Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • Dream Come True

    I love SxSW, and one of my favorite events of the conference is 20×2. I got an e-mail from Kevin Newsum this evening inviting me to be a part of this year’s event!! I’ve been to the last four (I told Kevin three, but I’m sure it was the last four – I can’t believe this is my fifth SxSW), and loved every single one.\
    What’s 20×2? Twenty people get two minutes to answer a very broad quetion. My favorite ones were “What’s the word?” and “What’s the big idea?”, and some of my favorite people have done it, including Dave Thomas, Kevin Smokler, Josh Benton and James McNally, and it’s a lot to live up to. This year’s question is “What if?” and I’ve already got some ideas. I don’t think I can stand up and take exactly two minutes with what I want to cover, so I’m thinking of doing a short film to answer the question. Not sure exactly what yet, but it’ll be something.\
    On top of that, this month I’m launching a new site that Jason, Cindy, Ari, Jenna, Shadia, Jayna and others (who really need to get websites so I can link to them) have been working very hard on, writing an 80 page chapter for Christopher Schmitt’s new book, working on two panels for SxSW this year, and putting together a panel discussion for work. February is going to be very busy.\
    Now? I have a cold. I made it through work today (got a lot done, but it’s easy to get a lot done in one day with a cold with Rails), but I am shot. I’m gonna go take some NyQuil, crawl into bed and watch the rest of Robot Chicken and then go to sleep.

  • Checking Out

    I’m checking out of politics. I was trying to keep up with news and what’s been going on since the election, but I just don’t have the energy. We won in November, Bush is still an idiot (and President), Cheney is still Darth Vader (did you see the interview on CNN? need more proof?), and we’re still in a bad war with no end in sight. Me paying attention to the inaction and bickering isn’t going to change anything.\
    Why I’m blogging about this, I don’t know. I just felt like I needed to say it out loud so I could turn off all my politics feeds and not feel guilty about it (because I told you I was doing it). I’ll probably flip things back on when primary season starts up and when the presidential field calms down a bit. Until then, it’s nose to the grindstone with work, family and photography. That’s a lot less contentious than politics anyway, right?

  • I’m Steppin’ Out on Ya’

    My pals over at dev.aol.com asked me during Mashup Camp to start a blog over on their site. I’ve wanted to start a geekier blog to do more long form posts on all things web, but just haven’t had the time or drive to really get it set up (you know, I can’t use default templates, it’s just not me). Well, here’s my chance, so I said yes (you know, I don’t think I’ve ever said no to Naveed – must ponder that one). I posted my first entry tonight. My goal is to post over there at least once a week – though two a week would be great. I’ve got way too much going on right now (product managing and writing a lot of the code for a new product, trying to write 1/3 of a book, taking more pictures, preparing for two sessions at SxSW, a couple other possible conferences, etc), but I think this is a good thing to support and to help out with. So, check it out if you want, and let me know what you think – suggestions for stuff you’d like me to write about would be greatly appreciated.

  • Mashup Camp Three Recap

    Mashup Camp 3 wrapped up a couple hours ago, and as far as I’m concerned, it was a gigantic success. I’ve had more fun at this “unconference” than at any conference since SxSW. Everyone was really into what they were doing, and there was a minimum of people there purely hawking their own stuff and not participating (which was my main problem with the last one in Mountain View). There were great sessions, and I was so geeked about everything, I ended up spending all of Tuesday building a mashup so I could share it at Speed Geeking. I ended up building a mashup of a feed reader and your buddy list that I unfortunately called Buddy Stalker, even though there’s very little “stalking” involved. It’s just a way to get a feed reader filled with things you’re likely to care about (the content your buddies create) without the initial setup cost of finding feeds, adding them, pruning them, etc. I ended up in the bunch of third place winners, which was great, when I consider that I did it in one day and that it was the first thing I’ve ever launched using Ruby on Rails.\
    I met some great people, and had some great discussions. Here are just some of my favorite people from this week: John Gerken from IBM, David Janes, the Herrens, Nate Ritter and Chris Radcliff from Eventful, Kaliya, Raj Bala, Frank (if you’re out there, I never got your last name… we’ll find you a Ruby Users Group in Little Rock, I promise) and Shimmy from Angelwish, just to name a few.\
    I think I ended up overdoing it a little… I ended up proposing and/or running four sessions, doing one presentation at Mashup University, and speed geeking for two days. My poor throat is shot – between talking too much and the cold dry air, it’s a raw mess. But, it was totally worth it. I got to talk about microformats, standards, the semantic web (both lower and uppercase), and in the last session, ruby on rails. It’s been a full week to say the least.\
    There are pictures to go look at, and lots and lots of stuff to think about and work on going forward. There are several more posts in me to discuss all the stuff we talked about this week, but they’ll have to wait. I need to pack and get some sleep.

  • Hellooo, Mashers!

    I gave my Microformats + DOM / AJAX = Mashup Nirvana today at Mashup University. I thought it went pretty well, but if you were there, I’d love to hear your feedback. You can either post your comment on this entry, or e-mail me at kevin at lawver.net. It’s been a few months since I’ve given a presentaton, and I feel like I’m out of practice, but I’d love to hear what you thought of the presentation.\
    If I do this one again, I’ll try to film it and put it up somewhere. Of the presentations I’ve given at conferences, this is one of my favorites (of couse, my all time favorite is How to Convince Your Company to Embrace Web Standards from SxSW last year). It’s fun for me because I get to talk about microformats, and I get to talk about what I think is useful and important – and where I think they’re headed.\
    I’m here the rest of the week, and will probable spend a good part of tomorrow working on a WIM mashup for Speed Geeking on Wednesday. I started it last night… and I got it started, but I got stuck at about 11:30 (go figure), and gave up. Today’s been eaten up with speaking, so I have tomorrow. If I get it working, I’ll put it up somewhere here so you can check it out.

  • Digging in With Rails

    It’s the end of our first full week of development on our big Rails experiment, and I couldn’t be happier with how things are going. We have 90% of the admin interface done (user management, static page stuff, moderation, etc), have user logins working using a really cool upcoming AOL open API (should be able to talk more about it later this week, but it’s one of the best web services I’ve ever used and I’m not saying that because I work there), and users can edit their own content now in a limited manner.\
    Rails makes things so easy. It takes all the obnoxious bits out of building web apps: the plumbing. I no longer have to write hundreds of lines of code before I can actually do anything important.\
    This is also my first experience with Subversion, and I’m loving that too. We’ve been using svnX, and I’m loving that too. It took a minute to get used to, but I love smart mode. It tells me what I’ve changed so I don’t have to go digging for it to make sure I’ve checked everything in (so Jason can keep his stuff in sync and mostly working).\
    We’re still planning on launching before SxSW. wish us luck.

  • A Non-Technical Microformat Definition

    I was asked by someone at work to come up with a non-technical definition of microformats for some glossary of web terms they’re putting together. Here’s what I came up with:\
    bq. Using standards that exist today, microformats take the HTML used to build the web and turn it into powerful, semantic, machine-readable, web-service ready data – without changing the specification or changing how HTML is written or delivered.\
    And here’s what the amazing Paul Downey came up with on Twitter\
    bq. Microformats for non-techies: colours on a Web page for things such as “date” and “telephone number” which only computers can see\
    I like Paul’s better. Oh, and you should check out Paul’s presentation on Web API’s. The man creates the best slides in the business.

  • My Job… on Rails!

    There are times when working at AOL is hard to defend, like say, when we give out lots of personally identifiable search data, or when our customer service is patently horrible. There are other times when I wouldn’t dream of working anywhere else. Today is the latter. I am extremely lucky. Why? I can’t say everything, but I can give the basics.\
    I’ve been playing with Ruby on Rails for a little while, just tinkering in my spare time, until I came up with an idea. This idea was big and complex, but I figured it would make a good “class project” to really get to know Rails. Once I started getting into it, it turned out to be too big and too complex, so I came up with what I think turned out to be a better idea. Better not only because it was simpler, but because I don’t think anything like it exists out there yet.\
    After playing with it after work for a month or so, I realized I didn’t have the time between work, travel and family, to really do it right. So, I brought it to work and proposed it. And, we’re doing it… in Rails. I have a small team of folks I hand picked to work on it, and their managers have graciously allowed me to steal them for a couple months. Cindy, Ari (Ari, do you have site?) and Jason are the best (which is why I picked them). We’re playing startup: very little interference, almost no process, and incredible executive “cover”. We’re doing out best to keep it simple, pare down the featureset to what’s absolutely required to make it cool, and throwing out traditional AOL project roles. We’ve making incredible progress and I’ll hopefully be able to unveil the final thing before SxSW. It will be unlike anything I’ve ever built for AOL before.\
    Even with the layoffs, uncertainty and swirl, it’s still a good time to work at AOL.

  • The Big Blog Re-Install

    I think my comment problems are related to my crusty install of Movable Type. I’m going to re-install Movable Type, and slowly re-add plugins. Things may be funky around here for a little while.\
    Update – I think it’s OK now. I deleted a bunch of old plugins I wasn’t actually using, and gave up on using FastCGI. I’ve posted some test comments and things seem at least a little faster, and no errors so far. If you notice anything completely borked, let me know.

  • OK, Who Else Twitters Around Here?

    Twitter was my only real “connection” to the online world while I was in Mississippi (no EVDO, no wi-fi, don’t like sharing other peoples’ computers unless I have to, etc), and I keep slowly finding other pals who’re on it. I like the immediacy of updates and how easy it is to turn them off when I don’t need the interruptions. I like the simplicity of the interface, and it’s just a fun way to keep up with what everyone’s doing and write really short stupid things while in between things (waiting rooms, stop lights, elevators, etc).\
    So… do you Twitter? I do. What I’m really asking, if I’m not bein’ too forward, is will you be my twitter friend?