Download the HD or larger format videos from program-glitch-esc.

December 17, 2010 can’t come soon enough.

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Unfortunately, they are all sold out right now (rightfully so, with this level of badassery), so I can only hope that more get into inventory soon, since I’ll order a few of these in a heartbeat if I can (and trust me, getting just one vinyl you want is suicide: unless you’ve put one on before, you’ll horribly screw up the first attempt…if not more).

See more at skinat’s Etsy page for this decal.

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1. The iPad Sucks

This is a single-task linear device that is a locked down black box which an owner has no control over. Apple has perfected Orwell’s 1984, but for devices. The App Store is a mortal sin, and it is censorship, control, and limitation at its core, disguised as stability and safety. From the wide ranging lies and double-dealing with VoiP apps to the debacle with Google Voice, the issues go on and on. The App Store is even one of the reasons why Apple won’t let Flash onto the iPhone, because it completely undermines the entire walled garden of the app store. And the App Store is the main reason I’ve shelved building the 3 iPhone apps I was working on (2 smaller ones, and 1 pretty big one that has a lot of potential…maybe one day…maybe non iPhone-OS platforms).

But here’s my reasons about why I won’t be picking up an iPad, despite my former hopes that an Apple tablet would be amazing and an instant buy for me.

1. Still tied to AT&T. Screw. That.
2. No multi-tasking. Seriously? That is a fatal flaw. On the iPad, IMing: “Wait, hold on, I have to log off so I can send an email, brb.” No listening to music while browsing or writing or using iWork. No being able to even see a doc or website you need to comment on in an email (you know, what some people call multi-tasking)…good luck. Major letdown.
3. The iPad requires an adapter to even use USB? Seriously?
4. All that nice “HD” video you can get on the iPad? Forget trying to output it to your TV or another device. There’s no HDMI/HD video out. Oh, wait…maybe they’ll start selling a $99 adapter for that.
5. $900 for 64gb. Wow. Amazingly overpriced for not nearly enough memory. This should have been a minimum 250gb drive for that price point.
6. Micro SIM. Welcome to even more sneaky ways for Apple and AT&T to control you and your use of a device. Because there are going to be zero other providers supporting Micro SIM for a good while to come. So forget about swapping your SIM or unlocking to get on a network that isn’t dedicated to suck.
7. Still no Flash. The iPad is supposed to be much closer to a netbook or laptop than something like an iPhone. Using the web is a highlighted feature. Yet there is no Flash support. Go figure, despite Flash being a prevalent technology for immersive and interactive websites. Oh, not to mention putting Flash on the iPad or iPhone would completely break the app store monopoly, but that has nothing to do with it, most definitely not. It’s because Flash is too heavy and Flash Lite is too light…sure, Steve.
8. Where’s the camera? Oh, right, there isn’t one. This isn’t necessarily a fatal flaw, but this sure seems to be a missed step from Apple. And that point speaks to the iPad in general: this does not seem nearly as well thought out or designed as their other devices. They merely took their existing hardware and OS (even removing a few things the iPhone already has), and enhugenated it. Nothing more.
9. And last, but certainly not least: It is still tied to the bullshit App Store regulation and control. Good luck making your device do what you want it to do or installing 3rd party apps (or real software), unless Apple has come down from their lofty clouds to take the time to approve some app that almost does what you want it to do, with Apple’s permission…unless they don’t like it or it conflicts or competes with whatever they choose to blame it on that day. You are buying into monopoly and control, and Apple is pushing this model far beyond just the iPhone and iPad. Don’t let them control your options so blatantly.

On a related, yet minor note, what the hell is with the bezel on the iPad? That thing is huge. All that screen real estate wasted for the bezel. Again, seems not nearly as well designed or polished as other Apple introductions.

Generally, though, the iPad seems to miss what we have all come to expect from Apple’s designs. It isn’t nearly as polished or feature-rich as what one would have, prior to this, expected from Apple. It’s a minor upgrade in only size, and a downgrade in some other areas (such as no camera). This is a misstep, and my only hope is that v2 of the iPad makes some significant improvements, as this first gen is just not what it should have, or could have, been.

I know people who are still going to get them, though, as I’m sure many people will. I hope those people like it, I honestly do. But for me, personally, I’m not buying an iPad at all, because it sucks.

On the other hand, as a friend of mine overheard an Apple Store employee say: at least it will be easy to jailbreak.

Update, 01.29.10: A friend of mine, cruftbox (whom you may have heard of) has put up his own thoughts on the iPad after actually getting a hands-on (he was lucky enough to be at the announce event), and offers some contrasting good points and perspective. Check it out.

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1. Hitler is not Pleased about the iPad

My own management and interview style is, so I’ve been told (and so all my comparisons and fact-finding tells me), drastically different, and I have been able to avoid the suckfest of these interviews for a while now, having staffed amazingly talented teams while avoiding problems, by seeing all the problems related to this issue, and actively trying new ways to address them, so why not share some of the things I realized about those problems? And those problems are not just about the interview process, or the questions asked therein, itself.

Hiring Managers Don’t Know What They Want

Lots of hiring managers are just trying to fill empty seats. And for some teams that works, like an Agency world–they just need doers, its not always about team fit or culture. For most teams it does not work, and it doesn’t work because one has to know what one needs before one can find it. For example, what level of SWE is needed? Are Leads needed more than “doers”? What about Architects or DBAs? Or, worse, people try and find everything in one person. They want an engineer who can write Java, C#, C++, ActionScript 3, PERL, PHP, CGI, FORTRAN (just in case), COBOL (it just sounds cool!), and they better know how to use punchcards. Why? Because they need to cover a lot of bases and they don’t see the focus they need in priority (or they are trying to make one position do far too much work). Knowing that one needs to hire a Senior level before anything else, or knowing one needs a guy who is solid at customer-interaction or troubleshooting or live-site support, etc. is extremely helpful to the Hiring Manager. If each position of the team is planned out and prioritized in that fashion, it aligns priorities and needs. Conversely, if each person on the team is meant to be a cookie-cutter carbon copy of everyone else on the team…well, two things: a) Managers – this means you’re probably doing it wrong, I’m pretty sure you will be causing yourself massive headaches doing this (with exceptions, of course), and b) interviewees: Warning – if the place you are interviewing at wants you to be like everyone else, is that really a place you want to be? There’s more to a paycheck than just a paycheck. You can only advance in your career so far by looking into a mirror, and that’s what cookie cutter tech shops are.

Hiring Managers Don’t Have a Vision for their Team

Continuing from the point above, establishing a vision of what the team is supposed to be doing and how it does that helps clearly identify and define the needs of that team. And, much more specifically, the type of people needed on that team. When I built my last (current) team (which is a team filled with great people who are all 10x engineers) I knew that I was building a team to be very high-powered, highly-functioning, capable, adaptable, and fast. That meant I needed people who would push the limits, who could think abstractly, who were strong proponents of standards, code review, SDLC processes, etc. That, in turn, meant I needed to tailor the specific requests and Job Descriptions of the people I was looking for, but it also meant I needed to figure out what roles I needed to staff earlier than others. I knew I needed a certain type of work done early before other projects hit, so I could prioritize those roles. I also knew I needed architecture skills early on, and that if I delayed that it would hurt the future health (and reputation) of the team, so I staffed that early too. The point is: I thought about it and planned it out, I didn’t just think “I need n guys to do some type of work.” The Hiring Manager needs to truly understand what they and their team are tasked with, so they can properly staff, motivate, train, and lead that team, and thus staff that team in a prioritized order.

Job Descriptions are Boilerplate, Recycled, and Misleading

Most Job Descriptions used, especially with larger shops and corporations, are all the same Job Descriptions used over and over again, even for different positions (at most a few key words or phrases are changed). Some I have seen were literally years old. For you people looking for jobs, this is also another warning sign for you: see if there are other job postings from the same company, and if they all look the same then make sure to ask a lot of questions in your interview, because the JD isn’t going to answer nearly as much as it should.

Writing a solid JD is not a difficult process, but its one that so many Hiring Managers overlook. Many of the Hiring Managers I have known completely ignore this step and just ended up using what was there before, or grabbed a copy from one of their peers, and the fatal flaw in this is that the Job Description is their chance to truly pitch, sell, and entice the types of candidates they are looking for, while also weeding out the types of candidates they are not looking for. This directly impacts the entire interview process as most candidates come in having been lied to by a false Job Description that doesn’t accurately describe the work, position, or team other than at the most vague, homogeneous levels. So now you have a hiring manager who doesn’t know what they need, doesn’t know what their team needs, and now a candidate who has been told a completely different story. Things add up fast.

Most People have no Success or Fail Criteria Defined

This is something I picked up from Johanna Rothman way back, either from her book or her Hiring Technical People blog, I can’t remember which, but it has been very helpful. This applies to both interviewer and interviewee, and is often just not thought of. The basic premise is that there are certain key things, both positive and negative, that are indicators that need attention. Specific things that if a candidate doesn’t have would result in an instant pass, or that if an employer didn’t offer would mean moving on. Similarly there are key things one specifically wants from a job or from an employer. These things should be identified. For example, if you are hiring a Flash Engineer and they have no idea how the Flash event model or bubbling/capture phases work, you probably want to pass on them. Similarly if you were to interview at a company who ensured working 80-hour weeks, that might be a pass too. On the flip side you need to also balance that against your Success criteria, since thinking of the negative is always easier to most of us in a technical world: PM experience, worked with geographical distant teams, workplace offers flexible work schedules, etc. Of all these points this one may not directly relate to the interview process itself, but it is worth noting as these things should be defined before a candidate ever gets in a room with an interviewer. Realistically they should be defined along with the Job Description, to my mind.

In short, take the time to figure out 3 or so key points that are both “Fail Criteria” and “Success Criteria.” This also helps one judge a candidate (or employer) more objectively, and can often end up making interview feedback such as “Meh, I don’t know, seemed ok at this, but not so good at that” into “The candidate couldn’t do x or y, those are both critical problems, I say pass.”

Most People are Just not Good at Interviewing

And this applies to both sides, interviewer and interviewee. For those conducting the interview, grilling other people is not natural for many people. And, more specifically, asking the types of questions that are consistently revealing and good indicators of success criteria, while being efficient with the amount of time available in an interview, is just not a natural thing. Individuals will naturally ask questions that are related to their world view, experiences, and day to day job responsibilities. These are typically not the same as the position being interviewed for, and may not be applicable to the candidate at all. Additionally, many people asked to interview are not properly informed of what they are interviewing for (the duties and responsibilities of the position) and this is crucial information for them to know in order to ask good questions and provide good and relevant feedback.

Again, a lot of this comes down to the Hiring Manager not knowing what they want and not knowing the best ways to go about that. If you are a Hiring Manager and the individuals on your team are involved in the interview process (and they better be, if not, stop reading this and go quit your job until you figure out how to do it better), and yet you haven’t told them the details of what they are interviewing for, then you are doing nothing more than ensuring a bad interview and that any feedback you get back from the interview panels will be so much errata. The more information and context you can give those people on your interview panel(s), the more your job as a Hiring Manager becomes simpler, and the more direct feedback that is relevant and insightful you can receive.

There is nothing wrong with setting up mock interviews with your team to practice. We practice at everything else, why not interviews? Change the paradigm, pick one person to be the candidate and have them intentionally lie or misdirect and see if your team picks up on it. Coach them through improvement after reviewing how the practice session went, ways to craft questions to answer multiple things, ways to work an interview into a more conversational tone (getting the candidate out of actor/interview mode and into just being a real person), etc. In other words, you’re a Hiring Manager, spend some time mentoring people to advance in their careers, and give them the tools to be successful at what you are asking them to do (in this case, interviewing). Presumably you mentor in other areas…why not interviewing?

However, on the side of the interviewee, many people don’t realize that the interview isn’t just about them, its just as much about the people who are interviewing you: work practices, focus, management style, culture, team fit, processes and methodologies used, etc. You need to know what you are getting into, and I (as a Hiring Manager) never see it as a good sign if there aren’t any questions to me from the person I am interviewing. It’s not necessarily a fatal flaw if a candidate doesn’t ask questions, but more directly its unremarkable, or only remarkable in a negative way. As a candidate trying to get a job, you don’t want to leave that impression. But, from my own personal perspective, don’t ask those oft-recited filler questions so prevalent in recruiter handbooks and job advice sites. Tailor the questions to what you have been getting exposed to in the interview process, research the company, research the people on your interview panel (if you know their names, that is), show that you are taking an active interest in wanting this job. And if you can’t do that, if you don’t feel motivated to do that…then really think about why you are even interviewing for that position.

The Wrong Questions Are Asked

Most technical interviews will, obviously, relate to very technical topics. However, this is a painfully deceptive trap. For me it is relatively easy to tell, and very quickly, if a candidate has the technical chops. That is because I come from a heavy engineering background and know the skill-set (many hiring managers do not have that background or have forgotten it all if they do, which is unfortunate just for the sake of career advancement), and I have grown and adapted my questions over time (in fact, I have one question I always ask that answers me dozens of things simultaneously as I lead the candidate down the path of the question, I’m notorious for this question), but also because I realized long ago that there are so many other key areas that affect and influence the validity of a candidate: team fit, culture, work ethic, approach, collaboration, stress indicators, and the most important one (for me): thought process. Knowing someone can write code a certain way, that adheres to standards and works, is fairly objective. That’s simpler to quantify in comparison. What is more subjective is how a person approaches a problem, how they think around a problem, their views on quality and standards/best practices, if they get stuck on linear paths or analysis paralysis, if they can’t even debug or troubleshoot (and if they can’t do that, they shouldn’t be in tech, its fundamental), if they don’t deal well with stress or live-site issues at 4AM, etc.

Now I’m not saying to create psychological interviews and brain teasers, as is so popular today (they suck even more at giving real-world insight into capabilities of a candidate, but do really good at letting you know they can do crosswords or move a mountain), those types of interviews are all glam and no substance, they are buzzword ideas. Fake. What I am saying is the questions need to be tailored to the position, and to the expectations of that position, and taking into account the people this position has to work with. If the same exact questions are asked of all SWEs, whether they are senior, junior, or senior staff, is a clear sign something is wrong. There are differences between positions, realize them and recognize them, then adapt interviews so that the interview itself can address and focus on those specific needs that are specific to the position. Otherwise you may as well just print out all the résumés you get and post them on a board and start throwing darts to pick your next hire.

Interviews are not about Ego and Showing Off

I’ve seen this so many times. Especially on the interviewer side, as the interviewee needs to show off during an interview, that’s the whole point. But as an interviewer no one should be in there trying to sound smarter, better, or faster than anyone else. That is completely unrelated to the point of an interview. This also taints, massively, any feedback to the interview process. There can be a bit of nuance to this, such as if you are hiring for a Sr. Web Dev, other Sr. Web Devs conducting the interview have likely more directly applicable and comparable mindsets, and that can be used advantageously. However, if a Sr. Web Dev is conducting an interview for a junior position and their questions are related to just finding out what they don’t know, and then their feedback is mostly about how much the candidate doesn’t know, something is wrong. But, again, there is a nuance there in that this is also valid feedback so long as it is balanced with (in this example) what the candidate does know…which is why ego and showing off need to be avoided. Balance must be maintained, objectivity is preferred over subjectivity, but still recognizing that subjectivity has its place.

This also goes to team management, an issue the Hiring Manager needs to address. For an extreme example, but one that is easy to visualize, your employees on the interview panel should never feel as if they are defending their own jobs when they are interviewing others, you’re just guaranteeing team morale and cohesion issues, as well as ensuring completely tainted feedback. In my experience the best mindset your interview panel can be in is one of ownership: each of them are helping shape and craft the future of the team they are part of. They are each helping ensure successful candidates are brought in, who will help them in their own tasks, be able to take extra burden off their shoulders, and someone they can either learn from or mentor, or (in the best situations) both. Ownership and that kind of accountability will help any interview so much in that each person interviewing is invested in a good outcomes and avoiding bad hires. But what’s even better about this is that this attitude and mentality can be extended across almost everything else the team does, and it works magic at team cohesion, accountability, investment, and passion. Use it to your advantage.

Most Interviews Ensure Invalid Feedback and Responses

Whether the interview style is grilling attacks, or problem solving, or diagraming or the like, interviews tend to keep a candidate in “interview” mode. Meaning prepared answers, prepared concepts, practiced points and responses. In other words, fake. This is not the information a hiring manager or team needs to make a good and well-informed decision. This is the information that makes people say Yes to a candidate and then 6 months after hiring them there are all kinds of problems because none of that was true in any real way.

The entire interview process needs to be about open conversation and dialog, getting people (on both sides) out of that prepared “acting” mode. Do that by asking questions that are not scripted, that are unique to the needs of the position and company, and questions that aren’t in every single interview book/blog out there (the only valid response to “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” is “Celebrating the 5th anniversary of you asking me this question.”) The questioning that allows this mood to fill an interview is the questioning that is standard, common, and completely useless. People ask these questions because that’s the way they have seen it done, because those are the questions they were asked.

Instead, think about the questions you ask, or have been asked, in an interview. Are any of them real? What’s your favorite language? Useless (Make the question about the language you need the candidate to know, and ask them what they think about that langauge). What IDE do you use? Useless (try “When working with X langauge, describe your optimal work setup for me”). How do you prevent SQL Injection attacks? Useless (try a question that is less leading and allows for more insightful responses that answer multiple things: “How do you ensure entered data is valid and safe in a system?” This question allows the candidate to show thought process, design, planning, troubleshooting. The original question only would answer 1 thing, make them answer 20 things with 1 answer). Instead ask questions that don’t lead the answer, that allow the room to answer multiple things without the candidate even realizing it, and that allow that open communication and actual conversation. That’s when you see the real candidate, and see the real information.

If you think about it, it wouldn’t surprise me if most of the questions asked in your interviews are either directly leading, only answer one specific thing at a time, or both. Craft questions to be more open while still specific enough as to get the point across (while keeping in mind some candidates will not understand such questions even with specificity, and that can be a valuable insight as well…assuming you aren’t making the questions so open as to be completely non-specific and utterly confusing). Use questions that answer multiple things (“How would you design a reservation system for a restaurant?” Everyone knows restaurants, and this answers DB, architecture, UI, requirements gathering, thought process, etc.), or questions that can lead down a path of multiple insights or topics (walking a candidate through a project process: requirements/spec gathering, estimation & design, unexpected shortened timelines, development, scope creep, slipping the date and figuring out how to get back on track, documentation, etc.).

Summation

Interviewing well is a vital requirement for successfully building a team, as a bad hire will hurt your team/company much more than a good hire will help it. And interviewing well is something that requires an investment to do well, and it is a wise investment. Many issues I see in jobs, especially larger corporations, are all related to bad leadership or bad hiring. And much of the time the bad leadership is due to bad hiring in the first place. Interviews are a basic fundamental thing that has impacts that will eventually ripple into nearly every facet of the company, especially if done poorly. Respect that notion, and work to always improve it. It doesn’t take too much effort, and it will pay off in both sanity, improved teams, and a fundamentally improved staff in your workplace.

What I lay out above is certainly not the full breadth and width of the ways interviews can be improved, and there are definitely more nuanced things to list if I wanted to list every single detail about why tech interviews suck. But hopefully what I’ve pointed out above will, at the very least, spark a different point of view or a rethinking of an approach, even if it isn’t directly what works for me or what I proposed an alternative to, the biggest outcome if you’ve taken the time to read this is simply to actively re-think your interviewing process and identify areas to improve it (as well as areas that already work and capitalizing on them). Always keep moving ahead, and sometimes its hard to tell if you are stuck unless someone points it out to you.

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Over 2008 I got much more into breakbeat and nuskool breaks, and over the last year I got back into Goa Trance quite a bit and went through a big period of reacquiring the hip-hop/rap I remember loving when I was going through school (Jr. High, High School, College, etc.) so the charts changed more than I thought they would, compared to last year. In fact I have a whole new Backspin playlist for that stuff that is awesome.

Top 10 Artists of 2009

1. The Crystal Method (#1 last year): Not much of a shock here, I still love TCM, though nothing they’ve done since has compared to the Vegas album (that album is perfect). The latest album got back to their roots a bit, but even then wasn’t nearly as good, except for Drown in the Now and Double Down Under. This album defined the west coast sound of breakbeat, and made TCM a name (and a common sound in countless commercials and movies).
2. Hybrid (#4 last year): Again, not much of a shock. After getting into Hybrid last year and really loving their style, I still love a lot of Hybrid’s tracks, especially from the I Choose Noise album. Hybrid does an amazing job of weaving so many disparate sounds: soundtrack, ambient, chill, breakbeat, techno, acid, rock, etc.
3. UNKLE (#5 last year): This one surprised me a bit, as I haven’t really added all that many new UNKLE tracks, but I’ve been listening more to the ones I have, specifically the Self Defence album. However, that album is all remixes, and not really indicative of UNKLE being #3. It’s more like Dylan Rhymes, Evil Nine, Roots Manuva, Ian Brown, etc.
4. Eminem (new to top 10 this year): Another one that wasn’t expected. I’ve only added 1 or 2 new Eminem tracks, but I have been listening to more hip-hop/rap this year.
5. Dr. Dre (#7 last year): Another change, this one less surprising due to getting back into hip-hop/rap. Keep Their Heads Ringing and Forgot About Dre came back into my headphones big in 2009.
6. 2pac (#2 last year): This one never surprises me, as I have a lot of songs from pac, so it always trends high (just like TCM above).
7. Frenessy (new this year): This was one of the big new albums for me this year, and was a clear sign I was starting to enjoy Goa Trance way more once again. Frenessy has some pretty solid sounds, really layered tracks and deep basslines.
8. Massive Attack (new to top 10 this year): I didn’t see Massive coming back up individually, but they did. I’ve always liked this group and really wish there were churning out more stuff.
9. Vaishiyas (new this year): Again, Goa Trance comes back up, and this was another new artist I never had before. More trancey than something like Frenessy, but still solid beats and basslines.
10. Leftfield (#9 last year): Much like Massive Attack, I’ve always liked and had Leftfield in my collection, but no new additions in a long time (both Massive and Leftfield need to come back heavy), but I’ve been re-experiencing their tracks and enjoying them. Solid electronic and dance, but with a distinct sound and vibe (much like Massive Attack), and not really able to be said is one genre over another, but definitely trending towards electronic.

Who dropped from the top 10 last year? DJ Krush, The Prodigy, and Voodoo & Serano.

Top 10 Albums of 2009

1. UNKLE – Self Defence (Never Never Land Reconstructed and Bonus Beats) (#3 last year): Great remixes of UNKLE’s stuff, and really not so much about UNKLE as about all the various artists doing the remixes. I’ve had this album for a while, but apparently started listening to it more over the last year. Album ranges from downtempo chill stuff to a few heavy riffs with solid beats. Good variety.
2. Hybrid – I Choose Noise (#1 last year): This album is still great, not every single song, but the vast majority. Hybrid has a really complex and creative sound, and contains both the sweeping and emotional feelings of classical, but also tracks and beats worthy of a dance floor or rave.
3. Frenessy – Lost Sound Digital (new this year): New Goa, great sound. Most of this album is pretty solid. If you like Goa, Acid, or Trance, Frenessy is worth checking out.
4. The Crystal Method – Vegas (#7 last year): No shock, I love every track on this album, and I usually only like 1 or 2 tracks on any given album, if that. If you don’t know about this album, go listen to the samples, it’s worth it.
5. Mimosa – Hostilis (new this year): As well as getting into Goa more the past year, I also got more into glitch, but way more than just the “regular” glitchmob or edIT stuff that has become somewhat meh. Mimosa does some great glitch, that isn’t cookie cutter like most other glitch.
6. Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard – The Dark Knight Collectors Edition (new this year): Okay, this one is probably the most surprising. While I do like soundtracks and instrumentals, and did like The Dark Knight’s soundtrack, there are only 3 songs from this 2-disc, 28 song album that I have listened to…the 3 remixes. The first 2 are Gunpowder and Gasoline (Mel Wesson Remix) and Rory’s First Kiss (Ryeland Allison Remix), both of which are solid, but only 3 stars to me. The one I really like, and the one I played enough to get into the top 10, apparently, is Why So Serious? (The Crystal Method Remix). Which is, in a word, awesome. Great remix that perfectly blends the original sound from the soundtrack, and all that entails, with a fully desired TCM driving beat, with synths, pulses, and all the things that make breakbeat so good and so infamous.
7. Vaishiyas – Action Flaxion (new this year): Again, Goa. And it works. The album is pretty solid overall, with 2 tracks standing out: Who You Are and Sub Oscs. If you like Goa or Trance, you should check this out.
8. Massive Attack – Mezzanine (#8 last year): More good stuff continually resurrected from the music collection I already had. Great album. And an album that truly makes me wish Massive Attack were still laying tracks down.
9. Tha Dogg Pound – Dogg Food (new to top 10 this year): Ah, High School. This album is up here as pure reminiscing and backspin-type of of stuff. Not anything compared to classics like Nuthin’ But a G’ Thang, Murder Was the Case, They Reminisce Over You, Uptown Anthem, Take You There, etc., but still definitely solid and worth having in the collection.
10. Various Artists – FabricLive 16: Adam Freeland (new to top 10 this year): Oh Adam Freeland. How I hate the little whiny no-talent bitch that makes shitty shitfest music these days that you have become. However, like UNKLE, this album is not about that idiot Freeland and instead about some really good other artists on the album.

And who dropped from the Top Albums for 2009? Rob Dougan – Furious Angels, Dr. Dre – 2001, Daft Punk – Alive 2007, The Prodigy – The Fat of the Land, Shadowstorm – Genesis, and DJ Krush – Stepping Stones: The Self-Remixed Best.

Top 10 Songs of 2009

1. Public Enemy VS. Benny Benassi – Bring the Noise (Pump-kin Remix) (new this year): I hate Benny Benassi for the most part. It’s crap cotton candy bullshit for trippers and tourists. BUT. This song is probably the absolute best remix of a classic rap song in history. The lyrics from Chuck D flow perfectly with this powerful driving new beat and comebacks laid down by Benassi. Amazing song.
2. Rhymefest – Run That (new this year): This song (also known as Welcome to the Jungle) is extremely hard to find, and was on the soundtrack for The Rundown (which is a pretty funny movie in and of itself), but not released as part of the official soundtrack. Too bad, it’s a great song, and uses the riff from Black in Black by AC/DC really well.
3. Souls of Mischief – 93 ‘TIL INFINITY (LP Version) (new this year): This is a song I picked up from by backspin school-days re-collecting of songs. I had completely forgotten about it until I stumbled onto it on YouTube looking for something else and instantly remembered some stuff I had forgotten about from back in the day. Really smooth hip-hop beat.
4. Above the Law – Black Superman (new to top 10 this year): I’ve had this song for a while, and remember it from High School as well, but it jumped up my personal charts due to the whole backspin cataloging thing. Best song by Above the Law, to my mind, and a really solid beat and sound. I think the CD is discontinued and it doesn’t seem readily available on MP3.
5. Ils – Cherish (Adam Freeland Mix) (new to top 10 this year): I got into Ils a while ago, and the original version of this track is pretty good, but Freeland plussed it up. As much as I loathe Freeland, he does have a knack for remixing a good electronic track and adding some nice nubreakz hotness to it. Otherwise he blows.
6. Dr. Dre – Forgot About Dre (#9 last year): Still a classic, still stands on its own.
7. UNKLE – Eye For An Eye (Dylan Rhymes vs Force Mass Motion Mix) (#6 last year): Excellent electronic track, still has a great break and comeback in the middle. Definitely worth checking out.
8. Evil Nine – Crooked (new to top 10 this year): When Evil Nine is on point, they bring it. Unfortunately the hits seem to be getting fewer and further between (especially after that zombie/Halloween They Live! crap they dropped in 2008).
9. N2Deep – Back To The Hotel (new this year): Again, new acquisition this year based on building my collection up of the songs I remember from school. And this song was awesome back in the day, and still flows and beats really good now. N2Deep did almost nothing else worth mentioning (though they got pretty big up in the Bay Area), but this song has all kinds of hip-hop nostalgia related to it for me.
10. Evil Nine Featuring Toastie Taylor – Restless (new to top 10 this year): Probably (I think) the only other Evil Nine track that I find a 4 or 5 star. Vocal electronic, you’ve probably heard it in movies like Tokyo Drift, good song worth checking out.

What songs dropped and no longer make the cut? Hybrid – Last Man Standing (wow, surprising, as much as I listen to them), Massive Attack (feat. Mos Def) – I Against I (another surprise, I love this song), RZA – Fatal, Evil Nine – for lovers, not fighters, The Chemical Brothers – Loops of Fury, Paul Van Dyk – Make It (not surprising), Hybrid – Choke (surprised again), and Brainbug – Nightmare (Sinister Strings mix). Overall my top 10 songs changed much more significantly than the top albums and artists, compared to the previous year, and based how I shifted my music buying/downloading and listening (it started to slant more towards hip-hop/rap due to the backspin thing) that makes sense, but my renewed enjoyment of Goa didn’t really break into the top 10. Which also makes sense, hip-hop/rap is more consistent to me, and I’m much more finicky about good solid electronic music I like, although there is plenty of utter crap hip-hop/rap, especially most things getting released these days.

So that’s it. Interesting for me to see the changes, maybe for you as well (though I doubt it), but maybe you’ll discover some songs, artists, or albums you like from all this.

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1. My Top 10 Music Artists, Albums and Songs from 2008

The simplest answer is that you are an idiot.

Much like the Hanlon principle (“do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity”), this new principle can find quite a few comfortable homes and uses in the modern day business world.

So go, I say unto you, go and point out idiocy when you see it. Drive it from its home. Make it suffer. Punish it. Lest it turn you into one of its latest victims and servants to the status quo: the acceptance of the unnacceptable. Because if that happens, well then the simplest answer is that you are an idiot.

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As mighty Gary Busey once said “Great things like this only happen for the first time once.” And then he punched a woman in the throat, set a baby’s diaper on fire, made a cow eat a hamburger, gave God the finger, and urinated all over a puppy all while screaming “WHOOOOOOOO! YOU’VE BEEN BUSEY’D!”

Source: giantmecha

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The guy dressed like a banana has already been perished, and now it’s your turn, monkey.

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When Kindle first came out, it was an interesting idea to me, but I wasn’t sold on what it had to offer at that point. There was also a part of me that liked (and still does) the notion of a physical book in my hand and lining my bookshelves, especially since I tend to re-read a lot of my books a few years apart. I’m an avid reader, and probably knock out a few hundred books a year, and space adds up. Adding to that, I also don’t believe in throwing books away, so I end up giving them away or donating them, which often times means I end up procrastinating in giving away or donating those books. So that was something I wasn’t quite sold on: the lack of physicality in a book. However, I knew that Kindle was something I wanted to try out, but just not with the first version.

In all that time since then, I have had no problem avoiding buying Kindle 1.0, I just felt that strongly that the initial offering was lacking, specifically in the form factor. Plus I have never seen another person using one, even now. Maybe if I had I would have gotten the itch more (consumerism rises again), but its worked out this way. So I have been waiting for the second revision of Kindle, Kindle 2.0, and that finally came when the box showed up at my door yesterday after I pre-ordered it a few weeks ago as soon as it was available on Amazon.

Coincidentally, a friend of mine got me a light box kit for Christmas this year (thanks, Jeff!), and I had a new unopened box with a gadget inside of it. The stars aligned, and here we all are with me doing an unboxing and babbling.

So first impressions? I really like it. Also, keep in mind I did not have Kindle 1.0, so I can’t make direct comparisons.

1. Surprised that Amazon actually shipped something in the proper sized box. I’ve gotten memory cards in shoe-box sized boxes. This order was perfectly snug in the box, and included both a single slim box for the Kindle itself, and a single even smaller box for the Kindle 2.0 Leather Cover I also ordered (this thing is getting thrown into my messenger bag, with my laptop and d80, some chargers, etc. so it needs a way to survive).
2. The battery was halfway charged already, and instructions bore me, so it was instantly turned on. Later I read that I should have plugged it in and then turned it on. Screw that, waste of time, and it didn’t break anything. I did find it slightly annoying to have to slide and hold the power button to start it (and the same to turn it off), but this isn’t so much as annoying as accepted at this point. Though it is odd, a quick slide puts it into sleep mode with a random author portrait displayed (and another quick slide wakes it back up), but in some ways I question why this just isn’t a simple toggle, not a slider that one has to hold to power up/down. Like I said, though, this is a paltry sticking point, and one that doesn’t alter my opinion of the device.
3. The display is very crisp. It comes with a plastic cover on it that you have to remove, and it was pleasantly surprising to realize that the instructions I saw on the Kindle’s screen itself were not actually on that plastic cover as I had originally assumed at a glance, but were what the e-ink display had onscreen. It was a nice introduction to the first e-ink I’ve owned.
4. Glad that the charger is a small form factor and, for the most part, standard. Amazon pretty much stuck their logo on everything they could find.
5. Buttons are sturdy and the device feels solid. The metal backing is nice. The buttons are not easily pressed accidentally, as people have said about the original Kindle, but not so stiff as to be difficult to use.
6. The device powered up quickly, and knew who I was, and what my Amazon account had in it. This was surprising, mainly because I hadn’t thought of it: it was configured for my account. If this was bought as a gift, I would have had to go through the registration process, but as it is I turned it on and it was connected to Amazon, my account on Amazon, and it was recommending me Kindle books based on my reading history. (This also made me realize I needed to clean up my Amazon recommendations, as I was getting books recommended to me that I would never read, based on books I had bought for others as gifts.)
7. The first books I bought were Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and The Art of War by Sun Tzu (both are books I have read multiple times). Downloaded in less than a minute. In many ways, it was just like reading a book. Reading it felt no different to me than reading a paperback, which is a subtle but key thing to note. Also, as a guy on my team pointed out, it’s nice to be able to hold the Kindle in one hand if you are (for example) reading in bed, moreso with paperbacks that are sometimes difficult to hold with one hand without your thumb and pinky covering chunks of the pages.
8. I found that I sped up the default settings of the text-to-speech and also dropped the font size to as small as it could be, but that’s more just my personal preference. The speech is pretty solid, though it doesn’t quite carry the sarcastic tone some lines in Snow Crash deserve, but I also found that I preferred the female voice as it’s speech sounded a bit more clear. Whereas with the male voice I would pick up on the slight hiccups it would have with a pronunciation and that ultimately distracted me from what I was listening to. This was also exacerbated because I had speech on fast, and I ended up putting it back to the default speed which alleviated those hiccups, and it works great (though, to be fair, I am not an audio book person and won’t be using this feature that much I don’t think).
9. You really would be surprised just how thin it is. When people asked to see it, I found I would end up unhooking it from the leather case so they could really get a sense of the weight and slim profile the device had. By the way, how Kindle 2.0 locks into the leather case is pretty cool. On the case there is a slider lock on the top, and a curved tang on the bottom; one has to rotate the Kindle onto the bottom tang and the move the slider down to fit into the top slot. The top slider then springs back, thus locking the case onto the device. Though I wonder if (over time) the two hooks will present as pressure points and either wear out the case, or (worse) wear out the slots on the Kindle itself. Not sure if Kindle 1.0 was the same in this regard, so it would be interesting to hear if any Kindle 1.0 owners noticed wear and tear like that.
10. It’s cool to have a dictionary on the device. And it lets co-workers who want to take a look at a Kindle in-person look up the word “dick” in the dictionary and leave the results there for you to find…you know, as a surprise. Thanks, Scott.

What wasn’t so hot, or what do I see lacking? Overall, not very much:

1. The 5-way controller/rocker should be consistently usable across all types of views of pages. Plus using it to go through lists/menus is slower than I would like, you have to down, down, down, down, etc. And it jumps from link to link in pages of links (such as the Kindle Store). The bigger part of that is that using this as a navigation element could be smoother.
2. I wish there was a way for me to skip to the bottom of the page (specifically when viewing a bunch of links, such as on the Amazon Store or a website) to more quickly get to links at the bottom of the page. Maybe there is and I just haven’t found it yet. This relates to the slower nature of the 5-way rocker.
3. While a guy I work with was randomly messing around with it, he got an error when trying to turn on speech. Something along the lines of “an error occurred with the speech engine.” However, this did not kill the device, everything was still completely usable, and when we tried a second time right after that the text-to-speech worked just fine.
4. I did experience a little oddity in downloading another book, in that it showed up in my Archive initially (not in the area where books normally appear, aka your home screen), and when I tried to open it it would just say “opening…” on the screen and do nothing. I had to go into the Menu to tell it to sync and check for updates, and then apparently that triggered Kindle to fully download the book. It was one slight hiccup, and again ultimately did not kill the device, so Kindle seems to have some good thinking to keep the device from getting into a bad state. All other downloads since then (either bought directly on my Kindle or sent to my Kindle from the Amazon site) have been flawless and shockingly quick.
5. The first time I typed on Kindle 2.0 I thought it felt awkward, but as I used it I adjusted to it (within the space of a few minutes). Specifically it was the width of the keyboard and how far I had to extend my thumbs to reach the center of the keyboard (and I have big hands). I think this is also partly related to how I am accustomed to typing on the iPhone. Also, the buttons were a little stiff, and I found it hard to tell (in a tactile sense) when it registered a keypress. However, after a little use this all went away. I believe the keypress “stiffness” was intentional, as Kindle 1.0 seems to have been plagued by all kinds of accidental button/key presses.
6. The SD slot is gone, in favor of 2gb of internal storage. I’d like to see SD added back in, and the internal storage still present as well. Though if it went all-SD I could get behind that too.
7. Touch screen. Don’t has it. This is probably the biggest single thing that could undoubtedly and significantly plus up the device overall. I, and the guys on my team who messed around with it for a while, all initially had the urge to push the buttons on the screen when trying to search. Some of us actually did it a couple of times. We’re all heavy iPhone users, so there is that side to it, but I think it’s pretty clear that a touch screen would do good things. Again, I don’t find the lack of a touch screen kills my use of the device or diminishes what I like about it, this would just be a great addition (and one I wouldn’t expect for a while).

Overall I have to say I really like it so far. It’s a revolution in how we consume books and the written word, and I can easily see why some people call it an iPod for books. I’ve had it less than 24 hours at this point, and have probably messed around with it a total of 4-5 hours, though I am thinking I’ll revisit this post, or make an updated one, in a month after I’ve had some time to really get into Kindle and use it. But so far, I like it, and I would recommend it to those who are interested.

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