Est. 2003
The blog of one Michael Heilemann, expatriated Dane coming to you out of New York City. Half machine, half grapefruit, Interface director at Squarespace, design lover, film enthusiast, Star Wars historian, creator of the Kubrick and K2 themes, and holder of opinions, many of which are shared on his Twitter account.
The whole idea of comments is based on the assumption that most people reading won't have their own platform to respond with. So you need to provide some temporary shanty town for these folks to take up residence for a day or two.
— Paul Bausch
Besides being a fantastic metaphor, it's a good observation and a difficult problem to solve, short of handing over the reins of your comments to something like Facebook.
It’s not that I’m embarrassed by my younger self, but… I’d prefer it if my blog continually contained mostly things that feel contemporary to me. Thus, employing government-sanctioned reality distortion field technology, I once again got Brian to do the heavy lifting and build me The Amazing ContemporizerOther names suggested were ‘I was young, I needed the money’, ‘It’s not that I’m embarrassed, but…’ ‘Youthful Folly’ and ‘The Ice Floe’. while I kicked back, drank piña colada’s and cackled at my cat.
The Amazing Contemporizer is a plugin for WordPress which automatically sets posts older than X to private, causing a wave of privacy to flow over your older and perhaps less… refined, past as a blogger.
PS: Backup you blog before using. Seriously. No… Seriously!
Twitter killed a lot of blogs, and I’m beginning to think that it’s killed even more comments. I love Twitter, but I do miss the old days of the blogosphere, back when blogs where as common as opinions (I was traversing my archives earlier; it was like visiting a graveyard, with URLs for headstones). Back when even a half-assed entry would garner comments from near and far, and people would link to each other and the sense of community was in-between people and their writing, rather than in-between 140-character quips.
Those days are gone, and a new batch have arrived, where if I write that I’m eating a strawberry pie on Facebook, it’ll get more replies than if I dig up a super-rare interview with George Lucas and write about it on my blog… What’s a man to do?
Adapt and overcome of course.
Earlier today I tweeted an idea as I was heading out the door and by the time I got back several people pointed me to Faruk’s, who already implemented an early version of that exact idea (so I’ll spare you the lead-in and leave you in his capable hands).
The basics is using Twitter for blog comments by using @Heilemann and a unique keyword, like the ID of the entry: #1234. As Twitter is searchable and tweets time-stamped, you have an off-site comment system already in use by millions.
Faruk’s current implementation is very baseline, but the potential is there, and it isn’t hard to imagine fetching replies through a twitter search, caching and displaying them as a traditional linear (maybe even threaded) comment list.
Problems and annoyances are abound, but it’s an intriguing idea; one that might be worth pursuing if it can bridge the classic and micro-blogging divide.
Hit me up and see what other said.
Update: There are several obvious and some not so obvious downsides to using Twitter as comment system, none of which I covered yesterday, both because I was pressed for time, but also because it’s worth gauging reactions rather than preempting them. First of all, Twitter searches only go back about 11 hours, which makes caching locally a must. Secondly, as roq points out, not everyone likes Twitter, though I can live with that (and easily build an anonymous function of sorts, if this otherwise solved more than it broke). Then there’s the 140-character limit, which isn’t necessarily conducive to conversation (but then, unlimited space apparently isn’t either, so…).
All in all, I doubt using twitter as a comment system is of much use. Perhaps it makes sense to have a link ala the one above to cater to people’s preferences, but on the other hand, if people aren’t going to comment locally, why would they do so on Twitter?
Update: Kim points out that “by anticipating the unique ids, it then becomes possible to pre-comment on stuff not yet published, and futurespam!” #
It being Kubrick appreciation week, it seems fitting Matt let me know that somebody went ahead and named their dog after Kubrick. Not the man though, but the WordPress theme I did!
Kubrick is named after the default Wordpress theme, Kubrick! It’s a really nerdy way of naming our new pup, but my husband wanted to name him with something that’s related to web design and development. #
We’ve done some pretty cool work on Habari’s administrative interface over the last months, and I’d like to take a few minutes of your time to walk you through it.
Oh, and if you like what you see, please, by all means, link back here, drop some comments on Viddler and let everyone know about this, because we want to get more people hyped about Habari, and you’re the key to making that happen.
PS: Download the 93MB quicktime file for full non-aliased pleasure.
Alright, listen up. Binary Bonsai has been powered by WordPress literally since its very first release. And as a consequence, I’ve been pretty involved with the WordPress community over time, especially these last few years with K2 (which is still in production I might add). But, while it has served me well for all of that time, to kick the carcase of the dead horse that is the girlfriend metaphor; we’ve grown apart. And today, I’m moving out of the apartment. So it’s goodbye WordPress and…
Hello Habari.
Mmm. Sweet, sensual, built Habari. Don’t get me wrong; this isn’t a pitch for you to do the same (though, please, take it for a spin; you never know). It’s simply me celebrating that I’ve finally gotten on with my online life, and getting even more involved with a project that has so far been both incredibly rewarding and ditto challenging.
And it wasn’t that WordPress and I were in a painful relationship; at least not in last year or so. It was more one of those courteous ones where we had both made peace with the fact that we weren’t meant for each other. That over time, we had grown apart. And… Alright, alright; enough of this blasted girlfriend metaphor; it’s creeping me out!
Seriously though, I’m really happy to finally move in with Habari. I’ve long had a keen interest in interface design and blogging tools, and my involvement with Habari has allowed me to follow up on both of those, and hopefully in the process creating a blogging tool that others will find exciting as well.
As a writer, if anyone would stoop so low as to call me that (thank you), what happens behind the scenes doesn’t really interest me. I do most of my writing in Textmate and then copy/paste it anyway. And after I’ve turned off comments, I don’t even see the whole admin section that often. But just because you only use the car to go down to the supermarket, why shouldn’t you be driving a black Countach?
I thought so too.
But please, have some patience with the design (which is new, and very much in progress), the archives and the feed (new permanent address, I’ll try and do some clever rewriting to get the old links to work). I’m working on getting all my ducks in a neat little row, and hopefully everything will settle down within a few days.
Well, except for the design.
I’m calling it Kalamari.
It’s with great joy, that I can link to the newly released Habari 0.5. It took less than half a year to go from an idea to a fully fledged and wonderfully implemented Monolith.
I might have done the design, but I could never have pulled off the implementation, which was not only a team effort, but a sight to behold.
Work is being done on a demo version, but for now, I hope you’ll take out the time to try it out on your own. I think you might like it.
One of the reasons I turned off comments on this site, was because the amount of spam that managed to slip through the cracks continued to rise, despite Akismet doing its very best to stop it. And the reason for this, was that somehow, the spammers have found a way to actually post coherent comments, that make sense in the context of the entry, but which then link back to sites that are obvious spam-sites.
Here are two examples, Adida and Alan.
Both these comments almost fit into the conversation, though Adida’s is somewhat off-topic (though strangely humorous to me, as I’ve seen that particular film quite a few times when I was a kid) and Alan’s being a rehash of sorts of a few of my notes from the entry itself.
The catch of course, is that you only catch the fact that these are spammers if you pay attention to the site they link back to. Because of this, in the last half year or so of 2007, I manually went to all URLs I didn’t know, just to check if they were spammers.
I don’t intend to turn on comments again on a regular basis, but I’ve found a wonderful method of subverting these idiots.
I change the link to point to Unicef.
Because obviously I don’t want any traffic or pageranking to go to spam-sites; but why waste the opportunity to have the spammers work for good?
I’m back from Rome in one piece, albeit paradoxically now in serious need of a vacation. Touristing it is hard work.
Just before I left, a few thing happened in relation to Habari and Monolith, which I didn’t find the time to comment on, but which may be of interest to those of you following the progress of these two projects.
First of all, I was cordially invited to become a member of the Habari cabal, which—roughly speaking—grants me access to the trunk of the subversion repository for Habari as well as voting rights in discussions on the in- or exclusion of for instance plugins, themes and any other such matter.
This is really helpful in fact, because where the Monolith codebase had previously existed on its own branch in the subversion repository, it was recently rolled right into the trunk. A gutsy move, which I think started paying itself off almost immediately, as the patches have been continually pouring in since then (and I’ve been keeping track of them from my iPhone while in Rome).
I’ve hardly even had the chance to play with it myself, let alone contribute any code; but I’m excited as hell at the prospect of having a fully functional Monolith in the very foreseeable future.
I’ll try and keep the updates flowing as work progresses, though you are of course more than welcome to try it on for size.
When in the future, bound to the wheelchair by an injury sustained in the Chrome Wars, I look back at 2007, I will see Kane & Lynch: Dead Men.
It’s not that I consider my other endeavors insignificant. I’m very happy with K2, even if we didn’t ship a 1.0 as I’d hoped. And I’m already very proud of the little work I’ve been able to contribute to Habari so far. Furthermore, both Rikke and I were able to chalk off Paris and New York from the ‘must travel to before impending death’-list.
But Kane & Lynch definitively marks the end of me wanting to make computer games for a living, and me having made making computer games for a living. And dammit, I’ll wear that chip on my shoulder and parade it around town like nobody’s business. It’s my party, and I’ll cry if I want to!... Look what you made me do.
2007 will also go down as the year I spent an excessive amount of money on a whole range of (fantastic) new Star Wars books, it being after all the 30th anniversary and all. And yes, I’m still a sucker for that stuff; you wanna start a fight or something? You a trekkie? Huh? Huh?!
Furthermore, this will be the last year Binary Bonsai will be brandishing WordPress. I’m a-shippin’ out and a-joinin’ Habari. It was fun, smell you later.
2008 will be the year where I leave the quantity of content to Tumblr, Twitter, Flickr and the seemingly never ending onslaught of something-r, and instead turn my focus on quality for this here site.
Proper writing, or at least, more attentive writing. Which is to say, if you enjoy reading about Russ Meyer and thinking about whether or not Chris Foss planted the seed for the Star Destroyers, then gosh darnit, you’re in luck Lucy, cuz that just about sets the style.
And proper writing, unlike this whole piece and this segue in particular, is exactly what 2008 will be tagged, bagged and sold as.
I love film. I work with games, but honestly, I can’t deny that my love is with film. And sure enough, the ‘I could do that better blindfolded!’-bravado is abound, but the actual product? It has yet to be manifested.
I’ve pseudo-dabbled in creative writing, and even half seriously discussed with Rikke the option of moving to New York for a stint, leading a bohemian life as a writer, living off of the wonderful New York deli’s and churning out socially subversive, but mostly un-produced scripts (that last part is a lie; it would be pulp sci-fi; you know that).
So this is the year where I, creatively, bend down to check whether I have a pair or not. And if I do, great, who knows what it might lead to? If I don’t? Well, shit.
So that’s it for 2008; you can go home now.
PS: This entry by the way, is the last entry to brandish comments. The spammers are too clever, they’ve won. But they can’t cross the bridge, if there is no bridge, so… Boom.
Catch me on twitter if you need me.
I recently served as a “consultant’s consultant,” advising a world leader in his field on what to do about his website. In particular, this expert asked me whether he should start a weblog. I said no. #
And I say: Yes, by all means, go for it!
I don’t care what field you’re a ‘world leader’ in, I guarantee you, a lot of people out there want to hear your small, hastily written thoughts on whatever topic you might find interesting at any given moment. A hell of a lot more so, than they want to read your deeply serious, hoity toity, graph-ridden ‘article’, which while surely very interesting in its own right, is not where the connection between you and your audience will thrive.
This is because we are humans, and humans, while superficially interested in graphs, long paragraphs and high-concepts, are just hardwired towards seeking human contact. This is why we have idolization and fandom. It’s driven by our basic desire to follow the people we admire.
Translated to my personal sphere of idolization, you could say that while I would surely read a lengthy graph-ridden article by Joss Whedon on Equality now, but conversely, I would just as much like to read a three paragraph quickie on why science fiction movies largely disappoint.
Joss Whedon being a world leader in Whedonesque matters, is thus just as well off with going down either path, if the desired result is ‘attracting customers’.
The problem with Jakob Nielsen—or perhaps rather his audience as it were—is that his articles, top 10’s and ‘usability tests’ are outdated, largely irrelevant and when applicable, made up of nothing but easily thought up logical conclusions aimed at the dull gray ‘we want to be hip with the youngsters, yo’ corporate market, from which he makes his money.
So if you’re hip, down with the beat and ‘happenin’, save yourself the headache, use your brain, not useit.com, and the rest should come easily.
We can measure expertise as some combination of intelligence, education, experience, correct methodology, professionalism (say, avoiding profanities and politics), and willingness to be frank.
I don’t mean to be the ‘look at me, we’re revolutionary’-idiot with the sign around his neck, because, let’s face it, my content isn’t exactly revolutionary as such. But what a piece of elitist ego-stroking generalized no-sharp-edges PR-friendly bullshit.
Jakob Nielsen, there’s a telegraph for you; it reads: “2007 going well stop. Hope you are also well in 1997 stop. Please stop stop.”
More:
Should Bloggers Assume that Their Readers are Dumber than They Are?
Jakob Nielsen Sounds Off About Web 2.0… Again!
I promised Joen a while back that I would put together a list of the podcasts I listen to on a regular basis, and I’ve finally finished crafting my list. Now despite my enthusiasm for the medium, I’m not nearly as nutcase-worthy as some people out there in the (blargh) podcastosphere…
But there is no denying that there are some genuinely great shows available, across a disturbingly wide spectrum of topics. Personally, I find my interests falling into a fairly narrow array.
Because podcasting is such a choice medium, I don’t hesitate for a moment to unsubscribe from shows that annoy me (The Movie Blog), are poor quality (iTunes New Music Tuesday), long-winded (Binary Bonsai… wait…)
Also, And finally, I haven’t included podcasts that either have fallen off in content-quality in the last few months or seem dead (like Ebert and Ropert, which otherwise used to be me go-to source for movie reviews).
Finally, I haven’t included podcasts that either have fallen off in content-quality in the last few months or seem dead (like Ebert and Ropert, which otherwise used to be me go-to source for movie reviews).
And now, without further ado, here is the list:
The Gamespot Hotspot · iTS
Probably the best podcast in my list. So many geek-related podcasts are longwinded and boring, but despite its running time of an hour, the Hotspot is anything but boring. Not only do these guys know games damn well, they’re both funny and charming from start till finish. And even better; the podcast arrives every week, like clockwork! Gamespot also does Designer Threads iTS, but with Greg K gone from Gamespot, its future is unfortunately uncertain. But do make sure you download the two episodes that are out. I would also point out GDC Radio | iTS, though their lack of proper show-descriptions and a generally poor audio quality is really annoying. Their archive has some good stuff though.
Amazon Wire · iTS
Worth mentioning as well are Barnes & Nobel’s Meet the Writers& | iTS (too many writers I don’t know, though I sometimes listen to them anyway, which can be refreshing),
Creative Screenwriting Magazine · iTS
Interviews with screenwriters; and good ones at that. I particularly recommend the recent interviews regarding Children of Men. Hell, just go back through the archives, and you’ll find lots of gold nuggets buried there. And if you’re a Pirates kind guy/gal, there’s a good one a few months back as well. And speaking of movies, definitely don’t miss out on KCRW’s The Treatment | iTS, which is just about the most cozy podcast in the world.
The Official Lost Podcast · iTS
I still loves me some Lost. And it’s only made better every week by the playful nature of Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof as they answer all kinds of geeky fan questions. Worth mentioning as well is the Battlestar Galactica podcast | iTS, which is also wonderful, though as you may have picked up, I’m perhaps not as interested in listening to commentary tracks every week anymore. The writer’s room ones are ace though! Even if the sound quality is so-so. And finally, Entourage | iTS, just because I loves it!
Acts of Volition Radio · iTS
Though it’s published about as frequently as the Binary Bonsai Podcast (that is, not often), it’s well worth the wait every time around. Steven plays tracks from various not-so-well-known bands, often from Canada, but on occasion also from for instance Denmark (Mew in this case). If you’re interested in undiscovered bands, then I also highly suggest that you check out the Coca Cola’s sessions | iTS, a range of podcasts from around the world, with DJ’s showcasing that country’s undiscovered talents.
Film Score Monthly · iTS
I wish it was released more often, and I wish they would do more retrospective work, but other than that I have very little to pin on this wonderful little nugget of a podcast. I definitely encourage you to browse the archives for goodies. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t also point you towards Soundtrack.net’s podcast | iTS. It too suffers from a poor release schedule, but then when it finally comes around, it’s always a pleasant surprise.
Kevin Smith’s SModcast · iTS
Currently regularly released, and just as irreverently honest as everything else Kevin Smith does, SModcast literally ranges between the mindnumbingly trivial and the absolutely outrageous! Well worth a listen. And of course, if you’re into humerous podcasts, The Garrett Murray podcast | iTS is also well worth your while.
Weekly iFanboy Video Podcast
iFanboy is a comic-book website which features not only a regular podcast, but also a weekly video podcast. Personally I’m not enough of a comic-book geek to know what half the stuff they talk about on the normal podcast, but the video one is great, fun and informative in all the right ways. One of my absolute favorites!
And then of course there’s stuff like Riding with Robots | iTS, about the exploration of space, Boing Boing Boing | iTS, which is as off-topic as Boing Boing itself, The Dragon Page | iTS, about science fiction and fantasy books, with frequent long-winded interviews with—to me—unknown authors
And finally, one-off ‘podcasts’, like Rolling Stone’s Bono interview, All-TIME 100 Albums and the Stephen King interviews in the TimesOnline Book podcasts | iTS (make sure you check out their archives!).
And that’s it! Peeee-hew.
I hate hate hate that Cinematical and Joystiq posts always start with an ‘introductory paragraph’. It’s like they have a certain post- and word-count they need to hit every day, and the result is too much bla-bla-blaing.
I grabbed the intro text for the latest entry on Cinematical:
Few people today remember what Nathan Hale is famous for. Even in my home state of Connecticut, where he’s officially recognized as our State Hero, he is probably often thought of as just another one of the many Revolutionary War patriots we learned about in high school. Perhaps you have a good enough memory to link him with his most famous quote, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country” (which may have been actually ripped off from a contemporary play)? Well, don’t worry if you haven’t held on to your history book knowledge; that is what we have Hollywood for. Warner Bros. will be producing a biopic about Hale, based on M. William Phelps’ upcoming book “For the Sake of Liberty: America’s First Spy.”
Here’s how a ‘story’ should be put together: The headline has to grab your attention. The first paragraph has to knock that zinger right out of the park. From there, it’s alright if you start fleshing out the real-world complexity of the situation. But that first paragraph is all important.
Warner Bros. will be producing a biopic about Jonathan Hale, based on M. William Phelps’ upcoming book “For the Sake of Liberty: America’s First Spy.”Jonathan hale, who is a State Hero in Connecticut—my home state—is perhaps most famous for having said: “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country”.
A slightly crass example perhaps, but it took us from 131 to 56 words, and the improved clarity is obvious.
And clarity. Is. Everything.
So why do I follow two sites that I obviously get annoyed at whenever I read a story on there? Because gosh-darnnit, they are pretty good otherwise. (Unlike Kataku, which is a great site, but they post about one zillion new things a day, which is impossible to keep up with).
Their problem of course, is that they have me looking at the headline, skimming the text for links, and I’m out.
That’s a problem, me thinks.
PS: I don’t mean to pick on Christopher Campbell, who wrote this particular story, because as far as I can tell—even though I don’t distinguish the writers on these blogs—they all do it.
PPS: Joystiq’s every-story-must-have-amusing-image thing is also getting on my nerves, just so you know… But I get it. It catches the eye, so it works. But it’s annoying.
Several people have been asking how I got my write page to be so clutter free... Well, there you have it.
Yup, get it here.
A big congratulations to Matt and company with the release of WordPress 2.1. I’m uploading it to the site as I’m writing this.
K2 is right behind it, and will see a new release as soon as humanly possible. I’m extremely busy this week, but I’ll see if I can’t slot it in somewhere later today so you have something new and shiny to play with.
WordPress 2.1 actually contains a couple of things that are of interest to K2, such as the inclusion of the Prototype and Scriptaculous javascript libraries directly in the core. And while it doesn’t look like WP gzip’s its JS libraries, it nonetheless is great for us to be able to rely on WP’s inclusion of those libraries, rather than shipping them with K2.
Also there is some interesting new header stuff, which should also make for some new niceties.
Today also sees the release of the 2.0 version of Akismet, a plugin that has done more for the world of blogging than any other plugin.
Alright, I wasn’t planning on posting this just yet, but since I won’t have proper time to work on it for the next few days, my lack of patience got the better of me.
Now it is important to note that this isn’t even a mockup as much as it is a sketch (albeit rather a polished one). There is some functionality missing and so on and so forth.
First up is the edit page with the media manager closed. As you can see, I also put in Flickr and Youtube as similar services to hook into. However, the media manager itself is meant to be a way to manage your local files (images, video, audio primarily I think).
Click the My Media tab, and the page splits open, revealing the media manager underneath. The rest of the admin is obviously better off being centered and fixed width, but the media manager gets the benefits of ‘stretching from ear to ear’.
A quick quick quick walkthrough of what I like to call a ‘feature-rich environment’:
And that’s what I’ve been up to in Habari. I’m pouring some of the stuff I work on into a flickr set, and of course both mine, Khaled’s and any other volounteers discuss all of this on the mailing list (and here is the thread for the above sketches).
And no, it won’t be coming to a Habari installation near you in the near future. In fact, I think I probably caused a few gray hairs in the Habari coders when they saw this. But it’s doable, and I’ll gladly chip in with my own meager skills.
Ideas, suggestions and what not are of course very welcome
So I’m looking at Symphony, a new CMS of sorts, and I almost choke on my own spit as I read their header. I’m sorry guys, but I’m going to have to call you on your hyperbole:
Bull. Shit.
Being a gamer, following the games industry, I’ve seen a fair amount of hyperbole (Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever anyone?), and it never did any good to anyone. I don’t mean to pound on Twentyone Degrees... but I’m going to anyway. So I went to their site, where I found this little remark:
It will have a level of support never before seen for such an application.
Listen puppies, launch the product, let it do its thing. If you rock, the rockness of you and your product will turn people in much the same way as a vile virus unleashed by a secret government project turns people into brain-craving zombies.
Anyway, I’ve thought up a few new taglines for K2:
Feel free to throw in your own ideas.
Oh yeah, almost forgot, it’s a cool name for an app. Symphony. Nice.
Having a few Gmail invites lying around doing nothing, how abouts one more competition? Jolly good.
I want you to dig out a link to the most enlightening article you’ve read in the recent past. Again, it can be about anything. Design, movies, spirituality, space, music. In short anything you like.
Again, here are the rules: