Confessions of a Digital Packrat

Blogging and writing, just not here lately...

2009-10-09T00:46:00.002-04:00

I'm still around, despite the dust and cobwebs around here. I've been doing a lot of writing, mostly on other blogs, though:

Launched dataliberation.org on the Google Public Policy Blog

Launched the Data Liberation Front's very own blog

Wrote about why I think Data Liberation is important on the Huffington Post

I also had a really nice interview with The Guardian to talk about Data Liberation and the Open Web.

And if that's not enough of my blathering for you, I'm @therealfitz on Twitter if you're into that sort of thing.

I'm hoping to find the time to write here more often, but since I'm busier than a one-legged man at an ass-kicking contest, I'm not making any promises.

Not Too Far From the Truth...

2009-02-14T00:40:00.002-05:00

I wrote this to Marie in an email last week:

Please don't wait for me to get home to eat... from 5-6 I'm hosting a high school student as a favor to a friend. I'm going to show him around the office and give him some career advice (yes, yes, stop laughing).

Marie's response:

Tell him you drank, didn't go to class, and bummed around Europe for two years as an excuse to avoid full time work. That will be very attractive. How you got to where you are today is still rather a mystery.

Oh, and then pull the horseshoe out of your ass and give it to him.

I probably would have taken offense at that if it wasn't so true...

Failure IS an Option

2009-01-27T00:23:00.003-05:00

One of my best friends works for NASA and a few years ago he gave me a Mission Control shirt that says "Failure is not an option". That's a fantastic motto if you're working in a situation where a mistake can cost lives, but a terrible motto if you're trying to innovate and invent. I've often half-joked around the office that our motto should be "Failure is an option". If you want to really push yourself, you've got to know that it's OK to fail sometimes. You pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and try again--failing is often the fastest way to learn. We've also been conditioned to think it's the most painful when it isn't--not by a longshot.

Scott Berkun blogged about the following video, which is basically a soft-sell ad about Honda, but at heart it's a story about the importance of failure. Well worth a watch.

For Sale: 1 Button, Used

2009-01-20T08:48:00.006-05:00

I won't be needing this anymore:

I've been waiting for this day for eight years.

Greatest. Christmas Card. Ever.

2009-01-15T21:48:00.002-05:00

See Jim and Rachel's Christmas Card. We showed it to everyone who came over to our house over the holidays.

Bloxes Rule

2009-01-07T19:30:00.002-05:00

I just wrote a post for the Google Blog about some of the cool things we've done in the Chicago office with Bloxes. Check it out.

What Happens When You're Out Of The Office for Two Weeks?

2009-01-06T22:58:00.003-05:00

You get, um, downgraded:

This was on my desk when I got back to the office on Monday morning. I think it was absolutely hilarious, and even better, it was a Mac SE, which was my very first Mac that I got back in 1991!

Thanks to Trow for pulling the outstanding prank, and especially for telling me where he hid my 30" monitor afterwards.

Datacenter sticker spotted in New York Times

2009-01-04T17:23:00.002-05:00

My friend Steve spotted one of my datacenter stickers on the laptop of my colleague T.V. Raman, who is the subject of an article about web accessibility, among other things. T.V. has really done some amazing work to make the web more accessible for everyone, not just the blind and the vision-impaired.

T.V. and I started at Google on the same day and worked across the hall from each other for my first few weeks (until I returned to Chicago). He's an all-around great guy, an emacs guru (he wrote emacspeak, and
can never be found far from his yellow lab, Hubbell, who is a real sweetheart (be sure to ask permission before petting Hubbell though--it's best not to pet a work dog while their harness is on and they're "working").

Congrats on the press coverage, T.V.!

Budweiser & Clamato

2008-12-16T01:58:00.002-05:00

I saw this at the grocery tonight:

How plowed do you have to be to drink this? I can hear it now: "Ya know what would really make this crappy beer taste truly awesome? Why, the refreshing taste of clam!"

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Graphics Cards

2008-11-13T22:41:00.003-05:00

As if Street View for Rome wasn't enough, now the Google Earth team has rolled out an ancient Rome layer:

I've often said that I wished I could redo college with Google Search, but I'd like to amend that to include Google Earth as well. Please? It's like flying through the model of Ancient Rome during the time of Constantine that I made the pilgrimage out to the Museo della Civilta Romana in EUR to visit.

Anyway, get ready to time travel, but you'll need a pretty hefty system ("Dual-Core 2.0Ghz CPU + 3GB RAM + High End GPU with 512 MB RAM Suggested") to get there.

A Plea for New Orleans

2008-11-12T00:41:00.009-05:00

I was a guest on Voluntourism.org today, and we talked about having ApacheCon in New Orleans, why we had it there, and how we incorporated Voluntourism into the conference. ApacheCon chose New Orleans this year for a number of reasons, but one of them was an email that I wrote to the Apache Members almost two years ago in an attempt to help them understand why New Orleans needed (and still needs) all the economic stimulation she can get. I read this mail on the show today and agreed to post it on my blog, so here it is:

----------------------------------------------
From: Brian W. Fitzpatrick
Date: Wed, Dec 27, 2006 at 1:16 AM
Subject: A plea for New Orleans for ApacheCon 2008
To: Members of the Apache Software Foundation

As a native New Orleanian who just returned from New Orleans (~3
hours ago), I'd like to strongly advocate that we have ApacheCon
2008 in New Orleans, and for the following reasons:

1. New Orleans provides plenty of entertaining things to do in the
evenings for you and your friends. Things don't close at 2AM. or 3
for that matter.
2. It's within walking distance of the French Quarter (about 2 blocks
to Bourbon Street).
3. It's next to Harrah's casino (I didn't go in this time, but
pre-hurricane, I found it kind of dumpy).
4. The food. It's amazing. Red beans and rice anyone? Gumbo? Po-boys?
5. Coffee and beignets, mmm mmm mmm.
6. Other cool trips you can make over the weekend: River plantations
tour, the zoo is amazing, the aquarium is awesome, take a streetcar
ride down St. Charles and see some of the beautiful French and Spanish
architecture of the Garden District. Take a riverboat cruise on the
Natchez.

I could go on and on and on, but the main reason that I want us to
have AC 2008 in New Orleans is this:

While the French Quarter (and most other neighborhoods along the river
which are actually above sea level and didn't flood) is still a pretty
hopping place with food and drink aplenty, New Orleans is still
suffering greatly from hurricane Katrina and the levee breach that
filled the city with water. While I was down for Christmas visiting
my family in Metairie (a suburb), I took a drive through the city
proper, and I was devastated.

For 16 months now I've been watching video footage of New Orleans with
suitably awed newscasters repeating over and over that "you can't
possibly understand the devastation that this city underwent without
coming here to see for yourself."

Well, let me say it once again: You can't possibly understand the
devastation that this city underwent without coming here to see
for yourself.

I drove through the Lakeview neighborhood (closest to the floodwall
breach), and SIXTEEN months later, it still looks like Beirut
on a bad day. I'd guess that about one house in 50 is inhabited.
City streets are so bad that you can barely manage 15mph in a rental
car. Street signs are mostly non-existent. Houses are gutted,
abandoned, and falling in on themselves. What used to be a grand old
neighborhood is now so much bulldozer fodder.

Mid-City, where I went to high school, is better, but not by much.
The closer you get to the river, the better things get, but they're
still not great. In the Central Business District, the Hyatt by the
Superdome is still abandoned. The New Orleans Center next to it, a
shopping mall/office building, stands decrepit with broken windows a
daily reminder of the hell that happened here [Remember, I wrote this
in December of 2006 -Fitz].

Metairie, where I grew up, is better, but it's still crippled--FEMA
trailers still litter each city block. To get a feeling for what it's
like, take the neighborhood you grew up in and rip out every 3rd tree.
Park a trailer on the front lawn of every 7th house. Leave 1 house in
20 abandoned. Leave 1 house in 35 gutted and abandoned. Now burn
down and remove 1 house in 40. Demolish 1 house in 50. Lean fences
over precariously, buckle sidewalks, and board up storefronts. It's
truly heartbreaking to see, and this is SIXTEEN months later
(and believe me, my family lucked out big time with minimal
damage to their homes).

So what's the point of this long rambling email? New Orleans needs
economic help. They need you, me, or anyone to show up and spend
money. They need anything and everything that they can get. Sure
they've got their problems with selfishness, greed, and corruption
(every city does--New Orleans is just famous for it :-). It will
never be the same, but I think it would be nice for the ASF to help
out "The City that Care Forgot" and have a good time in the process.

Laissez les bon temps roullez!

-Fitz

Vote!

2008-11-04T10:54:00.002-05:00

I'm totally fascinated with numbers and statistics, and I've been glued to FiveThirtyEight.com for the last month since it follows all the polls, but today's poll is the only poll that matters, so get out there and vote!

The Dude Abides

2008-11-01T21:28:00.004-05:00

For Halloween this year, I went as The Dude (Click for larger versions):

But what made it really great, was the fact that Walter dropped by to hang out:

That's Jim, our esteemed director of sales for Chicago.

I think we really tied the room together.

Street View hits Italy!

2008-10-30T22:39:00.005-05:00

Google Street View for Italy just launched and It's giving me a serious case of Rome-sickness. The official blog post has some great views of the city, so I'll share a few of my favorite non-historic places. For starters, I can see a view down the street to the John Felice Rome Center where I lived, studied, and worked for three years:

View Larger Map

(You can click to zoom or drag to look around on all of these shots)

The "Green Bar" where we used to go for coffee and chocolate croissants:

View Larger Map

OK, I can't resist--here's my favorite church (architecture-wise),
The Basilica of St. Giovanni in Laterano:

View Larger Map

And Marie's favorite,
The Basilica of St. Maria Maggiore

View Larger Map

I could go on for hours, so I'll close out with the greatest gelateria in the world, Cremeria Monteforte (run by my good friend Roberto):

View Larger Map

Drag the image around 180 degrees to see that it's facing the side of the Pantheon. Oh man, now I'm seriously craving a big cup of Roberto's Cioccolato Semifreddo.

A Message and a Messenger

2008-10-27T21:02:00.002-05:00

If you've had enough hearing about politics and this presidential election, you can stop reading now

Most of you who know me well know that while I sit firmly on the left side of the political bus, I don't go around beating a drum about it, and that I think that most politicians are crooks and liars. So it's exceptionally uncommon for me to find a politician that I respect, believe, and am willing to listen to.

First, as a speaker who has given over 100 talks in the last 8 years, I really appreciate a good orator (and can barely sit through a bad one). Barack Obama is a dynamic speaker who can connect with people on an emotional level, but more importantly, he conveys a message of inspiration and unity. Both of these messages have been sorely lacking in our country's leadership for the past eight years.

With that introduction, take a look at the last six minutes of a campaign speech he gave in Canton Ohio:

At no time in my life has this country needed someone like Barack Obama as much as we do today.

Take a good look, kids: this is our next president.

Everybody Should Have One

2008-10-15T01:57:00.002-04:00

The Second Edition of Version Control with Subversion has finally hit the bookshelves. Ben and Mike and I enjoy working together, but we're all happy to see this finally put to bed.

If you're a fan of the dead trees, you can buy a hardcopy or if you're a fan of whizzing electrons, download a free copy.

I hope you like it--enjoy!

PS Please don't tell my Grandmother that the book's not actually about turtles--she'll be really disappointed if she finds out that it's about "that crazy computer stuff."

Life Imitates Art

2008-10-08T21:26:00.002-04:00

My favorite web comic wrote this cartoon.

A short time later, my favorite online video site did this.

I tried it out and practically fell over laughing. Go ahead and try it yourself.

Further proof that the folks over at YouTube rock. I love it!

Is That Really Necessary?

2008-09-27T16:43:00.000-04:00

I went to Zurich this week and thanks to a massive brainfart, I forgot to bring socks. Fortunately, a Puma store was less than 20 feet from the entrance to my hotel. I ran into the store, bought a pack of 3 pair of socks, and found this tag fastened to the socks:

What I want to know is: have they really had a problem with people not washing their socks when dirty? Is that something that shows up in a high volume of support calls ("My socks seem to be kind of gross... what should I do?"), or is this a general public service announcement?

I'm not sure, but I'm going to go wash my socks right now, just to be safe.

Packed

2008-09-25T22:03:00.000-04:00

I was in an Apple Store the other day to pick up an iPhone belt clip, and I was totally flabbergasted by the sheer number of people in there. It was insane--there were people trying things out, two older women on folding chairs sitting at the feet of a store employee taking a class on something or other, and scads of people buying everything in sight. Most people weren't in line at a cash register waiting to buy their purchases, they were buying and paying for their merchandise at any spot in the store via handheld point-of-sale PDAs that most of the employees were toting.

It really was an unbelievable experience to see so much buzz around Apple products--and to think that some folks swore that the stores wouldn't work back when they were first announced.

I'd say they're working pretty damned well.

Wordle

2008-08-28T10:11:00.000-04:00

Wordle is a great way to waste an hour or two creating pretty word clouds from a given corpus. Since somehow or other Red Bean has become a home for a number of version control books (namely the CVS book, the Subversion book, and the Mercurial book), I thought I'd run them through Worldle and see what came out (click on the image for a larger version):

Tivo Olympics

2008-08-27T00:37:00.002-04:00

A few years ago I lamented the state of the Olympics on television, and while NBC hasn't done a whole lot to improve their televising of the Olympics, Tivo made it all somehow bearable. Tivo let me skip the commercials, the background pieces on athletes, the medal ceremonies, and the grating color commentary by Bob Costas and others. All in all it took me about two hours to watch each five hour stretch of the Olympics, and that somehow made it pretty OK.

I love my Tivo.

Stirling Engines at Sci Foo 2008

2008-08-12T22:54:00.000-04:00

I spent last weekend in Mountain View at Sci Foo 2008, and it was incredible. I attended some excellent sessions, talked with a lot of interesting people, and, along with Robert, assembled some Stirling Engines that Cat bought for the conference. Since Stirling engines run off of any temperature difference, the obvious choice to power them is a cup of hot water or coffee, but I figured you could get a nice difference if you only had something cold to run the engine on. So I... well, I'll let you see for yourself:

My Other Computer is a Data Center

2008-08-06T03:18:00.004-04:00

I was pretty happy last week when Dewitt sent me the article that Marc Benioff wrote entitled Welcome to Web 3.0: Now Your Other Computer is a Data Center. It's a good article, but the really cool part of the article was the last paragraph:

One of our developers has a bumper sticker on his laptop that captures the spirit of Web 3.0 perfectly. It reads: "My other computer is a data center." That's a claim that any developer in the world can now make. And that's the stuff of revolution.

Why is that cool? Well, because I designed that sticker.

That sticker traces its roots back to May 2006 when Jason Robbins and I were brainstorming some new sayings to put on the Google Code Hosting page and one of the saying Jason came up with was

My Other Computer is a Google Data Center

I thought that was an awesome quote for the hosting page, but it was crying out to be made into a laptop sticker. After all, it's the perfect companion to the sticker I used to see around in the '70's, "My Other Car is a Rolls Royce". It's fun, campy, and, unlike the Rolls sticker, it's actually true!

I ran over to Andrew, who was running Google Developer Day (the predecessor to Google IO), and wildly tried to convince him that this was the sticker to give out at the conference. He wasn't convinced, but he was busy, and I forgot about the sticker.

However, two months later I went to Foo Camp 2006, and Chris DiBona was manning the Epilog 35 watt carbon dioxide laser engraver and I just knew I had to engrave something. My laptop seemed to be the obvious thing...

But what to engrave? I wasn't feeling particularly artistic, and I didn't want to do anything too weird since I use my laptop to give dozens of presentations every year. I then remembered the "Data Center" idea and decided to etch a giant "sticker" on the back of my laptop. The saying didn't quite flow right, so I pulled "Google" out of the middle of the saying and added a big Google Code logo and a link to the hosting page. It wasn't particularly artsy, but definitely geeky, and hey, it's contextual advertising if bring it when I'm speaking at conferences!

After cleaning the NeXT sticker off the back of my laptop and giving it a good scrubbing, I headed into the lab where Dave Recordon was etching his laptop and he kindly offered to help me etch my laptop in the interests of me not completely destroying it--after all, you only get one shot with a 35 watt laser. After three test runs on paper (at 20% power, of course), it came out perfect:

Over the next year dozens of folks wanted to know where I got the cool laptop "sticker" from because they wanted one. I explained that it wasn't a sticker, but a laser engraving ("Really? Cool!"). In early 2008, since PyCon was going to be in Chicago and I was giving a keynote, I decided it was time to get some stickers made to give out there.

I designed the sticker with the quote in white on black and placed the Google logo off to the side on a white background so that if people wanted to put the saying on their laptop but not the Google logo, the only thing standing in their way was a sharp scissors.

(photo used under CC license from ryanobjc)

I ordered 1,000 and distributed about half at the conference and sent a few dozen off to Googlers in other offices who had asked for them.

Well, once those few stickers showed up in our offices, I started getting email after email from other Googlers wanting stickers. I cooked up another 10,000 stickers and sent packs and packs out to the teams requesting them, and gave a ton away at Google IO, OSCON, and various other venues. I've seen them on the laptops of VPs at work, hundreds of other Googlers, strangers at conferences, and even several Yahoo engineers! (with the Google part cut off, natch)

And now it's being talked about in essays by CEOs. Quite a journey for a humble little sticker.

Holy Banana: TR2N

2008-07-27T23:57:00.004-04:00

Tron has always been my favorite "computer" movie. I don't remember if I saw it in the theater, but I do remember that my friend Will had a copy on Betamax that we watched probably twenty times, even on his "portable" tiny 5" black and white TV. I loved the movie--it actually had a plot, a geek for a hero, some great sets (e.g., the Big Door), and—at the time—some incredible computer graphics. I always thought that the light cycles were the coolest thing I had ever seen, and was constantly disappointed by the video game with its crappy graphics and lack of cool, screaming sound effects.

I remember when the Laserdisc release came out 12 years ago and I realized just how crappy the VHS transfer of Tron was—the Laserdisc had gorgeous colors and incredible details. I even pull out my DVD copy every year or so and give it another watching just for fun. I would occasionally peek at the Internet Movie Database to see if a sequel was in the works (partially in excitement for new Tron action, partially in fear of yet another rape of my childhood, but I never found anything.

Well, it looks like the long-rumored "Tron 2" or "TR2N" is actually being made, and a grainy crappy copy of a teaser leaked from Comic-Con this weekend all but made me explode because, well, it looks awesome:

TR2N cleaned up 001
Uploaded by genchang2112

Let's see what we've got here:

Light Cycles: Check.
Kick-Ass CGI animation: Check.
Jeff Bridges: Hells yeah check.
Plot: Maybe?

And now I have to wait until 2011 to see it. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!

Dear Disney: Please hurry. Also, please don't screw it up. KTHXBAI.

END OF LINE

The Ben and Fitz Show Goes to OSCON

2008-07-21T18:12:00.002-04:00

At OSCON this year, Ben and I are giving three talks and sitting on a panel, including:

Do You Believe in the Users?: This is our latest talk—we'll give examples and anecdotes to show why it takes more than just great code to make great software.

People for Geeks: This is a reprise of our infamous Poisonous People talk, given as part of a larger tutorial

Subversion Worst Practices: The top 10 ways to destroy your project with Subversion—always a crowd pleaser

An Open Source Project Called "Failure:" Community Antipatterns to Know and Avoid: I'm going to talk about "Feeding the Trolls" while Ben is going to show you how to "Rule the Code With an Iron Fist." Come by and see why writing code on the internet is like trying to build card houses on a trampoline

So there you have it—all the Ben and Fitz you can stand, plus a whole lot more. If you see me at the conference, ask me for a My Other Computer is a Data Center sticker if you want to pimp your laptop (or, um, your car, I guess). Hope to see you in Portland.