I had to work on Friday night, so Jonna and Kelsi came in to hang out with me. They brought this cool cake in with them, along with enough cup cakes to feed an army. When it all comes down to it, Friday was a pretty decent birthday for me. Who can really complain when you have Spidey on your cake at 38? Who says I’m getting old?
Tagged with: birthday, cake, Photos
Over the last 6 months, I have been getting more and more addicted to the music of Frank Zappa. It would stand to chance then, that when I saw the book The Real Frank Zappa Book on a bookshelf in a local book store, I had to pick it up and leaf through it. As I leafed through it, it became pretty obvious that this is a book that I needed to sit down and read in depth.
The Real Frank Zappa Book is written by Frank Zappa with Peter Occhiogrosso and is, essentially, Franks autobiography in his words. He talks about growing up, his introduction to music, his first band, and his struggles with getting his music played by orchestras. Here’s the way Frank describes the book in the introduction:
I don’t want to write a book, but I’m going to do it anyway, because Peter Occhiogrosso is going to help me. He is a writer. He likes books — he even reads them. I think it is good that books still exist, but they make me sleepy.
The way we’re going to do it is, Peter will come to California and spend a few weeks recording answers to ‘facinating questions‘, then the tapes will be transcribed. Peter will edit them, put them on floppy discs, send them back to me, I will edit them again and that result will be sent to Ann Patty at Poseidon Press and she will make it come out to be a ‘A BOOK.‘
The style of this snippet above is a pretty good picture of the writing style of the book. It is a humorous and informative and covers all spans of Franks life from his childhood growing up in Maryland and Florida, where he was a pretty sickly child, to his first exposure to music in high school, through his attempts later in life to get his music recorded by orchestras.
The book not only gives you background on Franks life, but really gives you access to the unique outlook Frank had on life and music. Frank talks about the early days of recording, his outlook on musicians (”Very few people choose to play the bass … electric bassists are often failed guitar players, demoted to this duty after a band meeting in a garage when they were thirteen.”), and why guitarists have to do the “big solo” (he calls it “squirting”, which is, in Franks words, “end[ing] your solo by going up the scale, then grab that last note and repeat it as fast as you can.”).
Other subjects covered in the book:
One of the great pieces of the book is when Frank talks about progress. As a matter of fact, he says that he’s been quoted as saying that “Progress is not possible without deviation [from the norm]“. I liked this quote so much that I have it hanging on the door of my office. Its one of many little nuggets you get out of reading this book.
This intimate look at Frank Zappa gave me the motivation to really start listening to the work he produced during his life (and there is a lot of it) and I have to say, I’m loving it. Franks work was different. His compositional ability, coupled with his use of humor and drive to be unique make his albums an absolute pleasure to listen to. The music is different, entertaining, and timeless.
Over the last few months I’ve bought no less than ten of his albums - and each one gives a different look into the mind of a genius. Each album documents a stage in his musical evolution. This book gives the reader a glimpse of Frank from a different angle, in his own words. I would highly recommend that you give it a read. You may not be a fan of his music, but theres no denying what an interesting guy Frank Zappa was. I’m sure this book only covers the tip of the iceberg, but theres enough here to keep you entertained and fascinated.
Alright, I’m going to stop rambling now and start listening to Have I Offended Someone?, my latest purchase from the iTunes Music Store.
Tagged with: Books, Music, reviews
Well, after about two days of file copying, I finally got all of my iTunes stuff moved over to the new Mac. Why did it take so long you ask? I’m not really sure.
Copying between the Windows box and the MacIntosh using Windows File Sharing just didn’t work unattended. It kept failing for some reason. After about three tries at that, I decided to install cwRSync so that I could restart incrementally, but for some reason, this would not run unattended either, and I didn’t want to spend forever running back and forth between the family room and the living room (where my desk is).
Finally I decided to copy my iTunes library up to the Linux server. I started it at about 7:00am and by 7:30-8:00pm on Tuesday the file copy had completed with no interruptions. On Wednesday, I started an rsync from the Linux server to the MacBook. Another 12 hours later and that was complete.
I had heard horror stories about moving this stuff around if you had purchased music and was a little worried that I would have to spend a lot of time getting the machine authorized and stuff like that. Not so. As a matter of fact, I found these instructions on moving your iTunes library with metadata and they worked without a hitch. I now have all of my music on the MacBook. Nice!
I really do like this environment a lot better than anything I’ve used in the past. I’m not clear as to why I had all of the copy failures I had from machine to machine, but thankfully I’ve got the trusty SuSE server to back me up.
Tagged with: apple, itunes, Macintosh, osx, Technology
Now that I have a few days on the Mac using it full time, I figured I’d post up some first impressions from a new user. More than that, observations from a new user who resisted the Mac when all his friends told him to go that way in the first place.
Overall, I’m completely impressed. While my initial resistance to going Mac had a lot to do with the price, there are so many little things that I’m finding that are valuable enough to make me feel better about the purchase price. You get what you pay for and I’m quite happy with the new purchase.
Tagged with: apple, customer-experience, Macintosh, osx, Technology
I was really glad to read Stewart Butterfields response to the whole Zoomr API key thing that happened over the weekend.
The first thing I thought of when hearing about the hub-bub first on Tom the Architects blog and then on yesterdays Geek News Central (I’m a little behind lately) was the article Strategy III: Let Me Go Back by Joel Spolsky. I think that the essay does a really good job of illustrating the huge barrier to entry that the ability to choose to leave can be to a customer looking to use a product or service.
For me, the attitude of not allowing competitors to access public API keys seemed way too “lock in” like for even me, a very loyal Flickr user. I know that some of the arguments floating around places like TechCrunch were things like “why should Flickr let Zoomr use their bandwidth to take their customers”. The main reason for this is because they chose to create a public API and cannot discriminate against competitors without looking petty and protective.
This is a hard thing for companies to learn. Customers don’t want it to be a hard thing to leave your site or product. It’s a powerful feeling to know that you can move somewhere to try out a service and if it doesn’t work for you — you can leave. At different times in my career I’ve watched people confuse the idea of “creating stickiness” with the idea of tying the customer to a particular product — or at least making it hard for them to leave — and its really just disappointing to me and a clear sign that someone doesn’t get it.
“Stickiness” is the value you are creating that cannot be provided anywhere else and has nothing to do with whether your customer is “stuck” with you or not.
The decision that Flickr has made is to allow public access by competitors to their public API’s is a good one. I do disagree with Tom on one point, in that I think that the requirement that such competitors are required to provide a complete and accessible public API for them is a good one. I think thats a fair trade off and overall will set an example and a requirement to play fair and an expectation that when you take advantage of openness, you must be willing to be open yourself.
Oddly, its the same example Stallman has been trying to set for years …
Tagged with: business, customer, openness, Technology
Your looking at the first post to this web site completely written on a Mac.
Yep, thats right. A Mac.
Since the release of OS X I’ve wanted to make the leap to the Mac. The idea of a Unix based system with the useability of a Mac intrigued me to no end. I also have a couple of friends that have used Macs from what seems like day one, and have always told me that I was missing out on something cool. I just haven’t been able to justify getting one in my own head.
I think the clincher for me that a Mac was in my future was when Jonna started bringing one home for her testing work and I was watching her use it. It just looked so cool! Its been on my mind for a couple of weeks now, so yesterday we decided to take a road trip out to the Apple store and “just look” at the Intel based MacBooks to see whether it might be something I want to commit to as my next machine.
Well, I wound up walking out with one with the voice of an Apple customer from the store ringing through my head, echoing softly, “Once you make the move, you will never go back …”.
I got the machine home and booted it up. Within literally 15 minutes or so, I was hooked to our wireless network here at the Labs. Another 25 minutes or so and all of the software updates were downloaded. A few trips to grab the software I use most, like FireFox, the Flickr uploader, etc. and I already felt like I was home.
Of course, being a developer at heart, there are a few things I just had to do as soon as I got the base software like my favorite browser installed. I had to dive to the Terminal window and see what was out there.
Here’s the great thing about the whole experience. Every scripting language I use for every day work is on the machine from the moment I opened the box, even my old familiar friend, the bash shell. The important software I use day to day is at least available for me to install.
My email, calendar and news reader? I use Google, for all of that, so there was no setup or importing of data required. I just log in and feel at home.
The loose ends I have to tie off at this point is moving all of my iTunes stuff to the new machine. I’ve found a few articles on this around the NET, but the volume of data I have to transfer is becoming prohibitive. For some reason, rsync just stops part way through the sync — but I’ll get this worked out.
I’m extremely impressed with the machine so far. It has all of the utility of Unix and all the beauty of a Mac. I’m really not sure what else anyone could ask for.
Tagged with: apple, customer-experience, hardware, Macintosh, osx, Technology
I’m a little behind on the mailing lists, but I found that on June 5 it was announced that Best Practical Solutions, LLC has aquired SVK. SVK is a distributed version control system written on top of Subversion and provides the ability to mirror Subversion and CVS repositories to your local machine in order to work in a distributed fashion. It also provides advanced branching and merging capabilities far and above what the core Subversion product provides. Read the official announcement here.
Best Practical, LLC produces Open Source incident response, request tracking, and FAQ management software. Chia-liang Kao, the author of SVK, has joined Best Practical as a partner.
Tagged with: source-control, Subversion, SVK
As a customer, I like to be in control.
Our family goes out to eat at least once a week (on weekends, mostly). Many times once we are seated we spend quite a bit of time waiting for our initial drink order to be taken, then for our actual order to be taken, then for the check to be presented, and finally for our payment to be taken by our server. I know, pretty normal scenario — what is there to complain about?
Well, I’m not complaining really, just thinking. How could you enable customers to order for themselves and pay when they are ready to leave? Would putting customers more in control of the things they have to participate in anyway increase their satisfaction with the service?
I’d love to see a restaurant in which you are handed a wireless device with a card swiper as you are seated (or it could even already be at the table). The device can be used to select your drinks, appetizer, and meals which is routed to the serving staff (haven’t figured out the specifics of this one yet) who can then fill the order and bring it to you. Once you have finished your meal, the device can present the charges for you, allow you to swipe your debit and / or credit card and pay for the meal. Absolutely no waiting involved except to have the actual things you order delivered to your table.
Tom the Architect has told me that they have something like this in Vegas. I can’t wait for it to get to the mainstream. As a customer, I like the idea of being able to take care of the things I’m able to take care of without waiting on someone else to act first. I like to be in control — and I’m guessing that most people feel that way. I’m more satisfied when I feel like I’m more in control of the situation.
I think the one area that would have to be worked out is the security of the system. As we were sitting in a restaurant one day, I decided that I would enlighten my wife, Jonna, about these ideas. The first thing she hit me with was the opportunity for credit card fraud (she has the innate ability to point out flaws in the utopian ideas I come up with).
She brought the same thing up a couple of weeks ago when I was complaining about having to wait on someone to come over to the Jewel self-service checkout aisle to press a button to allow us to buy a six pack of beer. I started railing on as to why friction had to be added to the transaction, since the bank that we have the credit/debit card knows how old I am and can verify my age electronically. Jonna brought up that it would be quite easy for kids to take their parents credit cards and just go buy alcohol if age verification was done from the credit card (see, I told you she was good — I didn’t think of that).
Ok, thats a problem. What if in these situations you could get the benefits of “frictionless shopping” if you transacted with your debit card only and kept the PIN away from your kids? Then I could have my “lack of friction” and we could ensure that the kids weren’t off buying Tequila on my identity.
These are just a few things that I think about every now and again when I have to wait around for things that I know technology can solve. I love the idea that we are getting to the point where we can automate the friction out of a lot of the transactions we perform in daily life. Now and again, I’m disappointed that we haven’t removed all of the friction that we could out of the process.
As a customer, I just really like being in control.
Tagged with: Customer Service, customer-experience, ideas, Technology
