Dylan Richard talks about stuff.

I'm using drydrop for static sites on GAE using github and just recently ran into a problem where the awesome automatic updating on git push isn't working.

I got a message like this in my drydrop admin dashboard:

 

http://github.com/<username>/<reponame>/raw/master/<siteid>/
is not affected by incoming changeset for
https://github.com/<username>/<reponame>/raw/master/

after a bunch of searching (specifically for "is not affected by incoming changeset for") and getting nowhere with it, I finally realized that my content source was:

http://github.com/<username>/<reponame>/raw/master/<siteid>/

but the incoming changeset was:

https://github.com/<username>/<reponame>/raw/master/

I changed the content source over to:

 

https://github.com/<username>/<reponame>/raw/master/<siteid>/

 and all the magic came back.

If you still missed it, check the scheme on those urls (http vs. https).

After I left threadless, I spent a bunch of time going to new and different places around the city to meet with people or to find a place with wifi to work. I found that without a defined commute my default bustracker app (commuting.in, a site I did a while back with Aaron Salmon and Bryan Knight) wasn't serving my needs... what I needed what an app that knew where I was and told me the closest bus, that I could then filter by a specific line/direction... 

So I wrote one check it out; closebus.com 

Over on the cta-tattler, they somehow found out about it (probably from this interview with harper) and wrote a nice article about it. Read that acticle here: http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/cta-tattler/2011/03/location-aware-site-tells-you-where-the-closest-bus-is.html

It's super fun to have some other people using the site, and hopefully it will lead to me getting off my ass to fix some of the bugs I already know about, and overall making it better.

 

 

Tomorrow I am hopping on a train with my friend Scott headed to SxSW in Austin.

Since we're a couple of enterprising nerds stuck in a train for 30 hours each way, we decided that we should write a couple of little webapps. One for the way down, one for the way back.

 

So, while we have a bunch of ideas for webapps, some that we're already working on, others that are planned for later... there aren't really any that fit the "end to end in 30 hours" box that we're looking for.

With that in mind, anyone have any ideas for good "weekend hacks" that we can do on the train tomorrow?

 

So, it's been a very long time since I've written a proper "blog" post. Here's the cheapest form of post there is, the list!

Since I last blogged, I have:

• written a bunch of tweets. I don't write a lot of long things, becuase I have very little time to spend formulating sentances and I'm incredibly lazy. Twitter is where I do most of my communicating.

• stopped using wordpress. It just got too painful to try to keep it updated. I considered, briefly, one of the hosted alternatives (namely page.ly and wordpress.com), but frankly the cost benefit ratio was off for me personally (page.ly to expensive for what I need, wordpess.com not featureful enough). I was urged by Harper to try Jeckyl and drydrop which is really awesome, but just not easy enough for me to actually bother with doing it. In the end, this is now on posterous. My reasoning: cheap, featureful and fucking easy. I merged my personal and nerdly blogs, imported everything, and have everything up using my domain, the ability to customize the front end, in about 5 minutes worth of work. I really wanted to use tumblr (I had been using it for a couple other small-fry blogs) but they were just to damned unstable. So here I am, giving posterous a shot.

• helped run technology at an awesome company. As (first "Director of" then) VP Engineering at skinnyCorp/threadless I got to help grow an amazing platform, make it more stable, make it easier to refactor the next time around, grow an amazing engineering team, and have a hand in growing a great company.

• left the best job I've ever had to try to be an entrepreneur. I can't rave enough about how awesome it was to be at threadless, but I finished the things I set out to do there, and I know that someone else is better suited than me to bring technology at threadless to the next level; and I have different things that I am excited to work on.

• shut down my first company. I started mk2 development with my good friend Bryan years ago when we were both otherwise employed and wanted a clearing house for sidework and our ideas for little webapps. Over time Bryan (and I, but mostly Bryan) grew the business into a viable consulting company that was chugging along, but needed another active partner. After I left threadless Bryan and I figured out that we wanted different things out of a company, but that our friend Dave wanted a lot of the same things that Bryan wanted. So Bryan and I disolved our company, and Bryan and Dave are working together doing things under the colorjar flag. 

• spent a bunch of time thinking about big problems with smart people. Primarily commerce, community, identity and reputation. Those are hilariously big problems, and if you want to talk about them, hit me up. I love to talk to people about these concepts. 

• taken a couple of steps towards starting a company. I have spent a bunch of time recently learning the difference between an idea and a company. I have a bunch that I am hoping to share about where I am headed; it's super exciting.

• worked on a bunch of fun side projects. I'll talk about those as they surface.

• talked to a bunch of amazing companies and entrepreneurs. Having days free has allowed me to be free to talk to a bunch of different companies, from pre-startup to established companies it is great to share my experience as a technologist, and my specific experience with commerce. I love helping companies, so feel free to reach out. 

• become a first time parent. The main reason that I have very little time, and also the main kick in the ass for all the change. I have so much more to share about this, it's absurd. So, i'll leave it at that for now

 

Hopefully, I'll have the chance to share some fun thoughts about the second half of this list.

w00t.

so, eli tagged me in an internet meme. apparently I'm supposed to list seven things about myself that are interesting or obscure, then tag 7 other people to do the same.  This should be interesting... as I'm barely introspective enough to think of seven things people might find interesting or obscure, and I'm not sure I know seven people that haven't already been tagged. Hilarious. Ok, without further ado...

1. I went to hardcore punk shows with my mom.

   I used to be very involved in the punk scene in Philly, even though I am not musical in the least. I helped my mother research her doctoral dissertation about the sXe scene in Philly...  that involved going to a bunch of hXc shows with my mom. Incidentally, to this day, I don't own Minor Threat's discography, but I have permanently borrowed my mother's copy.

2. I used to have really long hair that confused people

   I married my high school sweetheart last year, about 10 1/2 years after we graduated from high school. That is neither obscure, nor interesting. However, knowing that when she first met me she didn't know if I was a guy or a girl is both obscure and interesting. (I was chubby and had really long hair when I was 13...  it wasn't the only time people didn't know, though it was decidedly the most hilarious.)

3. I used to be an art nerd

   When I applied to college I applied to two types of schools; those with excellent math programs (Princeton, MIT, UC Berkeley) and fine art schools (RISD). I chose math and went to UCB (for about three months then dropped out to be an options market maker on the PCX options exchange...). I stopped doing art for a couple years, and started again in 1999, at the time, I would sign all my paintings with "detour" and the year. That is where detour1999 came from. I don't paint anymore, but the name stuck.

4. I am French

   I am a citizen of the United States (and also of France.. shhh, I'm not sure if dual citizenship is allowed in the US atm.)

5. I read a lot of mysteries

   I read a lot of mysteries. I generally go through about 1 a week. I like them because I don't have to think at all. I have recently started [re]reading a bunch of Agatha Christie books. I generally read as my main source of relaxation rather than TV or video games.

6. I am a Quaker

   I am a mostly non-practicing Quaker. I was raised Quaker and still consider myself to be an atheistic Quaker. Basically this means that I try not to be a dick, I try to value all people, and I'm non-violent. It does not mean that I eat a lot of oatmeal, or that I worship Wilford Brimley (which people have thought was what Quakerism is all about, it's not).

7. I like old watercooled volkswagens

   I am a very weird old watercooled volkswagen fanatic.  I have a 1991 Jetta diesel that I bought about four years ago for $450 that I drove every day for about three years.  It still runs awesome even with it's 280K miles, even though I haven't driven it in a while. I also have a 1981 Rabbit Pick-up (aka the caddy) that will be getting a turbo diesel motor that I am rebuilding that I tore out of my other '91 Jetta that I scrapped. I also rebuilt an '84 rabbit diesel for my parents... I could go on for hours about that...

so, on to the tagging some of these people aren't currently blogging. those people are hopefully going to start: joe curlee - is crazy bryan knight - we do a lot of websites together. aaron salmon- is a great friend and makes the internet pretty. jake nickell - he made threadless, and makes me laugh all the time. armelle richard - my sister is amazingly awesome. atkins meyer - is both hilarious and crazy smart. jeffrey kalmikoff- is amazing and makes things pretty. The rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

damn, that only took me like 3 weeks...

I was just checking over some google analytics stuff, and checked the keywords that people who ended up on this blog used to search... here's a quick selection:

• detour1999
• 1999.com
• first time in the ass
• google and friends and people

ok, ok, wat?, ok... seriously wtf? hilarious. -d.

PDT Project. One thing that I should remember to do (in addition to my tech-i-use page) is get the RSS feed for releases... then I wouldn't have been three days late to the PDT 2.0 party. I've moved one of my dev machines to PDT 2.0 (eclipse 3.4) and so far it's pretty cool (it fixed my issue that I had been having with PDT 1.0 (eclipse 3.1[?]). I'll report back when I've used it a little more, but my first impression is that it is as good as the old one, and Eclipse loads in almost no time, relative to how it used to be. Also, I'm using the "press-this" tool for wordpress, it's pretty nice. excellent. -d.

I updated to the newest version of wordpress now that I have a relatively steady internet connection, and I have been mesmerized by the changes. Seriously, I have just been playing around in the admin panel for about 20 mintues just checking out all the new features. I must say, I am incredibly impressed. This is an amazing administrative section that really allows me as a user to have less of a barrier to blogging. Hopefully, that means that I will do it more... Also, I now realize that I had some drafts saved from a while back. Ha! Who knew? I'll try to finish up those and post them asap.

is a pain in the ass. I am on vacation for the first time in ages, and for the first time in longer than I can remember I have been mostly without internet. So, I had to do something about that. Using this sweet app, these directions and FoxyProxy I am now writing this on my laptop on the blazingly fast 3g connection of my G1 (~400K down/~150K up) (in reality, all internet feels slow to me now that I am used to the 100MB fiber @ work. However, I still use the shared 56k line at my parents when I'm there, and I'm happy to know that I'm significantly faster than that...) so, happy xmas to me, I'll be able to code and waste time on the internet on the train this weekend.

I got an iPhone a while back, and I must admit that it is one of the nicest examples of consumer electronics I have ever used. I'm writing this post on it right now. I never would have dreamed of writing a blog post on my old mda (even with its full qwerty keyboard...) it was just too slow and cumbersome. All that being said, I went ahead and preprdered a G1 android phone the other day. I doubt that it will replace the iPhone. But it will be incredibly nice to compare them side by side. (and, admittedly, I'm a he'll of a lot better at java than I am at objective C, so that will be fun, too.) I look forward to writing more on the subject, once I get the G1 in my hands.