heatxsink.com

This is an amazing song. It has gained mainstream popularity due to it's appearance on the soundtrack for Juno. As with most good music it's all about the lyrics. So I added them below...

Artist: The Moldy Peaches
Title: Anyone Else But You

You're a part time lover and a full time friend
The monkey on you're back is the latest trend
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

I kiss you on the brain in the shadow of a train
I kiss you all starry eyed, my body's swinging from side to side
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

Here is the church and here is the steeple
We sure are cute for two ugly people
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

The pebbles forgive me, the trees forgive me
So why can't, you forgive me?
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

I will find my nitch in your car
With my mp3 DVD rumple-packed guitar
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

Du du du du du du dudu
Du du du du du du dudu
Du du du du du du dudu du

Up up down down left right left right B A start
Just because we use cheats doesn't mean we're not smart
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

You are always trying to keep it real
I'm in love with how you feel
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

We both have shiny happy fits of rage
You want more fans, I want more stage
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

Don Quixote was a steel driving man
My name is Adam I'm your biggest fan
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

Squinched up your face and did a dance
You shook a little turd out of the bottom of your pants
I don't see what anyone can see, in anyone else
But you

Du du du du du du dudu
Du du du du du du dudu
Du du du du du du dudu du
But you

I am sure most of you noticed that my blog has been gone for about a month. I am somewhat (because I used to be the biggest movable type snob) proud to announce that I have completely ditched movable type (mt). In order to migrate my blog entries properly I had to write some perl to interact with the movable type platform. This is because the export format in the movable type platform is lossy. I've taken the other scripts I have made for movable type and put them in a google code project entitled mt-cli-scripts. You can visit the project here. This was very tedious because of the following code block from my mt-export-blog script...

 
sub get_categories
{
	my $entry = $_[0];

	my $categories_ = "";
	my $categories = $entry->categories;

	foreach my $category_object (@$categories)
	{
		# The line of code below was a BITCH to figure out.
		my $category = MT::Category->load($category_object->id);
		$categories_ = $category->label . "," . $categories_;
	}

	$categories_ = substr($categories_, 0, -1);

	return $categories_;
}

The documentation for the movable type API is in perldoc format. And all it said about $entry->categories was that it was an array of categories. It said nothing about having to invoke MT::Category->load($category->id);. This was probably the most horrid part of an API, I have ever seen.

So why did I do this? I wanted more control over all blog entries especially the entires with source code blocks. I wanted to move to an extremely simple blog platform. Simple to me meant no more comments, categories, blog roll, and badges. So out of all of those features, comments is the most people enjoy. I figure at this point people can email me if they have questions or want to say something about a particular blog entry. As for flickr/twitter/blog roll badges, I sincerely hope that this website has evolved enough to circumvent the need for those quintessential blog badges. Another very challenging/annoying part of this process is having to reformat almost every single blog entry. For example you might notice that at the time of this blog entry the archive page for 2004 is horribly formated.

Passion, you will need to find your passion. Many of you have already done it, many of you will later, many of you may take till your 30's or 40's. But, don't give up on finding it. Because all you are doing is waiting for the reaper. Find your passion and follow it. And if there is anything I have learned in my life, you will not find that passion in things. And you will not find that passion in money. Because the more things and more money you have, the more that you will just look around and use that as the metric. And there is always someone with more. So your passion must come from the things that fuel you from the inside.

Found a presentation on how Google Calendar was made here.

Some good quotes from the slide deck....

Simple things should be simple, and complex things should be possible

Alan Kay, Disney Fellow and VP of R&D, The Walt Disney Company

Great Design It's that ineffable quality that certain incredibly successful products have that makes people fall in love with them despite their flaws.

Joel Spolsky, Great Design

Some really good information taken away from the slide deck were.....

• Always have an eye on the minimum useful feature set that most people will use
  • Talking to a grandma in NYC
  • A mother loves quickadd and then prints out the calendar for the fridge
• Product usage tracks directly to how easy a feature is to find & use.
  • Creating calendars = easy
  • Finding calendars = not easy enough
• Figure out what you absolutely have to get right and relentlessly refine it.
  • Redesigned the "event page" at least 3 times
  • Kept adding new ways to get events into the system up until days before we launched
• Don't spend too much time on the less important areas.
  • Know where you'll get the most bang for the buck

I picked up one of these at the Maker Faire. It's the sweetest micro-controller setup I have ever seen. It is actually an ARM based system on a chip, complete with ethernet and usb! I'm going to use this setup to make my network controlled mood lamp.

Went to Bay to Breakers yesterday. I had a really good time. Enjoy the set.