My personal blog

Twitter was all aflutter over the “alcohol at programming conferences” kerfuffle, kicked off by Ryan Funduk’s “Our Culture of Exclusion” article. Ignoring Ryan’s first couple of paragraphs, his main point is apparently:

It’s the booze. You can’t go anywhere, do anything or talk to anyone in the tech industry these days without a drink in your hand. If you try to fake it with a soda water you may as well give up trying to have insightful conversations after the first hour, because everyone else is wasted.

I disagree with this paragraph in its entirety. I, myself, am a non-drinker. I’ve been to a fair number of conferences over the years, including the first three JSConf.us (missed this year’s, unfortunately!) and one JSConf.eu. I’ve been to PyCon, CodeMash, various Mozilla events and smaller regional conferences.

Chris and Laura Williams and the other JSConf organizers have done a fantastic job putting together a great volunteer-run technical conference. The topics covered at JSConf and the hallway track conversations are first rate. Why do you think the tickets sell out in seconds?

Even if you skip the parties, the daytime part of the conference program is worth the trip.

Now, about those parties. I think the intent of the organizers is simple: they want people to have some fun with other people that they generally only communicate with through a screen. JSConf has had a mechanical bull (which I missed, alas), an arcade and a cruise, among other activities.

I’ve been to many of these sorts of events and never once felt excluded because I don’t drink. Chris actually asked me once about my non-drinking. If I recall correctly, it was at Union Station at the first JSConf. I could have chosen to interpret the mere asking of the question as an attempt to exclude. But why would I? Chris’ behavior toward me never changed. He has always been a gracious host.

Perhaps there are some people who would look down at me or shun me because I don’t drink… I haven’t encountered them at a tech conference, though!

Now, to my point

Repeating this from Ryan’s article:

you may as well give up trying to have insightful conversations after the first hour, because everyone else is wasted.

I disagree because you have to give up having insightful conversations even during the first hour because of the noise/music level. Either that or you give up your voice. It’s possible that “everyone else is wasted” as time goes on, because the people who want to talk have either gone elsewhere or lost their voices.

I enjoy having some fun events, but I often wish there were more evening hack sessions and times to talk about stuff without yelling. At JSConf.eu 2010, there was a room off to the side that was shielded a little from the music in the main bar area. It was busy with people trying to talk. I had a conversation about TinyMCE and in-browser editing techniques there, and it wasn’t easy.

The people I meet at conferences are people that I seldom see in person. We get to talk some in the hallway track, at the cost of possibly missing some good sessions. More time in the evening to take advantage of the really scarce face-to-face time I get with these people would be a big improvement.

tl;dr: I’m a non-drinker and I don’t feel excluded at tech conferences. I do, however, think that the music and atmosphere of evening parties somewhat reduces what I can get out of tech conferences. Even with no changes at all, I would continue to attend JSConf and the like because they are terrific events even as they stand.

Apparently, I have a reduced tolerance for random geekery. I like a lot of geekery, but my time has become increasingly precious as the years have gone by. It’s been years since the last time I built a PC from parts and then tried to get all of the peripherals running on Linux. That was fun in its own way, but I don’t have a tolerance for that brand of fun these days.

I see it also in the use of my Galaxy Tab vs. my iPad. The user experience on Honeycomb just isn’t very good, at least when compared to an iPad. I actually have a good deal of faith that Android will become much better, but it’s just not there yet and when I feel like using a tablet, I invariably would rather use my iPad than my Galaxy Tab. The one exception to this is that I really do like Firefox on the Galaxy Tab and wish I could have that on my iPad as well.

This isn’t about PCs, Linux or tablets

In August, I embarked on a bit of geekery on this blog, switching it to Octopress. At the time, I blogged about how cool Octopress and Jekyll would be for me. That was the last thing I blogged here.

I converted my main blog, Blue Sky On Mars, as well. I have posted a few blog posts there since the Octopress conversion, but not many.

I did like using my editor du jour (TextMate or Sublime) to edit posts in Markdown. That part was fabulous. Having a static, unhackable site was nice. I thought that it would be nice not to have to upgrade WordPress, but it turns out that upgrading WordPress is actually less work than upgrading Octopress. My hosting company makes that a one click process and I think I can even have them do it automatically. Sure, failing to upgrade Octopress doesn’t mean my site gets hacked as it can with WordPress, but the simple upgrades make it a solvable problem.

Part of the reason I got annoyed with upgrading WordPress was that I never converted Blue Sky On Mars over to a “one click install” at the hosting company. I’ll fix that this time around.

I didn’t like:

• annoying command lines
• long build times
• an inability to use alternative blogging clients

I like the command line, really

I generally have at least one terminal tab open on my Mac, and will often use it for file operations when others would try to get Finder to do what they need. Typing

rake "new_post[My Cool New Post]"
mate source/_posts/(think about today's date)2012-03-01-my-cool-new-post.markdown
rake "isolate[source/_posts/blah blah blah...]"
rake integrate
rake gen_deploy

is a fairly irritating dance. There’s probably an Octopress bundle for TextMate that makes that easier. Or, I could just use WordPress.

Long build times

I didn’t think I’d care about the build times, honestly. Blue Sky On Mars has more than 2,000 posts. It takes several minutes to build. My computer is fast enough that it doesn’t get slow while building.

But, I don’t like having to do the whole isolate business in order to preview my post properly. I don’t like the fact that I can’t just start a thread about the post on G+ and then go back and link to it. I could, but I’d have to rebuild and reupload the whole thing again.

For this site, Octopress is no big deal. The number of posts here is small. I’d rather not have to maintain Octopress and WordPress, however, so I’ll just switch back.

Switching back was trivial, by the way. “mv kevindangoor.com.old kevindangoor.com”, convert my single new post to HTML and paste it into WordPress’ post form. BSOM has a few more posts, but it’s still not a big thing.

Alternative clients

There are some nice workflows for blogging coming up on the iPad. Blogsy is a nice app, and the new Photoshop on the iPad looks like a great way to quickly customize an image and put it in a post. My assumption was that I’d do my blogging-on-the-go in Evernote and just copy the contents into a file for Octopress. That’s perfectly reasonable, but having the option to use other blogging clients is nice.

Fewer tweaky bits

Generally, it’s just less tweaky to use WordPress. I remember a couple of times when I got cryptic errors from Octopress (I believe the Markdown parser, specifically) because I had messed something up in a post file. That was annoying. Having to remember how I needed to specify my categories also got to be annoying sometimes.

All the little paper cuts add up. Say what you will about WordPress, but it’s been around for years with an audience that is not very technically minded. The roughest edges were polished down a good long time ago.

It all comes down to writing

In the end, blogging is all about the writing (unless you’re a photoblogger). I used to do quite a bit of blogging, and I enjoy writing in general. Choosing the geeky blogging solution was a mistake for me. Not a huge mistake, but as I said at the beginning: time is precious. Enough with the monkeying with the blog… back to writing.

I’m a geek. I know that when you want to write and you want to get your writing out in the world, it doesn’t matter how you do it. However, I have found that the tools you use can encourage certain behaviors and discourage others. I have never really found WordPress to encourage me to write.

I decided to change my blogs from WordPress to Octopress for a few reasons:

• more control: Octopress is built on Jekyll and I am more comfortable with my ability to bend Jekyll to my will easily than I am with editing WordPress themes.
• preferrable workflow: I like editing plain text in my text editor. I like being able to manipulate an image and drop it into a directory to get it online.
• no comments: I hate having to moderate comments on blogs. There’s just too much spam and too little useful action these days. A few years ago, it was the best way to go. Not today.
• upgrade treadmill: Most WordPress exploits seem to be along the lines of privlege escalation for people with accounts on the WordPress installation. Those don’t affect my sites. However, those aren’t the only kinds of exploits, so it’s best to keep things up to date. But why should I have to do that, when all I want is to publish a bunch of pages? My generated HTML pages are never going to become insecure.
• super scalability: for when I have 10 million daily readers (kidding! While static sites are certainly faster than WordPress, WordPress with proper caching works just fine)

More On Comments

For the types of things that I read and write, comments are likely to be found in these places:

• Google+
• Twitter
• Hacker News
• Reddit
• Disqus (if I felt like adding Disqus)

I don’t list Facebook, because I don’t really use it. I list Google+ first because that’s what I want. I want each of my blog posts to have a link to a matching post over on Google+ and for the comments to appear there. I just prefer the way that comments work there.

I also like the way Hacker News comments work and would link over there for commentary for anything I post that happens to show up over there.

In the end, though, I don’t want the comments to appear here, as part of my writing. John Gruber has written about comments (more than once, if memory serves) and I agree with the idea that all comments are not created equal and I would rather link to comments elsewhere at my discretion rather than having them appear here hanging on to the things I post.

Dynamism with JavaScript

I make no secret about the fact that I prefer JavaScript to PHP. I’m happy to add as much dynamic behavior as desired to my site via JavaScript (sometimes connecting to external services) alone.

Up Next

Having converted my wimpy little personal blog, the next step is to convert Blue Sky On Mars, my blog about software product creation. BSOM has been around for more than a decade now, and I believe I’m up to more than 2,500 posts. I’ve gathered that Jekyll is going to spend a bit of time on chewing on that, and I want to make sure that I don’t lose anything in the translation.

I’m also using the default Octopress theme here right now. I want to change the front page of KevinDangoor.com to be a better “home page”.

I was quite happy with the ease of migrating from WordPress to Octopress. The documentation is great and Mark Nichols had both good information and a useful conversion script that eased the transition.

Ever since I got my iPad in April 2010, whenever someone would ask me what I thought of it, I would tell them that I think it represents nothing less than the future of personal computing. When I said that, I wasn’t referring to the iPad per se. I meant that a device very much like the iPad was the future:

• very portable
• touch screen
• touch optimized UI
• simple application management
• no need to consciously think about files and directories
• little opportunity for one errant application to take down the whole device
• smaller chance for viruses to take hold and wreak havoc

In the long run, it’s possible that some company other than Apple could come to dominate this market, but I wouldn’t bet against Apple at this stage. Their head start is too great, especially in light of what may be coming tomorrow.

The iPad was capable of the kinds of things that most people needed from their computers:

• access to the web
• photo management
• music
• videos
• word processing
• perhaps things like spreadsheets, presentations

Three big things were missing from the iPad: the ability to print, a way to back up the data and a way to synchronize with your iPhone. The iPad relied on a computer to do those two things. Then, of course, Apple shipped Air Print. HP is already shipping printers with Air Print support, so you can print directly from an iPad. No other computer required.

What I had been telling people since last year is that I was certain that within a couple of years Apple would sell a box that would eliminate the need to have a computer by providing backup and sync services. While Apple could have gone for providing those services completely in the cloud, I suspected that Apple would ship a box because the box would likely be more convenient and faster for large amounts of data. The rumor mill is now saying that Apple will introduce a Time Capsule update tomorrow that will do just that.

And this is why I wouldn’t bet against Apple right now. I wouldn’t describe their lead as insurmountable, but I would certainly call it formidable. To beat Apple in tablets, the future of personal computers, is going to be a challenge indeed.

I like Apple’s products because they do a great job of delivering on a solid user experience. On the downside, though, Apple wields a level of control over the iOS ecosystem that is far greater than Microsoft ever did over Windows. Microsoft abused their monopoly position, but Apple has consciously designed an ecosystem in which people buy into a level of control and filtering that promotes a predictable user experience on the one hand, but reduces freedom on the other.

In Apple’s defense, I will say that they have been working hard to build a great web experience into the iPad. Even after the App Store took off, Apple has continued to build new features into Mobile Safari that allow web developers to create apps that rival native apps. Of course, I wish they would open up their ecosystem to other browsers, but at least they aren’t letting their browser stagnate.

I do ultimately expect that there will be some very successful Android tablets, and I’m looking forward to switching to one sometime soon if for no reason other than being able to run the awesome and quickly improving Firefox Mobile. As a geek, I appreciate the extra freedom that Android devices often provide.

It sounds like Apple will tomorrow set your iOS devices free from a traditional PC or Mac, if you so desire. If it doesn’t happen tomorrow, I’m guessing that the introduction tomorrow will put us one step closer to that and within a year or two you could reasonably have a household where the only general purpose computers were iOS-based.

Disclaimer: I work for Mozilla and therefore have a keen interest in seeing a free internet flourish and a desire to see the Mozilla community’s amazing work on Firefox spread far and wide. I also own a small amount of AAPL stock.

In his review of the iPad 2, John Gruber says the following about whether or not you should upgrade:

But how much better? The big question, particularly for the Daring Fireball demographic: If you already own an iPad, should you get an iPad 2? My best answer: If you buy a new iPhone or iPod Touch every year, then, yes, you should replace your old iPad with the iPad 2. It’s thinner, a comparative joy to hold in hand, noticeably faster, gets the exact same battery life, and has more RAM (spoiler: 512 MB). If you don’t buy a new iPhone every year — if you have the good sense to hold onto them for more than a year before upgrading to a new model — then you’ll likely want to wait for a new iPad, too.

I think the question of “do I upgrade my iPad?” is a little different from the question of “do I upgrade my iPhone?” because of the carrier subsidies and contract extensions that go along with iPhone purchases. So, let’s just consider iPads on their own. For simplicity, I’ll look at the 16GB Wifi model.

If you’ve kept your iPad 1 in “perfect” condition, Gazelle will give you $300 for it. No monkeying with auctions and all of that. I need to scrutinize it, but I think my iPad is in “perfect” condition because it’s been in the Apple case since day 1. (I’m not sure if Gazelle will give me anything for the case, but I’ll ignore case issues for the moment…)

The upgrade cost is then $200. Let’s assume that an iPad 3 comes out in a year, ignoring the rumors of some new iPad model for the fall, and that the pricing works out the same. Another $200 upgrade then.

iPad 1 to 2 to 3 = $400 in upgrade cost

Now, imagine that you skip the iPad 2 and just hold on until the iPad 3 next spring. For the sake of argument, let me guess that an iPad 1 post-iPad 3 announcement will fetch $150. Apple gear holds its value remarkably well, so it’s hard to say exactly. My guess is not more than $200, though, and not less than $100.  New iPad 3 $500 – iPad 1 $150 = $350.

iPad 1 to 3 = $350 in upgrade cost

I assert, then, that it’s a question of whether you want to pay $50 in order to use an iPad 2 during this coming year rather than sticking with the iPad 1. $50 sounds a whole lot less than $200. Granted, people are very good at rationalizing things (“it’s definitely worth it to spend $400 upgrading [twice] this $500 device that replaces neither my phone nor my computer!”). Don’t get me wrong: I love my iPad and find new uses for it all the time, but it’s more a thing of enjoyment than necessity.

Of course, if everyone decided to upgrade, then basic supply/demand would likely dictate a steeper drop in the price of used iPads.

One final note: I do wonder how cases fit into the equation. They’re just under 10% of the cost of the iPad itself.

Yesterday, my daughter and I were playing a game of Old Maid (thankfully, she’s old enough now that we’ve also been playing more interesting games together, such as the awesome Dominion). I commented that Old Maid with two players is rather boring, since the only thing that matters is the last play. It’s just dumb luck whether the person who doesn’t have the Old Maid randomly picks the card at the end. (If you’re not familiar with Old Maid, I won’t bother reproducing the rules here and you can thank me for that sometime.)

Talking about Old Maid’s boringness led us to a much more fun pursuit of inventing other boring card games. I think I hit on what is possibly the world’s most boring card game. It’s also among the simplest to describe:

The deck of cards is placed in the middle of all of the players. The first player to draw a card loses.

I think a good name for this game would be Make It Stop ™, because that would appear to be the point at which the game ends. One player will become bored enough to grab a card just to make the game end.

Pascal Finette, one of my Mozilla colleagues, just blogged about how he’s using Things with an Autofocus-inspired approach to getting stuff done (as opposed to Getting Things Done(tm)). Pascal also discovered Autofocus via the recent Lifehacker article. As an also recovering GTDer and former Things user, I was interested to read about Pascal’s approach.

Before diving into Autofocus, I should talk about a high-level of what I’m looking for and why I stopped using Things. Paper doesn’t work well for me, because I don’t want to carry around a notebook. I always have my phone, so some way to access the data from my iPhone is important. Finally, I also have an iPad which is why I gave up on Things: the “cloud sync” never materialized, so synchronization is a hassle. I also thought that the total cost for Things (Mac+iPhone+iPad) is a bit out of line for a todo list ($80!).

One of the things that I like about Autofocus is that you review tasks on a page-by-page basis. This makes the notion of reviewing things less daunting and also aids the culling of the list to remove things that are never likely to actual feel like the most important thing to do. That’s an important aspect of Autofocus: doing what feels like it needs to be done and lightweight review is part of that.

I’ve been giving FocusPad a try. It’s available as a webapp (free!) and an iPhone app ($2) which automatically syncs with the web. FocusPad is designed specifically to support Autofocus. Your task list is separated into pages. When you finish a page, you can mark it so that it doesn’t show up any more when you navigate. You can cross an item off and re-add it to the last page (a common part of Autofocus). FocusPad also has a nice feature where you can move a task from one page to another on a given date, which means that you could create a “tickler” pad that will remind you of something you need to look at later.

On the whole, FocusPad looks like the most faithful, syncs-with-my-mobile implementation of Autofocus that I’ve seen. I wish it had keyboard shortcuts in the webapp and iPad support, but it certainly reaches the “good enough” level and I’ve enjoyed working with it so far.

We’ve been using Google Voice as our primary incoming phone number for some time now. Lately, we’ve had a lot of calls (incoming in particular) where the caller is told, sometime into the call, that “this call is being recorded”. Apparently, we’re not alone in this.

Recently, we got an Ooma Telo for our home phone service. So far, the call quality has seemed very good (when Google Voice is not in front of it), the price is reasonable and the multi-ring feature comes close to our favorite feature of Google Voice, namely the ability to ring more than one phone when someone calls. The only problem with multi-ring is that it can only ring a single other phone.

I experimented with using Daring Fireball’s “Linked List” style where the blog post link (in RSS) points not to the blog but to the site being talked about. In the end, I decided that this is annoying. If I’m posting something to my blog, I will generally have at least some comment about it. Rather than just passing the reader along to the original site without my comment, I’d rather have them come to my site and see the comment and then head over to the site I’m linking to.

This is particularly true since my blog posts automatically appear on Twitter and they would have been linking from Twitter to the original site and not to my site. It’s not a matter of wanting traffic to my site. It’s a matter of not wanting to link to the sites without comment. (I use delicious for that sometimes…)

Edito is a new markdown editor for the iPad.

For those of us who spend most of their time in Markdown, this tool allows to simply type a document using the Markdown syntax, and visualize its HTML equivalent immediately in a web-powered window, without leaving the app. In other words, it does the Markdown to HTML conversion in a breeze, and lets you email the resulting files.

The on-screen keyboard has a row of useful keys for Markdown. It also includes a web browser. No Dropbox integration (yet!), but I think they’re on the right track here and this could become a great way to write blog posts on the iPad.