Power & Light

Best interview ever!

Aiden Bordner — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 20:40:25 -0800

Wow, geeze. I had an amazing day. After a fun, but lackluster meeting with the nice folks at Gershoni via iChat, I figured the day was pretty well blown, so I might as well send out a couple more applications.

What has resulted has me dancing in the snow kissing old ladies and throwing babies in the air.

I don’t want to say much, because a) the horse hasn’t arrived, so we don’t need the cart; and b) they’re probably reading this (Hi, guys!).

That said, let’s just say I may soon be on a path for World Domination.

I’ll be cackling maniacally. (Oh, and don’t try to get ahold of me Tuesday or Wednesday… I’ll be in The Bay!)

Hardest Interview Question EVER!

Aiden Bordner — Fri, 08 Dec 2006 13:16:00 -0800

So, I had a preliminary interview today with Gershoni (woo! fo’ real!) that I felt went really well…

Okay, so really well except for The Hardest Interview Question Ever!. The person who interviewed me deserves the HR gold star of the year award for this one; maybe it’s common but I’ve never heard it before.

“How would your friends describe you?”

It is at this point that I slowly swallow my tongue and freak out. I probably looked like a puddle of something gooey, because despite thinking of plenty of good friends with nice things to say, I felt very awkward suddenly thinking about what other people would say.

I felt I should say something honest, but then I had no idea what that would be! I’m liked, I know, I’m pretty crazy intense when it comes to human rights or bad governmental behavior or work related perfectionism, but I wasn’t really sure what anyone would say, exactly, so I just kinda froze.

Those of you with a dream of working in HR, remember this one. It will stop’m dead in their tracks! :)

Whenever you feel bad about yourself...

Aiden Bordner — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 07:19:00 -0800

...there’s always Dio.

And check this out from the YouTube comments:

magicmelon (2 days ago)

that video was soooo bad, i luv the song but the killswitch engage version is beter

blackarrow37 (1 day ago):

killswitch fucking suck how can you compare a shit talentlass screamo band to DIO?? god damn it some people.

Holy crap people are crazy!

I hope no one can ever accuse me of cussing somone out in a public forum in defense of Dio (over kKllswitch, no less).

Editors Note: Please realize while watching this video that Dio is about 5’1” :D.

Typo: The end is nigh // Job // Plagiarism // GM4.0

Aiden Bordner — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 22:50:00 -0800

Typo: The end is nigh

Not for Typo on a whole, mind you. Just here.

I’m preparing the first sketches on the long-overdue development of my personal site and one of the major components is going to be a completely overhauled blog presentation. And, when that happens, I’ll be switching to Mephisto due to the unnecessary weight of Typo and it’s sluggishness on this shared server.

The new system will employ much AJAX and DHTML goodness. Don’t worry: not a bunch of useless crap. I’m working on the wireframes now for a novel way to look at a blog. Admittedly, there’s not a lot you can do with a blog, but I’m asking questions of myself as to how people really interact with blogs, the differences between posts like this, which are dated and time-specific, and posts for longevity. The result is I think that there should be more user control over what is on the screen at any time, and fortunately JavaScript, CSS and the DOM will let me do that to some extent (at least I hope).

I’ll be using the moo.fx animation framework due to it’s “superlightweight ultratiny” footprint of 3kb, as well as prototype.js. Best of all, I’ll be releasing the finished product for everyone under Creative Commons, so feel free to port it to Typo and Wordpress and the like. I’ll probably break out any custom Flikr or other modules as well.

Should be done sometime between now and the end of time. Stay tuned.

Job

I need a job. Full time. The fuller the better. The best looking opportunity I’ve seen in some time just slipped away due to the cruel winds of fate.

I’m tired of freelancing (mostly because if I was as bad at making websites as I am at selling them I’d be out of business). I’m willing to relocate. Preferably to San Francisco or Seattle. Hire me! ... current TV, this means you. :)

Plagiarism

Although many of you may know this, Karthik Kastury of 33rockers.com is a plagiarist, both of the written word and design. His site is ripped off from the Mephisto theme without credit and described as “heavily modified” (it is not), and he has ripped off – verbatim – several blog posts across the internet. I almost expect to see my seminal blog hit “How to get Typo 4.0 running on Dreamhost” on his blog soon.

For more information, see the very detailed expose on Kirk Montgomery’s excellent MaxPower.

Additional note: He’s also a damn liar. Note his Nov. 30 post about how he’s selling the site because of personal reasons. How about because the DMCA complaints cost him his Google AdSense. Thief!

GravityMusic 4.0 Continues…

For those who just love sneak peaks… here’s one.

Simple is my business, and business is good. Backend dev starts tomorrow in Rails. We’re only a week or so away from first launch. Hope it goes well!

That’s all she wrote for this night. See you all again soon!

Gravitymusic.com 4.0

Aiden Bordner — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 14:26:00 -0800

First of all, allow me to make a brief announcement regarding my seemingly permanent absence from the blogosphere: I’ve been really crazy busy and had no internet connection for a bit in Indianapolis, but now I am back.

Without further ado, the news at hand:

gravitymusic.com is getting it’s third facelift! The site that is currently up is some of my oldest work that I still mention (circa 2002) and it’s soon to be gone making way for a new Ruby on Rails powered web presence.

Gone will be:

• Flash-based MP3 player that intermittently decides not to work on XP
• Tables (eek!)
• I-Frames (EEGADS!)

New will be:

• Ruby on Rails (oooh!)
• DHTML and AJAX [via prototype and moo.fx] in news and music display (oooh la la!)
• “Web 2.0”-ie graphic shite, like reflections and starburst badges and a shitload of gradients (... em, TIRED?... yeah ok, but it looks hot.)

Just see for yourself! (Warning: Spoiler alert.)

(What’s this? News…?)

(Hmm… How “Web 2.0” (lol))

(Hmm, Quicktime? Well That should be reliable… is that a three-column navigation like the OS X finder I see?)

Tune in in a couple of weeks to find out. ;)

IconFactory Under Redesign

Aiden Bordner — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 15:48:00 -0700

IconFactory, purveyors of amazing pixel art (really the best in the business in my opinion) have taken their site down, oddly enough, for six days awaiting the launch of a completely new website.

To help market this relaunch, they have been running an extremely cool six-segment daily-updated pixel film in which the Sims-like icon workers are visited by a very angry W3C inspector (seen above complaining about undepricated break tags; very cute :) and then proceed to start renovating the place to comply.

This is the best kind of web promotion. Clever, insider, extremely high quality, viral as hell. This rocks.

See it from the beginning here. (Requires Quicktime)

Coolest Bar Ever

Aiden Bordner — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 07:03:00 -0700

I seriously cannot even fathom how much this would cost, but I think we need one at Therapy

I found this not too long ago on Digg. It’s pretty damn cool, huh?

More details are available at the website of the creator (natch, they’re German).

Oooh, pretty!

Aiden Bordner — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 17:39:00 -0700

I definitely think I need one of these. Check out that Leica Lens. Sexy, baby.

It hits the market soon. Supposed to be under $300. Yum.

Fears of a First Time Blogowner

Aiden Bordner — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 10:12:00 -0700

It’s official, I’ve joined the blogosphere™

I’m excited to have my own plot of land with an exit from the information super highway (and it was dirt cheap, too), and pleased how easy it was to furnish that tract with my very own blog.

Yet, there’s a certain lump in my throat and queasiness in my stomach.

Does my ownership of a blog now mean I’m doomed to end up just like my friends?

For those who haven’t already guessed (or also blog) I’m referring to the blog-owner habit of airing one’s grievances with another friend (usually also a blogger) in the blog, under disguise, rather than in person.

Let’s be honest here. We’ve all done it. Even me.

The blogger obstensively resides in the realm of the journalist as they begin writing. “Hey,” she may proclaim to herself, “it’s not really about him, it’s an observation, documented to be shared with my throngs of adoring fans who read my RSS feeds daily!”

But delve, and the truth is there. The blogger knows that the person who is being dished will read the post. In fact, it’s written specificly so that they will find it. The real reason for the decision now lies uneasy, just below the writer’s better judgement, with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other.

“Don’t worry about the consequences, she deserves it. This will teach her a lesson,” says the devil.

“Yes, perhaps. But shouldn’t you mention this in person rather than lying in wait for them to see it?” replies the angel.

“What’s the fun in that?” the devil quarrels. “What, I’m supposed to make my quippy remarks in person? That always blows; the no one is around to hear them! This way my interpersonal jabs are documented for life!”

“But shouldn’t you think more about the other person’s feelings than your righteousness or posterity as an internet humorist?” murmurs the angel.

“Screw off, fairy,” the devil spits back, “if I wanted to be nice I wouldn’t have started a blog.”

And at this, the angel is dead. The devil has grown three times his size and you’re halfway through the post. It won’t be long before his horns get through the thick layer of better judgement above. At that point, there is no turning back.

Those of you with blogs know this is the truth. LiveJournal is a veritable minefield of unwilling IM transcriptions and pseudo-poetic rants questioning the remains of a real-life friendship.

This stuff does damage!

Think of the hundreds of people every day who commit digital hari kari, strapping a suicide bomb to their MySpace profile or blog and tearing their digital persona out of the web’s netting forever!

Ok, well… maybe just for a couple of months. And certainly not before going out in a “I’m leaving because this place has become so cruel!” ball of fire.

It seems to be the nature of blog-land.

So I ask myself, am I doomed to repeat these mistakes of my adolescence? Will I join my comrades in petty track-backs and endless 2 AM tearing-ups?

Probably. I’m doing it right now. But I’m hoping I can stick to much less destructive and time-honored second blogger tradition:

Horribly prosaic self loathing.

Getting Typo 4 running on DreamHost

Aiden Bordner — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 16:37:00 -0700

This has been an interesting day, attempting to get a fresh build of Typo 4.0.1 installed on a shared hosting account with DreamHost.

The reason for this, predominantly, was to practice deploying a Rails application on DreamHost in preparation for the launch of Witnessing Life which I’m currently spending my days (and nights) thinking about.

Without further ado, here’s the rundown of how I achieved my goal.

Disclaimer: I am not well versed in server configuration, ruby, rails or typo. This is simply a documentation of the steps I took to get typo up and running on my page. I am a newbie with the intention of helping other newbies get their feet wet. If things go wrong, see the list of related links at the bottom and seek assistance at #typo on irc.freenode.net, but more importantly please let me know what went wrong so I can correct this information for the future.

Another Note: This post is under the assumption you’re installing your blog as a subdomain, like this blog, e.g.: blog.yourdomain.com.)

1. Install using Subversion (not gems)

Although the Typo folks were kind enough to create a RubyGems installer, you can’t install your own gems (easily) with DreamHost. (To do so requires creating your own gems install on your account. I followed the DreamHost wiki to this effect, but it did not work properly; I think a misconfiguration in the bash_config). Regardless. it proved easier to use subversion and install from the typo trunk. Use your terminal to SSH to your server (e.g., ssh yourusername@your.website.com) and enter the following into the command line at the dreamhost server.


svn checkout svn://typosphere.org/typo/trunk typo

This is going to take a while. Bounce over to your browser and go on to step 2 (or get a sandwich).

2. DreamHost Setup

You need to configure a subdomain for Typo. Under the DreamHost Control Panel choose “Domains > Manage Domains” on the left hand side. Then configure a subdomain with blog.yourdomain.com as the domain, FastCGI enabled and a directory of home/username/typo/public. Save your settings.

You also need to create a database where typo is going to store your posts, etc. I’m using MySQL. Under “Goodies > Manage MySQL” you can create a new database, for instance “typo_db” with a username of typo and a subdomain of mysql.yourdomain.com Create an original and strong password and save it for the next step.

It’s going to take a 10 or so minutes for your new subdomains to propagate on the dreamhost DNS servers, and some of the following steps to work properly (namely for typo to find the database, since DreamHost wont accept localhost for a MySQL server). If you haven’t already had that sandwhich, now might be the time.

3. Configuring Typo

The next step is to configure typo to work with your account. Enter the following in the command line:

cd ~/typo
pico config/database.yml.example

This is an example version of the database.yml for mysql. You want to edit this file to match the settings you just created.

Under the ‘login’ callout, change host to mysql.yourdomain.com, change the username to typo (or whatever you set the mysql user to be in step 2) and enter the strong password from the end of step two where it says password.

You also need to change the name of the database (marked database) under each of the three application modes (development, test, production) to your newly created db, typo_db.

Type ‘Control-X’ to exit. When it prompts you to “save modified buffer”, type Y. Pico will then prompt you for a name for the changed file. Remove the .example from the end of the filename, naming the file database.yml.

Next, at the command line, type:

pico config/environment.rb

On the fifth line, uncomment the line that reads ‘ENV[‘RAILS_ENV’] = ‘production’ (remove the ‘#’ from before the line). It should look like this:

This will force rails into production mode for DreamHost. When complete, type ‘Control-X’ to exit and save the file with the same name.

Finally, back at the command line, type:

rake migrate RAILS_ENV=production

This will take a while, but it will get the database schema configured on the typo_db MySQL database.

Note: If you have problems here and the output indicates the rake script was looking for a typo_dev database, you need to restart your rails processes on your dreamhost account. To do this, try ‘killall ruby’ and try again.

4. DreamHost Tweaking

If everything has been going ok so far, there’s just a few more things to do for you to be Typo Powered.

We need to edit a couple more documents:

pico public/dispatch.fcgi

First of all, change the top line that reads ’#!/usr/bin/env ruby’ to ‘#!/usr/bin/ruby’. This, called the “shebang” line, is the path to ruby, and DreamHost’s path is slightly different than the default.

Next, scroll down to the bottom of the document and look for the line that reads ‘require fcgi_handler’. Underneath that line, add the following code:

class RailsFCGIHandler
  private
    def frao_handler(signal)
      dispatcher_log :info, "asked to terminate immediately" 
      dispatcher_log :info, "frao handler working its magic!" 
      restart_handler(signal)
    end
    alias_method :exit_now_handler, :frao_handler
end

This is a method of dealing with intermittant 500 errors at DreamHost devised by Alex Young. When you’re done, the file should look like this:

Hit ‘Control-X’ and save your changes again. Now we do the same shebang line change to dispatch.rb:

pico public/dispatch.rb

Again, if the top line reads ’#!/usr/bin/env ruby’ change it to ‘#!/usr/bin/ruby’. Close and save.

Finally, we have just a few permissions to set. At the command line:

chmod 755 public
chmod 755 public/dispatch.fcgi
chmod 755 public/dispatch.rb

And you’re done! At this point you should be able to go to blog.yourdomain.com and create your first user. Note that, at first, the response of the system may be a bit sluggish. This is because the first time the controllers are accessed they haven’t yet been cached. You should notice a performance increase quickly through use.

Again, I am a Ruby/Rails/Typo amature myself, so if these instructions don’t work, my appologies. Please let me know and I’ll revise them. Additionally if you are a pro at this and notice I’m doing something wrong, please let me know and I’ll happily correct it.

That said, my experiences were based on trial and error and a lot of help from the following:

DreamHost 2.6 Installation on TypoTrac
Official DreamHost Wiki for Typo
Alex Young’s DreamHost 500-error fix