http://www.pixelmonkey.org Andrew J. Montalenti's Blog Sat, 24 Apr 2010 23:50:19 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Nobody moves to New York because they think they're just like everybody else. A young kid, fueled by a toxic blend of bravado and wicked insecurity, can expend a truly terrifying amount of energy trying to prove her exceptionalism, prove that she is different (read: better) than the dull hometown ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2010/04/24/546 My good friends at HiiDef just launched a new app that has been in beta for awhile, Flavors.me. This is an excellent tool that has a great, simple, and usable design. What's the value preposition of Flavors.me? It's to unify your various "online identities" into a single, dynamic, automatically-updated, ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2010/02/24/flavors-me-emerges-from-beta-lifestreaming-for-the-masses Andrew Leonard of Salon.com has written an article about switching from Chase to a local community bank, in response to HuffPo's MoveYourMoney campaign. I've written on this blog multiple times about my frustration with Chase bank, but it's interesting to see someone with as big a readership as Andrew Leonard writing ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2010/01/06/switching-from-chase I recently re-read Douglas Crockford's JavaScript: The Good Parts. I have been writing more and more JavaScript lately, especially object-oriented JavaScript plugging into existing frameworks. Re-reading the book has definitely been a useful exercise -- I think when I first read it approximately 6 months ago, I didn't ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/12/22/the-danger-of-feature-driven-design I'll start off this post with a somewhat controversial claim: I invented Dropbox. I'll show why this claim doesn't matter later, but for now, I'll assure you that it's true. How many of you out there use Dropbox? If you don't, you should -- it's an excellent tool. ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/12/11/ideas-and-execution I recently did some web design work in collaboration with a graphic designer. She introduced me to what has become my latest favorite piece of CSS code: 960.gs. 960.gs is a CSS grid framework, similar in spirit to Blueprint CSS and YUI Grid. However, 960.gs is at once more ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/12/08/simplifying-css-with-960-gs I presented Parse.ly at the NYC Search & Discovery Meetup on Thurs, Oct. 29.  The meetup is organized by Otis Gospodnetic (blog), who is one of the authors of Lucene in Action and the author of the upcoming book, Solr in Action. We make heavy use of Lucene and ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/11/09/parse-ly-presentation-at-nyc-search-discovery-meetup In addition to running Parse.ly, I also run a small consulting business, Aleph Point, Inc. In the course of working on client jobs, I sometimes have to make business purchases, which I always pay in full at the end of every month. I have never carried a balance ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/10/30/jpmorgan-chase-valid-fees-and-humanity If you were trying to log into Parse.ly between 11pm-1am this Sunday, you may have noticed that it was intermittently down for maintenance.  Over the last several weeks, we've been working hard to roll out some new features, polish some rough edges, and improve our infrastructure after our launch last ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/09/21/parse-ly-releases-new-version-on-sunday-sept-20 A few days ago, I got a call from my girlfriend, Olivia. I was so deep in working on my startup, Parse.ly, that I hadn't checked my bank account statements in several weeks. We just went into private beta last Thursday, after DreamIt Demo Day. She noticed ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/08/21/chase-insecure This post is only intended for those who actually run GNOME and Linux, just a warning :-)I just replaced network-manager on my Ubuntu Jaunty desktop with wicd.  See wicd here: http://wicd.sourceforge.net/What's so great about wicd?  I used to think nm-applet and NetworkManager were the best thing since ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/07/31/for-linuxgnome-users-tired-of-nm-applet-try-wicd Click to read "The Cost Conundrum" @ The New Yorker Will a new, national insurance plan solve the essential problem of the rising cost of health care?  According to Atul Gawande, it won't.  What is needed is nothing short of a complete cultural shift in the community of practicing medical doctors ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/07/15/atul-gawande-mdauthor-on-the-cost-of-health-care-in-this-excellent-new-yorker-piece After my recent upgrade to Pidgin 2.5.5 (on Ubuntu Jaunty), GTalk mysteriously stopped working.  Check out the FAQ entry on the Pidgin developer website for an explanation.  The workaround, not listed there, is to change your "Connect Server" to "talk.google.com".  Pidgin will then prompt you once for a certificate, and after that, ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/07/13/trouble-connecting-to-gtalk-with-pidgin Sorry for excessive metaphors related to trees, but it just seemed so fitting. You see, for almost a year, Sachin (the other founder of Cog Tree) and I have spent every moment of our free time to the path of starting this company.  We felt quite nomadic during that time -- ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/07/06/we%e2%80%99ve-planted-our-roots-and-now-we%e2%80%99re-growing%e2%80%a6 Today, I decided to finally sit down and upgrade my Ubuntu Intrepid installation to Ubuntu Jaunty. I torrented the live DVD last night (causing my roommates to complain of major Internet hoggage -- it was downloading at 1.2MB/sec!). I then performed a full system backup to a remote ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/06/06/ubuntu-jaunty-installation-process David Brooks has written a column for the NYTimes entitled, "The End of Philosophy". The basic thrust of the article is that moral reasoning is less about reasoning and more about intuition. In other words, morality is more like aesthetics than logic. A representative section: Think of what happens when ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/04/07/the-end-of-philosophy I attended PyCon 2009 this year, which was a whole lot of fun. Quite a few people have asked me which talks I liked, so I decided to put together my "top 5 talks" list, in ranked order: A Whirlwind Excursion through Writing a C Extension. This talk by ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/04/06/favorite-pycon-2009-talks I am teaching a technical course on the popular and ubiquitous version control system, Subversion, this Monday. I thought it might be fun to give my class a little "extra credit" reading from the O'Reilly book, Beautiful Code. In it, one of the original authors of Subversion, Karl ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2009/02/28/beautiful-code-and-a-beautiful-bug I wrote about John Kenneth Galbraith earlier, but just recently found this video on YouTube. A reflective 1-hour interview with the man that discusses his long career as a professor, advisor, and economic theorist. Well worth a listen. A Conversation with John Kenneth Galbraith -- April 27, 1986 http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2008/08/03/a-video-interview-with-john-kenneth-galbraith I haven't done a formal analysis of this yet. Just an informal one using a NYTimes.com search for Ralph Nader. On July 1, 2008, CNN published a poll that put Ralph Nader at 6%. On February 24, 2008, Ralph Nader formally announced his bid for presidency on "Meet the ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2008/08/02/the-media-blackout-of-ralph-nader In "Lean Left? Lean Right? News media may take cues from customers" by Chicago School professor Austan Goolsbee, we are given yet another argument for market determinism, this time with regard to the slant of the media. One of the most interesting things coming out of research on the economics ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2008/03/02/is-media-slant-determined-by-the-market Conason writes for Salon, ... the evidence suggests another possible motive for Nader to run this year -- namely, that he hopes to help his longtime ally John McCain, to whom he owes at least one big favor I just did a search for Nader on Salon, and found this article in ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2008/03/02/joe-conason-thinks-ralph-nader-loves-mccain Elizabeth Alexander of Salon writes about the mis-used Toni Morrison quote that Bill Clinton was America's "first black president." This quote was repeated during the Democratic Presidential Debates -- which was the first time I heard it. You can read Toni Morrison's original article from the New Yorker, ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2008/01/29/americas-first-black-president The latest insanity: New Jersey legislators have decided that sex offenders will be barred from using the Internet. That's not a joke: barred altogether -- there is only a single exception for job searches. This is a major infringement of their civil liberties. Once a sexual offender ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2007/12/29/sex-offenders-barred-from-using-the-internet-in-nj A book review by Thomas Frank, on a biography of John Kenneth Galbraith. What astonishes the contemporary reader is, first of all, that a genuine, independent intellectual like Galbraith was permitted to serve in government, let alone become the confidant of presidents. Facile anti-intellectualism is the order of the day now, ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2007/10/25/facile-anti-illectualism-is-the-order-of-the-day This taken from the comments section of an article written by Joe Conason on the tasering incident. The most distressing thing about this incident to me is that commentators like Mr. Conason, with whom I agree most of the rest of the time, insist on viewing this whole thing as some ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2007/09/21/nuances-free-speech I hate to alienate readers by starting with a Noam Chomsky quote, but oh well. Chomsky once said, "If you are in favor of freedom of speech, that means you are in favor of freedom of speech precisely for views you despise - otherwise you're not in favor of ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2007/09/19/fascism-rising From an interesting thread on /. My definition of "libertarianism" stands from a firm principle of "live and let live". That is, everyone is free to do what they want as long as they are not doing any direct harm to others against their will. I put in the phrase "direct harm" ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2007/09/02/what-is-libertarianism I passed by a church on the way to work today, and read the following: Unanswered questions are far less dangerous than unquestioned answers. This may just be the most succinct quote I've seen that summarizes my view on the distinction between honest religious beliefs and religious fanaticism. If one uses religion as ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2007/08/13/unanswered-questions I just got back from San Francisco. This wasn't my first time to the west coast, but it was my first time to Northern California. Overall, I had an amazing time. This trip emerged as a major convenience for me. My brother was heading out to California for ... http://www.pixelmonkey.org/2007/08/07/san-francisco-trip