Solomon Giles Design

Preamble:

I know next to nothing about running servers, PHP, LAMP, and many other things rep’ed by acronyms.

I do love Twitter tho and I do love the promise of Tweet Nest. If you don’t know what Tweet Nest is, go check it out and then come back here if you’ve got a mac and you’d rather run it locally than on a server. I tried servers first, two different ones with two different hosts and never had any luck. I trust you’ve not forgotten about the first sentence in this article.

Brass Tacks:

Get your Local Server Running:

1. Go get yourself a copy of MAMP. This bad boy lets you run mySQL PHP and APACHE locally on a mac. All that good stuff that you need to run a PHP server… so my limited understanding goes.
2. Install MAMP as per its instructions. i.e. drag the non-pro version into your applications folder (must be there, don’t argue).
3. Open the MAMP app. Or, if you’re especially cool, just open the file “Mamp Control.wdgt” and get handy start/stop access to MAMP from your OS X Dashboard.
4. Click “Start Servers” The servers have got to be a’running if you want your local/web app to work. Read: not just installing but to work. This can be done either through the widget or the app itself.
5. Navigate to http://localhost:8888/MAMP/ Hurrah! you did it!

STUCK? try this 10 min MAMP screen cast from CSS-Tricks.

Create the Database that Tweet Nest will use:

1. Navigate to http://localhost:8888/phpMyAdmin/ or click the link found on http://localhost:8888/MAMP/ following the text that says “The MySQL Database can be administrated with phpMyAdmin.”
2. Click the “Databases” tab.
3. “Create a New Database” using the field named… you guessed it “create a new database”. No spaces.
4. Write this name down and put it aside, you’ll need it later.

Get your Tweet Nest On:

1. Go get yourself a copy of Tweet Nest. You know the drill.
2. Drop your Tweet Nest files into the folder “htdocs” found inside  your shiny new “MAMP” folder (inside applications… don’t argue). NOTE: if you’d like to track multiple twitter accounts, then create a subfolder inside the “htdocs” folder, named as you damn well please.
3. Don’t Argue.
4. As per the Tweet Nest installation instructions (found on the Tweet Nest home page), ”included are two so-called .htaccess files, one directly in the folder and one in themaintenance folder. If you don’t see those on your server after uploading, you need to rename the RENAME-ME.htaccess files in these two places to .htaccess each.” This is a pain in the ass. OS X (finder) doesn’t let you do it. If you have Transmit it will let you do this. Otherwise, don’t do this, it’s the wrong solution. Instead, Google the OS X error you get when trying to rename .htaccess files and go from there.
5. Navigate to http://localhost:8888/ If you got tricky in step #2 add your subfolder name after the url.
6. Fill Out the Setup info accordingly. The instructions are pretty self evident from here. You’ll find the MySQL info on the http://localhost:8888/MAMP/ page. The “database name” is the name you made on step #4 of the “Create the Database…” section (above).
7. I highly recommend you fill out the “Admin Password” in the “Miscellaneous Settings” section, it makes updating easier. Save this url: http://localhost:8888/maintenance/loadtweets.php for use later (whenever you want to update your archive, will be a different url if you’ve put Tweet Nest into a subfolder).
8. Awesome.

Hopefully that all worked out for you. Otherwise hit me up on twitter and I’ll see if I can puzzle out what went wrong.

If you got a great big kick out of this article, check out my bad-self on Twitter. My ego can always use the stroking of another loyal follower.

So, I just finished writing an email to a nice person I met on Twitter who was talking about starting to learn Adobe Dreamweaver. My heart fell when I heard this news and so I stepped in to do what I could.

If you have a friend ailed by the same affliction … just remember:

Friends don’t let friends dreamweaver.

Here’s why:

It’s a piece of software that does a lot of things for you. That sounds good, and it might be if we were far in the future, but today with a product from Adobe… it does too much. What happens is your lose control over your code. And when you lose control, you inevitably lose understanding. And understanding your code is what lets you hone your craft. But to do that you need to be in touch with your code, you need to craft it by hand and move through it easily.

When you understand your code and know it intimately it becomes a sleek thing of beauty. Clean, beautiful code is fun and rewarding to write. Dreamweaver, at it’s heart, is not a code editor — it is a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get). I mean, just check their website it barely even mentions code. The problem with WYSIWYG’s is that they’re just not smart enough to create great code. You are.

My personal experience is on Mac. But I looked up a discussion thread on Forrst re: windows code editors and came up with the following alternatives:

Windows code editors, that come highly recommended:

• Note Pad Plus
• Aptana
• Sublime Text

Code editing in the cloud:

• Kodingen
• Bespin

On Mac, there’s three basic, brilliant, options:

From what I’ve seen, I’d switch to Mac just for the code editors. But of course, you could say that about every experience on the Mac.

• Text Mate: the barebones editor that manages to be a powerhouse
• Coda: brilliant software by a brilliant software company. More of an all-in-one solution. It combines FTP and a browser for “one-window web development” into a package I could easily write an entire post about.
• Espresso: not used it much. Seems more along the lines of Coda tho.

Feel free to get in touch if you’d like me to blather on more about this sort of thing. Otherwise, best of luck comrade!

It started off, like most trips I take online, in a meandering fashion.

A few weeks back, I’d somehow weaseled my way into an invite for Kyle Bragger’s latest pet project, Streak.ly. It’s a fun & straightforward app that lets you record day-to-day streaks of life’s little mundane goals. Mine was Yoga.

Well, my colleagues could tell you, it’s been a hectic week. And so Yoga fell through the cracks one day after another. Undeterred, dear Streak.ly kept sending me emails to help me remember to record my non existent streaks. I came to realize that I was starting to resent our cheerful, aforementioned application.

Feature request!

So I got on Twitter, to fire off a request to the effect of, “how bout you let me put things on hold?” And now we’re nearing the actual point of this here blog post, because at that moment I noticed the following tweet from @playstreakly:

“totally took a page from the fork.ly playbook and added a way to speed up your chances of an invite. enter your email at streak.ly to see.
6:49 PM Sep 28th via Tweetie for Mac”

Eh? What’s this? An innovative, invite only service that I am not part of. I like food, forks AND version control, no matter how you slice it, this sounds like the place for me. A way to speed up my chances you say? And off to Fork.ly I went, to dutifully supply my email address in the hopes that I could get in on this exclusive club du jour.

The ploy was very clever. But not kosher.

Don’t get me wrong, I signed up out of own silly will. The ploy is still to be revealed: After you sign up, to wait in line, Fork.ly supplies you with a custom URL. Share your URL with three people and get moved up in line. Not to the front, mind you; just up.

Genius. In an untoward sorta way.

The thing is, the un-kosher thing is, that they don’t tell you shit about what Fork.ly’s is. It’s all vague one-liner hype. Like a college, first year bump’n'grind club. Innocent, brash, honest and seedy.

My problem is that they were asking me to share something with my friends, just to move myself up in line, without knowing what I’m supposed to be vouching for. I even did a quick Google. These guys are ghosts. (And of course, by ghosts I mean that I couldn’t figure out who they were in under 45 seconds.)

The golden rule of social media.

Hell forget social media. The golden rule of relationships is: Trust. Online, when relationships and sharing often happen in such a truncated and fast-paced manner, when we find ourselves barreling across the super information seas, we don’t always have the opportunity to explain the nuances of what we’re sharing. This isn’t laziness, it’s the everyday truth of the matter. I mean, look how long it just took me to butter you up, dear reader.

When you’re running a company and dreaming up ways to generate hype, stop and think about what you’re asking of people. Not all viral campaigns are good for those passing around the virus.

Or, at least, the Greatest Entertainment he consumed this year.

• The Punisher Series on the Max Comics Imprint
• Batman The Long Halloween comic
• The 5by5 online radio, tv network
• This American Life podcast from NPR

And I’ve got a far fetched solution for his nagging Jiminy Cricket¹.

Here it is: it’s essentially a tax, or a forced savings. Whatever you want to call it. But, who imposes it² is hardly as relevant as the solution’s intent. Now this friend of mine, he consumed a lot of pirated entertainment.

From comic and more “traditional” books on his iPad, to music and audio books on his iPod, to Movies and TV shows in brain-wrecking numbers on his Macbook Pro. Did I mention this guy loves his Apple products? We’ve got a lot in common. Not pirating though. I’d never do that.

The juicy part.

This money that’s accrued, however it’s accrued, is divvied up in a vote-like manner by the individual from which it is accrued. Savvy? So, you just watch a movie that changed your life? Give it a star or a maybe even five. Read a comic that was unmatched in it’s prose but mediocre elsewhere, give that write some love juice. (ew?) I think you get the idea.

Now, at the end of the year, say you’ve set aside the equivalent of what you’d, in today’s world, have actually paid for each of these things… or even, what you’d have paid for the things you actually paid for (the stuff my friend just can’t figure out a way to download online). So now, imagine all that money you would have spent on booze and “classy entertainment” is on a jar on the counter. Cause it doesn’t get divvied up straight away in this magic world where my friend isn’t a criminal.

No. In this magic world, this guy I know is a philanthropist.

He’s a real supporter of the Arts. Only thing is, he only supports the Arts he really cares about. Think about it. In a system where exposure is free and the cream rises to the top, shouldn’t we have a way of throwing some cash at the people who really wow us? I know, put it into practice and it’d never work. That is, if there was some way to even put it into practice.

But my friend’s a Dreamer. So, he’s going to start a little TextMate document. And he’s going to make a list. And he’s going to check it twice. And come next year, he’s gonna throw some cash towards those that have been naughty and nice.

That’s what he told me anyway.

This isn’t a 3.0 product, it’s a 1.0 product.

And that camouflage is one of the most brilliant tactics they’ve thrown down on the media battlefield. For one, they’ve only got two of the major TV networks on board ¹. Yet, they’ve got a strong relationship and track record with all of them. There’s also no mention of its ability to stream video from you computer to your TV, which has got to show up at some point, even if its through some AirPlay backdoor opening up in 4.2 ².

But those are just details,

The big thing is that, according to Gruber³, it’s running iOS. It also has an A4 chip. It’s going to get apps. It’s that simple. This thing is the iPhone year one. In typical Apple fashion they’re setting up the board before they take that killer blow. This is years of scroll wheel iPods leading up to iPhones and iPads.

My guess is between the new price, rentals and NetFlix we’re going to see strong enough adoption to convince other networks to join up. Let’s say they get all the networks on board, they’ve done it before. Now all we’re missing is streaming live sports events. They add some NetFlix-like service⁴, that streams sports, to the roster and all of a sudden this is basically the most comprehensive cable TV replacement we’ve seen yet⁵.

And that’s without apps,

And by apps, I mean games. Sure, the device will see cool news readers, weather apps and a bunch of other really innovative ideas that I can’t even dream of. But, that’s not where the money is. Everyone knows that the video game industry blew TV, Film and the Music Biz out of the water years ago and now dwarfs them in terms of revenue ⁶. This is the real target and this is the 1.0 security breach, catch ‘em with their knickers down, Apple style attack.

No controller? Meager components? Sure, they’re just buttering us up. This is Apple, their phones are more powerful controllers than anything else on the market (hmmmm) and they make the most screaming PCs known to man. You heard Jobs at the September keynote⁷, they’ve got the most successful mobile gaming device on the market. So successful it’s grabbed more market share the the rest of the competition put together. A market, mind you, they entered with a phone. A market that was dominated by veterans Nintendo and Sony.

They’re doing it all over again folks and we’re sitting around on iPads, that don’t have multitasking, commenting on the new Apple TV’s lack of features.

¹ From the WSJ: “Apple Set to Announce 99-Cent Fox, ABC Rentals”. Note that ABC is actually a subsidiary of Disney (of which, we all know, Steve is the largest shareholder).

² Apple Rebrands AirTunes as AirPlay via PRN

³ John Gruber, apple high geek, hints at special knowledge of Apple TV being an iOS device.

⁴Here’s a thought for adding sports to Apple TV, on top of ABC, Disney also owns ESPN.

⁵“The iPad, and the Staggering Work of Obviousness” an article that completely changed how I look at design. It points out that the iPad’s ace-in-the-hole in terms of adoption is that it was patently UN-revolutionary. The genius of it is that people could grab one and say, “Oh look, a big iPhone”.

⁶Videogames now outperform Hollywood movies

⁷Apple September 2010 Keynote.

I grew up in a suburban household with my mum and step father. It was a great childhood. On the one hand, I had a balanced and “normal” week-day life in a great little neighbourhood. And then, on the weekends, my super cool dad would come pick me up and I’d get to break all my mum’s rules. I’d eat sugary cereals and croissants, watch Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and be lavished with toys. My dad wasn’t rich at all, he just loves me like crazy and spoiled me rotten.

While my budget was never unlimited, I did experience a rather choice sampling of the 80s’ and early 90s’ toy spectrum. In fact, such was my dad’s generosity that I often had to talk him out of buying me a toy. Which to my credit, was a very conflicted experience. Even at that young age I was a total gadget whore.

The Nintendo Power Glove was one such near acquisition.

I was nearly blinded by the Cool the Power Glove had garnered from a guest appearance in the awesome 1989 video game themed youth-blockbuster, The Wizard. But, such was the obvious shittyness of the product that even its being declared “so bad,” in that reverse-litteral Michael Jackson sense of the word, couldn’t close the deal for me. I remember standing in that Toys-[backwards R]-Us aisle pouring over the Power Glove box, trying to glean some hope for the products value but finding none. The thing is, it really didn’t work very well.

Twenty-one long years later, that user interface antihero, Microsoft releases Kinect at this year’s E3. And it is everything the Power Glove wished it could have been. It works, and it’s just you and the screen no gloves, no wii controller. Nintendo released a glassesless 3D experience at the same conference. Technolgies are still in their early stages, and they’re segmented between providers. Change will only happen incementally. More than anything, what sticks with me these days is how much less we’re trying and how much more we’re actually doing. We’ve attained a level of results that is, wait for it… game changing.

The times they are a changin’
The nature of our relationship with the things we create is rounding a momentum-filled corner. Welcome to the days when our imaginations must play catch up with our technologies.

I just got played by a twitter hottie. But first, some background. If you follow my twitter stream, you may have noticed my three day Lady Gaga obsession.

Day 1: I discover Lady Gaga singing “acoustic” (i.e. her + her on an electric keyboard) and am blown away. Seriously, she can sing! Lord.

Day 2: In attempting to win over my Gaga hating (but nonetheless wonderiferous) girlfriend, I show her this video and then a few more “acoustic” Gaga songs. They’re awesome too. So I go and get her album.

Day 3: I listen to 2 tracks off the album and am very embarrassed to have publicly declared my love for the Gaga. I issue a twitter-retraction insisting that I do not love Gaga’s albums. Gawd. Gag me with a spoonful of mediocrity.

Day 4: I get a message from some twitter hottie saying I should retweet her tweet if I like these Lady Gaga glasses she’s linking to. Did I mention she was a hottie? Did I mention I’m new to twitter?

In fairness, I didn’t retweet. But I did think I’d made a friend and I went out of my way to peruse the website this company sent me. Now I have no idea whether that chick works there or if it’s just some big not-so-faceless company using some random gal’s face. But, I did feel like I was taken for a ride.

And I also realized that I’m way more willing to follow someone on twitter that is a hot girl. I’m not looking or anything. But I am a dude. And it seems that this dude, at least, abides twitter hotties. I’d wager I’m not alone.

The takeaway: the tools may be new but the same old tricks work for the same old reasons. Just remember that these days you’re stepping into a more personal sphere with those old tricks and, as such, you risk striking too close to home.

Whenever I get back into GTD, as I just have using the surprisingly awesome Todo for iPad app, I always run into the same quandary. It usually beings like this, with a new app and me all excited. Yes, I’m a geek and new toys, even purely digital ones, send my heart a flutter. I add all the important stuff, which essentially is a bunch of job related stuff that I absolutely must accomplish.

Then things get tricky. For example, my life has been a whirlwind the last few weeks and that combined with a lack of GTD methods in my life wreaked havoc on my once blissfully empty inboxes. The question is, do I add something like “empty gmail inbox” to my todo app? I know, this can be broken down into smaller tasks. But let’s start w/ the parent task, shall we.

I’m sure somewhere someone’s mulled this over in detail. But fuckit. I’m going to mull this one over for myself. Mostly because I can’t think of how to phrase the question to get an answer out of Google in the 30 second maximum time I’m willing to spend on thoughts like these. That and, I’m in a writing mood.

The Pro’s of adding the little things to a GTD list:

1. Checking it off. Let’s be honest, this is pretty much the entire reason we make check lists in the first place.
2. Getting it out of my head. This is one of the big GTD selling features and its why they say to write everything down. But I find that at some point this becomes tedious. It is simply not true for me that the benefit always outweighs the cost of writing things down.
3. Scheduling it. This one really gets me. If I schedule it, will it get done faster? Or, will I simply perpetually reschedule the task?

The Con’s:

1. Too many todo’s is overwhelming. I’ve found, in past attempts with GTD, that when todo lists balloon things get forgotten. And the lists themselves start becoming first a source of stress and, eventually, useless.
2. It’s not like I’m going to forget. I’m in my inboxes about 50 times a day, there’s no way I’m going to forget that they need doing.

This time, despite the odds being stacked against it, Con wins. It’s just not worth risking the integrity of the entire system to add things that don’t need to be added. And I think, for now at least, “does it need to be added” will be my rule of thumb.