As for me, my whole world has flipped over, because a month ago my Grandma was still alive.

I’m no idiot. I know that no one lives forever, present blogger included. Realizing that my grandmother was aging, I had started to think about death more and more. While I would not say I have come to grips with it’s inevitability, I have certainly thought a lot about the nature of the world as I see it as well as what I think my place is in it.

The biggest realization is that the world does, in fact, keep going. Again, I didn’t expect for it to stop, but I was taken back by how normal everything else felt relative to me. To everyone else who didn’t know me or my family, nothing had changed. To people who knew me, but not well, nothing had changed. Yet I am still stuck with the reality that all kinds of things have changed forever. Even internally, leaving the hospital for the last time felt the same as any other, despite the heavy knowledge that not all of us were leaving - or, at least, not through the same set of doors.

I don’t know if it’s the surreal feeling, my mind playing tricks with me, or a religious or cosmic truth that I don’t know, but while I can’t talk to Grandma and get a reply anymore, I don’t feel like she’s gone. And no, not in that corny, “she’s always in your heart” kind of way, but not in a presence either. I just don’t feel her absense in ways I expected.

Despite feeling as through I knew my Grandma really well, it is intriguing to go through her stuff and see what was really important to her. She kept all kinds of things, and it’s like a sort of adventure to figure out why. Things that have surprised me the least are the obvious things - birthday cards, notes, etc. The most surprising, though, are the things that I never once gave a second thought to keeping, like a random blog post here or a trinket from a trip - both of which are things she had. I reread the blog post and tried to figure out what made her want it, but all I came up with was that I probably helped her set up her printer, that was the test, and she held on to it. The trinket was a coin Miles and I made at the Rock and Roll McDonalds in Chicago in 1994. We must have gave it to her when we got back. The thing only cost $0.50, but it was important to her. Also, both of these finds made me cry.

There is a surprising amount of administrivia that comes with death. The funeral home and hospital handled death certificates, but that was only a fraction. Grandma had several online accounts that I knew of that needed addressing. Facebook has a two-step process, the first of which (Memorializing) will lock the account from login and prevent the account from showing up in a handful of places (search, friend suggestions). The second is full deletion. We haven’t done that yet. Geni, an online genealogy site, doesn’t let you designate the avatar of an active account as deceased, and requires documentation to mark it for an account you can’t log in to. Similarly, closing an account provides an option to indicate that the holder is deceased, which will automatically close the account and flag their avatar. I have no idea why this exists, since I don’t share passwords and don’t expect to be able to close my acccount from beyond the grave. However, for Grandma, it was useful since I had her password. I don’t know GMail’s process because I can’t bring myself to do it. This doesn’t even start to cover the real-world issues like bank accounts, car titles, insurance, inheritance, etc. My family, however, is constantly prepared for this since none of us are on any account alone. We have learned from our history, but that is a different blog post.

The definition I use for “friendship” in my head has also been updated. We were surrounded almost immediately by friends and extended family who took incredible care of us. I can’t properly thank them here, and frankly think they deserve better than a blog post. You quickly learn who really is there for you, because they appear without question. This is amazing - I knew that was a cliche, but I never realized how true it is. Even those who are distant by time or physical distance have ways of being with you, and I can’t express how much I appreciate those who did. I have never known the right thing to say or do in situations like this, and I extend that awkwardness to my friends, so just showing up is enough. Likewise, I had no idea what the proper response is to the sentiments offered. For some reason, “Thank You” didn’t seem appropriate, but it worked. I think my problem here is that the pleasantries don’t really change anything - I know people feel bad for me and can empathize or sympathize, but that doesn’t change how I feel. I also realize that’s a very cold statement, but it’s true and I stand by it.

Speaking of comfort, I found a lot more than I expected through the Judaic rituals. I do consider myself a religious person and not terribly cynical about it, but I found it really nice that there was basically a checklist of things that had to be done, and all I had to do was participate. Maybe that’s it - I know I felt fairly devistated, so having to stop and thing in an orderly fasion about what to do would probably have been impossible. I can only imagine that it’s worse when it’s your own parent and you are really responsible for making sure things happen. I also liked wearing the kriah ribbon because I felt that in a small way it kept her with me - not that she has left my mind much since, but it extends a step further. Lastly, I like the grace period of shiva and shloshim in that they add a humanistic approach to grief - no one expects a mourner to jump back in to the world, and we have prescribed ways of reintegrating. Or, as I’ve been calling it, finding the new normal.

In a lot of ways, I have changed. My perspective of those who have passed has changed in a big way. I would think of my paternal grandfather in a certain way that isn’t how I think of my grandmother now. I think that’s because I still have a way of thinking of her - a context, voice, persona etc, that I got from knowing her. I also have been a lot quieter in a few ways. I’ve barely posted to Facebook (especially considering my former patterns). I think I’ve been talking less, too, but that’s hard to quanity since I spend all day with myself, and only really notice it when I’m alone. But my patterns were all disrupted pretty severly, and I didn’t enjoy the things I had before, like playing games on my computer or TV. I did escape deeply in to books, tearing through the Hunger Games trilogy (well, still tearing through the last one). I think some of this is mild depression, but I’m not a doctor, and it’s starting to come around get back to normal. I have also become incredibly resolved to do some of my passion side projects and to focus again on my diet and exersize, the latter of which is being expedited by Pesach.

There’s so much more to say, but just getting that out was a surprising help. If there is anything for people who aren’t me to take away from this, it’s let the people in your life know what they mean to you. But that’s cliche, and you do it anyway, right?

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apt-get install couchdb

Mac installation, however, wasn’t quite as easy, but it was close. I’m using Homebrew as my package manager since I’ve had a sordid past with MacPorts. After installing Homebrew, I just needed to have it install CouchDB. Here’s all the code I ran:

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# Install Homebrew - only need to do this once
/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/gist/323731)"

# Install CouchDB and dependencies 
brew install couchdb -v

I added the -v flag because I wanted to make sure it wasn’t locking up, since my first attempt at an install didn’t go so well. However, attempt #2 went swimmingly, and I’m installing it on my MacPro right now. So far, so good.

Update Always run on verbose! Turns out I’m having a problem downloading one of the dependent files, so it’s halting. Rerunning the brew install step will eventually fix it by finally getting the whole file. Sounds hacky, is hacky.

Because I want to have CouchDB running when the machine is and not think about it, I needed to add a launchd script to my startup. I was guided how to do so by running “brew info couchdb”, but for posterity, here’s my transcript:

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# To get the help
brew info couchdb
[...]

mkdir -p ~/Library/LaunchAgents
cp /usr/local/Cellar/couchdb/1.1.1/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.couchdb.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl load -w ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.apache.couchdb.plist

That’s it! I now have a working installation of CouchDB on my Macs! If you’re playing along with the home game, here’s a link to the admin console.

Welcome to the Admin Party!

Given this, I was a little surprised when my dad called me up the other day and said that they were seriously considering switching their Comcast cable and Internet service over to Uverse. I’ve been using Uverse since I moved back to Indianapolis, and it is easily the only AT&T service I’ve been impressed with in the last ten years. The plan my parents picked will save them money (pragmatic!) and result in a pretty big upgrade in technology for them. Whole house DVR, on-screen Caller ID (finally), and boxes on all the televisions - surprisingly progressive. Through the duration of the call, I gave my dad some notes to tell the installer (no wireless boxes unless necessarily, use the existing coax, place the gateway in the family room where the router is), and let the process happen.

The installer came when I was away for the evening, so I was phone-only support. My mom handled it like a champ. The installer left something to be desired, but she had already got her computer back on the new Internet and had Grandma’s halfway set up. I had to do some of the more specific configurations I have in place - namely, reprogramming the Harmony remotes and replacing the lazy installer’s coax from the box with HDMI - but they all took right to it. I’ve taugh them so well.

A few days in, and so far, so good. I’m taking the “no news is good news” approach - I haven’t been called about any big issues, and after I swap out a few more HDMI cables for coax, they’ll be all set. My dad is amazed by remote scheduling via his Nexus S and seems to really be enjoying DVR. Mom and Grandma are less than thrilled about the lack of The Hallmark Channel, but they move on. And I’m happy that they’re finally taking advantage of HDTV on the sets they’ve got.

All in all, a good change. Welcome to the bleeding edge.

Happy New Year.

Resolutions are a big part of New Years, but I’ve never really got it. I mean, I do on a superficial level - nothing says opportunity to start something new like a brand new year - but I’ve never needed a prompt like that to begin something fresh. Now, I will usually start new things on a Sunday for similar reasons, but I get 52 of those a year instead of just one. What’s more, my birthday is right around the corner from New Year’s, so why not use that?

That said, there are plenty of things I have on my list to accomplish in 2012. Some are worth sharing and may get their own blog post, some are fairly personal and probably won’t. But, Internet, have no fear - blogging more is high up on the list, because I love you. For now, just take this as a sign of good faith - 2012 won’t necessarily be a year of change (because isn’t every?), but it will be a year of accomplishments. So, here’s to it.

Since it’s inception, GoDaddy has been a strong supporter (and recent contributor) to the wording and legislation around SOPA. To me, these are acts that I can’t support, so I’m taking my business elsewhere. I’ve registered a few domains with them over the year as well as purchased an SSL certificate, and pending right now, I’m moving them over to Namecheap. They came strongly recommended by the hivemind at reddit, publicly display their disapproval and stance on SOPA, and even had a promotion - byebyegd - for anyone leaving GoDaddy (or anyone at all).

Will a measly 10 domains make a difference to GoDaddy? Probably not, but as of yesterday, they had lost 70,000+. And isn’t the basic idea behind capitalism the ability to vote with my dollar? They probably won’t close their virtual doors because of this, but they will be shy a few dollars every year come renewal.

The nice thing for me is that I am finally consolidating my domains and taking a solid inventory of the mess I’ve made of my domains and web presence over the last few years. As of a few days from now, all of my domains will have the same renewal date, and I will have a solid list of which domain is where. I may even come up with a Mac app out of this to manage it all going forward. Wouldn’t that be something?

Oh yeah, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah!

For a long time, my site had the subtitle, “Another Day, Another Platform.” Well, I’m afraid that’s, true again. If memory serves, in the nearly 10 years of this website’s existence, I’ve moved platforms at least five times. Clearly memory isn’t serving or that would be an actual number. I’ve been with Blogger using iFrames, Movable Type to generate static HTML (heh, more on this later), WordPress and WordPress and WordPress, and my own incarnation once or twice in there.

So why switch again? Boredom? Needed a change? A little bit of all of it.

My new platform is called Octopress. At it’s core, it’s a set of scripts that generate (wait for it) a static website. No fancy databases - or stupid ones for that matter. No complicated admin console. Just some scripts and a pile of text files. This has some huge advantages for someone like me, though. First, text files are easy and cheap to maintain and backup. I can zip up my site and have instant, daily backups that are ready to redeploy anywhere. Speaking of anywhere, I can more often than not access a text editor anywhere I am, be it on my phone, iPad, or anyone’s computer with a Terminal and SSH client. I know WordPress has an iPhone/iPad app, but it never really did it for me. Third (that anywhere bit was second), this method of blogging lends itself more naturally to how I write. I’ve wanted to be a more technical blogger for a while, and Octopress has some pretty graceful and easy methods for inputting and formatting code, as well as linking to a dozen other things. Namely, making install notes - something I should do a lot more often - is super easy since it’s just a text file to keep open and paste successful code bits into.

I’ll have more thoughts as I go on, and write about the journey, but since my test deploy was incredibly destructive (RTFD, seriously), I was instantly incentivized to get something exciting up. Also, take a peek on a modern mobile phone - the built in skin is pretty slick there.

We live in a world where it is now weird for adult men to be alone with children. Single fathers aren’t the norm. Men walking through a park a little too slowly will trigger a call to the cops. Kids can’t be outside too far from home or too long for fear of being snatched.

This past weekend I got to (finally!) go to my cousin’s gym meet at a local middle school. Being the avid amateur photographer I pretend to be, I took my camera. As my dad and I were walking in, I had a strange cringe of what people would think about two adult men (we drove separate from my aunt and cousin) walking in to a building of little girls with our cameras. I made sure we were sitting obviously with my aunt before actually pulling out my cam and zoom lens, but I couldn’t share the fear that people would be concerned. After her first event, I let it go, but I can’t shake the feeling.

I don’t intend on diving in to a “how did we get here” type blog post, nor is this a social commentary. I have come to rationalization that I would rather people eye me funny if I take my cousins out for lunch or something than risk a stranger harming them and no one taking action. But it is a shame that this is the case.

For the record, my cousin swept the event and scored highest all around for age group. She’s just that great - no big deal.

Then one day I heard about Django. I started playing with it, and I love it. Free Eddie panels, python, who could ask for more? I feel in deep. And I had a reason this time to write an app. So I did. And it was magic.

This weekend I was playing with Gitorious to slap a pretty front end on my repos, and I found out it was written mostly in Rails. After delving in to the code for a long time to get the dumb thing running (and it doesn’t yet), I sparked - “Hey, Rails! Let’s go look at that again.”

I Googled, I made yet another blog, then I accidentally Googled “Django Rails.” Comparison. The holy war of the Internet world. You may have heard of Mac versus PC, vi versus emacs. Turns out, they’re just as furious about Django and Rails.

For me, what it came back to was that I would rather spend time writing Javascript and CSS not for free in exchange for free Eddie and authentication. I don’t understand how you can have an application meant to be on the Internet these days that doesn’t include free - albeit basic - user authentication. I’m not saying that the state of Django’s Eddie is what I want in a big app, but it gets me from zero to 40mph with the option to swap it out later. I also get free, segregated Eddie. I can be dropping data in to an app within minutes of creating my project, and I love this fact.

All in all, these downsides are enough to keep me in Django. The grass is greaner, but this time I’m staying till.

For now, anyway.

I’m setting out on an experiment. For a long time, I’ve said that I’m a command line guy. A modern green screener. A relic, willing to trade my mouse for a permanent keyboard, any day of the week. In theory, this means I should be able to do some serious development with just an SSH terminal and a keyboard. As it happens, my iPad has just that.

I’m tossing between two SSH apps right now - iSSH and a new player, prompt. I don’t know much about iSSH other than it fell squarely in the “just works” category - point it at a server, enter some credentials, and it just worked. Prompt is from Panic, a company that makes software good enough I want to buy (namely Unison and Transmit). It’s version 1.0, and thus not without faults. Namely, the thing goes three minutes and hangs unexpectedly. Between the two, though, an SSH client is acquired and runs.

Next up - environment. I have an account on my web server that I can log in to for running the thing, so I’ve made a directory for local development. Now my SSH client has somewhere to go. A few virtualenvs and git inits later and I had a place to work.

For a quick test, I spun up a very basic Django project and kicked off it’s internal server. After remembering to let it listen on all IPs, I was able to get to it from Mobile Safari. A rousing success.

So that’s where I am. I have a kludgey but functional ultra mobile development environment. I’m going to let this go for a bit and see if it’s feasible. Clearly a gap is anything graphic, but that’s what my big Mac rocks at doing. For quick, ugly code work, this should do nicely. I guess we’ll see.

When I first started web design, everything with rigid formatting was done in tables. We didn’t have CSS yet, so if you wanted positions, you made a table. If you were graphically inclined, you drew your tables in Photoshop (or Fireworks, or Illustrator) and sliced it up, repeating portions that were worth repeating. It was fun, but it was tedious. Most importantly, it worked.

With the rise of CSS (except in IE6, still a problem), the Internet Hivemind commanded we stop doing that. Instead, we switched to DIVs. Everywhere. Tables were only useful now for tabular data, as the name would rightly suggest. Frameworks sprung up (I’m fond of Blueprint, myself) to make it easier, and that’s how we went. Hacks existing to do special things, but you made a semantic DIV to encapsulate content. It’s good, readable code, and tedious to write.

What’s next then? I have no idea. HTML5 was rumored to bring semantic sections (header, footer, navigation, content), but it’s not adopted. I’m working on a new layout for a site - not this one, sorry - and I’m finding that I’m four divs in before getting to content. It’s absurd, but it works. I supposed if I was really troubled I could lobby the W3C, but it’s not worthwhile. I’d rather fuss. At least I write moderately reusable code that I leverage (read: cut and paste) to new projects.

Oh, and I blog at midnight. That never helps me not-complain.

I guess it comes down to having nothing interesting to say. I half-wrote a social media post in the spirit of my epic Twitter farewell, but it never got realized in a form I liked. Work has certainly provided me with a of insight in to what I think of SM in general, and it comes down to “who cares?” I mean, I know people do care of it wouldn’t be an industry, but part of me can’t get past the fact that I think it’s only important because we as a people say it is. Think about it - why do you want to be friends with a company? Do you think they’re really following you back?

Maybe it’s my inner nihilist coming out to play, but I feel the same way about this blog to an extent - I like the idea that one day I’m going to look back and be able to loosely piece together my life, but right now I’m questioning the value in it.

On another topic altogether, I’ve started learning to code for iPhone and Android. It’s really funny to be learning about both of them at the same time, but I think that’s a series of posts better saved for their own entries.

I’ll have a large run32.dll and a side of you unsaved Word doc, please.

While watching Mallrats tonight, I think I finally found the answer to the problem. Some blame the heavy role Jay and Silent Bob play in the film. Some blame the fact that it’s set in Jersey but filmed in Minnesota ((Eden Prairie to be exact - I’ve been there)). Some blame the overuse of overly verbose verbiage spewed disproportionately to the perceived status of the characters ((See what I did there?)). Others just think Smith sold out and that alone ruins it. But me, I’ve found the answer. And it’s one quote.

“It’s not a mall. It’s the mall.”

Yup. That. It hit me like lightning. That one line was the entire plot of Clerks, despite it never being uttered. To Randall and Dante, Quick Stop was the world. Not just a minimart - the minimart. Clerks 2 beat this message over our heads with the dramatic Randall speech and montage to end the film, but it was there all along. The unwavering love they had for this place was tangible, despite the fact that Dante wasn’t even supposed to be there that day.

All of these genuine, endearing qualities were missing from Mallrats. Even when Brodie outright says phrases like “the mall” and “my mall,” it served as nothing more than a venue. These people existed at the mall, but it could have just as easily been set at a theme park or Mooby’s ((Here’s looking at you, Clerks 2)) and it wouldn’t have been the least bit different.

So what, you say. Plenty. Clerks played off our empathy for shitty jobs. We’ve all worked places we didn’t like on our day off. We had friends with shitty jobs and we’d go visit them. Yeah, we’ve all shopped at a mall, but that’s just a roof over stores we visit. Who cares? Take Mall of America - there are multiple instances of any given store in one building. You can visit half of the mall on one day, then do the exact same shopping trip the next day in the other half. This is how we feel, and this is how Brodie, TS and the rest of them treat their mall. Hell, they even visit another mall mid-movie. You would never dream of seeing Dante stroll through a CVS or Walgreen’s in the middle of Clerks.

Despite it all, I love Mallrats. It’s not my favorite in the ‘verse, but not my least either. I love quoting it with my friends. I can’t eat a chocolate covered pretzel without wanting to vomit a little. I have finished countless tales with “true story.” And should I ever own a sialboat, I’m naming it schooner. Dumbass.

Being a rabid Mac fanboy, I really like seeing Windows fail visibly in public. Here’s the latest one I saw. Expect more of this.

So, yeah, back to WordPress. I liked the idea of writing a Django blog, and haven’t abandoned it yet, but for now it’s a side project and not mainstreamed. For now, anyway.

Clearly any portable computer is at risk of theft, and while the hardware itself is considerably more valuable to the thief than the data on the machine, the opposite is true for me. I can replace a computer, but I can’t replace lost data. This is easily enough solved (hello, Time Machine), but I’d rather have a situation where I don’t have to.

As it happens, the bar starts to gain popularity. You think it’s pretty great. More people start showing up and you have more people to talk to. As the bar starts to gain popularity, they do stuff to make it more fun to be there - put in a jukebox, karaoke, etc. And don’t you feel great, because you knew about it before it was “cool.”

The bar gets so popular that alcohol producers start to find out about it. The send reps to talk about how great their beer is, but you’re not looking to talk to a distributor, you just want to hang out and talk to you friends. Lucky you, it’s pretty obvious who the reps are, so you keep to yourself and your circle. The bar may be getting a little passe, but you still like it.

Turns out sending reps was pretty successful, so the distributors send more. And so do the competitors. And then, they send more.

Some pretty cool people start showing up to the bar, and it’s pretty fun to stop and listen to what they have to say. Sure, you still talk to your friends most of the time, but celebrity stature certainly warrants keeping an ear on their conversation. Every once in a while you try to shout to the celebs and see if they respond, but they never do because the celebs just like being heard and talking to other celebs. Remember, they’re just people, too.

Unfortunately, some new people have found about the bar, and they find themselves so infatuated with what others are saying that they just stand around repeating what others are talking about. You know they type - “hey, did you hear what so and so just said?” All that training from high school kicks in, and you ignore them now like you did then. They’re just looking for people to listen to them, anyway.

The bar keeps growing and growing, and everyone’s having a good time. You have the tables you like to sit at, the people you like to talk to, etc. But, it gets kind of noisy. I mean, you’re still having fun, your friends are still coming, but it’s just not the same. You’re tired of hearing about how great all the new beers and other beverages are. You find it harder to avoid those repeaters. You even start sitting in the back room - it’s still the bar, just a little quieter. But all those things you used to like about it have changed. And you don’t really enjoy going anymore, either. You start coming less and less, and some of your friends don’t show up anymore, either.

So, what are you to do? Go out in search of a new bar? Yup.

And that’s why I’m done with Twitter.

This is where Google Wave comes in. From the video demonstration originally released and the supplemental materials on their site, it looks like they have solved reply bloat. By threading messages and constantly referring and replying to one at a time, you aren’t left with a string of emails with increasing size. Sure you get all the benefits of a threaded conversation, but this is probably the biggest undocumented perk yet. Consider the effect it would have on an email server storage setup. Picture what would happen if you were to have included an attachment on one of those emails - 10k could have started at over 1M, and it would grow as rapidly as changes are made to the document. Wave will solve this!

I applied to be in as an early tester when they solicited participants, and now I’m more excited than ever.

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