BurningbirdWe each have a moment in our nights, a point on the clock, where if we’re still awake, we might as well just stay awake. For me it is 4:30.
Good morning, everyone.
At least I managed to finish the metadata plugin. And I didn’t even need to drink the Mountain Dew.
I love to code. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I forgot how much I love to create software.
As I added years of experience, companies would increasingly pull me away from the computer and put me into a suit and a room and tell me to tell them what to do and their ‘junior’ people would do the coding because I was too valuable ‘just to code’.
Infrastructure was the word and architecture was my game, and I was, and am, good at this. I can spot bad tech a mile away, and can speak ‘user’, as well as ‘programmer’ and ‘manager’–a multi-lingual capability that proved itself of high worth again and again. But these gifts of mine rarely gave me a chance to just sit and code; to create something born of inspiration and need.
Coders will understand when I mention the ‘Aha!’ moment; when you hear from the other side of a cubical wall a cry of triumph–usually followed by the person bouncing out of their chair and in a hyperkinetic frenzy, walking about, dancing about–rapid swoosh of slinky being balanced from hand to hand, and shit-eating grin wide across the face. There were no cubical walls around me, and I scared my cat I think, but today I had one of those moments. And I re-discovered that I love to code.
I never realized until recently how much my experience at Skyfish.com had burned me out. It was the ultimate position someone like me dreams about: I had complete creative control of the architecture of the product, good rapport with the using community, a great team, and I still had time to code. I even had a CTO who I liked, though he was a pain in the butt at times.
But then the dot-com bust happened, and very nasty politics entered our game. The worry about our future and the anger at the power players, not to mention 16 hour days, eroded the joy so much, it’s taken me years to rediscover the person who sat down at a VAX terminal one day and typed in her first line of BASIC–and I’ll be damned, it worked!
I finished the metadata extension to Wordform today, and it works nicely and even though it’s not particularly fancy coding–using my code to glue together bits and pieces from others’ open source software–seeing it all come together, simply and with few moving parts, generated a rush of pure joy. That can’t be me, old, tired me that just experienced that moment. Can it?
We’ve been critical lately about ‘hackers and painters’, but this coder found the experience to be as satisfying as accomplishing a tough hike; as exhilarating as coming home from a day of shooting only to discover one perfect photo among the discards; as sure as knowing that something I’ve written is exactly right.
I did this. Whether people love it or hate it, doesn’t matter. The experience goes beyond money or, to use the coin of this realm, hypertext links; it even goes beyond being attractive to a member of the sex of preference and getting a mention in the New York Times. I did this.
Never take a coder for granted, or look at us with disdain or indifference; seeing in our aging bodies, the geeky children with vague ghosts of pocket protectors overlying whatever fashion sense we’ve learned to adopt as protective coloration. In moments like this, we almost have all the power of the universe in our fingertips because we make things work.
I love to code. That’s all. End of message.
If you could see my profile, you would see that I’ve dropped a lot of excess weight. Yes, last night I pulled my photos sub-directory, my multimedia directory, closed down the separate forpoets.com account, and downgraded to a leaner, meaner account — with just enough room to work on, and finish, one project before moving on to the next.
I put my request in for the change with the Hosting Matters folks last night before going to bed, and it was all taken care of by the time I awoke this morning. Of course, some might say that if I went with one of the new ‘cheap/lots’ hosts that provided a lot more space for a lot less money, I wouldn’t have to do these changes. However, I’ve been with Hosting Matters for years, now–long enough to know that any request I put in is answered almost immediately. More, I’ve watched the folks at HM enough to know that they a) really know their stuff, and b) don’t host so many people that they’re overrun with trying to keep up. More importantly, they know me. They know my level of expertise, and what I can or cannot do, and respond to each request accordingly. Can’t do that when you’re hosting a thousand accounts on one server. Can’t do that if you hop from host to host on a whim, or because you’ve been enticed by thousands of megabytes of space for 1.95US.
Of course, once I pulled the photos, all those boys and girls who hotlinked my images are crying in their cocoa this morning. I had dropped hotlink protection a couple of months ago, curious to see what would happen with Google and Yahoo images. And I don’t begrudge people linking my images in newsgroups–after all, many of them are relatively inexperienced about concepts such as ‘bandwidth’ use, and think this is the right way to do it (i.e. give credit to the image creator by linking back to the person’s image directly); many are just kids having fun. I figured, as long as I had the bandwidth, I wasn’t going to be worried about a link here or there.
Well, some images proved fairly hot, such as the feminine pirate flag. It ended up being linked in what amounts to hundreds of discussion forums and various other locations. Now, all of these images will be crashed and broken, and though I feel a bit bad (”oh, so sorry”), I feel so much better now that I’m not carrying around 200+M of images. Not to mention no longer being jabbed and pricked and bled, drop by bandwidth drop, by the little hotlinking dears.
Now, the issue of hotlinking has been passed on to flickr, as has the issue of excess fat around the middle of my web site. Eventually flickr may have to deal with bandwidth issues, as well as copyright issues. (A simple approach could be to have owners register the domains that will link to their own images so that hotlinking can be restricted (though this does violate the spirit of the site, which is based on photo sharing).)
As it is, per the terms of use*, avatars and site graphics cannot be posted to the account so if I want to post the pirate flag, I’ll have to do so on my account, and add hotlink protections. Which I did — pointing all of my weblogs to one shared directory to keep things simple and clean. Since graphics either are reused in pages, or much less space intensive than photos, I have room for the odd image from time to time..
Best of all, as I go through my weblog posts and change the URLs to point to the image on flickr, I also use metadata to capture the original image name. Then, if for some reason I want to move the images locally again, it’s just a matter of running an application that will translate each flickr image URL into the appropriate local URL, and I’m ready to rock n’ roll without a break. Centralized storage with a distributed back door.
Speaking of which, back to work on the last metadata bit on Wordform before the release. After a nice afternoon walk that is.
*from the flickr TOS:
Your account will also be terminated if it is used for hosting graphic elements of web page designs, icons, smilies, buddy icons, forum avatars, badges and other non-photographic elements on external websites.
I have started uploading my many images to flickr, and managed to ‘meet’ some new photographers in the process. I’ve not generally been fond of social networks, but when you have a site where the members have a shared interest–photography–doors open, experience broadens.
There are so many ways to organize your photos, and I have already created three new sets and explored several groups (and started one for the Ozarks). Best of all, the API exposes all of this and opens up all new ideas and possibilities.
Another advantage to getting the account at Flickr is that once everything is moved, I save enough space to close down the separate account for Tinfoil Project, as well as go with a smaller account for Burningbird. Paying the account a quarter in advance saves me even more money, while still providing all the service and space and bandwidth I need for my weblogs and also my ongoing development. Since Wordform has been approved at SourceForge, I don’t have to worry about hosting downloads of this product, or maintaining a bug database on my site. I can even put documentation at SourceForge, though I think I might do a restricted wiki. Best of all — when all of the bright, sharp, and intuitive developers that I know join the project, I won’t have to worry about setting up CVS for the group.
I was so pleased at my creative frugality that I celebrated by going to Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate today and getting one perfect chocolate covered strawberry.
It was the sweetest strawberry, red, and firm, and full of flavor. It was just juicy enough to drop brightly on my tongue, as I slowly nibbled the candy from the tip on down–taking time to fully experience each small bite. It was covered with the richest of chocolate that melted slowly, but without lingering overlong; and the complex flavor of cocoa and cool milk complemented the primal, sunshine flavor of the fruit.
One was enough. One was just enough.
This was such a huge mistake. I can no longer match existing photos with Flickr URL, so any embedded photos are lost.
I’ve decided to close down Tinfoil Project site as a separate site, and not try and open a Cafepress store. The more I’ve thought on it, the more I think using flickr as a repository of photos is actually a very decent idea. I like the API, which I can use for all sorts of nefarious deeds; and I like the fact that storage is unrestricted — the restrictions are placed in upload bandwidth. At 1G a month for a Pro account, that’s a lot of photos.
Once I move the photos from Burningbird to flickr, I’ll have room to bring the Tinfoil domain over, and still keep the weblog and the page–just the links will go to flickr. Additionally, I am going to focus more on writing about digital photography and imaging, less on just posting photos at the site. I’ll also be closing down the galleries.
As for the store, I don’t think this is a good area to put time and energy now. I believe that Wordform is a better use of my time, for both personal and professional reasons. And whatever time isn’t spent on this application needs to be focused on work, finding work, and writing (hopefully professional as well as personal).
I prefer to save my photography for how I use it here–to mix with my words to make a story. This is what I love to do. If there is anything uniquely Burningbird at this site, these stories are it.