Aku Aku

Don't Burn the Man

I don't do a lot of diary-type posts, but this is one of them. I'm feeling a little burnt out. There's my usual heavy workload from the startup I co-founded a little over four years ago. I won't name the company explicitly here to avoid google picking it up because I don't like mixing my personal life with my company life, and I consider this weblog to be personal, but if you're curious take the words 'Synthe' and 'matix', squish 'em together and add a .com. I've also had the task of getting ready for 10 days at Burning Man that start on Saturday. A task I've been severely procrastinating on and now there's only one day left. Sigh. Finally, I've been trying to get something together to demo at Foo Camp on September 10th. It's a "trusted brokered peer to peer social darknet." I'm serious, stop laughing. I'm basing it on JSDSI, a Java implementation of the SPKI/SDSI PKI. SPKI/SDSI is a public key authorization infrastructure that does not rely on a root certificate authority (like Verisign) which leads me to hope that it will be a better fit for a social network based architecture. The JSDSI implementation is only at version 0.5 and not clearly documented. As a by-product of my work I hope to publish a simple example application and tuorial to help out with the jsdsi project. I'm starting to think I might even be able to pull a Dr Dobb's article out of it. With only 4 possible working days between now and FOO Camp, I don't think I'm going to make it (especially when those are really working nights since I have a day job I can't neglect). I do expect to have something ready for beta testing by the end of September however. I'll post more specific details about it then, along with a plea for beta testers. But getting back to what I started with, I'm feeling burnt out. The upcoming return home to Black Rock City is going to help immensely. Another thing that is going to help is that sometime this Autumn I'm going to quit my day job in favor of part-time contracting and start dedicating more time to my next venture, which may involve that TBP2PSD I'm working on, or perhaps another project I've been asked to step in on as the chief software architect. And then there's the travel. The plan right now is to move to Brazil for ~1 year while I'm working on this new venture. There's an alternative plan developing that calls for merely going on a six month south american internet cafe tour instead of outright moving, but either way there's going to be a change of scenery. So, anyhow, this may be my last post until after we get back from Burning Man. Burn the man! Don't burn the man!

bjork on internet piracy

Great interview with one of my favorite artists, Bjork: medulla special : Waving a Pirate Flag. I was at a party Saturday night and met a girl from Iceland. I told her she's the only person I knew from Iceland, except Bjork, and I didn't know Bjork. Then I asked her if she believed in elves. She told me I should look into a band called Sigurros.

Q: Are the nature spirits intervening? A: "There is this stereotype of Icelanders all believing in spirits, and I've played up to that a bit in interviews too. As a member of Sigurros said, whenever a foreign record company comes over to sign an Icelandic band, the first thing they do is ask the band members whether they believe in elves, and if the do, they get signed. I hate to sound grumpy, but there are a lot of people out there who believe in a 2000 year old fairy tale. Both sides are waiting for their Messiah to arrive. And then people point their fingers at us and say we are superstitious." Q: So Bjork is not superstitious then? A: "You know, its ironic that just at the point the lawyers and the businessmen had calculated how to control music, the internet comes along and fucks everything up." Bjork gives the finger again, this time waving it into the air. "God bless the internet," she adds. Q: And what about you, then? A: "I'll still be there, waving a pirate flag."

I have Bjork's first album, from when she was 11 or 12. A disco/pop sort of thing sung in Icelandic. I adore Bjork, but it's pretty awful. via Boris Anthony

videogame character to appear in playboy

Creepy. Boing Boing: Video game vampire to go topless in October Playboy

"Videogame character BloodRayne (a red-headed 'Dhampir' who hunts supernatural baddies for the 'Brimstone Society') will be topless in October's Playboy. According to her creators, 'This is a first in videogame history and trust us when we say that Rayne does not disappoint.'"

hit in the head with a jelly doughnut

In IRC today:

<paul> wow..get this...we have these defect meetings where all the developers have to go over what defects they're working on and status whatnot...basically they're pretty boring meetings...most of the time.. <paul> [name deleted] was in a meeting and this system mgmt developer was getting grilled on all the defects his program had..he was getting really pissed. <paul> someone had brought in dounuts for the group, and this guy must have hit some boiling point because he just grabbed a dounut and winged it at a guy that was giving him a hard time. <paul> then he just stormed out. <paul> damn, i wish I had seen that. <Jesse> wow <dav> damn. <paul> [name deleted] said everyone was silent for about 2 minutes after he left...before someone said they should reschedule the meeting. <dav> it takes a lot to get fired at ibm, but that could get ya there <paul> yeah, it was this morning, so I guess it'll take a couple days to see what will happen. <Jesse> throwing a donut <paul> and he hit the guy right in the forehead. <Jesse> still sane enough to throw accurately. <jeff-b> man <jeff-b> ha <dav> was it a jelly doughnut? <paul> heh, I don't know what I'd do if I got beaned with a dounut <jeff-b> i'd stand up and upturn the table <jeff-b> always wanted to do that <dav> when i repeat this story, and i will, i'm gonna make it a jelly doughnut <paul> not sure...what type it was.. <jeff-b> and when i repeat, i'll say the guy upturned the table <jeff-b> man i love rumors <Jesse> purple monkey dishwasher

Another funny/scary story and the rumors it spawned: A Mouthful of Nitrogen.

eff wins! sanity in the 9th circuit!

Cory lays it out clearly: Boing Boing: EFF wins Grokster! Software doesn't have to be easy for Hollywood to wiretap!

EFF has won its Grokster case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- this is the case that establishes that if you make truly decentralized P2P software -- like Gnutella -- you can't be held liable for any copyright infringement that takes place on their networks. This is the "Betamax principle," from the famous Supreme Court case that established that Sony wasn't responsoble for any infringement that its customers undertook with their VCRs.

I already give monthly to the EFF, but this month I'm doubling up. Way to go EFF!

the art of the start

Mister "Don't Call Me Ito-san" Ito posted something about some new manifestos online, and there's no better summer reading than a good manifesto so I checked them out. The first one is called The Art of the Start by wizened veteran Guy Kawasiki. Pretty good reading if you're entrepreneurial minded. I was happy to see that most of his suggestions were close to my own beliefs about starting a venture, and I've only got one startup under my belt; maybe I'm, like, a prodigy! But seriously, it's good reading. Especially as I prepare to leave my first startup and begin building a new venture. It's a pithy collection of do's, dont's and reasonings to use as a handy guide to making smart goals and achieving them. I liked this part about soliciting criticism of your fledgling business model:

My final tip is that you ask women -- and only women. My theory is that deep in the DNA of men is a "killer" gene. This gene expresses itself by making men want to kill people, animals, and plants. To a large degree, society has repressed this gene; however, starting an organization whose purpose is to kill another organization is still socially acceptable. Hence, asking a man about a business model is useless because every business model looks good to someone with the Y chromosome. For example, Sun Microsystems wants to kill Microsoft. When is the last time you bought a computer based on whom the manufacturer wanted to kill? Women, by contrast, dont have this killer gene. Thus, they are much better judges of the vi- ability of a business model than men are. Dont agree with me? The book The Darwin Awards provides irrefutable proof of womens greater common sense. These awards commemorate "those individuals who have removed themselves from the gene pool in a sublimely idiotic fashion." For example, in 1998 two construction workers fell to their demise after cutting a circular hole in the floor while they were standing in the middle of the circle.13 The Darwin Awards contains nine chapters about the stupidity of men, and one chapter about the stupidity of women. I rest my case.

I'm not going argue with that.

Clear Sailing with KleerDrain

This one speaks for itself: Boing Boing: Explosive sink and toilet plunger is a gift from the gods

But Home Depot had one of those videos running next to the set-up, which showed clogged sink after clogged sink giving up its precious bolus of greasy hair to the explosive force of a CO2 cartridge unleashing its entire payload at once. Watching the guy on the demo using the device, with its rifle-like kickback and puff of condensed carbon dioxide gas, mesmerized me. The next thing I knew, I was racing home with my new KleerDrain. I could hardly wait to use it on a slow-draining sink in the bathroom. I duct taped the overflow drain on the sink, and inserted a CO2 cartridge into the Kleer Drain. I screwed on the rubber cone and then pressed it into the drain opening. WHAM!

superchunk at mergefest

I can't adequately express how much I wish I could have caught the Superchunk set at last weekend's Mergefest. I've heard that they will quit touring soon as Laura is pregnant. Hopefully someone taped the show and I can get mp3s of the set someday. Sigh.

comment-spam leveraging

Ran across this today on Gen's site: New comment spam technique :: Kalsey Consulting Group The gist of it is spammers have identified blogs that don't clean out their blog comment spam (blog1), and leave new spam in other blogs (blog2) that direct them to blog1, thereby upping the Page Rank of blog1 which transfers page rank to their spam site.

If you are a site that is apathetic toward link spam, it is now time to choose a side. If you continue your apathy and allow comment spam links to linger on your site you are helping the spammers. Spam friendly sites will now be placed on the list of blacklisted domains that are not allowed to post comments on this site.

I've got a few blogs full of spam that I only weed-out occasionally. This is another reason to at least update all of those to Moveable Type 3.0 and use its registration system. Which I will do soon, in my copious free time.

freecycle

I like the concept of Freecycle, an online service that allows people to give away or receive free tangible goods with others in their local area. No trading/bartering/selling/buying allowed. I'm generally interested in alternative economies, and this is the first instance of an organized 'gift economy' that I've seen outside of Burning Man. The implementation could use some work though. I signed up for freecycle eariler this year, but it was too complicated to use effectively so I had forgotten about it until today (when I saw it mentioned on Smart Mobs). My suggestions: The main page should have a lookup by postal code for rapid navigation to the freecycling group near you. Many (all?) of the groups are simply Yahoo! groups, which is fine for those who want to get every posting by email or eyeball the message board, but I think most people would prefer a well-organized online interface that they can consult only when they want to perform some activity in the system (like give away or get something). Because of the message-centric nature of communication, participants have come to use the subject field of the message to hold additional meta-data. The subjects tend to have this format: <status> <item> Where status is one of OFFERED, WANTED, or TAKEN. For example, the message board might look like this:

554	OFFER: 2-bag laundry hamper.	mitee_737	Mon 7/26/2004
555	Wanted: Steel grate or storm drain cover or fire grate	Gordan G Lawrence	Mon 7/26/2004
556	wanted: Mavis Beacon teaches typing	smokeytoki	Tue 7/27/2004
558	TAKEN: 2-bag laundry hamper	mitee_737	Tue 7/27/2004

The problem I have with this is twofold: there is no enforcement of this format, so the messages can be confusing or overlooked, and the WANTED/TAKEN relationship must be resolved by the reader. It's just more screen clutter to wade through, and we're all too busy for that. What I would suggest is a database-centric format wherein people enter an item in a OFFERED/WANTED state and resolve it to a TAKEN/FULFILLED state. Users coming to the site could then filter their view on just active items. I would also allow users to set up alerts for items that match certain keywords. People who prefer the old email format can still get the items sent to them as messages, the only difference is that the subject formatting would be used 100% of the time. If items were required to include a zip code, then people searching the system would easily be able to use a range to expand or constrict the geographical area of their search. The only thing I don't like about my fantasy re-factoring of the system is the centralized database requirement. With some more work, this could be overcome by using either a tight network of geographically dispersed freecycle servers that handle large-area searches via an intra-server protocol, or a a network that is tightly coupled to the user's social network. Some sort of tracked reputation system could be useful in the overall context of the system in any case. I view Freecycle as a good idea that needs another development iteration in order to break into the next level of participation and user-value.