A smattering of news from the world of Blue Monki fortified with vitamins and iron, suitable for vegetarians, may contain traces of nuts.
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WARNING: CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE, OPINIONS AND IS (possibly) DEMEANING OF YOUR CHARACTER |
I’ve been wondering for a long time if I should write this. I have a (bad) habit of shooting my mouth off in public, which hasn’t actually caused me any problems, but I’m sure one day it will. It doesn’t matter who it is, where it is, what the audience is, I like to try and speak my mind. Unfortunately sometimes my mind is ruthless in the pursuit of being deliberately rude to people it has decided it doesn’t like.
Anyways here goes.
Background
All of this stems from several recent complaints about Zooomr’s current lack of feature adding and bug fixing including blog posts from my friend and yours Raul Pop, among others.
To get a general idea of the sort of bleating I’m talking about you can read [this two page zipline thread]. If you don’t want to read it (or just can’t read) then I’ll bullet point out the jist.
Kris wrote his own reply to this on the [Zooomr Blog], but I felt a need to reinforce it a bit.
You might want to close yours eyes for this, it’s going to sting.
OK so straight up ALL OF THESE THINGS ARE TRUE. Well maybe not the bugs one, it’s hard to measure that, and it’s open to opinions.
The problem I have is people moaning about these things, anyone who’s spent a decent amount of time following/using/loving Zooomr should have followed the same story that I have followed, it goes a bit like this:
That’s pretty much the emotional and financial roller-coaster that is Zooomr’s history. It’s nice to see something that doesn’t die even if people take away pretty much everything it needs to survive - perhaps it’s viral….
OK so lets go through the moans:
Zooomr hasn’t gotten any new features recently
No it hasn’t. Why do you think that is? Perhaps you could use your brain for a second and realise that KT is only one man. He can realistically only develop one thing at a time. He needs to develop things that will make Zooomr some cash, Sun and Zoho have rescued us for now but we can’t rely on them! So Zooomr mobile is born! It’s only for Japan but that’s OK and it makes investers look at Zooomr and say “That’s really neat - here’s a lorry load of cash”.
Why some of you fuckers can’t see this amazes me, it truly does! I bet none of you NONE OF YOU could write anything that was like Zooomr and what have you given back? $24?, “your time”? what a crock of shit, you should be ashamed of your worthless hide. Servers cost money, storage costs money, data transfer costs money. Kris doesn’t have a job like you, this is all he has! Virtually nothing survives what Zooomr has already been through and subsequently walked off! Be thankful for what you got!
Not enough bugs have been fixed fast enough AKA I’m going home (flickr) and taking my ball (photos) with me!
Good. Go home and think about what you’ve done. You didn’t write Zooomr, you almost certainly couldn’t write it, stop making demands. EXIF data isn’t a “stop ship” problem GET OVER IT! See point 1.
Kris we haven’t heard anything from you, have you died?
I think the problem here is something that has happened before. From time to time the community (on Zooomr) completely distract KT from doing any “real work” - which is probably great for his sanity. What this means is we see lots of him on ZooomrTV, lots of blog posts lots of zipline posts. There are other times too, when Kris is actually doing stuff which means he’s quiet.
What people don’t like is this noisy to quiet transition, they start bleating like a flock of lambs once the Shepard has gone home. It’s fucking pathetic “Oh Kris you’re ignoring all the U.S. people”, “You’re not engaging with the community any more”, “You’re not telling us what’s going on!”. Are you people like this with everything? Do you want him to do stuff or tell you about the stuff he’s going to do? Yet more shame cast on your already filthy shame-ridden soul. Shall I write a dancing KT flash game that keeps you entertained while the man himself gets on with the job? I fucking would if it could shut your sprek holes!
Kris you’re in Japan doing stuff on mobile do you not love us any more? :(
At this point I nearly exploded. I’ve shown you the history above. Most chimps could probably work this out. How can you live your lives with such impatience?!
Building things in software is very different from building things in real life. In real life if one man built half a house and then another dude turns up, the second half of the house would be built twice as fast as the first half. In software the second half of the house would probably take longer - why? - because were not building a fucking house dumbass! we’re creating the future! It’s like building something where you make it up as you go along! THERE ARE NO BLUEPRINTS! All you know is what you want it to do, not how it’s going to look.
Everyone seems to have missed the most important point: more people developing Zooomr! MORE PEOPLE!! MORE!!! And that means that while KT is working on (for instance) Zooomr on your iPod, then one of his co-developers (lets call him dave) can be working on getting EXIF data sorted out for your camera phone while yet another dude (lets call her davina) is keeping you all entertained on Zooomr TV.
So what should you do now? Be thankful for what you have; because it could have all been so much different. Be patient, getting all up in KT’s face about it isn’t going to make it go faster. Be constructive, Zooomr is partly community funded in a not too dissimilar way to Linux. And like Linux things take time, but they get done and they normally turn out better for it.
You can open your eyes again now
Right OK rant over. I hope I’ve managed to make it clear as to why I felt inclined to write this shouty angry un-constructive post and I hope by the same measure that I’ve made you feel ashamed of yourself if you have been guilty of anything mentioned here, because I truly believe you should be. Now it’s time to learn from it.
bbfc certificate 15, kristopher tate, people, Rants, sun, zipline, zoho, zooomr, zooomr mobile
Here is a small list of things that are really making my left eye twitch about shops. This might well be a seasonal thing, but I strongly doubt it. Here goes:
rant ends.
left eye twitch, Rants, saturday afternoon, shopping, stock shop
From writing my little [Zooomr RSS Reader Facebook application] I believe there are a few things that developers need to be aware of that aren’t immediately obvious.
Facebook secretly includes the PHP (or whatever) pages under the covers, so http://apps.facebook.com/zooomr_rss_reader is actually mostly http://facebook.bluemonki.net/zooomr/index.php5 with some surrounding Facebook stuff.
Yeah you heard me it’s static. No it does not make calls to your server when people see it. Think about it, I don’t have that many Facebook apps on my profile but it’s got to be at least 10 different sections - which as we now know means 10 calls to 10 different webservers - which means it would suck, hard.
The way it works is that you have a cron job (a job that runs every 30 minutes or so) that inserts data into a users profile page using the Facebook API in PHP (or whatever).
This is kind of an addendum to point 1 and point 2. Lets use an example to make this clearer:
It’s not that much of a big deal, but it seems a little strange. I guess if you do annoying things with someones Facebook ID - write crap on their profile page, send them messages etc - then they’ll just remove your app. Still weird.
So there we go, the 3 main gotchas about writing Facebook applications, at least as far as I was concerned - maybe you’ve had a different experience? Maybe you don’t care. Maybe your cat just died! I strongly doubt any of the above will help with the cat dying, but you never know.
Now that I’ve felt I’ve contributed in a constructive fashion here’s a few things that really got on my b-cups about the whole thing.
Developers like to test things before they release them to the world at large. Now initially this is really easy - cos when you’re developing your app you can tick a magical box that says ‘only let developers of this app add it’.
Great. The problem happens when version 1 of your amazing cat based app is out and you’re working on version 1.1. Lots of people have 1.0 installed, so you can’t just go and change the code running on your server willy nilly, and you can’t change the application end points on Facebook cos that will change it for everyone. So basically you need to create another application in order to have a developer stream of your app and a production stream. PAIN IN THE ASS!
OK so this is all about point 2 - the magical cron script that updates peoples profile pages. To do this you need a valid (PHP) session key. You get one of these when you log into Facebook but it expires after 2 days which is why the infinite session key is useful - it never expires!
Getting one though is harder than it would first seem - this is the procedure I went through to get one:
Phew!
OK so I think I’ve covered both sides of the things that bothered me about Facebook apps and I hope I’ve instilled some pearls of wisdom to your good selves, now get back to work!
brain dumps, Code, developers, facebook, facebook applications, gotchas, mysql database, Rants, webservers, zooomr, zooomr rss reader
I’ve received this message a few times so far in my short Facebook life - so I thought I’d write about it. Deep breath now:
if somebody called bm_toon7@hotmail.com adds you to their facebook account/invites you to be their friend DON’T accept it because it’s a hacker. Tell everyone on your list because if somebody on yours adds them, you get them on your list and he’l figure out your ID computer addesss. So copy and paste this message to everyone even if you don’t like them and fast..because if he hacks their mail, he hacks yours
If one more person sends me this horse shit I’m going to be the one in their inbox hacking their mail!
Seriously, just look at the facts for a second:
Right I think I’ve calmed down a bit now. Thanks for reading, and remember, if it sounds like shit (I’m not sure what noise shit makes but you’ll know it when you hear it) it most certainly is.
facebook, hotmail address, hushmail, Rants
Sometimes (read most times) [new scientist] makes me jump up and down with anger!!
For instance this article on [Predicting Chaotic Systems] sent from one of my work buddies. Have a quick read - it’s not very long I promise.
So what’s the problem with it? Well I’m glad you asked!
The analogy given to the problem of predicting chaotic systems is thus:
You cannot predict the exact path a ball will take as it bounces through a pinball machine. But you can predict that the average score will change if the entire machine is tilted.
Which makes sense, but then they go on to say:
Similarly, while we cannot predict the weather in a particular place and on a particular day in 100 years time, we can be sure that on average it will be far warmer if greenhouse gases continue to rise.
Right so read those two statements again and you should stop something inconsistent. Try again, oh all right here it is:
Pinball: tilting table CHANGES average score
Weather: green house gases INCREASE temperature
Right, and what’s the problem with this then? Well we KNOW how to tip a pinball machine to get a better average score, we understand the system. Unfortunately we don’t understand the weather - it’s chaotic you see.
So in the pinball example, we understand the system, we understand what we’ve done to the system and so we can predict the result.
But in the weather example, we DON’T understand the system, we DO understand what we’ve done to it, but that in DOES NOT MEAN that we can predict it. All we’re saying at the moment is: ohh it’s getting hotter isn’t it? Mmmm yes it is! That’s not predicting, it’s some kind of ‘line-of-best-fit’.
Please note that I’m not saying that green houses gases aren’t bad, I’m just trying to make a point about chaotic systems.
Have a quick read of [this story from the BBC] which talks about some battery performance issues users are experiencing with MacBook and MacBook Pros.
A part of this performance issue is that your battery swells up - doesn’t sound like a performance issue to me but there we go! So Apple have released a software update and I quote:
The company advises users to install the update on all “MacBook and MacBook Pro computers and extra batteries that were purchased between February 2006 and April 2007″.
Now how exactly can you install a software update on a battery?…
apple, batteries, battery performance, bbc, macbook pro, performance issue, software update
Before I start this rant, lets get a few things straight.
So why does a simple thing like moving house fuck everything up?? It’s not exactly unusual is it!?
What this boils down to is the fact that I pay Specsavers money and they give me contact lenses and I allow their emaciated opticians to shine lights in my eyes.
But recently I noticed I hadn’t received my lenses for a while so I thought I’d give them a call. It transpires that the peeps that make my lenses have decided to jack it in so I need to try a different make. Someone should have called me, but it’s not that big a deal I’m Ok, no one is getting torched yet.
So then I go to Specsavers to talk about some new lenses and they mention that I haven’t had an eye test since May 2005. 2005! Nearly 2 years ago!
Here’s the conversation with the emaciated Optician:
Woman: So err when was the last time you had an eye test?
John: Ummm I don’t know…last year maybe?
John-internal: How the fuck should I know?! Don’t you have all my records? What am I paying you people for? etc etc..
Woman: cos it says here it was May 2005
John: [silence]…..[possible eye twitch]
John-internal: ..hulk…smash…
Woman (chirpy): You should have received lots of letters reminding you…
John (loosing it just a tad): Just like I should have had a phone call telling me my lenses weren’t being made anymore?
John-internal: Oh yeah I got them, but I just thought: Screw my eyes and screw you bitch!
Woman: [silence]….
So if you hear about some place in Eastleigh doing an impression of a towering inferno, you haven’t seen me. OK?
I’ve been forced to interrupt my holiday regaling to write a quick note about [podcasts] to vent my pent up anger, because it’s hard to affect physical damage on digital objects. Especially online ones!
Right when pod casts first appeared (?) I hated them - mostly because I’m an iPod hating type and secondly because everyone was going on about them and I really fucking hate things that are popular (Harry Potter, Big Brother etc etc).
Anyways…a year or so on I found an [application] which handled podcasts quite nicely and I found a pod cast that I actually gave a shit about. Enter [Lug Radio], a bunch of dudes talking about Linux but mostly ripping the piss out of each other - it’s laugh out loud funny and it makes peeps stare at me when I’m crying hysterically with laughter at my desk.
So I’d found one and though - hey there must be more shit I want to listen to. Then I discovered the BBC’s [Digital Planet] podcast - it’s not as well engineered as the Lug Radio one, it has at least one retard on it per edition(?) and no one is ripping the piss out of anyone but it was ok.
Now I’ve got the podcast bug right, so I visit a website to check up a [story] I’d commented on to see if anyone had anything intelligent to say about it. Which they didn’t. But then I saw the [podcast] which I promptly listened to.
My god it’s awful - not only are the first 2 minutes some shitty music, but the first guy’s voice is infeasibly dull and he doesn’t seem to know what he wants to say. None of this however prepares you for the second dudes voice. Fuck knows where he’s from his voice is boring and weird and his best tip to find out stuff about Gnome is to go to Gnome.org. Seriously buddy google can totally already tell me that without the bizarrely accented boring voice, I’m not even going to make it a link that’s how bloody obvious it is.
Needless so say I deleted all traces of it. So beware your ears when listening to a podcast - perhaps get a cat or dog to do it for you and judge the quality on their reaction…
bbc, digital planet, gnome org, laugh out loud, linux, lugradio, podcast
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