Postcards From My Life

Dear Reader,

[Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are mine, go get your own.]

I’ve just returned from my first ever “Microsoft Web Development Summit”. Reflecting back, I think the summit was a success on Microsoft’s part because it did change my perception of the company for the better. I won’t be giving a blow-by-blow accounting of all the sessions, I’m sure other attendees who were paying more attention will be able to do that. Instead I ruminate on a few of the things I picked up.

Microsoft’s self-stated goal of MS WebDev is to engage the PHP community in a conversation. To that end, I believe they succeeded for the most part.

Microsoft is schizophrenic

On the one hand, we were treated like royalty while there. The hotel was beautiful, the alcohol was plentiful and other than the fact that the employee cafeteria had wonderful smells coming from it yet we ate standard buffet fare from Microsoft Catering, the food was good. Each day had at least one really good session in which I felt the presenter was there more to listen than educate.

On the other hand we had presenters that I considered “Trojan Horses”, like the MS Office guy that gave us a history lesson instead of a frank discussion on how to create/edit MS Office documents in PHP.

Microsoft really is reaching out and I do respect them for that but I was upfront with them when I told them that trust will take time. My distrust of Microsoft stems from a long line of events, buying FoxPro to OOXML and I won’t even start on DRM here, there are many things I do not like about Microsoft. I give them props however, for their efforts in reaching out to the PHP community. That takes a lot of guts and I respect at least this little portion of Microsoft for making the right steps.

For the most part the presenters were much more like Laren Cooney’s session in which she first demanded that we close our laptops (so we couldn’t talk about her in the chat room) and then proceeded to host a session interesting enough to keep my laptop closed.

Even though I teased that the MSSQL session was “um…unproductive” After it was all over, the presenter (and I do apologize since I’ve obviously lost his card) came up to me and we had a very productive discussion over a drink. I won’t say we solve world hunger or anything but we agreed on a good first step.

Microsoft is Trying

For all their problems (most of which seem to stem from their legal department) at least the parts of Microsoft we talked to are honestly trying to reach out. They really want to know how they can help. They are severely hampered in what they can do (see aforementioned legal dept.) but within those bounds, they want to help. I was impressed by their sincerity and their willingness to listen, even when it wasn’t what they wanted to hear. (For some reason, telling them what they didn’t want to hear became my job…I’ve got to learn to keep my mouth shut)

The summit was opened and closed by Sam Ramji. The opening set the tone, “We want to listen”; the closing was a great wrap-up, “We heard what you have said”. Sam also crawled up onto a nearby table, sat down, crossed his legs and with his body language, set a very informal tone to the closing. (Note: In the opening session, I found it very funny that he wore a T-shirt that said “Obey Propaganda”, not sure if anyone else notices but I giggled about it)

In the closing he went over some of the things they had heard and then asked up for other ways that they can improve, not improve PHP on Windows but improve Microsoft. I don’t know Sam enough to know whether he was sincere or just stroking us but he did seem to be sincere and time will tell whether he was or not.

Parting thoughts

Overall, I am cautiously optimistic about Microsoft. If they can just get out of their own way, there are some great people there that are trying to change things. Mentally, my default image of Microsoft is slowly changing from “Balmer’s Monkey Dance” to that of Lauren, Sam and Karri, the jury is still out on whether that is a good thing.

So I’ll leave you with a list of memes for the summit. Those of you reading this that were there will smile, those of you who weren’t there, will just be confused. :)

• StickerBoy
• Mimosas
• RockBand2
• Mac Reboot Sound
• OOXML
• …and of course…teabag

Thank you Joe for inviting me, I really had a great time.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=

Dear Reader,

[DISCLAIMER: What you are about to read is my opinion and should not be construed in any way to be an official statement from my employeer]

CIO Magazine popped up on my radar this morning for an article they wrote on JavaScript. (I think I read coverage of the article on ajaxian.com) I noticed when I went to read the article that they also wrote one on PHP. I thought I would be delighted as I’ve been on their mailing list for several years now and thought that finally, they had caught a clue.

The article, “You Used PHP to Write WHAT?!” is the first in a series titled similarly that purport to examine different language options. A cursory read of the two articles published to date show that they do more to steer CIOs away from the two languages reviewed so far, I am assuming that the series will culminate in an article on the language that the magazine has “blessed”.

The PHP article however, is not only negatively biased, it’s factually incorrect and at times, insulting to those of us who use the language. I’m going to look at a couple of the statements that the author makes and discuss them. I will do my best to not take them out of context but I urge everyone to visit the article and read it for themselves instead of just taking my word for it.

There is no single right answer to every problem and PHP is no exception.

The author, Ken Hayes, gets this right. No one that I know that makes their living using PHP has ever suggested that PHP is the right answer for every problem. I speak only for myself in saying that it is the right answer for just about every programming problem I’ve tackled in the past seven years. Quite possible because I’ve made my living for most of that time writing web applications and in my opinion, it is the right answer for just about any problem you can solve on the web.

In particular, PHP is not thread safe—which means that multiple instances of the same routine may interact with each other, resulting in a crash on the Web server.

He is correct, PHP is not “thread safe”. I’ve built multi-million dollar web based applications using PHP and never once in seven years have I had two instances of PHP interact with each other, much less crash a web server. As a matter of fact, I can’t recall one single instance in my career where a “crash” (crash being defined here as bringing an httpd daemon down and a server not being able to serve web pages, dynamic or otherwise) on a server has been related to PHP. Yes, if you try real hard you can ‘fork’ PHP on Linux and do some shared memory operations if you have the right libraries installed but by-in-large, that’s an edge case. PHP applications are not written like that. I do invite Ken though to share his experience on the “thread safe” issue because I for one want to learn and obviously he has some knowledge on the subject.

PHP has suffered its share of security problems, and it isn’t particularly well-suited to large or extremely complex site implementations.

This is interesting because now Ken is tying one truth – that in the past, the language itself has had security problems – to a wholly unrelated supposition, that PHP isn’t well-suited to large or extremely complex site implementations. The supposition is not true, Yahoo uses PHP as it’s “glue language” and sites like Wikipedia and Facebook use it as their primary language.

Several dynamic or “scripting” languages, including PHP, Perl, Java and others, have their roots in the C language, which makes them a natural fit for developers making the transition from traditional application programming to Web programming.

The last time I worked in Java (it’s been a few years, maybe things have changed) Java was not a scripting language…I know, minor point but it’s just one more inaccuracy in the list.

Migrating from one database server to another is usually quite simple since most of PHP’s functions have a common naming convention. A programmer can do simple global pattern replacements to change from one database brand to another.

Now I know his target audience is C-Level and that means he has to dumb things down a bit (short words, small sentences) but really, this is just wrong. For all but the most basic select statement, SQL dialects are different enough so that changing the function name is just going to break your application, not allow you to move to a different back end. A knowledgeable author would have pointed to PDO or Database abstraction layers like the one in Zend Framework that will help mitigate the dialect differences.

When should you use PHP?
* Creating an intranet site.
* Prototyping an application that will be converted to Java or some other language.
* Creating a Web database application.
* Deploying an inexpensive or quick solution.
* Using ready-made apps from Sourceforge.net or other sites.

Now this is just insulting. PHP is not designed to answer the questions that Java is. (Mainly, how do you build a large, bloated application that will ensure employment of the development team?…now I’m just being naughty…ignore that last comment please) Oh and if there are an C-Levels reading this, when the author says “converted to Java” he means throw out everything you’ve done and rebuild from scratch. When I was a Director of IT, that was one of the main strengths of the language, not a drawback. Yes you can prototype in it, but then you can flesh out your prototype and finish the job, all without retooling.

But that’s not to say that PHP is always the best solution under every circumstance. In general you should not use PHP:
* Where data security is of high importance.
* In Shell or automated scripted applications.
* In enterprise applications where scalability takes higher precedence than economy.

Here, in my opinion, our author gets 0 out of 3.

The language itself has absolutely nothing to do with the security of your data. If it’s of high importance, hire programmers who understand this and can build your application accordingly.

PHP is actually a very good shell scripting language. As the author has already pointed out, it’s easy to learn but most importantly, your developers can leverage their existing skills instead of having to learn something like bash. It is true that there are cases, when writing shell scripts, that you have to ‘shell out’ to get the job done but if done properly, it’s no more of a security risk than calling scripts from within a shell script. Honestly, unless you are building on Windows, it’s an excellent choice for writing shell scripts.

Again with the scalability. I’m going to defer to someone I respect as an authority on that, Mr. Theo Schlossnagle. In an interview I did with him a while back, he had this to say about “scalability”.

Theo Schlossnagle:
I’ll just say that languages don’t scale. The word doesn’t even apply to a language. It’s like saying, “does English scale”. If you have a lot of people speaking English then I guess it scales. It’s really a bad word for talking about languages. Saying “Java doesn’t scale” simply means that the code you wrote in Java doesn’t scale well. That’s because of the code you wrote, not Java.

The entire interview can be found at “30 Minutes with Theo Schlossnagle“, that quote is about 1/2 the way into the article. I encourage you to read that section to get the entire context of the quote. (The fact that I’m quoting from an article on DevZone, again, does not imply that my views are in any way representative of my employers)

PHP is sometimes criticized for being slow, and detractors claim that it has somehow been crippled in order to prompt users into purchasing the Zend Optimizer.

It’s quotes like this that totally discredit the author even though he claims to be a PHP developer. A quick look at the “Zend Optimizer” page clearly states that Zend Optimizer is free. I really don’t know who he’s talking to about buying Zend Optimizer.

In larger implementations, PHP can suffer performance hits and may need an external boost from a caching engine.

I’ll do the author one better here, in medium to large applications you should most assuredly run a caching engine. That’s true of any scripting language. However, the author seems to ignore the fact that even languages like Java (which he seems to hold in high esteem) suffer from performance issues. Luckily for those of us who use PHP, the answers are usually free. (See above point)

PHP isn’t Java.

Finally a second correct fact in the article. PHP is NOT Java. I’ll give the author a point for stating this (fairly obvious) fact.

For large enterprise solutions, PHP makes a great prototyping or feasibility tool, but heavily loaded sites that require thread safety, security and stability should use Java.

Opps, here the author blows what little credit he got for his true fact. He also returns the the insulting tone of “PHP is a cool toy but ‘real developers’ use Java”. Sorry but no, PHP is faster to develop in, the solutions are just as stable if not more. The one true fact you have here is if you need a threaded application, where the threads need to interact with each other, then yes, you need to look at another language. Personally, I wouldn’t use Java but that’s because I spent a year in system administration and know what a royal pain it is to keep things like Tomcat running.

Now for the “spanked” part

I do hope you didn’t think that my analisys of the article was in any way “spanking” CIO magazine or the author. As of this writing, 30 comments have been added to the article that do a fairly good job of it. I won’t quote them all here or even rehash them, you can see them all nicely here on the Comments Page. I will however quote one…and I’ll do it verbatum because after all of the authors talk of scalability, performance, and security, this commenter spanked their ass pretty hard.

PHPGuru wrote:

Oh and btw, this very site uses drupal, a PHP CMS. I wonder if this site is secure and scalable.. hmmm.. maybe i should not use my real email address here on the comment..

Ouch! Ok, so either CIO magazine doesn’t consider their content very important, they don’t expect a lot of hits or they don’t consider security that important…or..they realize that they can build it faster, better, cheaper, and secure if they use PHP.

Hmmmm……

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)

=C=

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article are my own…go get your own.

Dear Reader,

DISCLAIMER: I have 2 Lifetime Tivo subscriptions and have been a member of LinkedIn since it was in beta.

I know a lot of you out there right now are scratching their heads and wondering what a Networking site and a PVR/DVR have in common. Here is what they have in common, ranks of upper management with closed minds.

Tivo

I was out at tivo.com yesterday and the first thing they did when I hit the page was ask if I would answer a survey after I finished my business. I of course agreed (I’m just that kind of guy) and so when I finished, I filled out the survey.

I gave them the usual answers anyone visiting tivo.com would.

• 30 seconds is too long to wait for a page to load
• Your site navigation is goofy
• Your documentation is incomplete

However, the question they did NOT ask me is “What could we do to make your Tivo more useful to you?” See that’s a question I could write a book on. However, I won’t here, I’ll boil it down into a single concept. “Open it up and let me discover new ways to use it.”

I’m a programmer, when I look at a box like that (or my XBox 360) where the mfgr has obviously gone to great lengths to make sure that I can never run “unapproved” code on it, it just makes me sad. Open it up a bit. Let me build services that can interact with my Tivo. I understand your issues with copyright and I’m not trying to steal content. but hell, it’s a Linux box. Let me write a service that feeds a widget on my blog that shows what I’m watching at the moment. Let me suck down the data on what it’s recording and slice it and dice it myself. Who knows, maybe I’ll find a better way to recommend new shows.

There are hundreds of thousands of ideas for product enhancements that you don’t have to write, we, the hordes of hobbyist programmers and 21 Century tinkerers will make the Tivo an indispensable piece of equipment if you quit locking us out and realize that the Tivo can be so much more than an appliance, it can be a platform.

Oh and it’s ok if you don’t make any money off of each and every service written…make your money on the stuff you do and don’t try to charge me for the privileged of making your device better. Get it together Tivo, if you open up and let us help you, then Hollywood can’t stop you. You can either be the big dog, or stay a whipped puppy.

LinkedIn

These guys still don’t get it. (This is getting to be a regular topic for me.) I’m on LinkedIn and FaceBook both for very different reasons. However, I’m on facebook 3-4 times a day and linkedin 1-2 times a week. See the difference LinkedIn? Pictures in my profile aren’t enough, I want to actually DO SOMETHING with the data I’ve been giving you all these years. We’ve had this discussion before, “Why LinkedIn Sucks (and why I’ll keep using it)”, “LinkedIn Rant – Part II” and you’ve even promised progress but so far…nothing. Open up, let me do what I want with my data and all of a sudden you are useful enough for me to start paying for your service. Have you ever stopped and wondered why you aren’t growing as fast as facebook? It’s not the teens and tweens on facebook, it’s the fact that on facebook, people have freedom to experiment. On LinkedIn, I still can’t write a program that allows me to simply figure out which of my friends know each other…hell on facebook it’s a game!

If Facebook ever wises up and decided that it wants to be the big dog in your yard, you are so toast. Don’t wait for OpenSocial, give me an API and give it to me now. Anything I can do via a web page should be doable from an API. Do that and do it NOW and it’s a good start…it’s only a start but it is a start.

To both tivo and linkedin, I write this post, not because I’m a disgruntled user but because I really like both of you. Both of you however, need a swift kick in the ass to get you moving before you are relegated to the pile of other services I liked once but are now gone. (anyone remember GEnie? I LOVED GEnie!) Come on guys, closed is so last century, open up, let us into the playground and I guarantee that what we create will do more for your bottom line than any overpriced CEO will ever do.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
=C=

Dear Reader,

When did we become a rude nation? I mean we are not France rude, but none-the-less, we are rude. I’ve give you 2 examples.

Language

I’m on my way back from a great time in California. I love the weather there (except today because it’s got me socked in at SFO) I’ve truly had a great time. But it struck me while I was out here that people out here cannot express a thought without punctuating it with a “fuck” or a “goddamn”. It’s like an epidemic out here. Casual conversation out here is R-rated and it doesn’t seem to bother anyone. I can remember when foul language was relegated to movies and late-night TV. I had lunch one day with a couple of colleagues. One of the members of our party could not find a way to talk in a conversational tone or complete a sentence without a profane punctuation. Even in California, people were starting to turn and stare.

People like to make fun of southerns but at least we still hold to the concept of “polite company” and temper our language when it may offend others.

Respect

In the past 2 jobs I’ve had in California, I’ve been the “Red State” on the org chart. it’s not quite that bad where I work but I am the vocal minority. However, there is one that, Democrat, Republican, or thinking voter, all used to agree on. When refering to a president, past or present, we use the honorific, “President”. I was listening to a conversation the other day between two people who were not not native Americans. One said something about conferences not being in America and the other immediately said “yeah, because of Bush”. (IMHO, ROW does not dislike America…Europe does. For some reason they feel they can speak for ROW.) To the point though, it’s “President Bush” not “Bush”. The Democratic party has produced the two most embarrassing presidents in my life time and I still have the civility to refer to them as President Carter and President Clinton. It’s not a sign of respect for the man, it’s a sign of respect to the office.

Anyhow, just felt the need to rant. If you think you recognize the people in this post, I can guarantee you that you don’t. Quit trying to guess and just flame me for having the audacity to have an opinion.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)

=C=

Dear Reader,

[UPDATE: Podcast version]
For the past three months, I’ve been watching a software project happening nearby slowly dissolve. While it’s not totally gone, currently, it is in such a state that I doubt it can be realistically salvaged. That’s not to say that the project won’t be delivered but the developer is now in ‘patch-n-go’ mode with major needs of the client being ignored simply to allow him to get “something” out the door. So as everyone is recovering from this year’s “Talk Like a Pirate Day”, let’s take a look at some of the steps that the developer and the project owner took to effectively kill this project.

First, a little background; this project is a web based project. In hind-site the customer needed a CMS with a shopping cart. The customer sells a wide variety of items so any off-the-shelf shopping cart solution would have had to have been customized. I’m sure by now, you have selected your favorite open source CMS or shopping cart package as a good basis for this project. I know I did, but that’s too simple of an exercise. With the basics of the project in mind now, let’s take a look at 5 rules that were followed to a “T” to properly kill this project.

(more…)

Dead Reader,

My boss asked me to write up my job description the last time I was out in Cupertino. I’m sure this isn’t what he had in mind, but I’m going to share it here for all to see.

What I Do

1: I represent Zend.
Ok, sometimes I do it well, other times, I try and avoid embarrassing them but for better or for worse, my job is to represent Zend to the PHP community at large.

I let people know just how cool of a company Zend is and how great it is to work there. This might sound a bit too touch-feely but in reality it has a hard and fast metric that I use to measure success. I know I have been successful when a Zend employee hands someone their business card and the response they get is

“You work at Zend? How cool is that?”

Because it is cool, damn cool, and it’s my job to let people know that. It’s a damn sexy company to work for and the pay is decent. Honestly, either one of those is a reason to go to work for a company but only one of those will keep you there long-term. Can you guess which one?

2: I manage DevZone
I feed the content beast that is DevZone. Sometimes I do it myself, sometimes, I help others do it but in the end, a large part of my time is spent writing or wrangling original content for DevZone.

3: I scout talent
Every conference, BarCamp or usergroup I go to, I am constantly looking for the best and brightest to pitch to the managers at Zend looking to hire. This is a cool part of my job because I love helping developers find positions at cool companies. I’ve done it for almost 10 years now and it’s still fun. Short of building and managing development teams, scouting talent is probably the funnest part of my job.

What It Takes To Do What I Do

First and foremost, you have to be a developer, specifically, a PHP developer.

I know I will ruffle some feathers with this one but it is my opinion that everyone at Zend should be able to write something in PHP. I mean no disrespect to my non-nerd co-workers but it’s the way I feel. Honestly, if you never wrote OO in PHP 4, how can you extol the virtues of the object model in PHP 5? If you have never had to compile Apache and PHP on a Linux box, how do you know that Zend Core is wonderful? If you have never had to manage a production server, how do you know that Zend Platform is great?

Most importantly though, if you’ve never had to work for a company where management expects developers to “do whatever it takes” yet still pays them for a 40 hour work week, how can you appreciate how much more productive you can be and how you can regain your sanity as a developer by using tools that actually increase your productivity instead of your complexity? So to do what I do, you have to actually be a developer.

Running a close second though is you have to love developers.

I was at ZendCon last year when someone came up to me and said “You are not a developer are you?” Now I’ve been a developer for more than 25 years so I was a bit taken aback by this comment. I explained this to him and he looked at me and and smiled and said something to the effect “You are way too outgoing to be a developer.” What he didn’t know is that I’m usually very introverted.

I just got back from a planning meeting for the upcoming BarCamp Nashville during which I probably didn’t say 10 words. Around most groups of people, I sit quietly and listen. Put me in a room of developers though and it’s a whole different story. As Johny Phoenix is fond of saying…”my people”. I can sit and talk shop with other nerds till the wee hours of the morning. So, the second skill you have to have to do what I do is you have to love developers.

The third skill you have to have to do my job is an unquenchable thirst for all things new. In my duties as a representative of Zend I attend, and occasionally speak at, conferences world-wide. That’s right, you heard me, I get paid to attend conferences. My boss often makes the joke that I don’t attend conferences, I take mini-vacations on the company dime, and he’s not far wrong. (but not in the way he thinks.) I love learning. I was teasing someone a few weeks ago at php|tek by telling them that I attend so many conferences per year that I’m working on my PHD in PHP. How I do love to learn, if I didn’t this job would get old in a hurry. I’m on the road these days more than I’m off but at each conference I attend, I learn something new. That gives me fodder to feed the DevZone beast as I share what I’ve learned with others. So you have to have a passion for learning to do this job.

So there you have it. That is what I do and what it takes to do it.

Boss, I hope this is helpful, although I’m guessing you want something more formal. :)

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)

=C=

Dear Reader,

Back from the House of Mouse and a wonderful 4 days spent with my favorite traveling companions. (Oh yea, the family was along also)

What I did on my vacation (Disney, Cirque, Savannah Ghost Tour) is much less interesting than who I traveled with. (BTW, if any of you know someone who actually works at Cirque du Soleil and have the opportunity to watch the show from the booth like we did, I HIGHLY recommend it. Also, see if you can get the back-stage tour) But I digress…

This vacation, I traveled with Scott Sigler and the whole GFL. Scott, WTH? This is the first time since EarthCore that I’m actually having to wait for episodes! Get off your lazy ass and release more than one a week. (Side note: if you’ve not seen the Ionath Krakens’ Jerseys, Scott now has pictures of them and bitchen cool sports cards located here.)

It’s been a long time since I’ve had to resort to my “other podcasts” to stay entertained. Look I pony up the dough like a good junkie now gimmie my damn fix! (Second Side Note: If you’ve not already ordered your print copy of Ancestor then WAIT! Buy it April 1st and buy it by clicking on this link because I’ve gotta pay the bandwidth bills too!

Since Scott is too busy sipping Martinis and counting his royalty checks to feed his junkies, I had to resort to other podcasts to stay amused. (It was that or talk to the family…you do the math) One that I had forgotten about till my recent trip to London was EscapePod.

I first discovered EscapePod soon after it started and quite by accident. I was preparing for a cross-country drive so I was grabbing anything I could to fill-up the old iPod, when I came across this. The first EscapePod I remember listening to was Feng Burger. (It’s still one of my favorites)

EscapePod is a series of Sci-Fi and Fantasy short stories, written by excellent authors, some of which are names you would recognize. From the description that the editor gives at the beginning, it sounds like most of them are reprints (what’s the audio equivalent of a reprint?) from SF magazines and anthologies. None the less they are some of the most entertaining stories and short fiction around.

The editor (his name escapes me and he doesn’t list it on the *&^% web site) does a fantastic job of selecting stories. He does an intro and an outro to each story that gives you a little bit of what’s going on with the feed, listener feedback on stories, etc. Nothing too long and certainly nothing that distracts form the story.

If you have any sort of commute to work you want to subscribe to this podcast! (Monday – Sigler, Tuesday- EscapePod, Wed-Fri stay home and wait for Monday)

Oh, if you do subscribe to EscapePod, make sure you download “Merry Christmas From the Heartbreakers”. I’d list more of the really, really good episodes but there are way too many. Really the only thing I heard from Oct-2006 through Feb-2007 that I DIDN’T like was “The Boy Who Cried Dragon”.

That’s it for now. I’ve got another one brewing in my head but it’ll wait for tomorrow. Thaks to the both of you for stopping by. If you need me, I’ll be sitting in front of iTunes hitting the refresh button on Scott’s feed, jonesing for the next chapter. (Go away, don’t bother me!)

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)

=C=

Dear Reader,

Scott Sigler’s latest comment here on Postcards reminded me that while traveling recently, I started listening to “Infection”. Ok Scott, sue me, I’m at least a year behind on my podcasts. But I hate this once a week crap so I wait till the entire book is available and then listen to it all at once. The downside is I’m never motivated to listen to Scott’s ramblings at the end, “Big Space”. (You get the joke kiddies, Big Space…BS…see, I knew you’d get it.) And I never get to comment on whatever Scott talks about before he dives into the story. So I totally missed it when [Avast ye, there be graphic words and images ahead] he caught flack for his character telling a female character “shut up or I’ll cut out your cunt and watch you bleed to death”.

Now, immediately previous to this, the character had just nailed a man to the wall with steak knives and beat him till he assumed room temperature; nobody had a problem with that. But threaten abuse against a woman and by-god your are going to lose an infinitesimal number of listeners. Anyhow, I wish I had been listening to it weekly when that happened so I could have commented on it in a relevant time frame.

So…

So what’s all this got to do with anything? Well other than trying to out curse Ed Finkler in a blog post (not really possible but everybody needs a goal) I really wanted to talk a bit about where fiction is headed. I’ve been a Steven King fan for a long…LONG time. From “Graveyard Shift” that I read in early high school, all the way up to “The Girl that loved Tom Gordon” , which was a huge disappointment, I read most everything he wrote. But honestly, sometimes (like the last title mentioned) Steve just kinda phoned it in.

A couple of years ago, I found myself about to embark on a cross-country drive. (why is irrelevant) I wanted something to listen to in the long stretch of highway so I went out searching for free books for my iPod. Among other goodies, I found this one called “EarthCore”. It sounded sufficiently Sci-Fi and gory so I downloaded. It only took a couple of episodes and I was an EarthCrack junkie. It was one of the best fiction books I had read/listened to.

Since then I don’t think there has been a time that my iPod hasn’t contained piece of a Scott Sigler novel. Right now I have 2, “Infection” and “The Rookie”, my long flight to Europe isn’t looking that bad. The thing that makes these books good is not the free it’s the talent.

Stephen King’s Got Your Back

I also have a Stephen King Audio Book, “The Cell” on my iPod. I paid considerably more for it and it’s been there since November and I’ve not bothered to listen to it. It’s not that I don’t think that King’s books are any good, it’s just that Scott’s are so much better. When I run out of new Scott Sigler material (and he blocks my emails because I’ve begged for more and he’s tired of it) then I’ll dust off “The Cell” and listen to it. Since it’s the unabridged version I’m guaranteed a long listen, even if it’s not full of “lot…and lots of f****** violence.

Finally, the point

The point of this post is not to gush like a fanboy over Scott. (I did that when he showed up at ZendCon and I’d had a couple of glasses of wine) My point is that so far book publishers have not suffered the same fate as music publishers have, and movie publishers will.

The music industry got complacent and content with the the idea that people would buy whatever they publish. The Internet busted this all up, not by letting people download music for free. Cal’s first law of content is “Free crap is only marginally better than being charged for crap…it’s still crap.” No, the real revolution was the ability for listeners to find music that was good but wouldn’t make it in the mainstream. (I’d throw out a cliche here like “The Long Tail” but really, we all know what I’m talking about) Good, free or otherwise, is still good.

Movies are heading there, it’ll just take a bit longer. Since the industry’s attitude towards users is the same – you are all dirty criminals and can’t be trusted with our precious, precious content – the outcome will be the same, plummeting sales, phony posturing about piracy and a lot of late night drinking trying to figure out where the hell things went wrong. (and again, see “Cal’s First Law” above)

It should go without saying but I’ll say it anyhow. I encourage everyone to consider this before buying an album or a movie ticket. Do you really like supporting industries that treat you like a criminal, even if you’ve not done anything? If we all just stop buying their products, maybe they will start listening.

The problem as I see it is that both industries value their content much higher than the average person does. What they don’t seem to understand is that they can’t sue consumers into valuing their content any higher. It’s only when we see value in their content that we will be willing to pay to consume it. I value Scott’s content, I’m willing to pay for it and I consume it like the junkie I am.

It’s artists like Scott (who, I was floored to find out, still works a day job. I wonder if any of the victims in “Infected” are named after his boss?) who give me hope for the future. If all music artists, movie producers and authors take the time to engage their audience like Scott does, I think there is hope. If they don’t, my personal opinion is that they will fall by the wayside. Either way, don’t worry Scott, Steve’s got your back.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
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Dear Reader,

My what a difference a year makes. Last year on my birthday I was a little depressed because I was still living away from my family and winding up a job that I really , REALLY loved but had to leave. This year, I’ve been through two jobs, one that I didn’t really like but it paid the bills and one that is possibly the coolest job I’ve ever had. (Well, as with any job, there are some things that could be better but by-in-large, it’s damn cool)

So here I sit again, celebrating my 40th birthday for the n+1 time. I’m looking back over the past year and I have to say that it’s been a good one. Here’s a list of a few things that stuck with me. (In no particular order)

There were more, I know, but those are the ones that stick out.

I love this time of year. not for the usual reasons but it is my tradition to spend time in December thinking back, looking over my shoulder before moving on. It’s fun to visit old memories and old friends. Tomorrow I’ll worry about where I’m going, today, I just want to enjoy where I’ve been.

Until next time
Push the button Frank.

(l)(k)(bunny)
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Dear Reader,

Ok, it’s been a while since I wrote last and I apologize for my continued absence. Thanks to several friends, some of whom, I’ve known only a month or so, unemployment has been more like a series of short freelance gigs. Guys, I’m truly appreciative.

However, that’s not the subject of tonight’s post. Tonight I want to give props to all my Code Monkey friends out there. Homies, you know who you are.

This was posted on /. yesterday and while it’s one of the greatest songs since ELO broke up, it also made me think. (BTW, none of this should reflect on my current employers. But it could apply to some of my recent employers, you know who you are)

You have to listen to the words of Code Monkey several times before you get the full gist of it. Those of you who are coders have to get past the obvious truths in the first verse and work your way into the song to get the full benefit. (If you don’t understand the first verse then you won’t understand this post because it’s you I’m talking about.)

This song made me remember a truth I had learned a while back and just filed away. (All you Johnny Phoenix fans…raise your toasted Barbie dolls in the air and scream A TRUTH!) There’s an entire group of people out there that make their living off of the work of others. Most of us call them managers, some of us call the PHB’s. (Pointy Headed Bosses, I had to explain it once when I used it in another article, so I’m explaining it here now for you.) Occasionally, we call them worse. Whatever the moniker we place upon them there is one undeniable truth about all middle management, they occupy that position because they can’t or won’t produce. Managers, I don’t care what you say in you defense, I’ve been in both seats. Management rarely produces anything, they manage the production of others.

Here’s a secret that a lot of managers ignore. Most developers are perfectly capable of managing their own production. Heck, I’ve built teams that are perfectly capable of divvying up the management responsibilities amongst themselves and working without a manager. On the other hand, a surprising large number of software development managers cannot code. I had this argument once with the COO of a company I worked for. He proudly proclaimed that “the Sales and the Development departments were the 2 most important departments in the company”. I stared at him blankly. Then I said

“I can pull any one of my developers in here, give them a client list and they can do sales. How many of your salesmen can code?”

(yes, it was a career limiting move, I wasn’t as smart as Code Monkey)

In a software development company, the development department is not one of the most important departments, it is the most important department. It’s not terribly difficult to build a great software development team. Good talented people are out there. The trick is to find them, hire then, then treat them like kings. Once they understand that you respect them and their talents, they will respect you. (Hint: Immediately fire anyone who demands to be treated like a king. Those people will kill a team faster than anything upper management can do.)

So if you are a manager and you’ve made it this far, do me a favor. Go into work tomorrow and personally thank each developer for showing up, as they show up. (Get there before them!) Then, at the end of the day, thank them again when they leave tomorrow night at a reasonable hour. (Yes, that means you are there when they leave!) Let each of them know that you know that they have a choice. They can choose not to work for you. Everybody has a choice. Thank them for choosing to come in; and do it every day. Let them know you respect them, because that’s important to Code Monkeys.

I’ll leave you with this…that again, I’m ashamed to say, I ripped off of /.

“Putt’s Law: Technology is dominated by two types of people: Those who understand what they do not manage. Those who manage what they do not understand.”

Putt was a Code Monkey.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)
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Dear Reader,

Welcome to Part 2 of “Roles in the Blogosphere”. If you missed part 1 then I suggest you read it first. Not that it will help you understand part 2 any better but it counts as a page view in my stats. (Sue me, I’m a stats whore)

In part 1 we talked about the first type of blogger, the Author. It helps (at least it helps me) to thing of this as a Totem Pole. Authors are at the very top of the pole and hold a revered place. Not because of what they write (because honestly some of it is just junk) but because they do write. (and amongst the junk there are a few great blogs.)

Directly under Authors are the Librarians. Librarians are those bloggers who do not write a lot of original new content but collect others writings on a specific topic. Again, playing to my strengths here and working with what I know, two good Librarian sites out there for technology are www.mashable.com and www.ajaxian.com.

There are several good blogs I read on a daily basis that don’t create much new content but they do gather a lot of good content together in one place. I thought about calling this pattern newspapers but since I hate my local newspaper I felt it degrading to the Librarians. (Besides, when I think of Librarians I think of Marion The Librarian in The Music Man. C’mon, who can hate Shirley Jones?)

Librarians serve an important purpose for blog readers because they strap on the hip-waders and slough through the muck that is the blogosphere looking for those rare gems of insight amongst all the floaters. They harvest the gems that they find, catalog them, and present them for us. This is the first attribute of a Librarian, a librarian is a blog scavenger. A better description might be that a Librarian knows where to look for stories both good and bad.

Like Authors, Librarians always have a theme. Unlike an Author, a pure Librarian will never stray from their theme. Given the diverse writing styles and approaches of the Authors who write the content they collect, the theme is what gives the Librarian’s blog cohesion. This is the second attribute of a Librarian; a Librarian always has a theme.

In addition to collecting and cataloging the news for us, they add value to the news. Sometimes it’s in the form of an opinion. Sometimes it is in the form of an object review; Pete Cashmore does a great job of this. Sometimes the value added is that stories from disparate sources there brought together so that the reader can make a connection. Adding value to news is what separates Librarians from classes we will see farther down the Totem Pole. This is the third attribute, Librarians add value to the news they collect.

Finally a Librarian is impartial. As I touched on in the previous point, a Librarian will give you an objective look at whatever they are cataloguing. Sometimes you read a Librarian’s blog so you don’t have to check every new toy or widget out. They have done it and you trust their opinion. Other times you will read it because they don’t opine but list the values and problems with any given item. (Toy, widget, services, etc.) This is the fourth attribute of a Librarian; a Librarian is impartial.

That is all for now. Join us next time for Part 3.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)

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Dear Reader,

Lately, in between minor software project I’ve been reading a lot of blogs a lot lately. I call it research, my wife (the lovely and talented Kathy) calls it my latest time-sink. Either way, it’s a fun diversion when JavaScript pisses me off.

During my time spent with my fellow ‘citizen journalists’ patterns began to emerge before my very eyes. Either these are generalizations of the blogers that make up the blogosphere or the aliens really are in control at Comcast and are manipulating the very fabric of space-time…and Pete Cashmore’s blog. We’ll assume for the moment that it’s patterns.

Those of you who know me know that I am not a Psychologist. (Those of you who don’t know me will have to take my word for it.) I have however, watched enough re-runs of Frazier to feel qualified to don a white coat and pontificate on this subject of “Emerging Patterns in the Blogosphere”. (If this were a movie, it would be at this point that the titles would grow real big over the image of a spinning globe. If you can actually see that in your head then you need more help than this article will be able to give.)

A bit of a diversion before I dive whole-hog into describing the roles themselves. These are not black and white divisions. As I look at the 5 categories, most of the great bloggers I know fit easily into 2 of them. The worst bloggers that I am aware of are those who fit into one and only one category. I’m not really sure why that is.

This is not an exhaustive list of the roles bloggers play. These are just the ones that are starting to emerge as I read. Just like software generally falls into design patterns, so bloggers generally fall into categories. Here are the ones I see.

Role #1: The Author:

Ok, first, before you go DUH, not all bloggers are authors; but some are. Authors are the people that make the blogosphere go ’round. An author is a blogger that creates original content. Like mine, it may not always be good content, but it is usually original content. Two good examples of Authors (other than my own blog) are joelonsoftware.com and freelancefred.com.

Note: I am in no way making a favorable comparison of my blog to either of these giants in their respective industry. You on the other hand, are free to do so. If you do, please go over to their blogs and post it!

I define original content as content written by the Author that is of interest to more then just his or her immediate friends and family. There is a place for ‘friends and family’ blogs and I’m not belittling them but I am mainly discussing semi-pro and professional bloggers. This is the first attribute of the blog of an Author; they produce original content.

Authors are by nature people who have a strong or educated (sometimes even both) opinion about a subject. They are the people you know who can talk for hours on end about a specific subject. They have a passion for their subject and that drives them to continually improve and refine their knowledge base. The difference between an Author and an expert is that an Author shares his knowledge and his passion for his subject with others else through his blog. This is the second attribute of the blog of an Author; an Author wants to share what he knows with anyone who will listen.

Finally, Authors convert their knowledge and passion into a central theme for their blog. They may deviate from time to time, wandering off course and sometimes all over the map; but you know they will always come back to their theme. Bloggers that wander all over the place talking about everything from the score to what happened at school yesterday are not Authors. Sometimes they are interesting but they fall into a category that is for a later post. This is the third attribute of the blog of an Author; the underlying theme is that there is a theme.

Until next time,
(l)(k)(bunny)

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