trickeries!

Make someone else host for you.

2012-05-09T00:00:00-07:00

Why bother using your own hosting?

Forget LinkedIn

2012-03-30T00:00:00-07:00

I'll go on a rant about reputation systems some other time. But this is about LinkedIn. I'm certainly not the first person to get fed up with them, but I honestly can't see the value. There does not seem to be any ongoing incentive for me to stay there. Every job or project I have been hired for has been based on a face to face meeting with someone who actually knows what I'm talking about. That does not describe 99% of the communications I receive from LinkedIn. They're mostly recruiters, who don't understand the difference between what I do, and what a Java Architect does. I've made a lot of mistakes in my career, but I'm afraid that the biggest one has been slinging bullshit. I've worked at a lot of interactive agencies with a lot of smart people that had their own strengths and weaknesses in their understanding of technology. I was worried about impressing them, because they were the ones hiring and paying me. As a result, I learned a ton and am grateful to have worked with a lot of very talented creative design folks. My asset was my patience, my ability to explain tech to non-techies. I was the exact opposite of Nick Burns. I wasn't focusing my energies on the correct places, I should work on impressing and learning more from my peers. I have SO MUCH code that's never seen the light of day on any public facing system - built for some intranet or just un-interesting project. I need to focus on developing more things with and for my peers. My peers are on Github, they're on StackOverflow (somewhat) But they are definitely NOT on LinkedIn. So I'm done, I've canceled my account. Read my Tumblr, Twitter, Stack Overflow, Github, This Blog. If you don't get a good enough picture of who I am, how I think and what I'm capable of, invite me to coffee and I'll tell you what else you want to know.

This is the amazing view from my desk.

2012-03-06T00:00:00-08:00

It's actually kind of perfect, by about 4pm every day the sun moves to the a point making the glare so bad that I have to go outside and walk my dog before sunset.

Great Article About Learning.

2012-02-23T00:00:00-08:00

Wired has a great piece about Why Some People Learn Faster.

When kids were praised for their effort, nearly 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. However, when kids were praised for their intelligence, most of them went for the easier test. What explains this difference? According to Dweck, praising kids for intelligence encourages them to “look” smart, which means that they shouldn’t risk making a mistake.

A Good Analogy for leaving CSG

2011-11-29T00:00:00-08:00

The point is, know your skills, know your strengths, and know your weaknesses. And occasionally things just end badly. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdQeIZ5hWXo&t=0m17s[/youtube]

The Tyler (Applying for a Job) Test

2011-10-20T00:00:00-07:00

I was reminded of this list today by my great coworking Brian. Originally inspired by the Joel Test I wrote the original version of this a while ago for what my ideal job environment would be. Some of it is web development specific and borders on prima-donna like demands, but I believe most of them apply to nearly any job.

Do you offer all of your employees the best tools to do their job?
Are you doing anything to make the workplace annoying?
Does process interfere with getting things done?
Will you trust me to set my own hours?
Will you let me explore new ways to solve problems?
Are you looking for a ninja, rockstar or guru?
Can I be proud of my work and the company?
Can we communicate openly? This begins with responsive communication during the job application process.
Do we have a vision for what we are doing before we begin or set a deadline.
Do you throw money or people at a problem?

You don't write code, you maintain code.

2011-09-16T00:00:00-07:00

Depending on where you read, but software maintenance is 60-90% of project costs. [reference] Remember that.

Great talk from Business of Software Past.

2011-09-15T00:00:00-07:00

Very much enjoyed this talk from Scott Farquhar of Atlassian about building his company.

My takeaway highlight was their company values.

Open company
no bullshit
Build with heart and balance
Don’t fuck the customer
Play as a team
Be the change you seek.

Weekend in the Berkshires.

2011-09-04T00:00:00-07:00

Love it up here with Johanna's family. Went to the Norman Rockwell museum. My favorite:

I love common sense responses.

2011-09-02T00:00:00-07:00

I'm a huge fan of Google Chrome for lots of reasons. I have my work Macbook Pro with me 90% of the time, to the point that I don't even own another computer anymore. When my wife wanted to get a new computer, because her ancient dell laptop died, I suggested we just share a Macbook Pro. Anyway, getting it setup was super easy because all of my saved passwords, extensions, etc were synched with Chrome. I lock my work computer all of the time, but realized that since we were sharing it, maybe I should password protect Chrome. A simple google search landed me on the suggestions page with pages and pages of requests asking for a Master Password (similar to Firefox) I thought the response by Blair, a Google employee was perfect. I think there is a huge lack of this willingness to make a design decision and stand by it in the world.

Hi everybody, We understand that many of you want a master password for your saved passwords in Google Chrome. You’ve laid out many scenarios in which this might be useful, but the most common is that if your computer were to fall into the wrong hands, that person would then have access to your saved passwords. While we agree that this situation would be terrible, we believe that a master password would not sufficiently protect you from danger. Someone with physical access to your computer could install a keylogger to steal your passwords or go to the sites where your passwords are stored and get them from the automatically filled-in password fields. A master password required to show saved passwords would not prevent these outcomes. Currently, the best method for protecting your saved passwords is to lock your computer whenever you step away from it, even for a short period of time. We encrypt your saved passwords on your hard disk. To access these passwords, someone would either need to log in as you or circumvent the encryption. We know this is a long-standing issue, and we see where you're coming from. Please know that your security is our highest priority, and our decision not to implement the master password feature is based on our belief that it creates a false sense of security instead of actually providing a strong security benefit. Best, Blair

Bicycle Companies, Customer Service, and Scalability

2011-08-19T00:00:00-07:00

I haven't written much about work. As many of you know, I've had a "real job" since November, working for Cycling Sports Group, or as I tell most people "Cannondale". We're a pretty large bicycle manufacturer, with four major brands (Cannondale, GT, Schwinn, Mongoose) as well as some other great companies. We have a tiny, but great web development team of 2.5 people and we share space with the Web Marketing team. Technologically speaking, we are in many ways an Enterprise company, but I'll write more about that some other time. This is really a rant about scalability and customer service. I remember when Groupon first started taking off, I was doing work with a lot of independent retail stores, and some thought it was the best thing ever, some were skeptical. My dislike of the company came from the fact that it couldn't work. While they got huge amounts of people to walk through the door, they were only customers at a specific (ridiculously discounted) price point, but would never be customers at regular prices. Groupon would eventually turn into restaurant.com, a great business, but not the next coming of Christ. I feel the same way about customer service. Even though he's kind of a douchebag, Tim Ferriss laid out a great sustainable practice.

Keep the customer happy. If it is a problem that takes less than $100 to fix, use your judgement and fix it yourself.

When I hear about stuff like the Morton's Steakhouse customer service handjob to a kind of douche, or other suck ups to known high profile personalities, I think the way most readers do, "hey, that's great, going out of your way to make one customer feel special" It's like hearing someone on your local news, or This American Life receive the spotlight, and think, hey, they are just like me. But how can you make that scalable. Clearly Morton's isn't going to do that for all customers,or even all big spenders. But it can happen. They've created the dream. I just wonder if that raises the expectation to create a let-down when things are less than spectacular. Or should the focus be on creating a reliable business and customer service practices.

Trap!

2011-08-18T00:00:00-07:00

A Great Explanation of "Marketing Bullshit"

2011-04-21T00:00:00-07:00

You should understand that marketers keeps brands/products relevant to consumers and consistently innovate and update how companies talk to their audience. Who are they? Where do they go online? What are their motivations? What are the barriers to entry? How can you gain their trust? Learning from marketing “bullshit” can lead you to develop some great opportunities. - Adam Horowitz (@seoptimizer)

Record Wedding Invitation (not mine

2011-04-13T00:00:00-07:00

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/22306468[/vimeo]

Fuck You, Pay Me

2011-04-11T00:00:00-07:00

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/22053820[/vimeo]

Ned, Ned Ryerson?

2011-02-02T00:00:00-08:00

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkW_ZkMtmlQ[/youtube] Happy Groundhog Day!

Why the hell not, best music of 2010 list.

2011-01-27T00:00:00-08:00

In no particular order, albums I enjoyed this year. Geographer - Animal Shapes EP

I've know Mike Deni since college and became fast friends with the the other guys in the band when they came to play Cincinnati's Midpoint festival. I was a huge fan of Mike's voice back then, and I'm worried my judgement may be a little clouded, but this record is really spectacular. Brian is a human metronome on percussion and Nate rocks the cello like a mofo.

I defy you to listen to Verona and not want to hear more.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcW3YlTZxyI[/youtube]

Anthony Jeselnik - Shakespeare

I listen to a lot of comedy. Anthony Jeselnik is fucking incredible. He is a borderline sociopath and cocky as hell, but fucking brilliant and brutal with his writing and delivery. By far the best comedy album of the last few years. He's perfect.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFnKTs6CXwQ[/youtube]

Anais Mitchell - Hadestown I went to college with Anais as well. This is her folk opera about the Orpheus myth. It's on righteous babe records. She can play guitar and has a beautiful voice. Definitely listen to this record in its entirety, it will transport you. [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/6632085[/vimeo] Celph Titled - Nineteen Ninety Now Truthfully I've spent most of this year digging back into hip hop, which is probably why I've enjoyed this new album so much. He's from Tampa, is Cuban and will tell you the rest of his story in this track. Kind of reminds me of Brother Ali a little bit. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrmIBAjG4NY[/youtube]

Pretty Lights - all of them

My buddy Beau (I'd link to his blog but he never updates it, ok, twitter) turned me onto him. I unfortunately missed seeing him at Moogfest because we had to leave early, but he makes some pretty awesome beats and I'm sure you will enjoy listening to him.

Super bonus, all of his music is available for free download at his website.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk9XYQMRiLY[/youtube]

Lorn

Lorn was the suprise act of Moogfest this year. He makes some really awesome beats.

Check this, and if you like, his album is a little chiller, but hits hard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTonpo7BoAI&feature=related[/youtube]

Garotas Suecas

They have a great 7" and a new album out. It's a fun, summer chill out party album. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FX7E9mGSfVg[/youtube] Other notables that I liked, but are probably on a million other best 10 lists. The fact that I love the Jonsi album makes me feel like I'm turning into Bob Boilen, but that's ok, it's fantastic. Best Coast also put out a great album this year. Neal Young's Le Noise was great. So was the Broken Bells record. There's a ton more, but that's worth dumping from my brain. Hope you enjoy something in there.

About to change your life.

2011-01-25T00:00:00-08:00

A must for Magento Developers

2011-01-24T00:00:00-08:00

I'm relatively new to Magento, at least in the hardcore, enterprise-y way. In my freelance work, I've done two small Magento sites. Basic store configurations, nothing crazy. Since joining CSG, I've dug pretty deep into Magento Enterprise. Anyway, Alan Storm is a hero, and his site is a must-read. He also has a killer plugin (Commerce Bug) that has been immensely helpful to understand what's going on in a Magento page. Anyway, definitely buy it, you won't regret it.

Cycling Sports Group

2011-01-04T00:00:00-08:00

Life has changed a lot this fall, nearly all for the better. After living in Athens, Georgia for about 4 months, we were looking for a new place to go. The Criteria: Near Horses. Within cycling distance to a downtown with some culture. Access to family and friends. Nature. Anyway, somewhat out of the blue, my old colleague Dave sent me a great invitation to apply for a job at his new employer. As a big bike fan, I was completely psyched to work with some awesome brands: Cannondale, Schwinn, GT, Mongoose, Sugoi.... Part of me feels like a bit of a corporate sellout, but they're more like the Matator or Sub-pop of the bike industry than major label. Anyway, the job and location were too good to be true. So I took the position as a Web Engineer and found a great (temporary) crash pad in downtown Bethel, CT. The job is pretty fantastic, working with an excellent small team of Web Marketing and IT folks. It has been somewhat more corporate than I've been used to, dealing with some politics slowing down the implementation of technology, but much less bs than other bigger companies (by bigger I mean more than 2 people :) ) Anyway, we've got a crazy gameplan of work, and it's nice to work with people with budgets. I won't get too technical here, but we've got a bunch of Magento Enterprise licenses and some serious cloud infrastructure.

Best Video of the Year (so far)

2011-01-04T00:00:00-08:00

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6A2rYSdluw[/youtube]

Great Bicycle Shop

2010-11-01T00:00:00-07:00

This was sent to me by my dad.

Streaming Media, Movies, TV, Audiobooks and others

2010-10-25T00:00:00-07:00

I consume an above-average amount of media, watch a lot of movies, listen to a lot of music, etc. I do work for a vinyl record pressing plant, so I'm obviously a big fan of the medium, but truthfully, I listen to music more via a computer than a turntable. Sad, but true. At this point buying CDs seems ridiculous unless I'm at a show or it's the only way to get the music. I occasionally buy digital albums via amazon or itunes. Anyway, I've hit the point where streaming makes sense. I've been a netflix subscriber ($10 / month) for a long while, and it's fantastic. They have almost any movie I could want. (with the exception, obviously, of newly released pirated films) And I've been comparing Grooveshark ($3 / month), MOG ($5-10/ month), etc. They all have their benefits, and a pretty comprehensive catalog. Then you hit audiobooks. I was looking for a book I wanted to listen to recently. And wow, for only a $15 / month audible membership, I can download ONE AUDIBOOK PER MONTH!! I'm moving to a new place soon, why would I bother with cable when I can queue up everything I want to watch between netflix, hulu, mlb.tv and torrents and watch at my convenience. (ASIDE: HBO/Showime - your models are fucked. Why do I have to subscribe to premium cable to then be able to buy your service. Sell it, streaming only, let me get it via my computer / boxee / googletv. Because otherwise, I'm just going to pirate your shows. I don't 100% agree with Mark Cuban's idea re: social gaming on internet enabled tvs. But netflix is definitely going to destroy hulu at the rate things are currently going. What's the end game? Seems like eventually all media will be in centralized libraries and everything will be streaming for monthly fee. Whatever. At this point subscribing to cable television seems akin to getting a landline. The founder of imeem gave a talk at startup school discussing how fucked you are if you're trying a music startup. The best investment are companies making the best deals with content providers (Netflix) and companies putting broadband everywhere. Long-range wireless, whatever comes after Sprint 4g. Let's get to the future already.

Great list of tools for start-ups

2010-10-25T00:00:00-07:00

Sweet wiki of start-up tools. Only one glaring omission - RepositoryHosting.

Ridiculous Bikes

2010-10-22T00:00:00-07:00

My neighbor Steve Klocke basically just ruined my weekend by sending me a link to CycleExif. It's not Bike Porn (probably NSFW) but it's essentially Bike Porn.

Wordpress vs. Drupal

2010-10-14T00:00:00-07:00

Sometimes I feel a little lame as a Wordpress developer, I'll admit it. There are SO MANY things that have already been done, it seems like it's pretty easy to make a great blog / basic CMS site with Wordpress. Anyway, great slide set shared by WPMU that highlights the differences in functionality, approach and what drupal is "doing wrong" compared to Wordpress.

Yahoo Pipes Awesomeness

2010-10-13T00:00:00-07:00

I totally forgot about building this until it came up in conversation today. At one time I was obsessed with filtering everything I did on the internet down into one mega rss feed. And Yahoo Pipes was the coolest new thing on the internet. So, the idea was to bring together:

Videos I favorited on Youtube.
Entries from a tadalist I kept.
My Flickr Feed.
Articles I wrote on Yelp
My Blog RSS Feed.
Shared Google Reader Items
Sites I Bookmarked on Delicious

You can check out the All Things Tyler Kremberg Yahoo Pipe here. (Warning, you may need a Yahoo login to view)

Passion, Crushing It, and Elevators

2010-10-07T00:00:00-07:00

I've found myself recommending Crush It, by Gary Vaynerchuk to several people recently. It's very inspiring, especially the audiobook version, read by him. In a nutshell: be passionate about something, create a personal brand, live your passion, be patient, make money eventually. For me, identifying my passion is the hardest part. I LOVE building websites, vinyl, biking, architecture and lots of other things. I find it SO hard to focus on one thing. The internet has made it way easier to share your passion. Here is somebody who has definitely found his passion: he loves riding elevators. And has a youtube channel filled with 536 videos of himself riding different models of elevators. Yes, you read that correctly. Absolutely brilliant. As of this writing he has had over 4.5 million views in total of all of his videos. Go check him out.

Drupal and other cool XSS

2010-10-03T00:00:00-07:00

I've been working with Drupal a bunch lately on some smaller projects, but it's fun to dig into the codebase and see how other systems are built. Anyway, as I was digging in, I found the Cracking Drupal book and blog. I really enjoyed this XSS hack and video: [vimeo]http://vimeo.com/15447718[/vimeo] I've been considering going back to a more corporate job or at least digging very deeply into onc specific technology, I'm afraid I've become too much of a generalist. Also, somewhat related, was sent this great hack that uses all kinds of cleverness to exploit an XSS hole in your router to use an un-documented Google Location services piece to find and map the GPS coordinated of the router. Damn smart.

Best Comedy Albums (not my list)

2010-10-01T00:00:00-07:00

The brilliant and funny Marc Maron has a list today of Five Funniest Comedy Albums that changed my life. In the comments, he also mentions Albert Brooks' Comedy Minus One. And considering that its been long out of print, I don't feel that badly about posting this link for a place to download it. I'd have to think a little longer f0r my list. It would definitely include Emo Philips E=MO^2 as well.

Fun Freelance Project I finished – Touchscreen Work

2010-09-28T00:00:00-07:00

As I've blogged before, I've been going down the deep hole of html5/ css3 /js. In the not too distant future I think you'll pretty much be able to do anything with those technologies. Thanks to technologies like Titanium (Mobile and Desktop) Anyway, the browser conditional selectors are still kind of a clusterfuck, but I love it. I'm setup in downtown Athens GA in a little coworking space I'm trying to get off the ground, so remote projects are a huge help. I've screwed myself on a few full-time possibilities in Atlanta, because basically it's not worth it for me to travel, I just don't care enough. On my portfolio I've started quoting higher rates for on-site work, but the number difference still isn't worth the mental cost of not being able to bike to where I want to go. Anyway, I'm not really sure if I'm supposed to share the code from this latest project, but I'll share some things that I found interesting.

It was a for a great design firm (ESI Design from NY) for a huge national company.
I only did the front-end work, which is a little odd for what I typically do, but actually very refreshing to draw a line in the sand and what my responsibilities really were. It would have been nice to communicate with the back-end team, but I didn't have the opportunity, so I hope they aren't cursing me for some decisions I had to make.
The project was all html5/ css3 and targeted at Google Chrome for a tablet device, which as of right now, I don't believe exists.
Lots of gradients and rounded corners, which made my job pretty easy (and reminded me of how much of a pain this would have been even a year ago)
I never really had a device to test this on, but there are a lot of weird decisions that have to go into the concept of active and hover states if you are using a touch-screen device. (as in, what the hell does that state actually mean in that context)
The simple solution is always the best one. And pushback is often necessary (and preferable) to horrifically hack-y solutions. (For example, how to overwrite native browser scrollbars)
Delivered early! Which was a nice surprise.

I'm kicking ass on our own stuff. Gotta Groove has been awesome and we're re-structuring our working relationship. Which means Reinvent Retail is going to get a bit of a re-work, as I start to take things to the next level. Rock.

Pixel Perfect

2010-07-29T00:00:00-07:00

I've been doing a bunch of freelance work since moving and am continually amazed at the weird and diverse selections of web projects that I somehow manage to find. Most are pretty fun little projects, building something useful to somebody for something. A lot of these low hanging fruit are building xhtml/css templates, typically for Wordpress. I have a bunch of rules when it comes to these jobs. For example, I only hand over work once I've received money. I'd like to think most of them are equally reasonable. The latest addition to the list is use of the terms pixel perfect, especially if they are in bold. It means nothing, because there is going to be somebody using WebTV, Seamonkey, Shiira or Maxthon (yes, those are all real web browsers) which will render some crazy thing differently that will never, ever be caught in any testing scenario ever. Is it important to do thing the right way? ABSOLUTELY. Is it important to test the rendering and graceful degradation of your execution in all modern browsers? OF COURSE. Will there be some silly reason why you had to compromise? PROBABLY. (our CMS strips out all span tags!) Will it look the same in every browsers? Consult the internet: http://www.dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/ There is no certification exam for web developers or designers, so judge us on the work we produce, how good we are to work with, and we'll do the same. If I included a line on my resume that I would only drink organic tea at precisely 10:20 every morning, would you hire me or think that I was difficult to work with?

JAPAN! MUSIC! SHOES!

2010-07-23T00:00:00-07:00

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS1exujG3cY&f[/youtube]

Investing in the Future

2010-07-16T00:00:00-07:00

I have in my hand a copy of HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith. It's concise and fantastic. And I think it represents the direction things are going on the web. I've been doing web development as a full-time job for 7 years now. I remember once I dove in, and first bought Designing with Web Standards [the orange one] and Eric Meyer on CSS. Since then, I've done a ton of work with PHP, some Rails work, a year of JSP/ Struts and a lot of Javascript. I've worked executing the visions of many visual designers. And have designed and created many user interfaces along the way. About a year and a half ago, I started investing heavily in working with Adobe Flex. At the time, I believed it promised a lot of great simplification in building Rich Internet Applications. At the time, the promise of having the AIR runtime to deploy to a desktop app and a great tool for building rich interfaces won me over. I went to one spectacular conference, met a ton of great people, and built some cool projects. The biggest draw at the time was the ability to make desktop apps in AIR work nearly the same as applications viewed in the browser in the Flash plugin. Sure, maybe one day it would work in Mobile devices too. Anyway, I've had a bunch of transition in my life and have been re-evaluating and re-focusing. I think that with runtimes like Adobe AIR and Appcelerator's Titanium Desktop and Mobile, investing heavily in HTML5, CSS3 and all of the badass things one can do with Canvas. Anyway, I'm done wasting my time with Flex, and I'm more excited about the future of web standards and browsers than I ever have been. It's a good thing A Book Apart isn't selling this book in stores, because it's readable in about 30 minutes, and not anything you'll ever refer back to. I'm glad I bought my copy, and I'm happy to pass it along to anybody who wants to buy me a sandwich. I recommend it, but more for what it represents than what it actually contains. I'm looking forward to a few new publications coming out in the next several months, and think that the new service from Think Vitamin is a much better resource to start learning. I hope to continue to become even more expert in the DOM and browser-based web technologies.

The Ultimate Indie Band

2010-06-30T00:00:00-07:00

Artist: we are black velvet kid bear ghost and the wolfpanther hot team collctive!!! Track: losing my house of crazy stillness (and you too) [diplo remix] Description: my bloody valentine meets warsaw meets velvet underground meets rl burnside combined with the raw power of burzum featuring members of neutral milk hotel

My Lyrics to a Plug Song for Comedy Death Ray

2010-06-30T00:00:00-07:00

I couldn't find an instrumental of Plug Tunin' by De La Soul, but that's what it's supposed to rapped over. I can't flow, but I can rhyme I just write jokes, don't need stage time it's the part of the show you've been waitin for comedy death ray, this humor is raw scottie aukerman's been making silly jokes best comedy writer? I'm callin it a hoax but thanks for listening to this show in order the funny parts were written by BJ Porter you know the time, but first I'm gonna rhyme dissin unfunny guests jimmy pardo is always not funny yo nick kroll, your jokes is old you're not that brainy, but funnier than john mulaney and I'm sorry ansari, but I don't want to hear about your cousin harris or vids with paul sheer todd glass, andy kindler, morgan murphy, dana gould all great comics, you guys ruled but scott used to ask what every guest earns now wastes your time between the two ferns wish you wrote jokes that were a lot stronger dropped albums on vinyl like my man matt braunger is harris wittels funny? hell no! he should be writing for Jay Leno like i love movies, with the same guests. ways to improve, allow me to suggest funny characters by mr. f thompkins when he's on the show, everybody wins. songs by weirder scott, need a disclaimer even worse than raps by mr. howard kremer offense joke, what? too soon? get better guests than mr. nick thune. comedy nerd fans who hate dane cook comedy by the numbers, yeah they read the book. go to UCB every day this spring their homepage is aspecialthing but enough of this shit, nice show cyberthug it's time to drop the mic and listen to the plugs /// Obviously very little editing went into this.

A Job I didn’t take

2010-06-28T00:00:00-07:00

The original Job Posting. I had an interview, but withdrew my application before the second interview. The lead developer seemed like a pretty awesome guy to work with, but I'm interested in being in a more collaborative environment, and I've had continued freelance work to keep me busy enough.

In a land before time… a girl -- two girls -- now more than ever… wait, wrong job listing. Languages and Environments HTML + CSS: Because Mama didn't raise you to format with tables. Javascript: "He's been using Brand X." "The Standards" - LAMP or MAMP: If you don't know, don't ask. Development Skills OO: The CS Rorschach Test. Simple Schema Design: Plans within Plans. AJAX: Used for more than cleaning kitchens and cutting drugs. MVC: No, it's not a Modern Venetian Constable (experience with CakePHP would be valuable). Powers... You Have Them! If asked, should be able to design a fully-functional pizza ordering form, complete with backend. If asked, should be able to propose a design for Tetris entirely in CSS, HTML, and Javascript (bonus points for real-time multiplayer Tetris that automatically orders a free pizza for the winner). If asked, should be able to persuasively defend choice of operating systems, email clients, and online shopping destinations. Applicants must provide a resumé, links to example projects (school assignments accepted), and a brief explanation, in your own words, of the philosophical differences between jQuery and Prototype. Athens preferred. Atlanta accepted.

My response.

MAMP developer here. Literally just moved to Athens to follow my fiance. I'll keep this rather informal. I've worked on short-term contracts with several web-design agencies in Columbus, Ohio for some decent sized clients. Most of my work has been in the Custom CMS / Wordpress land, with several larger E-Commerce sites. Re: Your questions. I LOVE it when I get to use the < table > tag for actual tabular data. I also love it when I get to use < dl > for an actual definition list. :) My resume and portfolio are linked below. If you want to ask me any of your questions, I'd be happy to answer them. - No problem on the Pizza Ordering - Why not make it a mobile app. Or augmented reality Tetris. - Mac OSX / Ubuntu, PINE for email (kidding), and I'm a partner in a company that created our own online shopping destination for independent record stores to allow customers to buy online and pick-up in-store, because I believe that you can't be a fan of boutique stores and a fan of insound.com (It's http://sellwithboutique.com/ ) I'm most experienced with Jquery, YUI, Mootools, and Prototype, extJS (in that order) From my experience, the most important skill is to choose the right tool for job. Either for technical reasons, framework compatibility or just to stick with what's been in use. In three words, the philosophical difference of how Protoype is different than JQuery: extending the DOM. The very real problem is collisions, if a property you try to overwrite is already part of some browsers DOM, and how the error may or may not be handled. I won't go further, as I'd just start ranting.

Welcome to Athens, GA

2010-06-24T00:00:00-07:00

Some first impressions - this city is much hillier than I anticipated, which makes having a fixed-gear bike a little tricky. Also, it's WAY hotter than it should be. - Our house isn't accurately on Google Maps, which amuses me. We're in a neighborhood called 5 Points, which has a nice little retail section, but is also very heavy with frat houses and 1.6 miles from Downtown. I've been exploring to find the optimal path to get there. Dijstra's Shortest Path algorithm in real life. - I've visited all of the bike shops and record stores in town. Even though the downtown is urban, most other neighborhoods are fairly residential, so there isn't a lot of urban biking, and most seem to mountain bike or tour. Wuxtry is fantastic and exactly what you would expect, tons of great vinyl. School Kids is really good, but not a ton of vinyl, but more accessible of a store. - It's nearly unbearable to function outdoors while the sun is shining, I think I'll be biking a lot at night. - Several people have told me about how difficult it is to find a job here because of so many students. I've had a few leads for "real" tech jobs in suburban Atlanta, but am not entirely convinced that the commute is worth the bump in salary. - I've already gone to one show by myself, because Jo is already on early morning schedule. The music scene here is fantastic, and it appears that every musician has been in a band with every other musician. Saw The Goons, Poison Control Center and left early during the Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't - Also, Junkman's Daughter's Brother is pretty awesome.

Next Stage In My Life

2010-06-10T00:00:00-07:00

Yeah, I'm marrying the dog too.

Why Ad Agencies are Great!!!!!

2010-04-27T00:00:00-07:00

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOcujXpbkhg[/youtube]

Fantastic Criticism

2010-04-21T00:00:00-07:00

I first saw Chris Weingarten speak at CMJ probably in 2004. I think my buddy Owen was working at CMJ and knew him. Anyway, I really enjoyed his thoughts and continued to read his stuff. Saw him at SXSW this year as well and he is always great. Watch this talk, it's important. or if you want the super-edited version, check this:

A New way to Fund Pornographic ideas: cockstarter.com

2010-04-20T00:00:00-07:00

A New way to Fund Pornographic ideas: cockstarter.com

Writing a relationship comedy script about a group of guys dealing with their girlfriends menstruation problems. #periodpiece

2010-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

Writing a relationship comedy script about a group of guys dealing with their girlfriends menstruation problems. #periodpiece

How I’m feeling today

2010-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

Demetri Martin, you were great in Analyze That. #obscurereferenceman

2010-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

Demetri Martin, you were great in Analyze That. #obscurereferenceman

Comedy Podcasts

2010-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

I've complained about this before, but: WTF with Marc Maron - Episode #62 featuring an interview with Jerry and Cathy McDowell (Matt Walsh, June Raphael). Then I Love Movies with Doug Benson, featuring the cast of Party Down. Then Comedy Death Ray Radio, co-hosted by Adam Scott (of Party Down) and with Jerry and Cathy McDowell. Then WTF with Marc Maron - featuring Scott Aukerman (host of Comedy Death Ray Radio)

Using Kickstarter to fund OpenStarter - An Open Source Version of Kickstarter

2010-03-30T00:00:00-07:00

Before you hate me, I think kickstarter is a fantastic site. But I also think this is a great idea. Why? Rule of the internet - if you don't do it, somebody else will. Really, Why? We think Kickstarter is fantastic, both as an idea and in execution. But it's lacking in some ways. Kickstarter is curating internet awesomeness for the grand community. And there is no doubt that Kickstarter.com has a very bright future ahead of it. But we believe the masses of brilliant internetizens can do a lot more with this idea. For example, say an arts community in Columbus, Ohio wants to help its members raise money:

to curate a community arts event
to start an art-mobile for local schools
for an local artist to create a public works sculpture.

Kickstarter is great not only because of their technology, but because of the community they are creating around an idea. A benefactor is going to come to the site for one project, but may not browse through hundreds of open projects to find other interesting ones. There are countless local groups who can run with this idea, creating a community of benefactors to surround a group of creators and more precisely target their fund-raising. (local arts orgs, public radio, community blogs, businesses) What are you, some kind of asshole? I guess so, but if wordpress.com can open source wordpress, and people can create clones of Basecamp, Digg, Delicious and others, why not? Really? Honestly, I don't expect the goal to be met, but the fact that it could be is intriguing. Plus I believe their is value in using Kickstarter to show thegreat and not-so-great aspects of Kickstarter.com Technical Details? OpenStarter should be really easy to install, setup and use. As in for people adventurous enough to install Wordpress or Indexhibit themselves. That is, it should have a fairly low barrier to entry, so should have clear documentation and be tested to install on cheap hosting (like Dreamhost for instance) PHP, MySQL with no crazy extensions. Support for Amazon Payments and Paypal are obvious requirements. This project won't have every single feature that kickstarter.com does, but will have the essentials executed very well. We're professional web developers, we do this stuff for a living, it will be good. I'm thinking a goal of $5000. Think of the social internet commentary. Think of the lulz.

The N-Word

2010-03-09T00:00:00-08:00

A show about the lives of a group of African-Americans and their friends, family and lovers.

Dunning–Kruger effect

2010-03-02T00:00:00-08:00

“

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

”

Bertrand Russell Dunning–Kruger effect - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Truth.

2010-02-24T00:00:00-08:00

True In Life

2010-02-24T00:00:00-08:00

A company known for having a point of view and commitment to community generates a payback worth more than money: Trust via Quote: Survival and profit are fine, but if you - (37signals).

Gentrify

2010-02-24T00:00:00-08:00

Great collection of videos from an interview with Sharon Zukin, sociologist at Brooklyn College. I particularly like her points about the necessity of diversity to form neighborhoods and cities.

Forget trying to make the moon inhabitable

2010-02-09T00:00:00-08:00

Let's try and make our cities inhabitable. Great read about the re-building of Paris.

Four Female Customer Service Reps at a Fax Repair Company

2010-02-08T00:00:00-08:00

Title: Fax of Life

Cool Comedy Side-project

2010-01-31T00:00:00-08:00

It seems like everybody in the entertainment industry knows or has worked with each other. All of that Six Degrees nonsense. I'm more intrigued at how incestual comedy circles seem to be. An example, Go listen to Doug Benson on the Comedy and Everything Else Podcast. Or maybe go listen to Todd Glass on Comedy Death Ray Radio Or why not just listen to Scott Aukerman on Doug Benson's I Love Movies Ok, enough is enough, plus there is the great Dead-From Stand Up Database. So here's my idea. Work on a visualization to group comedians and writers by their affiliations. I think it would be fascinating to see all of the data laid out and see who actually knows who. For example, as a start: Location Associated With ------------------------

Canada
Chicago
New York
LA

Training --------

UCB
Second City
Harvard Lampoon

Late Night Shows ----------------

David Letterman
Conan
Leno
Jimmy Fallon
Daily Show
SNL

Sitcoms -------

The Simpsons
Seinfeld
The Office

Also, my new sketch character “Obscure Reference Boy” — Hey Jeremy Piven, Loved you as the Nervous Quick-Mart Clerk in Twenty Bucks.

2010-01-21T00:00:00-08:00

Also, my new sketch character "Obscure Reference Boy" -- Hey Jeremy Piven, Loved you as the Nervous Quick-Mart Clerk in Twenty Bucks.

Final Word: IE6 was released pre 9/11. People still using it are a bigger threat than Osama Bin Laden.

2010-01-14T00:00:00-08:00

Final Word: IE6 was released pre 9/11. People still using it are a bigger threat than Osama Bin Laden.

Amusing google doc presentation on heuri...

2010-01-11T00:00:00-08:00

Amusing google doc presentation on heuristics and your brain. http://lesswrong.com/lw/fc/you_are_a_brain/

...

2010-01-11T00:00:00-08:00

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hELTtsBRie4[/youtube]

My dream job

2009-12-23T00:00:00-08:00

is to be on the writing staff of a late night tv show. Ideally Jimmy Fallon, to work with Morgan Murphy and Anthony Jeselnik. Anthony Jeselnik Stand Up

MC Paul Barman is my hero

2009-12-23T00:00:00-08:00

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thABL7wiS0M[/youtube]

How I got my job.

2009-12-17T00:00:00-08:00

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RlFmPD5Nss[/youtube]

Success is being who you are.

2009-12-11T00:00:00-08:00

I'm a natural observer with an analytical approach to understanding peoples' motivations and actions. My weakness is that it often takes me longer to realize the same truths about myself. I believe people enjoy everything they do. They complain a lot because they enjoy complaining. They read a book because they wanted to read that book. They show up late because they want to. The key to success at a project, job or relationship is the desire to succeed. The important part is understanding and focusing on who you are, what you are good at, and what you want. I call this the Burger King Retard theory. Probably my favorite written piece in the past ten years. My point is, know who you are and what you enjoy, and getting satisfaction out of it is easy.

Honestly I still believe this to be the funniest piece of comedy I've ever read: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28779

2009-12-10T00:00:00-08:00

Honestly I still believe this to be the funniest piece of comedy I've ever read: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28779

luddite?

2009-11-23T00:00:00-08:00

I have a subscription to the Sunday New York Times, but more often read the paper online. I listen to more podcasts per week than I do radio over the airwaves. I watch more video per week on my computer than television. I make purchases at Lowe's more often than my local hardware store. This trend scares the shit out of me.

Bernard Pivot

2009-11-23T00:00:00-08:00

1. What is your favorite word? funny. 2. What is your least favorite word? fear. 3. What turns you on? Absurdity. 4. What turns you off? Women wearing uncomfortable shoes. 5. What is your favorite curse word? Something I used to say when I was mad as a child: Stupidfuckingdammitshitassholebitchdick. 6. What sound or noise do you love? Laughter at something I said. 7. What sound or noise do you hate? Someone acting entitled. 8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Comedy Writer. 9. What profession would you not like to attempt? Priest 10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates? you again?

I don't understand software licenses

2009-08-30T00:00:00-07:00

Or rather, I believe that software licensing can stifle large-scale productivity. Software-as-a-service is a great business model. Build something awesome, charge people to use it. I have no problem paying 37Signals, Wufoo or Pingdom for the use of their services. They all put out great products that solve problems. If they don't solve your problem, or you wished they did so in a different way, use one of their competitors, or start your own. I think selling software to developers is also a great model. Designers do this all of the time, with stuff like iStockPhoto or numerous fonts repositories. You can buy Helvetica and a silly vector graphic, change some colors, save an illustrator file and sell it to me as my new brand. Open source is great, you can browse Freshmeat and find any kind of crazy project written in a language you've never even heard of by an insanely talented and devoted coder. And you can also find some offshoot written by another group who had some difference of opinion with some decision the original author made. These people are making the world a better place, but have essentially martyred themselves to their cause. Go look through some "support forums" for open source projects and get ready to hit yourself in the face. I do freelance work for clients. Occasionally those clients have clients as well. Clearly I don't need to hire a photographer when I can easily buy a photo of an old man laughing. Likewise, its obvious to use a free, open source library or framework for a project. There are many great places out there to purchase pre-made templates or components for use in a client project, like Themeforest (with a license to do so) or Ben Curtis of Railskits fame, who sells starter kits to solve certain types of typical web-app setups. His software includes a pretty great license, allowing you to use his work as part of your own client work.

You may not redistribute the SOFTWARE to anyone and via any means other than to your customers as a part of a purchased, integrated solution, that includes functionality above and beyond that provided solely by the SOFTWARE.

[full Railskits license] Lastly, here's a rather prohibitive license from MachForm, which I'm pretty sure prohibits distributing derivative works or assigning the license to a client. Anyway, whats the solution to this? How can I buy something - use it, improve it, then re-sell it? I can do this with a car or a house, but how do I do this with code?

CJ Doing the Jackal – http://bit.ly/13sr5t Man I miss the West Wing.

2009-08-28T00:00:00-07:00

CJ Doing the Jackal - http://bit.ly/13sr5t Man I miss the West Wing.

#iphoneappidea, “Running on Empty” – a timer that keeps track of how much the deficit has grown during the length of your run

2009-08-18T00:00:00-07:00

#iphoneappidea, "Running on Empty" - a timer that keeps track of how much the deficit has grown during the length of your run

Bands I've Seen Live

2009-08-18T00:00:00-07:00

Old buddy (and RANA fan) Jon Gilbert posted a note on facebook that prompted me to do this. My List

And I Ran – counts number of prisoners tortured in Iran during your run. #iphoneappidea

2009-08-18T00:00:00-07:00

And I Ran - counts number of prisoners tortured in Iran during your run. #iphoneappidea

Fear

2009-08-16T00:00:00-07:00

Fear of Apathy. “I can’t start this until I’m positive the work will never become dull or difficult.”5
Fear of Ambiguity. “I can’t start this until I know exactly how it will turn out (as well as the precise method by which I’ll do it).”
Fear of Disconnection. “I can’t start this until I’m totally up-to-date and current on everything.”
Fear of Imperfection. “I can’t start this until I know the end product will be flawless.”
Fear of Incompletion. “I can’t start this until I’m already done with it.”
Fear of Isolation. “I can’t start this until I know making it will never be lonely.”
Fear of Sucking. “I can’t start this until I’m already awesome at it (and know that even horrible people whom I dislike will hail me as a genius).”
Fear of Fear itself. “I can’t start this until I’m guaranteed that making it will never be scary.”

via Merlin

Folsom Prison

2009-07-28T00:00:00-07:00

How is it possible that this: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDbAxhV2ofM[/youtube] is a million times better than this: [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmt6OyRqb8A[/youtube]

Let's take a page from drug dealers

2009-07-16T00:00:00-07:00

I'm a freelance web developer. I occasionally tell people that I'm a writer of code and business plans. I've done consulting work for lots of companies - big, small, awesome and shitty. I haven't had a proper W-2 job since 2007. I work with a great partner doing some really sweet work, building both a software company for independent retailers and a fantastic sales / marketing partnership with Gotta Groove Records. I LOVE what I'm doing, and even though the money isn't exactly there just yet, I frequently work late into the evenings because I love it (and after spending the real evenings enjoying life and my girlfriend and dog. Anyway, this is a rant about being a freelancer. Or more accurately about getting paid as a freelancer. I'm not going to name names. I have my weaknesses as does everybody else. I've dropped the ball before and admitted it. I'm human after all. But I've also been screwed numerous times while working as a sub-contractor. Screwed as in not getting paid.... not just really late payment, but not at all. I'm not one to name names. (unless you want to buy me some root beer and get it out of me) But WHY THE **** IS THIS OK? I'm sick of the old standard: "I'll trust you until I don't." If I buy heroin, I can't just get a suitcase full and then tell the guy I'll pay him in 30 days. I can't tell him I'll pay him tomorrow. That's how people get shot. If I don't pay my hosting company every month, they shut my shit down. It's a service. I pay for it and they provide it. So why can't I demand payment from a client BEFORE launching their site? A lot of my work is my knowledge, advice, planning, analysis, but a good portion of it is also in that crunch time getting every nit-picky detail correct before launch. Why isn't it industry standard to demand payment before site launch? Sure I can claim copyright on code I wrote that I was never paid for, but any company worth its salt will change its server passwords once work is complete. I can't just un-do shit I already did. Convince me why I'm wrong or I'm right. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaiSHcHM0PA[/youtube]

Advice for every male friend

2009-07-13T00:00:00-07:00

Mike Birbliglia - I'm crazy and cats

Dope JS Sound Interface Stuff

2009-06-30T00:00:00-07:00

SoundManager 2 makes it easier to play sounds using Javascript. via SoundManager 2: Javascript Sound For The Web.

The First Guitar Hero - 1994

2009-06-25T00:00:00-07:00

I remember thinking about this when I first heard about Guitar Hero. My dad bought me this game for my first computer, I remember rocking out to Hey Jealousy over and over. Glad I tracked it down. Your job is to practice, practice, practice and learn garage-band versions of six songs, including Motley Crue's "Kickstart My Heart" and the Gin Blossoms' "Hey Jealousy." A "rhythm EKG," displays the beat as oscilloscope blips. via PERSONAL COMPUTERS; Big Multimedia Noise from Bedford - The New York Times.

Making Flex Development a Lot Easier with Blueprint

2009-06-24T00:00:00-07:00

From Adobe: Blueprint is a plugin for Flex Builder that lets developers query for sample code and look through examples found on the Web directly inside of Flex Builder. You can place Blueprint in a Flex Builder panel or you can open its window only when you need it. via Blueprint:Using Blueprint - Adobe Labs. Really spectacular piece of code there, lets the docs and a very fast search right at your fingertips. Highly recomended!

Flip Flop Fly Ball

2009-06-24T00:00:00-07:00

Some beautiful baseball visualizations.

Site Hacked - Rebuilding

2009-06-21T00:00:00-07:00

long story. still have the database, but lost all images and styles. great excuse to start fresh. In the meantime, apologies for ugliness / missing content. <4

Music I've been enjoying

2009-06-21T00:00:00-07:00

Schaffer the Darklord - The Tin Man A lovely little ballad dedicated to the best horror character that never was. Thanks Greg [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCSkDHVgjcg[/youtube]

By Request - Ohio State Mens Baseball Schedule Google Calendar

2009-04-06T00:00:00-07:00

Make Your Own. Just go to The Ohio State University Buckeyes Downloadable Sports Schedule. Download the file as a .csv and save to your computer. Go to Google Calendar. Create a new Calendar for your stuff to be imported to. Under Add, click import calendar. Browse and select the file you just saved. And then select what calendar you just created. Bada-bing, here's mine.

No more Portfolio - Ohioana Book Festival

2009-04-05T00:00:00-07:00

I've been realizing how un-representative of my recent work my portfolio has been. (and probably how little people give a crap about it) I've also been doing freelance work for the past three months that I can't showcase. LAME. Anyway, recently worked with my awesome friend Jon to launch the new Ohioana Book Festival site. I've spent most of my time deep in Flex / Rails land, but its always fun to work with cool people on cool projects.

Columbus Clippers (good) Web Calendar

2009-03-18T00:00:00-07:00

I'm a huge baseball fan. Now that I'm a Columbus(ian?) I'm a Clippers fan. (Their website is good, but not great and I would LOVE to help them make it awesome - shameless plug) I am SO VERY EXCITED for the new Huntington Park and my ability to walk to it. I use Google Calendar for everything. Their web calendar is ok, but annoying. I applaud their abillity to exportas a .csv but its even more useful for me as a Shared Google Calendar. So I whipped it together. View the calendar first if you want to just check it out. To subscribe in Google Calendar, on the left, under "Other calendars", go to "Add", then select "Add by URL" Then Enter: http://www.google.com/calendar/ical/k8765gqc9drbtqtpgjvmd4ktvg%40group.calendar.google.com/public/basic.ics And voila, now you can be just like me and check every day to see if you want to go to the game that night. UPDATE: Made it to the <a href="http://web.minorleaguebaseball.com/schedule/page.jsp?ymd=20090331&content_id=547155&vkey=schedule_t445&fext=.jsp&sid=t445">Columbus Clippers website</a>, thank you and everything.

Screw South By Southwest

2009-03-13T00:00:00-07:00

Ok, I'm a little bitter, because I was planning to go, then about to go, then had money to go, then still waiting to get paid, then whatever, I'm not going. Next year Reinvent Retail will be there in full force. We're having two great Press This Record specials for the weekend. But anyway, I've been just using basic plain old Twitter from the browser at the office I've been working out of. And I don't want to hear about it. So, nice little five minute project, a Greasemonkey script removing tweets from your twitterstream with a reference to that festival in Austin. (I don't claim perfection, or good code, suggestions welcomed) I'm calling it Screw By SW, because my good friend Atom, who usually helps me come up with more cleverer names, is down there. That is all.

Newspapers

2009-02-24T00:00:00-08:00

Its also exactly why newspapers are having a hard time making it. They sell papers 1 at a time. They sell home subscriptions one at a time. When they charge for monthly subscriptions online, they sell them one at a time. That’s a tough business. via How Cable & Satellite Can Save the Newspaper Business « blog maverick.

As usual, Mark Cuban is exactly correct. Cell phones cell 1 at a time, but they are still profitable. On the other hand, cell phone companies are making corporate deals all of the time. Of course your company wants to demonstrate a culture of blackberry users. Why shouldn't they sell companies on the idea of the culture of daily newspaper readers. Sell a small business on bulk work delivery of 10 papers. Or home delivery for employees to read on their commute. I'd think it was an awesome perk. It's not as expensive as a gym membership or massage room. Plus you'd have a more intelligent, informed workforce.

Free Art of Tomorrow

2009-02-24T00:00:00-08:00

Great kiosk-style distribution. Bring an 8gig flash drive, get all nominated Oscar films.

Facebook Connect Plugin Directory

2009-02-24T00:00:00-08:00

I was talking about this years ago at Middlebury. Classes were just starting to utilize blogs for peer review and commentary. I've long advocated for peer review for all disciplines. No better way to learn than to see how other smart people do things. Anyway, my idea back then was for students to be able to track their public comments back to represent the college. Middlebury has a student population of ~2200 with an incredibly diverse set of opinions, interests and political pursuasions. Wouldn't it benefit the student (and the college) to know that an insightful blog post or comment on a NYTimes article was made by a student representing the college. Knowing that a college's student body were engaged the global community of ideas would have been a lot better insight than watching Animal House. Facebook Connect Plugin Directory - Facebook Developers Wiki.

Scammy Scammy Scam Scam

2009-01-30T00:00:00-08:00

I love me a good scam just like the next guy, but the lesson to be learned from the following is not that companies who sounds like scammer are usually, in fact, scammers. The best part is their attempt at bribe a blogger who wrote bad stuff about them. Seems like a bad precedent to set. Maybe instead they should just NOT BE SCAMMERS! Sounds to me to be along the lines of marketing being a tax on the unremarkable. But I digress, I'm mostly just amused by people like this. Plus, I think it's important to remember @williac's memorable line. Check out the full article on cockeyed More related links at waxy.org

New Years in Maine - Lou Gehrig in the Minor Leagues

2009-01-27T00:00:00-08:00

My good buddy Chris, aka sassguerilla (aka imdb) edited together footage of our New Years blowout in Maine. (definitely worth watching in high-def) Some great footage and awesome editing. I'm not sure how well it plays if you don't know all of us, but is certainly amusing footage, considering it was all reality-show-esque footage. Also, check out Chris' work on these Scion videos, pretty badass.

At the Crossroads...Crossroads

2009-01-26T00:00:00-08:00

Been all over the place lately. Learning lots. Have done a lot of UI / UX reading and have been truly inspired to think of every interaction as an EXPERIENCE. Spending time in Florida observing my 90 year old grandmother interact with my iPhone or explaining Twitter to her was a humbling moment of understanding what usable technology really means. I'm trying to decide which way to go, I have a large back pocket filled with expertise at front-end web work, but I've also really enjoying the Rich Internet Application work I've been doing, mostly with the Air Framework. I've also been playing around with iPhone dev and some cool visualization stuff in my spare time. I've had a couple of amazing mentors these past few months and have learned a ton about the process of defining a problem and how to go about solving it, from an architecture as well as user interaction point of view. But I'm not sure where I'm going next. I've been annoyed by some of the feedback I've received from recruiters who have told me to "re-imagine my resume to fit the major qualities of the job description" I've also gotten the bait and switch. I've found most don't know what they're looking for and don't seem to care, although there are several recruiters I've worked with in my life who are both genuine people and care about finding the right fit. I've also gotten some skeptical questions as to people questioning my decision and commitment to wanting to come on with them full-time. I learned an incredible amount in the past year of freelancing - clearly identified my strengths and weaknesses as a programmer, communicator, facilitator, teammate and employee. I think I'd be equally suited to do AS3 / Flex work as I would to do Rails dev, PHP dev, User Interaction Design or teach Math. The fact of the matter is I've had the time to explore, learn to manage clients, learn to solve technical challenges and now I want to work with a team with vision, that is trying to do great things and who I can challenge as well. And if I can bike to your office in downtown Columbus, even better. Anyway, just throwing that out there. As an aside - every time I tell somebody that I moved to Columbus from New York, the first question I get is "city?" the second is "why?" and the third is "how long do you plan on staying?" Well I'm here, I own a home and love it. So stop asking.

My Favorite User Experience Books

2009-01-12T00:00:00-08:00

I would like to think that the things I save are those that are the most important to me. Books, records, firefox bookmarks, photographs...? I'd like to think that these things are representative of who I am and my collected interests. But I'm starting to realize that maybe that isn't the case. If that were true, I could easily reference my magic bookcase and easily identify my most influential (or favorite) books. But that hasn't proved to be the case. As I posted earlier over the past year the work I've most enjoyed would be described more as User Experience work than Front-end Web Development. I've been shopping with my generous $50 amazon gift certificate from Randal of R2 Communications (who I've had the pleasure of developing several sites with in 2008) and I realized that I've read, loved and given away most of my favorite Interaction Design books, most notably the following:

Web Form Design by the amazingly wonderful Rosenfeld Media (I gave to Bryan of Huber+co)
Defensive Design For the Web the first book by 37signals (pre-Rails) (I think I gave it to Liz at Smith Street Design?)
Don't Make Me Think (maybe my buddy Jon?)

I'm about to order:

Tog on Interface (one of the classics)
Use Case Modeling (I've been very interested in learning more about ways to think of functional requirements)
User Interface Design for Programmers (Spolsky, whom I usually find annoyingly opinionated, but he knows what he's talking about)

Basically I'm just trying to get better at what I do. (I think I'm going to read Mental Models shortly as well) In the meantime, I'm working on some mock-ups for my own projects as well as one for a client. Want to hire me? I'd love to talk! kremdela at gmail

2009 - Time for some new things.

2009-01-09T00:00:00-08:00

I've realized that I fallen way behind in blogging about work I've done, although I think a fairly good representation of my work is in my portfolio. My Twitter stream seems to be more up to date on my daily goings ons. I'm completely refreshed from a great time see lots of good friends in NYC and Maine. I just launched a cool new project for The Fuse Factory here in Columbus, with special design and moral support from Atom and Jon. Anyway, I spent my break playing around with iPhone dev (dirty) and Flex hacks (powerful!) And I'm working on some good small projects, but have realized that I'm much happier working on the Interface Design / Analysis side of things than on the programming side. So I've been applying to more full-time / contract positions rather than try and continue on a steady stream of freelance gigs. I'm also working on my own endeavors in the meantime. Also, my buddy Jim told me this reminded him of me.

Awesome Motion Graphics

2008-12-11T00:00:00-08:00

My buddy Jon just turned me on to the place his friend Nate works, Left Channel Motion Graphics. They're based in Columbus and have done some seriously kickass work for a very impressive client list. Go check out their Reel (or their video for RJD2 featuring images from Cuba)

Who’s On First on Twitter

2008-12-08T00:00:00-08:00

I'll start this by saying I know this is a dumb idea. I was looking up fictitious characters on Twitter and found Mia from Californication. That and the Sterling Cooper [Mad Men] Crew. Anyway, I suggested to my buddy Ari that we should create fake twitters for West Wing Characters (LemonLyman!) But alas, too much conversation and too little movement through hallways. I also toyed with idea of re-creating I Have a Pony in realtime. But twitter rate limiting (100 per hour) is a bitch. Then it came to me. Who's On First. Feel free to follow @bud_abbott and @lou_costello on Twitter. I didn't do too much error checking, so if the Twitter API wigs out, the conversation will stop. If I get enough (read: any) followers I'll start a nightly performance. Here's the source text: back_and_forth.txt And the code:

require('rubygems')
gem('twitter4r', '0.3.0')
require 'twitter'
require 'time'

client_abbott = Twitter::Client.new(:login => 'bud_abbott', :password => 'XXXXXXXX')
client_costello = Twitter::Client.new(:login => 'lou_costello', :password => 'XXXXXXXX')

puts "Logged In, Now Lets Go Through The Script"

File.new('back_and_forth.txt').readlines.each { | response |
  who_said_it, line = response.split(": ")
  if who_said_it.to_s == "Abbott"
    puts "Abbott: #{line}"
    begin
      status = client_abbott.status(:post, line)
      rescue RESTError => re
        puts re.code, re.message, re.uri
    end
  elsif who_said_it.to_s == "Costello"
    puts "Costello: #{line}"
    begin
      status = client_costello.status(:post, line)
      rescue RESTError => re
        puts re.code, re.message, re.uri
    end
  end
}

puts "Finished!"

A Quick Story About Searching for Records

2008-12-04T00:00:00-08:00

I like music, more specifically, I like vinyl records. I like listening to them, I like scratching then, I like buying them, I like finding them. The Internet is out to destroy this love. That's because the Internet has destroyed what would have once been a several month process into less than an hour. Scenario A I read some zine some friend told me about. It contains an article about some great record I've never heard about. I mentally note it. One day, several months later, I discover that record for $5 Canadian in a record store in Kingston, Ontario. Holy shit, I think. I recall the article and of course buy the record. Which I listen to when I arrive home and enjoy immensely. Scenario B I hear about a new record from a podcast I listen to while driving (who listens to terrestrial radio anyway?) It's All Songs Considered and I discover Take Ten by Paul Desmond. Sounds great. I get home and look it up (because I had already forgotten his name) and then search. I can grab it on ebay for about $8 shipped, which is not too bad. Itunes has it for $9.99, then I find pirated mp3s. I could download, listen to, and already get sick of the album before the ebay auction ends. (in two days) I'd love to find it in a record store, but is it possible that I no longer have the patience for that anymore? Have I really changed that much where I can't even enjoy the process of Scenario A anymore? I'm going to hold out and wait until I find Take Ten in a record store. And I think the world would be a better place if more people did the same.

I love Hollywood.

2008-12-03T00:00:00-08:00

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Now THIS is Advertising

2008-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

Great Web Series - The Line

2008-09-16T00:00:00-07:00

Read more about this comedy nerd extravaganza at the NY Times. Or better yet, go watch episodes on hulu. Simon Rich is writing for it.

Election

2008-09-16T00:00:00-07:00

SNL hit a homerun with the Palin/ Clinton cold open this weekend. The Museum of the Moving Image has an awesome collection of campaign ads throughout the ages. Go check out the Living Room Candidate. Quick conclusion: there aren't enough presidential jingles anymore.

Two Beatiful Vimeos

2008-09-12T00:00:00-07:00

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo. <
EepyBird's Sticky Note experiment from Eepybird on Vimeo.

Update: Jason and I think freakishly alike. Or both read Waxy Links, that probably makes more sense.

A Letter to Matt (my business partner)

2008-09-12T00:00:00-07:00

Obie Fernandez runs one of the top Rails consultancies. He gave a pretty interesting talk at Ruby Fringe that goes into how they handle getting business and what they consider important for their consulting contracts, about using a Master Service Agreement. (the contract stuff starts about 22 minutes in) Thought it might be up your alley. Related-ly, an old friend/ Starwood boss Todd has started transforming his company into working with (design) agencies to provide technical services to their clients. It's a pretty interesting stance. It's essentially what I've been doing lately, but I haven't been branding myself as a company. I don't want to run a design/ marketing web company. And I'm not hardcore (or self-confident) enough to run a technology consultancy. Maybe we should start to think of Reinvent Retail more as providing technology solutions to independent businesses. That's a mission I feel confident about getting behind. P.S. Reinvent Retail is now the number one google hit for "Reinvent Retail" Edit: Matt also does awesome (Business and Entertainment) law work in Columbus Ohio, I can't recommend him highly enough. His site is http://www.earley-law.com/

GOP Aborts Convention Plans

2008-09-02T00:00:00-07:00

hire me onion.

god bless wikipedia random article

2008-09-02T00:00:00-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Moody

I'm pretty sure this didn't make the TV edit.

2008-08-13T00:00:00-07:00

From the upcoming Comedy Central Roast of Bob Saget:

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Someecards goes social!!! I'm so excited.

2008-08-12T00:00:00-07:00

Poddington Bear

2008-08-12T00:00:00-07:00

I am loving this shit! Download for free on iTunes.

This weekend and my Junior Year of College

2008-08-10T00:00:00-07:00

Was devoted to Tony Hawk 2 for Dreamcast. Here's my high score screenshot for a 2 minute run in the Hanger. It's nowhere near the record, but I think its pretty impressive.

Sorry Doug Benson

2008-08-08T00:00:00-07:00

I found your album on the internet (and shared it briefly) Then Ryan from AST Records kindly asked me not too, and I was more than happy to oblige. I'll buy the record from you in Columbus in two weeks. Thanks! and sorry. :(

New Business Idea - POGS 2.0

2008-08-05T00:00:00-07:00

For All of your Custom POG Printing needs!

Craigslist never ceases to amaze me.

2008-08-05T00:00:00-07:00

Especially when its my friend Andy Lynch who posted it.

Podcasts I Love - Sound Opinions

2008-07-22T00:00:00-07:00

Or: "Sound Opinions is the Best Thing That's Happened To Me In a While"

Emo Philips Changed My Life

2008-07-06T00:00:00-07:00

Driving through western Colorado with my dad ~ 1998 we went into a record store. Searching through the comedy section, I recognized E=MO^2 from the film UHF. On a whim I bought the cassette that changed my life and introduced me to one of the worlds greatest joke writers. Anyway, I found this digging through a bunch of old crap. It's absolutely brilliant. Download Emo Philips - E=MO^2.

Novos Baianos – Acabou Chorare

2008-07-02T00:00:00-07:00

This is near the top of my favorite Brazilian bands/ albums list. Please enjoy. Download the full album.

Haiku

2008-07-02T00:00:00-07:00

Backstory: At the trendy asian fusion restaurant called Haiku in the Short North neighborhood in Columbus, a customer fled without paying their bill. Rachel Widomski, a bartender ran out after the customer, who hit her with his car while fleeing the lot, leaving her paralyzed. Everyone in the community has rallied around the cause, throwing fundraisers and art auctions. The retarded guy who lives in the park has written the following contributions to a book of Haiku poetry I'm compiling. Submissions are encouraged. didn't want to pay so he ran away but you'll never walk again --- sushi isn't cooked not alive, but raw and dead bet you wish you were --- my favorite dish lightly battered, tenderized you know how it feels --- california roll fake crab meat, cucumber. now: you're the vegetable --- i love your restaurant pretty smile and nice hair hope you get well soon --- driverman asshole I'm retarded and I know food costs you money --- your mom is upset saw her talk on the tv damn that cheap bastard

Ruby Metaprogramming Aha!

2008-06-27T00:00:00-07:00

At the recommendation of Joe O'Brien, I watched Dave Thomas' fantastic bottom-up explanation of Metaprogramming in Ruby. The talk provides a very lucid explanation of a lot of Ruby (and Rails) magic that always gets glossed over in any intro to ruby kind of talk. It's kind of the same way I never really *got* certain concepts until I made my 9th grade teacher completely show me Proof By Induction. Anyway, I highly recommend it for any computer-science curious types. It crescendos to wonderful payoff where this piece of code makes complete sense:

class Class
	def meta
		class << self
			self
		end
	end
end


class Dave

	class << self
		def self.hi
			puts "WHATS UP META!"
		end
	end

end


Dave.meta.hi

ch..ch..ch..changes...

2008-06-26T00:00:00-07:00

One of the first mashups I ever made was David Bowie - Changes vs. Jane's Addiction - Jane Says. Think about, it sounds great in your head. My version, not so much. Anywho, 99.9% of the readers of this site subscribe exclusively via RSS in Google Reader. So I've made a few changes to the stalking feed, now using feedburner, so you will never have to change again. SUBSCRIBE HERE: http://feeds.feedburner.com/myinitialsaretk This feed includes updates from this here blog as well as my contributions and favorites on numerous social media sites. Comment or drop an email if you think its possible I'm not reading your website.

Hot Listening - Tambourine Dream - Pocketknife and Cousin Cole

2008-06-25T00:00:00-07:00

You'll love this shit, I guarantee. Props to cassettenova.
if you want to be cool like him, go track down the colored vinyl. Download the full album here.
and if you don't know how to google, more about these guys here

5 Year Middlebury Reunion

2008-06-09T00:00:00-07:00

Thats Art Welder Andy on the right and his wonderful old hall-mate Meg, who wins the award for the coolest person I haven't talked with in five years. If you're reading this Meg, HI! Saw a ton of great people, reconnected with even more. Oliver and others took tons of pictures, which will probably show up on facebook soon enough. It was a beautiful, free for all party weekend, where I witness a Middlebury first, watching a public safety officer help someone carry a new keg into Coffrin at 1:30 am. The President's Baccalaureate Address. I'll be in Somerville / Cambridge until Wednesday, then to Germany. Get in touch if you want to chill.

Why I love Facebook on My Birthday.

2008-06-04T00:00:00-07:00

Because in addition to a warm greeting.. You get to figure out who logs in when based on when they write happy birthday on your wall. Or whether they give a shit about you or not. I love all of my friends very very much. And in case you are curious, in addition to 27 being my favorite number, I've made it as far as Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain. Today begins my east coast tour. Flying to Burlington to spend time with my wonderful Aunt, Uncle and Cousin, then my 5th Middlebury Reunion, then Boston... Oh and to answer your question, best present ever:

What I want to know before I sign up for a new site.

2008-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

how about being able to see how many of my contacts are already using it. Almost EVERYONE I know is on facebook. EVERY recruiter who wants me to be a Perl Developer in Boca Raton, Florida is on LinkedIn. Not enough people were on Twitter. Wouldn't it be nice to know how many people I know on [friendfeed/ pownce/mixx/etc/etc/etc] ?

Its like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder.

2008-05-29T00:00:00-07:00

A friend relayed a story about someone who recently was kicked out of a very prestigious architecture program:

He was good, but every time he got a criticism he would abandon the entire idea and start from scratch. All of his professors wanted him to refine his idea, but he couldn't go along with just making one idea work."

I'm certainly guilty of this: perfectionism to a fault resulting in not getting anything accomplished. I've been trying to better understand my strengths and weaknesses. From my Meyers-Briggs personality type analysis: (INTP for those keeping box score at home) "They love to theorize and discuss abstractions... They naturally build complex theoretical systems to explain the realities they see." They find it difficult to actualize their ideas. If they do not find a place where they can use their gifts and be appreciated for their contributions, they usually feel frustrated and may: become cynical and negative critics, be sarcastic and destructively critical, isolate themselves and put off action. I've been trying to weed out the bullshit in my life and do exactly what it is that I want to. Mark Cuban reminded me there's only one thing you can control: EFFORT. And even though its the part I get the most enjoyment out of, the idea is nearly worthless in relation to its execution. That won't stop me from constantly talking (and getting excited) about new ideas, but will hopefully remind me to focus more on their execution. Now its in a blog, so I can focus on getting better at my execution skills and stop complaining. Posted while listening to: Expresso 2222 by Gilberto Gil.

New Bike! (1964 Huffy Sportsman)

2008-05-28T00:00:00-07:00

The last new bike I bought was a Trek, which was stolen when a good friend borrowed it and left it unlocked in Middlebury. I then used my dads old bike for several years until I moved and gave it to my old boss. Since then I've been sharing my girlfriends bike. I've turned this into an idealogical struggle, trying to evaluate what my bike says about me, etc, etc. A new sweet bike shop opened up a few blocks from me. I spotted one I really liked, but right now didn't want to spend several hundred on a new bike to then worry about. I learned about the Third Hand Coop at the screening of Bike Porn and first checked it out this past Saturday. $70 dollars later, I've got this sweet ride. It's a '64, or so says the Sturmey-Archer Hub. I had to fix the rear brakes a bit, but the great volunteers at Third Hand did an excellent job!

Learning German

2008-05-24T00:00:00-07:00

German: Bitte, wo ist die alte Synagogue? English: Where is the former synagogue, please? German: Bitte, wo ist der Judenfriedhof? English: Where is the Jewish cemetary, please?

Fight Climate Change

2008-05-24T00:00:00-07:00

I've applauded my friend Andy's company, Brighter Planet, a credit card with rewards for the environment. It's the only credit card I use and I couldn't support their company mission more wholeheartedly. Check em out.

Frank Gehry

2008-05-20T00:00:00-07:00

Everything has been done before, what changes is technology.

Very old stuff I've found on burned cds- Weird Al and Wendy Carlos - Peter and the Wolf

2008-05-16T00:00:00-07:00

enjoy. http://drop.io/wendyal

funny domain names that are totally available.

2008-05-15T00:00:00-07:00

www.columbusted.com // pictures of ugly girls at parties [see vice do's and don'ts]
www.itsjusthandjobs.com // people upset with the fat girl that showed up via itsjustlunch.com
www.deadniggerstorage.net // pulp fiction fans [.com is taken, but empty]
www.fuckzuck.com // mark zuckerberg photoshopped porn
www.terroristplots.com // use your mfa in creative writing to help out non-creative terrorists

I've hit a wall sharing things on the Internet

2008-05-11T00:00:00-07:00

I've been building this app that I've codenamed Stalker. (unfortunately stalkr.com is taken) It should be fairly obvious what it does from the name, but was related to an old idea I had when I wanted to pay people (mechanical turk-style) to contribute one-line facts about a person. Sure, "Tyler grew up on Long Island" is rather meaningless, but joined together with 499 other facts that someone paid a nickel each for is $25 worth of "Every move you make, every step you take, I'll be watching you..." No big shock here, but there is a FUCKTON of information out there about people. And so what if nobody has yet figured out a meaningful way to categorize it, its out there and creepy. I hold a firm belief that nearly all internet communication is passive aggressive. (I've been talking about this topic in person non-stop for the past several weeks, therefore disproving irony) Imagine a conversation with a wide-eyed, innocent child and his father (around 1990) (see: Lucky Louie, ep 1)

Son: "Dad, why do people do things?" Dad: "Because they enjoy doing them, like you enjoy playing baseball." Son: "But some people just do things to tell other people about them." Dad: "What do you mean?" Son: "Like, you know how some people come home from work and like complaining about how annoying everybody is?" Dad: "Yeah..." Son: "Well don't people do things for the same reason?. Like my friends went to the Mets game this weekend, and I think he enjoys telling everybody that his dad took him to the game more than he actually enjoyed watching it" Dad: "That's probably right." Son: Well I think that in about 18 years there will be a whole slew of websites on the not-yet-invented-internet for people to share the things they read about, or discovered, or listened to, or are planning on going to." Dad: "That's crazy talk son, but why would they want to share these things with no end, wouldn't it be better if they formed an opinion instead, rather than just clicking checkboxes to show off whatever new book (or blog) they read or band they heard about?" Son: "How am I supposed to know, I'm only a kid."

What this completely pointless and anachronistic conversation is supposed to illustrate is that while people are more interconnected and have more tidbits of information about each other, they don't actually know each other better. And in fact are doing a lot of things to show how savvy they are. I seem to be in a bad mood a lot when I come to blog. I get very frustrated constantly hearing about "Hey, this is so cool, the new trailer for so and so is out, or hey, please vote for my video (aware of irony, see earlier post) or check out this great new book I'm reading... It's like the annoying marketing douchebag who is always talking about how great he is versus the person with genuine interests who doesn't always feel the need to talk about them. I went to New York last week and caught up with a lot of friends, which reminded me that face to face communication cannot be replicated no matter how much people interact via other communication mediums. I'm diverging from any coherent point, so I suppose I'll finish with the statement that I love the medium (The Internet) but I think it has changed my perception about people. I'm going to go re-read Marshall McLuhan and delete my Twitter account. It's been fun. If you want to get in touch, post a comment, or send a message via facebook or linkedin or instant messenger, or sms or email or USPS before the postage rate goes up.

Fastest Rhyme

2008-05-08T00:00:00-07:00

Hot new Diplo at turntable lab. Slowest Rhyme, the bobby birdman remix is hot.

An email I received from my friend Ben.

2008-05-06T00:00:00-07:00

i wanted to make sure you're all aware of cw's new blog: http://thingsyoucantdocokedup.tumblr.com/ it even hit gawker: http://gawker.com/386081/the-best-two-new-blogs-in-the-internet-toda ------- It's a lot better than her first (and more appropriate) title, Things I can't do right now.

Lucas Kavner has the only muxtape worth sharing

2008-05-01T00:00:00-07:00

I have a long-term hatred for anything even remotely related to lodwick or vimeo. But, my friend Lucas has released a lovely muxtape of his latest creations. If you don't know, or don't subscribe to my crazy all things tyler RSS feed, I'm consistently sending out an aggregated stream of everything I do/ share on the internet. Just like friendfeed except not so super-social 2.0. But this one was worth its own post.

Evernote Invites!

2008-05-01T00:00:00-07:00

By good buddy Ari as well as my new .comrade Jason have both mentioned Evernote in the past week. Thats enough of an incentive for me. Being able to clip text and images (with recognition for search) as well as posting from iPhone is what sold me. Anyway, if you want an invite leave a comment.

I'm a Comedy Nerd, but...

2008-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

I'll take the comedy nerd pepsi challenge anyday. My lifelong dream is to join the friar's club, I have a rather impressive comedy record collection, etc, etc, etc... But Office Tally, a fansite dedicated to EVERYTHING Office (US) is a little intense for my blood.

Guest Post from My Aunt Joy

2008-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

In the new age of internet video contests requests like this are more common. But I won't spam you (unlike a certain old college acquaintance, who if she sends me another email to vote for her video so her mom can get a trip to israel I'm going to personally issue a fatwah against her plane...) Anyway, a message from my Aunt Joy, who served as a second mother to me during my time in Vermont. Some of the images in the videos come from my uncle John during his tour of duty with the VT National Guard in Iraq. If you know me, heartwarming messages are the exception, so I promise to soon return to September 11 jokes and offensiveness. But in the meantime, please at least watch, and hopefully vote ------------ Hi Friends/Family, I need your help, puhlease.... I created and submitted two ads to moveon.org for their "Obama in 30 seconds" contest. Yesterday they started voting. I've looked at A LOT of the ads and I honestly think my ads "Hope" and "Priceless" are up there in quality compared to many of them. For those of you who know them, Kathryn and Jimmy's 13-yr old son Galen (and his friend Julian) wrote and recorded the music for the ads! If you can, I NEED YOUR HELP WITH VOTING ASAP, which ends April 27. They are two doing diff't types of voting. They are picking the top ten based on best rating in terms of quality. Then they are picking another five based on just how many hits they get, which is more like a popularity contest. The five that are viewed the most (the popularity contest) will also get into the final judging. Those fifteen will be judged by the "experts" like Oliver Stone, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon, etc. Anyway, if you can use all your powers of e-communications (emails, blogs, myspace, etc.) and spread the word asking people (and people they know and so on) to watch my ads, that would be GREAT! If they rate them HIGH too that would be even better, but since we cannot make them do that (but hopefully they will want to!), just viewing them will be enough. Here are the links to both of the ads: Hope
Priceless
Each time someone follows a link and watches the ads on the obamain30seconds.org site, they'll count that toward the total viewers for that ad. (People who watch an ad this way will have to enter their email address before they're counted; this prevents fraud and makes sure it's not one person just hitting refresh over and over.) Anyway, if you can help at all, that would be great. THANKS! Hope all is well. xoxoxoxo

Perfectionism

2008-04-20T00:00:00-07:00

My 7th grade teacher was the first to accuse me of being a perfectionist. I thought that her class was too easy, but it was the first time that I realized how difficult it was for me to admit defeat. I can justify a lot of things. I'm a terrible communicator with people I have no interest talking with because (I say) I learned the entertainment industry habit of not returning peoples calls if I didn't want to deal with them then. Real people get more pissed off than that, but the real reason is that usually I'm scared of giving someone the wrong answer or of rejecting them than just saying no from the get-go. That's the truth, I'm a tough person to get a hold of if I'm not interested in talking with you. I've worked on a lot of ideas that have tried to cut to the very core of this fact -- willingness to fuck up. Mostly, because I'm afraid to in my own life. But I've realized that this fear has paralyzed me many times. I talk about ideas in the third person so I have a (mythical) scapegoat in case the idea isn't well received. I would guess that most people don't want to be judged (in the moment, or later on) for their opinions, tastes, or interests. I can look back with a (semi-)ironic tone (depending on who I'm talking with) when I mention how much I really enjoyed Middle of Nowhere by Hanson (and I'm not talking guilty pleasure, come on - Dust Brothers!) Anyway, my goal is not necessarily to apologize for my occasional poor communication skills or my occasional fuck ups, but rather my commitment to fuck up more and not be afraid to speak my mind at certain times, favoring quick rather than prolonged rejection. As an aside, my good friend Atom will never let me forget the moment during my first week at a new job when I didn't stand up to support him on his crazily outspoken pro-web-standards stance. I wasn't prepared to fight against the CEO and CTO, but I have great respect for him for doing so. And he should be happy that he changed my desire to always speak my mind. (and stop bringing it up already) That's it for now... Tons of crazy projects on the horizon... too many to count in fact. Love you all.

My Guitar Gently Weeps

2008-04-20T00:00:00-07:00

Firs please go check out the wonderful Brooklyn band Friends Academy. Then go to their blog and watch this video of lead singer Andrew destroying my first acoustic guitar. Then watch them performing here:

CSS NAKED DAY!!!

2008-04-09T00:00:00-07:00

Nearly everybody reads this via RSS, but click through today because today and today only, I GOT NO STYLE. [more info]

First Record Purchase In A While- Gowns

2008-04-05T00:00:00-07:00

Yesterday, in a bit of an impulse buy, I bought Red State by Gowns. Available in limited vinyl direct from Kill Shaman. Flickr Shot By My Good Friend Nate. Who by the way writes an amazing NYC live show guide (Sans Temps Morts) for Impose. Ezra was in the Mae Shi, Erika was in Amps for Christ. And I swear the drummer (Corey?) played with the Mae Shi as well.

Epilepsy Website Hacked - Forward to Flashing Lights

2008-03-29T00:00:00-07:00

Funny, even though I have two close friends who are epileptics. Here's my sense of humor: my friend Andrew had a seizure while running and slammed face-first into the ground, mangling his face pretty badly. The next day, he was in bed resting and we brought him dinner. I got him what he ordered, but also a side of Caesar Salad. Get it? Seizure, Caesar?

Rails vs. PHP, or why I like method_missing

2008-03-26T00:00:00-07:00

-- This post is geared towards my non- or semi-programmer friends, based on a conversation I had with one of them the other day that I felt needed more clarification. Before I begin, I will concede the point that "PHP Can Do Anything" before some friends threaten to hurt me. [php dynamic methods] I in fact have probably done more client work in PHP [mad props to code igniter] than any other programming language, but I've really enjoyed working with Rails since I made some small utilities about two years ago. I've had a lot of *very* boutique projects that were great in their time and place, but I decided to retire. Anywho, I have a very anti-fanboy stance on a lot of Objects that tend to inspire fanboy-ness (Apple, iPod, Rails, America) I think they are great, but don't think everything else is shit and useless. I think my brain works in such a way that I always liked to have access to what was going on - I wanted to see my options. When I first started writing C programs in 8th grade, I remember outputting the value of every variable at every point of the iteration, just to be able to see what was what, what methods I had access to, what my value was. Fast forward to first using and IDE and getting sweet auto-completion, and its the same thing when I read some API documentation. It's good to know what methods you have access to so you know what you can do. Fast forward to ActiveRecord and dynamic finders. You mean I can just say find_by_pants_and_shoes and just because I have both "pants" and "shoes" fields in my database, you know what I'm talking about? Jamis Buck's definitive explanation solidifed the concept for me and changed the way I think about programming. I hope to be a HS Math and Computer Science teacher someday so I can be the person to teach kids about things like this and Proof by Induction, rather than dreadful things like Buggles. In conclusion, I'm glad I could both spout meaningless paragraphs for a page (just like every high school teacher I hated) AND just write about how great I think Rails is (just like every Rails blogger I hate) I guess the takeaway is that

NoMethodError: undefined method `invoke_method_missing_for_problem_solving' for "love"
:String from (irb):397

My old Boss Jake Szufnarowski has problems with facial hair

2008-03-26T00:00:00-07:00

Definitely a setup, but funny. I can't find the photo of me with a moustache from when I was working with him. Anyway, for obvious reasons, I'm more inclined to update you on my life via Twitter than here. [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZUtCBAtVas]

Black Blackitty Black Black

2008-03-19T00:00:00-07:00

Point and Counterpoint

Stupid old PHP Database Normalization Script

2008-03-13T00:00:00-07:00

I found this in my collection of old random files. Fortunately this one was called normalize.php, rather than the numerous asdf7.php or so files I have. Anyway, at the time I had a huge database that was one big table and every field needed to be normalized into its own table. This was for a belongs_to/ has_many. (Although I guess since its in php, you'd refer to them as belongsTo/ hasMany. :) Anyway, I'm sure there are hundreds of better ways to do this, but this one is mine, written long ago and resurrected because I needed it.

$DATABASE = "db_name";
$TABLE = "big_table_name";

function exec_query($sql) {
	//echo $sql . "\n\n";
	$result = mysql_query($sql);
	if (!$result) { echo "Could not successfully run query ($sql) from DB: "
							. mysql_error(); exit; }
	return $result;
}

/* connect to database */
$link = mysql_connect('localhost', 'root', '');
if (!$link) { die('Could not connect: ' . mysql_error()); }

/* connect to db */
$db_selected = mysql_select_db($DATABASE, $link);
if (!$db_selected) { die ('Can\'t use db : ' . mysql_error()); }

/* Get fields and create table for each field name */
$result = exec_query("show fields from $TABLE");

while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
	$drop_result = exec_query("DROP TABLE if exists $row[Field]");

	$create_table_query = "CREATE TABLE $row[Field]
				(id int(11) not null auto_increment
				, title varchar(256) not null
				, PRIMARY KEY(id))";
	$create_result = exec_query($create_table_query);

	// add foreign keys to main table
	$alter_result = exec_query("ALTER TABLE $TABLE
				ADD COLUMN $row[Field]_id INT(11)");

	// get all distinct values
	$distinct_values_result = exec_query("SELECT DISTINCT $row[Field]
					FROM $TABLE ORDER BY $row[Field]");

	while ($distinct_values_row = mysql_fetch_row($distinct_values_result)) {
		// add all data to newly created tables
		$insert_data_result = exec_query("INSERT INTO $row[Field]
						SET title = '$distinct_values_row[0]'");
 		$inserted_id = mysql_insert_id();

		// now update main table to reference newly created indices
		$update_big_table = "UPDATE $TABLE SET $row[Field]_id = '$inserted_id'
					WHERE $row[Field] = '$distinct_values_row[0]'";
		$update_big_table_result = exec_query($update_big_table);

		// then we can delete manually the old columns.
	}
}

Best New Blog...

2008-03-06T00:00:00-08:00

that I was reminded of because my DVR records every old episode of The Office. Unfortunately www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts [link is real] is updated more often than Dwight Schrute's blog.

Columbus Coworking

2008-03-05T00:00:00-08:00

Earlier I bitched about not feeling involved in any *real* community here in Columbus. But it felt *great* to be in a normal schedule with cool work. But even more invigorating was tonight's Columbus Coworking meetup at Junctionview Studios. Bryce put together a great summary of what has been done so far and in addition to some great ideas going forward, even better we have a plan of action. Location tbd, but next Friday (March 14) we will all be converging at some location for our first test co-work. Please join the Google Group or follow Corkboard on Twitter for more info. Also, the best part was meeting Adam Brouillette who shared the impressively ambitious plans for Simple Studios, to create a new 30,000+ sqft art/ performance/ gallery/ work space in Downtown Columbus. Ok, I'm getting more and more excited about Ohio every day. Tomorrow I'm driving up to Akron to explore and meet with a prospective client!

Rails Development on Heroku

2008-03-04T00:00:00-08:00

At last months Columbus Ruby Brigade Meeting, Mike Culver was demonstrating Amazon's Web Services and mentioned start-up Heroku, which has instant Rails deployment, full ruby console, control over your own gems, project snapshots and rollbacks, etc. And its of course build on the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. I have invites! If you are interested, please leave a comment and I'll send one to your email address. New friends welcome!

State of the Tyler Address.

2008-03-02T00:00:00-08:00

I've felt invisible recently, which has been reflected in my online status, communication with most people, and in my reflection not appearing in any mirrors. Ok, maybe that last one was a lie, but I have been struggling quite a bit lately. Since leaving my last great job, I've been bouncing around a lot, not really knowing what I've been looking for and not finding it. I HAVE worked with some great people and on some great projects but have lost my ability to focus on my strengths and set goals. I've started and stopped numerous projects, felt alienated by people as well as alienated others. Anyway, I hit bottom just over a week ago. If I haven't been in contact at all since then, the only excuse I can offer is that I have been completely self-indulgent and can only ask for forgiveness. It got so bad I even considered becoming religious. HA! I have been living in the internet and aside from very few people have felt l haven't found somebody to wink and nod with about the absurdity of life (in Ohio. - Ed.) I have accepted my entire lack of business acumen and completely forgotten about my ability to be funny. Sorry for complaining, but I'm seeking forgiveness from the internet. I'll now resume life as it was. And I actually do have a lot of things to show for my time freelancing. I haven't shared it all, but I've been working a lot on some upcoming projects. So I'm here, I'm sorry and I'm recommitted to enjoying life in Columbus and on the internet. In the words of a good friend of mine: "Man Up Tyler!" I love you all and don't forget it.

Fun work with Huber+co

2008-03-02T00:00:00-08:00

Via craigslist, timing and luck I've been working with a great team of people at Huber+co. They have a great office a short bike ride away in the Arena District. I honestly have no idea how long I'll be working on this project, it could very well be finished tomorrow. It's been fun being back in the swing of working in an office with interesting, creative people.

St. Augustine

2008-02-14T00:00:00-08:00

No particular reason to share this, just pulling some photos off of the iPhone. I love St. Augustine, although I never did find the fountain of youth.

Jews at 11

2008-02-11T00:00:00-08:00

I apologize in advance for this... I wish I could offer an explanation.

Screenplay - Mark Wahlberg defeats the Terrorists (9/11)

2008-02-10T00:00:00-08:00

Music to set the mood while reading... [intro narration] Mark Wahlberg, actor and former lead singer of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch narrowly escaped disaster in 2001 by leaving Boston one day too soon, on September 10, to party with a friend in Toronto before continuing onto Los Angeles. Wahlberg, with his reputation as a Hollywood bad boy whose real life entourage is the basis for the HBO hit show Entourage canceled his original flight, one of those flown into the World Trade Center on the morning on September 11. [shot of plane flying into WTC] [narration continues] What would have happened if he and his bad ass crew had been flying first class that morning out of Boston's Logan Airport? Could crisis have been averted? [cue music, "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch] We see Mark Wahlberg and three bad ass south Boston white boys walking through an airport, girls swoon on the side, the woman at the counter blushes from his obvious charm as they priority board the flight. You can see his Rockstar/ Boogie Nights Charm carries over into real life. In the back of the scene, we barely see several Middle Eastern men scattered throughout the terminal. One of Mark's assistants is carrying a leather briefcase. We see him send a message to his friend Rasta Phil via blackberry: "sorry we couldn't come last night, see you in vancouver" Next shot, everyone on the plane, its taking off, guys are joking around, you get the sense that these guys are majorly bad ass. We all know what happens next. Terrorists with box cutters try and take over the plane, they subdue the coach travelers, who are scared shitless, and come to the front of the plane, prepared to take it over. They are met by four bad boys from South Boston, ready to fuck up these wicked queers. The fight breaks out, and its a battle. A few terrorists get taken out, then one of Mark's boys gets knocked out. Mark's short Irish temper flairs and he starts knocking heads together. Finally, his buddy with the briefcase unlocks it to reveal Mark's special weapon: (of course the briefcase opens with a blinding white light, Tarantino style) his Boogie Nights prosthetic penis, which he always travels with, "Just in case" He pulls out this impressively long shaft and wields it like a kitana blade, slapping the remaining terrorists into submission. He finally captures the "leader" and forces him to deep throat the entire thing, plastic balls nearly on his chin and he gasps for air. The terrorist begs him to stop, Marky, now in complete control demands to know what their now thwarted plans were. He pulls the huge cock out, the terrorist starts to tell him, in very broken english, says, "Bin Laden, Trade Center, Two Planes" One of Marky's crew quickly runs off to the Pilot, signaling that another plane going to NY was to be taken over. Finally, the near dead, cock-choked terrorist says, no longer in broken English, now with perfect pronunciation: "You have defeated us Marky, Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with it." [song ends] [cut to] Mark Wahlberg being awarded a medal by President Bush. We see Dick Cheney next to him, with a glint of disappointment in his eye. [follow up] Mark is cast to play himself in the movie version, called "Too Soon?"

Updating Twitter from Google Talk Status

2008-02-07T00:00:00-08:00

As you may have noticed, I've been aggregating a lot of personal data, both to mine for my own interests, and to give you, my faithful readers/ friends/ internet stalkers, a comprehensive way to keep track of me. Notably recent has been My Twitter Feed, which I've been updating fairly often. While there are some limitations with the Twitter Facebook App (how about a very simple way to find facebook friends who twitter to follow?) you CAN automatically update your facebook status based on your tweets. Synchronicity isn't just a great Police album afterall! Well the only other place I find myself updating status regularly is Google Talk (ICQ is so Eastern Europe, and AIM is so 1996) It's wonderful that you can update your Twitter status by sending an im to the twitter@twitter.com bot, but I was thinking that it would be cool to have Twitter update when you change your Google Talk Status. Remarkably this hasn't been done (other than using a ghetto spanish jabberbot) Please let me know if it has, because I wasn't able to find it! There's a cool Twitter API and a very cool Jabber::Simple library. So I thought I'd play around for a few minutes. Unfortunately according to the XMPP people, the status part can be a little buggy, especially for Google Talk, because of multiple instances, etc, etc. So this is nowhere near perfect, and represents a very quick proof of concept. (duh) Anyway, I thought it would be fun to post some code, because I haven't for a while. So here it is, this was written from the point of view of having a bot to monitor your status updates, then twitter for you. Enough rambling.

require 'rubygems'
require 'twitter'
require 'xmpp4r-simple'
include Jabber

puts "Connecting Monitor..."
@jabber = Jabber::Simple.new('another_account@gmail.com', 'pass')
@twitter = Twitter::Client.new(:login => 'TWITTER_NAME',
                              :password => 'TWITTER_PASS')

@latest_tweet = @twitter.timeline_for(:me, :count => 1)

puts "Now Doing Update Checking"

@jabber.presence_updates do |update|
   if update[0] == "YOUREMAIL@gmail.com"
                            && update[1] == :online
                            && update[2] != nil
                            && update[2] != @latest_tweet.to_s #twitter it
        @twitter.status(:post, update[2])
   end
end

sleep 15

New Things, New Feed

2008-01-31T00:00:00-08:00

Lest you believe that I haven't been up to anything lately, I've been reading and learning a lot, and working on some small projects, exploring and deciding what to do next. In the meantime, I've been playing around with a lot of interesting things. First things first, you might notice a new sidebar, if you ever read this outside of Google Reader. I've done some data scanning, so posts are now tagged. It also has links to All Things Tyler Kremberg, including my profile on the social networks/ web sites I frequent. I've also got twitter updates in there. I also have a new RSS Feed, which I've tentatively called "All Things Tyler Kremberg" which would probably be the name of a radio show I would host. (Not to be confused with "Godspeed Tyler Kremberg", once actually hosted by a Mr. Matthew Longo.) It's a master feed, combining Delicious, Twitter, Google Reader Shared Items, and this Blog. Grab it here and stalk away: I've also been writing a few twitter things in ruby.

Hip Hop Legend? And you get to DJ for him? For Free??

2008-01-31T00:00:00-08:00

Mele Mel coming to Columbus for the Arnold Classic Bodybuilding Convention. No disrespect to the Furious Five, but this is a little ridiculous.

Baseball - Two weeks until pitchers and catchers report

2008-01-30T00:00:00-08:00

I first learned about this book from The Leopard Lopate show on WNYC. It took me nearly six months to get around to reading it, and boy was it worth it. Zack has a contagious passion for the sport, a great sense of humor and shares his encyclopedic, but never boring, breadth of knowledge about baseball rules and strategies and oddities. I am interested anything that is shared with passion, but its even better when it inspires my own, semi-dormant passions. Highly recommended to anybody with even a slight interest in baseball. Combined with the news that the mets signed Johan Santana, and I'm getting very excited about this season.

Indie Jesus

2008-01-26T00:00:00-08:00

Jesus must hate his PR people. Because when you think about it, he started out as this counter-culture, indie guy and now he's like all mainstream. And its one of those things where its like, "who the fuck is licensing all this shit" Who the fuck made "me" candles, and why haven't I seen a dime. And can we get a better band than P.O.D.? Like, I made the Beatles. Oh, and by the way, I saw those posters, I never said I hate Fags. I don't, and that's a horrible slogan. Like McRib never says "McRib Hates Fags" that doesn't sell a lot. I'm starting to believe that religion is like Star Trek for old people and recovering meth addicts. But its way worse because they have conventions every Sunday, and there's a lot more fan fiction.

Wyatt Cenac on TSOYA

Friends (Academy)

2008-01-24T00:00:00-08:00

Good friends from Vermont are now living in Brooklyn and have reformed as Friends Academy. [obligatory myspace link] All of them are astounding writers, so I look forward to interesting things from their blog. They're also pretty hard at work recording in their church. Check out their track "Rejoiner" - atmospheric and pretty, but they can rock pretty hard too.

I'm sitting in a sandwich shop without access to google.com

2008-01-21T00:00:00-08:00

WTF? Everything else on the internet is working perfectly for me. I'm assuming its being blocked by some network appliance, maybe too many people in here gtalking. So I can't respond to any gmail messages (well I guess I could on my iPhone, but thats not the point) Anyway, its sort of infuriating. Meanwhile, continuing on my agressive campaign to sell my Waterfront Condo in Burlington, VT by owner, I whipped up this little creation: http://www.83northave.com/ I've made some Adwords buys and there

Freelance lifestyle

2008-01-20T00:00:00-08:00

I've got to admit, part of me wishes that I hadn't left my great job at 2checkout, I really enjoyed all my coworkers, but the work that needed to be done in the next six months or so was not something that aligned with my skills interests (great, you can cook, can you farm?) I've taken a well-deserved (jesus, I can't use that expression without sounding like a real housewife of orange county) vacation. I've also just finished the "history of Tyler's employment" tour. I miss all of my old-coworkers and bosses. I was told several times that people would gladly have me come back. In fact I realized that this was the first job I left for non geographical reasons. That being said, the life of a full-time freelancer is scary. I've done some pretty cool projects, some of which are even featured on my portfolio. I've also taken on some work that I don't necessarily feel the need to share with the general public. In fact, this post started as an odesk bitch-fest, but just go there if you want to do crappy work for $12/ hour. I have definitely learned from my experiences with every client I've worked with. I guess it will take me a bit to get into the swing of things, I've got a Columbus Ruby Brigade meeting I'm looking forward to tomorrow. Then a bunch of random job related meetings, and one with my new (not yet signed on the dotted line) partner. I've got enough money to keep me running until the end of February, but I'll keep you up to date with whats going on. Until Columbus Coworking gets going, any cool wifi spots within a bike ride of the Short North would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to comment or hit me on email/ im. </rant>

83 North Ave, #5

2008-01-14T00:00:00-08:00

Showed it to several more peopleas of right now, more than one "seriously interested" perspective buyers. Anyone else want to live in my ideal apartment in Burlington, Vermont?

Slowly resuming internet usage...

2008-01-12T00:00:00-08:00

Scrolling through over a thousand unread items, deleting my subscriptions to things I find useless. In a bold move, stereogum and pitchfork are both gone. Also showed my condo to four people today. Hope something works out. Did a freelance gig, going down to Middlebury for a few days tomorrow.

Buy My Condo, Please!

2008-01-10T00:00:00-08:00

http://burlington.craigslist.org/rfs/535283300.html

Do I miss the internet?

2008-01-09T00:00:00-08:00

Actually, not at all... Google Reader has thousands of items, so I'm just marking all as read. It's been an amazing journey, and while my "internet personality" has been non-existent, my real life one has been thriving. Recap: 10 days in England (London, Oxford, Bath), made some amazingly wonderful people, ate pudding, clotted cream. Got sick, consumed mass quantities of tea... New Years with my great friends on a roof in Park Slope. Guitar lessons with Bishop, feeling like Middlebury is now Brooklyn. And a huge THANK YOU to Andy Lynch who can do everything I can do, better. I'm selling a washer/ dryer in Burlington. Also, my condo will be ready to show this Saturday... Many more pics, etc to follow. If you are in Burlington or Middlebury and I've forgotten about you, email me at: kremdela - gmail Alas, I guess I do miss the internet, I'll be back full-time with a vengeance in a week(-ish). I also miss my girlfriend terribly... and my puppy, but there is no way she is reading this.

Subtraction: A Subway System in Your Pocket

2007-12-18T00:00:00-08:00

Subtraction: A Subway System in Your Pocket

I love Khoi's work. I also love that I'm back in a place where this is useful.

Fun-employment, Step 1

2007-12-17T00:00:00-08:00

I had an amazing time at the 2Checkout Holiday party. A little too much of an amazing time. I've been feeling pangs of guilt all this past week after deciding to leave after my contract ended instead of take the great position they offered me. I haven't entirely figured out my rationale yet. There were times there that I was unhappy with the work, but they were an amazing group of people to work with. And I guess I had hoped to be doing more front-end work, and they're definitely in a transitional stage, ramping up their Java core environment (a task I am both ill-suited and not entirely interested in helping out on) Anyway, I didn't burn any bridges, and I would seriously consider returning somewhere down the line. I mentioned this earlier, but my friend Carl, now of Portland, Oregon inspired me with the term "fun-employment." Portland, I'm paraphrasing a quote from some article, is the place where "the idea of success is working at a coffee shop so you can play in your Ukrainian folk band." Anyway, they know how to live life. So I'm going to make the most out of time my time off, even if I don't have a lot of money to do it with... I'm about to get on a plane to New York. I'll be on Long Island today, then probably come into Brooklyn tomorrow and leaving Wednesday evening. So for my friends out there reading this, give me a call on my cell. (If you don't have it, it's on my facebook page) Or for any non-friends, I'm open to hanging out too... They're pre-boarding now.... bye.

Day 1 - Follow up

2007-12-17T00:00:00-08:00

Busy day today, lots of time on airplanes, Ohio -> Baltimore -> Long Island. Still can't believe I grew up here, the accents seem so foreign to me. Spent a lot of time in the mall, bought a dumb headphone adapter for my iPhone and almost bought a 5x5 rubick's cube. Sat in the bookshop and read / skimmed Brazen Careerist. Ms. Trunk makes a lot of good points about the way the world has changed. In summary, 30 is the new 20, the average person has 8.something jobs before they are 30 and people are now more focused on personal development than climbing the corporate ladder. The points hit fairly close to home. I like her writing style. I also listened to almost all of Steve Martin's book, Born Standing Up. I have read literally hundreds of books about comedy and comedy writing, and this is one of the most non-pretentious and truthful that I have found. I wasn't aware that he had such a close writing partnership with Bob Einstein aka Super Dave Osborne aka brother of Albert Brooks, aka son of Parkyakarkus (legendary comedian who literally died on stage at a Friar's club roast -- look it up) Anyway, Martin has an amazing perspective on his career and ideas of what comedy is. It's a dishonor that his name and Dane Cook have been used in the same sentence (mentioning fastest selling comedy albums) and yes I understand the irony that I just used both of their names in the same sentence. Anyway, I have lots running through my mind idea-wise. And tons of projects to take on... Bye for now.

I'm officially fun-employed

2007-12-15T00:00:00-08:00

I had written a long-winded, heartfelt post about how much I enjoyed working at 2Checkout [you can see some of my handy-work at http://www.megashopolis.com/], which is completely true. But for now, I've just decided to move on and take some time off, rather than come on as a full-time employee. They are an amazing group of people to work with, and I highly recommend their service. But as for me, I'm heading to New York on Monday, then England for 10 days, back to NY by New Years and off to Vermont for a couple of weeks in January... Stealing a line from my good friend Carl, I'm now FUN-EMPLOYED!! I'll figure out what I want to do next when I return to Columbus, but in the meantime I've got some good ideas brewing....

The Worst Band Names Of '07 | The A.V. Club

2007-12-14T00:00:00-08:00

The Worst Band Names Of '07 | The A.V. Club Proof that truth is better than fiction..

[Vinyl]

2007-12-12T00:00:00-08:00

PREFACE: I know this is a pretty dumb idea. But I like the juxtaposition of Webcam + Record. There wasn't much thought involved here, I just grabbed the first record I saw with an interesting cover. So enjoy Bttls and expect more in the coming weeks. Especially after my upcoming trip to England. [youtube:http://youtube.com/watch?v=aCgF-fqmXOs]

Why Columbus?

2007-12-05T00:00:00-08:00

Why Columbus? Because it's the "best of everything" I am enjoying my new life here for the most part. Low cost of living, it's wonderful. How does "you get what you pay for" fit in to that as a sales point. I'm having difficulty making this comment as sarcastic as

Creation Museum - a photoset on Flickr

2007-12-05T00:00:00-08:00

Creation Museum - a photoset on Flickr Just found out about the Creation museum near Cincinnati. Then Brendan showed me these photos of his trip. I apparently have so much to learn.

Tribute Band Ideas

2007-12-04T00:00:00-08:00

Bjork + Spoon = Spork
Talking Heads + Radiohead + Stereolab = Talking Stereoheads
Yankees Suck (Boston/ Classic Rock Tribute)
Dead Kenny G's (brilliant, and already exists)
Of Montreal + Band of Horses = Band of Montreal
Calla + Califone = Callaphone
Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Yeah Yeahs
LCD Soundsystem of a Down

I give you $500 USD and a Week in England

2007-12-04T00:00:00-08:00

What records do you buy? If you don't want your choices public, feel free to im me: kremdela. You can't mention Radiohead, The Beta Band, The Smiths, Joy Division or The Beatles.

Brighter Planet

2007-11-30T00:00:00-08:00

Brighter Planet

Good friend (and math/ standards nerd) Andy has been hard at work on the American Dream (starting a credit card company) but this one rewards you by purchsing your carbon offset. Congrats to their whole team (and the environment for still be saveable)

ArtWelderAndy

2007-11-30T00:00:00-08:00

ArtWelderAndy

Apparently its the day of blogging about Andy's. My ex-roommate and favorite Peter Tosh scholar has launched his new personal website featuring a new blog and samples of his amazing sculpture and industrial design work. Can't wait to see his new studio.

Haven't Posted any Code Recently.

2007-11-29T00:00:00-08:00

I've been a bad programmer, or rather a bad communicator because I haven't shared any work here in a long while. The portfolio page has been coming along. It has been very helpful to me to re-consider my past work regarding what I've enjoyed doing and what I've learned from the experiences. Anyway, I've been away from writing a lot of Rails since I've moved to Columbus (which is ironic, because I've been to one Columbus Ruby Brigade Meeting, which has a huge membership) At work I have been working with a lot of cool Java e-commerce stuff. Securing code, improving my testing skills and cleaning up front-end templating code. But one lesson I've been reminded: Java is a pain in the ass. Class compatibility issues, build problems, blah blah blah. Recently I've been getting seriously back into getting my hands dirty writing and deploying Ruby code some personal projects. [note, its quasi-live, but not open to new members right now, but just wait...] Anyway, I'd prefer to be getting more time under my belt sitting in front of a Rails Console. I also don't want to let any cats out of the bag, but I've been playing around with Flex as well... Once I have something I'm willing to share, I'll let you know. I also hope to open source some of the stuff I've been working on. In the meantime, I'm deciding what to do next professionally. I would to get to play with Rails (or Flex) during the day as well as the night! Back to personal related posts, because more people tend to think those are cooler than code.

Google Music Trends

2007-11-29T00:00:00-08:00

Google Music Trends

You know they were doing something will all of that data.

The ClosedPrivate Initiative

2007-11-28T00:00:00-08:00

The ClosedPrivate Initiative

Brilliant! I especially like the Black on Black T-Shirt.

T-Shirt Idea of the Week

2007-11-28T00:00:00-08:00

"I moved to a swing state, how the hell are you helping this country"

Greatness with Firefox Search Bar

2007-11-28T00:00:00-08:00

If you have "Show Suggestions" on, and type in a mathematical equation, say "sqrt 2 / 2", the first result will show you the answer = 0.707106781 . Silly, but very very cool. Kind of reminds me of the day I first discovered alt + tab in Windows 3.1. Thanks Adam

Google Talk

2007-11-28T00:00:00-08:00

I was called odd in real life the other day for the fact that I use Google Talk with my friends more than Aim/ ICQ. Anyway, I was a little frustrated with work, so my status was "f". To which I was given this reply by my amazingly wonderful old friend Kristen. Kristen: unctional, ebruary, unky monkey, abulous, riday, ree, un my.make(day); Why can't twitter, facebook status and Google Talk status all be updated via the same place?

Simon Rich, author of "Ant Farm & Other Desperate Situations"

2007-11-26T00:00:00-08:00

Simon Rich, author of "Ant Farm & Other Desperate Situations"

Jesse Thorn showcases the brilliant comedy writing of Simon Rich. Works better on paper than outloud, but still great! I emailed him about Simon a bit ago, so I'm going to take full credit for getting him on the show. kidding.

Happy Blue Beanie Day

2007-11-26T00:00:00-08:00

Zeldman, you are the man.

Fuck you Saxophonist Ari Joseph

2007-11-26T00:00:00-08:00

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0tA2R12OBY] Hope this helps your google rankings. [footnote]

Three Suicide Movies I've seen in the last 3 weeks

2007-11-21T00:00:00-08:00

Control Wristcutters: A Love Story The Bridge I promise I'm not contemplating anything... All three are great! Also, amusing and related to the theme, from the NYT Review of the New Woody Allen Book. "The working title of his most acclaimed film, “Annie Hall,” was “Anhedonia,” meaning the inability to experience pleasure."

Things I will gladly accept for Hannukah

2007-11-21T00:00:00-08:00

Tim Minchin - So Live DVD Joy Division Vinyl Box Set A Donation Made to Charity (seriously) I guess I should have been born English.

New Portfolio Additions

2007-11-21T00:00:00-08:00

I've been playing around with slash portfolio What's the point of having a personal blog as a web developer if you don't showcase some of your best work. So go check it out. And I'm heading to New York this weekend for the first time in a long time. If you don't get a call from me, I probably forgot, so call me!

Rock N Roll Nerd

2007-11-18T00:00:00-08:00

Sometimes you find out about something and you wonder how this person has existed in the same universe as you for so long without you finding out about them... Tim Minchin is one of those people. [youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QQkMVddwx0]

What Would Jesus Buy?

2007-11-16T00:00:00-08:00

What Would Jesus Buy?

Man, I wish this were on sale at Walmart, there's one just around the corner... Kudos to the term "shopocalypse."

Tim Minchin

2007-11-16T00:00:00-08:00

Tim Minchin

New DVD, damn it not being on Netflix... He's fucking hysterical.

CD Changer

2007-11-16T00:00:00-08:00

I just took Os Mutantes tribute out of my CD-ROM and put in Electric Grandmother. Last.fm is for losers.

RCRD LBL

2007-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

RCRD LBL

From the founder of Engadget... This here could be the future of music?

Outside In

2007-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

Outside In

Has a lovely educational video cheesiness to it, but entertaining and informative.

Not The Daily Show

2007-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

Not The Daily Show

That's like "half NOT a billion dollars." My partner in crime is suggesting that maybe this whole strike was orchestrated by republicans just so they could avoid being made fun of on the daily show during the primaries. Genius I say!

Laidback Electronica / Structure and Chaos EP

2007-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

Laidback Electronica / Structure and Chaos EP

I reconnected with my friend Nate, who makes unbelievably well constructed, beautiful electronic music. I also did sound for him forever ago. Recommended if you like Marumari, Hrvatski, Grafitti, Maine.

Coworking Columbus

2007-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

Coworking Columbus

I created this wiki entry long before I ever set foot in Columbus. We met last night. It was great meeting like-minded individuals passionate about the idea. I didn't expect to find the sweet full-time job I have now, but I still want an evening office.

Alternative Workspaces

2007-11-15T00:00:00-08:00

Alternative Workspaces

I didn't explain anything about the concept of Coworking, but here's a great article with pictures for some additional reading about the idea. I also realize that I didn't offer any additional explanation this time either. :)

Fox News Vs. CNN Vs. WWE

2007-11-14T00:00:00-08:00

Fox News Vs. CNN Vs. WWE

I hope to be as cool as Jay one day...

My Friend Mallika Blogs

2007-11-13T00:00:00-08:00

She's in journalism school and writes better than me. She's incredibly insightful, brilliant, and has an incredible knowledge of bad Bollywood movies. Enjoy!

Michal Levy » GiantSteps Download

2007-11-13T00:00:00-08:00

Michal Levy » GiantSteps Download

This must have taken a LOT of time, but was totally worth it for Coltrane. Not what it looked like in my brain, but I don't think Jazz lends itself to visualization. I don't think it would have thrived in the age of the music video.

Thanks for bearing with me while I'm moving servers

2007-11-12T00:00:00-08:00

The site will be back to full working order once I've moved everything over to my new hosting with Media Temple. Who I as of right now, LOVE.

Sonidos y Silencios: Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC 3 (1975)

2007-11-12T00:00:00-08:00

Sonidos y Silencios: Grupo de Experimentación Sonora del ICAIC 3 (1975)

Ari says this is a great record, so I highly recommend it as well. (and I haven't even listened yet)

Emo Philips Live at Wiley's Comedy Club Dayton, Ohio

2007-11-12T00:00:00-08:00

I knew Emo from his appearance in UHF when I stumbled upon his cassette E=Mo2 in a discount bin. It changed my world, especially my view of comedy. He's definitely one of the most bizarrely unique minds of the last 30 years. It was nice being in a (wholesome midwestern) comedy club as opposed to an alt-alt-club (like I used to always go to) in New York. Yet there was a certain subtle sadness to Emo, who seemed geniunely hurt by his divorce. Those sentiments can somewhat be seen in this video. (Starting at 4:45) Emo: "No, ... After my standup there's a real steep drop-off in my skills." Interviewer: "What are some of your other skills? Emo: "...unng, (pause) just stand-up and that's it, I have no other skills." I'm not suggesting serial depression or anything (I sure hope not!) there just seemed to be a bit of rawness at a few times. Which is probably what makes him such a genius writer. And brilliant comic timing that only 31 years of working can give you. Also of note was opener Ken Schultz, who had some pretty funny bits, nothing ground-breaking, but he has a honed professionalism and innocence of his character. I definitely wish him the best! I now regret not talking to him afterwards and buying his CD. Anyway, that was my last night. I'll have more of a weekend report tomorrow. There are some other things I have to fix about this site in the meantime. And oh yeah, I have a real job too.

Writer’s Strike: NBC Takes ‘Office,’ Others Offline

2007-11-09T00:00:00-08:00

Writer’s Strike: NBC Takes ‘Office,’ Others Offline

Amusing video featuring striking Office writers... It's nice to get a glimpse of them not in character... who knew, Toby might be cool!

Web Accessibility - Section 508

2007-11-09T00:00:00-08:00

Web Accessibility - Section 508

Excellent overview of what 508 actually means.

Banda Omelete in Joao Pessoa

2007-11-07T00:00:00-08:00

Look for Johanna and I as they pan the crowd. Amazing CD.

White Castle latkes win recipe contest - Yahoo! News

2007-11-06T00:00:00-08:00

White Castle latkes win recipe contest - Yahoo! News

The Latkes You Crave!

Many Eyes

2007-11-06T00:00:00-08:00

Many Eyes

These are incredibly beautiful to view. Probably my newest favorite place on the internet right now.

Joshua : Web Standards at Yahoo! (with transcript) : MIX Online

2007-11-06T00:00:00-08:00

Joshua : Web Standards at Yahoo! (with transcript) : MIX Online

So one way I define front-end engineering is we're responsible for everything you see when go to "view source." What an incredible definition. (A Note, I have not turned into a Nate Koechley fanboy, I just read a lot about front-end engineering)

East Side Comedy Club was stand up's breeding ground

2007-11-06T00:00:00-08:00

East Side Comedy Club was stand up's breeding ground

Ah... right place, wrong time... wish I were born a little earlier, would have loved to have been there.

Another Halloween Photo

2007-11-06T00:00:00-08:00

Thanks to my friend James, another great shot of my Halloween Costume.Â More on flickr

YUI Theater — Nate Koechley: “The YUI CSS Foundation” » Yahoo! User Interface Blog

2007-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

YUI Theater — Nate Koechley: “The YUI CSS Foundation” » Yahoo! User Interface Blog

I first heard of Nate when I interviewed with his brother Peter for a position at The Onion. I've used the YUI JS framework at Starwood and am using their libraries extensively a new endeavor. Pesquisa is coming!

YUI Theater â€” Nate Koechley: â€œThe YUI CSS Foundationâ€? Â» Yahoo! User Interface Blog

2007-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

YUI Theater â€” Nate Koechley: â€œThe YUI CSS Foundationâ€? Â» Yahoo! User Interface Blog

Vonnegut Dollhouse - Ornamental Etherworld » Sleevage » Album Cover Blog. Music, Art, Design.

2007-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

Vonnegut Dollhouse - Ornamental Etherworld » Sleevage » Album Cover Blog. Music, Art, Design.

Stunningly beautiful jewel case design. Its fucked up that my first thought was, maybe I'll download the album first and if I like it buy the disc. I'm an asshole, I'm going to just buy the CD.. Great work!

Vonnegut Dollhouse - Ornamental Etherworld Â» Sleevage Â» Album Cover Blog. Music, Art, Design.

2007-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

Vonnegut Dollhouse - Ornamental Etherworld Â» Sleevage Â» Album Cover Blog. Music, Art, Design.

HYPE MACHINE

2007-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

HYPE MACHINE

Sobering view from the Oxford American about the ever-changing *new* music scene.

Gracenote: Music Maps

2007-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

Gracenote: Music Maps

I haven't been able to harvest any incredibly useful data out of this yet, but its still noteworthy...

:: AdobeStudio feature : Sagmeister ::

2007-11-05T00:00:00-08:00

:: AdobeStudio feature : Sagmeister ::

Two defining quotes: "If i talk extensively about [ideas], I can't of lose the need to do them." and "Having guts always works out for me." I love his Sagmeister Inc. on a Binge poster. I'd rather be a designer than a programmer...

CSS2 - :not

2007-11-02T00:00:00-07:00

CSS2 - :not

[ppk] updated his css compatability tables. What a valuable resource... Anyway, here is one of my favorite CSS selectors that I admittedly have never used... But I can't wait until the day that I do.

Beat Procrastination: Here’s a Free Tool to Watch Over You « Web Worker Daily

2007-11-02T00:00:00-07:00

Beat Procrastination: Here’s a Free Tool to Watch Over You « Web Worker Daily

A FF extension that tracks time you waste. I had a very similar idea a while ago, everythingUdo.com where you could publish an XML feed of your day on the internet, and then share it for your friends to recreate. Twitter Voyeurism to the max!!

Beat Procrastination: Hereâ€™s a Free Tool to Watch Over You Â« Web Worker Daily

2007-11-02T00:00:00-07:00

Beat Procrastination: Hereâ€™s a Free Tool to Watch Over You Â« Web Worker Daily

That's Weird, Al

2007-11-01T00:00:00-07:00

Everything he does makes me laugh.

Coding Horror: A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins

2007-11-01T00:00:00-07:00

Coding Horror: A Visual Explanation of SQL Joins

This is a beautiful example of all basic two table SQL joins and happened to be a useful reference in helping me explain something today at work. Even fun for the non-programmer?! :)

Trent Reznor and Saul Williams Discuss Their New Collaboration, Mourn OiNK

2007-10-31T00:00:00-07:00

Trent Reznor and Saul Williams Discuss Their New Collaboration, Mourn OiNK

"iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up. I feel like I'm being hustled when I visit there, and I don't think their product is that great." My sentiments exactly.

New Mae Shi Video

2007-10-31T00:00:00-07:00

Run to Your Grave from the mae shi on Vimeo.

I first saw them a while ago and boy do they put on an insane live show... They've lost two members and have a "friendlier" sound these days, but they've released a beautiful HD video for their new single. Hope you enjoy.

Werewolf Bar Mitzvah!!!

2007-10-30T00:00:00-07:00

Here's the video and MP3! Hope this brightens your day as much as it did mine. Larchmont Country Club!!

The Sound of Young America: Werewolf Bar Mitzvah - Spooky, Scary.

2007-10-30T00:00:00-07:00

The Sound of Young America: Werewolf Bar Mitzvah - Spooky, Scary.

I think the fact that this exists proves to me that I believe in G-d.

Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin

2007-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

Vinyl May Be Final Nail in CD's Coffin

Interesting article from Wired which summarizes my buying habits, the vinyl is at least worth something me as an experience of listening. Although they clearly are missing the real reasoning behind the death of CD... fear of lasers.

The Holy Grail

2007-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

Check out this sweet Joy Division: Box Set from Rhino Records. Or as my friend Matt referred to it as: The Holy Grail.Â Pretty steep for records you can pick up in a good record store for not a ridiculous amount of money, but it's on the "maybe someday" list.Â Pitchfork Review for those who care about those things.

musicNeutral

2007-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

musicNeutral

A vehicle to pay an artist directly for music that you may have obtained via other methods... Interesting, but if there is claim is true that they aren't taking any money out (only paypal processing fees) what is their business plan to make money?

Halloween Party with Co-workers

2007-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

Ben Karlin Speaks Out About "Daily Show" Experiences

2007-10-29T00:00:00-07:00

Ben Karlin Speaks Out About "Daily Show" Experiences

Great video of Carl Arnheiter talking with former Daily Show head writer Ben Karlin. I love behind the scenes comedy workings...

Illicitohio.com

2007-10-28T00:00:00-07:00

Illicitohio.com A great collection of photos of better days....

Another Approach to Free, Collaborative Site Prototypes « Web Worker Daily

2007-10-28T00:00:00-07:00

Another Approach to Free, Collaborative Site Prototypes « Web Worker Daily Don't bother... my advice to them, A) let you just have a looksie without registering, and B) Do you really expect me to take you seriously as a company with this disclaimer on your login page: Firefox support will soon be available.

Stupid Stupid Stupid Environmentalist

2007-10-27T00:00:00-07:00

At the bookstore they're already selling 2008 calendars (which I guess makes sense) I snapped this genius page-a-day calendar with "hundreds of tips on how to save money and the environment." Come on... this must be a joke.

Livin’ in Cowtown by Corey Spring » Facebook Group Actually Gets 1,000,000 for Colbert -- Uweekly.com

2007-10-26T00:00:00-07:00

Livin’ in Cowtown by Corey Spring » Facebook Group Actually Gets 1,000,000 for Colbert -- Uweekly.com Take that Obama!

Dear Google, from an iPhone user.

2007-10-26T00:00:00-07:00

1 - Please turn on IMAP for my account. 2 - Please let me sync my Google Calendar and iPhone Calendar over the wireless connection. 3- Not your problem google, but why can't I record video on my iPhone.

A Block of Cheese Is Seven Dollars Here: Lessons in Networking

2007-10-25T00:00:00-07:00

A Block of Cheese Is Seven Dollars Here: Lessons in Networking My friend Liz lives a life worth envy.

"Terrorist Buster" Logo — Central Intelligence Agency

2007-10-24T00:00:00-07:00

"Terrorist Buster" Logo — Central Intelligence Agency I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I should have gone into graphic design.

YUI Theater — PPK on the Professionalization of Frontend Engineering

2007-10-23T00:00:00-07:00

YUI Theater — PPK on the Professionalization of Frontend Engineering [ppk] is extraordinary, I loved his book... Makes me wish I lived in Holland.

MRI :: for web developers

2007-10-23T00:00:00-07:00

MRI :: for web developers Pretty cool tool for finding selectors for objects... Although not that much more than Firebug.

competitive edge explorer - data visualization & visual design - information aesthetics

2007-10-23T00:00:00-07:00

competitive edge explorer - data visualization & visual design - information aesthetics Great new blog I discovered... Man I wish I had done more geography back in college.

BBC NEWS | England | Tees | Huge pirate music site shut down

2007-10-23T00:00:00-07:00

BBC NEWS | England | Tees | Huge pirate music site shut down NNNNOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

We've Got Dave Eggers's and Spike Jonze's Script for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ -- Vulture -- Entertainment & Culture Blog -- New York Magazine

2007-10-18T00:00:00-07:00

We've Got Dave Eggers's and Spike Jonze's Script for ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ -- Vulture -- Entertainment & Culture Blog -- New York Magazine I can't wait to see this melding of brilliant minds.

We've Got Dave Eggers's and Spike Jonze's Script for â€˜Where the Wild Things Areâ€™ -- Vulture -- Entertainment & Culture Blog -- New York Magazine

2007-10-18T00:00:00-07:00

We've Got Dave Eggers's and Spike Jonze's Script for â€˜Where the Wild Things Areâ€™ -- Vulture -- Entertainment & Culture Blog -- New York Magazine

I can't wait to see this melding of brilliant minds.

I promise this will make you laugh

2007-10-18T00:00:00-07:00

Every solved problem ever.

2007-10-18T00:00:00-07:00

Seth Godin had a post about the usage of Wikipedia and how it "...as the internet gets smarter, the questions are going to have to get harder. Which is a good thing." Reminds me of an idea I had that google provides some already existing half-fledged solutions.Â My dad turned me onto Schaum's Solved Problems guides in high school, which was essentially a collection of 3000 solved problems on a topic.Â Because in reality, how many classes of Algebra/ Calculus or Operations Research problems really are there.Â I got in a large argument with a teacher once who thought that it was cheating to use that for help with homework.Â I just learned much better.Â I don't really know the "intellectual property" argument about how that info works, but by creating a wiki site of solved problems, you could have (at least thousands of) students using your site for reference and adding in new tricky problems that their teacher most likely stole from some instructor's manual.Â I can't find the link right now to a site for professor's to customize their own textbooks, but this is along the same lines. If the answers are out there, teachers have to come up with harder questions, and everybody wins.Â Except lazy (read: most) teachers.

Birth Control Allowed at Maine Middle School - New York Times

2007-10-18T00:00:00-07:00

Birth Control Allowed at Maine Middle School - New York Times "The school principal, Mike McCarthy, said about 5 of the school’s 500 students had identified themselves as being sexually active." That mean there's a chance of a middle school threesome going on.

Funny or Die - Judd Apatow

2007-10-17T00:00:00-07:00

Funny or Die - Judd Apatow New Life Goal, write something that makes Judd Apatow laugh...

donewaiting.com » Last Night in Columbus: Wilco, Andrew Bird

2007-10-17T00:00:00-07:00

donewaiting.com » Last Night in Columbus: Wilco, Andrew Bird My last night was pretty awesome... How was yours?

donewaiting.com Â» Last Night in Columbus: Wilco, Andrew Bird

2007-10-17T00:00:00-07:00

donewaiting.com Â» Last Night in Columbus: Wilco, Andrew Bird

My last night was pretty awesome... How was yours?

A List Apart: Articles: Findings From the Web Design Survey

2007-10-17T00:00:00-07:00

A List Apart: Articles: Findings From the Web Design Survey Just because it's been shared everywhere does not necessarily mean that its not incredibly interesting... ALA has some amazing data about "people who make websites" - a group of which I am proud to be a member.

Rapper Big Moe, 33, Dies - Entertainment News Story - KPRC Houston

2007-10-16T00:00:00-07:00

Rapper Big Moe, 33, Dies - Entertainment News Story - KPRC Houston The sizzurp claims yet another... I hope he and DJ Screw are releasing some dope mixtapes in heaven. Thanks FX.

Dissecting the Hype Machine | EchoDitto Labs

2007-10-16T00:00:00-07:00

Dissecting the Hype Machine | EchoDitto Labs Amazing dissection of the new Hype Machine redesign. Fast and thorough, sure beat me to it, I haven't even looked through the site yet.

The NEW Hype Machine is getting ready to launch...

2007-10-15T00:00:00-07:00

The NEW Hype Machine is getting ready to launch... Boy, they finally earn the name hype.

Sellout Songs | washingtonpost.com

2007-10-15T00:00:00-07:00

Sellout Songs | washingtonpost.com Bill Wyman (Rolling Stones fame) derived the equation for selling out. Amusing enough to make the cut.

Read This Weekend - Vinyl Junkies

2007-10-15T00:00:00-07:00

Boston Phoenix author Brett Milano has a great collection of stories of conversations with record nerds all attempting to justify that they aren't the biggest nerds. In some ways, his inability to break the stereotype of record collectors as single, balding middle-age men doesn't make me too hopeful for the future. Although it does remind me to make sure I put in enough effort to make my relationship with my wonderful girlfriend work... but first I have to find some out of print 45s of the perfect love song... Vinyl Junkies, at Amazon.

Columbus Architectural Salvage

2007-10-14T00:00:00-07:00

Columbus Architectural Salvage Awesome discovery... wish I had a place that needed fixing up.

TV-I | The A.V. Club

2007-10-11T00:00:00-07:00

TV-I | The A.V. Club Watched this two nights ago. Excellent DVD, especially commentary with Kasdan and Apatow yelling curses at the industry they hate. They make it look so easy to be brilliant. Great tagline: The TV Set, a place where dreams are canceled.

BIF-3: Dan Heath - Think Inside the Box

2007-10-11T00:00:00-07:00

BIF-3: Dan Heath - Think Inside the Box

I was about to write a post about this book (which I finished yesterday) when I coincidentally stumbled upon this article. Ideas are like families, all good ones are good in the same way, but bad ones are bad in completely different ways.

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

2007-10-10T00:00:00-07:00

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe Mike, this one is for you.... HAHAHAH

Wired Geekipedia: Mashup — Pop Culture's New Math

2007-10-10T00:00:00-07:00

Wired Geekipedia: Mashup — Pop Culture's New Math

Brilliant Comments.

Wired Geekipedia: Mashup â€” Pop Culture's New Math

2007-10-10T00:00:00-07:00

Wired Geekipedia: Mashup â€” Pop Culture's New Math

Brilliant Comments.

Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends at FISTFULAYEN

2007-10-10T00:00:00-07:00

Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends at FISTFULAYEN

Some brilliant, yet simple thoughts about how we interact with musicians and the internet.

Behance :: Articles :: Paul English: Getting Human

2007-10-09T00:00:00-07:00

Behance :: Articles :: Paul English: Getting Human

I'm loving Behance. here's a great interview with Paul English (the man behind Kayak.com) "Don't aim for the all-American novel, start with small hilarious essays or mini-projects...then find small successes that you can build on..."

times new viking - Columbus, Ohio

2007-10-08T00:00:00-07:00

times new viking - Columbus, Ohio Best band named after a font I've heard in a while... Can't wait to see them live.

Biggie Smalls - Movie - New York Times

2007-10-08T00:00:00-07:00

Biggie Smalls - Movie - New York Times “When you think about Biggie, you gotta say Tupac,” said Josh Du Love, 27, a Bed-Stuy resident who came in the guise of Biggie’s foe, Tupac Shakur, complete with shaved head and bandanna. “I said I’d come here, try to start up some beef.”

Sly & the Family Stone - Concert Vault

2007-10-05T00:00:00-07:00

Sly & the Family Stone - Concert Vault Amazing resource of awesome soundboard recordings of vintage concerts. Man, to have been alive and cool in 1968. Free to Stream, THIS is FUNK! Thanks Ari.

DUSTY NUGGETS: RAW, FUNKY, & RARE SOULFUL GEMS

2007-10-05T00:00:00-07:00

DUSTY NUGGETS: RAW, FUNKY, & RARE SOULFUL GEMS Great new music blog find, the title just about tells it all.

donewaiting.com » DJ Riko: P-Funk Is Playing At My House

2007-10-05T00:00:00-07:00

donewaiting.com » DJ Riko: P-Funk Is Playing At My House

I'm not going to the LCD/ Arcade show, primarily because I've seen them before and I'm VERY excited to see BORIS!!! Hot Remix/ Mashup though.

donewaiting.com Â» DJ Riko: P-Funk Is Playing At My House

2007-10-05T00:00:00-07:00

donewaiting.com Â» DJ Riko: P-Funk Is Playing At My House I'm not going to the LCD/ Arcade show, primarily because I've seen them before and I'm VERY excited to see BORIS!!! Hot Remix/ Mashup though.

Does this work

2007-10-05T00:00:00-07:00

If so... I am at the BORIS show missing all of my old WRMC friends. Sent from my iPhone

Banking Problems

2007-10-05T00:00:00-07:00

I have several complaints to make about banks. First, last Wednesday I deposited my check by going to the bank and filling out a deposit slip.Â It took until this past Tuesday for the funds to become "available" causing a temporary (one day) negative balance in my account, for which I was assessed a $96! fee.Â Â This week, I desposited my check by walking to the ATM window after hours on Wednesday.Â Today is Friday, and my funds are available.Â I called Chase, and they were very nice, encouraged me to get a Chase credit card or savings account for overdraft protection and were willing to refund the ridiculous $96 when I asked politely.Â So, I was pissed, but now Yay Chase! My mortgage is through US Bank.Â The payment is due on the first of the month, but you can pay up to the 15th without a late fee.Â I've always paid on time, but this month I had to wait for a check to clear to pay it, thus I am paying it today. (the 5th) I logged in and went to pay it as I usually do, and they have a one-page form, which is made to look like you are filling out a check. (and looks pretty lame)Â I left everything at the default (normal payment, today's date), entered the last four of my SSN to confirm payment. When I clicked submit, a Javascript alert came up letting me know that I will be charged an additional $3.50 for paying after the due date.Â No cancellation button, you had to click OK and be charged the fee.Â From a customer service point of view, this is IDIOTIC.Â If they had a little note on the page letting me know, I would pondered mailing them a physical check for a second, realized it wasn't worth it, and been ok with paying the fee.Â But now, I'm pissed off enough to blog about it.Â Boo US Bank. Ok, thanks for letting me get that off of my chest.Â Problems to solve:

bug my employer about why direct deposit isn't happening
figure out why the banking system has essentially eliminated the need/ effectiveness of actual people
get a chase credit card so I have overdraft protection
open information is key to making people happy

Mocean Worker

2007-10-04T00:00:00-07:00

Mocean Worker Refreshingly awesome beat/ funk/ jazz/ everything.

Apple - Trailers - Be Kind Rewind

2007-10-04T00:00:00-07:00

Apple - Trailers - Be Kind Rewind Can we call them Black-and-White-Star? Ok, that was terrible, but it will be interesting to see where this lives on the spectrum of "feel-good" movie to "gondry lives in his own twisted fantasy world."

Tracy Morgan | The A.V. Club

2007-10-03T00:00:00-07:00

Tracy Morgan | The A.V. Club Morning full of absolutely nothing interesting in Google Reader, except this gem, that I'm willing to share even before I've read the whole thing, that's how great Tracy is.

The Canadian Press: Tom Green, Crispin Glover signed to star in sci-fi comedy to film in Alberta

2007-10-03T00:00:00-07:00

The Canadian Press: Tom Green, Crispin Glover signed to star in sci-fi comedy to film in Alberta Possibly better news than if The Beaver Trilogy was released on DVD. This makes my day, now if I'm only ever able to watch it...

mental_floss magazine - The First Time News Was Fit To Print.

2007-10-03T00:00:00-07:00

mental_floss magazine - The First Time News Was Fit To Print. First references in the NYTimes. My particular favorites are JFK (1938), Nintendo (1955) and Wikipedia, which may have gained recognition post 9-11.

Vermont Public Radio: Francois Clemmons still popular from "Mr. Rogers Neighboorhood"

2007-10-02T00:00:00-07:00

Vermont Public Radio: Francois Clemmons still popular from "Mr. Rogers Neighboorhood" Divaman himself, Francois Clemmons discusses Fred Rogers in the style that he does best.

I Am So Funny - Lauren Weedman - The Stranger

2007-10-02T00:00:00-07:00

I Am So Funny - Lauren Weedman - The Stranger Great insight on the Daily Show from a fired (now freelance) correspondent. She's a bit of a wreck though. Thnx Ari.

Shake Some Action - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2007-10-01T00:00:00-07:00

Shake Some Action - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Recent Vinyl Purchase that I've been loving!

Guy At Bar Had Similar Experience, But Better | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

2007-10-01T00:00:00-07:00

Guy At Bar Had Similar Experience, But Better | The Onion - America's Finest News Source I assume that everyone in the world reads The Onion, but this one particularly resonates with me.

Outsourced - Movie - Review - New York Times

2007-09-28T00:00:00-07:00

Outsourced - Movie - Review - New York Times Why can't you buy a download for something like this TODAY. It's never going to be in a theatre in Columbus, and I'm never going to rememember to look for it in 7 months when it comes to my local rental place... or I could just use Netflix.

How I learned to stop putting things off and re-skin my site.

2007-09-28T00:00:00-07:00

This site has been evolving, as I've experimented with importing things from various sources.Â But as I was reading through my list of Starred items in Google Reader and old bookmarks, I wondered why I keep old things to eventually read.. I've had this Comedy College site bookmarked for who knows how long.Â Maybe if it were in iTunes I would have listened to it earlier, but nevertheless, I need to stop putting things off. So if you are visiting my (Tyler Kremberg's) site in a RSS reader, go check out the results of my 60 second redesign.Â It's nothing profound, but certainly cleaner and is helping me look at the world with a fresh outlook today. Hope you enjoy!

From Scratch: A Radio Show about the Entrepeneurial Life

2007-09-28T00:00:00-07:00

From Scratch: A Radio Show about the Entrepeneurial Life Wow, I'm suprised that I hadn't heard about this yet. Looks to be intelligent and informative, how suprising NPR :)

7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails - O'Reilly Ruby

2007-09-28T00:00:00-07:00

7 reasons I switched back to PHP after 2 years on Rails - O'Reilly Ruby From the founder of cdbaby. A very clear argument for why it is important to be a better programmer and choose the right tool for both you and the job.

YouTube - Stevie Wonder ~ Superstition

2007-09-27T00:00:00-07:00

YouTube - Stevie Wonder ~ Superstition Excellent footage, live in the studio.

YouTube - Heil Honey I'm Home Part 1 of 2

2007-09-27T00:00:00-07:00

YouTube - Heil Honey I'm Home Part 1 of 2 After a brief conversation with my coworker about how Nazi Fiction is one of the few things that scares him, I stumble upon this gem, that I can't believe I haven't seen before.

Os Mutantes Chicago Silkscreen Poster Grzeca - (eBay item 110172418890 end time Sep-27-07 09:57:17 PDT)

2007-09-27T00:00:00-07:00

Os Mutantes Chicago Silkscreen Poster Grzeca - (eBay item 110172418890 end time Sep-27-07 09:57:17 PDT) Amazing 4-color print, sold by the artist.

Burst Labs Loves Music Production and Recording Geeks, Milwaukee Microphone Museum

2007-09-27T00:00:00-07:00

Burst Labs Loves Music Production and Recording Geeks, Milwaukee Microphone Museum Oh just read this Burst Lab Piece, or rather just subscribe to their RSS feed, because they're starting to become one of my favorite places on the internet.

Fine Arts: Piles of Trash Light Up Into Fantastic Art - Gizmodo

2007-09-26T00:00:00-07:00

Fine Arts: Piles of Trash Light Up Into Fantastic Art - Gizmodo Some amazing light art, thanks Ari!

Fear of the City

2007-09-26T00:00:00-07:00

Overheard at the DMV the other day as I was registering my car: (and yes, I understand the irony/ hypocrisy here) I asked the woman behind the counter if she knew where I could get a Victorian Village parking permit (for the streets around my neighborhood) and she scoffed that she lived way out in the suburbs and had "no idea why someone would want to live downtown!" She was nice enough, and I let it go, but I will never live in a place where I can't access all of the essentials within a short walk. Anyway, this seems to be a trend in the Ohioans I've met, which is shocking to me... maybe a state with such a history of poor industry in cities has become afraid of them? Looking forward to being able to bike to work.

Asterisk

2007-09-26T00:00:00-07:00

Barry Bonds ball donated to Cooperstown, with asterisk.Â But, the interesting part, to quote from the article: "Pete Nash, a baseball historian who was also one of the members of 3rd Bass, a defunct rap group, said writing on baseballs dates from the 1850s." Wikipedia link mine, which reveals a great tidbit of 3rd Bass trivia: "3rd Bass is credited with discovering Nas" There you have it, from Barry Bonds -> 3rd Bass -> Nas. I think that's funny.

Pitchfork: Akron/Family Robbed

2007-09-24T00:00:00-07:00

Pitchfork: Akron/Family Robbed I've been really busy all day, and was going to post a mini concert review (parenthetical review: AWESOME) when I read this really disappointing news. Fuckers!

Field Notes Brand

2007-09-24T00:00:00-07:00

Field Notes Brand Ari thinks these are great. I've had moleskin envy other times in my life, but would someone remind me again what makes any of these better than a $0.99 generic pocket notebook?

NPR : Jaco Pastorius: 20 Years Later

2007-09-21T00:00:00-07:00

NPR : Jaco Pastorius: 20 Years Later great piece. greater bass player.

Good Luck Chuck - Movie - Review - New York Times

2007-09-21T00:00:00-07:00

Good Luck Chuck - Movie - Review - New York Times "Iâ€™ve occasionally heard Dane Cook, one of the stars of â€œGood Luck Chuck,â€? described as a comedian. I find this confusing, since my understanding is that comedians are people who say and do things that are funny." -- that about sums it up :)

Your Favorite Assassin Â» About

2007-09-20T00:00:00-07:00

Your Favorite Assassin Â» About Two of my new co-workers are in this band... They're pretty cool guys, so I look forward to hearing their disc.

The Best and Worst Things About Google's Shared Stuff

2007-09-20T00:00:00-07:00

The Best and Worst Things About Google's Shared Stuff Will this kick eventually kick ass or disappear? I'm not exactly ready to delete my delicious account just yet...

Rock Band 2007 Tour | Rockband

2007-09-20T00:00:00-07:00

Rock Band 2007 Tour | Rockband Columbus Oho this weekend! Oh if only i had a video game system... and three friends in Columbus :)

Music Review: Islaja Ulual Yyy

2007-09-20T00:00:00-07:00

Music Review: Islaja Ulual Yyy What can I do to hear about artists like this pre-pitchfork? Other than be Finnish?

Loudspeakers & Hi-Fi Systems - Welcome to Ferguson Hill

2007-09-20T00:00:00-07:00

Loudspeakers & Hi-Fi Systems - Welcome to Ferguson Hill Thank you for sharing Phil... Put these on the list for when I'm a multi-millionaire...

Lev and Thumpbot play "Crazy" on Vimeo

2007-09-20T00:00:00-07:00

Lev and Thumpbot play "Crazy" on Vimeo Somehow this is infinitely cooler than the human-played theremin version.

Chozinn - The Heeb Hop Hit

2007-09-20T00:00:00-07:00

Chozinn - The Heeb Hop Hit Recommended by my friend Ben... as far as Jewish Hip Hop goes, it's pretty good.

yewknee.com - Too Sad

2007-09-19T00:00:00-07:00

yewknee.com - Too Sad

This kind of sums up how I feel about work right now.

Lots of Contact with Friends...

2007-09-19T00:00:00-07:00

Since I've been back in the country and blogging regularly, I've been getting in touch with LOTS of people... The cool stuff, I will feature here... My great ex-roommate Andy is back in Vermont working on some cool Environmental Sculpture at Middlebury.Â Check it out... there's a webcam and everything.

I've found myself unsubscribing to lots of feeds recently...

2007-09-19T00:00:00-07:00

But these two are definitely getting an add: Ron On Middlebury, by President Ron Leibowitz One Dean's View, by Dean Tim Spears Sorry to outside readers for the Middlebury-centric post, but its too juicy not too share... Edit: To save you from reading, apparently Eat Good Food (next to the Alpine Shop) has closed and has now been leased by the College... to possibly turn into a music venue... ?

Boxing Metropolis: Heartbeats

2007-09-19T00:00:00-07:00

Boxing Metropolis: Heartbeats My friend Lucas blogs sometimes... he's also funny sometimes. I hope he does both more often. Here he posts a great song.

Amazon.com: Upright Citizens Brigade - The Complete Second Season: DVD: Matt Walsh,Amy Poehler,Matt Besser,Ian Roberts

2007-09-19T00:00:00-07:00

Amazon.com: Upright Citizens Brigade - The Complete Second Season: DVD: Matt Walsh,Amy Poehler,Matt Besser,Ian Roberts Out yesterday... Infested by Friar's is one of my favorite episodes ever!

What's Next For McLovin?

2007-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

What's Next For McLovin? Sounds like a great cast... I can only assume Apatow is producing :)

Stickman Lifesized on Flickr - Photo Sharing!

2007-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

Stickman Lifesized on Flickr - Photo Sharing! My good old college radio buddy mercurialn keeps coming up with amazing photos all of the time.... This stickman came on his flickroll this morning... Love it.

Offline comment from my friend Ben.

2007-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

I just clicked through to www.myinitalsare.tk for the first time from my feed reader. Never has a "front-end web developer" published a website as illegible. Also, please post less frequently with less interesting material. You're stealing my time.

We've had a long string of visitors, and I've been busy with a new job... Expect some upgrades to the site this week... Hi Ben!

The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history!

2007-09-17T00:00:00-07:00

The Million Dollar Homepage - Own a piece of internet history! My new employer owns approx 88 x 17 pixels here... oh my.

The Biggest Ever BitTorrent Leak: MediaDefender Internal Emails Go Public | TorrentFreak

2007-09-17T00:00:00-07:00

The Biggest Ever BitTorrent Leak: MediaDefender Internal Emails Go Public | TorrentFreak This is sweet

Nick Bradbury: Indie Tip #4: Get a Life

2007-09-17T00:00:00-07:00

Nick Bradbury: Indie Tip #4: Get a Life Sage-like advice...

End of my first week of work

2007-09-17T00:00:00-07:00

People are great, company sells some bizarre stuff... more on that later. Friday afternoon, Disc Golf! Mom got into town Friday, we bought nightstands and toured around this weekend.Â Â It's great having her here, but when she's gone I'll be able to get more other work done.

Amazon.com: Conceal Book Shelf: Home & Garden

2007-09-17T00:00:00-07:00

Amazon.com: Conceal Book Shelf: Home & Garden This is awesome!

I'm so old school...

2007-09-12T00:00:00-07:00

I listen to bands that don't exist anymore... While I'm waiting for the second coming of Penelope, listen to some old, but amazing tracks. In the (paraphrased) words of the Terminator, "They'll be back."

First Day at a New Job

2007-09-10T00:00:00-07:00

Remains to be seen what my exact job functions will be.Â A little more information about 2checkout.com.Â Everyone seems pretty cool.Â Working with the Perl Catalyst MVC Framework.Â I'm working right now using the Apache Velocity templating framework. The office is cool, but unfortunately its located in absolute suburban hell.Â I'm talking industrial tech park near subdivisions with vinyl siding an no side-facing windows.Â And gigantic parking lots with ridiculous large chain stores...Â Thankfully I found a bus route that might work from my new house, although there is no food within walking distance (ugh) so I'm going to have to start packing lunch...

Weekend Reading: Faking It

2007-09-09T00:00:00-07:00

So for Cobain, as for most rock stars and fans today, real rock'n'roll must be shackled to the kind of primitivism that accompanied Leadbelly's career, an idealization of "savage" simplicity. If Cobain had broadcast the facts of his own painful life in the wordy, sophisticated tradition of Loudon Wainwright III rather than the barebones tradition of Leadbelly, he would have been a role model for next to nobody.

From Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music I'm reading this book after hearing an interview with one of the author's on The Sound of Young America. The authors makes some interesting points about the "theatre" and what is real and fake in modern music. On a related note, I'm watching School of Rock. I've been thinking a lot about how the concept of authenticity applies to fans. Nick Hornby's Songbook makes me wonder if I even understand the music I love, or if I even love the music I love... Have you ever doubted the authenticity of your fandom?

Sweet, Sheraton.com Share Your Story getting some love, I'm proud to say that I worked on that site.

2007-09-07T00:00:00-07:00

Sweet, Sheraton.com Share Your Story getting some love, I'm proud to say that I worked on that site.

Pitchfork Feature: Column: Get That Out Of Your Mouth #38

2007-09-07T00:00:00-07:00

Pitchfork Feature: Column: Get That Out Of Your Mouth #38 WNYC's Radiolab gets Pitchforked...

I tried to buy this doing Italian paypal checkout with no US shipping option, I'll let you know in 4 months if I ever receive it.

2007-09-07T00:00:00-07:00

I tried to buy this doing Italian paypal checkout with no US shipping option, I'll let you know in 4 months if I ever receive it.

One of my favorite people just moved from Chicago to NY, here is her blog...

2007-09-06T00:00:00-07:00

One of my favorite people just moved from Chicago to NY, here is her blog...

YouTube - President Bush on the performance right: "No earthly idea"

2007-09-05T00:00:00-07:00

YouTube - President Bush on the performance right: "No earthly idea" Please Mr. President, you make me sick.

anyway records - distribution

2007-09-05T00:00:00-07:00

anyway records - distribution Columbus Ohio based record label, they seem pretty cool.

I miss you so much andrew bishop

2007-09-02T00:00:00-07:00

I miss you so much andrew bishop

I take Mobb Deep over Jay-z

2007-08-29T00:00:00-07:00

And I definitely take Andy Milonakis over Judd Apatow. This is fucking genius.

Exploring Ohio - Cedar Point

2007-08-29T00:00:00-07:00

I'm not a huge roller coaster fan and I definitely chickened out on a few... but the Raptor was definitely my favorite.

Days wandering around Columbus

2007-08-27T00:00:00-07:00

Meeting some cool people who are into music... And lots of cool gossip.

And I'm gone.

2007-08-27T00:00:00-07:00

And I'm gone.

Welcome friends, old and new…

2007-08-26T00:00:00-07:00

My Summer, in a video nutshell... Brazil - Summer 2007 from kremdela and Vimeo.

What am I doing with my life?

2007-08-25T00:00:00-07:00

What am I doing with my life?

Probably THE definitive Daft Punk blog post on the internet... good work WRMC.

2007-08-25T00:00:00-07:00

Probably THE definitive Daft Punk blog post on the internet... good work WRMC.

One of my favorite designers out there... Although I can't exactly describe why.

2007-08-25T00:00:00-07:00

One of my favorite designers out there... Although I can't exactly describe why.

Way Too Good for Facebook or MySpace?

2007-08-24T00:00:00-07:00

Way Too Good for Facebook or MySpace? Elitism and social networks... I think there is a future here.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Ways I've Let Down Popular Musicians.

2007-08-24T00:00:00-07:00

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Ways I've Let Down Popular Musicians. Another great list from the McSweeney's WitBot.

Thom Yorke and Weird Al Working on Album Together Â« Hard â€˜N Phirm Industries

2007-08-22T00:00:00-07:00

Thom Yorke and Weird Al Working on Album Together Â« Hard â€˜N Phirm Industries a boy can dream, can't he? FYI - I once wrote to the Weird Al fanzine (the Volcano Worshippers) about Chris Hardwick (from Hard N' Phirm) singing a few bars from Al's song Another One Rides The Bus during an episode of Singled Out.

RIP - Tony Wilson

2007-08-22T00:00:00-07:00

"You either make money, Mr. Wilson once said, or you make history." The label went bankrupt in 1992. [NYT]

I know that my friend Ben has already seen this, so I'm not even going to send it to him.

2007-08-22T00:00:00-07:00

I know that my friend Ben has already seen this, so I'm not even going to send it to him.

Dammit, would have preposd her.

2007-08-22T00:00:00-07:00

Dammit, would have preposd her.

2008 SXSW - In Praise of Elitism

2007-08-22T00:00:00-07:00

2008 SXSW - In Praise of Elitism Funny idea for a talk, I love the idea that Elitism ruins the movement.

The Road to Clarity - New York Times

2007-08-21T00:00:00-07:00

The Road to Clarity - New York Times Just drove I-80 all the way across Penn on Sunday!

Love Rogen, but I think this movie is over-rated

2007-08-21T00:00:00-07:00

Love Rogen, but I think this movie is over-rated

I know there are many alums that read this blog, but WRMC posted this gem!

2007-08-21T00:00:00-07:00

I know there are many alums that read this blog, but WRMC posted this gem!

Recife to Salvador to Curitiba

2007-08-08T00:00:00-07:00

I am sitting in an Internet cafe in Morretes, Parana which for those keeping score at home is a crazy three hour train ride (through some seemingly impassable spaces) fromÂ Curitiba.Â Â Since I last wrote, we returned to Joao Pessoa, took a bus to Recife.Â Were thinking of staying in Recife to see the oldest synagogue in the Americas, but decided it wasnt worth the day so we caught the overnight bus to Salvador.Â I bought a bunch of records, and a cuica (which I will hapily play for anybody anytime once I return to the States)Â Its a pretty bizarre, yet totally amazing place.Â And you can buy randomÂ handmadeÂ gifts ina market onceÂ used for slaves. Then yesterday we flew to Curitiba, marveled in its extraordinary public transportation system (urban planning orgasm***) went to the Niemeyer museumÂ and walked around with some awesome crowds of people.Â Southern Brasil is SO much different than the northeast.Â The accent is cooler (imho) and everything is much more European-seeming.Â There is also *gasp* infrastructure, such as consistently paved roads, and futuristic bus terminals... Next Up: Floripa tomorrow for two nights, then Flying to Rio on the 11th for four nights, then two days in Sao Paolo and back to NYC!Â Love you all, and please email me at bazoomercom at gmail with your address if you would like a postcard.... Ive sent out a bunch, but they probably wont arrive until who knows when.... Â Lots of photos to come when I am using my own computer...Â Also,Â a note about some parties:Â **FINAL EAST COAST APPEARANCE** Party inÂ NewÂ YorkÂ on Friday, August 17, details to follow.Â Party round two, Columbus OH, August 24

Natal (via buggeiro) e Praia da Pipa

2007-08-02T00:00:00-07:00

I don't really have enough time to post more pictures or description, but lessons learned:

When tour books say don't drive at night in Brazil, listen to them.
Roads that are not on mapsÂ usually involve very tiny wooden bridges.
Having not seen any tourists for almost 2 months makes you resent and hate them when you do.
The Sand Dunes in Genipabu (Natal) are totally incapable of being captured on film, especially with emocao.
I actually now feel like I'm on vacation, actually being away from computers for extended periods of time and exploring Brazil
Although still applying for jobs in Columbus.
By the way, if you are reading this and want to send me a voicemail, feel free to give me a call at 614-FOGHAT1 [heh]

T-Shirt Idea

2007-07-31T00:00:00-07:00

Phil's Mother suggested "Oy Polloi", unfortunately too close to a Scottish anarchist punk band. My counter: A shirt with a graphic of FDR, with the caption: "Hoi Polio" If this doesn't make sense, read more here.Â Special thanks to Danny Choi.

Music From Paraiba

2007-07-29T00:00:00-07:00

New York Style: Forro in the Dark

Leaving JoÃ£o Pessoa soon…

2007-07-29T00:00:00-07:00

And finally going on some real traveling vacation... Plans include: Natal, Praia De Pipa, Recife, Porto de Galinhas then bus to Salvador to hopefully buy *lots* of records. Then Curituba, Rio and SÃ£o Paulo, then New York, and finally Columbus!! Things I can't wait to do in New York. 1. get a good bagel 2. zabar's chocolate croissant 3. good falaffel 4. see my friends Any recommendations on places to go or people to see are greatly appreciated...

Weekend in Areia

2007-07-26T00:00:00-07:00

Feeding the goats: Milking the cows: Beast of burden: words to follow later.. thanks to all of my friends who have sent emails, I love you all...

Today’s Idea for a Photo Calendar

2007-07-26T00:00:00-07:00

Lepers with Leopards. I'll spare you the image I mocked up and just let you visualize the wonder... UPDATE: Also, cougars with cougars, camels with cameltoes...

KANYE WEST | STRONGER

2007-07-25T00:00:00-07:00

KANYE WEST | STRONGER This is everywhere, but this reminds me that god exists.

Human-baiting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2007-07-25T00:00:00-07:00

Human-baiting - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Thanks Phil.

Del Close Marathon - Dane Cookin' It Up

2007-07-25T00:00:00-07:00

Del Close Marathon - Dane Cookin' It Up Brilliant Concept, wish I could be there

Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0 [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog]

2007-07-24T00:00:00-07:00

Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0 [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog]

Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0 [Dion Hinchcliffe’s Web 2.0 Blog]

2007-07-24T00:00:00-07:00

Ten Ways To Take Advantage of Web 2.0 [Dion Hinchcliffe's Web 2.0 Blog]

Skinnyman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2007-07-24T00:00:00-07:00

Skinnyman - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lextant: Curious?

2007-07-24T00:00:00-07:00

Lextant: Curious? Columbus Ohio based Design Research Company

Pitchfork: Sympathy for the Record Industry Label for Sale

2007-07-23T00:00:00-07:00

Pitchfork: Sympathy for the Record Industry Label for Sale

Lefsetz Letter Â» Blog Archive Â» The New Reality

2007-07-23T00:00:00-07:00

Lefsetz Letter Â» Blog Archive Â» The New Reality

Sinuca Brasileira

2007-07-17T00:00:00-07:00

Played a crazy game of pool the other night at a place called Bebe Blues e Come Jazz. (Drink blues and eat jazz, (god I love Brazil!)) Weird game, each team has four balls, small table, tiny pockets. I lost the game for us... Then we went to a Peter Tosh tribute show with some sweet Brazilian Reggae (to be pronounced Hey-ghee) bands, but couldn't keep up with the late-night action and went home around 3am. I've been doing some really interesting freelance work this past week, applying for some jobs in Columbus and going through lots of old random thoughts and jokes I have.... My new Wordpress design/ plugin will be launching soon...Â Also, look forward to some more music-related posts.

Rent for Cats

2007-07-16T00:00:00-07:00

A new musical I'm writing about the Feline Aids epidemic. Featuring the hit song: (five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes) X (nine)

At my next job, I want to be able to…

2007-07-15T00:00:00-07:00

bike to work
laugh with my co-workers
write code that makes me smile
balance work and life
get good lunch within walking distance
work in an architecturally cool place
not have an out of touch project manager tell me to read Rise of the Creative Class
listen to great music
make some reasonably good percentage of my previous salary

(by no means an exhaustive list)

Que peu grandÃ£o

2007-07-14T00:00:00-07:00

Recap of the last week in JoÃ£oPessoa. Went to see this band called (I'm not joking) The Omelettes at a Chinese Restaurant at MAG Shopping. Unfortunately no camera, but it was four band members in leopard print shirts and Brazilian Flag sunglasses. Highlight: sing along to the famous Elvis hit, typed phoenetically: "Blue Sude Shoes" Of course I bought the CD. The Omelettes - SuperstarÂ (the title of this post is the chorus, roughly translated: what a big pansy) Lots of random exploring and getting on the wrong bus. A bus map does not exist here, which is completely unfathomable, and made me wish I had brought a GPS to just ride every bus and create one. Also, went shopping. I think everyone will thank me for not bringing these bad boys back to the states. Helped Johanna with work one day this week, streaking plates and looking for salmonella. Also did a lot of reading and working on some side programming projects. I'm also in the process of forking this blog into a tumblelog and a real company blog. And I've been doing a lot of work on my main project for when I return, the music startup I co-founded. Here's a cute picture of my girlfriend Johanna and me. This is a cute donkey, I named him Dave. More shots on Flickr. P.S. Real friends, dot-comrades, anybody who reads this, send an email to bazoomercom at gmail with your mailing address for a postcard from Brasil.

Ari and I are both a bunch of dorks.

2007-07-14T00:00:00-07:00

Our answer to the question: Would you outsource your social networking?

MARY-KATE OLSEN JOINS THE CAST OF WEEDS' THIRD SEASON

2007-07-13T00:00:00-07:00

MARY-KATE OLSEN JOINS THE CAST OF WEEDS' THIRD SEASON

maybe season 3 might have made it successfully over the shark

In Brazil, performers embrace music pirates - 07/09/2007 - MiamiHerald.com

2007-07-12T00:00:00-07:00

In Brazil, performers embrace music pirates - 07/09/2007 - MiamiHerald.com The possible (hopeful) future direction of the music industry? Unfortunately this is very far away or I would love to rock a technobrega. I'll try to find some to bring back.

Electronic Musical Instrument 1870 - 1990

2007-07-12T00:00:00-07:00

Electronic Musical Instrument 1870 - 1990 Comprehensive (?) history of electronic instruments... pretty sweet.

Last Facebook Ruby Code – Grids

2007-07-04T00:00:00-07:00

I promise, in remembering how much I don't like optimization problems, I was playing around with the Facebook Grid Puzzle. Now I'm done looking at the Facebook problems, but in case anybody else is interested in playing around, here is some Ruby code I wrote that models the problem exactly: Also, as an aside, I've noticed http://snippets.dzone.com/ showing up in search results lately and it has lots of interesting examples, without all of the ugliness of devshed or any of that garbage. Although its all tagging and not searchable - dumb.

class Grid
   attr_reader :two_d_array, :col_sum_array, :row_sum_array, :big_S

   def initialize(two_d_array)
      @two_d_array = two_d_array
      @col_sum_array = []
      @row_sum_array = []
      @big_S = 0
   end

   def calculations
      @col_sum_array = []
      @row_sum_array = []
      @big_S = 0
      col_krem = Array.new
      row_krem = Array.new
      two_d_array.each_with_index do |row, index|
         col_sub = 0
         row_sub = 0
         two_d_array[index].each_with_index do |col,i|
            col_sub += two_d_array[i][index]
            row_sub += two_d_array[index][i]
         end
         @col_sum_array < < col_sub
         @row_sum_array << row_sub
         @big_S = @big_S + col_sub + row_sub
         p two_d_array[index]
      end
   end

   def flip_row(row_num)
     @two_d_array[row_num].each_with_index  do |v, index|
        @two_d_array[row_num][index] = v * -1
     end
     self.calculations
   end

   def flip_col(col_num)
     for i in (0...@two_d_array.length)
         @two_d_array[i][col_num] = @two_d_array[i][col_num] * -1
     end
     self.calculations
   end

end

two_d_array = Grid.new([ [3,1,-5,-3,4],[4,-5,-2,-3,-3],[6,-8,-2,-6,1],[3,4,1,-4,-8],[1,4,-2,7,-1] ])

puts "Initial Array"
puts "-------------"
two_d_array.calculations
puts "-------------"
puts "Initial Big S: #{two_d_array.big_S}"

puts "------------"
puts "------------"
puts "Flipping Row Zero"
puts "------------"
two_d_array.flip_row(0)

puts "------------"
puts "------------"
puts "Flipping Column One"
puts "------------"
two_d_array.flip_col(1)

puts "------------"
puts "------------"
puts "Column Sum Array"
p two_d_array.col_sum_array
puts "------------"
puts "Row Sum Array"
p two_d_array.row_sum_array
puts "------------"
puts "Big S: #{two_d_array.big_S}"

It’s all been done before, yet here’s my soution to the Mike Korn facebook puzzle

2007-07-03T00:00:00-07:00

When not exploring around Brazil, I've been working on lots of my own projects, and doing a lot more messing around with Ruby and Python. I stumbled upon Facebook's Puzzle Page the other day, which they presumably use to attract nerds to job openings. Anyway, the Mike Korn puzzle caught my eye. I really enjoyed Abstract Algebra and Number Theory back in college, and had to dust off that part of my brain to recall how number partitions work. Of course, I was talking online to my good friend Dan about it. (Sorry Buster, you weren't around) Anyway, it seems dumb to completely re-hash the great math and code explanation offered over at 20bits. And I was doubly doh'd to see that he even put in the case statement solution that I thought I was being clever using. For anyone curious, here is some Ruby code to run through the simulation for entered text, just for fun.

entered_name = "mikekorn"     #lowercase and without spaces

alphabet = ("a".."z").to_a
mappings = alphabet.sort_by{rand}
keys_fucked_mapping = Hash[*alphabet.zip(mappings).flatten]

puts "Key Mappings:"
puts "-------------"
p keys_fucked_mapping
puts "------------------------------------------"

def fucked_typing(name_a,keys_fucked_mapping)
  fucked_output = String.new
  name_a.each do |letter|
    fucked_output +=  keys_fucked_mapping[letter]
  end
  fucked_output
end

count = 0
what_to_mash = entered_name
begin
  what_to_mash = what_to_mash.split(//)
  what_to_mash = fucked_typing(what_to_mash,keys_fucked_mapping)
  puts what_to_mash
  count += 1
end while entered_name.to_s != what_to_mash.to_s
puts "Number of Iterations: #{count}"

If you have a puzzle you'd like me to solve for your job, please feel free to contact me at bazoomercom at gmail. And ideally you are located in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Update: no, I don't want a job with facebook.

Video Game Systems – Any suggestions?

2007-06-30T00:00:00-07:00

It's weird, but I guess the lack of structure in my life has been making me think about the best way I recall to waste time... video games.Â So I'm strongly considering buying a video game console to mod the hell out of it.Â I think the Wii is in the lead (damn you lack of GH, but maybe Rock Band?), but the fact that you can create your own custom songs for Guitar Hero on PS2 is mighty tempting. [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOAtMLrF-fE[/youtube] Or maybe I could just take the money I would have spent, but a new electric guitar, and practice it to learn to really play ths songs. We're working on some travel plans and I've reconsidered my earlier position on sleeping in like a jackass, and think maybe its time to start waking up early and trying to be productive during daylight hours, like my girlfriend...

Where am I going? Columbus

2007-06-29T00:00:00-07:00

I saw a Brazilian (one l?) wearing this shirt the other day, which is both awesome and brilliant. I'm pretty much over my sickness now, but my day is still broken up in weird chunks thanks to a terrible mattress, sunset at 5:30 pm and no real structure to my life. There is this Mike Birbiglia bit about his sleep-addicted friend Sleepy Carl that continually entices him to stay in bed, while his girlfriend jumps out of bed yelling, "put me in coach." Well that's pretty much how its been going here. Johanna passes out on the couch watching a movie, and I stay up coding until 4am, then she yells at me when I am too groggy to want to kiss her when she wakes up (before her alarm!) at 8am. If that's the biggest problem in our relationship, I'll take it. Anyway, finished reading The Razor's Edge, which is a pretty incredible success story about someone looking for their own happiness, which brings me to, what am I doing after this vacation in Brasil? Well... I'm looking for jobs at the moment, but strongly considering several options. I like the idea of trying to put assemble some sort of co-working setup in Columbus.Â I've enjoyed freelance work in the past, but I keep recalling that I *need* people to work with and keep me inspired.Â Plus I'm not sure that I want to go entirely freelance when I get so bummed out with the stupid projects and pay that are floating around on the internet.Â More about this topic later... We'll be moving into this *AMAZING* condo that we (well technically, I) bought! [for you stalkers, Google Map it] in the heart of the Short North district of Columbus. Hopefully Jewish will suffice for gay and artsy in Columbus, and I don't see why it wouldn't, as they are synonymous everywhere else.Â I'm excited to help Columbus become the new San Francisco.

Update from Brasil (hopefully I won’t die of dysentery)

2007-06-27T00:00:00-07:00

Things have been fun and yet crazy… I’ve been really sick the past couple of days, but have been taking a good mix of tylenol and cipro and am starting to get back to somewhat normal. This past weekend was the SÃ£o JoÃ£o (St. John) festival, and we took a tourist bus to Campina Grande for the celebration. It kind of made me feel like we were in the Texas of Brasil, lots of leather, traditional dancing… but instead of Mexicans there are Brazilians everywhere! And lots of food and drink. Johanna’s full flickr set is available here. Also, havaianas are the sweetest shoes ever, here are these awesome special edition kicks I got in Campina. ForrÃ³ (the musical style) is king here, its basically a triangle, an accordion, and a zabumba drum. And its EVERYWHERE. It’s sort of shitty folksy polka-ish music. I mean its good, but kind of sounds the same in the same way that all salsa music sound exactly the same. But people of all ages here love it in a really non-ironic way. I guess we are in too rural area for their to be arrogant hipsters. But man, I’ve been into ForrÃ³ for so long now… Other than that I’ve been keeping myself busy, trying to decide what direction I want to take my life in next. I’ve been reading The Razor’s Edge as well as some advanced Rails books. More to come at a later date… Miss you all.

the most annoying thing about one of my most visited websites is fixed!

2007-06-27T00:00:00-07:00

Take that Gray Lady! Disable double-clicking on nytimes.com: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7721

Flash Websites Suck

2007-06-25T00:00:00-07:00

http://www.osklen.com/ Or any huge bloated site sucks when you are on a really slow internet connection. Thanks Brazil for your valuable lesson on small page-weight.

Time to ponder…

2007-06-21T00:00:00-07:00

Ever wonder what you would do with lots of idle time? Not a four day weekend. Not a two week vacation with a list of tourist destinations... I'm talking about SIX weeks with absolutely NO responsibilities. Well let me tell you, as of right now, it's pretty sweet. I'm working on the first Bazoomercom Facebook app.Â Also, in the process of redesigning this here blog. In the meantime, went swimming today, ate dinner at a sweet Japanese place (2 people, drinks and dessert, 22 USD!!!) Enjoy this flickr set of my sad old Starwood cubicle and my lovely new surroundings.

Brazil – First Post

2007-06-19T00:00:00-07:00

The trip was long, but not too delayed, and fairly smooth at customs, etc. we left JFK at ~10pm on Friday, flew through the night to Sao Paolo. Then to Recife (pronounced Heh-see-fi) where Johanna's mentor Celso picked us up and drove us to Joao Pessoa. The city is pretty awesome, we are two blocks from the praia. (beach) My Portuguese comprehension is actually suprisingly good, all of those Spanish and Italian classes I guess have proved somewhat useful. I still sound like a retarded 5 year old when I speak though, although Johanna is holding her one beautifully. Overall though, the Brazilians I've met are all *extremely* helpful and speak very good English. We had one hysterical moment where Jo's advisor here at the UFPB asked her if she was from "Jew Family" which could have been straight out of Borat. We weren't thrown on a train or anything, and everyone here is muito simpatico. The house is very nice, it's a private home owned by this woman Fernanda, who lives ere with her son Iuri and rents rooms to a steady string of foreigners. Now there is a German student named Helga here on an internship. There is Narry, the other girl from OSU and Johanna and I are in the guest house, which as best as I can explain is a pool house, except there is no pool. Rent is reasonably cheap, 400 Reals (~200 USD) per person per month. n fact, pretty much everything here is inexpensive, food, drinks, buses... Electronics re *mad* expensive here, especially relative to everything else. We had a hard time trying to figure out what to bring as gifts, as America doesn't really have anything "cultural" (what? a native american dream catcher?) So for Jo's dvisors we brought Maple Syrup and Ipod Shuffles. Turned out to be a great idea, they looked at us like we handed them gold bars. Other than that, we have wireless internet (inter-netchy) at the house, and its slow, but that are you going to do... Maybe it'll keep me from wasting all of my time here doing dumb shit online. Please email me (kremdela--gmail) with questions/ comments/ requests or recommendations. I plan on buying LOTS of records down here, and have been checking out lots of Brazilian music I also found a really funny poster for a concert promoter here in JP, and am really upset that I missed a Brazilian Evanescence cover band. :)

A Question to Ponder…

2007-05-22T00:00:00-07:00

Which is more appealing? - a life of leisure - a life of accomplishment I at first answered a life of leisure, as for a long time all I've wanted is no monthly bills, and to just chill.Â But I'm beginning to take the turn, as there are things I've set out to do that I really want to accomplish. Also, from the same stupid online survey: Which traditional wisdom is more true? - Don't put all your eggs in one basket. - Women can't control their emotions.

Â Comedy response from my dad:"women cant control all their eggs"

Wednesday Morning Video

2007-05-16T00:00:00-07:00

I saw my good friend, (and boss) Todd, win the lawyer's league championships at MSG last night.

Also, might of made a few very helpful connections in Columbus, OH via LinkedIn

Also, three weeks (holy crap!) from tomorrow is my last day here at Starwood. I've been working on some really fun stuff for the new SPG site, that I'll talk about once it launches.

And the most exciting news: our offer was accepted on an amazing place in Columbus. Short North to be specific, one block from Goodale Park, one and a half from High Street, walking distance to everything! It's the oldest carriage house in Columbus, and was once the Veterinarians office :) Major bonus points for my girlfriend Johanna, who's in Vet School. We both fell in love with the place immediately. Anyway, check out the listing (with pictures)

Dumb

2007-05-16T00:00:00-07:00

The whole point of the last post was to put in this video from a friend of the environment and the man who gave my commencement address, Bill Richardson. Take that Obama.

Chilling out.

2007-05-15T00:00:00-07:00

short imagined monologues, big willie style, [via liz ]


10:34 AM Ari: buck just sent this to me: http://www.chrisjordan.com
10:36 AM did you download the cinematic album yet?
 me: oh wow, this guy is awesome
 Ari: yeah
 me: dl'd it last night
  haven't listened yet
 Ari: it's way different
  definitely their coming out album
  they wrote songs this time arond
10:38 AM me: heh, sweet
10:57 AM Ari: http://www.headington.org.uk/history/misc/shark.htm

me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F6YTdGWxLY
	9 minutes
1:38 PM Ari: ha, DEFINITELY gonna have to wait
	21 minutes
2:00 PM Ari: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6647011.stm
  i just met that guy
 me: awesome
	7 minutes
2:08 PM Ari: ho.ly.shit. http://www.metafilter.com/61186/I-originally-set-out-to-try-and-save-the-world-but-now-I?m-not-sure-I-like-it-enough
2:09 PM and wow, this is a brilliant idea: http://feeds.downloadsquad.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/116909945/

Middlebury Puns

2007-05-09T00:00:00-07:00

why I still subscribe to the RSS feed of my alma mater's (terrible) paper is beyond me. but I needed to share this playfully awful article title: "It's no lye...organic soap is sud-sational!" [article]

Delta, waiting and music recomendation

2007-05-09T00:00:00-07:00

I've been on hold with Delta for 1 hour and five minutes, I've heard kiss me by sixpence none the richer three times. But hopefully when this is over I will have tickets to brazil!!!! also, this is kind of a cool music recommendation idea But I'm eagerly awaiting Hrvatski's brother Brian's echo nest

Cool Things about Columbus

2007-05-07T00:00:00-07:00

Moving to Columbus in the fall, strongly considering buying a house in Clintonville, near some pretty cool places. There seems to be a pretty cool music scene out there, although some dumb shit is going on with one venue. Come on, they can't cover an 1800/ month increase (to $6000/ month!) in rent? Something isn't right here. I'm almost considering buying it myself... And while Columbus is the largest US city without a MLB team, they do have some other kick ass sports. And oh, yeah, the best part about Columbus? My girlfriend is there...

OH - IO, Comix. (and not the shitty comedy club in NY)

2007-05-06T00:00:00-07:00

I've got a lot of things I've been wanting to say for a while. Firstly, I've officially quit my job to take a very extended trip to Brazil [info] with my lovely girlfriend. For those into long-term planning, that means there is a highly qualified web developer to be looking for freelance gigs [seriously, email me]for the summer and then eventually full-time employment in Columbus, Ohio. Speaking of which, I'm sitting in a sandwich shop in Columbus as I type this, doing work (or at least looking busy. I read two great graphic novels on the plane ride last night. The first was Hello Again, by Max Estes, a story about a building manager faced with his past. Also, James Kochalka's [I called him Cock-Choke-ah to his face once] Magic Boy & The Robot Elf. It's a pretty deranged story, like most of his stuff, but definitely entertaining. What the hell, if you are reading this, and want either of them, send me an email and they are yours: bazoomercom [at] gmail.com , for serious.

yeah, what he said.

2007-04-30T00:00:00-07:00

so. true.

Schemin’ on these…

2007-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

From Prodigy of Mobb Deep, Mack 10 Handle, hot. Also, I fucking HATE *any* corporate culture. For some reason, these people piss me off. Just had to get that off of my chest. Lip Dub - Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger on Vimeo

Nail, hit on head.

2007-04-20T00:00:00-07:00

Also aiding the study were the many contributors to This American Life, who took time from their best-selling essay-writing careers to donate personal anecdotes about dropping out of prestigious art schools, taking harrowing but poignant childhood vacations to the Grand Canyon, and the unique challenges of growing up in families supportive of their homosexuality.

[The Onion, on This American Life] Also, npr sexual fantasies.

Let's take Steve Inskeep, for instance. He has a different sonic appeal than Ira's hipster nerdiness; his baritone is more anchor chic. He's the kind of guy who might buy me a few martinis, loosen his tie over some tapas, and get a throbbing boner for Mozart's concertos. This has its own sordid appeal; he could probably explain what's happening in Iraq, in which case I'd totally get wet. I like to envision an erotic evening in which he merely pronounces the names of Al-Qaeda operatives as if it were some kind of Salome striptease â€” Abu Masab Al-Zarqawi, Saif al-Adel, Abu Mohammed al-Masri. By the time he got to the third "Abu," I'd be ready to jump across the table and rip off his sensible button-down.

Does that make me crazy? Probably.

2007-04-18T00:00:00-07:00

This is not too far from what my future could be.

Barney Vincelette on bad music:

"Many people just assume that you should be able to have this music in your backyard. But it is such an ugly music that it takes over one's life," he said. "That's why I fight back against it." Vincelette is so sensitive to noise that he's gone as far as shooting and killing a dog that barked nonstop outside his apartment. He paid a $100 fine and was evicted.

And, on smoking in public places:

In the spring of 1977, when he was a graduate student at the University of Georgia, he got into a confrontation with a woman who was smoking cigarettes nearby. She blew smoke in his face. He took out a spray can filled with tear gas and fired it at her face. It also hit her boyfriend's face.

Said by a comedian wearing a Hawaiian Shirt

2007-04-16T00:00:00-07:00

I know what you're thinking, did I blow Don Ho for this shirt? No, I blew Don Ho because he's an Excellent Entertainer. [rip]

Sweatin’ to the Indies!

2007-04-11T00:00:00-07:00

SG reports on Now That's What I Call (Indie) Music. I had an idea for a workout video starting Richard Simmons, featuring live band performances by your favorite Indie rock stars, called Sweatin' To The Indies. In other news, Ari wishes he could have written this headline: Ring of fire engulfs Johnny Cash's former home

april1

2007-04-01T00:00:00-07:00

Inspired by this projectionist post and some thoughts I've been having about the possible future, I read my horoscope: Get more power by vowing to become a "master."... Improved self-expression is dramatic and subtle. Unique new opportunities bring pleasant surprises. Your best ideas are ready for television.... You are challenged to be charismatic. Express your fantasies. Steer clear of hypersensitive folks.

Happy April Fools, and birthday Andrew William Lynch, the IV .

I started a news item in the blogosphere.

2007-03-30T00:00:00-07:00

UPDATE:: Brooklyn Vegan and Curbed report as well. I have a major personal character defect, that I need, or at least very much *like* to be first in regards to things. I get a pleasant satisfaction when I've read (and sent) and article around before it appears in the NYTimes Most E-Mailed Stories newsfeed, for example. It's pretty core to what we at bazoomercom are doing with our flagship project. What, you're not on the mailing list yet? If you're the kind of person that always know about the newest bands, films, arts, whatever before you're friends (real or cyber) then boy are you going to have fun with preposer. Anyway, The Apiary and Dead Frog both cite my tip..

Take that!

2007-03-28T00:00:00-07:00

Wal Mart Great video of the day, watch for the Neil Hamburger Cameo: [thanks sg and im]

Judd Apatow can do no wrong.

2007-03-27T00:00:00-07:00

A Tv Show about a TV show. maybe aaron sorkin is available. still, he can do no wrong. Also, I would have preposered Seth Rogen 8 years ago.

Update

2007-03-21T00:00:00-07:00

Loving The Web Design at cassete playa
having some doubts, but willing to wait and see how it goes with good reads, two very trustworthy friends are on there.
Enjoying the new upcoming Brother Ali
working from Maine the rest of the week, going to visit my girlfriend
Almost bought an ipod (product) nano today at lunch, my old one is totally dead. But I guess I'd rather just hold on to my 200 bucks and maybe consider buying an iPhone (I'm not going to link that shit, because come on...
considering selling my 1200s and mixer, and buying a new pre-amp for my Ariston, any buyers?

I am SO SICK of seeing ads for the new This American Life SHOtime TV Show.

2007-03-21T00:00:00-07:00

They obviously got their targeted advertising right, because I definitely fall into their "liberal arts educated jew npr listener" demo. I really enjoy Ira's take on the idea of trying to get better at something that you have good enough taste in to know that you suck:

Did I mention the Drive-Thru?

2007-03-20T00:00:00-07:00

Great Quote For Monday Morning

2007-03-19T00:00:00-07:00

"I'm looking for amusing send-ups of peeling potatoes on KP duty, not another vignette about a soldier waking up screaming because he accidentally shot a pregnant Iraqi woman."[The Onion]

two titans of comedy from our childhood… or at least one.

2007-03-16T00:00:00-07:00

Artist on Artist: "Weird Al" Yankovic and Seth Green Add to My Profile | More Videos

In short, architectural integrity needs to take a back seat to appearances.

2007-03-15T00:00:00-07:00

The above quote, from the following article represents one total moron's view of architecture as it applies to a beautiful building that I love.

Op-Ed: Johnson Memorial is Brutal

Colin Foss Middlebury Campus Issue date: 3/7/07 Section: Opinions Looking for a place to avoid the crowd during fall finals, I decided to head toward a strange light emanating from the top of the Johnson Memorial Building. I walked through the front doors, past the "1967" engraving, and found myself in a cavernous building with stairwells that smell like a public pool and the most confusing floor plan on campus. The walls were mostly concrete, with bits of student artwork hanging from anything that you could puncture with a nail. Things look imposing inside Johnson, but I would not be daunted. I kept going to find that quiet study gem. The study room wasn't so great, but on my way there I got to see some of the more interesting architecture Middlebury has to offer. The concrete may be official, cold, and not accepting of stray light from the outside world, but there's something austere about it. They represent a trip back to the days when fancy columns were too frou-frou and the world was not looking so bright. "Brutalism" is an architectural movement from 1950 to 1970 that basically adopted the tenant that buildings shouldn't be warm or welcoming, but instead should reflect the bleak world view of architects disillusion by World War II. The symmetry of Johnson is notable: the faï¿½ade is wrapped up neatly and packaged into a windowed shell. Nothing seems out-of-place or accidental, or implies a slip in the logic of the architect. Patience is what sculpted the stones. Method laid them out, and then someone forgot the finishing touches. Boston's City Hall has some of the same problems as we do. A concrete monstrosity blackens the otherwise-jovial atmosphere of Government Center and dampens the mood of any public rally or parade that passes by. Little light is admitted into the inner chambers of City Hall, which leads some city officials to lament Brutalism's former popularity. They don't care about how bad the years were after the war, they just want somewhere nice to work. Who cares if it was voted sixth greatest building in American history according to the American Institute of Architects? It's oppressive, it's depressing and as an ugly municipal building, it wastes a central location in the metropolis where people would rather be shopping. Tom Menino, mayor of Boston, has an idea that could be translated to Middlebury if it gains enough attention. He wants to tear down Boston's City Hall and reconstruct a new one in the port area. No, Johnson should not be moved to Otter Creek though that would be picturesque, but maybe we could demolish this eyesore and build a phoenix in the ashes: something new, something like Bicentennial Hall, or Old Chapel. Yeah, something grey and depressing. Grey slate is timeless and instills a different kind of austerity than Johnson's blockishness: an austerity that Middlebury needs to make uniform and propagate. Menino and President Ronald D. Leibowitz need to get together during Leibowitz's open office hours and discuss for fifteen minutes the possibilities of a new, improved Johnson. I say fifteen minutes not because that's how long our president would allod the Boston mayor, but because Menino is in his last term in office and needs to get back to working on this important move. A relocation this dramatic would certainly create a name for Menino, who is currently running on lame-duck enthusiasm and a career some might call lackluster. In short, architectural integrity needs to take a back seat to appearances. I personally am sick and tired of walking past and being depressed by Johnson and do not want to take the time to understand the floor plan enough not to get lost inside. Boston's City Hall is being relocated for much less pressing issues, so why hasn't the College jumped on the philistinic bandwagon and torn down that incongruous eyesore? Colin Foss is a literary studies major from Rochester, N.H.. He lives in Allen Hall and walks past Johnson Memorial Building every morning.

Tuesday Night at the Bar.

2007-03-14T00:00:00-07:00

Personally, I think my friend Andrew does it better than Mr. Gervais.

But I really do love you honey, I swear.

2007-03-14T00:00:00-07:00

Definitelybehind the curve on this one (note the 2005, doh!), but here's a helpful guide on How To Date a Web Programmer.

This Weekend

2007-03-12T00:00:00-07:00

Visited my very good friend Andy (and his wonderful girlfriend Melissa) in Connecticut. The continued to Cambridge. Somerville to see Ari (the other Bazoomer) and my finger-pickin' friend Ryan. They're all hippies, we played music, I shook a Tambourine. The whole weekend was basically a fairwell tour for my friend Andrew, who is leaving for Prague this week. My favorite detour was re-finding my favorite ice cream shop. ok, back to work for now. The real question though, is this ironic?

Columbus Ohio

2007-03-02T00:00:00-08:00

Looking at real estate, listening to Giles Peterson in Brazil, ep 4 which is a pretty incredible podcast series about the history of Brazilian music.

Z-Trip Killin’ It

2007-02-27T00:00:00-08:00

The first Bonnaroo, 2003. This was unreal, even more so from this angle.

My old roommate

2007-02-27T00:00:00-08:00

Do you have any fun stories of seeing concerts when younger? Peeing in a crowded bathroom at a Rush show. Strangers getting excited with each other because they played 2112. There was no line for the girl's bathroom. [Gothamist]

Friday.

2007-02-23T00:00:00-08:00

Interview [SG] with Seth Rogen of the upcoming Knocked Up
BJ Novak (US Office) with a great bit about Muslim Hell
Long Term Betting, a great idea to stimulate long-term thinking.
Also, WNYC is bringing The Sound of Young America to the New York airwaves, so I donated some bling to Jesse

Blogs are a waste of time (yes, I understand the irony here)

2007-02-21T00:00:00-08:00

I've come to a few conclusions.

The only Social Networking site I use is Facebook, which I've actually begun to find incredibly useful for keeping in touch with people. If you'd like to, add me as a friend
I wish I had learned this lesson from Jeffrey Veen then, rather than having to arrive at that conclusion by myself; in summary, don't bother saving things for later, because you most likely don't give a shit about them later either
I have actually found money to be a great equalizer in obtaining music. There is certain music that I've very excited to get in advance of actual release dates, but as it turns out, if I'm not willing to buy your record, I probably don't give a shit about your music.
37 signals blogged an email I sent them: I'm the TK
I've finally finished a huge project at work and another freelance gig, I'm considering forking this site to a personal page. Anybody have any clever/ funny ideas for a dot tk domain name for me?

oh my GOD.

2007-01-25T00:00:00-08:00

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/v/3EAV1SClmO0[/youtube]

I remember why we started this…

2007-01-09T00:00:00-08:00

because we love Music!

the race to the bottom

2007-01-08T00:00:00-08:00

did you have to hire your black friend? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/05/AR2007010501613.html?sub=AR

Wasting my time… with you

2006-12-27T00:00:00-08:00

My good friend Ali, who I am legally bound to tell you, is a Watson Fellow has been tracking her trek around the world studying tatooed women. She is, as usual, much more insightful than I could hope to be . She has some great points that spending more time on the internet causes you to lose focus or something... Anyway, I think I'm headed in the direction of a career change, I can't do this shit for the rest of my life. A recent NYTimes article describes some further sad trends recently in the US. That might help explain a shift in what college freshmen described as their primary personal objectives. In 1970, 79 percent said their goal was developing a meaningful philosophy of life. By 2005, 75 percent said their primary objective was to be financially very well off. I guess that's more proof that things were better before I was born.

Moral Relativism

2006-12-26T00:00:00-08:00

The Ruth Webb Talent Agency's scandal division, which got work for many down on their luck tabloid superstars had this to say about their client, Tonya Harding. Ms. Harding was offered a Woody Allen movie but turned it down, saying she abhorred the director's morals. source: Ruth Webb, Talent Agent Who Revived Flagging Careers, Is Dead at 88 Related: Essentially Woody at the Film Forum

Be yourself. Have fun with it.

2006-12-26T00:00:00-08:00

The Onion talking about Will Oldham doing comedy ...Zach Galifianakis, who pretty much knocked it out of the park, even though he looked half dead and stoned. He kept looking at a notebook for his jokes, then remarked, I don't have any jokes written in here. It just says, "Be yourself. Have fun with it."

blinded by the big head.

2006-12-20T00:00:00-08:00

we're in the business of niche.

morning meditation.

2006-12-15T00:00:00-08:00

every morning of camp, we'd have to take two minutes at breakfast to put our heads down on the table and listen to someone play something shitty on the piano. i still really appreciate in retrospect, and i'm reinstituting the policy. check this out:

RIP Van Smith

2006-12-14T00:00:00-08:00

Van Smith designer for Divine. In related news, I've been working on a Rails project for a pretty high profile client that I cannot at this time really disclose. Also saw Vieques exploiting my employee discount for the next week. Happy Hannukah, be back in a week with hot pictures. <3 Ty

barter/free: two witty and cunning entrepeneurs…

2006-12-11T00:00:00-08:00

the new york times takes a look at the internet's biggest public service, the now-ubiquitous craigslist. google has tried it, and so has microsoft, but ultimately these are for-profit endeavors that people do not perceive as providing a service. i've bought a car on craigslist, a minidisc recorder, a futon, made money as a man with a van and met cool people all along the way. one could say that what i owe craig is invaluable, considering all of the great stories i've gotten along the way (and a copy of interpol's antics (thanks, jude!). ok, just some food for thought...

3 Days, 1 Outfit, Zero Internet

2006-12-11T00:00:00-08:00

I was in Somerville, Mass this weekend, and did quite a lot.

Stayed with my lovely girlfriend.
Toured the Cambridge/ Sommerville Line and played Guitar Hero with my business partner.
Got my socks rocked off by some badass girls
Walked around Walden Pond, and the lesser known Walden Pond 2: The Pond-ness Unknown.
Got to watch my friend Florion engage everyone in conversation
Ate great Venezuelan [highly recommend the Torta Fluida] and Indian food.
Enjoyed seeing my wish-we-became-better-friend(s) Buck
Went to a prom for orthodox jews... no explanation available.

More later...

I’m working from home today (and sitting in Ari’s Dining Room)

2006-12-08T00:00:00-08:00

Its funny, I think its easier for me to get up early when I don't have to go to work, then when I do. Kinda makes me want to become a freelancer fulltime. In related news, I've been all confused lately about a lot of things. It's funny how idealistic perfectionism can result in depression. I'm looking for a Ruby on Rails Mentor. Comment with your e-mail address if interested... I pay well.

one of her characters worried that he was not qualified.

2006-05-03T00:00:00-07:00

"Why not us?" replied the man who had invited the group together. "If more qualified people are up to the same thing, more power to them. But we don't know that, do we?"

more online music experiments

2006-05-03T00:00:00-07:00

Jane Siberry has created a fascinating new experiment in online music sales. Outlined here by freakonomics co-writer Stephen Dubner, the site offers four options for purchasing songs, and they are as follows:

free (gift from Jane)
self-determined (pay now)
self-determined (pay later so you are truly educated in your decision)
standard (todayÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s going rate is about .99)

I hope we are getting to the point where recording is really just used as promotional material for a live show, and for an artist's documentation of changing creative stages. More to come soon...

to potential investors and bands:

2006-04-28T00:00:00-07:00

Live music is the future. Why you should be interested in preposer.com: "Of the total American population, 71 percent did not attend a live concert last year...That means only 29 percent of the population do attend live concerts every year....we can group these fans based on the number of shows they attended in the past year. What we call our Occasional Goer, those who only attended one concert in the last year, represent 23 percent of the population. Our Concert Goer group, those attended two concerts in the past year, represent just four percent of the population. And finally, our heavy fans, those we have called our Concert Aficionados, who attend three or more concerts a year, represent a meager two percent of the population." (via http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2006/04/rockonomics_the.php) That being said, the music industry is starting to restructure, as indicated here: "Only four of the top 35 income-earners made more money from recordings than live concerts," the paper says. "For the top 35 artists as a whole, income from touring exceeded income from record sales by a ratio of 7.5 to one in 2002." It's a known fact among artists that they make measly profits from the sale of records. In fact, most artists see maybe a couple bucks or less from every album sold. As such, most artists make money through performances, licencing and some combination of the two. In fact, even a fair bit of the promotion is paid for by artists, such as music videos. Live music is the future.

“You’re not just blowing smoke up my ass, are you?”

2006-04-25T00:00:00-07:00

And David Mamet says: "What do you mean just?

Three is fine; two, divine.

2006-03-08T00:00:00-08:00

Hopefully this will serve as some inspiration for us.

trickeries!

Make someone else host for you.

Forget LinkedIn

This is the amazing view from my desk.

Great Article About Learning.

A Good Analogy for leaving CSG

The Tyler (Applying for a Job) Test

You don't write code, you maintain code.

Great talk from Business of Software Past.

Weekend in the Berkshires.

I love common sense responses.

Bicycle Companies, Customer Service, and Scalability

Trap!

A Great Explanation of "Marketing Bullshit"

Record Wedding Invitation (not mine

Fuck You, Pay Me

Ned, Ned Ryerson?

Why the hell not, best music of 2010 list.

About to change your life.

A *must* for Magento Developers

Cycling Sports Group

Best Video of the Year (so far)

Great Bicycle Shop

Streaming Media, Movies, TV, Audiobooks and others

Great list of tools for start-ups

Ridiculous Bikes

Wordpress vs. Drupal

Yahoo Pipes Awesomeness

Passion, Crushing It, and Elevators

Drupal and other cool XSS

Best Comedy Albums (not my list)

Fun Freelance Project I finished – Touchscreen Work

Pixel Perfect

JAPAN! MUSIC! SHOES!

Investing in the Future

The Ultimate Indie Band

My Lyrics to a Plug Song for Comedy Death Ray

A Job I didn’t take

Welcome to Athens, GA

Next Stage In My Life

Why Ad Agencies are Great!!!!!

Fantastic Criticism

A New way to Fund Pornographic ideas: cockstarter.com

Writing a relationship comedy script about a group of guys dealing with their girlfriends menstruation problems. #periodpiece

How I’m feeling today

Demetri Martin, you were great in Analyze That. #obscurereferenceman

Comedy Podcasts

Using Kickstarter to fund OpenStarter - An Open Source Version of Kickstarter

The N-Word

Dunning–Kruger effect

Truth.

True In Life

Gentrify

Forget trying to make the moon inhabitable

Four Female Customer Service Reps at a Fax Repair Company

Cool Comedy Side-project

Also, my new sketch character “Obscure Reference Boy” — Hey Jeremy Piven, Loved you as the Nervous Quick-Mart Clerk in Twenty Bucks.

Final Word: IE6 was released pre 9/11. People still using it are a bigger threat than Osama Bin Laden.

Amusing google doc presentation on heuri...

...

My dream job

MC Paul Barman is my hero

How I got my job.

Success is being who you are.

Honestly I still believe this to be the funniest piece of comedy I've ever read: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28779

luddite?

Bernard Pivot

I don't understand software licenses

CJ Doing the Jackal – http://bit.ly/13sr5t Man I miss the West Wing.

#iphoneappidea, “Running on Empty” – a timer that keeps track of how much the deficit has grown during the length of your run

Bands I've Seen Live

And I Ran – counts number of prisoners tortured in Iran during your run. #iphoneappidea

Fear

Folsom Prison

Let's take a page from drug dealers

Advice for every male friend

Dope JS Sound Interface Stuff

The First Guitar Hero - 1994

Making Flex Development a Lot Easier with Blueprint

Flip Flop Fly Ball

A must for Magento Developers