Remember why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby? Man I love that thing. What a fantastic, awesome work.

And now that I found that link, and got drawn into reading the amazing beginning for the hundredth time, I hesitate to bring it up, to even mention it in comparison to the subject of this post. What I want to introduce to you pales so anemically next to w(P)GtR as to basically become invisible. But at the same time, the whole crazy thing is my inspiration.

I’ve been reading a lot of technical blogs and tutorials lately. I mean, as developers we read a lot of that stuff anyway, but even more than usual. And at some point the very sameness of it all, the tone, the style, even the depth, I don’t know, it started dragging me down. The thought occurred to me, and just will not leave me alone: there’s not enough weird out there. Not enough odd, interesting, _why-style stuff.

So, without further ado, here’s my first contribution: An Unicks Bestiary. It isn’t an introduction to the Unix command line, or a comprehensive reference of it. Its focus instead is tips & techniques that I’ve found over the course of coughtwenty-pluscough years banging away at a Unix (Linux/BSD/Solaris/AIX/HP-UX/etc) prompt. Fellow command-line folks will probably see plenty of stuff you already know, but I hope there’s some amount that you don’t know or have forgotten. Or at least that you get a grin from this humble tribute to illuminated medieval bestiaries, from the nigh-unreadable font or the delightfully bizarre creature illustrations (all public domain as of about five centuries ago).

Hope you like it.

Via Marco.org, a great post by Mark Wunsch: The Great Google Goat Rodeo.

My serious problem with Google is that their products for users (the ones that collect information to inform advertising) are becoming confused, inarticulate, and increasingly malicious. Malicious in that Google is effectively transforming the World Wide Web itself into one of its products by controlling (through a natural monopoly) traversal and discovery (Google Search).

I don’t feel quite as strongly about Google as he does, but I do cast a wary eye at them, for most of the reasons in that post. And the explanation of Google’s behavior, that it boils down to “an organizational clusterfuck that is unable to decide what [way] it thinks is truly the best”, sounds dead-on.

He ends with this:

Angry about this? Here’s what to do. Switch to Firefox. Mozilla is a non-profit whose mission “is to promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web”, which seems pretty cool. Use DuckDuckGo as your primary search engine; they “believe in better search and real privacy at the same time”, which seems pretty cool. I’m probably not going to be doing either of those anytime soon. I’m too stuck in my ways.

As I was reading that, I was thinking, “yes! Firefox, DuckDuckGo, I use those!”, and then I got to his “aww, who am I kidding, I can’t quit you” letdown. Too bad. They’re both good, I recommend them both. But I also don’t use them exclusively, and that’s why I wanted to post this, to encourage y’all to try them, and other Google alternatives as well.

I use Firefox as my primary browser, despite ridicule from hipsters and small children, though that choice is more because I love slash-to-search, tab groups, and the “awesome bar” than because of any anti-Chrome bias. And DuckDuckGo is my default search engine (easily set that way in Firefox, natch (and not hard to set in Chrome either, tbh)). I scoff at Google+ (like everyone), and I purposefully log out of Google’s services when I’m done with them.

But I do use them: I have a gmail.com email address for home and work, plus Calendar, Drive, etc., etc. And when I’m doing web development, I use Chrome because the devtools are (currently) far superior. And it’s not uncommon for me to add a “!g” to the end of a DuckDuckGo search, which forwards the search to Google, especially when I’m looking for answers to specific technical questions. I also use “!m” to get Google Maps for all my map searches. And you can bet your ass I’ll get Google Fiber, coming to Austin next year, as soon as humanly possible.

Hmm, that sounds like a pretty mixed conclusion. But I suppose that’s appropriate. Like Wunsch, I don’t think Google is “evil”, but their power is tremendous, and growing, and that makes me nervous, and then they do stuff like this, dropping support for open interoperability standards. I’m not handing out tinfoil hats, but at least realize that there are alternatives out there, and some of them are great.

As [Richard Chancellor] was preparing himself to depart, he fell in company and speech with certain Scottishmen, who began earnestly to dissuade him from the further prosecution of the discovery, by amplifying the dangers which he was to fall into.

But he persuading himself that a man of valour could not commit a more dishonourable part than for fear of danger to avoid and shun great attempts, was nothing at all changed or discouraged, remaining steadfast and immutable in his first resolution: determining either to bring that to pass which was intended, or else to die the death.

— Voyages & Discoveries, ch. XIII (1553), Richard Hakluyt

Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project books and blog, despite the saccharine appearance and self-helpy feel, rarely fail to yield some useful or enlightening wisdom. For example, her recent post about what she calls the “One-Coin Argument”.

She starts from a long-remembered footnote to the 16th century writing of Erasmus, explaining “the argument of the growing heap”:

“If ten coins are not enough to make a man rich, what if you add one coin? What if you add another? Finally, you will have to say that no one can be rich unless one coin can make him so.”

Which she goes on to put in perspective as follows:

I think the “argument of the growing heap” has stuck with me because it captures a paradox that I grapple with in my own life, and which is very significant to happiness: Often, when we consider our actions, it’s clear that any one instance of an action is almost meaningless, yet at the same time, a sum of those actions is very meaningful. Whether we focus on the single coin, or the growing heap, will shape our behavior.

Take going to the gym. You don’t feel like going to the gym, and you say to yourself, “What difference does one day make? It doesn’t matter if I skip today.”

True, any one visit to the gym is inconsequential, but the habit of going to the gym is invaluable. Does one visit to the gym make a person healthy? Ten visits? Eleven? Finally, you have to say that no one can be healthy unless one visit to the gym can make him or her so.

Following are some assorted thoughts and observations. I also took some pictures; see them in this Flickr set (this stadium map will help orient specific locations).

• The number of people at the tailgate was phenomenal. The support they have already for this team is amazing.
  
  
• The new stadium is bigger and nicer than I expected. I really like it. It has an interesting design and a very comfortable feel.
  
  
• They sell beer at the stadium! This has come to feel like the holy grail of soccer games, at least to us in Austin, where games are played at a high school stadium where beer sales are prohibited. But here's the thing: it was all crappy mass-market stuff, Coors Light et al. I guess I've become a real beer snob, because although I drank it last night, it honestly made me wonder if that watery dreck is worth all the fuss.
  
  
• The supporters section was good, full and in full voice. They're led by not one, but two, capos, who worked tirelessly all night to keep the fans loud.
  
  
• One chant the supporters had was the "I believe... I believe that..." call and response. The chant ended sometimes with the "we will score" or the "we will win" that I've heard, but sometimes in just, "Scorpions!". Over-thinking this last had the three of us cracking up every time the "I believe in Scorpions" chant came along. Yes, we sure do believe in them, why wouldn't we, the existence of these arthropods has been conclusively proven, it doesn't take all that much faith. :-P
  
  
• My favorite chant was struck up during the introduction of the opposing players before the game: "You … may all … go to hell … I … will go … to TEXAS" (an homage, of course, to the famous Davy Crockett quote).
  
  
• For all the impressiveness of the supporters' presence, it cracked me up to overhear more than one person call them "booster clubs".
  
  
• What a great bargain these games are. Tickets start at $10, and parking is free. Even if you have a Miller Lite or four, that's still not too expensive.
  
  
• When you go, don't hit up the traditional concessions until after you head down to check out the row of food trucks behind the north stands.
  
  
• We couldn't cheer for him out loud, but it was good to see former Aztex fan favorite Jay Needham putting in his usual solid work in defense for the Rowdies.

Conclusion: two enthusiastic thumbs up for the Scorpions gameday experience. Aztex games at House Park are great, but I look forward to the day when we have this kind of environment here in Austin, too.

I saw this recently on Buzzfeed: 19 Brands You Didn’t Know Were Owned By Giant Corporations. (Insert guilty acknowledgement of occasionally following links to Buzzfeed here.)

Pretty descriptive title there. It’s a simple page of product pictures, with the dark secret of their true corporate owners. Like this:

Owned by: Coca-Cola

I’m not sure what the intent of this piece is. Well, the real intent is to get page-views and sell ads on Buzzfeed, of course. But as for the purported point, for my part, it made me initially feel like a sucker, a dupe, for using those products.

But once I thought about it a little more, I realized it’s actually fine, for the most part. In general, all things being equal, I would indeed rather support smaller, local, “mom & pop” kinds of companies rather than large corporations. Part of the reason for that is an expected correlation with higher quality, more well-crafted product. But these are known high-quality products, that happen to be made by a company owned by (usually bought up by) a large corporation.

Maybe Coca-Cola will start to cut corners on how Odwalla juices are made, or using cheaper ingredients. If and when they do, then complain about Odwalla. Until then, be glad that a giant company is investing in fresh, natural, healthful products, and that they’re being sold in a lot more places than the one hippie health-food store that a mom & pop juice company would be able to sell through.

Of course, if you come across tasty-looking juices that actually are made by a mom & pop juice company, by all means give them a shot. But absent such a choice, or even if you just prefer them, don’t feel bad buying Odwalla, Tom’s toothpaste, or any of these.* Be glad that you’re using your money to vote for quality goods.

• P.S. An exception to note, however, is beer (their examples are Blue Moon, made by MillerCoors, & Goose Island, made by Anheuser-Busch InBev). It’s a bit of a different category, in my opinion, because there are a lot more small, independent breweries around than there are small, independent toothpaste makers or pita chip companies. And their products are easier to find, even in regular old neighborhood grocery stores. However, the bottom line is the same. I won’t buy Blue Moon when there are more interesting options, but if I’m somewhere where the only other choices are Budweiser and Miller Light, then I’ll pick Blue Moon all day long.

P.P.S. That Buzzfeed page also includes Marmite, made by Unilever. I don’t really know what that is, except that it’s similar to Vegemite. I don’t know what that is, either, except that it’s the target of this hilarious, profane rant song by Amanda Palmer: Vegemite (The Black Death).

Here’s an idea for a site/app/whatever that, as a soccer fan, I’d love to have. I hereby release it to the world so that someone can build it for me.

The idea is simply a service to help you decide whether or not to watch games that you’ve DVR’d or which are being rebroadcast. You’ve stayed off Twitter to avoid knowing the score, which is great, but you’ve also avoided knowing whether the game is going to be any good.

The closest I’ve seen is the short-lived Redacted Match Reports on Howler Magazine’s blog. They only kept this up through the Euros last year, but here’s their description:

The idea is pretty simple: It’s tomorrow. You’ve recorded both matches—Greece vs. Poland and Russia vs Czech Republic. But when you get home, you only have time to watch one of the two. How do you choose? Bookmark [whatahowler.tumblr.com/redacted] and check it after the games have been played. We’ll give you all the information you need to decide which game to watch, with no scores or spoilers.

Though that was specific to picking which of two simultaneous games to watch, I think the use-cases is more broad. Take today, for example: Bayern vs. Arsenal in a second-leg UEFA Champions League game at 2:45PM (CT) could be awfully good. But there are also CONCACAF Champions League games tonight (Houston v Santos and LA v Herediano) that I’m interested in. Similar to how whichever checkout line you pick in a store is inevitably the slowest, I’m afraid that whichever game I decide to watch tonight will turn out to be the least exciting one.

Even if there weren’t any live games tonight, there’s still the question of whether I should spend two hours of my life (ok, more like 80 minutes with fast-forwarding) on that Bayern-Arsenal game.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of other people will have already seen it. They may not all agree, or be happy about the outcome, but there will surely be some consensus about whether it was a Good Game. Whether it was Worth Watching.

And that’s all I want to know. I don’t need the redacted details of Howler’s version (“XXXX leaves it until late in the second half”), just an indication of the quality of the game. It could be a simple scale: 1: don’t bother, 2: watch if you’ve nothing better to do, 3: DO NOT MISS.

Also unlike Howler’s curated version, this could be crowd-sourced. Apologies for the buzzword, but I think it’s a perfect application of a simple poll, like-button, hot-or-not kind of vote. Having a built-in audience to start with makes it an easy fit for existing sites like SBNation or BigSoccer, though it could be a standalone site, too (until SBNation buys it out; instant millionaire!).

Maybe my view of the market for such a thing is skewed by following European soccer, for which it’s common to want to watch a DVR’d or rebroadcasted match at home in the evening (US time) that took place five, six, seven hours prior across the Atlantic. It seems like fans of other sports would use something like this, but I just don’t know.

Anyway, there’s my idea, I give it to the world for free, all I ask is that someone build it so I can use it. Godspeed!

Time again for my annual best-of music review! Okay, past time; sue me. Here’s the introductory explanation from last year’s post, copied & pasted for your convenience:

A couple years ago, I started doing my own personal "best of the year" selections in iTunes. It's easy to make an iTunes smart playlist that includes all the tracks added during the calendar year. Just set "Date Added", "is in the range", and pick the dates (I also add rules to exclude some tracks, like audiobooks, podcasts, etc.).

I use “date added” rather than “year”, so my selections are based on music that I bought during the year, regardless of when it was originally released. If I discover an old artist or pick up an old album years later, then so be it. Also, I buy full albums only; I never buy just single tracks. And so that’s what I pick 10 favorites of: albums.

Here are my 2012 selections, in alphabetical order by artist. The links are to Wikipedia, and a playlist of these albums is here on Spotify.

• Born To Die, Lana Del Rey – Leaving aside the controversy between whether this is Art or lowbrow misogynist trash, and just going along for the ride with her surreal and honestly kind of dorky persona, this album has a dark, smoothly consistent feel that I just found myself listening to over & over.
  
  
• Hospitality, Hospitality – I saw this band do a free SXSW set at Waterloo Records (and got an autographed CD), and they were solid. So indie that there's not even a Wikipedia page for their album, and a little twee, but I listened to this album a lot this year. Good stuff.
  
  
• The Big Roar, The Joy Formidable – This album is just a solid rocker from start to finish, another with hardly a bad song on it. Volume dials don't really go high enough for music like this. (No, not even Spinal Tap's volume dials.)
  
  
• Synthetica, Metric – Another band that's been around for a long time that I hadn't been into very much. This album, especially the track "Youth Without Youth" (with its fantastic video), plus a great set at ACLFest, converted me.
  
  
• Bring It On Home, Joan Osborne – The singer who you think of as a 90s one-hit wonder has been putting out good albums ever since then. What a voice. This compilation of cover songs doesn't have a bad track on it.
  
  
• Theatre Is Evil, Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra – I'd heard a little Amanda Palmer here & there, and I'd seen her gigantic Kickstarter campaign to record this album, but never really been hooked. But between a couple of seriously intense videos (The Killing Type & Do It With a Rockstar, both more or less NSFW), and the ability to download this album for free (I've since paid for the "deluxe" version), I'm hooked now. It's a little uneven, but overall pretty amazing.
  
  
• Reign of Terror, Sleigh Bells – Sleigh Bells' debut album made my best-of-year list in 2010, and they're back, kicking as much ass as ever. If iTunes let me, I'd rate the track "Demons" six stars.
  
  
• Close-Up, Vol. 3 - States of Being, Suzanne Vega – Is it bizarre to have an album of acoustic reissues by 53-year-old poet & guitar strummer Suzanne Vega on the list right after raving about noise-pop band Sleigh Bells? I'm a mystery wrapped in an enigma, and I love her voice as much as I did in 1985. Vega made four of these reissue albums, rerecording her own stripped-down (and copyrighted in her name) versions, and they're all good, but this one is my favorite. Really good versions of really good songs.
  
  
• Blunderbuss, Jack White – This album, like his set at ACLFest, and his hour on Austin City Limits are Jack White at his Jack-Whitest. There are a few tracks that aren't my favorites, and I really wish he hadn't said "noivous" on "I'm Shakin'" (that cost that song a star, Jack), but a rocker nonetheless.
  
  
• Conatus, Zola Jesus – Laid back in more of a heavy shoe-gaze way, this is one of those that doesn't have especially stand-out singles, but isn't at all too monotonous to listen to all the way through. Over and over and over. Another ACLFest act; she performed early in the day, so I only caught the last couple songs of her set, but at least I got close enough to get a decent picture.

So those are my ten favorite “new” albums of 2012.

There are good albums among the rest of what I picked up in 2012, and good tracks even on the not-so-good albums. To keep them from getting lost in the iTunes library, I also made a playlist (ordered in mixtape order, not best-to-worst) of favorite single tracks from all of the year’s albums that didn’t make the best-album cut. This “Best of the Rest” is also a playlist on Spotify (minus the Giant Drag track).

1. GO! — Santigold (Master of My Make-Believe)
2. Gold On The Ceiling — The Black Keys (El Camino)
3. Wanderluster — Band of Skulls (Sweet Sour)
4. Lafaye — School of Seven Bells (Ghostory)
5. Nothing To Remember — Neko Case (The Hunger Games: Songs From District 12 & Beyond)
6. Mouthful of Diamonds — Phantogram (Eyelid Movies)
7. Who's That Boy — Demi Lovato (Unbroken)
8. We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together — Taylor Swift (Red)
9. Want U Back — Cher Lloyd (Sticks & Stones)
10. Major — The Asteroids Galaxy Tour (Out of Frequency)
11. Guggenheim — The Ting Tings (Sounds From Nowheresville)
12. I Am Not A Robot — Marina & The Diamonds (The Family Jewels)
13. Suicide Pact — JJAMZ (Suicide Pact)
14. Widow's Walk — Suzanne Vega (Close-Up, Vol. 4 - Songs of Family)
15. I Got Nothing — Dum Dum Girls (End of Daze)
16. Call Me the Breeze — Beth Orton (Sugaring Season)
17. Bird Song — Florence + The Machine (Lungs: The B-Sides)
18. I Hate Love — Garbage (Not Your Kind Of People)
19. Firestorm — Giant Drag (single)
20. Teen Idle — Marina & the Diamonds (Electra Heart)
21. Call Me Maybe — Carly Rae Jepsen (Kiss)
22. What Makes You Beautiful — One Direction (Up All Night)
23. Malo — Bebe (Pafuera Telarañas)
24. My Country — Tune-Yards (W H O K I L L)
25. Neskowin — The Corin Tucker Band (Kill My Blues)
26. Babelonia — School Of Seven Bells (Disconnect From Desire)
27. Rhapsody — Siouxsie & The Banshees (Peepshow)
28. Ride — Lana Del Rey (Paradise)
29. Emmylou — First Aid Kit (The Lion's Roar)
30. Tighten Up — The Black Keys (Brothers)
31. Can You Believe It? — Martha Wainwright (Come Home to Mama)

A note about the teeny-bopper tracks on the list above: they’re in my iTunes library because my teenage daughter bought those albums on our iTunes Store account. And I listened to them. They’re mostly… not that good, in my opinion, and I haven’t listened to most of them more than once. But – there are singles that are good, and super catchy (as they were engineered to be), and sometimes even funny. Also, part of my purpose in making these lists is to have a time capsule of each year’s music. And whether the cool kids like it or not, Carly Rae Jepsen, One Direction, and Taylor Swift were all part of this year’s music. But I’m not apologizing. If I didn’t like these songs I wouldn’t have put them in the list. Haters gonna hate; I’ll be over here letting myself enjoy these occasional pop confections.

Anyway - enjoy!

There are too many brilliant & hilarious Onion stories to retweet them all, let alone blog about them. But this one, a masterpiece of “it’s funny because it’s true”, deserves extra attention. Plus, it has too many great quotes for 140-character limits.

Without further ado: Internet Users Demand Less Interactivity.

Speaking with reporters, web users expressed a near unanimous desire to visit a website and simply look at it, for once, without having every aspect of the user interface tailored to a set of demographic information culled from their previous browsing history.

“I don’t want to take a moment to provide my feedback, open a free account, become part of a growing online community, or see what related links are available at various content partners.”

“I don’t want to know where other people are, I don’t want them to know where I am, and I definitely don’t want it all to be tracked by a website that pits us against each other to see who can share our locations the most. Frankly, it doesn’t make any sense why that would ever appeal to anyone.”

“Nobody needs to get my immediate take on everything I see online,” said Atlanta printing consultant Deirdre Levinson, questioning the merits of any site that, without knowing her level of intelligence or expertise in a particular topic, would deem her worthy enough to engage in a discussion. “And they’re sorely mistaken if they believe I could actually add something of value to the conversation.

If you’re thinking I’ve quoted the whole thing, you’re wrong. Read the whole thing. Learn it. Love it. Live it.

Via Quipsologies, an interesting perspective on the advent of more and more people having opinions on logo and brand redesigns: Graphic Design Criticism as a Spectator Sport.

Redesigns such as Tropicana, UPS, and the University of California are used as examples. (Come to think of it, this isn’t all that recent a development; I was at AT&T when Lucent (RIP) was spun off, and their “Innovation Ring” logo was mocked by none other than Dilbert.)

The post gives an interesting, in-depth perspective, and is a reminder that people don’t necessarily love new designs just because they’re new and “better” according to the designers.

I was surprised by how often the civilians [non-designers] got it "wrong," voting enthusiastically for the cartoony old version of the Comedy Central logo, the needlessly fussy and insecure pre-redesign Starbucks, the dated Clarissa Explains It All-era Nickelodeon splat. After a few hours of air-conditioned anthropological observation, a number of precepts emerged, almost all of which rang as true in my professional experience as in Building 110.

… Third, and most crucially, people prefer the thing they’re used to rather than whatever new thing you’re foisting on them.

This is unfortunately as true for software & user interfaces as it is for logos, though we can make those work better, be faster, do more, etc., in order to make it worthwhile for our users to endure the change.

I also loved this distillation of, well, of a lot of “discussion” on the Internet:

A seemingly endless series of drive-by shootings punctuated by the occasional lynch mob, conducted by anonymous people with the depth of barroom philosophers and the attention span of fruit flies.

As the saying goes: opinions are like assholes; everyone has one. When I first heard about the UC logo, I thought it looked dumb, too (though I was prejudiced by the Daring Fireball post that got me there). But there’s a lot more to it than a simple graphic that “a 4-year-old could have made”. Next time I have that reaction, I’ll remember this “Spectator Sport” post, as well as the UC logo post by Armin Vit he linked to, and think twice.

A logo doesn’t have to be the equivalent of a book trilogy and tell all its story through a circular device. A logo, actually, is nothing. It’s useless. It derives meaning from what it represents. I’ve said this before: The Nike swoosh logo is shit. It’s a clunky checkmark. People think it’s great but it’s not. It’s the amazing athletes and their stories that Nike has associated with over the decades. It’s the quality products. It’s the great ads. It’s not the logo.

… Funny story: You know what Nike founder Phil Knight said when he was presented (and proceeded to select) the swoosh logo? “I don’t love it. But it will grow on me.”