Facebook: 200 Hours (of dev time) FREE!

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

The soup du jour in the Web 2.0/startup community is Facebook’s new API. StyleFeeder has an app on it now, because it made sense and it’s a good fit. You should try it out. Phil did most of the heavy lifting, and we should pity him for it, because it’s very poorly documented, not completely built, and nerve-wrackingly unstable. But it works, and it’s pretty cool to be able to get in to a place people feel comfortable and offer them something we think is useful, that Facebook never would have got around to building. Not everyone is impressed about the whole idea though:

Kottke obviously wasn’t doing any internet development in 1994 or he would have heard “why isn’t my website as nice as stuff I see on AOL?”

“What happens when Flickr and LinkedIn and Google and Microsoft and MySpace and YouTube and MetaFilter and Vimeo and Last.fm launch their platforms that you need to develop apps for in some proprietary language that’s different for each platform?”

It’s pretty clear what would happen. People would develop for Google and MySpace, people are already developing for Microsoft, and the others would be ignored. You need massive scale and a big carrot (Facebook’s is a massive, clean network of users), to pull this off. Everyone else puts their faith in the W3C. Eventually the Facebook API will be deprecated or ignored, and if there are any good ideas in it, they’ll trickle out into the mainstream.

Valleywag has a screed by someone who bought the hype and blames Facebook for it, and is now apparently trying to generate some backlash to justify to management why it didn’t work as promised. Keep in mind that the hype was not from Facebook, I didn’t get any emails from them, see any ads, it was solely driven by tech-pundits, bloggers and VC panic. This person is sad that they didn’t get millions of users overnight and that Facebook “undercut” developers by preventing them from spamming their apps all over the place. If your app is useful or fun, it’s going to grow on its own, just like any other software distribution method. Sure it may seem unfair that some people got in and got big before the rules tightened up, but it’s also unfair that my parents got a house with an acre of land for $32k before I could (I was 3).

How not to boycott

Posted on by Eric F. Savage



Ineffective Campaign

Originally uploaded by Eric Kilby

So you may have heard of this guy Barry. Barry plays baseball for a living. Barry is really, really good at his job, and has been for a long time. At a certain point, Barry noticed most people his age weren’t doing so well, so he tried this and that to keep his job. Some of this was good old fashioned exercise. Some of that was kinda-sorta-not-so-legal-even-less-ethical-but-not-illegal (in an unofficial, nobody’s-telling way, of course). We don’t know exactly what happened, but alot of people made up their mind regardless.

Many of these people were at the Red Sox vs. Giants game Friday night. They were easy to spot, they chanted “ster-oids” whenever Barry showed up at the plate, maple in hand. These people also stood on their feet to watch a hall-of-famer bat for the first time in Fenway Park.

Advice: If you want to boycott someone, you don’t spend 30, 50, 100+ dollars to buy a ticket to a game, and you don’t stand up on tiptoes to see every pitch thrown to him.

PuTTY: Custom Icons

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

PuTTY is the most popular free SSH client for Windows. It’s very stable and very lightweight, due to the developers keeping bloat out of the source. One piece of bloat that I would like to see is the ability to pick icons, which I find very valuable when working on multiple servers, a common task for most developers. Luckily it’s pretty easy to roll your own PuTTY, so I figured I would offer a little how-to here.

  1. Download and install Cygwin. I’m not sure which packages you need, as I typically just install everything.
  2. Download putty source code from here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
  3. Open cygwin shell
  4. cygwin: mkdir putty
  5. cygwin: cd putty
  6. cygwin: unzip [wherever download is]/putty-src.zip
  7. cygwin: mv WINDOWS/PUTTY.ICO WINDOWS/PUTTY_ORIG.ICO
  8. Now put your icon (.ico) file in WINDOWS and name it PUTTY.ICO
  9. cygwin: cd WINDOWS
  10. cygwin: make -f MAKEFILE.CYG putty.exe
  11. You should now havea nice fresh putty.exe file in the WINDOWS directory, copy this wherever you wish.
  12. Copy the next icon to PUTTY.ICO and re-run make. Repeat until you have one executable per server.

Savage: The Movie

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

Saw this over at Matt’s LJ, seemed interesting.

IF YOUR LIFE WERE A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?
REMEMBER, DON’T CHEAT!
So, here’s how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, iPaq etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that’s playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool…

Note: I skipped the song if the same artist came up again.

Opening Credits: Dr. Dre & Ice Cube – “Natural Born Killaz”
What kind of movie is this going to be?

Waking Up Scene: Susie Van Der Meer – “Somebody Has to Pay”
From the Run Lola Run soundtrack, not a bad choice for a breakfast montage.

Walking Down The Street Scene: House of Pain – “House of Pain Anthem”
This could be funny, fitting or tragic depending on which street we’re talking about.

Car Driving Scene: The Police – “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”
Eh, not a great fit.

High School Flashback Scene: Mr. Mackey – “It’s Easy, Mmkay”
Nice choice here. Life advice, South Park stylee.

Drug Abuse Flashback Scene: Blue Swede – “Hooked on a Feeling”
Bizarre.

Summer/Beach Scene: Blink 182 – “All the Small Things”
Good beach music.

Nostalgic Scene: Insane Clown Posse – “The Neden Game”
Just can’t make this one work.

Bitter, Angry Scene: Nine Inch Nails – “Where is Everybody?”
Few better choices than Nine Inch Nails for bitter music.

Break-up/Throwing Things/Slow Motion Scene: The Dust Brothers – “Psycho Boy Jack”
If you broke up in a run down gas station with flickering flourescent bulbs, this would be a good choice.

Regret Scene: Ahmad – “Back in the Day”
Title works, song doesn’t.

Bar Scene: Air – “The Vagabond”
Harmonica, hand clapping and Beck, sounds like a good bar to me.

Nightclub Scene: Underworld – “Ballet Lane”
It fits if its a laid back club full of people sipping amaretto.

Fight/Action Scene: Green Day – “Basketcase”
Eh, can’t imagine this song causing any fights.

Sad, breakdown scene: Korn – “Lost”
Angsty, gritty, good pick.

Death Scene: Hüsker Dü – “M.I.C.”
Pacifist punk song, bad fit.

Funeral Scene: Moby – “My Weakness”
Kinda sad I guess.

Mourning Scene: Beastie Boys – “Eugene’s Lament”
Probably the best pick of the bunch.

Mellow Scene: Kittie – “Immortal”
Instrumental Kittie song, I guess that passes for mellow.

Dreaming About Someone Scene: Bjork – “Sod Off”
Dreaming about pre-emptively dumping someone.

Sex Scene: Kompressor – “Vitamins are Good”
Bizarre.

Contemplation Scene: Outkast – “Prototype”
Well he says “i think” alot…

Fancy Party: Ministry – “Psalm 69”
Not too fancy.

Realization Scene: 311 – “Fat Chance”
Realizing one of your favorite albums is almost over.

Flashback/Build up Scene: Howlin’ Wolf – “Moanin’ at Midnight”
This song begs for sepia tone.

Chase Scene: Mudvayne – “Nothing to Gain”
Hmm, wouldn’t work for a car chase, maybe a foot chase through the city.

Happy Love Scene: Marilyn Manson – “The Speed of Pain”
Might work with a loose interpretation.

Happy Friend Scene: Cut Chemist meets Shortkut – “No Mistakes in this Number Son”
Not a bad fit.

Closing Credits: Basement Jaxx – “Same Old Show”
Decent credits song.

Safari for Windows: No Thanks

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

I’m with many others, including Yuval, in saying that Apple porting Safari to Windows is unfortunate. Web developers have basically got 3 main browsers to deal with right now, and adding a 4th isn’t going to help. IE6 is dying, but still prevalent. IE7 isn’t great, but is obviously a force to be reckoned with. Firefox is bloated and slow, but comfy and relatively painless to develop against. Safari is outdated, buggy and less standards-compatible than IE7 or Firefox, often intentionally so (try styling a submit button).

The big claim Apple makes is page rendering performance. Firstly, I hope nobody takes Apple’s performance numbers seriously, they’ve been flat out lying about them across the board for a decade or more. Even if the stats are legit, picking a browser based on page rendering speed is silly, it’s like buying a car that goes 200mph instead of 150mph, when you live in Los Angeles and spend most of the day in slow traffic anyways.

I think Apple ported Safari to force people to support it, since it’s often sidelined due to low usage and its quirky behaviors. I’m really loathe to support a browser that offers no new features yet has a unique set of drawbacks. The solution here is for Apple to abandon the KHTML core and put it’s overstated development resources into the Gecko engine, giving them the ability to Mac-ify and brand a browser, but not impose increased costs on web developers. They should look to their own successful Airport line for how you can drive adoption, leverage/strengthen a standard, and maintain a strong brand at the same time.

Musical Addiction

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

Every once in a while, I (and probably most of you) get addicted to a song or album. The day just isn’t complete without hearing it a few times. I’m currently addicted to a possibly-record 4. It’s also very interesting that all 4 songs are available for free, legitimately!

“Truth Is” and “Uncle Sam Goddamn”, both by Brother Ali, who seems to be the second best artist on the Rhymesayers label, behind Atmosphere. Nice beats, plus Ali’s a very talented rapper, and an interesting fellow, a mixed-race albino who’s found himself in an extremely race-conscious industry/genre. You can hear both songs at brotherali.com

The other two are remixes by Ratatat (apparently unsigned), who I came across a while back when someone used them for a World of Warcraft video. “Party and Bullshit” by Notorious B.I.G, and “The Mule” by Z-re, Devin the Dude & Juvenile. Both are available on myspace.com/ratatatmusic.

So this made me think of the albums (not songs, there’s been too many) that I’ve been addicted to over the years. I’m going to set a threshold here of at least 3 months of compulsive daily listening. Albums I just happened to have left in my CD player for too long don’t count either. This means that there aren’t many, because it’s rare to be hooked for a week, never mind 12. I’m actually surprised there’re even this many, but then again, I am getting old. Note: I’m not making any claims to the objective Greatness of the albums on this list, though some are (OK Computer, Odelay), and some are clearly not (Fine Malt Lyrics). It’s just that these are the ones that stuck the longest, for me, when thrown against the wall.

Check your Head by the Beastie Boys
Black Sunday by Cypress Hill
Fine Malt Lyrics by House of Pain
Dirt by Alice in Chains
Murder Ballads by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
Odelay by Beck
Dig Your Own Hole by The Chemical Brothers
OK Computer by Radiohead
Amnesiac by Radiohead
Reanimation by Linkin Park
Seven’s Travels by Atmosphere

Current: None.

What are yours?

The Caffeine Dilemma

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

This is not news to anyone, but the American food industry has a generally brazen disregard for people’s health, from over processed grains to trans-fats to things we don’t even know about yet. Unfortunately these ingredients and techniques are so commercially advantageous that it can be near-impossible to avoid them when having a meal outside of your house. An ingredient that falls into this category but doesn’t get as much chicken-little-press is caffeine.

Now caffeine is probably not as unhealthful as other things, but I’ve been trying to eliminate it from my diet except on an as-needed basis. Some people I know take pride in their level of caffeine consumption, but no doctor has ever told me I wasn’t getting enough of it, so I figure less is better.

Most non-fancy restaurants will have most of the following: coffee, decaf, hot/iced tea, tap water, bottled water, coke, Diet Coke, sprite, root beer, and a few other sodas, and often a juice or two. I eliminated sugary sodas a while back from my standard diet, so coke, sprite, root beer, and the other sodas are out, as are any available juices since they are mostly sugar too. Coffee is usually bad, decaf is usually horrible, and tap water is rarely any good, so they are out too. I’m left with hot/iced tea, bottled water, and Diet Coke. Bottled water usually costs a lot and you don’t get refills, and even before I was exercising regularly I consumed more beverage than your average person. I really can’t justify spending $5+ per meal for water. I’m not a big fan of hot tea without cream and sugar, and the quality of (caffeinated) iced tea is highly variable, so I typically order Diet Coke. Which, of course, has caffeine. It also has artificial sweeteners which I’d like to cut out at some point, but one thing at a time. There is of course, beer, wine, and liquor, but I drink far less than I go out (once or twice a month versus several times per week, respectively) and don’t see increasing intake as a healthy alternative.

So the logical plan would seem to be to order tap water, and if its not good, order a Diet Coke as a fall back. The problem is that if you’ve eliminated caffeine from your regular diet your tolerance for it drops quickly. So I’d be taking in a pretty powerful stimulant at 7 or 8pm and I’d likely be hopped up well into the night.

One thing I have stopped doing is buying soda for the house. I’ve been sticking to things like Gatorade, Fruit2O, Vitamin Water or Propel, and I feel better, despite most of them having sugar (though it’s about half of non-diet soda). I drink a half gallon of spring water a day, but I find that those sports drinks help with the sweet tooth.

If you think I’m working towards some conclusion here, I’m sorry to disappoint, as I’m still not sure what to do about the restaurant thing. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Update: Credit to Dana for suggesting club soda w/lemon as a caffeine-free, free-refill alternative when the restaurant also has a bar. It might take a bit of getting used to, but I’ll give it a shot.

Vista: Day 1

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

So, after finally calling it quits in my battle against my MacBook Pro, I retreated to Microsoft. You basically can’t buy a Dell without Vista now, so I figured I’d give it a shot. There’s been a fair amount of hype by Microsoft in favor of it, and a tremendous amount of anti-hype against it by basically everyone else. After my first day, I’ll say that neither side has much to stand on.

The system is what I’d consider an average developer box these days. Grand total with tax was less than $1150.

  • Dell E521
  • Athlon Dual-core 5000+
  • 2GB RAM
  • 250GB hard drive (no raid)
  • ATI X1300 video card
  • 20″ Dell 4:3 LCD
  • Windows Vista Home Premium

I hooked it up to my pre-existing 24″ LCD as primary monitor. I had bought a Radeon 9250 so that I could run the second monitor on DVI, but ATI doesn’t have Vista drivers for that, so I hooked it up to the VGA port until I return that card for a newer one.

Here’s what I installed:

  • JDK6 – No problems
  • Eclipse 3.3M4 – No problems
  • Jetty 5 and 6 – No problems
  • JettyLauncher (eclipse plugin) – Only works with JDK 5, not sure if this is a Vista thing, so…
  • Subclipse (eclipse/subversion plugin) – No problems
  • JDK5 – No problems
  • MySQL 4 – No problems
  • Firefox 2 – No problems
  • Yahoo IM – Crashed once, but it does that on XP too often too.
  • AIM 6 – Crashed once after I first started it, ran fine through several conversations later on.
  • Windows Mail (pre-installed, I configured for POP and SMTP over SSL) – no problems.

So the big complaint by the hordes has been performance. For a mid-range machine, with full Aero enabled on two monitors at 1920×1200 and 1600×1200, I see no lag at all. Aero is actually decent. It’s only major flourish is the new “flip-3d” where the windows stack up like something you would see on a Mac, but its really kind of useless, and I prefer alt-tab. The live previews when you over over the task bar are actually kind of nice, though not very useful. The transparency is fancy, but not overdone, the fade/shrink when you minimize is quick and nicely done. I haven’t disabled any of it yet after 7 hours of use, which is about 6.9 hours longer than the ridiculous XP theme lasted.

Programs launch and run faster, though it does seem like installers go slower and hang for a while. It also comes with a ton of nice fonts, I’m curious if we’ll start seeing those show up in CSS files. I set most of my stuff up for familiar 8pt Lucida Console, I’ll have to go through and see if they’ve added any other nice monospace fonts.

Microsoft seems to have adopted the unix idea of security when it comes to “sudo”. Whenever you do anything that affects the OS, it prompts you to allow it to proceed. If you want to do something like edit your hosts file, you’ll need to run your editor as an administrator, which is as easy as a right click. It’s all a bit annoying, but probably just because I was tweaking it alot. We’ll see how it plays out after a period of normal usage. The worst part is that when the box comes up, the whole screen flickers and takes on a lightbox type effect. Seems to be overkill and poorly implemented.

Other than that, I hate to break it to the Microsoft PR squad and the throngs of haters, but it’s really just good old Windows. The paths are a bit different, things are called slightly different names, but from my perspective, it’s all trivial stuff. Unless I come across something tragic or wonderful, I see no reason for people to upgrade, or to resist upgrading.

Roundup: January 2007

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

I don’t have the time or inclination to do a standard commentary-style blog, linking to the latest news item or wacky video, but on the other hand, there’s things worth sharing. I’m going to try wrapping these up in a monthly digest.

If you haven’t checked out The Chloe Chronicles, you should. Nicole has been writing a very personal, detailed, no-holds-barred account of the experience of having a daughter a bit on the early side. I can’t imagine how cool it will be for Chloe to read this when she’s older. I don’t think anyone in my family ever kept a diary, but it would be amazing to read something like this from them.

More important than the iPhone or the 108-inch HDTV, but lacking in fanfare, solid state disks (SSDs) are coming to the consumer market. These should be standard equipment in laptops in a few years, and will offer hardware designers a whole new set of opportunities.

My favorite fantasy series since Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, is on its way to being an HBO show. It’s a complex, serial storyline with a ton of characters and no shortage of sex and violence, so it should fit in perfectly with HBO’s other great shows.

Went to see Children of Men. The first half was slow but seemed to be building up to something good. The second half looked like this:

Boston Fire Department at Loews Boston Common 19

I got a membership at BSC. The one in Wellesley is really nice, they even have individual TVs on each cardio machine. My current plan is to go in the mornings. Those who know me will probably affirm that the previous statement is probably one of the funniest I’ve ever made.

Rational Exuberance

Posted on by Eric F. Savage

I’m a fairweather football fan, and the last 5+ years have been good ones for New England area fans, fairweather or die-hard. I watched the two games yesterday, Seahawks @ Bears and Patriots @ Chargers, and was immediately reminded why I just can’t get into the sport in any serious manner.

For those that don’t know, last weekend was the second round of the NFL’s 4-round playoff season. One of the reasons I think football is so popular is that it’s so easy to follow. There’s no grueling 162-game marathon, very few weeknight games, and a season ticket is only 8 regular-season games. I watched 50% of the entire league’s playoff games for this round in the space of a few hours, something that would require taking a sabbatical for a sport like basketball. Add a TiVo to the mix to skip past all the downtime and you’ve got some good action. Seeing guys get tossed like ragdolls and exciting plays like interceptions, as well as freaks of nature like Shaun Alexander, who makes the rest of the field look like it’s in slow-motion, is good entertainment. Yes, entertainment.

So first up was the Seattle Seahawks playing the favored Chicago Bears. They battle it out for a while, the Bears benefiting from Seattle’s quarterback Hasselbeck making a few big mistakes, and the game is tied going into overtime. I really didn’t care who won, I don’t follow either team and it’s two of my favorite cities, but it was an immediate letdown. Why? Because overtime in football is probably the thirdmost anti-climactic thing in professional sports. (The second is also in football, where they run down the clock, and the first is pretty much anything that happens in soccer).

Football is a game modeled on the same principles as warfare of the 18th century. Everyone lines up, everyone has a job, and you go at it. The two sides are rarely evenly matched, but there’s the sense that if everyone does their job and the plan is sound, you have a chance. Overtime takes that and flips it on its head, because it’s sudden death. Whoever scores first, wins. The really disappointing part is that it usually ends on a field goal, and the team that gets the ball first is decided by a coin toss. The Seahawks won the toss, but didn’t score. The Bears moved the ball a bit, and kicked the winning field goal.

Football is no stranger to rule changes, so I’d like to see two more. First, both teams are guaranteed at least one possession. If there’s a turnover, at least the other team had a chance. Second, and much more importantly, no field goals. Sorry kickers, I’d rather see the whole team have to win, not just you.

After that game, the Patriots played the favored Chargers. Both teams played a sloppy, but enjoyable game. The Patriots came back in the 4th quarter to tie it, and took the lead on a field goal. The Chargers got the ball, made a field goal attempt, and missed it, game over. The big story of the game, however, is that the Patriots overcelebrated their victory, “showing up” the Chargers on their own turf. So now the darlings of the NFL media, the reigning dynasty in the league, were made to look like a bunch of hooligans with “no respect for the game”.

There seemed to be two major offenses. The first was that they were jumping on the Chargers logo in midfield. The solution to this is a simple one. If you or your fans are too sensitive about your corporate logo being tarnished, don’t paint it on the field. The second was that the Patriots appropriated the taunting dance of the Charger’s defensive superstar Shawne Merriman. Never mind that Merriman did it after every sack, or that Merriman had shown his personal respect for the game by failing a drug test. The league MVP Tomlinson was so incensed he charged at the group and had to be restrained, and kept his anger boiling through the post-game press conference.

To borrow Rob Corddry’s attempted catch-phrase, “coooome ooon!” Sports are first and foremost entertainment. Fans pay hundreds of dollars to watch guys play a game most of us gave up in adolescence, after which they retire to their mansions and spend the rest of the life getting updates on the charitable tax deductions their assistants run for them. I’d argue they deserve the money they get, not because they are psuedo-heroes or guardians of contrived traditions, but as entertainers. I want to see the winners be happy and the losers be sad. I want to see grown men doing silly dances because they carried a warped ball over a line of paint. The next day, I want to read about the ridiculous comments from a guy who had to cheat to get a 700 on his SAT.

If the Yankees beat the Red Sox and a pinstriped marching band ran out onto the Fenway infield and Derek Jeter stuck the game winning ball in his pants while A-Rod did the funky chicken on homeplate, I’d be laughing out loud. When they silently tap gloves and retreat to the locker room, I feel deprived not only of my team’s victory, but the sense that it actually meant something to the team who took it from them.

So let’s forget about respecting the hallowed traditions of a child’s game played by rich men of often questionable character, managed by billionaires who hold lifetime fans hostage and demand taxes to pay for expensive stadiums with horrible parking. I just want to see people show up, play as hard as possible, and put on a good show. If you win or lose, show me that you’re playing this game for something more than the huge paychecks, and that you’re as excited or disappointed as the crazy fat guys that painted themselves blue to try and give you an edge in the contest.