Ultranormal

Category: development

  • circaVie

    It looks like we’re on to something here… first, we launched ficlets. Now, Dave McVicar and crew have launched circaVie. It’s a cool site for building timelines of pretty much anything. There was a bit of overlap in the ficlets and circaVie crew. Jason Garber did most of the markup before he scampered off to join his startup. Jenna Marino, who designed the gorgeous ficlets logo, did UI design for circaVie. Ari Kushimoto, who did a lot of ficlets’ UI, was circaVie’s art director.\
    I love seeing things launch, especially stuff as beautiful as circaVie. It’s an amazing piece of design and engineering. The site is gorgeous (I would say “lickable”, but that’s gotten me in trouble before – not doing it, just saying it, so I’m not saying it). The Flash stuff feels perfectly integrated and the interaction is really smooth. Jayna Wallace was the visual designer and did an amazing job. Corey Lucier did the flash work. Kelly Gifford jumped in and took over the markup when Jason left. Plus, it’s all on Rails!\
    Update: AUGH! Dan reminded me in the comments that I left him out, and I certainly shouldn’t have. Dan Bradley is the operations guy for both ficlets and circaVie, and I’ve worked with him for at least the last five years (probably closer to seven), and he’s one of the best there is. He helped a ton getting ficlets out the door, and I’m sure he’s done the same for circaVie.\
    You really should go check it out. The team worked really hard on it, and it shows.\
    See also: Kelly’s blog post, Mashable and Somewhat Frank.

  • Portable Social Networks at Mashup Camp

    I’m doing a presentation today at Mashup University that I’ve titled Tapping the Portable Social Network that’s a code tour of how to create a social network that uses existing social connections and public data to make the sign up process for web sites easier. Of course, this whole idea came from Jeremy Keith.\
    It’s a very simple Rails app (that you can download) that only deals with the login/signup process using both OpenID and AOL’s OpenAuth.\
    Here are the basics…\
    If you log in with OpenID, it:

    1. grabs the identity URL, and looks for some microformats
    2. looks for an hcard and pre-fllls the profile
    3. looks for XFN-encoded links and searches the site for existing users with that homepage and gives you the option to add them as contacts when you sign up.\
      If you log in with OpenAuth, it:
    4. pre-fills your profile with URLs and data we think we know based on your screen name.
    5. grabs your buddy list and looks for folks who logged in with those screennames on the site and gives you the option to add them as contacts.\
      It’s dead simple and poorly documented, but works well so far, and I think the flow makes sense and has possibilities. You’re welcome to take it, the concept, the code, and do whatever you want with it.\
      The next step is to see what other open reliable sources of social data are out there that would make sense to look for during the sign up process.\
      UPDATE: Read the README file! There are several things you need to change in both the configuration, and one line in profile.js. The README documents all of the required changes and where to find them.

  • This Week’s Ficlets

    I’ve been writing ficlets at night after work as a way to unwind and do something creative outside of writing code. It’s been fun! I’ve been trying to write sequels to other peoples’ stories as an exercise in trying other styles, genres and voices. I think I’d call the results mixed, but fun.\
    Here are this week’s:

    • The Devil in a Shop Window – I seem to do tragedy pretty well. This is a sequel to a story about alchoholism and hitting rock bottom. The original provided a perfect setup.
    • Shokran Gazillan – I had to do research for this one (looking up “thank you” in Arabic). It’s a sequel to a story about a soldier in Iraq on patrol stumbling on a wounded Iraqi child and his brother.
    • Basil, Rock God – A sequel to a hilarious story about an accountant who wakes up in the body of a rock star. Lots of questions to answer, but all I wanted to write about were leather pants and his stupid non-rock star name.
    • Keeping the Peace? What Peace? – I re-read Shokran Gazillan and had to write a sequel to figure out what happened next.
    • God’s Fist – A sequel to a great Deep Impact~~style story about an impending comet impact. Reminded me a lot of the first ficlet (oddly enough called The End) (which has spawned a surprising number of sequels~~ it’s actually got a bunch of threads coming off of it!).\
      Jen came downstairs earlier and asked me if I was working (before I started writing, I was checking on stats, checking for reported stories, and wander). I gave her a blank look… was I? She laughed at me and told me it was OK if I was working. I shook my head and told her I was playing with my “toys”.

  • Watch Jeremy Schaap Talk About Nerds

    AOL’s sponsoring TopCoder again this year, and one part of the promotional materials stood out:\
    bq. Over the course of the three hour webcast hosted by ESPN’s Jeremy Schaap, viewers will be able to watch the high stakes software competition unfold through live views of the arena, entertaining coder profiles, and interviews with contestants – all culminating with in-depth coverage of the final results.\
    Now, of ESPN’s reporters, Mr. Schaap is #2 when it comes to possible closet nerd status* (their awesome NFL guy, John Clayton, is #1), but it just cracks me up that we’ll have play by play for a coding event. It’s worth checking out for that alone!\
    If you want to play along, the coverage starts at 4 EST today over on the AOL Developer Network. They’ve even put together a preview video.\
    *I’m saying this as a full on nerd. There’s no shame in being a nerd. Flaunt it, Schaap, flaunt it!

  • My New Standards Role

    My New Standards Role

    It’s finally official and I can talk about it… so I am! My pal, Arun, who has served as AOL’s representative on the W3C’s Advisory Committee for the past three years, has been elected to the W3C’s Advisory Board. That’s a huge honor, and very cool, both for Arun and for AOL. That means he’s got his hands full – what with his membership in two working groups and his spot on the Advisory Board (plus his day job). So, I’m going to take his spot on the Advisory Committee! It’s a huge honor to represent AOL at the W3C and I’ve got my work cut out for me. AOL’s participation in the W3C while Arun was AC has blossomed, but there’s more work to do. We need more folks to participate, and participate in a meaningful and consistent manner (something I’ve not been able to do in my time in the CSS Working Group, unfortunately). It’s as much a management problem as it is a technical one, to give people the time to contribute beyond the travel (and a time management problem – we’ve got to be willing to carve out the time).

    There’s lots to do, lots of folks to recruit to “the cause”… and I have to find some way to abuse my new power!!

    (there’s no real power, just a lot more e-mail, apparently)

    For now, I’m going to try to remain a member of the CSS Working Group, but I’ll probably need to drop it and concentrate on my duties on the Advisory Committee. Thankfully, we’ve got Jason and Justin, two super-talented designers, to take my place!

  • Playing With Ficlets

    Ficlets has been around for a few months now, and while it was a blast to build and launch, I honestly haven’t had a ton of time since it launched to actually enjoy my own product. I’ve been busy fixing bugs, responding to feedback or working on other projects (the nerve, people making me work). Building things is fun, but I forgot to actually use it.\
    For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking time out to play with ficlets: write stories, play with inspiration, and explore other peoples’ ficlets. It’s been a nice surprise to find out that the experience I envisioned when we started building it is actually fun. I’m having a great time working on stories, getting feedback, and finding stories to continue. Here are some of my favorites:

  • Reelin’ in the Years in iTunes: The Year 2000

    I recently created a bunch of Smart Playlists in iTunes to segment my music by year. I have the following lists so far: before 1990, 1990-1995, 1996-1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. Today is Year 2000 day – full of techno, Eels, Phish and Lemon Jelly.\
    Here are my favorite songs from 2000 (not in any order, and probably not the “best”, just my faves):

    • Name of the Game by The Crystal Method – This song kicks so much ass, I think it was on repeat in the car for at least three months. The rest of the album it came from doesn’t measure up to the standard set by Vegas, but it’s still pretty good.
    • Get Your Snack On by Amon Tobin – Another frequent repeat. Kicks almost as much posterior as the the first song in this list. Amon Tobin creates atmospheric industrial stuff that’s not for everyone, but I dig most of it.
    • Bewilderbeast by Badly Drawn Boy – The album this song comes from is spectacular, and this is my favorite song from it. One of his few instrumentals, it’s sweet, lovely and has a wonderful beat.
    • Daisies of the Galaxy and I Like Birds by Eels – I love Eels and am sad I didn’t discover them until recently. The whole album is great, but these two songs make me insanely happy. You won’t be able to listen to I Like Birds without giggling and singing along.
    • Dirt by Phish – From Farmhouse, what I consider to be the last great album by the band, this song is heartbreaking and one of their rare slow numbers. It’s gorgeous and unlike 99% of their other stuff.
    • Everything in its Right Place by Radiohead – This song and album were my first real exposure to the bad, and I was blown away. Painful and brilliant.
    • Diamond from the Snatch soundtrack – You’ve heard this song even if you haven’t seen the movie. Like Massive Attack‘s Teardrop, this one makes the rounds in commercials, sporting events, other movies, and even a few TV shows. Bouncy rockin’ techno.
    • Gravel Road Requiem by Walkingbirds – I don’t remember how I found out about Scott Andrew LePera and the Walkingbirds, but this song is an acoustic folky masterpiece. You can download it (and hopefully buy it) on his music page. It’s funny. I met him at SxSW a couple years ago and it took me three days to remember where I’d heard his voice before.\
      Next week, it’s on to 2001: Cake, Zero 7‘s first album, Constantines, David Byrne and Gotan Project.\
      Oh, and I’m going to be on The Biblio File tomorrow night. Details on their blog for how you can join in the fun.

  • The CSS Working Group and Me

    I’ve represented AOL on the CSS Working Group for over three years now, and I’ve always felt that I’m not able to give enough time to it, or help as much as I wanted to, because of my responsibilities in my “real” job. With recent blog posts by Ian Hickson and Fantasai, I think it’s time to put up or shut up, especially since fantasai called me out in hers

    For most of my time on the working group, the only representation we had from the web design community was from AOL: from Kimberly Blessing and Kevin Lawver. When Andy Clarke joined the CSS Working Group as an Invited Expert last year, I was really excited: finally some more web designer perspective. But Andy and Kevin are both too busy to be regular participants,and when they are around, they’re not technical enough to really follow the discussions and understand the impact some silly sentence in the spec has on what web designers are trying to do.


    In my defense, even though it doesn’t look like I’m following, I usually am, except when the discussion veers into the bowels of typography, internationalization or we have six hour arguments about punctuation (it’s happened, don’t try to deny it): that’s when the blood starts seeping out of my ears. When we discuss layout or things I actually want/need to use, I’m right in there.


    Now, it stings a little bit to be called “not technical enough”, but she’s right. I’m not. I don’t have an inside-out knowledge of typography, of how browsers are built or the reasons certain things are hard for them to do. I build web apps, not web browsers, and after sitting through over three years of meetings, I certainly don’t want to build browsers. It’s a hard, painful and thankless job. The folks who work at Mozilla, Opera, Apple, Microsoft and anyone else who works on browsers are extremely smart and I’m in awe of them. I understand that building browser is hard, but it’s extremely frustrating when features that web developers and designers need are shot down because they’re “too hard to implement”.


    I share her concerns about the lack of designer input on CSS, and that the group is dominated by browser implementors. That’s why I asked Cindy Li to be my backup in the group, and when she left AOL, asked for designers to volunteer to join the working group. I got Jason Cranford Teague and Justin Kirk, two very skilled and experienced designers, to join up, and effectively tripled the designer population in the working group. In fact, Jason’s volunteered to work with Andy to design the group’s blog, which is great!


    I think the CSS Working Group needs more designer and developer input. I think W3C member companies need to pony up some designers and developers to help out – even if it’s just to provide feedback on working drafts and proposals and provide use cases and real world examples of things we need.


    I don’t know what the point of this is, except that I agree with both Ian and fantasai – something is wrong. The CSS Working Group is in jeopardy of becoming irrelevant, and unless the group gets new blood and can open up, we’re in real trouble. The worst part is, I’ve had to admit to myself that I don’t have the time or ability to do anything about it other than nod and agree with them. I’m hoping that by sharing my perspective as a web developer, bringing more designers into the group, I’ve done something worthwhile in my time in the group. It certainly doesn’t feel like enough

  • Insomnia-Fueled E-Mail Management Musings

    I just saw Khoi Vinh’s post on managing e-mail and since I can’t sleep, I figured I’d tell you how I manage e-mail. I use OS X’s Mail.app for work mail and Thunderbird for my personal stuff (I like keeping them separate). I don’t get a ton of personal e-mail, but I get between one hundred and three hundred e-mails a day for work (during the week, 50-70 on weekends) between projects, internal listservs and CSS Working Group stuff. That number’s been as high as four hundred during the AIM Pages crunch last year, I was getting more than five hundred a day.\
    I’ve managed that load for more than five years, and have found a couple things that keep me sane.

    1. I have a smart folder called Unread Messages that has only messages I haven’t read in it. Instead of peering at threads and a thousands-message long inbox, it contains only the stuff I haven’t read. I have another smart folder that has messages received in the last 36 hours. I almost never go into the Inbox view, because there’s just too much stuff there.
    2. Respond right away. If you can’t respond in a couple minutes, open the message in a new window and get to it after you’ve filtered the rest.
    3. Do your e-mail first thing. I spend the first half-hour of the day filtering e-mail and respond, and then get to work. I’ll check back every hour or so and filter again, depending on what I’m working on. If I’m coding and in the zone, then I might only check at the end of the day, but if I’m in meetings, it’s more often.\
      That’s pretty much it. My work day is an exercise in interruption management. Between e-mails and IMs from co-workers, I deal with hundreds of interruptions a day. It’s funny, but when I really have to get something done and don’t log in to AIM or open my e-mail, I miss the interruptions. I don’t know what to do with myself.\
      Sad, isn’t it?

  • Rules for Career Development

    I’ve been asked to talk to a group here at AOL about career development (no idea when, or really what the topic is). But, Jason and I were talking about it, and came up with this list of rules that I think are worth sharing, even if they’re not fully baked:

    1. Don’t be a dick: Translated – be constructive, helpful and positive
    2. Teach yourself something new on every project
    3. Be passionate about what you do: If you’re not, find something else to do.
    4. Get involved in the internal and external communities
    5. Repeat step one
    6. Know when to run: No one talks about it, but you have to know when to get out of a bad situation. I’ve been very lucky at AOL to know when it was time to move on to a new group or challenge. Thankfully, I’ve always found a soft place to land with new challenges.
    7. Expect change, roll with it, move on: Working in a company means things will change. When you’re not in charge, there will be lots of stuff that happens that you don’t agree with. You have to know when to fight, when to give up, and when to move on. The quicker you can do all three, the better.
    8. Update Have a support system: This one comes from Jen’s comment. It really helps to have someone in your corner – a spouse, parent, best friend or mentor who you can turn to. My wife is, of course, my most important, but I’ve had lots of mentors and good managers that have helped point me in the right direction.
    9. Update Be someone who gets things done: This one is from Joe in the comments, but it’s a good one. People don’t care about excuses or reasons why things don’t happen. Be the one folks can go to and get things accomplished.\
      Cool, I think the presentation’s all done! Thanks, Jason!