Ignored By Dinosaurs 🦕

So far it's been a little boring. I've added a few modules, mostly to achieve some comment functionality that Wordpress comes with almost out of the box, and somehow I find my database up to 90+ tables. And the comments don't even really work that well.

So, in researching how to move from Drupal to Wordpress (since I've of course been doing mountains of Wordpress hacking for the last weeks since moving to Drupal), I've discovered that it's basically not easily doable, due to the above mentioned database bloat and variety of setups. Thus...

Version 4.0 shall be a Rails app. I've said this before, but I'm going to have to manually import all of my old posts and comments shit like that in via SQL most likely. To the layman this means a lot of interesting and educational work. I'll bet I can copy what I need for a functional blog in <10 tables. Probably more like <6.

You'll know. thanks for stopping by. I'll have something more interesting to write about soon.

I don't buy Zuckerberg's argument that Facebook is now only reflecting the changes that society is undergoing. I think Facebook itself is a major agent of social change and by acting otherwise Zuckerberg is being arrogant and condescending.

via => ReadWriteWeb.

And, in my humble opinion, he's begging the FTC and the FCC to get involved in a sector of the economy in which they can only do lasting and permanent harm. This is why 25 year olds shouldn't be allowed to be CEO of companies this large. This is nothing more or less than youthful hubris and this giant mis-step is the first on the road to irrelevance. I hope for the sake of Silicon Valley that they don't IPO now, because they're done. It'll take a few years, but they're done...

I appreciate that you've stopped by. I unfortunately have nothing to say about anything. I feel like I should be giving some sort of summation on the last 7 years in a band, but I don't have anywhere near the perspective to do so yet. I also don't feel like just blathering about technology (again) yet, as I don't feel like I have the guns to be espousing my viewpoints on that either.

This blog might be a little static for a little while.

What I'm doing in the meantime is rewriting JohnnyGrubb.com as a Rails app. This will be my first Rails app from scratch. The Posts model (system) is pretty much done, and I, and only I, can blog away all I want. The trick is the comments model. I've got a commenting system in place, but what it needs is the simple little email verification and website linking tricks that all blogs have. I've got the database set up to receive the info, and display the info, but verifying that email addresses are in the correct format and setting the commenter's name to link to their website, if they put that in, is a bit more of a trick. when I get it figured out, you'll know.

Maybe ten years is too long a period of time to plan for. So how about seven?

Seven years from now, what will you have to show for what you're doing right now?

If your answer is, “not much,” perhaps you should consider a new plan, one that might generate a different answer, or, at the very least, be a more fun way to waste seven years.

via => Seth Godin).

“A systemic failure has occurred, and I consider that totally unacceptable,” an angry and unusually blunt Obama told reporters near his vacation retreat in Hawaii.

via LA Times

A few points =>

I haven't noticed any change in any security whatsoever in any of the 3 airports in which I've been in the last three days. I am not, nor has anyone that I've talked to been concerned with getting killed by a terrorist. The perp in the case was “subdued by passengers and crew” on the plane.

Flying is miserable. It has been for years by now. The entire process from finding a ride to the airport to getting picked up and certainly everything in between seems as if scientifically designed to exert as much stress on as large a segment of the population as possible. Atlanta's airport sees almost a million flights a year. Belligerence is high.

The “threat level” was already at orange, and probably has been for several months. It was not raised after the attempted attack. This got me to thinking.

Has the Bush/Cheney threat level mechanism actually desensitized us to the possibility of a terrorist threat so thoroughly by this point that even when there is an attack nobody really cares? And if the ultimate goal of the terrorist is to make us afraid, and we're not really that afraid, have we now won the war on terror? None of the security measures in place stopped this asshole, a fellow passenger did. I'm surprised they didn't beat him to a pulp, for if someone were attempting to blow me up on a plane on Christmas day, that's quite likely what I'd be inclined to do. And how much further past the point of diminishing returns are we going to push this quest for airline security? Wouldn't we be safer giving all passengers a set of brass knuckles before they board the plane?

I'm kind of ready to get this over with.

http://tryruby.org/

The coolest and most useful programming tutorial I've seen so far.

The future is here. Check it out...

The Twitter API is Finished. Now What?

via Anil Dash

I'm testing out this new comment notification system that will supposedly email me when people leave comments, with the aim of making this website (that's getting a tiny bit of action now) a little more conversationally interesting. Would you mind leaving a comment down there? And if there's already one there, would you engage that person in some banter? Supposedly they'll get email, too, unless they untick the “notify me” box.

I appreciate it. By the way, I don't think it's working and I've been debugging it all day. But maybe it just needs a new post to work. I dunno. Drupal's tricky.

Edit: It's working now. Thanks.

I just realized this weekend that I missed something in Friday's post. * Nershi's announcement. * Ben's announcement. * Zac Matthew's announcement. * And mine.

So, if you haven't already, take a look at the dates, and allow me to prepare a meditation on why November seems to be such a drag for touring bands...

Surprise! I'm a cliche! All of these announcements were dated sometime in November – Billy in '06, Ben in '07, Zac in '08, and myself in '09. I already asked, what is it about November that makes one of us flip out and quit our band each year? Well, obviously, all of these bands are summertime festival circuit bands. That was RRE's bread and butter, sort of like the hippy band equivalent of Black Friday. Remaining closed on Black Friday is not an option for most retail businesses, just as not hitting the road each summer is not an option for a band that also wishes to remain a viable business. So, how does that end up laying out your touring year? We'll start in the spring...

Spring tour is great. People have been bottled up all winter and are ready to party. You've had all winter to get creative (or not) and hopefully have a boatload of new tunes ready for your crowd. These are all club dates since festival season hasn't begun yet, and usually they are packed with a fired up crowd. You deliver. Your job is the best one on earth. March, April, May.

Festival Season! It usually starts some time in April for most of us, though if you're lucky enough to be on the Judy's fav list you might get to start early at SpringFest. The majority of your summer is spent doing what's called “routing”, which means getting from good gig to good gig. Hopefully, those good gigs are every weekend and Tuesday night is paying for the gas between Fridays, but if not, and your next gig is on an opposite coast, then you might be playing some of the dreaded “routing dates”. These are the gigs in Winters, CA on the Wednesday before High Sierra Music Festival, or the Bottleneck in Lawrence, KS before or after Wakarusa. They're rough, not only because you get yanked from festival land back to club reality, but because the vast majority of the live band audience isn't really interested in going to the Bottleneck in the middle of summer. Club owners don't have the option of shutting their club for the whole summer, and some scenes probably do a really good business in clubs in the summer, but ours ain't one of them. File under : necessary evil. It's cool, though. On weekends you're a rockstar.

Now it's fall. You've already been on the road for half the year. September might throw you a festival bone or two, but mostly it's back to the clubs. The edge has come off of what were fresh tunes and a fired up crowd. It's time to start laying out plans for the winter. You need to write a new record, but you also need to keep the business going, so it's a constant push and pull. Oh, you're on the road while you're deciding all of this so usually you're too tired to really be able to puzzle out the correct combination of dates that will keep the business far enough above water to enable you to do what you really want to do, and that's be home with your family and write some new music. Your crowd will be there, and they will be expecting you to prove your otherworldly talent by delivering them fresh new tunes, preferably originals but whatever they want at the time will be fine. Do not disappoint, my friends.

So you walk the line, and don't line up a winters full of shows so that you can get creative. The problem? You've been on the road for so long by this point in the year that you don't remember how to write music. Better line up some shows for February, since payroll is running out...

Wash, rinse, repeat for at least 7 years and what you have is a subconscious dread of winter.

#life