Prerequisites

• Install MacPorts

Also, make sure that your MacPorts install is completely up-to-date with:

sudo port -d selfupdate

Installation

Now, I’ve never used MacPorts to install PHP or Apache before, so I’m starting with a clean slate. If you’ve already installed PHP or Apache with MacPorts, your steps may be different. As always, your mileage may vary. For me, I develop several open-source projects, so I need things that others may not. Adjust these steps as necessary.

1. From Terminal, install PHP 5.3 + Apache, and some other stuff. This will likely take quite a while. I’m installing SQLite, MySQL, and PostgreSQL because of my work on CacheCore, so you may or may not need those. mysqlnd is the new PHP Native Driver for MySQL and is supposed to be better, so we’ll use that.

   sudo port install php5 +apache2+fastcgi+pear+sqlite+tidy+mysqlnd+postgresql83+sockets+debug

   You can see all available options by running port variants php5

2. Using “Web Sharing” in your Sharing Preferences should be turned off forever, as this points to the (old) Apple Apache installation. We’re not using this anymore, so we can leave it off.
3. The new Apache configuration file is stored at /opt/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf while the old one was at /etc/apache2/conf/httpd.conf. Take a moment to copy over any settings you’ll want to maintain into the new Apache installation.
4. You’ll also want to include your extra settings. Toward the bottom of your httpd.conf file, add the following line:

   # All settings
   Include conf/extra/*.conf

5. If you don’t have an SSL certificate, rename your SSL configuration:

   cd /opt/local/apache2;
   sudo mv conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf-disabled

6. You’ll also want to enable PHP in Apache:

   sudo mv conf/extras-conf/mod_php.conf conf/extra/mod_php.conf

7. The new PHP configuration file is stored at /opt/local/etc/php5/php.ini while the old one was at /etc/php.ini. Take a moment to copy over any settings you’ll want to maintain into the new PHP installation.
8. Restart Apache. If you were using apachectl before, it still points to the old Apache, so we’ll want to point specifically to the new one.

   sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart

At this point, PHP 5.3 with Apache 2.2 and the new mysqlnd extension are all installed.

Extra stuff

1. I generally prefer to have lots more stuff installed locally so that I can worry more about developing and less about installing. Because of this, I also install a few other things.

   sudo port install memcached php5-apc php5-http php5-imagick php5-xdebug php5-memcache

2. I install XCache (supported by CacheCore, which I develop).

   cd / && \
   sudo mkdir source && \
   sudo chmod -Rf 777 /source && \
   wget http://xcache.lighttpd.net/pub/Releases/1.2.2/xcache-1.2.2.tar.bz2 && \
   tar -jxvf xcache-1.2.2.tar.bz2 && \
   cd xcache-1.2.2.tar.bz2 && \
   phpize && ./configure --enable-xcache && \
   sudo make && sudo make install;

3. Restart Apache with:

   sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart

If you’ve not yet read the related post, “Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMWare Fusion on Mac OS X,” you should. This is a follow up on how to take those virtual machines (which we’ve already done a lot of work on), and convert them for use VirtualBox.

Prerequisites

• You need to have access to a Mac OS X machine.
• A broadband connection would be quite helpful.
• A USB flash drive (or some other way to copy files to the VM before you have network access enabled).

VMWare Fusion uses the .vmdk disk format for its virtual drives. VirtualBox uses the .vdi format. Although VirtualBox can use the existing .vmdk images, you get better performance if you convert them to .vdi.

Downloading and Preparing stuff

1. Download and install VirtualBox. It should live in the /Applications directory.
2. Download and install Q (a Mac version of Qemu). It should live in the /Applications directory.
3. Download and decompress an IE6, IE7, or IE8 VMWare Fusion image that I’ve posted previously. If you need ALL of them, you can save yourself the bandwidth by downloading the IE6 image, making a copy of the file, and upgrading that copy to IE7 or IE8.

Extracting the disk image

1. When you decompress the VMWare Fusion image, you should end up with a folder containing 3 files: Two text files, and a .vmware file.
2. Right-click (or command-click) the .vmware file and choose “Show package contents.” This will open up a new window.
3. Find the .vmdk file and drag it some place that’s easy to find. In this tutorial, we’ll use the desktop.

Converting the VMWare image to a VirtualBox image (Optional)

This step is optional. VirtualBox can read the VMWare Fusion disk image format if you’re short on time. However, you get better performance if you convert to the native VirtualBox format.

1. Fire up Terminal.app. It lives inside your /Applications/Utilities directory.
2. Move to your desktop directory:

   cd ~/Desktop

3. We’ll convert the .vmdk file into a raw hard drive file, then convert that raw file into the native .vdi format:

   /Applications/Q.app/Contents/MacOS/qemu-img convert -O raw IE6-XP.vmdk IE6-XP.raw && /Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxManage convertdd IE6-XP.raw IE6-XP.vdi && rm IE6-XP.raw

4. Wait. Depending on your computer, this will probably take 20-45 minutes.
5. Once it’s done, you can delete the IE6-XP.vmdk file.

Configuring the VM

1. Move the new .vdi file to wherever you’ll want your virtual machines to live.
2. Launch VirtualBox. You’ll be presented with the “Welcome to VirtualBox” dialog.
3. Click “New.” A “Create new virtual machine” dialog box will pop up. Click “Next.”
4. Name your virtual machine. I named mine “IE6-XP.”
5. Operating system is “Microsoft Windows.” Version is “Windows XP.” Click “Next.”
6. Determine the amount of RAM you want to allow the virtual machine to use. I have 4 GB of RAM, so I allow 512 MB. Adjust as necessary, but I wouldn’t go below 192 MB. Click “Next.”
7. Here, you select the disk image to use. Choose “Use existing hard disk.” There is a pull-down menu that says “<no media>”. Click the icon to the right of it.
8. The “Virtual Media Manager” dialog should pop up. Click “Add.”
9. Find where you saved the .vdi file to, and select it. Once that’s done, click the “Select” button. This will close the Virtual Media Manager” dialog.
10. Back on the “Create new virtual machine” dialog, the pull-down menu that used to say “<no media>” should now say something along the lines of “IE6-XP.vdi (Normal, 16.00 GB).” Click “Next,” then “Finish.”
11. From there, click “Settings” along the top of the application.
12. Click the “Audio” tab, and deselect “Enable audio.” We don’t have the drivers for this, so we’ll save ourselves the nag-ware.
13. Click the “Network” tab, and choose “Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop” from the Adapter Type pull-down.
14. Leave everything else as default, and click OK.
15. Click “Start” along the top of the application to start the virtual machine.

Installing the drivers and Guest Additions

1. When the virtual machine starts, the viewport will be very small. Windows also may be asking you to find drivers. Make it go away for now.
2. In the “Devices” menu, choose “Install Guest Additions.” This will load a virtual CD-ROM.
3. The setup should begin automatically. If it doesn’t, go to the Start Menu, choose “My Computer,” then double-click on “VirtualBox Guest Additions.”
4. Go through the process and install the software, then restart your VM.
5. While that restarts, switch back to Mac OS X and download the driver for the Intel PRO/1000 MT ethernet card. Download the version for Windows XP (32-bit). Copy it to your USB flash drive.
6. When the virtual machine comes back up, you’ll need to connect your USB flash drive to your virtual machine. To do this, you’ll need to drag the flash drive icon to the trash from Mac OS X (but leave it physically connected). In VirtualBox, go to the menubar and choose Devices > USB Devices > USB Flash Drive.
7. Navigate to the installer on your flash drive, and install the Intel drivers.
8. Lastly, go to Start Menu > Run, then in the dialog type the following so that you can keep the additional drivers on your VM:

   D:\VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe /extract /D=C:\Drivers

Done!

You should be all set! If you want to get all super-hacky, you can check out “Create IE VBox” for geekier details.

Fast-forward to today. My 7-year-old is just starting to learn to play video games. For the past few months, she’s enjoyed (or been frustrated by) games like Mario Kart Wii and other games where motion (such as jerking the controller up in the air) gives her the response she wants. Playing the Wii has been a bit unnerving for me, as I spent years of my childhood trying to unlearn the very sorts of actions that the Wii encourages. This has always come naturally to her.

A few days ago, I decided that it was time for her to learn how to play with my Nintendo DS. As the was playing “The New Super Mario Bros.,” I noticed that the motion that she’d become accustomed to (jerking the controller around) wasn’t working, and it was making her frustrated. When playing Mario Kart DS, she kept trying to turn her driver by turning the DS in the air… which, of course, doesn’t work. All in all, playing the DS was a frustrating experience for her after having played the Wii for so long.

After seeing her frustration playing those action-oriented games, I decided to let her try another game that I thought might hold her attention longer: Final Fantasy. Specifically, it was Final Fantasy Tactics Advance for Gameboy Advance. (FFA for PlayStation is still one of my favorite FF games.) I handed her the DS and let her play, warning her that there was a lot of reading involved, but that it might be more interesting for her. She started playing and I didn’t hear anything out of her for over 4 hours. Simply amazing. Her cousin came over yesterday, and they’ve been playing a LOT of Nintendo DS together.

So I suppose it was interesting to see the difference between her generation and mine. Or rather, the similarities. The biggest difference is that this time around, Nintendo allows people to jerk the controller around. I also think it’s interesting that my daughter couldn’t pay attention to the Mario games, but was able to hyper-focus when it came to playing an RPG. That sounds like my daughter.

A few years ago I discovered Builder.node(), a component of Scriptaculous. The problem is that Scriptaculous relies on Prototype, and both are HUGE JavaScript libraries. Later I moved to Moo.fx/MooTools, then I didn’t do much JavaScript for a while, then I started doing a lot with YUI, while sprinkling a little jQuery around here and there. None of these other frameworks had an equivalent to Builder.node(), and again, that sucks.

So last night, I wrote a small JavaScript class to handle this very thing. Introducing DOMBuilder. DOMBuilder is small, fast, and doesn’t depend on any other JavaScript frameworks meaning that it’s easy to use in any project where you need to construct nested DOM elements. The fully commented debug version clocks in around 3k. The minified version is 739 bytes. With gzip compression, it squeezes down to a mere 393 bytes.

It’s not quite as terse or elegant as I’d like (yet), but it’s a good result for about 2 hours of hacking.

Examples

Here’s the HTML we want to generate:

<div class="location_select_control">
	<a href="" class="location_select_label">
		<label>This is my label</label>
	</a>
</div>

Here is how we’d do it with the standard DOM:

control_div = document.createElement('div');
control_div.className = "location_select_control";
control_link = document.createElement('a');
control_link.href = "";
control_link.className = "location_select_label";
control_label = document.createElement('label');
control_label.innerHTML = "This is my label";
control_link.appendChild(control_label);
control_div.appendChild(control_link);
document.body.appendChild(control_div);

Lastly, here’s how we’d do it with DOMBuilder:

document.body.appendChild($dom('div', { class:'location_select_control' }).child(
	$dom('a', { href:'', class:'location_select_label' }).child(
		$dom('label').innerHTML('This is my label')
	)
).asDOM());

Download

This code is BSD licensed, so feel free to use it in personal or commercial projects. You can download it from Github.

1. All through Elementary, Jr. High, and High School, my teachers would always tell my parents: “Ryan is a bright kid, but he just doesn’t apply himself.” In 6th grade, I was the only kid in G.A.T.E. with an F as a class grade.
2. My first real girlfriend was a girl named Claire, who was really cool. The first time she met my mom was on the way to Taco Bell, and Claire called her “Mom.” My mom still asks me about her from time to time, although Claire and I haven’t spoken since high school.
3. When I was a kid, my mom didn’t want me listening to “Devil’s music,” so I was only able to choose between opera, easy listening, or country. I chose country. I listened to country exclusively until mid-way through my Freshman year of high school when I went to Eric’s house after school. His brother Kevin and cousin Sebastian were listening to a little blue-covered CD with 4 guys standing there with the name “Weezer” along the top. That was the day I became a fan of Alternative.
4. In 1995, my best friends (Eric & Jeff) and I decided to start calling ourselves the U.F.K.S. (which stands for something that starts with “ugly” and ends with “suckers”). It was an inside joke about an inside joke that was satirized by the class clown. Over time it just became UFKS, and doesn’t really stand for anything anymore.
5. My sophomore year in high school, I wrote a story about my then-girlfriend and I breaking up for my English class. I wrote it in a writing binge that started at 9:00pm and went until I finished editing the story around 4:30am. I listened to “The Change” by Garth Brooks on repeat the entire night. I turned the paper in and got an A+. I turned the same paper in in 11th grade and got an A+. Same thing in 12th grade, and again in my first year of college.
6. I met my wife, Sarah, in 11th grade Chemistry class. I gave her a wedgie, she gave me her pager number. True story.
7. I asked the same girl (my long-distance, on-again-off-again romantic interest) to both my Junior and Senior proms. Both times she said yes. Both times she backed out after I’d bought the tickets.
8. When my best friends (Eric & Jeff) graduated from high school, I ran down to the field after the ceremony and wrapped them both in duct tape just for kicks. When I graduated from high school a week later, Eric and Jeff wrapped me and my girlfriend Sarah in duct tape.
9. One of the best things about college was that you didn’t *actually* have to go to class. I used this privilege liberally, and ended up failing all of my classes. Unfortunately, I also did the same thing the following semester, and again the semester after that. I ended up deciding to join the seminary instead. I dropped out of that too.
10. I spent a few months in 2000-2001 in the San Francisco rave scene making candy bracelets and dancing to trance and house music in underground clubs getting hit on by both girls and guys. I met some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met during that phase of my life.
11. Once I was at a party, and had unknowingly taken a hallucinogen. It’s one thing to be young and stupid and decide to get high with your friends. It’s another matter all-together when you find yourself having a conversation with a 6-foot lizard-person with a rainbow for hair, or when you’re talking to someone and suddenly their face morphs into a completely different person, or when you shout “go carpet, go!” and actually mean it.
12. When I was 21, I asked my girlfriend Sarah to marry me. She said yes. A few weeks later Sarah said that she thought she was pregnant. I woke up the next morning and found our roommate, Rick, snorting a line of some blend of speed off the coffee table. Sarah and I packed up and moved back to Morgan Hill that very same day. My little girl changed my entire life.
13. I told one of my best friends that I was going to go back to college and graduate valedictorian. He scoffed at me and didn’t believe I’d even finish. In 2003, I graduated with a B.A. in Design and Visualization with a 3.84 GPA.
14. My daughter, Julianna Grace, was born at the end of 2001. I came up with the name 3 years earlier when I was working at Berean Christian Bookstore in Fresno, CA. Sarah loved the name, so our conversation about what to name The Girl literally lasted all of about 2 minutes.
15. I’ve founded two open-source software projects: SimplePie has now had hundreds of thousands of downloads worldwide, and is considered one of the best pieces of software in its class. Tarzan reached a stable release in November 2008, and has already become a very popular piece of software for leveraging Amazon.com’s pay-as-you-go internet infrastructure services.
16. My son, Matthew Taylor, was born in 2005. His name consists of both my own middle name, and the middle name of Eric — one of my two best friends. We also kicked around Daniel (Jeff’s middle name), but preferred the sound of Matthew instead.
17. In 2006, I co-founded a company with the goal of solving the digital media problem. People were downloading music and movies for free on the internet, and the Media Industry was crying foul. Meanwhile the Media Industry was unsuccessfully trying to apply the old “Content is King” mentality to the internet, and were treating their customers like criminals. WarpShare was born out of our efforts, and will be launching in the next few months.
18. I have an INFJ personality type, which less than 1% of all people on Earth have. – http://bit.ly/SSeR & http://bit.ly/Rt5Y
19. I’ve moved roughly 25 times in my life. 19 of those times have been since Kindergarten. 9 have been since I graduated from High School.
20. I am a very pattern-driven person: I always keep a pen, chapstick, and my keys in one pocket, and my wallet in the other. I only take off my shoes in one of two or three places. I have a left-foot sock and a right-foot sock.
21. I hate wasting my life away. If I’m going to spend part of my life doing something, then I want it to be something I can be proud of. There only a few things I hate more than having to work on a project where I’m not able to make enough of a difference to be able to be proud of what I’ve worked on.
22. If relationships aren’t intense, they’re not worthwhile. Although I have friends, my closest friends are people that I’ve been able to be emotionally close to (as I’m sure is the same for everyone). If I can’t have that, then they’re just people who are in my orbit who I cross paths with from time to time. If you’re not in my daily orbit, call me, because I’ll only occasionally remember to call you.
23. Because I’m able to to do my hobby as a job (usually), I find that I struggle with workaholism. When I’m working on something interesting and my brain is firing on all cylinders, I can zone out for several hours at a time before realizing how much time has passed.
24. I Tivo every single episode of Scrubs that comes on throughout the course of the day, and on most nights I fall asleep watching it.
25. For about a year and a half (May 2007 – November 2008), I was the lead male vocalist for a band called “The 5-Afters.” Mary, Sandy and Ingrid were the lead female vocalists, Nick was our acoustic guitarist, Mike was our electric guitarist, Dave P. was our drummer, Tina was our percussionist, “Guitar David” was our bassist, and Dave K. was our sound guy. I had a lot of fun with those guys, and I’ve missed them terribly since I moved away this past fall.
26. (Bonus) I’ve suffered from Seasonal Affective Disorder since I was 16. I’ve never taken any medication for it, but simply understanding *why* I get depressed in the winter (and, conversely, why I have so much energy in the summer) enables me to make adjustments in my life when I start feeling depressed or anxious for no good reason. A by-product of this is “reverse photosensitivity” in that I frequently have all of the lights on when I’m home, my home office desk is in front of a window, and I have a difficult time working in the current WarpShare office (which has no windows).

I already tagged several people on Facebook, so I’m only going to tag a few more here: Geoffrey Sneddon, Ryan McCue, Michael Shipley, Matt Clower, Vada Dean, Ron Bronson, and Christen Dybenko (whom I’ve not met in person, but should seeing as how we live relatively nearby each other).

Because of that, we need to go the long way. We’ll download the “officially sanctioned” VirtualPC images containing a time-limited version of Windows XP SP3 and Internet Explorer 6.0, and then we’ll convert these images to the kind that work with VMware Fusion (which works on Mac OS X). This should only need to be done every 3 or 4 months when the images expire.

These instructions are loosely based on the ones found at Running IE6, IE7 and IE8 on your Mac.

Prerequisites

• You need to have VMware Fusion installed on your Mac.
• You need to have access to a Windows XP machine, as this is where the converting will happen.

For those in a hurry

These are the pre-converted, ready-to-go images that you can simply unzip and run. They DO require VMware Fusion, but DO NOT require Windows. I will update these as often as I need them, but I don’t promise to update them forever. That’s why we have this tutorial. Please read the README file inside these packages to get (a) the expiration date of the image, and (b) the password for the user accounts.

• ie6-xpsp3.tar.gz
• ie7-xpsp3.tar.gz
• ie8-xpsp3.tar.gz

Installing Qemu (FIRST-TIME ONLY)

1. Download a small application to our Windows machine called Qemu. At the time of this writing, you want to download the regular version 0.9.1. Once it’s done, unzip it someplace that’s easy to get to via the command line (e.g. c:\qemu).
2. Go into the Qemu folder, then into the bin folder and copy all of the files in the bin folder back to the original Qemu folder (you can simply copy-paste).

Downloading and Preparing stuff

1. On Microsoft’s website, they have a page entitled Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image where you can download various time-limited images that allow you to test combinations of Windows XP SP3 or Vista, along with Internet Explorer 6.0, 7.0, and the 8.0 betas. In this example, we’re going to install the IE6/XP image but you can do whatever you need to do.
2. We’ll need to unpack this download in Windows, so if you haven’t already, make sure you’re doing this part in Windows.
3. Double-click it (in Windows) to begin unpacking it. It will warn you that it has an expiration date. On that date, we’ll have to download a fresh VPC image from Microsoft and do this all over again.

Converting the image

1. You’ll want to copy the XP SP3 with IE6.vhd file into the Qemu folder. This will allow us to use simpler, more consistent commands to convert the image.
2. In your Windows VM go to Start Menu > Run, type the cmd command, and click OK.
3. Using your deftly intimate knowledge of MS-DOS, use commands like cd to navigate to where you unpacked Qemu.
4. If you don’t know MS-DOS commands from a hole in the wall, you can download Open Command Window Here from Microsoft, install it, find the Qemu folder in the normal Windows Explorer, right-click, and choose “Open Command Window Here”. One method is shorter and harder, while the other is easier and slower. Take your pick.
5. Type the following command in your MS-DOS window:

   qemu-img.exe convert -f vpc "XP SP3 with IE6.vhd" -O vmdk IE6-XP.vmdk

   Note that “XP SP3 with IE6.vhd” is the path to the IE6 VPC file you downloaded, while “IE6-XP.vmdk” is the new file that VMWare Fusion will use.

6. Wait. This will probably take 5-10 minutes.

Configuring the VM

1. Move the new .vmdk file to your Mac.
2. Open VMWare Fusion (or shutdown the Windows VM you may already have running) and click File > New.
3. Go through the wizard and when you get to the “Virtual Hard Disk” page, expand “Advanced disk options”, check “Use an existing virtual disk” and use the dropdown to find the new .vmdk image you just copied back to your Mac.
4. Finish the wizard and start it! If prompted to upgrade the virtual hard drive, click “Yes.”

Installing the drivers and VMWare Tools

1. With VMWare Fusion running, download and decompress vmware_xpsp3_drivers.tar.gz. Copy all of the resulting files to c:\windows\system32\drivers. Make sure you install these BEFORE the VMware tools!
2. Download vmware_mouse.reg and double-click it to load its settings into the Windows registry. VMware doesn’t correctly overwrite these setting upon install of the VMware tools, and the mouse can start doing wonky things. These registry settings fix it.
3. In VMware, click Virtual Machine > Install VMWare Tools.
4. Follow the instructions. If Windows asks for additional drivers, point it to c:\windows\system32\drivers.
5. Make sure that you shutdown the VM and configure your memory (etc.) settings appropriately.

You can download the 2.0 release from http://bit.ly/tarzan2, and please Digg us at http://bit.ly/digg-tarzan.

For starters, I’m an avid Mac user. I’ve spent many years on Mac and Windows systems, and I overwhelmingly prefer Mac. One of the biggest problems that I had as a Mac + BlackBerry user is that the syncing tools suck. PocketMac is a disaster, and the Mark/Space app (whatever it’s called) only works about one day per year. I ended up having to install the Google sync app on my BlackBerry and move my iCal calendars into Google Calendar, then re-import them with Google’s CalDAV support. A messy solution at best, and it still doesn’t solve the issue with my contacts.

iPhone 3G, however, syncs with my Mac flawlessly (as expected). Because I have a MobileMe account, my contacts and calendars sync within minutes (faster if I force a push). On top of that, I have all of my email accounts routed through Gmail, so the mail client’s IMAP support makes configuring and managing my email simple.

Beyond that, there are all of the custom apps that are available now that the iPhone OS 2.0 software went live. The apps I find myself using most (besides Contacts, Calendar, Phone, Safari, and iPod) are Brightkite, NetNewsWire, Things touch, Twitterrific, Apple Remote, Klick, TV Forecast, 1Password, Facebook, YPmobile, and nearly a dozen time-wasting games. I’ve even created a ringtone from the Dr. Horrible theme song.

All-in-all, I’m happy with the phone. The on-screen keyboard responds and auto-corrects as quickly as I can type, which makes typing MUCH faster than it was on my BlackBerry. The only irritation I have is that I can’t tether it to my MacBook Pro as a 3G modem without jail-breaking it. This is more due to AT&T’s policies than anything else. The only other thing is that I haven’t found the right setting yet in Handbrake or VisualHub to convert my DVDs into a format that works with both my Playstation 3 AND my iPhone at the same time. Let me know if you find the right combination of settings.

I give it five stars, over and over again.

• Added the ability to change the content-type of an existing object in S3.
• Fixed some minor bugs in SimpleDB and S3.
• Re-wrote all of the documentation in the entire project (which enables us to generate awesome documentation which can be found on the Tarzan documentation page).
• Launched an entirely new website!
• Added support for caching frequently requested data to enhance performance. Caching types currently include file-based, APC, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Informal tests tend to show a speed-up of between 600x-1000x, depending on the request and the type of cache being used.

If you’d rather not use the bleeding-edge subversion trunk builds, you can grab the latest pre-release build from the Tarzan download page. Check it out!

I ended up scrapping the project around the same time as Geoffrey came to me and said that he wanted to help work on another one of my little side projects, SimplePie. Of course, as most of the web development community knows, SimplePie has gone on to be wildly popular and Tarzan essentially bit the dust.

Fast-forward two years, and I’ve started my own company, WarpShare. I’ve spoken before about the frustrations I’ve had trying to find and download music, movies, and TV shows with high quality, no DRM, with excellent metadata, all for cheap or free. “Legal” is nice, but not required. I believe many of us feel the same way. So I went on to start a company where one of the focuses is to do almost exactly this, except that the “legal” became required instead of optional, and where all parties involved can get what they want. But I’m not here to talk about that.

We knew that an undertaking of this kind of magnitude would require quite a bit of infrastructure, lots of data processing, and huge databases for cheap or free (we’re a pre-VC funding startup). Amazon’s new “cloud computing” initiative to the rescue! I’ll let you read up on Amazon Web Services on your own, but I ended up deciding to resurrect the old Tarzan project as something entirely new. That currently-in-development software will, when officially released, be known as Tarzan 2.0.

I’ve already spent some time talking about it, so if you’re interested in this new “cloud computing” thing (including storage-in-the-cloud and lightweight-databasing-in-the-cloud) and you’re a PHP developer, take a moment to give Tarzan a look. I think you’ll like it.

Doogie, I mean Barney, I mean Neil Patrick Harris plays a fantastic Dr. Horrible, who is trying to get into the “Evil League of Evil!” Nathan Fillon (who played “Captain Mal” on Firefly/Serenity) plays Captain Hammer, the shallow jerk of a superhero who steals the girl (Felicia Day) from Dr. Horrible when she mis-credits Captain Hammer for saving her life from a runaway van.

Anyway, I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s available streamed from DrHorrible.com and also from iTunes (it’s only $4 total for a season pass for all three episodes). Check it out! It’s great!

Between the flights today, I didn’t have a chance to eat dinner. So when I got here, I decided to get something to eat… that, and I wanted to go exploring a bit. In the end, I ended up walking around the downtown area of a large, unfamiliar city all by myself at 1:00am. Although quite unorthodox for me, it was a fun hour of walking around. It’s about 80 degrees and humid, even at 1:00am.

Coincidentally, my friend Michelle is also visiting Chicago from the Seattle area. I didn’t know this until after we’d already booked our flights, but she’s a professional photographer and scrapbooker and apparently there’s some convention in Chicago this weekend. I ended up chatting with a lady on the place and on the subway ride afterwords that was going to the same convention where my friend Michelle is going to be.

I’ll be meeting up with Eric and his girlfriend Katie tomorrow. It’s going to be fun!

These instructions apply to a 32-bit Fedora 8 installation. The hardware I primarily use happens to be on EC2, but these instructions aren’t specific to EC2. You may need to tweak things a smidge for an x64 system.

Preparing the LAMP stack (and a few other things)

For FFMPEG-PHP to work, you need to have a web server with PHP support up and running. You’ll definitely need GD for image processing and mbstring is helpful in conjunction with PHP5’s built-in iconv support for managing multiple character sets in ID3 tags.

1. Install PHP, necessary extensions and supporting software.

   yum -y install php-devel php-gd php-mbstring gcc gcc-c++ libtool svn git yasm gsm-devel libogg-devel libvorbis-devel libtheora-devel;

2. Also, I like to create a directory with symlinks to important files so that I can access everything more efficiently. These will be used throughout this tutorial.

   mkdir /www-config; \
   ln -s /etc/init.d/httpd /www-config/httpd; \
   ln -s /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf /www-config/httpd.conf; \
   ln -s /var/log/httpd/ /www-config/logs; \
   ln -s /usr/lib/php/modules/ /www-config/php5-extensions; \
   ln -s /etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf /www-config/php.conf; \
   ln -s /etc/httpd/conf.d/ /www-config/apache-conf; \
   ln -s /etc/php.ini /www-config/php.ini; \
   ln -s /etc/php.d/ /www-config/php-ini; \
   ln -s /var/www/html/ /www-config/public-html; \
   /www-config/httpd restart;

PHP 5.x should now be installed and you should have a directory prepared that lets you easily access important files for managing your configuration.

Installing FFMPEG

FFMPEG can be fairly complicated to get running properly, so here’s what I’ve gotten working thus far.

1. Download FFMPEG source. Export the latest FFMPEG trunk from Subversion, then change to the source directory.

   svn export svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg/trunk /ffmpeg-trunk-source; \
   cd /ffmpeg-trunk-source;

2. Install x264. Export the latest x264 trunk from Git. Enter the directory, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264.git; \
   cd x264; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-shared --enable-pthread; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ..;

3. Install liba52. Download the latest version of liba52 (Currently 0.7.4). Decompress the package, enter the directory, run configure, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   wget http://liba52.sourceforge.net/files/a52dec-0.7.4.tar.gz; \
   tar -zxvf a52dec-0.7.4.tar.gz; \
   cd a52dec-0.7.4; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-double; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ..;

4. Install FAAC. Download the latest version of FAAC (Currently 1.26). Decompress the package, enter the directory, create the configure file, run configure, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/faac/faac-1.26.tar.gz; \
   tar -zxvf faac-1.26.tar.gz; \
   cd faac; \
   autoreconf -vif; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ..;

5. Install FAAD. Download the latest version of FAAD (Currently 2.6.1). Decompress the package, enter the directory, create the configure file, run configure, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/faac/faad2-2.6.1.tar.gz; \
   tar -zxvf faad2-2.6.1.tar.gz; \
   cd faad2; \
   autoreconf -vif; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ..;

6. Install LAME. Download the latest version of LAME (Currently 3.98b8). Decompress the package, enter the directory, run configure, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/lame/lame-3.98b8.tar.gz; \
   tar -zxvf lame-3.98b8.tar.gz; \
   cd lame-3.98b8; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ..;

7. Install libmpeg2. Download the latest version of libmpeg2 (Currently 0.4.1). Decompress the package, enter the directory, run configure, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   wget http://libmpeg2.sourceforge.net/files/mpeg2dec-0.4.1.tar.gz; \
   tar -zxvf mpeg2dec-0.4.1.tar.gz; \
   cd mpeg2dec-0.4.1; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ..;

8. Install Xvid. Download the latest version of Xvid (Currently 1.1.3). Decompress the package, enter the directory, run configure, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   wget http://downloads.xvid.org/downloads/xvidcore-1.1.3.tar.gz; \
   tar -zxvf xvidcore-1.1.3.tar.gz; \
   cd xvidcore-1.1.3/build/generic; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ../../../;

9. Install AMR/3GPP. Download the latest version of AMR (Currently 7.0.0.1). Decompress the package, enter the directory, run configure, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   wget http://ftp.penguin.cz/pub/users/utx/amr/amrnb-7.0.0.1.tar.bz2; \
   tar -jxvf amrnb-7.0.0.1.tar.bz2; \
   cd amrnb-7.0.0.1; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ../;

10. Compile FFMPEG. Configure, make, and install the software, including all options that enable enhanced functionality.

    ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-static --enable-shared --enable-gpl --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-avfilter --enable-avfilter-lavf --enable-liba52 --enable-liba52bin --enable-libamr-nb --enable-libfaac --enable-libfaad --enable-libfaadbin --enable-libgsm --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libtheora --enable-libvorbis --enable-libx264 --enable-libxvid; \
    make; make install;

Installing FFMPEG-PHP

Once you have FFMPEG functioning properly, you can install the FFMPEG-PHP extension.

1. Download and install FFMPEG-PHP source. Enter the directory, download the source, run phpize, configure, make, install, and go back to the parent directory.

   cd /ffmpeg-trunk-source; \
   wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/ffmpeg-php/ffmpeg-php-0.5.3.1.tbz2; \
   tar -jxvf ffmpeg-php-0.5.3.1.tbz2; \
   cd ffmpeg-php-0.5.3.1; \
   phpize; \
   ./configure --prefix=/usr; \
   make; \
   make install; \
   cd ..;

2. Add FFMPEG-PHP to the PHP configuration.

   echo "extension=ffmpeg.so" > /www-config/php-ini/ffmpeg.ini

3. Restart Apache.

   /www-config/httpd restart

FFMPEG and FFMPEG-PHP should now be installed and ready to go. Make sure to check your error log if something isn’t working properly.

cat /www-config/logs/error_log

Also, Digg it! http://digg.com/tech_news/New_Yahoo_Messenger_website_is_LIVE

I’m an information junkie with a limited attention span. Twitter has all of the interesting links and thoughts of a Digg, Newspond, del.icio.us, or Ma.gnolia, but is filtered by people I follow, giving me a much higher signal to noise ratio for links and services that require my attention (or that I may want to give my attention to).

I’m interested in what people are thinking about. Twitter is perfect for this. “Tell us what you’re doing, in 140 characters or less” is fantastic because it forces the short, to-the-point posts. As a “thought publisher” on Twitter, it’s less demanding than, say, writing a blog post.

I work on a couple of open-source projects, as well as a commercial project. We’ve configured our subversion post-commit hook to trigger a Twitter update containing the log message. As we all work on the project throughout the day, I’m able to have up-to-the-minute notifications that tell me where in the development process we are at any given time. My commercial project has protected updates, and my open-source project has public updates so that our technically-oriented end-users can follow progress.

Twitter has become an indispensable utility for me. Being a Mac user, Twitter is as critical of a utility to me as Mail, Address Book, QuickSilver, Growl, and Adium. I don’t have to put a lot of time and effort into it, it has a very specific purpose, and I can engage with it passively if I choose to (I receive Growl notifications via Twitterrific, for example).

Twitter is interesting, useful, and non-demanding (both as a “publisher” of tweets as well as a “consumer” of tweets).

My only half-hearted complaint is that the Flash widgets are ugly as sin, but that’s why we have RSS feeds and open-source tools such as SimplePie to parse them, right?

But over the past few years, I’ve really been digging into the details of legislation that affects me most as a technologist — DMCA, Net Neutrality, Internet Radio Royalties, NSA spying via telecoms, and the outright suspension of my digital 4th amendment rights (e.g. search and seizure of digital property).

I’m sick of the partisan mentality in government. I’m sick of the RIAA/MPAA getting away with passing bogus laws in the name of “copyright protection” against “pirates”, making it near impossible for an interested party to come up with a newer, better business model for the digital age. I’m sick of candidates who don’t know the first thing about what I’m most passionate about — technology.

Watching the recent Republican debates, I cringe at how awful they all are. Except Ron Paul. I like Ron Paul, but he doesn’t strike me as a good leader, and he’s certainly unaware of technological issues — which are the issues that matter to me most, and affect me on far more of a daily basis than whether abortion is legal or not.

After spending the last several weeks really digging into the candidates and the issues, and watching the debates on TV and YouTube, I’ve officially decided to stand behind Barack Obama. And not just stand behind him, but rally others to do the same. Obama is the first candidate I’ve cared about because I believe he’s the first candidate to care about people like me. I might not agree with all of his stances (e.g. Pro-Life vs. Pro-Abortion), but I do think that Obama is the right leader for this moment in time.

1. iTunes Movie Rentals debut 30 days after physical DVD releases. — That’s right, 30 whole days. Why? I have no idea, other than Big Media wants to get people to drive down to their local Walmart store and purchase a physical box with a physical disc in it first. Here’s the problem: In the high-bandwidth digital world that we currently live in, distribution costs are next-to-zero. However, in the archaic world that Big Media lives in, whoever solves the [physical] distribution problem makes the most money. The problem is that distribution is no longer a problem (now that we’re in the digital age), and Big Media is still trying to solve it. (See Sony’s DRM-Free Gift Cards.)
2. iTunes Hi-Definition Movie Rentals are only for AppleTV, not for computers. — You’ve got a 20-inch monitor and a 640×480 resolution movie playing. Seriously? Why? Oh, because Big Media wants to charge a premium for HD content, and if it ends up on a fully-functional computer then the DRM might get broken, and they would lose control of the content. Nevermind that I’m watching a tiny video on a giant monitor/TV/whatever. And nevermind that I don’t have an AppleTV.
3. HD content is available to rent, not to buy. — You can rent HD content on your AppleTV, but you absolutely can’t buy it. Why? Because Big Media wants to get people to drive down to their local Walmart store and purchase a physical box with a physical HDDVD or Blu-ray formatted disc in it. Oh wait, you have a Playstation 3 so you want watch Blu-ray movies, but Bourne Ultimatum is only available in HD in HDDVD format. I guess I’ll need to spend another $300 for an HDDVD player as well.

Now, for a consumer who owns an AppleTV, the fact that they can rent movies directly from their TV without having to drive to the video store is pretty handy. For the rest of us that are more digital media savvy, it is absolutely amazing to me that Big Media is so out of touch with their customers that they would do this to them.

Now, let’s look at the reality:

1. Having two competing HD formats is bad for consumers. — Lots of people have either Playstation 3’s, Xbox 360’s, Tivo HD’s, and relatively modern computers. Why are we wasting shelf space with physical discs where some movies are in one format and other movies are in another format. Digital 720p/1080p movies should be Big Media’s biggest push right now, and it’s not. Lost money, right there, lying on the floor.
2. Having insane DRM restrictions hurts consumers. — Why waste the time with heavily DRM-laden content, when I can just get DRM-free HD content from the darker places on the internet (the “DarkNets”)? After reading about how this guy’s Netflix downloads wouldn’t play because of the monitor he was using, you can bet I’ll never use the Netflix service, Amazon Unbox, or Windows Vista… EVER. I’ll just download content from the DarkNets because the currently-legal-yet-ridiculously-broken models for digital media suck for consumers.
3. The DRM used by the Blu-ray and HDDVD formats has already been broken. — It’s only a matter of time before more people buy HDDVD and/or Blu-ray drives for their computers, crack the DRM on movies they rent, and post those consumer-friendly files on the internet. That business model (give away good stuff for free) is far more effective — and will ramp up faster — than either Blu-ray or HDDVD will in the marketplace.

Now, here’s my proposal: What if, instead of causing consumers grief with ridiculous restrictions on HD content, what if there was a way to monetize the flow of this content across the internet? Where money was made, not by restricting the content beyond belief, nor by forcing people to drive down to their local Walmart store and purchase a physical box with a physical disc, but by monetizing the free flow of the content. The more the content flows, and the more people who share HD movies over P2P, the more money is made.

What would that world look like? Consumers would certainly be happier because they could get whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. Labels and Studios would be happy because they’d be making more money than ever before by embracing this new model. Everyone wins, right?

All I’ll say is this: WarpShare. Keep your eyes and ears open folks. More information is coming soon.

Oh, and for anyone keeping track of the current score, Piracy is beating Legal Solutions: 489,672,211,642–0.

What are the characteristics (perceptible and imperceptible) that you look for in a sales person? What keeps you coming back to him / her more often?

I’m a sales professional (trying to gain perspective on consumer buying behavior) — really trying hard to overcome my shortcomings. As a background I’ve been into consultative sales of e-Learning (products / services) and managed offshore services in the IT Industry for approx. 4 years.

I would look forward with great expectation to receiving your brilliant, insightful and enlightening sales experiences. As I mentioned I have certain shortcomings — and most certainly, your experience will offer me a line of attack to improve on those limitations.

I won’t come back to a sales person. I hate sales people. I can sniff a salesperson from a mile away, and I have a bullshit detector like no other. I _HATE_ sales people. Well, mostly. My wife is in sales. At home, she’ll start telling me about all of the ways it would be so wonderful if we went to HER parents house for the holidays, and I carefully and skillfully shut her down every time.

However, I’m very much interested in working with someone who can help me solve my problem. I don’t want to be sold something, and I’m intelligent enough to know that I’m being sold to. I’m not susceptible to charisma and charm, and I’m skeptical and untrusting. If you can get a person like ME to buy something you’re selling, you’re very good.

1. Build a relationship. A relationship requires trust. Trust requires a genuine interest in a person. That’s not going to happen overnight. Sit down, shut up, and listen to their problem. If you have something that suits them, great. If not, keep in touch. Maybe you’ll be able to solve their problem in the future.
2. “Do, or do not. There is no try.” (Yoda) Either you really are genuinely interested in helping me solve my problem, or you’re not. Faking it = bullshit, and I can detect it a mile away. Don’t TRY to be genuinely interested — BE genuinely interested.
3. Put MY best interests ahead of YOUR best interests. Even if you have commission, or even your job tied to a sale, putting your interests before mine will lose you the deal. If you put MY interests before YOURS, even if it doesn’t result in a sale, is okay. I’ll remember you in the future, and I’ll remember how cool you were about putting my interests first, and I’ll be calling you as soon as I have something you can help me with.
4. Create “raving fans”. Go the extra mile or ten. Go completely out of your way to ensure that your customer has the best experience in existence, and you can earn my respect. I would also recommend the book “Raving Fans” for ideas.
5. Here’s a personal nitpick: learn to avoid your “uhh’s” and “umm’s” when you speak. “You know” and “actually” are also common filler words. Take a class if you have to. Trust me when I say that prolonged silence (within reason) is better than filling the silence with filler noises.

Just about the ONLY person in a sales role that I’ve ever even liked is Tim Alston. He is the only sales person (besides my wife) that I’m not absolutely disgusted with. As a matter of fact, I would probably have his babies if I could. With as skeptical and cynical and untrusting as I am, Tim completely won me over. Read the recommendations he’s received to get a feel for the kind of customer-centric attitude he has and how he’s gained the loyalty and respect of many people.

1. Install MacFUSE. This is a Google project that allows you to mount other file systems on your desktop, including even things like SSH and FTP.
2. Install the NTFS-3G plugin for MacFUSE, which will allow us to not only read, but also write to NTFS drives.
3. Install the Mac OS X Developer Tools. They should be an optional install on the Mac OS X install disc, or I believe you can download them manually.
4. According to Garbage In, Garbage Out, simply copy-paste this line into your Terminal, and press Enter:

   /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/Untitled; killall Finder;

Your Boot Camp drive icon should be hidden from your desktop, but may still show up in things like open/save dialogs.

This video explains what’s going on, and why it’s so very important that the Writer’s Guild wins this battle against the media companies.

Now, the big thing that’s changed (or is changing) is the emphasis on the individual and her role across the system. Look at MyBlogLog. Look at Automattic’s purchase of Gravatar. Look at the sharp rise in OpenID adoption over the past two years. The future is in non-siloed living man! The future is in portable, independent identities valid, like Visa, everywhere that you want to be. It’s not just about social network fatigue and getting fed up with filling out profiles at every social network you join and re-adding all your friends. Yeah, those things are annoying but more importantly, the fact that you have to do it every time just to get basic value from each system means that each has been designed to benefit itself, rather than the individuals coming and going. The whole damn thing needs to be inverted, and like recently rejoined ant segments dumped from many an ant farm, the fractured, divided, shattered into a billion fragments-people of the web must rejoin themselves and become whole in the eyes of the services that, what else?, serve them!

Normally I have no particular opinion of the term “Web 2.0″, although now as I think about it, it’s a bit of a misnomer. Web 2.0 began with XHTML and RSS. Later, Web 2.0 grew to include XML Web Services, Blogging, and Trackbacks (i.e. a cross-network, or an actual “web”). In 2005, we saw the big AJAX push which was like fuel on the fire, and these days we have a buttload of social networks. The next step is a move to more “open” services, or at least more services that play well with others (see “OpenSocial“).

This is the thing that I am most passionate about on the web. Connecting people together in people-centric, people-friendly ways. Adapting technology to fit people instead of the other way around. With SimplePie, we started of by taking something complex (RSS parsing), and making it simpler, easier, more flexible, and more robust. By enabling people to easily integrate other people’s content (or even their own), we’ve made it that much easier to integrate various parts of the web. At Foleeo, we’re wanting to take that several levels further.

I like the quote by John Maeda from the book “The Laws of Simplicity”:

Simplicity is subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

If you’ve never read the book, I highly recommend it. It’s fairly short, and you could probably knock it out in a few hours, but it adds a tremendous perspective on how to simplify (good) while adding more value (better). And for me, the aforementioned quote is the driving force behind everything I build. I ask myself “how can we make this simpler, easier, yet more valuable for human beings?” (It suddenly occurred to me that I should start looking into books by Jef Raskin). Here’s another favorite quote by Antoine de Saint-Exuper:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Between my work with SimplePie and Foleeo, I’m wanting to influence my little corner of the web to become something incredibly cool and/or useful that makes people marvel at how easy and intuitive it is. That takes a tremendous amount of work, but by focusing on people instead of technology, and by surrounding myself with some of the smartest, most talented people in the industry I plan to accomplish that goal.

1. MY LOVE LANGUAGE (FROM THE BOOK “THE 5 LOVE LANGUAGES”) IS “WORDS OF AFFIRMATION”.

   I used to think it was “Quality Time”, but then I realized that since I never have the opportunity to spend much time with most of my friends, I’d probably be pretty depressed most of the time. More recently I realized it was “Words of Affirmation” as that is how I both express and feel affection, and “Quality Time” is likely my secondary love language because I find that I thrive on close personal relationships with other people.

   I’m definitely NOT “Touch” (it’s likely the last of my 5), although two of my closest friends are. It took me a while to get used to the idea of hugging my best friend, but that’s how he expresses and feels affection. Over time it’s grown on me with him and a few others, but times where somebody touched my shoulder or grabbed my hand for whatever reason have made me feel particularly awkward.

2. I’M THE BIGGEST “CALVIN AND HOBBES” FAN ON THE FACE OF THE ENTIRE PLANET.

   Eric (my BFF — yes, I said BFF) would probably beg to differ, but he’d be wrong. It really is me. C&H changed how I saw the world at a very pivotal point in my life, and I believe it actually made me a better person. I’ve told my kids the very same things that Calvin’s dad told him (”you were unceremoniously dropped down the chimeny by a big, hairy pterodactyl”, “it’s windy because the trees are sneezing”). Besides all of that, I have every C&H book ever produced (except for the complete collection, which I’m hoping to get soon), and I have 15 original C&H comics cut out from the newspaper (16 if you count the one I gave to Eric when I moved away).

3. BETWEEN MY FIRST GIRLFRIEND AT 15 AND MY MARRIAGE AT 21 I’D DATED 12.1 PEOPLE.

   These are the very special ladies who’ve been in my life at one point or another. Chronologically, speaking: Claire S. (May – Oct 1995), Michelle B. (Nov 1995), Heather H. (Feb – Mar 1996), Amber M. (Apr – July 1996), Emily B. (Jun – Aug 1996; we never dated, but we were both interested in each other and we spent a TON of time together over 3 months. This is the 0.1.), Alyssa B. (Oct 1996), Renee T. (Nov 1996), Kristen P. (on and off from Feb 1997 – Nov 1999), Aimee B. (on and off from May 1997 – Aug 1999), Sarah C. (May 1998 – Sept 1998; Mar 1999 – July 1999), Liz S. (Dec 1999 – Mar 2000), Amanda F. (Apr 2000 – Sept 2000), Steph L. (July 2000 – Oct 2000), Sarah C. (again, Nov 2000 – Present).

4. I’M NOT EASILY IMPRESSED, AND I’M FREQUENTLY BORED/DEPRESSED/FEEL ALONE.

   Some people are easily impressed. I’m not. I spend time with some of the smartest, most talented leader-types alive today. It takes more than acting smug when you answer a trivia question correctly to impress me.

   Some people struggle with depression. I’m one of them. People who don’t struggle with depression wonder why we don’t just get over it. If it were really that simple, we wouldn’t be depressed dumbass. For me, I thrive on close relationships with other people I care about, but I live at least an hour away from the people who are closest to me. Because of this (and everybody’s busy schedules), I don’t usually have that emotional need filled… and that can be hard to deal with. My wife and kids fill the wife and kid roles, but that’s not the same thing as the ill-maintained friendships I have. On the other hand, I’m in the process of developing some cool new friendships here in town, so hopefully I won’t feel this way for too much longer.

5. NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS AFTER 2:00 AM.

   This is more advice than something about me. I’ve had more than one instance where after 2am my better judgment gets up and walks away while I stick around to make really bad decisions all by myself. I’ve already destroyed one relationship and almost destroyed 2 more because I was left to my own post-2am stupidities. P.S. It gets even worse when alcohol is involved, so I try not to drink much.

6. I HAVE A TECHNICALLY-INCLINED INFJ (INTROVERTED, INTUITING, FEELING, JUDGING) PERSONALITY TYPE. I’M ALSO A TEXTBOOK SCORPIO.

   Here’s a great INFJ description: http://typelogic.com/infj.html. Read the whole thing. It describes me flawlessly. If you don’t feel like reading something else, here’s a snippet:

   INFJs are distinguished by both their complexity of character and the unusual range and depth of their talents. Strongly humanitarian in outlook, INFJs tend to be idealists, and because of their J preference for closure and completion, they are generally “doers” as well as dreamers. This rare combination of vision and practicality often results in INFJs taking a disproportionate amount of responsibility in the various causes to which so many of them seem to be drawn.

   INFJs are deeply concerned about their relations with individuals as well as the state of humanity at large. They are, in fact, sometimes mistaken for extroverts because they appear so outgoing and are so genuinely interested in people — a product of the Feeling function they most readily show to the world.

   On the contrary, INFJs are true introverts, who can only be emotionally intimate and fulfilled with a chosen few from among their long-term friends, family, or obvious “soul mates.” While instinctively courting the personal and organizational demands continually made upon them by others, at intervals INFJs will suddenly withdraw into themselves, sometimes shutting out even their intimates. This apparent paradox is a necessary escape valve for them, providing both time to rebuild their depleted resources and a filter to prevent the emotional overload to which they are so susceptible as inherent “givers.” As a pattern of behavior, it is perhaps the most confusing aspect of the enigmatic INFJ character to outsiders, and hence the most often misunderstood — particularly by those who have little experience with this rare type.

   I’m also a Scorpio in that if you’re cool with me, then I’m cool with you… but don’t dare cross me. It’s been a rare occasion when I’ve unleashed my inner scorpion, but those who’ve felt it know what I’m talking about (of course they’re likely not reading this). In the end, I married a textbook Leo. Sometimes things are fantastic and other times it’s death incarnate.

7. MY MOST SIGNIFICANT EX-GIRLFRIEND’S BIRTHDAY, MY WIFE’S BIRTHDAY, AND MY ANNIVERSARY ARE ALL ON THE SAME DATE.
   My most significant pre-marriage relationship was with Kristen P. Turns out that her birthday is the same as my wife’s. We got married on my wife’s 21st birthday. Basically I only have to buy one present, but it has to be a big one. I don’t really talk to Kristen anymore, as that relationship ended up exploding in a fantastically gigantic ball of flames on my 20th birthday and I don’t think she ever wants to speak to me again for the rest of her entire life.
8. I’M PRETTY WELL-BALANCED BETWEEN THE CREATIVE AND THE TECHNICAL.

   For many years I wanted to grow up to be a professional musician. Then in 1997 I got my first computer and discovered web design. Web design was the perfect balance between the creative (design) and the technical (programming). Music, writing, and visual composition are all passions of mine. So are the web and technology. So is usability. I’ve spent the last 10 years focused primarily in the web and growing my skills there. Over the past 2 years I’ve been focused on making technology as human-friendly as possible. Over the past few months I’ve finally gotten back to my music. I’ve got so many ideas for arrangements on some songs I wrote 10-15 years ago, script and production ideas for videos/movies/plays, and I’d love to be able to oversee the use of human-friendly technology to enable people to explore their creative depths. I plan to see these things realized one day, beginning sometime very soon (MFM ~ I’ve got some lyrics for you).

I’ve been sitting here for 10 minutes trying to think of a good opening line, and I can’t. I’m speechless. Something very intriguing is happening this very moment: The users of Digg are outright revolting. This is the digital equivalent of the Los Angeles riots. But what’s more interesting is the fact that as of 9:00pm PST, Digg is letting them. (As I was writing this, Digg went down. This is getting more interesting by the minute…)

In the US, there is a law known as the DMCA — a heavily flawed and much hated law among consumers of digital media (including DVD’s, HD-DVD & Bluray discs, and most downloadable songs and videos) that is often used by the Recording and Movie industries to justify suing people and shutting down services. (A side note is that they’ve never quite figured out how to use digital media sales to their advantage, and so they’re just shutting people down instead of working with them to find a more consumer-friendly solution. Acting out of fear is never good.)

The other major thing that the DMCA does is stops people (legally anyway) from bypassing or cracking something called DRM (”Digital Restriction Management”). DRM is the locking mechanism that stops you from downloading songs or videos from iTunes and putting them on your non-iPod player. It’s the locking mechanism that stops you from copying DVD’s. A new kind of DRM known as AACS is what locks the next-generation HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies/games so that you can’t copy them or back them up on your computer. (Sony’s Playstation 3 has a built-in Blu-ray player while Microsoft’s Xbox 360 has an optional HD-DVD player.)

Recently, (and I’m trying to remember here) someone posted a code (known as a “key”) that allows programmers to build software that bypasses this locking mechanism allowing people to copy these next-generation DVDs. Naturally, this is illegal and the movie industry sent a cease-and-desist letter trying to get them to remove the key from public view. So be it.

Earlier — I’m assuming today — someone re-posted this key to Digg and the movie industry sent a cease-and-desist to have it removed. Digg complied. Someone else caught wind of this, and re-posted it. Digg removed that posting as well. After a bit of back and forth, the following was posted on the Digg blog this afternoon:

Whether you agree or disagree with the policies of the intellectual property holders and consortiums, in order for Digg to survive, it must abide by the law. Digg’s Terms of Use, and the terms of use of most popular sites, are required by law to include policies against the infringement of intellectual property. This helps protect Digg from claims of infringement and being shut down due to the posting of infringing material by others.

Our goal is always to maintain a purely democratic system for the submission and sharing of information – and we want Digg to continue to be a great resource for finding the best content. However, in order for that to happen, we all need to work together to protect Digg from exposure to lawsuits that could very quickly shut us down.

Thanks for your understanding.

Instead of working together, the users of Digg began outright revolting. The AACS key was posted over and over and over again is a number of different ways. So much, in fact, that 98 of the last 100 stories to hit the front page of Digg are posts about that key. Digg has been banning posts and users all day long, and the users are fighting back with full force.

Around 9:00pm PST, there was another post on the Digg blog that said the following:

Today was an insane day. And as the founder of Digg, I just wanted to post my thoughts…

In building and shaping the site I’ve always tried to stay as hands on as possible. We’ve always given site moderation (digging/burying) power to the community. Occasionally we step in to remove stories that violate our terms of use (eg. linking to pornography, illegal downloads, racial hate sites, etc.). So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.

About an hour and a half later Digg went down. It’s been 45 minutes since then. I’m interested to see how this all shakes out.

Not like the guy who washes his hands hundreds of times a day, or like Adrian Monk — the TV detective that suffers from all sorts of phobias and anxieties and has these oddball little quirks — kind of obsessive.

But a little.

I think it all started when I was a kid. I was the kid that had to have all of my toy cars lined up exactly right, or it was no good. When I was about 5 years old, I randomly watched my dad put his socks on. You know that long line stitch in the sock that’s supposed to go straight over your toes? Yeah. My dad’s stitch was looping over his toes from the top to the bottom. I saw that and felt my brain short-circuit.

When I was in Jr. High or High School, I started noticing that if you looked at my socks you could see where the big toe went. Apparently this was because I unconsciously wore the same socks on the same feet. A left-foot sock was always worn on the left foot, and the same was true for right-foot socks. I would even go so far as to flipping one sock inside-out if I could only find 2 left or right-foot socks. I still do this to this day.

I always, ALWAYS keep my wallet in my right pocket, and my keys, chapstick, and a pen in the left pocket. If I’m missing any of those items, I almost feel naked. Well, no. I take that back. But things do feel not-quite-right. When playing Monopoly, the Chance and Community Chest cards MUST stay within their assigned boxes on the board. If I notice them out of place, I have to fix them. Except for the times when somebody else moves my things, I haven’t lost my shoes, wallet, or car keys in over 10 years. Why? Because I only put them in one or two places when they’re not on my person.

It seems funny to talk about, because it doesn’t seem like any of this is out of the ordinary… but for many people it is. My wife can’t keep track of her head, and it’s attached to her body. But even though I’ve been doing all of these things for my entire life (at least as long as I can remember, anyway), the thought of actually being a little OCD never occurred to me until last week.

Last week, I discovered OpenID. OpenID is a cool system, where you can authenticate (sign-in) to an OpenID-enabled service, and that will activate your URL (your website address, among other things) as your OpenID “key” to other OpenID-enabled services. (I know that was probably a terrible way to explain it, but it’s really not all that relevant to the story.) 37signals launched a new service last week called Highrise, which is a way to manage your contacts, conversations you had with them, follow-up tasks, etc. Highrise also supports OpenID authentication.

Once I got my OpenID set up, I logged into Highrise with it. I typed in “ryanparman.com”, and it logged me right in. I thought that was really cool, so I logged out, and again typed “ryanparman.com”. It logged me in again. Sweet. Log out, type “ryanparman.com” again. Log back in.

I’m not really sure how long this went on for, but I began looking for other services that supported OpenID, like Zooomr, and Live Journal, and there’s a Mediawiki extension that supports it, and there are at least a couple dozen sites and/or services that support it already. I just kept logging in, logging out, logging in, logging out. After a while I looked at the clock, and realized I’d been logging in and out of services for about two hours. Two hours of my life — wasted — because I thought that OpenID authentication was really cool. No… it’s, like, 5 minutes cool. Maybe 10. Not 120 minutes cool. Not two hours cool.

And here I sit, talking about something I never noticed about myself until last week. It makes sense though, and it certainly explains a lot of my behavior over the last 27 years. It explains why I have a sock “thing”. It explains why things need to be alphabetized. It explains why when I’m drinking a Pepsi from a can, I never leave any Pepsi in the lip of the can after each drink. It explains why I’m the one who’s responsible for how my furniture is arranged and how the kitchen is organized — not my wife. It explains why I became a web developer… and before that I was a musician… and before that I was a kid who was really good at math.

Thing is, I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, it certainly serves me well that I never lose my shoes or my keys. But I know it drives other people crazy. Should I even care? My impulsive side wants to arbitrarily change something about the way I do things. Sometimes that works out for me, and sometimes it drives me crazy. I’m not sure if I’ll even do anything about this new revelation, I just thought I’d take a few minutes to talk about it.

MySpace definitely hit the jackpot in terms of users. With over 20 million users, MySpace has to be doing something right. Many movie and music websites are foregoing standard www.com websites in favor of myspace.com/whatever websites. This says a lot about the kind of draw that MySpace has! What MySpace sacrifices in terms of solid usability, reasonable uptime, good design, a web services API, and respect from the web standards crowd, they make up for with their network of people — especially for those under 35 or so.

I have a MySpace account because my best friend said “Hey, you should get a MySpace account.” That was enough to get me to sign up, but not enough to get me to stay. Why did I stay? Because I can find nearly everybody I’ve ever known in my life on MySpace. MySpace has allowed me to get back in touch with old friends from high school and otherwise that I haven’t talked to in years. People aren’t there to share interests… they’re there to share themselves with people they know. THAT’S the major differentiator! People gathering around interests with other strangers is one thing, people keeping up with their past and present friends is on another level.

Social bookmarking services like del.icio.us have been successful for two reasons. The first is that they solve the problem of keeping track of bookmarks across browsers and computers. Simple enough. The second is that del.icio.us makes it really, really easy to add bookmarks to their service. They’ve lowered the barriers to the point where it’s as easy to add a bookmark to del.icio.us as it is to add it to your browser. Lowering and/or eliminating barriers while solving a common frustration makes for a great service. Other services are doing a good job too (I recently switched from del.icio.us to Ma.gnolia for my social bookmarks) because I think they’re technically better, and it looks better as well. There are some really cool social features built in that make it a better choice. The only complaint I have with Ma.gnolia is that sometimes it feels like the design gets in the way. You don’t get that with del.icio.us.

Services like Digg and Newsvine are really cool for a number of reasons. First of all, my time and attention are very important to me. I don’t want to have to read through all of the worthless posts just to try to find the gold nuggets of information scattered around. Social news sites like Digg and Newsvine are pre-filtered for me. They’ve already gone through a (fairly) rigorous screening process, and I only see topics (on the homepage) that the rest of the community thinks are worthwhile. Where I think Digg and Newsvine diverge is that technologists are a very passionate people, and Digg was built around technologists. Newsvine tends to be more general news, and you simply have less passionate users there. I’m not saying that people who are into politics and world news aren’t passionate, I’m just saying that technologists seem to be more passionate about their preferred topic, which is why Digg is the front runner and Newsvine is still coming along.

YouTube is far and away the front runner on the social video front. I can’t quite put my finger on why they took off as quickly as they did, other than they got a ton of buzz in two networks: MySpace and the Blogophere. YouTube videos are really easy to get into MySpace profiles and blog posts, in a video format that loads very quickly, and they used industry standard technologies (Flash) rather than creating yet another format that people need to download a plugin for. On that last point, they did the same thing that del.icio.us did… they lowered the barriers to the point where they simply didn’t exist by going with Flash Video. As a consumer, the only thing I have to do to get a YouTube video on my homepage or MySpace profile is to copy and paste a single line of code that I don’t even need to understand.

Music related services like Last.fm, MOG, and MyStrands are doing something smart: They’ve all got plugins for the popular desktop music players (iTunes, Winamp, Windows Media Player, etc.). All I have to do is listen to my music in iTunes while I’m working or MySpacing, and that data gets uploaded to the aforementioned services. Those services take that data and calculate things like favorite artists, tags, music recommendations, and other music-related things. I think it’s really cool that I can be introduced to new music simply by listening to some of my favorite tracks while I’m working. Again, they’ve taken all of the work out of getting people to use it, making it more attractive than services where I have to invest more time and attention that I’m already in short supply of.

Flickr isn’t the largest or most popular photo sharing service, but it’s certainly the best. Flickr is focused around sharing your photos, and — again — they’ve removed the barriers from sharing/viewing photos that many other less successful services still have in place. My friends Ben and Jen share photos of their son with their Snapfish account. Can I view those pictures easily? No. First, I have to give Snapfish my email address (no-no #1), and then I have to let them bombard me with with notices telling me to purchase prints for so many cents a print (no-no #2). If they had Flickr, they could simply send me a URL for the photoset via email, and I could look at the pictures. Simple. Easy. No problem. I haven’t seen pictures of their kid in over a year because I don’t trust Snapfish or Hewlett-Packard (the parent company).

Photobucket is (I believe) the largest photo sharing service on the internet at the moment. Why? The only reason Photobucket is #1 is because they did the best job riding the MySpace wave. The service isn’t all that great, I can’t do cool things with my photos because they have no API, and their first wave customer support is worthless. Photobucket is not a compelling service, and I don’t think they’ll be around for more than a couple more years. User-oriented services like Flickr will be around much, much longer.

Lastly is the Twitter phenomina. People either love are addicted to Twitter, or they hate Twitter. My friend Matt used Twitter for a day or two, and couldn’t stand it. I believe he said something along the lines of “I’d rather have someone mash fistfuls of sand into my eyeballs with a hammer than to use the Twitter UI again.” Me, on the other hand? I post a new status every few hours, and it’s an interesting way to see what other bloggers do/say/think when they’re not trying to compose a piece of writing for the whole world to read. I don’t know whether to call Twitter “successful” or not — I think the jury’s still out on this one — but they’ve definitely got an active community growing, and that’s a valuable thing to have.

So, the take-away points from these ramblings are:

• The network of users you have is very valuable. More is better.
• Networks of friends are more valuable than networks of strangers.
• Lower the barrier to entry to the point where the barrier simply doesn’t exist.
• People’s time and attention are very valuable. Do the work so they don’t have to.
• Have passionate users. If you can’t find them, make them.
• Being someone’s addiction is okay too, and sometimes can even be better than someone’s source of productivity.

Since the last time I wrote, a few things have happened. First off, I quit my job last September to co-found my first startup, Foleeo. We’ve been keeping our eyes on the web and watching what’s been going on. We’ve been looking at the successful players, and have learned from them. We’ve been listening to thoughts and ideas from many people in the blogosphere to get a sense of not only what some of the existing problems are, but also how people want them to be solved. We’re working on some really cool stuff and I really hope that people are as stoked about this stuff as I am when we start pushing out the cool parts of our roadmap.

Geoffrey and I have released SimplePie Beta 3, and are trying to polish off our 1.0 release. SimplePie has really started to take off in popularity, garnering a TON of praise from the community. We couldn’t be more thrilled. It’s amazing to see how this little side project within a project has grown into a major player in the RSS/Atom space. This success would never have been possible without the community that has gathered around it to give feedback, submit patches, and make it better.

As a substitute for blogging (and as a simple showcase for SimplePie), I launched RyanParman.com a few months ago as a way to show the world the things I was interested in without having to blog about them. The site keeps itself up-to-date by tapping into things I’m already doing — adding bookmarks, listening to iTunes, renting DVD’s from Netflix, uploading photos to Flickr, watching funny videos on YouTube, and of course Twittering. Since this is my first official “comeback” post, I’ll be integrating this blog’s posts into that site as well.

Lastly, I recently had a friend pass away at the age of 29. I have the quite unfortunate knowledge that she made the conscious decision to reject a relationship with the Lord, meaning that she hasn’t actually gone to a better place like we’d all hoped. If so, I’d be throwing a party for that lucky girl because she got there before I did! Instead, I find myself mourning in the very depths of my soul.

But it got me thinking. If I was visited by an angel who told me I had 30 days to live, how would I spend today? I know the setup might sound a little odd, but let me put it into perspective: If an angel came and told me, it’s not like I could argue about it — I would know it was coming. If I’ve got 30 days, it leaves me with enough time to do a little planning so I don’t have to panic and try to cram everything into today. And if I knew I didn’t have much time left, what would I spend those precious few moments doing? Who would I spend them with? Would I stay angry at those people? Would I still be afraid to call that old friend I had a falling-out with a few years ago? Would I make long-distance friendships a greater priority? It’s really had me thinking, and I’ve been making changes to my life and my schedule appropriately.

Anyways, welcome back into the life of Ryan Parman. Hopefully I’ll be able to keep it interesting.

Everybody needs this! Even those of us who have spent lots and lots of time around the web, this is a good thing. It’s especially good for people like my in-laws and many of my other friends and family.

Besides that, here’s some good information my wife passed along to me:

Having worked for a bank for over 5 years, I will tell you that a little bit of education goes a long way. Never ever EVER give out your pin # to ANYONE!!! Banks will never ask for this information (Other than asking you to enter you own pin # into a machine). Bank employees don’t even have access to your pin #. Your bank would never send you an email asking you to verify your personal information — the bank already has it if they need it.

I recently received an email (I think that it was a bank from Tenessee); When I clicked on the link, it took me to a sign on page. It was really quite clever, you could enter any user ID, and any password. Then, they asked you to verify your bank information. (Including your pin) The other type of phishing email that I have been receiving a lot lately, has been on behalf of phony people from other countries. These people will ask you to reply to their email with your contact info. Then, they will try to get you to cash a fake cashier’s check from them of some ridiculously large amount. They will tell you that your cut is 30% or 40% in some cases. Don’t be fooled by these either.

If you receive an email asking you for any sort of financial information/help know that it is probably a scam, you should delete it at once, or you can forward it to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov, or contact them at www.consumer.gov/idtheft or 877.IDTHEFT (877.438.4338).

The other was the SimplePie Plugin for MediaWiki, the wiki software that powers the popular Wikipedia, by adding support for the <feed> tag in your wiki pages.

If you’re using either of these software packages, check out these plugins!

read more | digg story

Nearly every major feature has been enhanced, as well as the addition of several new ones. Be sure to read the upgrade docs if you’re upgrading from Beta 1 or the Preview Release. People who were using trunk builds should be able to just drop this file in as a replacement for any previous simplepie.inc file.

We’ve also added a Wordpress plugin and a MediaWiki extension to the mix. And as always, if you have any questions, comments, or need clarification on anything, be sure to swing by the support forums. We’re there a lot.

Enjoy!

For those who are concerned about efficiency in all things (as I am), I believe I’ve found the most efficient way to get the snot as far away from your sinuses as possible.

1. Take the roll of toilet paper and wrap it around your hand 2 or 3 times. This is really all you need per blow.
2. As you cover your nose with the toilet paper, plug one of your nostrils to ensure that maximum airflow is being forced through the other nostril, ensuring that the greatest amount of snot is removed.
3. Do the same to the other nostril. Repeat as necessary.
4. Once you’re through blowing, you still have bits of snot that cling to your nose hair. We’ll want to clean these out as well.
5. Take one perforated square of the toilet paper and cram the whole thing into your nostril. Make sure that there is enough sticking out for you to grab. Once it’s in there, twist the toilet paper in a circular fashion. Give it a minimum of 4-5 rotations before pulling it back out.
6. Do the same to the other nostril. Repeat as necessary.
7. You’re done!

In my experience, this is the most effective way to get all of your snot out. It’s also safe to use this method without following up with a mirror to make sure that there is no snot clinging to your nose hair because the follow-up twisting is nice and tidy.

According to Bugzilla, the patch has already been added to the trunk (although it’s not quite complete yet), and seeing as how its status has been set to blocking 1.8.1 (which according to this roadmap is Firefox 2 timeframe), I’m hoping that this will finally get implemented.

Yay!

Cinemanow bills itself as “the #1 legal movie download store” and sells movies a-la-carte, but for the same price, if not higher, in some cases, than actual DVDs, killing part of the incentive for purchasing a digital download.

Why would anyone want to spend more on a movie in a format that is significantly less flexible than a DVD? Yeah, I’m not sure either.

I flew from San Jose to Omaha last month, with a layover in Minneapolis. All-together I was on a plane for roughly 5 hours. I had my Powerbook, PSP, and iPod 5G with me. I had some videos I’d purchased from the iTMS on my iPod, and a couple of DVD’s for my Powerbook. While I was waiting for my flight to leave, I went to go find a UMD video to watch on the plane, since the iPod gets about 2 hours of battery life when playing video, and my Powerbook (with a 2-year-old battery) gets about 45 minutes of juice.

I walked up to the counter, looked at the selection, and found a couple that I’d've liked to watch. Then I saw the price: $32. Excuse me? Thirty-what? With a DVD, I can watch it on my TV, watch it on my computer, I can rip it to my iPod or PSP and watch it from there. With a UMD disc, I can only watch it on my PSP. Why would I want to do that? Since the format is so limited (along with any sort of “legal” (read: DRM’d) movie downloads from an online store), how on earth does it make sense to charge more for it? It doesn’t, and that’s why the format is failing. It isn’t because it’s a bad idea — it’s actually a very good idea — but they need to drop the cost to 50% of the price of a DVD.

Seriously, if most DVD’s are around $17-$22, then they should sell the UMD’s at $8-$12. Paying $30 for a 10-year-old movie is completely out of the question.

Sony (and all other movie companies), if you’re not willing to drop your prices on your UMD movies, then it’s definitely time for the format to go the way of the Aibo, Mini-Disc, BetaMax, ImageStation, Connect Music Store, and all of the “iPod Killers” you guys have had in the past.

Vasectomy. That’s right, no more kids for me. I decided a long, long time ago that I only ever wanted two kids. I have them, I love them, and I’m done. My wife said that she was kinda bummed out about it, but understood my decision. And it’s not like it came as a surprise either — I’ve been saying the same thing since we met in high school, long before she was ever my girlfriend.

I have always been very adamant about only having two kids, for a couple of reasons:

1. Statistically speaking, parents with an odd number of children have a higher likelyhood of losing their minds and going crazy. After watching my parents go nuts, I decided I didn’t want that for my life. (Mom, if you’re reading this, laugh!) I considered stopping at one, however, after my daughter was born. But one kid is too few and they tend to get lonely because they’re the only child in the house (or so I’ve heard).
2. That just leaves an even number of children. Six would make me a Mormon (which I’m not, nor will I ever be), four would put me in the poor-house, so that really only leaves two (which also solves the only-child syndrome).

So yes, there were specific reasons for wanting to stop at two. I was so adamant about only having two, however, that when my wife told me she missed her period last week, I got really pissed. Not at her, per se, because it’s not like I can blame it on her. More because of the fact that it would mean more than two kids — and I didn’t want that. Fortunately, she went down to take a blood test, and everything came back negative — which I’m thrilled about. Now we justs need to figure out why she missed.

Anyways, so I’ve been in surgery before, so this should be no big deal. I’ve never been one to have “test anxiety” because I know that things are going to go however they’re going to go, and there’s really nothing I can do about it, so why stress? This was no exception.

Fortunately, I have a desk job, so I should be able to go back to work on Monday, and still be able to relax and stay off my feet. When my best friend got done, he went back to work after four days — but he was the General Manager of a fast food restaurant, and that required him to spend most of his day not only standing up, but also running around in a high-stress environment. His wife was telling me that his junk swelled until they looked like a couple of blood oranges — a fantastic thing to look forward to.

So I got into the operating room, and the nurse asked me to strip from the waist down, and then gave me one of those blue sheets to cover my lower half. As soon as I came back out and sat on the bed, she asked me to lay down while she removed the sheet anyways. What was the point of the blue sheet? *shrugs*

So after having her do a quick shave down there, rubbing it all down with some sort of disinfectant, and me praying “Dear Lord, please don’t let me pop one,” she left and the doctor came in. He apologized for running behind (I’d sat in the waiting room for an hour), and began explaining exactly what was going to happen. He was cool about it all, very professional and everything, which was kind of a relief.

I won’t go into details about the next part, but between the stab of the anesthetic syringe, the incision, and the dull pain that comes from the squeezing, I can say that if anybody ever graduated from a university with a degree in making vasectomies as comfortable as possible — that person would make billions. I’m SO glad I never have to have babies. And I’m lucky I’ve never passed any kind of kidney or gall stone, because I hear that a guy passing a stone is more painful than a woman having a baby.

So anyways, I’m at home relaxing — jock strap and all — and trying to find things to keep myself interested over the next few days when I’m not allowed to do anything. In truth, I have some work to do on a couple of websites, a computer to fix, and some software to upgrade, so I doubt I’ll be needing anything to do.

If you thought that this was too much information, all I can say is that I warned you at the beginning. However it might have been like a car accident: so grotesque, but you just can’t look away.

Anybody care to share your own v-sec experience?

Lots of information can be found about IE7, specifically improved CSS compliance (hasn’t yet been updated with the current build information, but will). This build is supposed to be rendering engine complete, meaning that this build will render webpages the same way that the final release will.

I’m tempted to do a full install of IE7, and simply run IE6 standalone from now on…

Thought I’d pass this little nugget along from one front-end developer to another.

In completely unrelated news, I really need to fix up skyzyx.com don’t I? Yeah, it’s in bad shape. *Adds it to the list.* I finally have a strategy for it… I just need to execute that strategy. Maybe next weekend…

This led me on a journey to figure out how to handle this. I ended up digging through some TinyMCE source code, and found a gem of a function that I then added a ’stupefy’ mode to.

Here’s the code:

function entity(str, mode) {
	var str = (str) ? str : '';
	var mode = (mode) ? mode : 'string';

	var e=document.createElement("div");
	e.innerHTML=str;

	if (mode=='numeric') {
		return'&#'+e.innerHTML.charCodeAt(0)+';';
	}
	else if (mode=='utf16') {
		var un=e.innerHTML.charCodeAt(0).toString(16);
		while(un.length<4) un="0"+un;
		return"\\u"+un;
	}
	else return e.innerHTML;
}

entity() has two parameters:

1. entity: is a string which can be either a named entity (&raquo;) or a numeric entity (&#187;)
2. mode: is an optional value that accepts ‘numeric’, ‘utf16′, or ’string’. Defaults to ’string’.

You’d use it like this:

// Normal mode
var div = document.createElement('div');
var text = document.createTextNode('Parent '+[b]entity([/b]'»'[b])[/b]+' Child');
div.appendChild(text);

// Stupefy mode
var num = "The numeric entity for » is "+entity('»', 'numeric');
var utf = "The UTF-16 entity for » is "+entity('»', 'utf16');

I hope this can help other people out there who’ve run into the same problem as many times as I have!

If I’m interested in some new software whereby using it I’d have to change my habits (such as changing browsers, or text editors, or mail clients), I’ll install the new software and promise to use it for a week. If after that week I decide that I like it better than what I’m currently using, I’ll make the switch. I figure a week is a good chunk of time to try something out because any irritations and possible solutions for those irritations will have surfaced by the end of the week. I have faith in this system for myself, because this is how I found Mozilla 0.99, Firebird (later Firefox), Adium, Transmit, FlashFXP, Topstyle, and other constantly-used bits of software.

I’ve had my eye on Camino for a while, but I wanted to wait until it hit 1.0 (which happened last week) before I tried it out. Having a browser with the rendering engine of Firefox, but had an Aquafied UI was very tempting to me. Instead of switching between Safari (my default browser on my Mac) and Firefox (which I use for viewing the source of RSS feeds), I could switch between Camino and Safari; Two browsers that feel Mac-like. Unfortunately, I ended up finding more things about Camino that I don’t like, so Camino has now been uninstalled. Here’s why:

1. No support for extensions. You mean, no Firebug? No Gmail Notifier? No Greasemonkey? No Reveal? I might as well be using Internet Explorer then.
2. No DOM Inspector. If it’s there, I couldn’t find it. For someone who does as much development as I do, I need to have my DOM inpector and my JavaScript console… especially if I can’t run Firebug.
3. No live bookmarks. This is one of my most used features of Firefox, and to a certain extent Safari. I need to be able to have 1-click access to certain feeds from within my browser. Or at least the ability to detect them.

There are some things, however, that I really did like about it.

1. It’s crazy fast. A Gecko-based browser that’s as fast as Safari? Camino’s right there.
2. Favicons in the bookmarks bar. Mmmm… favicons….
3. Something else. I’m sure there was something else, but I just can’t think of it right now.

If you don’t care about any of these things, then I suppose Camino is as good a browser as any other. But it seems like Camino is roughly on par with Firebird 0.6. It can render pages just fine, and it’s got some speed to it, but it simply does not yet have the feature set to make it a viable alternative for web developers. Maybe Camino 2.0 will have the features it needs to compete, but Camino 1.0 simply isn’t there yet.

I’ve been doing a lot of Ajax development lately for an internal webapp where I need to dynamically add nodes to lists. In my source code, I’ll have an empty <ul> tag with an ID, then I use that ID when I go and add <li>’s to it. No big deal, right?

If you use the standard view-source contextual menu item, it will show you the source code that you coded in: the empty <ul> tag. BUT, if after you’ve added your <li> nodes dynamically, you click-and-drag to select the rendered area, and choose “View Selection Source”, Firefox will show you the fully-rendered HTML for that area. As in, it will show you the <ul> tag with all of your <li> tags inside of it… just as though you’d coded it like that in the first place. How awesome is that?

So if you need to see what HTML your JavaScript is generating, simply select the area, and choose “View Selection Source”.

And it’s all a matter of money. Stupid lawsuits brought on by stupid lawyers are really dragging our legal system through the mud, not to mention using up my tax dollars to do it. Maybe Apple really should discontinue sales to stupid people…

This is the download package that was made available as the Internet Explorer 7.0 Beta 2 Public Preview. This version of IE7 writes a couple of keys to your registry.

Don’t try to run the iexplore.exe like you have in the past (even with the standalones). Instead, run the __RUN_ME.bat file. This will make sure that the above-mentioned registry entries are removed, and will automatically add the .local file, etc.

I had a problem for a while where IE7 would “flicker-quit”. As in, a window would display for a fraction of a second, and then quit. This is the only package that worked for me, but even then it didn’t work at first. Here’s what I was doing when it magically began working.

• I ran the normal iexplore.exe file
• I ran the __RUN_ME.bat file (didn’t work, btw)
• Went into the update folder, and double-clicked the IE icon. It started the installer.
• Went back to the root folder and tried __RUN_ME.bat again.
• Out of frustration, ran __RUN_ME.bat yet again just so that I could get angrier at the IE team.
• IE7b2 magically worked.

I’m still not sure which part of my voodoo worked, but I have it running. I may have had some problems because I was previously running the IE7b1 standalone.

This is completely unsupported — completely. The official word from Microsoft is that we shouldn’t be running them in standalone mode anyways.

Stop yelling at me like that! You’re preaching to the choir, brother (or sister)! I know that Microsoft really needs to release official standalone packages for developers to work and test with that are available from MSDN, and not intended for public consumption. But I don’t make the rules—I just break the bad ones.

When Microsoft said “your potential, our passion”, they weren’t talking about web designers. But maybe they should have been… How’s this for an idea: Microsoft has been pretty responsive to our requests for a better browser with IE7. How about we bombard them with comments and such letting them know that we want our standalone mode in order to fix the mess they made in the first place.

Here’s the URL for the IE Blog. Let them know how you feel. Pester the crap out of Chris Wilson, Al Billings, and the rest of the ’softies that simply barking “unsupported” is unacceptable, and that they need to help us fix the problem by either producing official IE standalones, or by not making it so freaking hard to make happen.

«Update» The zipped package now uses version 1.4 of the IE Launch Script. Now supports conditional comments.

I could sit here and go over each and every things that’s new or better or changed, but I’ve already done that. To find out more about SimplePie, and what all it can do, check out the official SimplePie website.

It’s been a year since the last SimplePie release, but that doesn’t mean the project is dead. Fortunately I was able to get some help from Geoffers, and he actually ended up driving most of the development since he came on board over the summer.

I wish I could tell you that a shiny new version 1.0 was available, but alas, not yet. What we do have, however, is a shiny new Preview Release — soon.

What is SimplePie? Let me tell you:

SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, for reading RSS and Atom syndication feeds. By keeping it simple, and focusing on what’s important, we’ve built a pretty sweet little API. SimplePie’s focus has been two-fold: speed and ease of use, and has been very successful on both fronts.

Expect to see a new SimplePie Preview Release and a matching website in the next few days.

We usually have 2 Christmases at our house. Everybody always gets together with their families for “real” Christmas, and so did we. But we also have a Christmas with all of our friends (which we call “UFKS Christmas”) a week or two before “real” Christmas, so that we can all get together without having to compete with other family stuff.

So at UFKS Christmas this year, my wife let me open my “big present” early. It was a new Sony PSP! My wife really knows how to spoil me! It has built-in Wi-Fi, and the latest firmware update has a pretty decent web browser. Another friend got me GTA: Libery City Stories, although I haven’t had the chance to play it yet. I’m thinking about going out today and picking up Burnout Legends and Star Wars: Battlefront II. Very cool stuff.

But what I didn’t know was that my new PSP wasn’t really my “big present”. It was just a decoy, of sorts.

She hands me a wrapped DVD, which I promptly opened. Inside the DVD case, however, was a piece of paper with a riddle on it. I figured out that the riddle was another location in the house. I went there, and found another riddle. I couldn’t help but laugh, because I had done the same thing to her for her present — she just didn’t know it yet. Anyway, I followed the clues to the back seat of her dad’s truck. I opened the door and saw a box that said “42-inch Plasma HD Widescreen”. I was completely dumbfounded. Based on the expression on my face, she thought that I was disappointed, but actually I was just trying to think of something to say.

We got it all set up with the new Monster Cable that she’d gotten for it, and it was beautiful in all of it’s 42″ Plasma glory. I got the fourth season of “24″ from my parents, so I spent the rest of the weekend watching 24 on my new TV with my already-owned Bose Surround Sound system. It’s like a movie theatre replacement, it’s so awesome!

I felt kinda lame when she opened her new Palm T|X with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, a 1GB SD Flash memory card, and a palmOne-branded GPS locator system for her Palm.

But all-in-all, it was actually better that we got to spend so much time with our friends and family over this holiday season. I love my kids, my wife (awesome toy-buyer extraordinaire), my friends that I got to spend a good deal of time with, and those that I consider my family.

But there is one condition… you have to leave a joke in the comments. And not one of those lame “why did the chicken cross the road” jokes, but a good one.

Alright. Who’s got the first one?

I have a long drive to and from work — an hour fifteen to an hour and a half, and I don’t get to spend as much quality time with my daughter as I’d like. Sure, we sit together in the car, but that’s not always the same.

Whenever it’s just she and I, we’ll oftentimes make up silly songs on-the-spot, we’ll tell jokes, and I’ll ask her questions to continually try to find out what makes her tick. She’s turning 4 today, and she just keeps growing up so fast.

I’d love for her to be able to be open and know that she can talk to me about anything for as long as she’s willing to. The teenage years aren’t all that far away in the grand scheme of things, and I just want to cherish the precious few moments that we’ll have until she decides that I’m not as “cool” as I used to be.

She’s smart, funny, beautiful — the perfect girl for me, if she wasn’t my daughter, of course. And, y’know, 4 years old. On the weekends we’ll play, and make silly faces, and dance, and invent new words and songs, and she’s just a little ham. She’s the coolest kid I could ever ask for.

There are so many things that I want to teach her, and so many things I want to do to get her a headstart in life. But some things you just can’t teach a kid until they’re ready to learn them, and I have to fight the urge to make her the kid that tests out of high school, and finishes college in 3 years, and just let her be a 4-year-old kid because that’s what she is.

Sometimes when she gets in trouble, I can be a little hard on her. And I hate having to punish her, but I know that if I’m a little tougher with her now, then I won’t NEED to be as tough with her as she gets older because she’ll (hopefully) be we well-behaved, respectable little firecracker.

She’s very independent, and has a will as strong as mine. And I believe that God gave me a child like myself for two specific reasons (among many others, of course): (A) to teach me patience, grace, and love, and (B) because if she’d been born into any other family, Julianna would tear them up. She’s got that strong will and that drive and it’s one of those things that gets her into a lot of trouble now, but if we teach her how to properly wield those character traits, she’ll be able to do great things with her life.

Her independence will have a huge hand in the kind of leadership skills she develops (because she will most definitely be a leader). For all you LOST fans out there, I often times compare Julianna and her best friend Kylie, to Locke and Jack, respectively. On LOST, Jack is the typical Type-A leader. People look to him for answers on what to do, and he tends to be the major decision-maker on the island. “Jack” is Kylie, Julianna’s best friend at pre-school. Julianna is more like Locke. Locke is also very much a leader. He can respect Jack’s decisions, but he’s more of a lone wolf. He goes his own way, and does his own thing. Whereas most of the survivors look to Jack as a leader, Locke sees Jack as an equal, and that really defines their dynamic. Kylie will say “hey everybody, we’re going to play with the blocks today,” and all the other kids start playing with the blocks. Julianna says “I’m glad you all like playing with the blocks. Blocks are fun. But I’m going to go play with the balls. See ya.” I think that as she gets older, and Sarah and I have done our jobs, she’ll turn out like a Jack-Locke hybrid.

Being the best possible father to my kids is my number 1 goal in life. May the Lord give me the grace, strength, and wisdom I need to be able to accomplish this goal.

[Double posted to 43 Things]

You can download the new release from Mozilla.com, or if the servers are overloaded, you can get them from Skyzyx: Downloads.

• Firefox 1.5 for Windows
• Firefox 1.5 for Mac OS X

I’m now on MySpace. *Hangs head in shame*

I want to apologize to all of you that had any respect for me as a person, a blogger, a web developer, a music lover, or anything else. I have let you all down. Now I’m just a dork who sits around on long Thanksgiving holidays waiting for other people to send me messages, and trying to think of ways to spruce up my “Space”.

I hope you can all forgive me. BTW, here it is…

Okay, so have I ever mentioned how cool my wife is? Yeah. I had my 26th birthday last week, and when I got home that night, I had one of these awesome little toys waiting for me. The 60GB model. Yeah.

But that one was broken.

So I exchanged it for a new one, and that one has been awesome. Combine that with Tivo, Tivo AutoPilot, and a few hours of patience, and I was watching Tivo’d episodes of Alias, Lost, Veronica Mars, and the Mind of Mencia on my iPod the next day (which came in handy because I had a lot of riding-in-a-car to do that day).

I seriously have the best wife ever.