bynkii.com

Bullshit

2009-11-04T15:40:44Z

That's the term for the "points" behind this article, and Gruber's agreement with it.

I had a long post here, but I realized it all comes down to this:

You do the work, you own the work. Everyone else can pound sand.

Klout...mmm...not so much

2009-11-03T02:17:18Z

So a good friend talks about yet another Twitter analytics tool: Klout. (Right there, they lose me. Spell.correctly.motherfucker.)

Now, if Mike was only talking about the tool itself, it would be a mildly interesting read. Mike's a social media marketer, among other things, we work together, so when he talks about stuff like this, I pay attention, because he knows his shit. But because Mike is a nerd about stuff, or as he puts it, a meta-nerd, he talks about the larger picture of Klout. Here, the 2.1 paragraphs that really nail what's wrong with Klout, and other tools of its ilk:

What concerns me is there is an inherent bias in the textual descriptions that it's important to move to "higher" categories. The implicit statement is that everyone should aspire to have more followers and more engagement. I see this over and over in different tools, and I see it discussed among social media professionals and marketers. It's complete hogwash.

Most people using social media are not marketers. They don't really care about gaining large numbers of friends or followers. They want to connect with friends, family and people with similar interests. They share information about their lives and the things the love. They don't look for analytics on their profile.

They shouldn't.

Right there, he nails what all the Scobles, Winers, Arringtons, and Calcani miss: Social Media is not about marketers, it's about people.

So I put my profile into Klout, and what comes out, along with the requisite meaningless graph is this:

bynkii is a persona
You have built a personal brand around your identity. There is a good chance that you work in social media or marketing but you might even be famous in real life. Being a persona is not just about having a ton of followers, to make it to the top right corner you need to engage with your audience. Make no mistake about it though, when you talk people listen.

It's allllmost right, but like a lot of tools that only care about numbers it misses some things.

True, "bynkii" is a persona. A D&D character to be precise. Originally a Ranger, now a Monk. Really, I'm on DDO. So's Melissa. The reason I use Bynkii on da intertubes is because back in the early days of AOL et al, it was either "bynkii" or "john90872348". Yay common names.

Have I built a "brand" around it? Shit, I dunno, that's for others to decide. If I did, it was unintentional. This blog, along with Twitter, are just outlets for me. If anyone other than friends and family read either, I'm glad, although I feel bad for you. (Really, there are better people to read.) I happen to work in marketing, but I'm an IT Director, not a marketer. Really, you don't want me designing your marketing. Your network, sure. Your advertising campaign? Not so much. (If you want to hook up with people who are good at that, email me. But seriously, I'm the IT guy. It's what I'm good at.) So while it's teeeeechnically right that I work in social media/marketing, it's not really right. By that logic, I was an insurance guy, and a weather science guy too.

Do I engage with my audience? I suppose, although I doubt it's in the way they mean. (I doubt "full contact combat" applies in their world.) Do people listen to me when I talk? I dunno, maybe, but if so, I'm not sure why. I'm not always right, and even when I am, I'm certainly not in possession of the *sole* right opinion. I like to argue, it's an enjoyable sport for me.

See, that's the problem with shit like Klout: It's just numbers. For the most part, when I write stuff here or on Twitter, there's not a lot of thought. It's me, in the moment, venting. There are exceptions. AppleScript articles, the SNMP article, the Cacti article, the Nagios article. That's me planning what I'm saying, and I hope the difference shows. The rest? That's brain hooked to internet via keyboard, and very little filter. The fact that anyone reads what I have to say at all is nice, and flattering. The fact that people throw me money to offset bandwidth bills is astounding and really appreciated, but neither are why I do this. Really, all of it are just outlets for me. I suppose without the Internet, I'd have a stack of paper journals. That's really all this kind of stuff is for me.

But Klout can't get that, because it can't interpret data. If you read Klout's interpretation of my Twitter account, you're going to get a really different, and quite honestly, wrong, idea about what I'm on Twitter for, even though it does get the facts mostly right. I'm doing stuff here, on Twitter and other places for personal reasons that happen to intersect my professional life, not because I think I'm all that fucking interesting or smart. There's little I do that any one of a million other smart guys with similar backgrounds can't come up with, and a good chunk of them will do it better.

If you want to get an idea of what someone is about, don't use shit like Klout. Try actually talking to them. The results may surprise you.

RSS worse than Graphics

2009-11-02T21:10:18Z

Long ago, in the stone age of the Web, we cared about graphics. About optimizing graphics via compression, interlacing, shrinking the colors used, all of it. We cared deeply about such things. Recently I took a look at the actual file downloads for this site, looking to see how I could reduce my bandwidth usage, and therefore, my costs. To give you an idea, this site ships, on average, around 7-9GB per month. In the last three month period, (Aug-Oct), the total was 26.79GB. For a site that doesn't really have much in the way of images, and few that aren't hosted somewhere else, that's a lot of text.

So, I looked for what the main file was. I expected that the biggest offender would be my main logo, which accounts for, on average, 12% to 15% of my overall traffic.

However, that wasn't the biggest bandwidth user by a long shot. The number one file in terms of GB transferred from this site to the Internet, averaging 31% of all traffic, a total of 8.42GB of textual data was...

atom.xml

That's right...the atom feed file, all text, was over twice the bandwidth use as any single other file including an image file that is 1.5 times its size. It's really not surprising when you consider the effect that feeds have had on web usage. To reload an image, you have to reload a site. To reload a feed, you do...nothing. Your feed reader will do that. Feed readers hit a feed pretty often, and why not? There's no more work required, beyond a preferences setting, to have your feed reader of choice hit a site every 5 minutes or once a month. My feed reader of choice is Safari, and I hit hundreds of feeds every 30 minutes.

Now, according to feedburner, there are 901 people subscribed to my feed. If we assumed that stayed stable, and their update frequencies are the same, that's (901x49Kx48x365)/12 for 64,457,540KB, or 64GB of data every month in RSS alone. Obviously, this tells us that no, 901 people aren't downloading 49K of data every 30 minutes 365 days a year. But it does tell me that feeds are, or are about to become, the #1 use of bandwidth for websites, (outside of really big stuff like Video/Audio or Flash). For people who include images in RSS, oy vey.

This isn't surprising to me, because outside of web comic sites that don't include the comics in the feed, there are really a small number of sites where the feed isn't my primary UI. Out of those, one, MacSurfer, doesn't have a feed and two, Daring Fireball and Ars Technica, have sites with designs I find aesthetically pleasing enough that I don't WANT to read their feed. The others either don't update enough for feeds to be worth the effort, or the site setup doesn't lend itself to feeds.

Other than yet something else to deal with when it comes to managing bandwidth, I'm not sure what this really means, but it's interesting.

Oh, and the top search strings for each month? "Firefox download error -228" (twice) and "bynkii" (once). Take that for what it's worth.

Not that anyone who cares needs me to tell them

2009-10-28T16:17:24Z

But the first launch of the follow-on to the Space Shuttle, and the platform that will take us back to the moon, and beyond, happened today. The Ares X-1 launch was flawless.

But, because somewhere, someone is going to be hitting a ball with a stick, well fuck stupid shit like that.

Yet another reason why NMDs should be soylent green

2009-10-24T13:02:12Z

This quote from Scoble, shows perfectly why NMDs are idiots:

But all that isn’t the real reason why Facebook is the big loser.
Facebook has another problem. People think it’s a service for talking to your college friends. Or your close “real world” friends and family. I watch my wife and that’s how she uses it. She doesn’t understand that Facebook needs to move her into their public world so that they can turn on search and enable other cool experiences that will go outside of her little walled garden.

What Facebook needs to do is listen to your wife, and smack you upside the head every time you try to talk to them. It is people like Maryam Scoble who matter, not morons like Robert Scoble. Robert Scoble, and his ilk, care about one thing: themselves, and their needs. What are their needs? Why, to be fellated at every turn and have their ideas treated like the very utterances of $DEITY$.

Who makes money by listening to any New Media Douchebag? Other NMDs. Running your company the way a Scoble or an Arrington or a Winer wants you to will land you in bankruptcy court, because none of those fuckers are your customers. They are, at best, untrustworthy paid shills. That may say nice things about you, or may call your stuff crap, and you'll never know why either happens. Shit, not a one of them has created anything worth a fuck. Winer bullshits everyone about RSS, when he even admits he stole it from Netscape. Arrington? How're the sales on that tablet doing? Scoble? He hit his peak asking someone if they wanted a nice lens with that new camera body, and putting both in a plastic bag.

You want good ideas, listen to your actual customers, not jackasses who only care about themselves.

Technorati Tags:
New Media Douchebags

Y'all are making me verklempt

2009-10-22T18:20:17Z

Another thank you to the last round of donors. (I'm not naming names, everyone knows who they are, and I love all of you the same.) It's interesting...the "get rich quick" method of advertising, total, was over years, worth less than $50 total. I'm being generous there. (Yes, I realize that there's a lot more work involved with making money from da google than I put into it, but, seriously, less than $50 in 2-3 years? That's rather craptacular.)

In contrast, the random kindness of readers has actually managed, in the last month, pay for bandwidth bills on this site. That's the first time that's EVER happened, and I am almost overwhelmed by what that says about the people who read this. The short version would be, "Y'all Rock".

As always, thanks everyone so much.

john

You want to know why people are angry?

2009-10-20T03:36:36Z

Even when dealing with a big, assholish corporation, I try to remember that the person I speak to on the phone did not make the bad/stupid/nigh-evil decisions I'm pissed about. Sometimes it's hard, but I try, because they don't deserve the abuse I want to heap on their corporate masters like a flock of dysentery-ridden pigeons.

Tomorrow, when I'm severing all personal ties with Citi, I'll be remembering that a lot. If I fail, then poor schmuck on the phone, I apologize to you now. You didn't write the letter I got. Now, before we get to the money shot here, let me explain how I deal with credit cards. I pay on time, and over the minimum. Like fucking clockwork I do this. When I can, I'll make multiple payments per month. Why? Because that's the deal, or what the deal should be. The credit card company extends me credit, and in return, I pay my shit on time. It's pretty simple and for decades, it's worked well for me.

See, that was kind of the compact, implied to be sure, that I have with credit companies. You do your part, and I will do mine. I'll do without personally, just to make sure I pay your ass back, because you trusted me with the credit, and in return, I do my part. Quid pro quo. (Note: I don't really fucking care if the reality is more complicated, not this time. This is not complicated shit here, it's pretty pathetically simple. Maybe if the banks and credit companies hadn't made this shit so overcomplicated, we would not be in a recession. Simple may not work in every situation, but it rarely skull-fucks you the way complicated does.)

Once again, I have learned that if you aren't rich, if you don't have assets, then you're going to get fucked over by your creditors. Not if, but when. It has nothing to do with the deal. You can make your payments on time, they won't care. You can do it as right as possible, but the instant they need to make bank, they are going to take it out of your ass, and your past payment history won't matter. Don't think a low balance will help you. If you have a low balance, they aren't making any money off you. So they'll fuck you too, because now you aren't generating enough income for them when they decide to actively start fucking you.

So here's the text of this letter from Citi:

Dear John C. Welch,
We are making changes to your account terms (They put this in bold, not me. You know that's bad news)

To continue to provide our customers with access to credit, we have had to adjust our pricing. The terms of your account will be changing. These changes include an increase in the variable APR for purchase to $29.99% and will take effect November 30th, 2009. As always, you will have the option to opt out, close your account, and pay down your balance under your current terms. If you opt out, you will not longer be able to use your Cite card.

If you accept these changes, we have designed a program where you can earn interest back each month that can help offset the increase in your purchase APR.

Earn interest back every month.

Here's how --make an on-time payment of at least your minimum amount due.

Each month you do, you will receive a credit on your billing statement equal to 10% of your total interest charge on purchase balances. This can help offset the increase in your purchase APR. Start earning interest back in December and January, and you will see the full credit on your statement no later than February 2010, and monthly after that.

If in any month you do not pay on time, you may not be eligible to continue to participate in this program.

We reserve the right to change or end this program with 30 days' prior written notice. Please see the back of this letter for further details.

You know, it's not just that they're trying to ass rape me, but that they're insulting my intelligence too. They're going to double my interest rate, but if I pay on time, they'll give me back up to 10% of the total interest charge that month. Of course, I'll see December and January "no later" than February. Which also means "no earlier". (Doesn't it just suck when you prove you're unworthy of trust? People start assuming you're going to fuck them at every turn.)

So you increase my RATE by a factor of two, but you'll "give me back" ten percent of the FEE derived from that rate for the month...as a credit, the month after that.

Man, I know I can do stupid shit here and there, but I can also do math. Evidently too well for Citi. So, I'll call them up and kill the card in the morning. After that, they're dead to me. Right now, if I woke up a billionaire, I wouldn't give Citi the time of day, unless it was "Eat Glass O'Clock". If I ever get around to pulling the trigger on a VA loan for my house? Fuck you Citi, won't be through you. You're done.

People want to know why the average schmuck wants bankers' heads on a platter? It's because they're tired of the banker's dick in their ass. Fuck killing all the lawyers. First thing we do, we kill all the bankers.

Do you want to know the real shit part of this? Out of the institutions I owe money to, do you want to know the one agency that has been unfailingly nice? I don't mean polite, but genuinely nice to deal with? Who abide by the "you hold up your end we won't fuck you over" part of things? Who are nice on the phone? Who really try to work with you? Who don't change the deal on you in mid-stream?

The fucking I.R.S.

You want proof it's the end times, there you go.

Why Science Wins

2009-10-14T16:40:35Z

In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion” [Carl Sagan, 1987 CSICOP keynote address].

Thanks Carl.

Just a quickie

2009-10-09T22:46:33Z

Just wanted to
say "Thanks" to the folks who have thrown some bucks at the PayPal link since the last time I said thanks.

It is greatly appreciated and means a lot

Seriously, get a grown-up comment system

2009-10-09T10:20:18Z

What WOULD have been a comment on this...bit of electrons, except for the Fisher-Price™ commenting setup.

Apple can have little greppy bots compiling a list of public and private calls and run Clang or whatever else, the point is that there’s a first filter to kick the dreck back to the newbie coders like I may someday become. You can grep for calls in source and when private call/api combos are found, kick it back to the newb with a wagging finger and no-no-no. Or if you’re Google you get to slide. But I digress. There’s a top level pass/fail so that devs aren’t left in limbo over the painfully obvious.

this is literally untenable except for hobbyists. No commercial dev who, you know, wants to make money, is going to do this, because this isn't sharing, or caring, this is giving your code away to your competition. So at best, it's a sample code repository, and Apple already has gobs of sample code. If it's for devs to share among themselves, they can do that now, no need for Apple. The private API thing is kind of overblown, because you don't "accidentally" use one. There's no slipped, tripped, and fell on a private API. There's some work involved there.

Next is the reviewer, where code gets audited in its totality ONCE. Now the fun begins. Instead of having this 2 week plus wait over little code or even string changes, the dev checks in the change and a reviewer does a diff and a launch test. In fact, for string changes there’s no wait.

If everything’s kosher that’s it. Right now, if an AppStore dev finds an ohshit bug, in general he’s gotta fix, re submit, and wait 2+ weeks for a review to peer around his blackbox. So remove the black and make it glass box already.

Source code review won't actually tell you if the application works or not, if it's crashy, or what the parts of it that reach out to the internets for in-app purchases do. relying on a code audit here is about useless from the POV of what you'd actually care about. The other problem is that for code review to work, EVERY reviewer has to be able to write not just basic iPhone applications, but keep up with all the code they'll ever see. So now you're hiring talented devs to...sit around all day and read other people's code, and figure out what it will actually do. Yeah, retention in that department will be SKY high. Actual days even.

Because of the nature of the iPhone, what the source code says is not always going to be the totality of what the application does.

They can also put a label in the AppStore that says to me, an enduser, ‘code audited by Apple’ like some Good Housekeeping Seal o’ Approval. Devs using Apple’s approved tech get preference.

that's a fucking nightmare, because end users will not, ever, assume that this 'seal' means "oh it passed code review, no private APIs." They'll assume it means this application kicks ass, has no bugs, and works the way they think it should in their heads. Yeah. No.

Now, for Adopey, if they wanna compile a binary and spoof a signature and put a black box over the binary that’s fine with me. They can go thru the bynzantine clusterfcuk that is AppStore 1.0. I really don’t want half-assed crap on my iPhone, if I can help it, and I don’t think anyone else does either.

There's no more "spoofing" or "black box" with Adobe's ARM compiler that with the machine code you get from Xcode. Paranoia and other similar emotional states do not actually reflect reality. It's ARM code that meets Apple's specs. the source is irrelevant.

My point is that yes, ‘developers of all levels’ should be encouraged to submit apps. And they should be treated, if at all possible the way devs wanna be treated. In other words, not like the hoi-polloi.

devs are the computer equivalent of a new 2nd lieutenant Academy grad F-22 pilot. They want to be treated like God, and not that lame fuck who created the Universe.

So audit the code. And for the visigoths & barbarians of Fuh-lash & the ‘Compiled Script Kiddies’, you can make them wait 2+ weeks at the Great Wall o’ Segfault. That’s what walls are for, keeping the riff-raff out. And the current wall works. Just not for the Devs.

For someone who rails at Apple's snobbery, you sure seem in favor of it when it's convenient to you. There's enough wrong in this that the letters in the word "wrong" are inadequate to properly label the amount.

Testing

2009-10-08T15:47:29Z

Nothing to see here, move along.

Angry Mac Bastards swag!

2009-10-07T22:22:03Z

Go now, and buy!

Flash 10.1 on everything but your descending colon...

2009-10-06T01:45:41Z

and the iPhone.

Hey, maybe THIS version is the one that won't bog your fucking machine down just to view a shitty 2" x 2" ad, and watching a single movie won't eat an entire CPU for lunch.

Shit, wait, I was thinking of what Silverlight is now. Never mind, it's Flash. The idea that team will fix that rectal spew of code on anything but a "superior browser and OS" is in fact, ridiculous. Shit, I bet the installer will still be a total fuckup for remote installs.

Technorati Tags:
Adobe Can Kiss My Ass, Adobe: Just install a Flash Blocker, Adobe: Simplicity is our enemy

He's gone, oh my, what went wroooonnng!...or IS he...

2009-10-05T10:52:16Z

Alas, we come to the conclusion of today's "Email from a paranoid fucknut in three parts" with the whiny conclusion. See if you can spot the exact moment when he screamed "NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ME! YOU ALL HATE ME! ONLY LINKIN' PARK UNDERSTANDS THE DEPTHS OF ME!", slammed the door to his room and fell down on his bed crying and getting his eyeliner all messed up:

Yup, exactly: ignore *every* fact that anyone throws back at you...completely change the subject... and throw your own precious version of spin on it ad infinitum...

There is in fact a difference between "fact" and "what the voices in your head tell you to do". Arguing that because a lot of people agreed with you, therefore, we are out to get you, because "popular=your post was perfect"...that's not actually a fact.

Maybe take the tinfoil hat off for a bit?

You definitely got the O'Reilly thing down and just reading the several pages of Twitter discharge from you today confirms this, you completely closed-minded twat.

Oh John, you raconteur you!

It is however nice to know that you live to read my every word. Flattery like that just might turn a boy's head.

Get your last say in and enjoy posting this yet again to your blog, you gutless coward, because I'm done now. Until you and/or Peter try this bullshit yet again in a few months, of course. See you then...

Oh great, now you're going to make Darby feel all sad and left out, and you KNOW how he gets.

Still getting email...

2009-10-05T02:50:45Z

Oh you didn't think that Casasanta can stop that fast did you? Now, we have the onset of some interesting paranoia: evidently, Angry Mac Bastards sits around, all the live-long day, plotting how to get him.

You think I'm shitting you?

Ha!

If it wasn't one of the more popular posts recently (it got passed around considerably) and if there were *any* comments in it that agreed with the bullshit you spewed on it, then I would've believed you, John. But this was all too coincidental with Peter's email so it was more than obvious that, as always, you were out on a witch-hunt.

Yes, yes, we're all out to get you, everyone is. Us, the mailmain, the UPS guy, the local hobos. We're all out to get you. In fact, we're setting up a Google Wave server, just to make getting you that much easier via the power of CLOUD. I didn't tell you this but Google itself only exists to make getting you even easier than before. Read that last part quietly, they can HEER UR BRANE!!!!

That's SO much more logical and likely than us just thinking the article sucked. Something you wrote, not perfection itself? That's UNPOSSIBLE!

Even if there were comments on our post or yours after the podcast came out, I would've believed you (of course, you likely have so little traffic that this was unlikely). There *were* comments about people not liking our version of the icon, which was one of the points of the post. But maybe your lack of proper reading comprehension skills caused you to miss that point.

When all else fails, wave your traffic penis around. That sure showed me. Wow. Do I ever feel showed. Like a showROOM, you done showed me.

So... I'm calling bullshit, as there was clearly an agenda at work here, as there always is with you and your pathetic crew.

Again, we're allllll out to get you. All of us. Every single person over the age of 14. We have meetings. And cookies.

When Bill O'Reilly retires, you'd make a great replacement for him as you have the same manipulative "technique" as he does when trying to argue.

Well, you have the "act like that idiot for whom being popular in high school was the big achievement in their lives" schtick all locked up, so I had to find *something*.