are properly proportioned for health and comfort.

Mr. Bullock achieved his goal to perfection. My wife and I frequently ask “Are we in the Green Zone?” (even though it is clearly marked as the “GREEN AREA”). The paragraph on the face of the device towards the bottom reads:

HEALTHFUL CONDITIONS of temperature and humidity exist when hands cross within GREEN AREA

Even from across the room one can tell if the room is in the green area or not. It’s the ‘30s version of a dashboard. Except that the design is tightly focused and I want to use the indicator unlike most dashboards I’ve seen that tend to pummel the user with useless data.

The Air Condition Indicator does a much better job of actually relaying relevant information than our two digital thermostats that control the AC and heat. Both are made by the same company and they never agree on the temperature never mind take humidity into account even though the device that one of them controls is meant to remove humidity from the air.

My wife recently put it in our malfunctioning fridge to determine the actual temperature and humidity inside the fridge when a digital unit failed to provide that information. It let us know that the fridge was broken. It turned out to be a faulty circuit board which is a common problem for GE refrigerators. Ours is only four years old. I’m not trying to maintain that this simple thermometer and barometer is as complicated to build as a modern refrigerator. However, I get particular satisfaction when you can use a simple tool to determine that something modern and somewhat complex is completely failing to fulfill its primary task. It was like John Henry came to my house and smashed the circuit board with a railroad spike.

While it is amusing, the text above the Green Area, “GRAPHIC”, is one of the few element of the device that could safely be stripped away and not impact the functionality. It almost seems to have been left in unintentionally or added by someone else at a later date. I do wonder if the device came with some sort of instruction manual that advised the user to refer to the “GRAPHIC” to determine if their immediate area was “most conducive to health and comfort”. The fact that this is the only element that seems a little odd some 74 years later is a testament to the design.

The fact that this little device still operates and gives accurate readings is a testament to the construction by the Middlebury Electric Clock Corporation. There are not many items that I interact with on a regular basis that I can imagine wanting to interact with even 20 years from now and even fewer that I can imagine still operating at that time.

Homebrew-Package management for Mac OS X

2010-09-30T00:00:00Z

Unfortunately for me, every once in a while I have to worry about software dependencies. The issue crops up every year or so when there is either a security patch that we (work) need to install or an upgrade we want to attempt. As I get older I’ve become slightly less enthusiastic about upgrading often or at least upgrading quickly. So it was with some trepidation that I removed MacPorts from my MacBook Pro today and decided to give Homebrew a shot.

The good news: It pretty much works for me.
The bad news: It pretty much failed for me within a few hours of installing it.

Failed may be a bit harsh. At work we use a specific version of mysql and that version is compiled with specific options that we require. Homebrew doesn’t make it immediately obvious how you go about requesting a specific version of a package nor how you specify any options for the package when it is built.

I’m not going to bother going over the basics of getting Homebrew up and running as there are already a number of resources for such things. Dr. Google is your friend (or Dr. Bing, or whomever you visit when you are in need). But I will share how to get a Homebrew formula (the recipe for building packages) to do what you want in a few simple steps.

Altering a Homebrew recipe

At first I thought it might be necessary to fork the git repository of homebrew or at least make a fork, branch, or copy of the mysql.rb formula. But, that would have been a lot of overhead for simply altering some build options. Also, the specific set of options I need are probably only relevant to me on this particular project. They certainly would not be the correct options for everyone.

To alter the options one can simply edit the Ruby formula file in brew --prefix/Library/Formula. If you installed Homebrew into /usr/local (which the authors make quite clear that they would very much like you to do) then the path would be: /usr/local/Library/Formula. For example, to edit the mysql build options:

vim `brew --prefix`/Library/Formula/mysql.rb

Look for the array of configure_args. Edit them to your heart’s content.

brew uninstall mysql
brew install mysql

Done! In my case in step two I changed the —with-plugins option to supply the plugins that my mysql install requires.

Alternatively, you could also make a copy of mysql.rb (I actually made a copy of the file myself before editing away). In that case you’d just need to change the class declaration at the top of the file. For example, if you name the file mysql-myCompany.rb then on line 3 you’d change:

class Mysql <Formula

class MysqlMyCompany < Formula

To ensure your new formula is in place run:

brew info mysql-myCompany

To finish it off you’d need to:

brew uninstall mysql
brew install mysql-myCompany

My sentiment is this: You own the formula directory. It’s on your hard drive, is it not? Do with it as you please.

The drawback of course is that when updating homebrew there may be a conflict on the file or it may just be replaced. I’m hoping since it is just git underneath that the brew update command will give me some way to reconcile the problem. Maybe I’m blindly optimistic. But as I mentioned you can always create your own file if you are concerned.

There also appears to be a HOMEBREW_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable that you could set to temporarily use your own Library and the formula within. Haven’t tried that yet but it is definitely worth a look. Especially if you just want to create your own formula and test it out before embarking on contributing to the de-facto Library.

launchctl is persistent

There were a few nasty issues for me after installing mysql. First, the instructions helpfully provide the command for adding mysql to launchctl so that OS X will start mysql when you boot:

launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.mysql.mysqld.plist

Unfortunately, launchctl will start mysql AND attempt to keep mysql running come hell or high water. It only throttles back its attempts to every 10 seconds. Before you get excited and add mysql to launchctl you want to run the first command in the instruction list:

mysql_install_db

Otherwise mysql will fail to start up and launchctl will dutifully fill your logs with attempts at restarting mysql until you fix the problem. This also comes into play if you’ve adjusted the build options and reinstalled mysql. Again launchctl won’t relent. I would have guessed that launching launchctl and issuing the stop command would have stopped mysql. It does but, then launchctl starts it right back up again. To get out from under launchctl’s, um, ctl you have to unload the plist:

launchctl unload -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.mysql.mysqld.plist

After that I ran:

mysql_install_db --rpm

That’s the “internal use” option that “is used by RPM files during the MySQL installation process.” It might be nice is the mysql formula could run this command for you after a new install. I’d wager that I’m not the only one to perhaps miss a command in the output of an installation. Anyway, it is my own fault for getting in this bind but, those are some tips on how to get out of a similar situation.

Did my options take?

For my install case since I was altering the plugins that mysql compiles and enables I needed to show the list of plugins to be sure they had installed:

mysql> show plugins;
+------------+----------+----------------+---------+---------+
| Name       | Status   | Type           | Library | License |
+------------+----------+----------------+---------+---------+
| binlog     | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| partition  | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| ARCHIVE    | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| BLACKHOLE  | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| CSV        | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| FEDERATED  | DISABLED | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| MEMORY     | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| InnoDB     | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| MyISAM     | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
| MRG_MYISAM | ACTIVE   | STORAGE ENGINE | NULL    | GPL     |
+------------+----------+----------------+---------+---------+
10 rows in set (0.02 sec)

The second plugin, partitioning support, was the one the schema required.

Using what Apple gave you

The creators of Homebrew intend for you to leverage the software already installed by Apple into /usr/bin, /usr/lib/, etc. I have a slight misgiving with this philosophy in that Apple very rarely updates some key components. For example, sqlite3 comes installed by default by Apple. However, the version on my MacBook Pro is 3.6.12. Using MacPorts I was up to version 3.6.23. With no offering from Homebrew I’m left to either install it directly or create my own formula, submit it, and hope that it is accepted by the Homebrew team and that the lack of an existing formula was just an oversight (reasonable possibility given that mysql is there). Still a package that is used by default by every Rails install not being present in the library gives me pause. On the other hand the Formula Cookbook does explain which formula will not be accepted and does list some notable exceptions (libpng, libxml2) since the versions provided with OS X have problematic bugs.

I don’t think the Homebrew philosophy is wrong. To the contrary I feel that Apple is a bit lazy in not having provided something like Homebrew in the first place. Pretty much every Linux distribution offers some sort of package manager. Also, Homebrew is smart enough to point folks in the right direction for packages that are provided by Apple but that nearly everyone is surely going to want to upgrade such as Ruby. Homebrew has a formula for Ruby 1.9.2 but they wisely advise: “Consider using RVM or Cider to manage Ruby environments” and provided links to those two management systems.

What could Homebrew do?

My top feature requests would be: * Provide a migration path from MacPorts and Fink to Homebrew. * A way to accomplish the above might be to just accept a package manifest. Essentially a list of packages to install that already includes all of the dependencies (though dependency checking up front would be an added bonus) and is a complete list that if installed would result in a working system at the end. I’m considering upgrading my laptop and one of the tasks I’m not looking forward to is installing everything I need to do development again.

1Password, many irritations

2010-09-27T00:00:00Z

At the risk of turning this blog into a forum for my personal grievances I’ve yet another complaint about a recent purchase. Or maybe I’m the problem. You be the judge.

I invested $40 in 1Password by Agile Web Solutions. 1Password is a password management solution for Mac, iPhone, and iPad (also for Windows but, I haven’t tried it out there yet). I’m graduating from info.xhead which was adequate but, doesn’t give one an option to sync across devices nor does it integrate in any way with browsers. My very generous wife bought me an iPad for my birthday so I now have a collection of Apple devices without any sort of password syncing between them. The iPad version of 1Password was an additional $15.

The sync certainly works well. There is an option to sync over a WiFi connection (yes, it has the WiFis) or to a file in your DropBox. I setup the latter option and that all works swimmingly. 1Password also contains a password generator with a nice option of creating a pronounceable password. Clearly these guys are thinking hard about the design of the application and intended uses.

The problem however is that on the iPad and the iPhone there is no integration with Safari. Agile Web Solutions built in their own browser or more likely added some chrome to the WebKit component (I’m guessing here as I’ve not built an app for the iPhone or iPad yet). At any rate, you can go from the 1Password app to a web page associated with an account stored in 1Password. But only in their browser where you don’t have access to the rest of the features of Safari. Does Apple really not allow this level of integration?

The lack of integration basically makes the entire endeavor an elaborate ruse. You have access to your accounts but, not in a place where you want them. Thus I end up not making use of the software and I probably won’t store new accounts there and eventually the list of accounts will grow stale and I’ll stop using it entirely. I only bought the desktop software to be able to manage the accounts easily and to complement the iPad and iPhone apps. It is really on the iPad where I want easy AutoFill of my account information. It would appear however that Safari Extensions are not available to iPad developers which is a shame. I was a hair’s breadth away from a workable solution to the annoyance of 1,000 and 1 passwords.

The fact that I have to buy third party software to accomplish this task at all is a bit irksome. I would have ponied up the cash for MobileMe if it had this functionality. How hard would it be to extend the Keychain to the cloud to manage all of my passwords and not just application access for MobileMe? I’d happily offer up an 128-bit SSH key with passphrase to be able to access the information. I know it is putting all of my eggs in one basket but, I sense I’m not alone in that desire (nor the poor substitute of reusing passwords more often than I should). Calgon, take me away!

UPDATE: Today my Windows Live ID password expired as it does after 72 days for sites that require the highest level of password security that Live ID offers. Unfortunatey, 1Password’s pronounceable password generator didn’t meet the standards of Windows Live ID. The random password did work. But then the tool somehow managed to not update the WLID account with the new password. Luckily there was a fill-in last generated password option that saved my bacon. Otherwise I would have been locked out of the love-in. Kicked out of the hoe down.

I also failed to mention that I was a bit upset at not being offered any sort of a savings for purchasing both the desktop app and the iPhone/iPad app. Seems like an opportunity lost to offer a bit of a discount for a multi-app purchase. If there had been a discount offered I might have also bought the Windows edition. While there are some shortcomings to the app I’m committed now so I might as well extend the solution to all of the machines I interact with.

Apple annoyances

2010-09-25T00:00:00Z

This is the start of a list of bugs or design quirks that I encounter in my daily use of Apple products of which I own plenty (an embarrassing number really). I’m not an Apple fan boy but, I do like my products to work together and not get in my way. Apple pretty much gets that right. However, there are issues both large and small that disrupt the otherwise seamless cohesion of One Infinity Loop products. Here are some off of the top of my head. I’ll add more as they pop up.

Your Airport Base Station has done a runner

This problem has been around for some time and is probably my number one annoyance. I believe I’m on my fifth straight Apple laptop (the first was a Lombard Powerbook G3 and the latest is a 17" MacBook Pro) and I’ve used wireless routers since they first became available. When I open my laptop it often fails to reconnect to my wireless network. Doesn’t matter if I’m at home or, in the past, at the office. It is the little problem that could.

At the moment, with Mac OS X 10.6.4 I have to “Turn AirPort Off” and then “Turn AirPort On” in order to reconnect to my Airport Extreme (802.11n) Base Station (running version 7.4.2) at home. An Apple product consistently failing to connect to another Apple product. Not so much with the happiness making.

I’m not sure I even want to know how to solve it if there is in fact a work around. I’m not sure I’d know what to do with myself or all that new found free time if I didn’t have to down the en1 interface (I do know a slight bit about what’s going on underneath the UI) and bring it back up each time I open my laptop.

Honestly, how hard can it be to solve this problem that has plagued OS X from the start? The revised UI in Snow Leopard at least gives the user some indication that something is happening with the animated strength signal icon. It takes a fair amount of time for the search for my last known working network to fail. If it fails, why not just reestablish the interface? It doesn’t take that much longer and at that point I’m it to win it. I really do want my network back.

Apple TV crashes

Our current Apple TV crashes just about every other time we use it. It seems to crash whenever my wife is at the remote which is not entirely stunning seeing as how she is a Quality Assurance (QA) engineer and lots of things crash around her. The problem has improved slightly over time.

Of course, I’ve rewarded Apple by pre-ordering the new Apple TV like a lemming. The problem is: once your in, your in. I’m very much in with Apple TV. It is one of the few products I’ve convinced other people to buy. People who are in fact not nerds like myself and don’t normally spend money on tech products just to see if they can get them to fail in new and spectacular ways.

The Apple TV does work fairly well on the whole. I have not filled the 180GB storage space with music yet but, we are getting close. I bought the new edition of the hardware solely because of the Netflix feature. My XBox moved downstairs and with it moved the Netflix access. We have a Blu Ray DVD player from Samsung that offers Netflix but, the UI of the player and the Netflix component is awful. It wouldn’t pause properly and would restart the program if you did attempt a pause. Samsung fixed the problem with a firmware download (that claimed 30 minutes of my life). But, come on, it’s 2010. You shipped this thing without it being able to pause?

I’m a bit nervous about the lack of a backup with the new hardware as everything will apparently stream now. That means I need to find a new backup solution for my digital music collection. Also, the sneak preview of “Freakonomics” that we watched on the Apple TV did have some streaming issues. It was actually the first time we’d ever encountered any problems with the streaming on the Apple TV. Not a pleasant surprise nor is it filling me with confidence for the next generation. Full report when it arrives.

The checkout

2010-09-24T00:00:00Z

I was recently searching for well designed location or contact pages so that I might spruce up the one I’m working on and I came across this Smashing Magazine “Showcase of Fresh and Well-Designed Online Shops article. There are a number of good designs within the list of 35. One that caught my eye is Onetribe which sends one-half of your purchase to a worthy and beneficial organization. I choose the Water.org shirt which "provides a person in a developing country access to clean drinking water for life”. When I checked out I couldn’t help but notice that their checkout page was nearly identical to that of the muji.us site.

MUJI U.S. checkout page

Onetribe checkout page

I’ll be honest: I just ordered underwear (more on the sad state of men’s underwear in a separate forthcoming article) from MUJI yesterday so it isn’t like the similarity jumped out at me with many weeks or months in-between. Also, I’m not pointing this out to bust on Onetribe. Heck, for all I know both sites were designed by the same company or maybe Onetribe came first. Who cares. The point is that this sort of mimicry is a good thing.

The layout of the form is appealing. It is functional and isn’t overwhelming. I’d be happy to run into this form again on another site. I understand how to use it and it took me a minimal amount of time to complete (mostly thanks to Safari’s autocomplete but, at least that means both site’s form fields are marked up accurately). What’s not to like?

I cropped out the checkout progress on the Onetribe image above to avoid having to obscure my personal information. However, that component is present on their page as well positioned off to the right. I will note that going back to edit the company information (it was autofilled with my employer’s name) worked but then I couldn’t get back down to the end of the form to submit it. So the experience wasn’t perfect. MUJI appears to have solved that on their form with the “EDIT” link on the right side of the form’s section title bar. That said, it was still better than most forms I’m forced to use.

When I run into a poorly designed form, and they are legion, I usually let out an explicative or two because, it’s just not that hard to design a reasonably functional form. One pitfall is that companies try to do too much with a form introducing unnecessary interactivity and movement that is distracting. It’s a web form for making a purchase. It doesn’t have to be sexy. It was to function. I’ve abandoned a purchase because the form wasn’t appealing enough. I’ve definitely high tailed it off sites where the design of the form was so poor that I started to question whether they were competent enough to have established the SSL correctly.

Another site of the Smashing Magazine list is another apparel company that I shop with: Nau. Their site used to be more flash heavy and they have thankfully toned it down a bit. I will say that their one page form is appealing and concise. Their checkout process in general has never tripped me up. However, it is a bit disconcerting how they drop you into a form to update your contact information after you sign in. I’m always flummoxed by that practice. It’s a bit forward of them: “We know you are going to buy something this visit so let’s see if your contact info is up to date, shall we?”. To which I retort: “I’m just browsing. Or at least trying to. Hussy. And your clothes are pricey! (P.S. I’m so happy you came back!)”

As someone who has been building web pages and forms for many years it was refreshing to see the number of comments on the Smashing Magazine article that pointed out that the list was essentially a list of nice looking home pages but not necessarily well designed or functional e-commerce sites. The main point of the article seemed to be: Look at all the high-quality photos. Not exactly a news flash. If anything the list demonstrates how similar the layouts of the home pages are. Even the ones that stand out as being different (the Nixon watch home page) had a design companion in the list (the small multiples of the Volkswagen site).

As I mentioned at the start I was looking for location and contact pages. I took note of this Smashing Magazine list because I’m hoping I can do a better round up with a bit of insight rather than just a list of pretty pictures. Just about every business site has a location or contact page. Surely there have to be some good ones out there. We shall see.

Disambiguate

2010-08-10T00:00:00Z

I subscribe to Emusic because the subscription model works well for me. I know I’m going to spend a certain amount on music every month and Emusic helps me keep that spending to a reasonable and trackable level. Today I was offered the chance to obtain ten free downloads if I rated ten albums. I logged in to do so (seems like easy money to me) and found that one of my favorite bands, Moose, had a new album out. Or did they.

In fact, the Moose in question was a metal band. Now, I have nothing against metal but, it is not the new Moose record that I was hoping for (which, incidentally, is crazy since the Moose I’m referring to have long broken up). Another Emusic user was nice enough to let Emusic know that the Metal Moose and the English Moose are not one in the same. The question is: What the heck is wrong with Emusic that they cannot figure this out on their own!?

The task of determining which Moose is which is know as disambiguation. You’ll note that I linked to the Wikipedia article on the English Moose band that got their start in the early ‘90s. I was able to link to this article and not an article about the animal Moose, Moose the dog actor who played Eddie on American sitcom Fraiser, nor the alternative object system for Perl 5 because Wikipedia knows all about disambiguation. They have to because they have links to lots of things that share the same name. As do Emusic. Yet Emusic seems to know nothing about disambiguation (never mind the notion of normalizing their data to use a primary key that is not the name of the artist/band). It drives me a bit crazy.

At the very least Emusic could offer what Wikipedia does: This lovely disambiguation page. Better still Emusic could at least link a band to one or more genres that classify their music. Then when there is more than one artist with the same name they could show the user in parentheses next to the band name which genre that band belongs to. Emusic does this once you drill down to a specific recording. But they continue to list all of the albums by bands with the same name in one list.

One definition of disambiguate is: to make (an ambiguous expression) unambiguous. I like that. It is simple. Unfortunately, disambiguation is not always easy. Take speech recognition for example. Knowing what a user of a speech system means can be quite daunting. That is why there are virtually no systems that just let a user pick up a phone and say whatever they want (though that functionality is coming someday). The set of possible matches is just too broad to for the speech reco software to determine what you meant.

Even when the problem is constrained some disambiguation is often necessary. With speech reco constraining the problem at least allows you to load and match against a specific set of grammars that have the terms a user is most likely going to use to achieve their task.

For instance, if a user is asking for driving directions in Washington, DC to 14th street. Well, is that 14th street NW or SW or SE or NE? GPS systems have had to solve that problem. Otherwise their system just doesn’t work very well. Wikipedia has had to solve that problem. You would think that iTunes, Emusic, and other online entities handling queries where disambiguation was clearly necessary would have addressed the issue. But they do not. And it drives me to distraction!

Besides the fact that I know a tiny bit about disambiguation as it relates to speech recognition from working at Tellme (now Speech at Microsoft) this problem is also near and dear to my heart for another reason. I record music with two friends under the unfortunate band name of “LU”. There are at least five other bands named LU. Leaving aside for the moment that naming anything with just two letters makes it pretty much unlocatable on the web (if those searching for your entity don’t know which keywords to add) let’s examine some of the other methods of disambiguation or the lack thereof.

last.fm, like Emusic, pretty much leaves it up to the community to disambiguate one band from another. The community actually steps up and does it. Here is the page for LU:

There are multiple artist called Lu: 1) LU is a duo from Guadalajara, Mexico. The members are Paty Cantu and Mario Sandoval. Their sound is Pop Latino… Similar to Aleks Syntek. Their first self-titled album, “LU”, had moderate success in Mexico, USA, Brazil, And Latin America. Their second album, “Album”, was released in September 2006. Their singles up to date are “Duele,” “Por Besarte,” “Una Confusion.”, “Sera”, and “La vida despues de ti”“ 2) LU is a czech band, from the small town Koprivnice, where a new young music scene blossoms. They play alternative rock, with smashy guitar spaces but even sweet melodies. Only the eponymous album Lu (2003), but a new album is planned on autumn 2006. Releasing on Piper Records. 3) Lu is also a Greenlandic rockstar, now living in Denmark. He plays (økse/axe)rock, metal, electronica and progressive disco. 4) Lu is a nickname of Polish DJ from Wrocław, who blends rap, lounge, and acid jazz. 5) LU is a three piece instrumental outfit from the U.S. Their first album was released on 9/11/01 on on Trevor HollAnd’s pulCec label (a subsidiary of Darla). Their second album, Share the load, was released on Textilesounds (http://www.textilesounds.com/). LU features members of Lorelei, Grappa, The Saturday People, and Macitajs on Acid. 6) Lu is 25 and from London.

Number 5 on the list is us. The amusing thing about this page is that right above the image of our second album cover are the mugs of the members of the Mexican LU outfit Mairo and Paty. Clearly the engine behind last.fm has no clue that the album and band they are displaying have no relation to one another even though their community of users has taken the time to point it out. The site doesn’t leverage the power of the community of users behind it. It doesn’t make their work searchable nor does it harness the input coming from users to correct mistakes made on the site.

To make matters worse each track has an ISRC code, which is essentially a built-in unique key that makes every track unique and traceable. Why that cannot be leveraged by sites that have access to the music files themselves is a bit of a mystery.

In the meantime I’ll just have to deal with the fact that none of the sites that I buy or listen to music on have any real notion of disambiguation.

First post

2010-08-04T00:00:00Z

New blog driven by a new blog engine (toto) using a new design (HTML5, CSS3) posted to a new provider (heroku). Trying to keep up with the kids. This is not “Hey, I bought the new Arcade Fire record” style keeping up with the kids. This is “The Mayyors rolled around and then shat on my carpet” style keeping up with the kids. (They didn’t by the way but I would imagine they might try and, if not for the wee one and the wife, I might let them.)

Here is why: toto is this ubber-stripped down blogging engine that is supposed to be a starter kit for one to hack on. Sadly, it is a gem so the hacking is not so much with the readily available. I do prefer Scanty a bit more in that regard and I’ll probably switch. That said, toto is oddly freeing because …

Being a software tweaking fellow but generally too lazy to write my own blogging engine it is difficult to put down the power tools and just write something that warrants the effort one puts into posting the damn thing in the first place.

Heroku makes all that as painless as I could imagine what with the free and the you just commit to github and wammo: InstaBlog!

But it too wanted me to fuss around with my SSH keys and whatnot and so this blog in five minutes thing which sounded all wunderbar turned into three days of mucking about. But only a tiny bit of that was fussing with Herkou. The majority of it was…

Relearning source control in the hippy dippy Animal Collective style that the kids are all into now. I was using CVS until a few years ago to give you a notion of how stone age I was rocking it. Before that I had used Perforce (before the mothership devoured them). When I upgraded my lifestyle to Subversion I was in hog heaven. But just around the time I made the leap here comes Github with the smash and grab. Now most folks are “Subversion, we hardly knew yee!” So now Github is something I have dabbled with as well.

But the real time suck was mucking about with HTML5 and CSS3. What to do, what to do. Read a tutorial, dug it, wanted to get stuck in. Went full on with the if your browser doesn’t support it then SUCK IT attitude because I work all day for the overlords on making sites work for their antiquated shit that they can no longer rid the world of even if they tried (starts with an I ends with a 6). But then Firefox decided that the sidebar background was NOT ON and left it looking a bit crocked and so it dawned on me: Why copy a tutorial that shows you how to make HTML5 look just like an HTML4.1 page?

If the point of progress is to progress and be able to do new things then doing the same old stuff, I’ll grant you with greater semantic integrity but, still the same old stuff, is useless. This site (not what you are looking at but the one sitting here on my hard drive) was underwhelming with the progression element. When I can create some fantastic Constructivism inspired pièce de résistance then I will let fly with that. Until then you get a column, with some text, and oh …

Fancy pants fonts! I am down with the @font-face and the Font Squirrel. Rocking the Cantarell font (details in The Rub below; otherwise known as the fashionably large footer). This future I can get with because let’s face it Verdana is played out. We need a little refresh with this web stuff.

So there you have it. New stuffs all around. I may actually write on all sorts of topics here. Or not at all. Time will tell.

Oh, btw, not one but two Bunnymen references on this site already. Cracking start. Reading Bill Drummand’s books all at once as quickly as time will allow (perhaps I will learn how to be a proper card carrying artist).

A list of stuff to get going on

Create the forms for new patients for carolinapetsanimalhospital.com
Create my own entry to 10kApart even though I technically cannot enter.
Build portfolio site. Many years of web development and nothing to show for it (nothing I can readily share anyway) does make for sadness.
Upgrade cooler to Rails 3. Well, basically rewrite the thing in the modern time. Poor dear is still using rhtml. As is this new fangled blog. Hey, wait a second!