The Full Feed

2008-11-13

Well, DHH seems to be caught in a lie in his latest blog post on Rails myths so I feel I should correct it. An outright lie that Mongrel caused his 400 restarts/day problem. However, David must have forgotten that I have a full log of the chat where he admitted it, so let’s get into some nice clean truth for a change.

Normally I wouldn’t give a shit. Ruby on Rails is so far from my world right now that I don’t even really care. I play guitar and write with maybe some coding to pay the bills and that’s about it.

However, I get really sick and tired of the passive aggressive people who run things over at the Rails/Ruby Revolutionary Faction. They have to project this image of being nice, but at the same time are competitive jerks who try to destroy their enemies. That’s why they constantly pick on little guys like Giles, Obie, and myself, but never in a direct way. It’s always with little turns of the phrase, or rumors, or power plays behind closed doors.

The insults are always minor things you’d be crazy to get mad about, but they still get under your skin. It took a year of being called an idiot by the same people who used my wares constantly before I finally gave up.

Now It’s Mongrel

DHH is right, in this part of his post that Phusion Passenger is the shit.

If you aren’t using Phusion Passenger to deploy all of your Ruby web applications (not just Rails) then you’re a dumbfuck.

Of course, I was saying that Phusion was great months ago when I met them. Again, DHH and crew are late to the party, but that’s how they roll. I bet they were even bashing it at first in their little chat room. Now they’re backing it as the way to go, probably for no other reason than to take Mongrel out as a competitor.

However, remember I told you that guys like DHH never do anything directly. He praises Phusion Passenger saying it’s great and better than Mongrel (for deployment).

Then, he tells a wild ass yet subtle lie about the 400 restarts/day being a Mongrel problem. Let’s take a look at the magician at work:

"Zed insinuated that it's normal for Rails to restart 400 times/day
because Basecamp at one point did this with a memory watcher that would
bounce its Mongrels when they hit, I believe, 250MB."

If you simply remove “Mongrel” and replace it with “FCGI” you have the real truth. DHH was actually talking about FastCGI when he said they had to restart, and that’s proven by the fact that he hadn’t moved Basecamp to Mongrel yet, and was talking about installing mentalguy’s fastthread library into his existing FastCGI setup.

But, let’s have DHH tell you instead:

(15:10:24) DHH: btw, fastthread has definitely helped us
(15:10:29) Zed S.: that mongrel_service is great stuff
(15:10:30) DHH: we're running it on BC now
(15:10:33) Zed S.: oh?
(15:10:43) Zed S.: very nice.  what's the big improvement you noticed with fastthread?
(15:10:47) DHH: it hasn't completely removed our leaking issues, but drastically reduced them
(15:11:04) DHH: we have a cap at 160M where processes get restarted
(15:11:12) DHH: before fastthread we had ~400 restarts/day
(15:11:22) DHH: now we have perhaps 10
(15:11:29) Zed S.: oh nice
(15:11:33) Zed S.: and that's still fastcgi right?
(15:12:05) DHH: ye
(15:12:13) DHH: we're still not mongrel on the big apps
(15:12:18) DHH: but on all the small ones we are

See that? It’s the exact same chat I got my quote from in The Rails Is A Ghetto rant but let’s emphasize the important statement:

(15:12:13) DHH: we're still not mongrel on the big apps

Now, when you read his blog post he makes it seem like he had 400 restarts/day using Mongrel, yet right here he admits to using fastcgi and having the restart problems. It was fastthread that fixed up the problems, which really points out just how broken Ruby is still.

To summarize the facts:

DHH was using FastCGI from the beginning of Basecamp and Rails.
He had to do forced restarts 400 times a day because of leaking issues under FastCGI (really Ruby).
It wasn’t until Mongrel and later fastthread that people could actually deploy without problems…almost 2 years after Rails was widely being adopted.
This means that DHH and all of rails-core lied to everyone about Rails’ stability for years, and keep lying.
It also means that if you had problems with FastCGI, then you were not crazy. Ruby really was too unstable for production use.

That was the point of telling people Rails crashed that much back then. It is of course better now, but only because of the hard work of people like mentalguy and myself. Everyone else just denied there was a problem, including DHH.

It’s also an indicator of just how fucked up Ruby really is. I consider the Apple Patches Ruby’s economic meltdown. If the mishandling of that doesn’t make you pause before picking Ruby then I don’t know what the fuck would. Shit like that could kill a company off overnight.

Anyway, if DHH ever wonders why I flipped out, it’s this kind of weird passive aggressive lying that did it.

Don’t Fuck Over Phusion Passenger

The one thing that pissed me off about the Mongrel project was how it destroyed my career path. I don’t really think I ever fully recovered from it, but Mongrel basically made it impossible for me to get a regular job just doing my thing. To have everyone in your world using your software, but not offering you any jobs greater than a system administrator position is tough.

My buddies over at Phusion are potentially in the same boat. They did a really good job marketing Passenger and their very nice patches to the Ruby system named “Ruby Enterprise Edition”. They could make some money in this area where I couldn’t.

Yet, I see them getting the same treatment I did when it comes to the people who use their stuff. All they are looking for is support contracts and custom work, yet their stuff is so good nobody needs them. Rather than feed the ecosystem and just buy their support licenses to support them, people who use Phusion are probably just gonna take it and not give back.

If you actually do use Phusion, consider buying something from the guys who made it. It’s an awesome product, and if you want them to continue developing it and giving it out for free then give them money.

It just makes you a good open source citizen.

2008-11-11

I’m quickly coming to the end of my first semester in music school and am considering taking a consulting gig for the two month break we have. Not really sure what’s available these days, as I actually haven’t touched a computer for the entire semester.

First off, I learned a ton so far and have improved my technique so much, but I’m still way behind in what I need to know for the next semester. I’ll be spending any spare time I have studying guitar, piano, and voice so I can roll into the next semester ready to go.

That means at least 3 hours a week of private lessons and about four hours a day of practice, which isn’t hard. These days I get up at 6am to practice anyway so I’ll just continue that.

Now I have a choice: I can continue living poor for the next two months and just do nothing but music, or I can try to get a job to make the rest of the year easier.

In order to figure out this dilemma, I’m curious if anyone has offers for a two month gig. If there’s something good then I’ll do a job. If not, then I’ll continue to study.

If you have a job you think I might find interesting, then contact me. If you have a job that’s totally mindless and pays alright with flexible hours, then definitely contact me.

Here’s to being a starving artist!

2008-10-30

In this world there are these weird little dickheads who think that they have some kind of magical powers manipulating others to do their bidding. They spend their days making people around them dance like marionettes in a sick little play that only they find funny. The sad truth about manipulators is their machinations are only powerful and effective in their own mind.

If you read my previous blog post about Matthew Kaufman it may have sounded like Matt was in trouble. He was threatened and thrown out of his apartment by some big evil bad man. Matt promptly disappeared and potentially could have been hurt. He was a ghost who simply left a bizarre panic ridden voice mail for me.

At the time I debated even doing anything. This Matt character could need help, or he could just be a manipulator trying to use me as some kind of blunt weapon against his enemy. This is why I took my time trying to help the guy. I had the feeling he was playing a game, but after debating it and gathering the evidence I decided to try and help.

You see, if I did nothing, there was a chance that Matthew could have been dead. If he had died and I could have helped him then I would have hated myself.

Today however, someone who read my blog post finally got access to his twitter feeds and sent me this tweet from him:

All that we need to make us happy is 
something to be enthusiastic about. :)! (today)

That means he’s alive, probably doing well, and is now on my fucking shit list.

I’m more than willing to help out a total stranger who needs my help, so long as it doesn’t involve me handing them money or risking my life. Hell, I’ve stopped fights between random people many times, putting my self at risk. I’ve pulled battered women out of abusive relationships. Helped kids who were being beaten by bullies. I got no problem stepping up and protecting the weaker ones in our world.

When someone takes advantage of this by trying to manipulate me they are seriously fucking with the wrong guy. Here’s a tweet from Matt on the 25th:

yes, zed shaw, ... EVIDENCE AND OBSERVATION ... not 20 year 
old defined logic and reason 12:35 PM Oct 25th

That’s when this dick fucker gave me the call. His crazy ass probably read some fucking essay of mine and concocted this wild pussy ass passive aggressive scheme to get back at his arch nemesis Michael. Matt probably sat in a big chair with a high back and black leather stroking his feminine fucking fingers together saying, “Yes, yes, dance my minions. Dance!”

I knew there was a good chance he was fucking with me, but I had no way to find out unless someone who knew him had evidence he was alright. A good long series of fairly happy tweets over the last few days says he’s doing just fine.

He doesn’t need my help at all, what he needs is a severe ass kicking.

Which brings me to my favorite thing about manipulators:

All passive aggressive manipulators are pussies.

Anytime you meet that guy who thinks he’s some fucking criminal mastermind who manipulates you into doing his bidding, just remember that. One good punch in the fucking nose and he’ll realize that he actually doesn’t have control over anyone.

In Matt’s case, I better find an apology in my fucking email queue or a very nice voice mail. It is seriously uncool to make people think you are hurt when you are not.

And, I’m still not the A-Team.

More Reasons Why Reddit Blows

If you just take this story on Hacker News vs the same On Reddit you’ll start to realize why Reddit is a total joke. I don’t even bother reading Reddit, and usually just wait until a friend sends me a link to something stupid redditors are saying. In this case, you can clearly see that the folks who participate in Hacker News are worth listening to:

I hope this has a happy ending. -- qwph

The majority of the comments are well thought out, longer than just a single sentence, and either debate the topic or try to help.

Meanwhile, we have the whore’s cunt known as reddit:

Zed's dead, baby. -- Canadian_Infidel

The majority of the comments are one-liners with stupid fucking jokes about the A-Team and me being the Z-Team. Oh, hahahahaha, such comic fucking genius. No, they don’t even try to mask their collective stupidity and instead just skip right over the fact that someone needed to be found and into unoriginal middle school quality gag humor.

I’ve said it before, but all those morons do is provide entertainment for the smarter people in the room. Their stupid one-liner “commentary” is not a part of the conversation. It’s not social media. All it amounts to is the maximum their dipshit little ADD infested brains can handle in focus.

Their one-line comments are insignificant when compared with the real conversation happening amongst the one-percenters out there.

BTW, reddit-whores, in NYC if you call 311 to ask for anything related to the police they transfer you to 911. 911 is basically the NYPD’s main contact, and is designed to take insane amounts of calls and route them fast and efficient. Unlike your podunk little shit-hole town where the whole emergency system can be knocked out by two crank callers and a homeless guy pissing on the building.

2008-10-28

UPDATE: Read my follow-up post to this where I explain Matt is alright.

I was checking my voice mail Monday and clearing out anything I’d missed when I heard a strange message from some random guy I’d never met. I’m hoping it’s nothing, but read this story, and if you know the people involved, then please let me know what you know.

In the voice mail Matt sounds very distraught. He rambles on, forgets what he was saying, misses important details, and seems to be completely confused. I think I could hear him walking outside somewhere. He says that he knows me from using Mongrel, and that he thinks I might be able to help him tell people what’s going on.

Then he says that he’s been forced out of his apartment on 31st by one Michael Brauser and that he’s received death threats. I’m not clear on whether Matt claims the threats were from Michael Brauser or not, and in no way am I accusing Michael Brauser of any wrongdoing. I’m simply trying to figure out what might have happened and make sure Matt’s alright.

Even when Matt mentions Michael he loses track of his topic, and forgets where Michael works. He then rambles some more, and hangs up after apologizing for rambling.

Right away this seems odd since I don’t know this guy at all, and I don’t give out my phone number. How he got it I’m not sure, but I start doing some digging. I get his phone number from the voice mail envelope and then find out that he called me on Saturday. He must have called when I was in the subway and dumb fuck Verizon didn’t deliver the message until Monday.

I call him and ask him to call me back, and then I hunt down his email address and email him too. While I’m waiting I collect up this information to confirm his story:

Here’s a good picture of who I think is the Matthew Kaufman in question. I can’t confirm it, but all the info matches.
Here’s his twitter with the same picture so that confirms more.
His LinkedIn profile says that he “Served as CTO and Sr. Developer at portfolio company RootZoo, an online sports social network…” for Marlin Capital.
Michael Brauser has a ZoomInfo which lists him as a partner at Marlin Capital. This makes Matthew’s voice mail even weirder because Matthew obviously worked with Michael, so why would he forget where Michael worked?
I can’t find any phone numbers for Marlin Capital Partners, and their website is down. There’s this mention of what could be the company but that number doesn’t work.

Other google searches confirm his address and other coherent parts of his voice mail. The only problem is, nobody I know in Ruby or otherwise has ever heard of Matthew or Michael.

I left a few more messages with Matt and then decided that if he didn’t call me back by tonight I’d call the police and have them go find him. Well, he didn’t call me back so I called 911 to see if they can try to find out what happened.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Oh man, yeah I almost thought the police would actually do their jobs too. I guess Matt would have to have brown skin and try to go on the subway with a backpack before they’d go searching anywhere near him. In the end I called 911 and my local precinct and they just shuffled me on to another precinct. They said that they probably can’t do anything since Matt’s an adult. They also kept asking me stupid irrelevant fucking questions like whether he’s from New York. As if the NYPD only helps native New Yorkers yo!

If I get more information I’ll go down to the police precinct in person and try again, but I’ll have better luck helping the guy with the Internet. My gut also tells me that he’s probably alright and I just need to confirm that.

What Happens Next

After putting together the story I think Matt is probably alright. I’m not going to speculate as to what Michael Brauser did or didn’t do, or even if Matt is telling the truth. He sounded like he needed help, so I’m going to see if I can get him some.

What I can figure is he’s at least been kicked out of his apartment and doesn’t have a job. He’s not answering his phone, voice mail, or email so that could mean he’s embarrassed that I’m contacting him, or he’s dead in a ditch somewhere. There’s a good chance he’s not even in the city anymore and has just gone home to Mom and Dad.

I’d like to at least know if he’s alright. He’s a total stranger I’ve never met before, but I can at least ask if anyone knows him.

If you know Matthew, and know he’s alright, then please email me. If you have other information then please let me know that as well. If you know how I can contact Michael Brauser please send me that information. I’d like to call Michael to get his side of the story and maybe track down Matthew through Michael.

The Lesson To Learn

Go to a party. Make some friends. Date a girl or a guy you like. Date several, if you can.

Whatever you do, don’t get to a point in your life where you have to call some random guy with a blog named “Zed’s So Fucking Awesome” to help you.

I am not The A-Team.

2008-10-05

Taking a break from more and more guitar practice I decided to weigh in on the current banking “crisis”.

In case you’ve missed it, people with lots of money are trying to scare people without money. They are claiming nothing short of societal collapse and that if Americans don’t give the rich who screwed everything up close to 850 billion dollars then we’re going to have another Great Depression!

Now, I can’t predict the future, and I don’t know if there’s going to be bad things happening. I’ll wager most likely someone’s screwed, but probably only the major banks that fucked everything up for us in the first place. I do not enjoy the thought of bailing these asswipes out without something in return. I also despise the fact that they’re trying to convince “Main Street” that it will prevent another depression.

However, I have an idea that may make this a fair trade.

I’ll Trade Your Golden Parachute For Some Surgery

Just in case everyone forgot what capitalism is all about, it’s about trade by contract. It is not about fucking corporations. It’s about me giving you money, which binds you into a contract to give me a service. Any time I don’t get something in return (even a single penny) it’s called an unconscionable contract and lacks consideration.

My problem with any bailout is that I’m not getting anything in return. I mean, I’d trade my tax money for bailing out a few banks if maybe I saw some CEOs get put to the guillotine. I am actually not joking about that. I think the quickest way to get the bailout approved is to drag the leadership of every bank in the country into a large stadium and begin beheading them on national TV. Then threaten to stop the beheadings if every American doesn’t donate fifteen-thousand dollars by Monday.

Well, beheadings are a little old fashioned, but what about a fair trade?

Why don’t we trade the bankers tons of money for socialized medicine?

It’s fucking brilliant because it trades one form of socialism for another form. They get corporate socialism in the form of bank holdings being purchased and we get free medical care for every American forever. I mean, they’re being bailed out forever, so that’s only fair.

This may seem radical, but it’s actually not too far fetched. Take a look at what we could be buying:

AIG is a huge insurance company that could run the insurance.
Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are loan providers that can provide loans for hospitals, housing, clinics, etc.
Any banks doomed to die like Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley become the Sovereign Wealth Fund Of The United States and work completely to reduce the American tax burden and fund health care.

The goal of the bailout would then change from saving a bunch of rich assholes who fucked up the economy, to turning these rich assholes into socialists. What we’d get is a fully functional sovereign wealth fund that exists to power an autonomous arm of the government providing health insurance for free.

There’s one final catch to this plan which makes it brilliant: Doctors and hospitals still stay private corporations that take loans rather than partake of the socialized system. This is essential because in countries where both the insurance and the care are socialized, the government has too much control over who gets treated and how. By having the two sides at odds, we’ll have a competitive system that should function more smoothly.

But Free Medicine For Kids Isn’t Capitalist!

Neither is buying bad assets from failed entrepreneurs. You didn’t see the government running out to buy failed tech startups when we went into the shitter in 2000. Incidentally, all of that was caused by these same bankers running massive pump-and-dump schemes using shitty technology companies. Yet, you didn’t see them running around begging to save these start-ups. They just let them die and took it on the chin from Elliot Spitzer.

Which brings up another thing I haven’t heard anyone mention: Who actually owns these assets we’ll be buying at above market value? Homeowners you say? Really? The “homeowners” who “own” their homes because they got a loan from a bank under shady circumstances? Those homeowners?

Nope, really the banks do. That’s the part that’s so funny. Congress and everyone is running around saying that we’ll be buying “distressed assets” as if we’ll be handing out free houses to the poor or saving some kid from losing his favorite spider man wallpaper. No such thing is going on. We’re handing a shit load of money to rich banks so they don’t have to do their jobs.

Their jobs? Yes, what’s really happening is the wealthy banks don’t want to go through the usual bankruptcy process. Our bankruptcy laws were created because of the Great Depression for just this very situation. When people take out too much credit, they have to negotiate with their creditors to save some kind of value and build more favorable terms, or to wash the debt away. The risk to the borrower is they can’t get credit again for many years, but that’s how it should be.

Instead, banks want to have their cake and eat it with extra peanut butter. They want the poor and middle classes to pay for the property with taxes, and they want to take that property from the people who are currently living there. Our government won’t buy these homes and give them to the people. They will pay for them and then hand them back to the banks to sell again at the new market rate.

Go Ahead, Just Give Me Health Care

Back when Bear Stearns ate it I knew something was up. The weekend prior to Bear’s demise I was in late working and there were about 60 people dressed in business clothes running around in a panic. One week later, the company died horribly.

I also predicted that other banks would die too. Then they started to die. Then I found out that the SEC gave Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley special exemptions on their dept-to-capital ratios.

I now predict that the “assets” we’ll buy up are only the ones owned by these five extinct or soon to be extinct companies. The impact will probably not extend much farther than these five.

Yes, you see, our friends in the SEC gave a bunch of companies who had a history of fucking over the economy many times in the past even less limitations on their actions. These companies then went ape shit and built up such massive debt that it crushed them into the center of the earth.

This involves the government and legislators so that means they owe me twice over.

If I bail any companies out, I get health care.

It’s that simple. Any bank that partakes of the giant fund becomes part of the Sovereign Wealth fund. I’ve already paid for AIG, Freddie Mac, and Fannie Mae, so they’re part of it as well. AIG runs the insurance, the others make money so I pay less taxes. It’s a simple solution.

Libertarians Can Suck My Dick

I’ve always hated Libertarians because they have a distorted idiotic idea of economics. Their view of economics comes from living in a world where there is a solid rule of law already. In our world, we’ve got a government that does set limits on what companies can do because companies are fucking stupid and they fuck over the customers. In true capitalism you can’t have economics without a rule of law to act as the advocate of the customer.

Libertarians seem to think that companies could run things better. It’s interesting that any dumbfuck who thinks this hasn’t worked for a giant company before. Fuck, for any company. Most companies can barely shit in their toilets, let alone run the fucking government.

Let’s put this into perspective: I bought some MP3s from Amazon to study for class, and then I bought some Led Zeplin albums. Amazon’s entire only purpose is to send me content. They are the masters of it. Yet, these dumbfucks screwed up my download midway, marked my download as completed, and then refused to refund my money or give me the rest of the download.

Yes, I want fucking Amazon running the government. They can’t give me $30 of fucking .mp3 files, but they’re going to do shit like process taxes. You realize the IRS processes every American’s taxes, the taxes of all corporations, and manages to fucking audit people accurately enough that we are deathly afraid of them? Most companies can’t even figure out how to collect 20 bucks from a single guy.

The SEC has finally given me even better ammunition against Libertarians. By not enforcing rules against these banks they demonstrated that without a strong rule of law watching out for the consumers, corporatists (not capitalists) will fuck themselves and everyone else in a greed fueled myopic frenzy for money. With the rules in place watching out for the population,and a strong enforcement arm, we get well run companies despite themselves.

In the future, if a Libertarian or a false Republican tries to tell me that I can’t have health care because it’s not capitalist, I’m gonna kick them in the fucking face and stomp their eyes out.

2008-09-29

I read Obie’s most recent post about his intense passion for Loverboy’s quintessential anthem, “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It”. I find the early 1980’s music is inspiring and uplifting and definitely suited to such important things as corporate culture, recruiting, and motivating the troops to do better. Yes, nothing gets a worker working better than a little Loverboy right in their ear.

Yet, I feel that this rendition is sadly not up to the task of helping Obie in his quest to explain to outsiders just what an important and relevant impact Loverboy has on the world. The important part of “Lovin’ Every Minute Of It” is obviously the lyrics. There needs to be a version that showcases the fine lyrical talents of whatever corporate writer Fairbain was able to acquire. Such gems as:

I got fun, You want some,
I'm ever ready DR. love,
I'm antennae aerial,
I'm tuning in my control, Whoa

with it’s subtle reference to robot love, masturbation, and teledildonics tightly wrapped in a single bridge and demonstrating a keen sense of rhythmic prowess by closing out the tension created by “control” with “Whoa”. This bridge (one of many in the song, where other’s might have a single bridge) also manages to hint at the robot’s erection directly, but without such crass language as you might find in a rap album today:

I got a cock
I'm ready to roll
It's hard like a rock
Now suck it robot bitch!  I'm in control, Whoa!

As we can see, the “gangsta” rap version of the same lyric, while clearer, doesn’t have the same nuance and depth of teledildonics understanding as the LEMOI lyric.

Because of the overwhelming importance of this song to Obie, Hashrocket, and Vancouver, I present to you my rendition on ukelele which features the Loverboy-Fairbain lyrical genius prominently.

You may partake of an Ogg Version or a larger and clearer MP3 Version and begin your road to true Lover-FanBoism.

2008-09-25

Don’t forget folks, the FU NYC show will be in a few hours (7pm-9pm). I’ll be icecasting this one at http://zedshaw.com:8000/fu_nyc and as usual you can use VLC, mplayer or many other players to play the stream.

Tonight I’ll be bringing much less equipment. I’m bringing my kaossilator, an H4 recorder for the whole sound system, and a spare microphone. Should be fun. During the intermissions I’ll be making fat beats on the Kaossilator.

For those attending, hit The FU NYC Wiki for location information.

2008-09-17

I got into music school last week and I’m going to study guitar exclusively for the next year. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, but just never had the chance. Either I wasn’t good enough (being self-taught for so many years) or I just didn’t have the money. After being laid off and getting a small package I decided to practice my ass off on the guitar, do a few live shows to get ready, and then audition for a school in the city.

I definitely freaked about it, and waited until the last Friday before the school opened on Monday. I made an appointment, walked in, sat with the director, and went through the small audition. I was very nervous, since playing music is about the only thing that I’m intimidated by these days, but I did well enough to get into the one year program. I was just hoping to do six months, but when I was offered to do one year I decided to just go for it and bust my ass.

As the director said, I’m not quite good enough to be in the program, but being older and motivated means I can probably pull it off. So far he’s been right, since I’m having to pick up a ton of extra things you don’t learn when you teach yourself. Simple things like the best way to actually practice, or why I keep lifting my pinky too much when I play.

I get up at 6:30am every day and practice for 4-6 hours if I can. I’m easily the worst musician there which is both kind of scary (especially at my age) and also very fun. Having so many younger better qualified people to interact with and learn from is great. Hell, I’m even older than a few of my instructors and some of the people who run the school.

That’s basically all I’ve been doing, that and writing when I can. I finished off a ton of my electronics projects, like the PAiA Mid-Side Mic and now I’m putting them on hold during school. The mid-side mic was very fun to put together, and PAiA does a good job making the kits they sell. This one is great because it’s just large enough to challenge your electronics construction skills, without being so large that when you fuck it up you can’t fix it.

In this case, there’s a small errata section at the beginning that mentions two tiny little jumper wires you have to add. At first I didn’t have these in so it wasn’t working. After I read about those two, and managed to find the little bastards, I installed them and the thing work great. It has a few flaws like the mics are a bit too sensitive, and they need to have screens on them, but otherwise the thing is awesome for recording my ukelele or harmonica.

The funniest thing about this mic is how people react to it. I first show it to them and they go, “You made this?” I tell them it was a kit but yes I assembled it and got it working. Then they hear it and freak out since it makes things far away from you sound like their right by your head. It also has weird features like if you pull one of the 1/4” jacks, the other jack takes over and “downmixes” the stereo sound image to mono for the remaining jack. It’s a very nice microphone, especially for $120 including shipping (and my time to assemble, but that’s just fun).

Some guy even bought me a biscotti when he saw it because he was impressed. He was also kind of strange and asked me if I was straight or gay, so yeah, I’m just happy I only got a biscotti.

After that I’ve been running the FU meetings. The next one is on the 25th of Sep. and we’re doing a visual show. People will show off paintings and a weird visual debugger. I may bring something, and as usually I’ll be icecasting the whole thing live so you can listen to the fun.

If You Had The Chance, Would You?

That’s all I’ve been doing. Guitar, writing, and FU. Now, some people when I tell them that I basically used a huge chunk of my severance to learn music at my age ask, “What are you going to do with it?” Well I could come back with, “I just wanna rock.” Which is partially true, but obviously in my own weird little way. Another answer is that I want to make tech for musicians, but the truth is I want to be a musician who makes tech for himself.

The better question is why people think that the things they learn only have value if there’s money potential. Yes, I understand more than anyone that being poor sucks and that many people can’t even eat let alone attend a fancy music school. This is why if I have the chance to study now, and I don’t take it, then I’ll have wasted an opportunity other people would kill to have.

For me however, the biggest reason is I’ve got something to say, and I think music is the best way to say it. When I’m done with my year of school, I’ll be able to use my knowledge to express myself, my ideas, and the things I want to say. It may never make me any money, but it will make me a better person.

The reason music appeals to me now as a way to express my feelings and ideas is that, unlike code, people expect you to be weird or creative with sound. When I tell people the software I write is art, or if I make something weird just as a joke, they look at me funny or roll their eyes. To them, coding is how they put potatoes on their plate. It’s not art, and I should shut the fuck up and get back to work.

When I write, people seem to enjoy the humor and the information, but very rarely enjoy the creative writing I do. Hell, I don’t think I’ve written anything creative in years. It’s all informational technical writing or funny blog posts. The reaction this form of expression receives is powerful, but only in the opinion forming or political-social way. The popularity of the phrase, “Steak and Strippers” from my blog is a good example of how my writing influences people.

Yet, with music I can play a wide range of styles and tunes, compose little tiny songs or bing horrible evil ones, and people will react in more direct varied ways. Sometimes it’s, “God I wish he’d quit playing.” Other times, they make my stuff into a ringtone and preserve the joke for future generations.

With music I can write sad songs, or happy ones, or funny stuff (yay ukelele) and even get serious and deadly if I feel like it. People will listen even when I’m just noodling around on a little thumb board over the internet. People just generally like different interesting music and respond to any range of emotions I can put into it.

With code, they hate emotion. People will actually email me to ask that I not put “curse words” into my open source projects. With code, nobody appreciates the huge amount of work that went into the little web server that runs their massive business operations. With my writing and public speaking they expect me to be a raving lunatic asshole (which is kind of cool too).

Music though gives me the chance to be more myself, and just write songs or say whatever the hell I want. No pretense about it, just me dorking around making something I feel like making.

Well, actually, when I get better at playing that is.

2008-09-04

The Freehackers Union NYC show went insanely well. I managed to pull off a full live internet feed of the audio to people in FU and the show at the same time. We had about 10 newbies show up to give their first five minutes and 11 listeners on IRC/icecast. Some people showed up just to hang out, so we relaxed the rules and let them stay to build an audience. Overall, there were some cool projects presented and everyone had a good time.

But, I’ll let the audio from the show tell you rather than write about it.

I’ve uploaded a “full” feed that’s high quality, a “low” that’s mono and 22khz, and a “flyby” that’s the low version but sped up so you can listen to it fast.

I’ll be uploading video of the event to the same place and then I’ll look at automating this process more.

How The Live Audio Worked

I’m kind of still wondering how it all worked, but it worked great and didn’t have many problems other than the audio levels.

What I did was setup an icecast server running on zedshaw.com that people could connect to with their browsers and various streaming media players. Then at the FU NYC show I used the icecast client ices to relay the audio out over the internet, to the icecast server, then out to everyone listening. The people who were listening then were hanging in IRC and could ask questions realtime and get responses.

In order to make it just a bit more complicated I took my Yamaha mixer board with me and used that to do the audio recording. This let me plug in the mic, an iPod, and any sound demos people had without much hassle. When people were setting up and there was down time, I played some classical music for the people on IRC to listen to and not get bored.

It worked out great, so I’m gonna look at this for some of the UnLocal technology we’re building. (UnLocal is the virtual local we’re building).

Interviewing My Peeps Is Not Interviewing Me

I’ve had a few friends and former employees tell me that knowing me sucks when they try to get a Rails gig. Apparently, there’s some assholes out there who are bringing in former employees for interviews only to ask them what it’s like to work for me. These companies don’t even have jobs, they just want to pump my friends for information on me.

Here’s a little advice to all the shithead startups in NYC that are doing this:

This is incredibly unprofessional, and can backfire on you quick. While you may say, “It’s not illegal,” you’d be wrong. All someone has to do is call the EEO and claim that your hiring practices are racist or sexist and the investigation alone can get you fired. For a smaller company the negative publicity from my blog alone could crush you, not to mention all the many friends I have in various activist networks. Calls to local unions, government agencies, publications I’ve written for, and blogs that I’m connected with can destroy what little image you have left.

More importantly, when I get pissed at someone and start writing about them, they die. Just ask anyone who was creating a Rails startup when I called Rails a ghetto and exposed that shitfest. After I wrote that essay, Thoughtworks called in the big guy Roy to call all my managers and try to get me fired. He of course didn’t call me (because I’m impervious to his Neuro-Linguistic Programming mind tricks) but think about that for a minute. I wrote a single essay that scared a large company enough that they started using their biggest hitters to come after me.

In short, don’t fuck with my friends.

You can fuck with me all you want, but some people I barely even know who are looking for work should be treated fairly and professionally.

( and people wonder why I started Freehackers Union )

(( and to the redditors who will say “he deserves it”, you are proving my point you morons ))

2008-09-01

UPDATE: Fixed the bzr repo for SoS.

We are a GO for the Wed September 3rd Freehackers Union meeting. I’ve got nearly everything ready to roll, so here’s the particulars:

The show will be at 7:30pm on Wed Sep 3rd at Earthmatters (177 Ludlow St.)
Announce sent to the lists
Wiki Page For New_York-NY-US
Website for the location

I will be bringing equipment for sound, video, and projecting.

All you gotta bring is your performance for the show and give your 5 minutes to get in.

You should probably reflect on the Rules before you come. Feel free to email me for questions about what you can show.

Announcing “Son of Sam”

I’ve started a fun email server project I’m calling “Son of Sam”, or SoS for short. It’s really just an attempt to bring modern web development techniques to doing mail applications. I’m mostly just sick of duct taping together a shit ton of stupid processes just to get an email server to be smarter. Based on my experiments so far, doing a new email server isn’t really too hard, thanks to Python.

It’s still rough, but you can grab the source as it is now (GPLv3 licensed) from:

bzr branch http://zedshaw.com/repository/sos/

In there you’ll find the code and a sample application. It’s a little tricky to try it out right now, but take a look at the sample directory to see where I’m going with the application. I think in a few days it’ll be good enough for me to use on chaos2congress.us and freehackersunion.org. It already can route emails to various handlers that you can write based on regexes, process emails in stages using a Finite State Machine, and send emails that it receives. Up next is generating emails in response or to send to others and probably a bit of queue management.

Son of Sam came about because the easiest to use mailing list for freehackersunion.org was Minimalist and even that was a total bitch to configure. It involved aliases numerous times in different Postfix files, other files in a spool directory for minimalist, permissions being just right, and tons of tinkering with text files.

Compared to a modern web application framework like Django or Rails this was like doing raw cgi-bin processing. It seems like SMTP servers are just nowhere near as flexible or easy to modify as HTTP servers, and I’m sure email guys have their reasons, but I’m also sure all their reasons are total bullshit these days.

This lead me to check out what was available for a “WSGI for SMTP” and only thing I found was Sendmail’s milter version 8. Wow, what a piece of shit protocol. It’s really only documented in C code, and you have to build an entire Sendmail to get at just the library and headers. What amazed me though, is motherfuckers are actually selling milter clients based on this. I’m not sure if they’re making money, but that’s simply impressive. Like those African dudes who can build whole Vespas out of wood and raw metal.

After much annoyance at playing with milter I decided to see how hard it would be to do just a plain old framework in Python. Just something that looks and works like Django, web.py, TurboGears, PHP, Ruby on Rails, Merb, hell even video games have simplification engines and frameworks these days. Why is SMTP so brain dead?

A quick googling around and I find out that Twisted does SMTP (as well as shave dogs and smelt gold), but that plain Python does a decent enough job already (here’s the code). Lakin Wecker did a good job of breaking the difference down and showing the kernel of the idea. I took his pointers, and then went and read up on what’s available.

Python clearly is the email processing god. It has everything you’d ever need, and really I think only Perl would compare in pure number of libraries to do all the bizarre email tricks. With a nearly complete simple SMTP server already baked into Python, and full SMTP client libraries, plus all the other goodies from the web framework world (SQLAlchemy, Mako Templates) it didn’t seem too hard to crank out a little sample.

Started it on Saturday, worked for a few hours, hacked on it Monday for a few hours, and now I’ve got the start of a nice little framework for doing intelligent email applications. I’ve even got a simple Finite State Machine class that lets you hold conversations over email with the state of each step controlled and stored to disk between receipts.

So, if this works out, I’m gonna make it the mailing list software for freehackersunion.org to test it out. After that, I think it would work great as a first step in taking on some of the messed up incumbents who voted for FISA through chaos2congress.us.