Reggie Watts and Bitching about Twitter
Listened/Watched
Funny. Speaks for itself. Trust me. Sit through it.
Reggie Watts on The Sound of Young America from Jesse Thorn on Vimeo.
Learned
I learned that this blog post on being careful about a Twitter API based business is 100% correct. Last night around 10pm, Twitter decided that the emails that are sent for new followers and direct messages would have background colors, pictures and other information. Previously, for direct messages, you just had the direct message as the first line of an email. Now, the message was trapped about 5 lines down.
Maybe the HTML is valid XML for easy parsing? Nope. Maybe the actual direct message is in a HTML element that's easy to pick out? Nope. In fact, the direct message is in an incorrectly marked up <td> that makes parsing a total bear:
<td valign=3D"top"><strong>username: </strong></a>Your message here</td>
See that </a>? That was already closed in the previous <td>. Lovely.
So, yeah. There went a few hours. Thanks, Twitter! They've given me a lot and I should be grateful they even have an API, but man... that was a pain in the ass at an inappropriate hour.
Deceleration
Listened
Good download today from RCRDLBL.com, if a bit low-key:
Also, a potential attendance of the Peelander-Z show at the Red and the Black on Thursday has me re-listening to S.T.E.A.K:
mp3 courtesy of http://bothsidesofthemouth.blogspot.com/2009/04/retrospective-peelander-... who appears to have been at the same show as me.
Watched
Been catching up on Flight of the Conchords Season 2 and ran across this gem again from episode 6:
Learned
Spent a little time today trying to get redmine working on Site5 - it's a Ruby on Rails app, which I haven't really messed with enough in a shared environment. It didn't go well...
French house, Swedish swing/pop/hop
Listened
If you're more into the hard stuff, I found this track on HypeM:
Les Petits Pilous - Jolie Fille (The Bloody Beetroots Remix) (via illictronix)
Watched
A coworker sent along this Swedish swing/pop/hip-hop crap.
Learned
I learned a bit about JavaScript on the way up to NY. I had no idea that the official name of it was ECMAScript. Note to self: never, ever say "ECMAScript" again.
Big Weekend coming up
Volunteering for Servathon tomorrow and then going up to NYC for a very old friend's bachelor party (he's not ancient, we've been friends since short-pants).
Listened
Friday appears to be hype machine day for me. In any case, today I found Hansome furs track via (djnodj.com):
Watched
A friend was nice enough to forward this birdhouse promo from its creators and the rest of the muy witty guys over at You Look Nice Today.
Learned
I learned that there are a lot of branding requirements for Netflix when it comes to developing an application for their API. I understand where they're coming from, but yeesh! They're going to feature the application I built that adds movies to your Netflix queue from Twitter after I make a few tweaks regarding language and imaging. Netflix also sent out a tweet to recommend the app and a facebook link post (which was the biggest traffic driver by far). It's exciting! I really built the thing for myself, so my primary goal is to make sure that it still works for me even with all these other people using it.
hash-tag
Listened
This Kaiser Cheifs song popped up in the shufflé (Good Days and Bad Days). Quite Nice:
Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io
Watched
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Another bike video. Skip to the last 30 seconds and you'll be impressed
Step Up Session from RyyS on Vimeo.
Good stuff
Listened:
RCRDLBL.com posted this:
Watched:
I can't get over this Slap Chop remix:
Not to be confused with the anti-"Guy berry" device that is The Cock Shot:
Cock Shot - watch more funny videos
"Stop having a boring cock shot, stop having a boring life."
Learned:
DK came over and was talking a bit about how his mom was freaking out about swine flu (which I'm now calling "wine flu" for fun) and it reminded me of this article that I read in Harper's at some point. At first I thought it was more recent, but it turns out it was from 2004.... makes me feel old. In any case, it's definitely a great read, it's called "We Are Not Immune: Influenza, Sars, and the collapse of Public Health" and you can find it here.
Also, here's the first paragraph:
Death
is inevitable but not disease,
The difference may be as simple as washing our hands or keeping the wastes
of industrialized farming out of the water supply, but it is often much more
complicated. Bacteria and viruses are no mean adversaries, nor are they eas-
ily defeated. If we fail to be watchful or to protect those most at risk, a
public-health catastrophe is inevitable, and yet somewhere within the span
of the last thirty years the idea of the common good has disappeared from
our national consciousness, giving way to the misconception that we no longer
need concern ourselves with the welfare of our fellow citizens. It is a dan-
gerous conceit, and it leads us toward a future infected with unprecedented
and unnecessary disease.
Better Late than Never
Listened:
I caught up on several episodes of the Chicago Public Radio show Sound Opinions. They don't play as much music as they could, but it's good to hear to intelligent conversation and critiquing of new music coming out (largely indie hipster nonsense... my bag).
This episode features Jill Sobule and Julia Sweeney (of SNL back-in-the-day fame)
Don't have time for that? Then listen to this song by Department of Eagles:
Watched:
R was working late, so I spent the evening biking down to VA to watch the planes land at Gravelly point. When the wind is from the South, the planes land right over the field giving way to sweet vortexes and jet fumes.
Learned:
I learn a lot every day from the home page of del.icio.us, which aggregates everyone's most recently bookmarked sites and the userbase tends to be a lot like me. Yesterday, I brushed up on Facebook privacy settings, which I still hadn't bothered to mess with since everything I do is pretty much public now anyway.
I also checked out this article on 10 dirty little web development tricks and fond a few useful ones (also patted myself on the back for already knowing and doing 50% of them).
Some nerdy stuff towards the bottom (what's new)
Listen:
This RAC Remix of Kings of Leon's Use Somebody popped up in my iTunes. Quite enjoyable:
Watch:
Someone posted this classic from Tiny Toons. I'm pretty sure I recall running home from school to watch this show and thereby discovering They Might Be Giants.
Learned:
Building a direct message twitter bot on Google App Engine (GAE) that runs by checking the emails sent via twitter DMs isn't possible since GAE won't check ports outside of 80 and 443. This was a big deal, since I'd been planning to try out GAE for a new project. Oh well, back to CodeIgniter on my shared host.
Speaking of which, getting mod_rewrite for clean URLs in codeIgniter on Site5 involved a bunch of attempts that finally worked out when I went and copied the .htaccess file form Drupal and used it as a guide instead of various posts from other parts of the internet. Here's what I ended up with (I think the only real difference is the [QSA] part...):
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
#Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file,
#such as an image or css document, if this isn?^?^?t true it sends the
#request to index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/?$1 [L,QSA]
#Removes access to the system folder by users.
#Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller,
#previously this would not have been possible.
#?^?^?system?^?^? can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php/$1 [L]
# If we don?^?^?t have mod_rewrite installed, all 404?^?^?s
# can be sent to index.php, and everything works as normal.
# Submitted by: ElliotHaughin
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
No listening
Went to Cantler's and ate crabs all afternoon in the sun. Delicious.
Watched:
The Reader. I thought it was great, but looking for a link found that The New Yorker disagrees.
Now I just have to remember to return it tomorrow.
Learned:
The brewing of Guinness and many other cask ales involves the use of "Isinglass", a substance obtained from the swimbladders of fish, as a gelatin to catch yeast and sink it to the bottom (thus, filtering the beer).
This makes Guinness non-vegan.
Technically, I learned that yesterday when I was listening to Wait, Wait, Don't tell me on the way to Charlottesville, but I looked it up today to learn more.
Only Listened
Something I Listened to Today
I spent most of the day driving down to Charlottesville to pick up my new mountain bike - and also found that 88.5 WAMU came in about 80% of the time. This enabled the listening of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me; Car Talk; Radio Lab; All Things Considered and a bunch of other shit that I don't get to listen to because I lack a car and therefore radio. In any case, here's a link to the Car Talk episode that I listened to today (the "Procedural Deviant" episode):
This will change in a week - remind me to update it.
Something I learned today (from Car Talk)
It doesn't hurt an automatic car in any way if you turn it off while it's still in Drive (instead of switching it to Park). Hooray! Now I can be a procedural deviant, too!
I probably watched something too, but it's Saturday and I'm sure you've already seen it.
