I couldn’t think of anything else to post, so I decided to put up a brief synopsis of my current musical adventures, especially what I listen to while I program.

1. The Knife. These guys are great; sort of electronic with fast beats. I listen to them when I really just need to focus, even if I’m having a bad day. I’ve never written any great code with them playing, but what they do for me is allow me to write code even when I really don’t want to.
2. The Hold Steady. I can’t listen to most of their stuff except in full album format, and I never listen to them just to get motivated. I reserve The Hold Steady for when I need to stay on a hot streak. I can listen to them on headphones, like The Knife, so they’re good for a midday streak often.
3. The Decembrists. I have all their stuff on my computer, and I’ve written a lot of my best stuff to their erudite lyrics and catchy melodies.
4. Radiohead. An old standby for writing great code. My very best coding sessions have involved listening to everyting they’ve ever done, in chronological order–it’s what I put on when I know I’m hot and I want to stay that way for the next 12 hours…
5. Dave Matthews Band. Not many programmers I know of are down with DMB, oddly, and I can’t listen to them for really hard concentration, but for basic bug fixing, they’re alright.
6. Mayaflyer. I like to start and end every day with Mayaflyer. They’re the only reason I’ve ever produced a worthwhile line of code, ever.
7. Wilco. Unbelievable for sustained periods of productivity. I can code for hours, especially with “A Ghost is Born.”
8. Just about anything from Schubert onwards, chronologically. I code really well to Shostakovich symphonies, Brahms concertos and sonatas, and Menotti’s operas. Also Philip Glass. If you’re a programmer reading this, try some Glass, especially the album of the Brazilian group playing his stuff, it’ll blow your mind.
9. TV on the Radio, The Strokes, The Libertines, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Velvet Revolver, Portishead, Interpol, We are Scientists… see Radiohead.

Oh, and as for what I’m reading right now, I’ll admit without embarrassment that I’m progressing through the Harry Potter series in order; I’m on book four and loving every second of it.

A week ago I was strolling through my local shopping complex with the kids in tow. The weather was rotten, and I was desperately searching for something to keep them occupied for a few minutes so I could rest my weary bones.

To my surprise it wasn’t a toy store, candy machine, or fountain that provided my rug rats with the sensory distraction they so desperately needed. It was an advertisement. More specifically, an interactive advertisement platform from a company called Reatrix.

(more…)

Spock is a new search engine with a primary focus on people. It claims to be the leader in personal search - Imagine the “Google” of people search. Users can search Spock via three types of information - name, email or tags. Experts say that nearly 30% of Google searches are people searches. If this is true I’m surprised no one has created a good “personal search” engine until now. Spock utilizes tags which make it extremely simple to organize and find information. Our society might just be ego-centric enough to make this a success - how many of us have Googled ourselves? Oh and by the way, Spock allows users to add tags, name variations and a photo.

Go to Spock and “claim” your profile before someone else does. Spock uses a technology that automatically generates tags for an individual. This differentiates Spock from the other People Search web sites such as LinkedIn and Wink. Think of Spock’s potential uses - get the dirt on a new love interest, impromptu employer background check, or find out “where they are now”. It seems like Spock has the potential to be yet another Internet time sucker.

By the way, Spock is thrilled with Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). They are utilizing S3 for storing their photos. They write, “We’re pretty psyched with Amazon Web Services, and we’re looking forward to leveraging other neat services they roll out in the future.” It’s reassuring to know that other companies are having success with this technology just as we are with Wonderfile.

So Apple announced a $200 rollback on iPhone prices…. TWO DAYS after my return policy expired. I am so livid; more than I’ve ever been at a technology company (even Microsoft). I pay $599 for an iPhone a couple weeks ago, and then they announce a 33% reduction in price. I won’t say I’ll never buy anything from Apple again, because I *certainly* will. No doubt. Their stuff is the best, the one, the only… which makes this a million times worse for me. Please Apple, don’t let us, your die hard fans and best evangelists start to hate you… send us gift cards, iTunes songs… anything. If you dropped the price $20 a month for 10 months, fine. But this, this is purely a slap in the face.

UPDATE: I feel slightly better after learning that I’ll get a $100 credit to the Apple Store. I mean, yeah, I’d rather have cash, and I’d rather get all $200 back than just $100 of it. But it’s better than nothing.

Ever since I got my iPhone, I’ve been drawn more frequently to YouTube, that glorious time suck. I suppose it’s because YouTube is now even easier for me to abuse than ever before, but the fact remains. I saw an interesting one over the weekend, the “hipster PDA” which is an organizational tool consisting of note cards, a pencil, and an alligator clip. The “hipster PDA shuffle” is the same, but with an iPod shuffle instead of the alligator clip (funny, right?)

Also over this last weekend I had a programming spurt of unprecedented effectiveness and productivity. All this, plus the normal course of my reading has led me think a lot harder about why I work the way I do, which is to say, why do I have such great and productive 60 hour spurts which last a few days and then return to normal efficiency? Or more importantly, how do I change my ways so my output doesn’t drop but the schedule is more predictable?

I’d like to think that I started to answer this question for myself over the weekend. See, my biggest problem is that when I hit a brick wall in the course of writing code, invariably I end up watching YouTube for three hours (if I’m good at programming I’m much better at watching YouTube). So this weekend, when the urge to watch the ‘tube hit, I managed to drag myself out of my chair and into the conference room, away from any computer, and refocus on planning and architecture. It worked amazingly. I did about two weeks worth of work in three days.
Anyways, working at the office with other people, I can’t always go to the conference room or pace the floor with my music blasting, so I’m going to need to find a more social method of working. Ideas?

Oh, by the way, I wrote this post from my iPhone.