Time Travel Toaster

Moving to Posterous

2010-06-30T07:29:00.002-06:00

Blogger is old and busted. Posterous is the new hotness. You can find me here from now on: http://wesmorgan.posterous.com/

DC Transit Fail

2010-04-07T10:47:00.003-06:00

Public transit is pretty nice in DC. You have trains and busses all over town, and they run pretty frequently. By all accounts, it's a world-class city with a word-class transit system. Except that the people in charge of it are really, really stupid when it comes to technology.

That's a bold claim, but I'm prepared to back it up:

1. Google Maps knows nothing about Metro trains, and is generally confused about bus routes too. WMATA publishes the data that Google needs--in the format Google needs it in--to make Google Maps Metro-aware (you can find it here under "GTFS Download"). But they've published it under a draconian license that reserves the right to charge for it or remove it in the future. So, as you might imagine, that's not cool w/ Google. Way to do all the work and then drown at the shore, guys. More background on this here.

2. For a long time, WMATA didn't even provide this bullet-pre-installed-in-foot non-solution. Originally they refused to play along at all, saying:

Metro staff did explore some possibilities with Google, but ultimately we decided that forming a partnership with Google was not in our best interest from a business perspective. We do believe that Metro's newly redesigned Web site, at www.wmata.com, improves customers' access to information about the Metro system. In addition, customers may get real-time information and bus and rail schedules directly on their cell phones or PDAs.

Oh right, you mean the website whose trip planner determined that a co-worker of mine should use the following Metro rail route between Union Station and Shady Grove (two stops on the red line--the same freaking line):

Notice that round trip in the middle where they have you take the blue line from Metro Center to McPherson Square, then take the orange line back to Metro Center once you get there? Not all red line trains go to Shady Grove, but they should know that and their tool should be able to handle that extremely common situation. And apparently this sort of thing happens pretty often with the WMATA Trip Roulette Machine.

3. Notice how it also doesn't show you a map of your trip (like this other tool called GOOGLE MAPS does). They just want you to trust them that it's all correct. Inspiring a lot of confidence there, guys.

4. Google will always be better at this than you are, Metro tech team. I'm sorry, but it's true. You can't and shouldn't try to compete with their resources, experience, and technology. Feel free to continue banging out your trip planner tool, but please, for the love of Jeebus, let Google use your freaking transit data so those of us who prefer useful tools can get on with our lives. Please?

Thomas Merton is Wrong

2010-01-25T06:40:00.001-07:00

Ran across this quote today:

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself."

Apparently it comes from Thomas Merton in "Letter to a Young Activist."

Sigh... Fail.

I understand that things have not been easy for those of us on the
left lately. And this quote offers a tempting salve for those feelings
of frustration. But...

Not focusing on results is a bit of a pet peeve of mine in the
progressive world. It is, in my humble opinion, how we can have
multiple, well-funded non-profits for every single issue we care
about, and yet not make much progress on them. It is how we can
control two branches of national government, and yet be unable to pass
healthcare legislation, close Guantanamo, and reign in the abuses of
large corporate-persons.

Focusing on results is exactly what activists, young and old, should
constantly be doing. The real trick is understanding how to "fail
forward" (to borrow Clay Shirky's term).

Yes, you will fail. A lot. Over and over. But if you build your power
/ movement / organization during each campaign, then you will begin
again in a better position to win than you were in the last time. And
begin again you must. This is politics, and it can be used for good
or evil. We need more progressives focused on using it to achieve good
results. Otherwise, the "work itself" has no "rightness" or "truth." It's
self-delusion.

Idea: CopyCarrot

2009-10-20T18:56:00.005-06:00

I've had an idea stewing in my mind gravy for a while now that I think could be a pretty cool solution to the whole music industry fail whale thing.

I call it CopyCarrot. As in, the industry has tried the stick, now they should try the carrot. The basic idea is that you embed info in every bit of digital music (MP3 files, CDs, etc.) that contains a standardized link to the artist's PayPal account, or whatever they prefer--it shouldn't be tied to any specific payment gateway, and allows you the music fan to pay them whatever you wish for that song or album or whatever. There's no obligation, there's no digital rights management (read: restriction), just a link that allows peoples' music players to tell them, "Hey, [artist] made this. Care to throw a little money their way? (Yes / No / Stop Asking)."

It would then be tied into your iTunes / Amazon / PayPal / whatever account so that kicking the artist a buck or two would be extremely fast and easy. Obviously consumers would be able to choose if they wanted that tied together or not, it would be up to them and the software / music player they were using.

Of course many people wouldn't pay, and some people would even strip that info out of the songs they passed around the 'Net just like they do with any sort of DRM that the industry tries to add now. But I bet 2 really important things would happen:

1. Enough people would pay enough money for the music they loved that it would make life noticeably easier for artists, and it would do it with no middle man. And really, making it just a little easier for the artists would go a long way.
2. Most people would leave the info in there because it wouldn't restrict their ability to listen to the songs, and it wouldn't even nag them if they told their music player to stop pestering them about paying for their music. In general, people think artists should be compensated, and they respect systems that leave them in control of that decision. It's only when the recording industry middlemen try to impose a bunch of restrictions on how, when, and where they listen to music they have paid for that consumers try to circumvent those restrictions. CopyCarrot imposes no restrictions; it only adds information.

Software that reads this info could be configured to ask people to pay every time they start playing something new, or every X months, or every time they play a song Y+ times, or never. It could also show them what they've paid for, and what they haven't, and nifty graphs showing how much they've paid which artists, per track, per album, etc. Or how much their entire collection is worth vs. how much they've paid. But the point is, it doesn't treat fans as criminals. It recognizes that sharing music is not only a social good (it's not stealing when no one has lost anything, and great art should be shared), but also that spreading the art around helps the artist when it contains a handy link to pay them for their amazing work.

And then obviously you could start doing the same thing with movies, books, images, software, and any other kind of digital media. Artists could also offer promos to encourage people. Like, "Pay me $25 or more for my album today, and I'll get you into my next show in your town for free!" They could also embed other info like their Twitter account or their Last.fm page and then music players could link you straight to those things. It would be a direct artist-to-fan-to-artist circle of love that made everyone happy and gave fans great music and artists money in their pocket to eat food so they can make more great music. Awesome.

And then lastly, and this would be the coolest part of all, it would setup a dynamic where it was in the artists' best interests to encourage their fans to send their music far and wide, to as many people as possible, via whatever systems they prefer. The more people get those MP3's, the bigger the pie from which X% of them will pay the artist an average of $Y per track.

I think this would be pretty great. One of those things I'd like to leave my day job for awhile to go work on. But what say you, dear readers of my bloggity blog?

I <3 TDO

2009-09-22T00:08:00.002-06:00

http://thedenveromelette.wordpress.com/ ZOMG, how much do I love this blog? Can we hang out sometime? There will be booze...

The Constitution doesn't say we get healthcare

2009-08-14T19:07:00.004-06:00

"Citizens of the U.S. do not have a constitutionally guaranteed right to healthcare," I've heard many a conservative bleat. It is as though the Constitution is meant to be a document that outlines the few rights we are to be grudgingly guaranteed forever. That way we won't think we're entitled to all sorts of rights from the government. "These but no others!" they imagine it saying.

I do not believe this is intent of our founding document. The fact that it was made to be amended when necessary and that the first 10 amendments to the document are guarantees of rights pokes a big hole in that interpretation. It is also a very old precedent in our country that the Constitution does not create rights. It only enshrines those we are already endowed with into the rule of law. They are "inalienable rights." That then begs the question, where do these rights come from and what is the government's role in protecting them?

Government's role is to ensure that certain things exist in a society that are deemed too important and universally needed, and the pros of having options to choose from are far outweighed by the cons of not guaranteeing the existence of the thing in question. Certain rights fall into this category, obviously. So do, arguably, education, defense, and certain types of infrastructure. Religion has also made the list in many cultures, and you can understand why from one (archaic, crazy) perspective. But in ours, it did not because it did not pass the final test in the framers' minds (among other tests in some of their minds).

All but the most anarchic libertarians would argue that defense, roads, street signs, street lights, police, firemen, etc. are good to have provided by a government. Imagine if we each had to buy into a separate military, police force, or road company and they all competed with each other. It would be a mess.

So where does healthcare fall into this equation in 21st century America? It's certainly very important, perhaps 3rd in a list right after food and shelter. It's absolutely universally needed. In fact, we already pay for universal healthcare for illegal immigrants, poor people, and everyone else. We just pay extra for them to land in the emergency room because that's the first type of healthcare available to them.

The last point is where you could make a case against some types of universal healthcare. The British system, for example, being fully socialized (i.e. the public owns all the buildings and pays the doctors and nurses), does limit UK citizens choices a bit. I would still take it any day over the American excuse for a system. It's like forcing people to eat at a free buffet that's always there rather than "letting them choose" from several different restaurants they could never afford to eat at. Not a difficult choice when you're left high and dry by the latter option.

However, the two systems being debated as reform options here in the US (and the system in Germany and many other countries) do not do this. Single-payer and the "public option" still leave private healthcare providers intact. The latter option even leaves the existing insurance system intact, it just allows the government to compete with it (I think this is a far inferior option to single-payer, though). Choice is increased, but more people are brought into a more cost-effective and more socially just healthcare system. Win-win-win.

I think you could make a very strong case that the framers of the Constitution, were they writing the document in 2009, may very well have included a right to healthcare. And if we the people actually ran our representative government like we're supposed to (rather than letting corporate special interests do the dirty work against our own best interests), then such an amendment to the Constitution would quite likely be on the table or already long-ratified.

Hello Darkness My Old Friend

2009-08-05T15:57:00.005-06:00

Wow, long time no blog. Not. OK.

I'm hanging out at Kilgore Books and Comics today. It's a great place if you like to read things and happen to find yourself in downtown Denver. Also the banter between owners Luke J. and Dan S. is priceless. You'll be humming the odd couple theme all the way home.

I found a new Denver blog that so far I totally <3. It's called The Denver Omelette (you see what they did there?) and you can find it here: http://thedenveromelette.wordpress.com/. I mean, the top post right now is titled, "DO NOT Jack in my Box." Yes.

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately: What's the best way to be an informed citizen of our great democracy? Is it to absorb news from any and all sources coming from any and all points on the political spectrum? Or is it to focus on the objective sources (do these even exist)? Most people would say you shouldn't just pay attention to things that you agree with. It's immature, prevents you from accurately weighing all sides of a debate, yadda yadda yadda.

I call bullshit. If some right-wing pundit tells me that the sky is orange because the Flying Spaghetti Monster he worships says it is in the Scroll of Pasta, I don't feel super compelled to listen to that argument or give it any weight in my consideration of the contentious and profound issue of what color the sky is. Add to that the fact that the mainstream media will then spend hours debating whether or not the sky is orange in an attempt to appear balanced on the issue, and I don't really feel like I need to pay attention to them either. Then someone like Rachel Maddow will have a scientist on her show to explain why the sky is blue. Is it just me, or is real news only on the left these days? It's like Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." Don't get me wrong, there are annoying shouty people on the left too (Olberman and O'Reilly are twin demon man-babies sent here by Papa Satan to make sure we have enough assholes to go around). But if you want intelligent discussion by experts on issues that actually matter, nothing comes closer right now than the Rachel Maddows, Amy Goodmans, and Jon Stewarts of the world. Oh shit that last one hosts a fake news program. That says more about how shitty most of the "real media" is than anything else.

Anyway, your thoughts, dear readers?

Burrito Madness '09

2009-02-11T11:10:00.018-07:00

OK, so my friend Colin got struck by an idea bolt in his mind grapes the other day. He wants to have a Denver burrito challenge where we eat a burrito every week from a different restaurant and rate them. At the end of our exhaustive list of burrito-serving venues, we'll declare a winner.

We'll use a 1-5 burrito scale to rate each tubular, tortilla-shrouded beast. Like so:

Really good burrito:
Not so good burrito:
Best friggin' burrito ever:

You get the idea. There may also be short reviews involved if we're feeling verbose.

The team is currently composed of me, Colin, Anne B., and Mari S. Our first stop will be Illegal Pete's on 2/12. After that we'll be visiting (in no particular order):

Chipotle
Qdoba
D'Corazon
El Taco de Mexico
Big City Burrito
Wahoo's Fish Taco

Why is that burrito-sellers always emphasize that lesser-of-the-handheld-pseudo-Mexican-foodstuffs, the taco, in their names? Come on, muchachos, El Burrito de Mexico and Wahoo's Fish Burrito sound so much more appealing to this gringo's orejas.

UPDATE: This didn't happen. Oh well.

Refreshingly deep analysis of Israeli / Palestinian conflict

2009-01-19T11:43:00.003-07:00

This article, in the American Conservative of all places, is a refreshingly deep and sober analysis of the Israeli / Palestinian conflict. I'm not saying you should take everything it says on face value, but it does go into much more detail than any other coverage I've seen recently, and is written by a fairly reputable source (political science professor at the University of Chicago).

The other interesting thing is the conservative angle here, which is something along the lines of, "Conservatives like Israel. Israel's current strategy is not only bad for Palestinians, but also for its own long-term survival. So Israel should change course." This ends up being a fairly nuanced analysis as a result. It also avoids the conservative tendency to ignore the humanitarian tragedy component.

I tend to give well-written, non-conspiracy-nut pieces like this the benefit of the doubt until the mainstream and/or conventional wisdom crowd can answer with an equally deep, nuanced rebuttal that treats all parties involved as real, contemporary people with real, contemporary problems (as opposed to the "Muslins have always and will always be terrists!" line of thinking).

Cause and effect

2008-10-21T19:50:00.005-06:00

Cause.

Effect.

There you have it. So if Palin visits your town, just put your mail on your mailbox. You just may live to get the reply.

Here's a handy graph to further illuminate the danger we all now face:

It's Debatable?

2008-10-03T11:30:00.003-06:00

The Chicago Tribune has an article today about last night's Biden v. Palin smackdown. It's title is "The winner? It's debatable." But look how the article starts out:

They were in the same room Thursday night, but Joe Biden and Sarah Palin often seemed to be participating in separate debates. One debate dealt with issues. The other served as a platform for Palin's unique brand of Alaskan-bred populism and twangy asides.

Uh... Is it just me or is it a sad day in America when "issues" vs. "twangy asides" constitutes a toss-up in the Vice Presidential Debate? FAIL.

What Margaret Mead should have said

2008-09-15T13:11:00.003-06:00

Everyone's heard this quote: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

She should have said this: "Never doubt that changing the world requires hard work, setback, frustration, and anger. Indeed, those forces applied over too long a time are the only thing that ever has."

Nowhere near as catchy, but she probably could have said it more eloquently.

Seriously though, she didn't mean your drum circle has to visualize world peace, people.

Goodbye George, we'll miss you

2008-06-25T21:56:00.002-06:00

This is great. Choice quote: "Not every ejaculation deserves a name."

Bed Stuy, I love you but you're bringing me down

2008-04-27T12:35:00.006-06:00

Only the first part of that really applies, but I had to finish the LCD Soundsystem reference. :)

Exhibit A: Bergemann in her birthday girl hat

Phew, back in Denver after a whirlwind tour of the Right Coast. Meetings in Boston followed by hanging w/ the C-Berg in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, New York. Big ups to Bergemann for showin' a guy a great time, and not even making him sleep in the streets at the end of the day!

Highlights:

Getting a citation for drinking beer on Crystal's stoop the first day I get there. Bad. Ass.
All the food! We had Mexican, Japanese, Indian, Polish, Cuban, Italian (OK, it was pizza, but it came free with the beer at the Crocodile Lounge, so shut up), Chinese, and cookie dough. Mmm... cookie dough.
New York. What a spectacular place. There's 25 things that are unique and great hidden on every city block. Gotta find 'em all!
People. Not only did John Harris come down and hang with us a bit (always a good time), but I also got to meet lots of Crystal's New York friends and one of Dan's high school friends. Good peeps to a (wo)man. As if that wasn't enough, Drew and John came down on Friday and made us drink an unintelligent amount. It's our ranch, and it's our home.
Crystal. One of the nicest, most fun, most willing to eat cookie dough in raw form girls I know. You rock, Bergemann.

Lowlights:

Getting a citation for drinking beer on Crystal's stoop. Which means it's now more problematic to drink beers on Crystal's stoop, which would be the worst tragedy ever to befall New York if 9/11 hadn't, you know, mainly happened there.
Not still being there.

Here's to August, a.k.a. the Triumphant Return.

Knocking On People's Doors, Which I Don't Know If I Agree With

2008-04-21T13:45:00.005-06:00

A conversation I'm overhearing (and liveblogging) in a coffee shop in Brooklyn between the barista and some customers:

"What did you do this weekend?"
"I went to Philly, did a little campaigning."
"Oh, for the B-Rock?"
"Yeah. I've never done it before."
"What does that entail?"
"Knocking on people's doors, which I don't know if I agree with, personally. It's a bit intrusive."
"Yeah..."
"Because politics is SO sensitive, especially in this race."

We need to change this attitude. I'm willing to bet (nay, guarantee) that it's the dominant one in this country today. Don't get me wrong, it's great that Obama is turning people out to canvass who have never done it before in states they don't even live in. That r0x0rs. Go B-Rock.

BUT! If we're going to take social change to the masses, then regular people need to start feeling comfortable with interacting with other people face-to-face about politics. I think there are two components to this:

The annoying salesman problem: Knocking on strangers' doors because you agreed to when asked by someone else to do it (whether for money or altruism or anything in between) immediately evokes the vacuum salesman frame. We should try to shift this to a "meet new people" or "explore and discover new places" frame. White people eat that shit up. "I was back-packing neighborhoods in Philly." Response from all white people in the room: "Wow!" Not that I think minorities wouldn't / couldn't / shouldn't participate. I'm just speaking for my fellow honkies.
The religion and politics problem: You know, the only two things you don't bring up in polite company. This one is actually fascinating to me, because one of the things I studied heavily in college was how the evangelical Christianity movement in the U.S. had made Christianity into a totally individualistic religion. It's about whether or not you are saved, how your relationship with Jesus is, etc. It wasn't always like that. So it's ironic that the two "private" topics in this country are religion and politics. Not that that leads to a way out of this frame, I just think it's interesting.

New Orleans

2008-03-29T15:47:00.004-06:00

Last week I was in New Orleans for a conference. It was my first time there and I have to say, I was impressed. I'd heard a lot about how great it was, some from people I trust and some from people I don't. Either way, the potential for overhype was great and I was ready for a let down.

Nope. It's sweet.

Remember right after Hurricane Katrina hit and lots of people were saying things like, "They should just pack up and move New Orleans. It's ridiculous to rebuild it." No one who's ever been there would say that. I don't care if we have to build a glass dome over it because global warming makes killer hurricanes run rampant. New Orleans is a national treasure.

Seriously, it's like a white liberal paradise. Culture! Non-threatening minorities! Food! Music! Corner shops, bars, and restaurants where you can find all four! I wanna go back.

Yes, I'm a Philistine

2008-03-13T01:01:00.002-06:00

The second opener was better than the headliner and Across the Universe is a great movie if you've loved and lost and had 5 beers.

Fail.

2008-02-23T12:13:00.002-07:00

Funny cuz it's...

2008-02-17T10:47:00.002-07:00

true.

Hombres Necios

2008-02-09T13:00:00.000-07:00

This almost makes me wish I had caucused for Clinton instead of Obama.

We've all heard those polls that say Obama beats McCain in the general but McCain and Clinton are tied, right? According to this article, the lion's share of that difference is men. They'll vote for Obama for President, but as soon as you swap him out for Hillary Clinton, they vote for McCain. WTF? Not shocking, but annoying as hell.

You'll also notice in the article that there is no corresponding shift among women voters between Clinton and Obama in the general election. A voting bloc that makes up 51% of the population who has never had a member of their group in the White House supports both candidates about equally. God forbid we cede our 200+ year political winning streak to these subversives.

I'd like to take this opportunity to, once again, apologize for the stupidity of my gender.

Three Way

2008-02-07T20:08:00.000-07:00

Not long ago in a bar not very far away, a funny thing happened. You see, I was chillaxing with a couple of charming ladies whom I think are approximately 14x cooler than me. So far so good, right? Well, one of them, let's call her "Elana," was intrigued that I had one of these "blog" things. After I explained things a bit, her keen intellect grasped the opportunity before her. Before I knew it, she had offered to triple my revenue by joining forces and guest blogging on the Toaster. The other girl, we'll call her "Meshawn," agreed to be in on the action. Meanwhile I'm multiplying zero times three in my head.

So, ladies, I've sent you your invitations. Let's see what you've got. Elana & Meshawn, time to pony up. I think my entire fanbase would agree that the world is awaiting your debuts in the blogosphere with baited breath.

Caucusing instead

2008-02-05T22:34:00.000-07:00

Tonight I caucased for Obama and said goodbye to a girl I'm a big fan of. I spent more time with Obama. He better not fuck me on this. Right now I'm drinking at Precinct 533's favorite bar, Gabor's. So here's to bad timing and may it leave me be.

Screwed by Bad Timing

2008-02-03T22:38:00.000-07:00

Sunday Blues again. Tonight I'm worrying that I don't invest myself enough in my friends. Like maybe they think I'm kinda "meh" about them sometimes. Hopefully some of them know that's not the case, I'm just good at being my dad (biodad). So I've been reading all of their blogs and re-realizing how cool they all are. I'm thinking about something else too, but not yet ready to blog about it.

Anyway, here are some shout-outs to some of my friends who might read this (in no particular order):

Dan: I miss you buddy. You've only been gone for the weekend, but I've been wishing you'd been here the whole time. Everything's less fun when you're not around.
Crystal: I hope you move to Denver. I feel like you and I are kinda similar in that we make people work at getting under our thick skins. I'll show you mine if you show me yours. ;)
Drew: You should also move to Denver, though I feel like that's a more remote possibility, so I'll content myself w/ regular visits. My favorite thing about you is that you're less afraid to wear your fears on your sleeve than I am. I'm jealous of that.
Will: I like that we've reached a point in our friendship where we can cuss each other out in a totally joking manner, but still reveal just enough biting truth that it keeps us from getting too full of ourselves. I hope you know that I respect and admire your opinion. I'm not always good at making that apparent in the moment.
Mari: I think you and I have a funny friendship where we make subtle gestures to remind each other that we're BFF but otherwise play it cool. So here, I'm making it official: You're one of my favorite people ever and I love you like a sister.
Shelley: I sometimes worry that you don't realize how smart and kick-ass you are. Srsly. Both personally and professionally, you have your shit so together it makes me feel like a huge slacker sometimes.

Perhaps obviously, I could post one of these for each of my friends (and family, for that matter). But I think that's the bulk of my readership on here (thanks for sticking w/ me through the dry spells). If you run across this post and feel sad because you're not mentioned above, let me know and I'll add yours to the list.

Political Journalism an oxymoron?

2008-01-21T17:03:00.000-07:00

Here is a very interesting article on political journalism and why it sucks so badly. "Yawn," you may be thinking, "I've read that one before. Several times." You're potentially right, but give this one a go.

The point, once it gets there, is that political journalism shouldn't focus on who is going to win, but on who should win. An excerpt from the end of the article:

"[T]he job of the campaign press is not to preempt the voters' decision by asking endlessly, and predicting constantly, who's going to win. The job is to make certain that what needs to be discussed will be discussed in time to make a difference - and then report on that."

Damn skippy. The article starts out by claiming that the media is a mindless beast that does horse race political coverage because that's what everyone else does. It then starts to make the case that "expertise" in this field (namely, predicting political outcomes determined by voters) is dubious at best. This dovetails interestingly with a book I read recently called Super Crunchers that pretty much debunks all form of human "expertise" where it concerns analyzing data and making predictions based on that (and instead claims that machines can make much more accurate predictions, so we should let them do the predicting while we spend our brain cells on more creative, humany things like imagining what else we could have machines predict for us).

Combining these two perspectives, one could make the case that not only is horse race political journalism bad for democracy (in the sense that it pretends to predict outcomes but actually ends up unduly influencing them), but it's also a job much better left to number crunchers than so-called political "experts" who are terrible at it anyway. How many points was Obama supposed to win NH by, again? That would then free up real journalists to cover real issues and where candidates stand on them. Imagine that.

Morey Middle School is a Drug-Free Zone

2008-01-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

1,000 words, indeed.

uncov = douche

2008-01-18T09:32:00.000-07:00

I recently put uncov into my feed reader at the suggestion of some friends. I found it mildly humorous at times. But seriously, homeboy is a douchebag that mostly pisses me off. So I'm calling it: uncov = fail.

Apparently at uncov it's a rant-worthy occurrence when a woman blogs about programming but not über-geekily enough for Ted's liking. Lame post here.

Keep churning out those oh-so-clever "LOLZ!!!1! FALE!!!!one!!" Photoshop abortions, gang!

Possible Explanation for Clinton's Victory in New Hampshire?

2008-01-10T17:10:00.000-07:00

Apparently in counties where hand-counting was used, Obama won. Guess what brand of voting machines the other counties use? More info available here:
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/10/1635225

Denver election results

2007-11-07T02:47:00.000-07:00

As I'm about to go to bed at 10 minutes until 3:00am on Election Day (technically the morning after), the local news sites are abuzz with the news that the Denver Police (including the SWAT team) have been called in to help count. Apparently, the turnout in Denver was around 47%. To put this in perspective, the last time the turnout was just barley above 40% was when a critical tax measure was on the ballot (in 2005, Referenda C & D were the hot button issues on the ballot all over the state as they proposed to temporarily overturn the Libertarian-foolishness that is TABOR). The conventional wisdom was that this election would have a turnout between 30 and 35%. Not even close.

This turnout is remarkably higher than anything those in the "know" were expecting for our fair city. Why?

I have some theories. First, I think the youth vote (18 - 35) will have played a big role in this election. Secondly, I think every age demographic has turned out more than the pundits expected. The reason being that they wanted to vote for the mayor's civic improvement initiatives (A-I). These common sense property tax increases (which amount to peanuts for Denver property owners) will enable our city to stop being penny-wise and pound-foolish and actually keep our civic infrastructure (museums, libraries, cultural facilities, etc.) up to snuff. Mayor Hickenlooper rules. Funny name, serious mayor.

So the verdict will be (you heard it here first) that young people care about their beloved Denver and that everyone in this fair city wants to see it blossom. This is what democracy looks like.

I <3 Trains...

2007-09-13T09:23:00.001-06:00

...and so do all of you, apparently. (If by "all of you" I mean the 4 people who regularly read/comment on my blog + the random interlopers I recruited w/ my direct e-mail campaign.)

It seems like the train idea is the big winner overall for birthday ideas. I couldn't be happier about that outcome. I was afraid everyone would shoot that down since I kinda assume I'm the only "train buff" in the group. Usually train buffs (don't you love that term?) are retired old men who play with model trains in their garage. Oh to dream.

However, there's a fly in our double steel railed ointment: The scenic trains in Colorado are amazing, popular, and thus not cheap. The Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad (the crème de la crème of scenic trains, IMHO) costs $65 a pop. Now, I would happily pay this again and again to ride this train round trip from Durango to Silverton through one of the most beautiful parts of the generally not-ugly Centennial State. I realize, though, that this may be a little rich for some others' blood. (Or am I, yet again, underestimating the extent of everyone's closeted train buffiness?)

There are cheaper options too. Such as the Royal Gorge Railroad, which while not a steam train, still looks wicked awesome. It costs $30 per person. Sadly the Georgetown Loop Railroad is closed for maintenance, or that would be an excellent option. It's close to Denver and a steam train.

OMGWTFLOLZBBQ!!1!!one!1! I just went to the Georgetown Loop site, and it's running again! w00t! This train costs $20 per person. If we're planning to go on Saturday, October 6 (which seems like the best option) we should probably book our tickets now. And hey, if we get 20+ people to come, there are group rates! ;) I think we found a winner.

What do you guys n' gals think?

3 Cubed

2007-09-10T21:36:00.000-06:00

On the fifth day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand, nine hundred and eighty, a baby boy was born. That boy had a destiny. But on the way to that destiny, he would turn 27. 3³. And this semi-momentous day would occur on October 5th, 2007. Hey, that's not so far away.

So here's the deal, fools. I'm turning 27 on October 5, and you need to be there. If you live within 800 miles of Denver, then there's no excuse. If you live further than that, then there's only a partial excuse^*.

There have been a few ideas batted around for the celebration of this awesome day (some would call it a "milestone"). Here they are in no particular order:

Random meats served at the local Brazilian meatery. I eat meat every year on my birthday, and this place has the best of the best (we're talking rattlesnake sausage here kids). It's $38 / person, but you get a red-light/green-light indicator at your table. As long as that pooch is green, you're getting some more meat.
13th Ave. pub crawl. This would entail starting at Pints at 13th & Cherokee and working our way east to Wyman's No. 5 at 13th & Vine. One. Epic. Night. of Drinking.
Ft. Collins brewery tours followed by Coopersmith's for dinner. If you've been there, you know.
Sushi!
Train adventure in the mountains. The Royal Gorge, the Georgetown Loop, the Durango & Silverton Narrowgauge. I don't care, I love 'em all. But a kiss (on the mouth) for anyone who hooks up the steam loco action. Followed by boozing at ye olde mountainous pub.
Other (please comment).

Please cleave a comment indicating which party option you prefer. I may or may not take your views into consideration.

^*The partial excuse entails the following caveat: In the event of non-attendance of my 27th birthday, I reserve the right to hold your non-attendance against you indefinitely. For example, if you are invited to Denver at some point in the future but attempt to bail out, I may say something akin to the following: "But you missed my... *sniff*... birthday. (cue puppy dog eyes)" Yeah, that's right. The eyes'll getcha every time.

Kurzweil's brain

2007-09-09T15:25:00.000-06:00

Back in college (I know, yawn) I took a class about the broader moral and ethical implications of my chosen field (Computer Science, shockingly). A large section of it was about the future of computer science and what ethical issues we would face if someday we were able to create human (or superhuman) artificial intelligence, for example. During this part of the class, we read several essays written by Ray Kurzweil. The musically-inclined among you may recognize that as a brand name for synthesizers. That's the same guy.

When not inventing synthesizers, Dr. Kurzweil writes about what the future may look like if we continue on our present explosive growth of technology track (not in a pessimistic way, but the things he predicts are pretty wild, so you could interpret some of it in a dystopian fashion if you were so inclined).

I remember one of his most interesting essays that we read was about the nature of the human mind. The idea was that your mind was the software that makes you you and this "You" program runs on your brain (like Mozilla Firefox runs on your computer). Starting from that premise, he says that it's not that crazy to think we could build a little computer chip that mimicked the behavior of a single neuron. They are, after all, relatively simple in and of themselves. You could then take one of these synthetic neuro-chip doo dads and have a brain surgeon replace one of the neurons in your brain with it. Assuming it did its job, you probably wouldn't notice anything weird. You'd go right on thinking and feeling like you were you.

But then suppose the brain surgeon didn't stop there and just kept right on replacing your neurons with synthetic ones. Would you notice a change at any point? In theory, replacing them one at a time, you could even stay conscious throughout the procedure. Eventually, your whole brain would be made up of synthetic neurons. You'd have a computer brain. You could then upgrade that brain w/ more or faster synthetic neurons or copy the "software" (you) onto a different computer (possibly faster, more powerful one).

So then you have some interesting questions to ask at that point. What makes you, you? If you were able to augment your brain to make it faster, able to store more memories, or more accurate memories, would that mean you were no longer human at some level? What about an AI that is as smart (or smater than) a human that we created ourselves? Should it be afforded the same rights that a human would be? After all, if you were to put your mind onto a computer, you'd probably still want basic human rights like it being illegal to pull the plug on you or install Windows on you. ;)

Anyway, my friend Emily and I were discussing these things while I was staying with her in Chicago. I think it kinda freaked her out. Sorry, Emily! :) I found this site, which has all kinds of fun things to make you afraid of what the world might be like by the middle of this century. Just kidding, sorta.

And no, this didn't come up because I'm in Boulder right now. The contact high isn't that good.

iPhones, ski passes, and credit cards

2007-09-06T09:41:00.000-06:00

Yesterday The Steve announced that the 8GB iPhone only costs $399 now. When I bought it a couple months ago (early July, to be exact), it cost $599. Yeah, $200 price drop.

The thing is, the iPhone is a 100% gratuitous purchase. I shouldn't have spent 1 penny on it (because, after all, you can get cell phones for free and I already owned an iPod nano). For some twisted reason, that makes the price drop not annoying at all. What's the difference if I blow $600 or $400 on something? It was still a stupid purchase that I totally love and don't regret buying in the slightest. So yeah, if I'd known this would happen on September 5, I probably would have waited. But if I knew when the next-generation iPhone was coming out, I'd probably wait for that too. C'est la vie.

But thanks for your concern, everyone! :)

In other news, I recently also purchased a Winter Park ski pass for this year. Yet another totally stupid purchase that I won't spend one day regretting.

At some point the credit does run out, though.

Marion House Stay of Execution

2007-09-04T19:37:00.000-06:00

At the last minute, 11:59pm, Governor Ritter called to cancel the execution of the Marion House. 1311 Marion will continue to be the home of Luke, Dan, Will, and yours truly for the foreseeable future.

However, if anyone moves out, I'm probably gonna push for dissolution of the house. I just don't think I can bring myself to posting a "smokers need not apply" ad on craigslist. Vomit.

Backpedaling

2007-08-27T20:45:00.000-06:00

OK, correction time: We haven't yet actually decided to move. I may have jumped the gun a little there.

We have a house meeting on Thursday to discuss our options.

But let's have an informal netroots poll first! Please indicate in the comments your preference among the following options (in the interest of transparency, please fully disclose your affiliation with the Marion House):

Move, move, move! The landlord's goin' nazi, the rent's goin' up. Get outta there!
Look around, see what else is out there. If you find a better deal, go for it. If not, stay there.
It's cool if you move as long as you find Marion House 2.0 w/ equal or greater party-having possibilities.
Are you fucking crazy? You can't shut down the Marion House! This is a lot bigger than you, Dan, Will, and Luke now. You don't have the right!
Other (please elaborate)

Intro / Sweet Jane

2007-08-26T19:25:00.000-06:00

I'm back in Denver, and feeling a little restless. Every time I visit old friends I start feeling this way when I return home. I think it's because I re-notice all the things that I'm not content with about my life.

Don't get me wrong, my life rules. But there are things I would change. Maybe I'll have to blog about that in the future. Though that's not super groundbreaking; everyone feels that way to some extent. It could just be a case of the Sunday Blues.

But, I'm listening to some live Lou Reed, so that's helping. And I am definitely happy to be home for awhile. Denver really is a great town. There's nothing like being away for a week to remind me of that.

I think what may be making the Sunday Blues hit home today is the realization that the Marion House is coming to an end. At first I thought, we're probably moving soon, but that doesn't mean anything has to change. But really it very well could. If we get a smaller place, or a place further from the heart of Cap Hill, or any number of other variables, then it may not be the Marion House anymore. And really, that's OK. I don't hate change, in fact I kind of like it. I think you need to mix things up every once in awhile to keep things interesting. I'm just a little apprehensive about this one because, let's face it, the Marion House rules. Oh well, it will be what we make it.

I've never been able to properly explain myself in this climate

2007-08-23T22:01:00.000-06:00

It's so humid in Chicago. I can't sleep. Crystal's post about insomnia finally convinced me to stop kidding myself. There's a bed right next to me, but the prospect of lying in it for a few hours, dripping with sweat, is about as appealing as... well, something that's not very appealing. Analogies are lost on me in this sweltering jungle.

So, here's some random blogging from the dark side of the circadian rhythm.

I saw a bluegrass band the other night at a bar here in Rogers Park called the Red Line Tap. Appropriately, it's right along the red line of the L. I never could tell what people were saying the name of this band was. I'm pretty sure it's either Sexfest or Sexfist. Either way, not something you'd immediately think, "Oh yeah, Appalachian banjo, steel guitar, and fiddle." But wow, these guys were amazing. We're talking old school stuff here. A lot of original material, some Hank Williams, some old gospel songs. These guys are the real deal. I'll get back to you on that name...

One thing I always notice in Chicago is how much more integrated it is than Denver. Some people think Denver's not diverse, which is just incorrect. But I understand why they think that. Denver is disturbingly segregated. Sometimes I want to move out of Cap Hill just to get away from whitey a little bit. But then I think, am I going to hang out w/ these newly discovered minorities? Will they suddenly be my friends even though the young, white, middle class people in my current neighborhood aren't unless they already were for some other reason? Seems unlikely. But who knows, I'll have to give it some more thought...

Speaking of moving. We got a letter from Ed (the landlord) the other day. He says he's raising the rent again. $50 / month increases every 6 months starting in March of next year. $50 in March of '08, $50 in September of '08. $50 more in March and September of '09. Whatevz. Not the first time he's done it, not entirely unexpected, and hey, at least he gave us ample notice. However, the thing that really grinds my gears (bonus points if you instinctively just read that in a heavy Rhode Island nasally accent) is another little clause he added. Apparently, any new people who move into the house have to be non-smokers. That is, not just can they not smoke inside (which none of us ever do), they have to not have the personal habit of smoking. Two of my most favorite roommates are smokers. And you know what? I don't want to live somewhere where they're not welcome. Did we lose a war? Fuck that shit. So I pretty much want to move ASAP. Dan's trying to calm my righteous indignation. He always does that. I routinely get angrier about things that are personal affronts to him than he does. That's how we roll.

I've also been thinking about trying to buy a place. Since that's what the cool kids are doing these days. But all this sub-prime, liquidity, foreclosure rate craziness is freaking me out a little. I don't understand half of it. It just sounds bad. I'm like a crazy old woman when it comes to this stuff. New scary words I don't understand!!! Flee the unknown!! Take comfort in old prejudices, no matter how socially destructive!!! Or something like that... (I told you analogies were lost on me right now.)

OK, time for some more water.

And I'm back. So tomorrow is Friday and I'm going downtown w/ some old friends to eat some gen-you-wine Chicago deep dish pizza at the one, the only, Uno's. Now I know what you may be thinking. You're thinking, "I've been there. They're all over the suburbs of [insert city name here]. It's a'ight, I guess." No, my friend. No. Unless you've been to the orig, THE Uno's in downtown Chicago, you have not had deep dish pizza. It's the flakiest lard-based pie crust ever piled high with layers of cheese, sauce, toppings, more cheese, more sauce. Oh man. It clogs your veins with delicious. I'm pretty pumped (and triple-bypassed).

Overall, Chicago trip is a success. I've seen some good people. Met some new people. Ridden some trains (always a bonus for me). I'm pretty excited to head back to Denver, though.

One last thing (for the extra special friends who've made it all this way): Mark your calendars now for the party of the new, old, and every millennium. Yes, that's right. The LAST PARTY AT THE MARION HOUSE! We're moving sometime next year, probably. So you should just mark all of 2008 (and most of the rest of 2007 just to be safe) as "busy" because sweet Jesus are we gonna party. It's pretty much going to be the greatest thing to occur on planet Earth, ever. And you're all coming. No, seriously, you are.

OK, I'm going to attempt to sleep now. Goodnight friends, may the morning find you happier, wiser, or if nothing else, near a toilet for that wicked morning piss.

Top Gun: Calvin Edition

2007-08-21T19:16:00.001-06:00

Calvin videos on YouTube? Oh yes. We are so... white.

Coal: Cheap. Abundant. Cheap.

2007-08-12T13:11:00.001-06:00

This is brill.

Simpsons Movie

2007-07-30T19:07:00.001-06:00

OK, so the Simpsons movie was really good. I already want to see it again. The reason it was so good is that they didn't worry about the hype. It's a longer episode of the Simpsons with slightly deeper characters and somewhat cooler animation. Both things are subtle, though. I think this was exactly the right way to do it.

Anything with as much hype-potential as THE SIMPSONS MOVIE could easily have been a huge disaster. I knew I had nothing to fear from the opening scene, however. From the 20th Century Fox logo (w/ Ralph singing along to the fanfare inside the zero), they panned up to the moon w/ very melodramatic music in an obvious nod to the potential bad directions they could have taken this movie ("Hey, I know! Let's have The Simpsons... ON THE MOON!!"). Lo and behold, it's an Itchy and Scratchy episode. Brill.

OK, no more spoilers. If you haven't seen it, go. If you have, comment below. And agree w/ me or pay the price. This my house, bitch.

Coming out of the closet

2007-07-14T17:00:00.000-06:00

Not that I'm really in the closet, but I am admitting it publicly now. I'm an iPhone fanboy. They rule. I love mine to a perhaps immoral extent.

However, I do have a few gripes. Just so everyone knows I'm not a complete fanatic. Or something...

Gripe #1: No bluetooth syncing. Sweet merciful lord Jobs, why the hell can't the iPhone sync over bluetooth!? My MacBook Pro has bluetooth. My iPhone has bluetooth. Turn them both on, and they'll even see each other. But that's as far it gets. Awkward sidelong glances all night, but nobody sacks up and asks the other one to dance. This match made in heaven doesn't even get to first base. That's just... cruel.
Gripe #2: No multi-recipient SMS messages. OK, this is dumb. My Motorola V220 (huh? exactly.) that I bought 2.5 years ago can do this. The phone I had before that, some black on green screen Nokia job, could do this too. Sending text messages to a whole group of people all at once is just about one of the most convenient things in the universe when you're trying to get a whole mob to descend on the bar for a critical night of drinking, for example. Sigh...
Gripe #3: No third-party apps. This one ain't gonna last. Mark my words, the iPhone will be opened to third-party apps. It's just a matter of time. It may not be this revision, but it will happen. In a perfect world, Steve Co. would announce that only open source apps are going to be allowed on the iPhone so Apple can scour the source code all they want (and hell, they can even control distribution for all I care). That'd be sweet, but seems pretty unlikely. I've tried some of the web apps that are supposed to be the band-aid for this gaping wound. Some of them (such as the BeeJive IM program) are pretty cool as far as web apps go. But it's still nowhere near the experience you can get from a real, honest-to-goodness native app (especially when you try to use that shit over EDGE, which stands for Slow As Frozen Molasses, somehow).
Gripe #4: It's a cell phone. OK, so that's not really the gripe. But it is indirectly. AT&T (the new Cingular, the old SBC, the old Southwestern Bell, the old AT&T) is one of the most vile companies in existence. I loathe that my money goes to them every month. This is sort of a meta-gripe, because it leads to all kinds of things I hate. For example, we'll probably never see the ability to make phone calls via WiFi and VoIP because of this satanic soul-selling. Not to mention the whole telecommunications monopoly resurrection thing. Looks like it's back to the bad old days. Thanks pro-corporate Republican administration!

I'll probably come up with more...

And yes, this is a tactic to lower the market value of the iPhone so I can more easily afford to buy the revision 2 one that's coming out right before Christmas with 3G data support!!! OMG!!1!!!one!!!

The speech I want the Democratic nominee to give

2007-06-30T11:26:00.001-06:00

It's frustrating to be a Democratic (or a Democratic sympathizer) these days. They tend to be spineless, wishy-washy, poll-slaves that don't end up accomplishing much. All too often, the best thing they have going for them is that they aren't Republicans.

Part of that is a messaging problem. Most Democrats don't know what it means to be a Democrat, or they can't articulate it well. And the party itself doesn't offer much help. You can't act on principles you don't have and can't talk about.

That's why it was very refreshing, even inspiring, to read this speech written by John F. Kennedy's former speech writer Theodore C. Sorensen. If the Democratic nominee for President says something like this in Denver a little over a year from now, it will be a good day. Not to be a Democrat, but to be an American. And it's been a long time since that felt good.

The end of this song makes sense now!

2007-06-28T09:30:00.001-06:00

You know the Daft Punk song "One More Time?" 'Course ya do. Anyway, you know how at the end the beat stops and there's just this synthesized bell tolling? Weird, right? Well the video explains it! Evil-types attack the huge concert where the song is being performed. The bell is your garden variety "for whom the bell tolls" sorta bell. It's anime, so that's a perfectly plausible story line. It's all very dramatic...

Meta-irony

2007-06-23T12:45:00.001-06:00

I just got friend requested from "elitist hipster snob" on MySpace. Normally I just deny these spurious requests from bands and porn sites, but the tagline on this profile is, "myspacing ironically since 2007."

Brill.

It's so post-post-modern I may just have to accept them as my friend. They claim to live in Denver and have lots of cool Denvery stuff in their profile (bands & bars mostly), so I don't feel like a complete tool in doing so.

Let's make a democracy out of it: Based on the evidence presented here, who thinks I should accept "elitist hipster snob" as my MySpace friend? Please backup your vote with circumstantial evidence and/or irrational justifications. Thanks for playing.

Ugh! Cinco de Mustache!

2007-06-21T18:49:00.000-06:00

OK so it's been like 1 million years since Cinco de Mustache and I just got my pictures up on Flickr. I know, I'm the blurst photographer ever. Whatevz.

For those not in the know, Cinco de Mustache is that day every May 5 when mustachioed men and women gather to celebrate the upper lip and the hair that grows there. It's a long and storied tradition, dating back to various mustache-inspired military victories of the Mexican army over some Frenchies. w00t.

To see all the photo documentation, go to my Flickr page.

Here are some choice samples:

Super Blog Friends!

2007-06-20T14:40:00.001-06:00

I just want to say how excited I am about our little blog network we have going on. Myself, Dan, Drew, and Crystal pretty much rotate among each others' blogs leaving snarky comments. We rule.

I'm learning to like Wilco's new album. It's different from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, which isn't a bad thing in and of itself. But at first it seemed less... unique? Anyway, I have to listen to an album in at least three different contexts before I can decide whether I like it or not:

On my iPod while walking down the street, preferably with lots of other people around.
On my home stereo with the sweet, sweet sub. Mmmm... bass.
At some sort of hanging-out (KGB would say "ch-hanging ar-round") type event.

I've got 1 & 2 down. Anyone wanna have a Wilco party?

Choice quote from Dan on the subject, "I think, all kidding aside, I would probably have sex with Jeff Tweedy in a heartbeat."

Bitch.

2007-06-16T15:26:00.000-06:00

I have to give a "shout out" to my friend Mari Q. Schimmer for leaving copies of Bitch magazine around the house. I had a good Saturday afternoon buzz on today (don't you love those?) so I picked one up and started reading.

Instantly I was back in college, the sole male member of the Calvin Feminists club (I'm not fishing for non-jerk cred here--rest assured I'm a grade A asshole when push comes to shove).

All kidding aside, I do <3 feminism. It's one of those things that should be the new default. So that we start talking about anti-feminists rather than feminists. Like, "Whoah! That asscopter is a total anti-feminist!" As though we were talking about an anti-semite or a homophobe. Anyway, yay feminism. And Bitch.

Losing my nerd mojo

2007-06-14T22:37:00.000-06:00

Wow, it's been a really long time since I posted here. Almost a year, in fact. I guess this is sort of my nerdy blog, whereas my MySpace blog is more my personal one. Maybe I should combine them... Hmm, there's a thought. I haven't been feeling very nerdy lately. I think mainly because I haven't had a lot of free time to ruminate on all things geeky. Though I do have a nascent thought in my brain about how Ubuntu Linux could better position itself as a must-have operating system for businesses and home users alike. And it centers around LDAP. Weird, right? Maybe I'll get some verbage up about that one of these days. I'll try to find some better use for this blog. Because I do love the name... :)

Rails Day 2006

2006-06-19T12:30:00.000-06:00

On Saturday, I participated in Rails Day 2006. It's a 24-hour contest between 1-3 person teams to develop cool Ruby on Rails web apps. I set out to build a visual database query building system (that doesn't require knowledge of SQL) that also allows people to post and share these queries with other users of the system. This would allow people to quickly and easily build queries and share them with others.

The itch I was trying to scratch is that many people in the nationwide network of non-profits I work for use Access to create databases for the data they're working with because they can easily create queries to run on that data. I would rather they put their data in our centralized MySQL server for many (hopefully obvious) reasons.

However, asking them to learn SQL is a bit much, and connecting Access (or OpenOffice.org Base) to MySQL is a bit daunting, especially since there is no way in hades I'm going to open up the MySQL port to the Internet (so they would need to setup a VPN client, an ODBC data source, Access connections to all the tables, etc.).

If I had a web app that just gave them the visual query builder piece, it would be pretty easy. Combine that with the collaborative ability to share the queries, and you've got a big win in terms of empowering people to help themselves and help others work with the database.

Anyway, I built Emerald (as I called the tool) during Rails Day. I don't have it hosted anywhere, unfortunately, so it's not easy to try out. (You could check it out from Rails Day's svn repo and run it locally on your computer, if you really wanted to.) The app, as it stands right now, is not a solution to the problem I set out to solve. If anything, it's proof that a) ActiveRecord (Rails' ORM database access layer) is not a good tool for this sort of job, i.e. generic database access that adapts itself to your schema, not the other way around or b) I don't really know what I'm doing. :)

ActiveRecord proved very tricky to adapt to this purpose. One of the mantras of Rails is "convention over configuration" and usually it's very nice. For example, if you have a table whose name is the plural form of the class you're instantiating (let's say the table is called "people") and the primary key's name is just "id", then your model class looks like this:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base

end

That's it. You now have full ORM access to your "people" table using instances of Person objects. It's very handy.

However, when trying to adapt it to work with existing database schema, the convention was almost never correct, and namespace conflicts abounded. These are possibly not insurmountable problems, but in a 24 hour contest, it caused me to have to spend way too much time adapting the tool to the job. This became rather frustrating by the end of the day.

I was fully aware of the fact that I was trying to use ActiveRecord in a non-standard way, so these difficulties were not entirely unexpected. I wanted to push the boundaries a little of both my knowledge of Ruby (and Rails) and what was possible to coax ActiveRecord into doing. It was a labor of love, as I am a big fan of Ruby, Rails, and ActiveRecord. Overall, it was a very fun experience and I can't wait for next year! (But I'll probably pick a project that's more suited to ActiveRecord's purpose.)

Posting this from Flock

2006-06-14T14:40:00.000-06:00

First Post!

Slashdot just posted a link to this nifty little Firefox-based web browser. It has built-in blogging tools, del.icio.us and flickr integration, and other cool features. It's billed as the "Web 2.0 browser." Click the image below to check it out.

So far, I like it. Some are claiming it's all hype, and that you can get all these features in Firefox via extensions. While I have no doubt that that's true, I for one enjoy having it all integrated in one package, without having to hunt down a million extensions. Leave comments with your impressions of it.

Blogged with Flock

UPDATE: Flock is still in beta, and it shows. I've already run into a few rough spots with it. I'll be sticking with Firefox for now, but keeping an eye on Flock's development.

YearlyKos '06 wrap-up

2006-06-11T18:37:00.000-06:00

I'm finally back in Denver from YearlyKos. It was great. I loved meeting and talking to all the bloggers. Everyone was very nice and approachable. If you want to build more access to the netroots, you need to go to this conference.

Some comments on a few of the speakers at YearlyKos:

Mark Warner - +5 points after his funny and inspiring speech; Keep an eye on this guy for '08. The universal health care for everyone under 18 idea that he and other Dems are talking about now is great. Something we can actually achieve, *much* harder for the other side to speak out against than "HillaryCare" (as long as we keep getting the messaging right), and a significant step towards real universal health care (we'll get there).
Howard Dean - between his speech at yKos and what Markos and Jerome write about him in Crashing the Gate, +12 points. We should be very, very glad he's at the top of the DNC now.
Harry Reid - Give 'Em Hell Harry indeed! +10 points for being a model of Democratic backbone, and proving that that's not an oxymoron. Watching him struggle to contain his excitement when someone yelled, "Shut it down, Harry!" was priceless. He's introducing legislation that will require the administration to backup everything it claims about Iran w/ real intelligence.
Barbara Boxer - Her speech was very good, but apparently she was overheard defending Lieberman to a reporter, and then wondering why so many people at YearlyKos were not very... enthusiastic about ol' Joe. Barb, come on, Jomentum is a Republicrat!

If you missed YearlyKos, go to their site (logo above is a link) and you get can video and audio of most of the conference (at least the keynotes).

Where do we go from Net Neutrality?

2006-06-10T16:43:00.000-06:00

Still at YearlyKos. A questioner in a Net Neutrality panel brought up an excellent point. After we win on the Net Neutrality issue, we need to use that momentum to start fighting things like the DMCA and the "copyright extremism" (quoting the very smart Matt Stoller of MyDD who is on the panel) of DRM. This is a culture war; it's a free speech issue. This information belongs to all of us. Onward!

Open-source TV

2006-06-10T15:45:00.000-06:00

I'm at the YearlyKos netroots conference in Vegas and Tiffiniy Cheng at The Participatory Culture Foundation ran a session on online video. She showed us the Democracy Internet TV Platform. It's working now, you can download the Democracy Player and see what's already online. It's basically RSS video feeds combined with an iTunes Music Store-like interface. Oh, and it's all free and open source. The software is GPL'ed and runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I dig it.

Linux Software Installation Made Easy

2006-01-16T15:12:00.000-07:00

Software on Linux

Software installation should be one of those areas where Linux shines. I mean, almost everything you need is free! Freely available, free to download, free to run, free to modify, free free free.

Many distributions have gone to great lengths to make it easy to find and install new software. My personal favorite is Debian's (and thus off-shoots like Ubuntu's) APT/dpkg system. APT, along with whatever front-end you prefer using, makes it pretty trivial to find and install lots of great programs.

But, there are two problems...

Typically you can't get the latest version of whatever program you're installing because APT / RPM / whatever pulls from your distro's repository, tagged with its version. It doesn't matter if Firefox 1.5 is out if the latest version of your distro came with 1.0.7. Sure you can download and compile the latest source from the upstream vendor, but then your package system has no idea what you've done. Everytime you do this, you make your package system a little more useless and your /usr/local/ hierarchy becomes a den of unpatched security holes, orphaned files, and in other ways a throwback to pre-package system Linux life. Not a place I want to be.
Extensions, plugins, and libraries that are managed with their own package management systems (e.g. CPAN, Ruby gems, etc.) are typically only partially represented in the distro's package repositories, if at all. These systems, more than others, contain lots of little packages that need to be more up-to-date and don't really need much distro-customization. Additionally, it's sort of silly to duplicate CPAN in an APT repository. What a duplication of effort!

Gentoo to the rescue?

One distro (at least) partially solves the 2nd problem in a unique way. Gentoo comes with a script that loads Perl modules from CPAN and records them in emerge's package metadata so the package system thinks you merged an ebuild that just happened to contain the latest CPAN version of whatever Perl module you wanted. However, you have to check whether or not there is an official ebuild before using this script, and it's still a different system that's not obvious unless you read about it in a forum or something.

As far as problem #1 goes, Linux is way behind the times. Think about what you do when running Windows or Mac OS X when a new version of Firefox comes out. You go to mozilla.com and you download it and install it (well, on OS X you drag it to the hard drive, which is infinitely superior to both Linux and Windows' complex installation systems, but more on that in another post). Why can't we do that in Linux? Yeah, yeah, I know we can, but I want it to be kept track of by the package system. If it were Windows or OS X, uninstallation would be no more painful than installation. Not so on Linux.

Gentoo kinda gets around this problem by relying on the upstream source code as the "base" of its package installations (because they aren't binary packages until you compile the ebuild on your system). Ebuilds are just recipes that have compilation instructions, package metadata, and some patches for the source. This allows Gentoo to be a little more nimble in terms of keeping up to date with the latest releases. However, the more complex the software or the more major the version bump, the less true this is. Additionally, (in my experience) you lose some of the stability and system robustness of running a set of programs and libraries that are well tested together.

I used to run Gentoo for its up-to-date-ness. It was nice only having to wait a few days (usually) to be able to install the latest version of a new software package. New version, package system knows about it, we're all good.

But, the instability finally got to me. Package versions were changing all over the place, constantly. Half the time my system couldn't tell where in the world the most basic libraries could have gone (hint: they were right where they'd always been). Things that used to work would suddenly break. If I wanted this, I would run Windows, sheesh!

Turning the problem into an advantage

So, I switched to Ubuntu. I missed Debian's reliability, but not its staleness. Ubuntu seemed a happy medium, and indeed it is. In fact, it's so close to software nirvana, I think there's only one more thing it needs to fully achieve it.

Both problem #1 and problem #2 can be solved with a little standardization. No, I'm not talking about standardizing on One Package System To Rule Them All. That ain't gonna happen anytime soon. No, what we need is a little standardized metadata that gives whatever package system you're using enough info to know you installed something not from the distro and how to uninstall it later (as well as fun things like automatically uninstalling it when/if a newer version comes up for availability in the official repositories). This metadata should be defined by someone like freedesktop.org, and then dpkg, rpm, emerge, etc. should be modified to handle it.

Brave New World

Let's say it's far into the future and my vision has been fully realized. I'm running the "Blubbering Bass" version of Ubuntu and it came with Firefox 3.1. However, the super sweet Firefox 4.0 has just come out and I want it! All my friends running Mac OS 11 and Windows XP We're Sorry Vista Sucked So Bad Edition can just download it and install it. But, so can I! The file that mozilla.com is offering for Linux is just a regular .tgz source tarball. However, it has a special file inside called "install" which I can either run from a terminal or my distro can run for me when I right-click the tarball in my desktop environment and select "Install..." from the menu.

This nifty file would put some metadata about this program in a standard place that my package manager knows to check. It would say, hey, I'm installing Firefox 4.0 into this directory. My package manager would then know Firefox 4.0 existed in the system and where it lived. It would then be able to uninstall it and possibly monitor for security problems with the version I installed.

Additionally, when I ran the CPAN shell or the Ruby gem installer, these programs would also put this metadata in the right place so that my package manager knows about what crazy stuff I've installed with them.

This would make Linux the best of both worlds in the software installation department. When something new comes out, download it and install it, just like your proprietary-OS-using friends. Same goes for CPAN modules and Ruby gems. If you start having issues with some of the programs, you can run a quick little "revert to distro version" function that will get you back on track with the tried-and-true version of the program in question.

Obviously this is only the tip of the iceberg here; you could imagine extending this system to allow the installation of RPM's on Debian-based systems (although alien already does a pretty good job here), or other crazy things like that. But I'll not get into all that for now.

Tom's Hardware may have shed some light on why Apple made the switch

2005-06-15T15:28:00.000-06:00

Many pundits have been confused by Apple's sudden switch to Intel processors, claiming that AMD makes more sense as Apple's new chip supplier from a technology perspective, or that Apple and Intel must be merging in an attempt to dethrone Microsoft (alright, Cringely's the only one saying that). Indeed, looking at Intel's current desktop processor technology, there does not seem to be a compelling technological reason for Apple to move their entire Macintosh product line to Intel chips. But maybe we need to look beyond their "desktop processors" to see what Steve Jobs & Co. were thinking. As this (rather surprising) article on Tom's Hardware Guide reveals, one of Intel's current chips that is based on a pre-Pentium 4 design not only outperforms both Pentium 4 and Athlon 64 FX chips in most applications, but it does so using much less power than either of these heat-sweating behemoths. When you think about this in light of Apple's stated reasons for switching to Intel (Steve Jobs had some vague numbers about "performance per watt"), it begins to look like Apple may have been eyeing Pentium M (Dothan) technology for the new Intel-based Macs. And Intel seems to be heading that way too. The Tom's article concludes with, "Intel's upcoming accelerated 65 nm dual-core processor, [is] code named 'Conroe.' Care to guess upon which architecture this design will be based?" I predict that we'll see Pentium M-based Mac Minis, iBooks, and Powerbooks first, followed by Conroe-based desktops and servers. I'll be very surprised if any Mac ever contains a Pentium 4 (other than Jobs' demo machine and the dev kit Apple is selling to its developers). I, for one, welcome our new mobile processor overlords. UPDATE: Tom's agrees, more or less.

Arctic drilling budget passes House and Senate

2005-04-29T09:49:00.000-06:00

Late last night, both the House and Senate passed a budget with Arctic drilling language in it. The budget does not itself authorize drilling in the Arctic, but it directs lawmakers to come up with $2.4 billion in energy revenues. The pro-drilling crowd can use that to authorize Arctic drilling in the final budget. The good news is, the fight's not over. More to come...

Budget Will Trample the Arctic, Unless We Trample It

2005-04-27T15:23:00.000-06:00

This Thursday, April 28, we'll probably see votes in the Senate and the House on the federal budget - a budget that currently contains a provision that would allow drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

U.S. PIRG has set up a free number that you can use to call where you'll be directly connected to your representative or senator's office, depending on which is a more important target. Please call now, and then email a link to this page to three friends or family members so we can generate as many calls as possible.

Here's the number: 1-888-8-WILDAK (1-888-894-5325)

After you call, please let U.S. PIRG know what the person you talked to said so they know where they need to focus their resources.

Report your call here.

It's not just the Arctic Refuge at stake in this budget battle. If drilling in the Arctic Refuge is allowed, pristine, untrammeled lands like Arches National Park and offshore areas like Florida's coast could all be at risk. House Majority leader Tom Delay said it best when he said about Arctic drilling that "It's about precedent." One of President Bush's major supporters, Houston energy industry investment banker Matthew R. Simmons, said, "If you can't do ANWR, you'll never be able to drill in the promising areas."

We are tantalizingly close to stopping this budget and stopping the oil industry's plans to turn America's pristine public lands into spider webs of oil rigs, roads, and pollution. Just four votes are needed in the House of Representatives and just two votes in the Senate.

Deconstructing Stupidity

2005-04-22T16:16:00.000-06:00

James Boyle, a law professor at Duke, has written a very nice little article on why intellectual property law and policy as we know it is so stupid. He moves past the easy "corporate capture of the decision making process" explanation toward trying to understand the real reasons behind the unprofitable, public-domain damaging decisions we keep making regarding IP law. He rightly refers to these decisions as "stupid" because they are motivated by a lack of understanding and a systematic omission of evidence upon which to base any understanding. I've quoted this guy a lot in my own writings on intellectual property, especially as it relates to information and media. One of the few people who actually understands intellectual property law's raison d'être.