Sold Out Activist

Test

http://ping.fm/N0f6E

A test.

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/test-2)
This is a $test of the a bug fix ($0) for PingPressFM. $1test. $test1.

A test of Ping.fm's handling of dollar signs

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/a-test-of-pingfms-handling-of-dollar-signs)n$variable

.50

$wtf

$body.50

PingPressFM 2.2.0 Delayed A Bit

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/pingpressfm-220-delayed-a-bit)PingPressFM 2.2.0 has been delayed due to incompatibilities with Internet Explorer. Almost have then all fixed.

Borked? Mindy-ed?

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/borked-mindy-ed)nI think my wordpress is messing up, the post is live, but not shown in the home page list.

There. Fixed that for you.

(My Original Blog Post: -*http://www.soldoutactivist.com/there-fixed-that-for-you)n

McDonalds and other fast food restaurants have taken to making their customers suspicious about something most of us wouldn’t have otherwise questioned. Did you know that your burger has 100% beef? I know, right? In this day and age, I would have said 75%, but 100% just seems like the big ol’ corporates have dropped the ball giving us the screwjob. Seriously, alerting us that your burger has 100% beef simply makes people question whether or not that burger always had such high protein count. So call that advertising campaign fail. “110% Beef” is a better advertising scheme because it causes a different series of questions other than questioning the beef. The little tidbits on Taco Bell hot sauce are exactly what I’m talking about. “110% Beef” becomes a funny joke, a sarcastic little flip that makes people feel better and NOT THINK SO HARD ABOUT THE CRAP THEY ARE EATING. Rule of thumb: when corporations act genuine, they aren’t. Next up is the Reality House minisodes from McDonalds: I don’t really have anything against this advertising campaign. Corporations failed to get real shows to build ads directly into their shows (so you can fast forward through them effectively), so they thought, wtf, we will make our own cheapass shows. Still, I think this particular venture is retarded, therefore:

I don't like Ike, and wouldn't vote for him.

(My Original Blog Post: http://ping.fm/sLnmf) The hurricane anyway. But now the power is back on and the air conditioning is flowing strong enough to cause a new blackout.

Official Test of PingPressFM 2.2.0

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.soldoutactivist.com/official-test-of-pingpressfm-220)The training wheels are coming off, and we’ll see how the little bugger handles.

The plugin is beefier: 100% larger, but more sophisticated as well. The flat 3 default triggers have been replaced with unlimited customizable triggers. The interface has been upgraded, relying on JavaScript for interactivity. Scheduled posts are not supported. And you can select your triggers to fire only on certain categories or tags as well as setting it to use a combination of both.

Anyway, we are still a bit aways from a real release, but this will be a milestone test.

Live coding is often more effective

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/r9v)
Live coding is often more effective than safe backup coding. That is, modifying the code of a site that the public can access while the public is accessing the site. Yes, you will rarely look like a retard when you’ve perfected the code on a secret copy of your site, but at the same time, it can potentially take you longer to achieve your goal. And you might have accomplished your goal in a roundabout way.

“A rolling stone gathers no moss.” Chinese proverb (I think). But it illustrates my point. Working on private copy sites is like only going on group dates: you will always be safe, but will rarely move forward in your relationship goals. Live coding brings to the table a sense of urgency and tension that can sometimes be lacking when you need something more than caffeine for motivation. The fear of disrupting a user’s experience is a scary prospect for any programmer that gives a shit, so the adrenaline flows and you should be on-the-ball about double-checking your work. Or at the very least, quick to address bugs that spring up.

You will also find that you are running against a self-imposed, imaginary deadline. Working on live code is like walking on hot coals. You can do it, but you certainly don’t want to lounge around all day while your feet burn. Fear-based deadlines are so much more effective than calendar-based deadlines it is a wonder we stopped whipping people. Well, I guess there was the whole revolt thing. Anyway, when you drive, you slow down when you see a cop. When you were a teenager, you stopped trying to screw your girlfriend when her parents came home. And when your boss tells you he needs to see you on Monday, you clean your shit up and finish up those nagging projects like you should have. If you didn’t, you deserved that speeding ticket, as well as that bitch slap from the father, and that pink slap I would have stapled to your face. And yes, we’ve all tried to keep going when her father came home.

I do nearly all my work in a live coding environment. Especially on my blog. And yes, often times, my blog is broken. But having a broken blog gives me extra incentive to fix the problem as quickly as possible. Not only that, some of my best solutions come from those crisis moments when a plugin has brought the whole site down.

Bottom line: if you find yourself stagnant or waddling in a boring project, try making it public. Then start tailing the access/error logs while you are coding. Does wonders for the motivation: at least for me.

Slashdot to the discredit!

(My Original Blog Post: http://s3nt.com/r8u) Surprise, surprise: I read Slashdot. Today I clicked into an submission about Peter Moore, the current head of EA Sports. The end of the blurb claims that Moore said that the iTunes $0.99 per download was a ripoff. Obviously, I wouldn’t be writing this if that were true. From the original article:

Moore: […] Steve Jobs comes to the rescue to figure out a way to charge you 99 cents or whatever you’re paying in the UK. Stuart: 79p Moore: Is that what it is? You’re being ripped off.

If you do the currency conversion of £0.79 pounds to USD, you get roughly $1.45 USD. That is what Moore meant: the UK is being ripped off everytime they buy from the iTunes store because it is cheaper in US Dollars. If that’s not enough evidence, soon after the above passage, Moore goes on to explain some of EA’s plans to use micro-payments in their games.