blags by matthttp://blagomatic.com/b/matt/blagsblagomatic - genetic gesturesnodejs -> twitter -> nodejs -> couchdbhttp://matt.io/technobabble/nodejs_->_twitter_->_nodejs_->_couchdb/uhnode client to import the public twitter timeline into couchdb running at http://127.0.0.1:5984/ (create the database at /twitter/ first).

Everybody can run 150 public API requests per hour which nets you around 3000 tweets per hour. The client polls the public API every 0.5 seconds.

Runs against 2010.07.16 node-v0.1.101.


#!/usr/bin/env node

var http = require('http');
var couch = http.createClient(5984, '127.0.0.1');
var twitter = http.createClient(80, 'api.twitter.com');

function post_all_json(twitter_json_text) {
var creq = couch.request('POST', '/twitter/_bulk_docs',
{'content-type': 'application/json'});
creq.write('{"docs":' + twitter_json_text + '}');
creq.end();

}

function runTwitterRequest() {
var treq = twitter.request('GET', '/1/statuses/public_timeline.json',
{'host': 'api.twitter.com'});
treq.end();
treq.on('response', function(response) {
var twitter_response = "";
response.setEncoding('utf8');
response.on('data', function(chunk) {
twitter_response += chunk;
});
response.on('end', function() {
var tjson = JSON.parse(twitter_response);
console.log("Posting retrieved tweets which number " + tjson.length);
post_all_json(twitter_response);
});
});
}

setInterval(runTwitterRequest, 500);

]]>
Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:48:57 GMThttp://matt.io/technobabble/nodejs_->_twitter_->_nodejs_->_couchdb/uh
redis meetup noteshttp://matt.io/technobabble/redis_meetup_notes/uf
libcluster
Redis is getting native clustering one way or another. What if we make a generic libcluster to handle the hash ring, membership, networking, failover and other clustery things? It could be helpful in other projects if libcluster is as well thought out and as well written as Redis.

zeromq
How about adding zeromq as a connection option in addition to TCP and (soon) unix domain sockets? Zeromq can give us sane udp out of the box (maybe) and possibly a more efficient tcp layer since zeromq coalesces as many outgoing messages together as possible (nb: would break a central NIH rule of antirez).

command response tags
Someone brought up the issue of multiple threads using one redis connection. What if each redis command could accept an optional tag that got echoed back in the response to the user? Client libraries can make a tag (something unique within a short time period of the app), send commands to redis as needed, then use the tags in responses to match up redis responds with who should receive them.

Sounds good to me.

-Matt ]]>
Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:07:56 GMThttp://matt.io/technobabble/redis_meetup_notes/uf
Work at a Startup Reviewhttp://matt.io/startup/Work_at_a_Startup_Review/ud
One after another in sternly administered choreography, the startups gave brief pitches to the attendees. Pitches consisted of projected slides, one or more of the startup founders presenting an employee-focused view of their company, and endless fidgeting with a shared lavalier. Every few pitches, a person comfortable with public speaking became slightly more engaging by including a developer-friendly joke.

Notable presentations
Drew Houston of Dropbox received a vocal "Woo!" when he introduced himself. Everybody loves The DropBox.

The pas de deux between a seemingly nervous Sam Altman talking quietly to his slides and Paul Graham in the back holding up his trademark "LOUDER!" sign entertained the crowd for a full 60 seconds. It turns out you can't see Paul Graham holding up a sign, no matter how bright his shirt, if you are looking at a wall. (Don't worry Sam, I still love you.)

The presenter for airbnb ("The Abees") was unquestionably the most direct, forceful, and well rehearsed speaker of the event. He knows what airbnb wants, how they are going to get there, how awesome they are, how much the world suffers, and why they are worth more than you can possibly imagine.

Paul S joined ex-Twitter employee Chad to talk about notifo (pronounced note-ee-foe, but which reminds one of Jeff's notify.io). Paul, being with notifo for about two days, talks as if he worked on the project for months. You can't out plan, out hipster, or out self-promote Paul S.

Reception
After the second "this is the last presentation" presentation, the attendees were invited out to the parking-lot-turned-pizza-buffet for a few hours of mingling, scheming, catching up, and getting to know one another. Startup founders darted through the crowd as little entrepreneurial sharks swimming through the chum of potential employees. Pairs of platonic speed dates broke off. Some pairs chatted for half an hour while others lasted barely thirty seconds. Some people greeted with a firm handshake while others only yielded a sideways glance of yes-i-see-you-but-don't-talk-to-me.

More interesting than talking with the intended audience of startup representatives was talking with fellow attendees. You can see in their eyes when they are good at what they do. You can see in their eyes when they are uncertain what tomorrow brings. You can see the crazy ones, the dreamers, and the failures. At least one attendee did not know what Y Combinator actually did. Other attendees ranged from Lockheed Martin employees, to in-between-semester undergrads, to i'm-taking-this-loop-off people taking a break from being employees, to people just scouting for a slightly more interesting life.

Notable reception happenings
One person was carrying a copy of On Lisp. I assume he obtained a useful signature.

The venerable Sam Altman, the chosen one, the golden child of Paul Graham, said he likes my HN comments. He then proceeded to tell me the story of how he almost killed someone then escaped death at the hands of mother nature. I've stories for you too, Sam. Give me a call.

[[This brings me to another point: name badges are for names. We all have multiple names. I was the only one I saw with my Human, HN and Twitter names on my badge. Come on people, use a blank canvas more creatively. We want to know you.]]

I thought Trevor said the telepresence bots would be active, but they never emerged. A row of bots lined up obediently at the Anybots entrance waiting for their chance to be of service. Their chance never came.

Paul Graham attracted his large conversational following as usual. I didn't notice Trevor emerge outside. Kate gave me a nod but didn't want to talk. Jessica was doing what she's known for and kept everything running smoothly.

When trying to convince me of the merits of San Francisco instead of San Jose, Dan from Weebly attempted to interject a point about dating being more prolific in San Francisco. His approach was a bit off. Dan tried to ask, "Do you have a girlfriend?" To which I replied, "No, I don't have a boyfriend." One additional round got the point across: "No, a girlfriend," he clarified to himself. A final recitation of "No, I don't have a boyfriend," cleared up any confusion. If you are a good Analytics person who likes SF and wants to work at Weebly, give Dan a call. He may even be able to hook you up with a girlfriend.

I monopolized Emmett's time for probably 30 minutes while having Sam Altman, Build Enginner Dude, Weebly Dan, and one or two others try to break into the conversation. Some break-ins were more successful than others.

I missed talking to Gnip Dude. He kept vanishing.
I missed talking to Paul S. I've a bone to pick with him.
I forgot to talk to the DailyBooth guys.
I'm not interested in moving to San Francisco, which writes off probably 90% of the startups in attendance.

Conclusions
Was it useful for the startups giving presentations? It's difficult to say. We'll have to wait a month or two until startups can report back how much usable talent appeared due to the event.

Was it useful for the attendees? Yes. An emphatic Yes. It's empowering to sit through stories of early-stage (and some not-so-early-stage), on-track startups. Thoughts of running a startup flow through so many of us, but not nearly enough people act on it. How about an Express-YC for more experimental ideas not needing a 30 question application?

Was it the right format? As I told someone before the event, and as Paul Graham reiterated during his opening talk: What matters are the people with whom you work. Go with amazing people and you'll be fine. A format of presenting the company's projects may be misguided. We should be looking for people to join. Have every employee in attendance speak for 30 seconds at the front of the room. Yes, some people are horrible with public speaking, but that's a data point in and of itself. Let's get the people to present themselves followed by one 20 second overview of their products.

Final conclusion? I need to get off my ass and get my own startup in gear. Time to redefine some paradigms.


-Matt
650-450-8826]]>
Fri, 18 Jun 2010 14:44:16 GMThttp://matt.io/startup/Work_at_a_Startup_Review/ud
introducing slippycomicshttp://matt.io/slippycomics/introducing_slippycomics/ucintro
I hide books from myself. The more dangerous the book, the more cleverly it gets buried. Recently I uncovered "xkcd: volume 0" again and lost an hour of my life re-reading everything on the spot.

It dawned on me: there must be a way to extend the productivity killing capacity of fluid comics to a mass audience.

This is around the time an HTML5 presentation was making the rounds. A slippy HTML5 presentation. A fluid HTML5 presentation. "Let's replace the damn slides with comics," screamed the productivity devil on my shoulder.

A few weeks later, we have slippycomics.

creation
slippycomics is a re-written version of the HTML5 presentation above. Most of the CSS is stolen, but the javascript has been completely rewritten.

Since the xkcd book inspired slippycomics, it was only natural to include all of Randy's comics. Next up are two comics which I always mean to read but constantly forget about: bunny and smbc.

All comics, alt text, and alt comics were scraped from their respective sites. The comics and alt comics for slippycomics are hosted on the Akamai CDN[1] as to not overwhelm the originating sites. In no way am I trying to steal or claim these comics. Each comic has a link back to the original site along with a link to the store for each comic every few frames.

[1]: If the CDN gets too expensive, I'll host directly from my servers.


tech stuff
front end site: html5, css3, coffeescript (-> javascript -> yuicompressor), jquery (1.4.2 + jquery.history + jquery.cookie -> closure compiler)
back end site: nginx -> yaws -> erlang -> redis (via my in-progress redis client er); akamai -> nginx -> disk
back end scraping: python with urllib2 and lxml.html for finding comic URLs, titles, and alt text/comics. python stores everything using redis-py. python downloader for comic graphics after comic data is stored in redis.


controls
Up. Down. Left. Right. r. Spacebar. [numbers then enter]. w.a.s.d. Click on stuff. Mousewheel. Touch sliding left/right for iPad/iPhone. Forward/back history. Remembers your last position if you close your window and come back later.


future
If you want your comic added, email me. I can add as many comics as people would like. Accounts may even happen one day for personalization.

It will be trivial to make an automated comic submission process if enough authors want their content here and don't want me scraping their sites.

If you want your comic removed, let me know and you'll be removed with extreme prejudice and a frowny face.

There are some UI bugs. The backend needs to be able to accept automated updates from authors directly. The iPad/iPhone interface needs fleshing out.


contact
questions? praise? love? hate? hugs? rage? Direct it all at matt or at @mattsta.

Go forth and slip: http://slippycomics.com/

]]>
Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:45:50 GMThttp://matt.io/slippycomics/introducing_slippycomics/uc
abouthttp://matt.io/slippycomics/about/ubhttp://slippycomics.com/]]>Fri, 11 Jun 2010 13:28:14 GMThttp://matt.io/slippycomics/about/ubGoing Nowherehttp://matt.io/found_things/Going_Nowhere/u9
Shankill Butchers




Nick has a great voice but a less-great audio recording setup. Still worth a listen or two or twelve.

Mad World


On the Bus Mall



]]>
Mon, 05 Apr 2010 11:44:53 GMThttp://matt.io/found_things/Going_Nowhere/u9
french love lost at seahttp://matt.io/found_things/french_love_lost_at_sea/u8]]>Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:43:30 GMThttp://matt.io/found_things/french_love_lost_at_sea/u8Wadeinghttp://matt.io/found_things/Wadeing/u7

]]>
Wed, 20 Jan 2010 10:09:19 GMThttp://matt.io/found_things/Wadeing/u7
Apple January 2010 Event Keynote Leakhttp://matt.io/iworkforapple/Apple_January_2010_Event_Keynote_Leak/u6background
I've spent the last month in isolation meditating on The Device Who Comes from Apple. Based on sensory deprivation induced hallucinations and stalking Apple coworkers, I've come up with this outline for The Device Who Comes. Also, it helps I found a leaked draft copy of the January event script.

The leaked script had the actual product name redacted, so I call it i[REDACTED] throughout the script. The script below leaves out details relying on actually seeing the device (demo parts of the script), industry recaps, and the scripts of guests invited on-stage.

summary
The device will not be called iSlate. What is a 'slate?' It reminds me of a misshapen piece of granite chipped out of the earth with shards flying everywhere.

There is a good chance The Device Who Comes will not be prefixed with i.

The Device Who Comes will use a Natal-like control interface thereby pissing off Microsoft to no end.

Basic Description: 13" 300 ppi multi-touch screen with free-space gesture recognition. "Giant iPhone" mode (for App Store apps) and full OS X mode. First client device to fully rely on Apple's new personal content hosting service. Perfectly designed reader functionality supporting books from iTunes (they may rename iTunes at this point) and supporting all open data formats for books (pdf, mobi, epub). Also, a new custom Apple eMedia format will be released for richer content consumption experiences.

Wireless Partner: Verizon Wireless.
Initial Content Partners: NYT and Conde Nast.

Prices: $1199 with free 2-year Verizon Wireless access. $699 with $30/month two-year Verizon Wireless contract. $899 with no cellular radio included (wifi/bluetooth only).

draft keynote
Thank you for coming. We're going to make some history together again today. Welcome to the future.

[industry specific recap]

This is a day I've been looking forward to for six years. Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything. And Apple has been -- well, first of all, one's very fortunate if you get to work on just one of these in your career. Apple's been very fortunate. It's been able to introduce a few of these into the world. In 2007, we introduced the first iPhone, and it didn't just change the way we all use phones, it changed the entire mobile landscape. Well, today we're introducing three more revolutionary products of this class. The first one is a widescreen electronic reader with a full color, highest quality, multitouch screen. The second is the most portable Mac ever developed. And the third is a breakthrough service for managing your digital life. Electronic reader, extremely portable Mac, managing your digital life. Reader, portable Mac, digital life. Reader, Mac, Life... are you getting it? These are not three seprate devices. This is one device. And we are calling it i[REDACTED]. Today, Apple is going to reinvent the tablet computer, and here it is.

So, before we get into it, let me talk about a category of things. Current eBook readers on the market use something called eInk displays. These displays require no power while showing a page, but they only work in black and white and they are slow to turn pages. Slow to turn pages. In a book. Why do people use these? Some eBook readers also have Internet access, except everything is black and white and slow to change pages. Did you see tablets and readers from CES two weeks ago? There must have been over 100 tablet PCs and three dozen eBook reader models released. The "tablets" are all tiny and they all run Windows without regarding what form-factor the devices use. Desktop? Windows. Tablet? Same Windows. Same hair-tearing experience. The eBook readers all use the same underlying technology. Their only difference is what plastic case manufacturers use. Well, we don't want to just re-brand existing technology. What we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is way smarter than any mobile computer has ever been, and super-easy to use. This is what i[REDACTED] is. Okay?

So, we're going to reinvent the mobile computer. Now, we're going to start with a revolutionary user interface. It is the result of years of research and development. Now, why do we need a revolutionary user interface? Other tablets out there use a stylus -- a stylus -- or half-broken multitouch implementations. We can do better. i[REDACTED] is a full multitouch device, but it also has a camera built in. i[REDACTED] will also respond to just motions of your hand. See the camera there at the top? It constantly watches for gestures to be performed. In Reader Mode and want to go to the next page? Gesture from right to left and Boom. There's your page. Want to go back? Gesture from left to right. Want to scroll? Gesture in the direction you want to scroll. Boom. Isn't that amazing?

Let's talk about design. We've designed something wonderful for you to hold, just wonderful. This is what it looks like. It's got a thirteen inch screen on it. It's really big. And, it's not only the highest resolution screen we've ever shipped, it's also the highest resolution screen of its size available anywhere. It's 300 pixels per inch. Highest available anywhere. It's gorgeous. And on the front, there's only one button. It's the home button everybody is faimilar with from iPhone. Let's take a loook at the side. It's really thin. It's thinner than any tablet out there, at 8 mm. Thinner than an iPod touch. It's really nice. And we've got some touch spaces on the sides for quick navigation, along with volume controls. Let's look at the front. We've got a five megapixel camera and microphone built in to the top. Video capable. We've got a headset jack for listening to music. We've got a quick push-to-sleep button just like iPhone. And on the bottom we've got our 30-pin dock connector for charging.

Now, we've also got some stuff you can't see. We've got an extra-long-lasting battery. 8 hours of full use and up to 30 hours during light use. We've got an accelerometer so we can automatically switch from portrait to landscape. We've got an ambient light sensor for automatic brightness adjustment. We've got wifi and bluetooth built in. You can pair i[REDACTED] with your iPhone to see incoming calls and send text messages directly from the i[REDACTED] through iPhone.

So, now, let's take a look at Reader as part of i[REDACTED]. We've never offered books, magazines, or news for sale before. We're proud to announce a partnership with Conde Nast and the New York Times who will be creating content exclusively for i[REDACTED]. What other electronic reader gives you an insanely great mobile reading experience with full color videos and all the benefits of the web built right in? None that we've found. How do you get real-time, live updating content on i[REDACTED] no matter where you are? We'll get to that in a minute, but first let's show you hour Reader works. [DEMO]

Isn't that great? Now how do you get real-time articles on i[READER]? We've partnered with Verizon in the US and our iPhone partners internationally. You have real Internet access anywhere with i[READER]. [DEMO]

All right, now I want to show you something incredible. I want to show you how you get all your music, videos, books, photos, documents, email and more on to i[REDACTED]. This is a new way to manage your digital life. Over the past few years we've spent over $800M building data centers. $800M buys a lot of hard drives. When you have a desktop, laptop, iPhone, and i[REDACTED] we wanted to make it as simple as possible to keep everything up to date. Your home computer has an always-on internet connection. iPhone has an Internet connection anywhere. i[REDACTED] has an Internet connection anywhere. See a pattern? We're going to store everything for you. We'll stream music, stream videos, synchronize yours last read book positions, sync photos, documets, email, and everything else. On i[REDACTED], you have access to your entire library without having to download anything. Let's see how it works. [DEMO]

Let's talk about apps. On OS X, anything goes. On iPhone OS, we approve every application to maintain the integrity of the network and OS. You can't have people destroing their phones by downloading a malicious application. People live and die by their phones. But i[REDACTED] is something new. Do we open it up completely or do we approve everything? We've thought long and hard about the pros and cons each way. We decided: we'll let you choose. i[REDACTED] can run a full desktop OS X or i[REDACTED] can run in an iPhone-like mode where it only runs App Store apps. All i[REDACTED]s are in "giant iPhone mode" by default. If you go into the configuration menu, you can enable full OS X. We've satisfied the needs of every day users and advanced users alike. Simple mode gives you a giant, visually stunning, iPhone-type interface. Advanced mode gives you full desktop OS X in its most portable form ever.

So what's under the hood? i[REDACTED] has a super powerful dual-core 2GHz ARM CPU developed by Apple along with 2 GB of RAM, 802.11n wifi, and a cellular Internet connection. We talked about our plans for an always-on streaming device with all the US mobile carriers. Verizon is the best suited to meet the needs of our users now and in the future. They are building out the fastest nation wide data network and we've negotiated unlimited Apple streaming access on i[REDACTED]. All other Internet use through i[REDACTED] is capped at 10GB of celluar data per month. Data anywhere. Data everywhere. The bulit in five megapixel camera can be used for video chat anywhere. We have a gorgeous 13 inch 300 pixel per inch screen developed specifically for i[REDACTED]. It shows text sharper than a laser printer and images sharper than high def.

Battery life. Tablets out there have pretty low battery lives. We've managed to get eight hours of battery, and that's for watching videos and a lot of Internet browsing. That's eight hours of streaming video and audio. With light usage of just Reader and browsing a few websites, the battery life goes up to 30 hours.

So what should we price it at? Well, what do these things normally cost? First, what does i[REDACTED] replace? It can replace a MacBook you carry around when you don't really need the full power of a MacBook. That's at least $999. It replaces an ebook reader. A comprable ebook reader costs $500. We're including two years complete access to all Conde Nast and NYT content -- that's $1200. We're also including two years of our revolutionary media and document streaming service. i[REDACTED] replaces almost $2700 in other devices and services. What should i[REDACTED] cost? We've come up with three configurations. The first includes two years of Verizon Wireless unlimited data transfer between your streaming media and i[REDACTED]. i[REDACTED] + always on Verizon Wireless = $1199. The second lets you add i[REDACTED] to a Verizon Wireless account for $30/month. Two year contract required with Verizon Wireless. $699. The third option is i[REDACTED] with no cellular connection -- wifi only network access. That's $899. Now, when's it going to be available? We're going to be shipping these in May. We're announcing it today because with products like this we've got to go ahead and get FCC approval which takes a few months, and we thought it would be better if we introduced this rather than ask the FCC to introduce it for us. So here we are, and we're going to be shipping it in May in the U.S. We're going to Europe by the fourth calendar quarter of this year. Then Asia after that.

The Mac in 1984 is an experience that those of us that were there will never forget. And I don't think the world will forget it either. The iPod in 2001 changed everything about music. The iPhone in 2007 changed everything about mobile communications, and we're going to do it again with i[REDACTED] in 2010. We're very excited about this. There's an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. "I state to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been." And we've always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will. So thank you very very much for being a part of this.

Questions?]]>
Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:24:21 GMThttp://matt.io/iworkforapple/Apple_January_2010_Event_Keynote_Leak/u6
abouthttp://matt.io/iworkforapple/about/u5
-Matt]]>
Tue, 19 Jan 2010 08:06:35 GMThttp://matt.io/iworkforapple/about/u5
Hazards of Workhttp://matt.io/startup/Hazards_of_Work/u2Day job. The eternal safety net. The side projects can wait -- nay, must wait -- when day job comes calling.

Day job. The infernal contraption taking inputs of time and effort resulting in output of electronic signals which trigger my bank account balance to rise ever so slightly twice monthly.

Day job. Disruptor of sleep. Left to my own devices, I fall into 26 hour days. 17 wakeful, alert, upbeat hours followed by the inevitable sleep of what dreams may come. Day job forces a wake-up time. Day job doesn't care if you can't sleep until 3am. You'll still wake up at 7am to start the next "day." They don't call it day job for nothing. Cyclical sleep deprivation is a constant when day job is around.

Day job. Killer of nutrition. We turn into scavengers seemingly never knowing where our next meal comes from. "Better eat a big meal, I might be working late," the inner voice prods. Left to my own devices, I eat every few hours. Day job alters that to eating 1.5 times between sleep (let's say 0000) and dinner (let's say 1800). 19 hours. 1.5 eatings. No wonder the bodies don't know how to regulate their input.

Day job. Breaking retention time. Side projects. Soon-to-be-Startups. The complex brain state can't be maintained part-time. It's relegated to spans of free time. Weekends. Holidays. Weeks off. After days back at day job it's as if the side projects and soon-to-be-Startups don't exist. They've fallen out of your internal fifo queues. Projects with a life of weeks take months. Projects with a life of months take years.

Day job. Getting home. Tired. Angry. Annoyed. Hungry. Oh, look. There's fresh tv shows to download. That'll get my mind off the absurdities. The shows comfort. Visual drugs let us forget our dreams. The dopamine loop kicks in. Another show is played. Looping. Another show. Loop. And yet another. Are we tired yet? Just one more. One more. Almost tired now.

Day job. Starts over again. 5/7ths of the week. It starts over again. The pain is forgotten. Numbness is natural, dreams are undesirable, and failing is fantastic.

Day job. Comfort. Warmth. Security. Income. Average. Boring. Simple.

Day job must fall. Startup must rise.

]]>
Mon, 04 Jan 2010 15:21:52 GMThttp://matt.io/startup/Hazards_of_Work/u2
how make living playing musichttp://matt.io/found_things/how_make_living_playing_music/tzhttp://www.dannybarnes.com/blog/how-make-living-playing-music but I found the formatting there so horrible I couldn't read it. Here it is with a touch of Text::Autoformat]


I hear so much complaining about this subject, I just wanted to lay my practical experience on you. Free.

First, three pre-conditions:

1. If you are a very materialistic person, skip this article, I don't think you are going to like what it says.
2. If you don't have the music where you want it art-wise, you might want to go work on that, this article isn't going to help you much either. You will be better off by practicing and studying and working on your music instead. You will need to get the art pretty close to where you want it, before you should worry about making much of a living out of it.
3. Determine if you are actually called to be a musician. If you aren't called, all the gyrations in the world, won't make it work. If you are called, no matter what you do, it's going to work. This determination will solve most of the problems you are going to encounter.

Assuming these three conditions are met, you are financially workable and you have the music where you want it and you are surely called into the art, here goes, in no particular order as I am want:

a. Keep your expenses very low. Read that one again. Move someplace cheap. Drive a good used car. Do all the things it takes to be a secure un-monied person. You have to have health insurance. You have to have a reliable car [unless you live in nyc or something]. You have to have some money in savings. You have to pay your taxes. Don't have a big expense of alcohol or drugs or any drag on your system like that. I wouldn't even smoke. Use your head. Spend very little, save as much as you can and don't get into any big expenditure until you can afford it, maybe never. Buy your gear used. Research as much as you can. Think about it really hard before you part with a dollar. Learn how to honestly add and subtract without emotion. If you spend more than you take in, you lost money. I can't tell you how many folks that I run into that have trouble with this. If you bring in more that went out guess what? You just made money. Stick to this low-overhead model, if you end up making a bunch of dough, you already know how to deal with it. If not, you still get to keep working because you don't have a bunch of stuff that you have to dust and pay for. The more overhead you tack on, the harder it's going to be. And the easier it is to get knocked off course.

b. However, don't be a cheapskate. Tithe or donate faithfully whatever your heart tells you to do. Pay your band as much as you can. Never withhold a laborers wages. Tip well. Give street musicians money. Become involved in charity work.

c. Be totally square on your taxes. Render unto caesar that which is caesar'S. If you try to fudge on this, it will come back to bite you every time. Get receipts for everything, 1099 everyone no matter what, unless they are a corporation. Be totally on top of this or you are burning money in a pile on the lawn. Claim every dollar you make and take every deduction. Otherwise you are a drag on the system. Keep perfect records.

d. Your basic infrastructure will have to consist of these things: a good lawyer, bookkeeper, cpa, doctor, a mechanic, an instrument repair person, web person, and someone in your circle that will always tell you the truth. Maybe a backup of each one. And do what they say. These are all musts, even for solo acts. Then later you can add a good agent. Then maybe a manager if you have lots of stuff to deal with like a label. You can grow from there. If you don't assemble a good team of the first eight people on that list, you are likely to have problems every time you turn around and you might not have a way to fix them.

e. If you are going into a deal with any entity, seek two things:
1. The arrangement must be win/win. Win/lose is ultimately lose/lose. Avoid that.
2. Make an agreement that either one of you can walk away at any time and everything is cool.

f. Keep working on your art. Keep taking lessons and studying and working. This is the main art strategy. Research, learn, study, experiment, develop, edit.

g. Don't be afraid to do other things to make money in the short term. This can be a very rewarding experience. Historically musicians have been barbers and bartenders and all kinds of stuff to make ends meet. This is totally fine. Don't worry about it. It's cool. Do what you need to do. Waiting tables will give you lots of stuff to write songs about. I used to call myself the king of the part time job, because I could get up out of my chair at any time and go get a job of some sort. Not that it would be the greatest job of course, but I could go and get something going. I've cleaned pools, painted apartments, done maintenance work, taught music, worked in a factory, threw newspapers, drove a delivery truck, cooked, all kinds of stuff, and none of it killed me. Through it all I was able to keep practicing and writing music and studying what I was doing. Bills? Hey no problem, go flip a few burgers and I can pay that and get back to playing the banjo. Get a job in a dance band whatever I have to do. Just live within your means and you can avoid so many hassles. Hassles interrupt your practice routine.

h. Keep your art the main focus. It isn't about you it's about your art. Do what's good for your art and don't draw attention to yourself as much as the art. If your main focus is on the art, waiting tables is no big deal because you are doing it to support your art. If your main focus is you, you are not going to like waiting tables. You will feel like you are way too good for that.

i. Avoid the performance mentality. I know this sounds ridiculous in a performance based industry. But think about this. Here is a recipe for disaster. My value = my performance + other people's opinions the reason why, is that someday, you are going to have an off day and/or someone is going to criticize you. If you put your value in the world like that, you are going to have a bad time of it. I speak from experience. I only learned this at the age of 46. finding my true value fixed this for me. [Write me if you want to know what it is.] But establish your value outside of how well you did on the gig and what the papers said about you. Otherwise you are going to be miserable and you are going to make everyone else miserable. Somedays you play better than others. This doesn't make you a great person. Somedays you make lots of errors, this doesn't make you a bad person.

j. Don't gossip. Gossip means you aren't in the problem or the solution, you are just talking about someone and probably gaining pleasure from something bad not happening to you or envying something good that happened to someone else. Spend your energy on getting better at your art.

k. Record labels. They can help or they can drag you down. Here's the scoop. If they expect you to be the primary distributor of the product, don't sign the deal. The typical deal is a 90/10 split, you get the ten minus every expense related to the project. Thus you are paying for everything and giving the label 90 percent of the gross. Read that sentence again. If they aren't really really offering you something good in terms of promotion, or something....some tangible quantitized tie-in to something bigger, skip it. You can hire that stuff yourself easier. Talk to other artists on the roster and ask them what they think. Any more, if you are an emerging artist, it's going to be hard to find a label home. They are losing so much dough they only want for sure money makers or somewhat less money losers on the roster, and they are dropping folks right and left. This is all good for you. Take heart. It's a 90/10 deal and you get the 10 and they want you to be the primary distributor of the product plus pay for the whole deal, those are not very good terms. In addition they will charge you eight bucks plus shipping for your own cds that you can make for either zero or one dollar. And they might complain about every little detail. Again if they really have an idea for a bang up thing they are thinking of, by all means have a go. If they are motivated and have a track record and have ideas and are workable, they can really help. However, you might want to have an out. Have an out clause in there. Shooting from the hip, i'd tell you to avoid the whole thing and do it yourself.
It's very likely that the person that brings your act into the label fold will get fired. Then you can get stuck with four years left on the deal and no one will return your calls. Then they just hope you will get another deal and someone will buy out the rest of the contract. Lot of bands close up shop at this point. There are some labels that operate with different models. I have had very good success with them. They tend to be more punk rock style outfits. You might want to investigate that. The standard deal referred to in the preceeding paragraph is pretty hard to profit from unless the contract is on your letterhead. The punk rock deal goes something like this, all the black ink goes in a list, all the red ink goes in a list, find the difference, split what's left if it's a positive number. Fifty fifty. These are really the only deals I ever made money on. The point is, there are some other ways to look at stuff contractually. If the deal is win/win, great. If it's win/lose, skip it. If the label in question is locked into doing contractual things a certain way, this won't be for your benefit. You are creative, your business arrangements can be creative.

l. The main business strategy is to build your own audience. If you have a draw, agents, labels or investors [which I do not recommend] and stuff will come to you. If you skip this step and start trying to talk to industry people and you don't have a draw yet, you are going to be sorry [unless you are really hot looking or have a famous parent and/or willing to sign away the rights to the whole thing of course]. Build your own audience. If you can sell your own records that you make yourself and do your own shows, you can attract the attention of industry folks and get your calls returned. Then you probably won't need them unless you want them. That's a better bargaining position for you. Work on your draw. If you don't have a draw, these are some likely things to look at: where you are playing isn't the right place the music isn't there yet the time isn't right

In any case, the answer is to forge ahead. Keep doing it. Always keep writing and practicing.

Keep working on finding more and better places to play. And new contexts within which to place your work. If something feels right, it probably is right. If you are having to bang your head against the wall in regard to something, it may be better to drop it sooner. The longer you work on something that isn't going to work out job-wise, I think the more time we waste.

I wouldn't get too hung up about opening slots. They are okay and you can increase your draw, but as far as that being the principle strategy you are using, it may not work. The old model of thinking that if you open for someone and do a good job you can get some of their audience interested in your work is not really that reliable. Find a new model. If you meet someone who wants to work on your team, and you are thinking of hiring them and they offer this as the main strategy, this is not a creative workable person. They are working on business models that are decades old. This ploy will work sometimes, but it should be part of an overall deal, not the main thing. Just like if you went to interview a financial advisor and he said, "what we are going to try to do is to buy low and sell high," and behaves as though he has just isolated the plutonium isotope. You might need a little more horsepower upstairs than that if you get my drift.

I work for free when it's kind of my idea to do so. If someone else suggests it, I tend to pass. I also pass on a job where they say they aren't going to pay you but you'll sell lots of cds. And when I did not adhere to this, I was sorry.

I'm not really a self promotion person, and find that sort of distasteful. In my experience the strong self promotion vibe alienates people or attracts folks that you don't want to work with. Maybe I just didn't do it right but this did not work for me. I've had much better results endeavoring to let the art speak for itself.

m. Don't expect to get paid more than you can bring in. If you draw ten people, and the cover is ten bucks a head, you gross one hundred dollars. Not five hundred. Don't get mad at the agent, club owner or whatever because of simple math. You drew ten folks. Guess what? That's better than nine. If you want a raise, figure out how to draw more folks. This is not as mysterious as some would suggest. But you can't ask for more than you bring in the door. If you don't believe this, try producing some concerts of your own.

n. You may not want to hire sidemen that get too worked up about money, it can be hard to make these folks happy. Also when it comes to hiring musicians, you may have to live with them at arm's length for a long time and be involved with them about emotional issues like money and life problems and stuff. You may want a person that's easy to get along with even if they are a little less sharp musically. Of course getting both is best, but if you have to take one or the other, take the one you get along with a little better. If you are in a place where you don't have a lot of choice, you may be forced into hiring someone that's tough to be around. Replace them when you can. Really the best players I know are also the nicest folks. Except for one or two. Many times, in that world of musicians that are struggling to make a living, but haven't really gotten there yet with the music or with the people skills or what have you, they will be the most difficult to deal with. They over-compensate by talking too much, or acting like they know everything, or showing up drunk or being really critical or whatever. When folks have it together, they are at ease and play great, and know when to lay out and stuff. They are also more expensive. It's totally fine and many times necessary to use different players on the recordings than in the shows. If you are a leader, do this with no guilt. If you are a sideman, get ready for it and don't complain. It has to be this way. If you don't believe it, trying putting out your own record. You'll soon see why when you go to record. Sidemen, you can
always practice and take lessons and get your tuning and timing together. Leaders again, get their tax id and report every dollar that transacts. If someone is upset about this, you can't use them. Period. Never fudge on taxes.

o. You really won't be able to work that much in the town where you live. And there will probably be a morass of musicians in your hometown that aren't really committed to the lifestyle that haven't really developed their art that will be complaining loudly about how hard it is to make a living and whatnot and you can easily get sucked into their trip. You'll be better off traveling to various places and developing that. Use local shows to try out new stuff, play with different folks, have fun, play for the home town crowd, etc. but typically you won't be able to work that often at home. Maybe twice a year or something. Don't worry about that. Your market is the whole world, not your hometown. Negativity is a sign to alter the course.

p. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't make money playing music. Six of my pretty good musician friends are millionaires. Three of them multi. Three of them play music that most folks would surely comment, "you can't make any money playing that." Don't tell those guys. Five of them are the nicest people you would ever want to meet. One of them is as mean as a snake. There you go.

q. I would suggest being able to do different things. If you write songs, maybe you can sing on other folk's demos. Maybe play guitar in someone else's band. For years I taught music lessons in a music store. Many folks I work with have a little studio and also play in someone's band. Or they are a chef or tax person on the side. This is all very healthy. I know several folks that are sidemen but have their own writing deal or what have you. This is a good course to take. That way you can take a hit and keep moving. The world doesn't grind to a halt because your label went under.

r. Be wary of someone that talks about gear a lot. Also be wary of folks that tell you how great they are. Stay away from complainers and folks that don't have their lives somewhat together. Sometimes folks need some ministering, which is certainly what we are called to do, but if you take someone out on the road with a big jones, you are going to be sorry... Or otherwise get involved financially, look out. Don't make your own problems or agree to be in a messed up deal. Drama is always bad. Never make a financial agreement with someone that has no problem getting paid for not working.

s. All the trouble in the world is going to come for you in two ways. The things you say, and the things you agree to do. Be very careful about these items.

t. Build alliances. Let's say you play some weird kind of music, make contact with someone in another city that does something similar and offer to set up a concert for them in your town. Maybe they will later help you to play their city or something. Work it out with them. If you can't get into a particular festival, why not have your own festival? Get some like minded bands together, the venues would love to turn over the night to you to produce your own gig, and do it yourself. Sometimes you can do stuff like that yourself easier than you can talk someone else into doing it for you and then paying you, think about that. Going to that big music conference is out of the question for some reason? Why not have your own conference? It might be cheaper to fly the guy in you are wanting to have see your band. That way you only have to put one guy up, rather than having the expense of flying a six piece band to los angeles and have one guy come out out to the show that lives there. He may blow you off anyway. It would probably be cheaper to fly in six a and r guys to where you are and put them up and have them come to the show, than it would be to take the band out to them because of the gear and salary. You also could have their undivided attention, within reason. Don't keep saying "well if I had a label or agent or manager, then I could be happy." Forget that. Forge ahead with your music. Keep working. Develop the music. Come up with different ways to do an end run around conventional wisdom. If you are really called to be in music, the right people will present themselves at
the right time. Build those alliances of simpatico musicians, writers, studio guys, label guys, radio guys. Be nice and help others. I have been fortunate enough to be close friends with lots of folks that are way better at music than I am. I take constant inspiration and encouragement from these folks. I think this has been really good for my work.

u. If for one second you think you aren't getting the recognition your talent deserves, banish this thought immediately. If others tell you this, ignore it. Just keep working on the music. You are probably right where you are supposed to be, learning and doing what you are supposed to be learning and doing.

v. If there's no social context for the music you are making, don't be mad if no one comes to the shows or buys the music. Or if only very few people do. In that case the reward has to be the music. Hey that's a great deal. Also you have lots of freedom to do different stuff. There's no one to alienate. Let's face it, sometimes having no one at the show is a great indicator that you are onto something. I'm serious.

w. Robert keen told me he never regretted firing anybody that he fired, and I agree. If someone is a problem, and they won't fix it, get rid of them. It's okay. You both will be happier.

x. Don't waste materials and time giving a cd to someone unless you are fairly sure they will actually listen.

y. Avoid folks that make your job harder. Sometimes people gum up the works, even when they have a smile on their face. You'll get more done the less of this type you deal with. When you ask someone a direct question and they go into a convoluted story about something else, get ready for the hassle.

z. We are all blessed with different talents. This is as it should be. Don't be upset with someone that doesn't have your talent for something, and don't feel bad because someone else got some talent that you think you want. Move towards grace.

z. I have a system, where if I sense that the gig is going to get weird before I even get there, I cancel the show and walk away. In my experience, if something goes awry before you even get there, it won't magically get better if you commit a bunch of dollars and time towards it. Because of this, I can't remember the last bad gig i've had. Example, let's say i've booked a show next year with a person that I don't really know that well. And as time goes by, he keeps wanting to chisel away at our arrangement, or add stuff for me to do, or whine or complain about the situation, I would cancel the show. Time and time again I learned that it only gets weirder and more difficult when you get there. This is better for the buyer too because then he or she doesn't have to worry about my show anymore. If the buyer isn't really into it, or at least somewhat into it, seriously consider passing on the show.

z. Have interests outside of your art. Especially if you can do this on a non-performance basis, where you can just enjoy the activity and not analyze it to death and be real critical of your own work and stuff. It's so easy to burn out if you do one overwhelming thing for about twenty or thirty years. Sometimes, I just don't play at all and don't think about work and mess around with my sailboat, or work in the yard, or something. Ride the motorcycle. Giving myself a break from the pass/fail mentality. I like just being a regular person.

z. Think of your art as a work in progress. That takes the heat off of it having to be perfect all the time. Keep working on your art, your vision, your catalog. Dedicate your work life to that, and things will work out.

Okay i'm out of letters.

[These are all just ideas, and you may have your own way. Good. Also these are different components and you have to make a sort of stew of them. Maybe you have a little more of one, use a little less of the other or whatever it takes to make it come out right. I've made all these mistakes myself in the trial and error process, which is a fine way of doing things except for the error part.]

Barnes
(from http://www.dannybarnes.com/blog/how-make-living-playing-music)]]>
Fri, 01 Jan 2010 13:31:56 GMThttp://matt.io/found_things/how_make_living_playing_music/tz
newporthttp://matt.io/hazards_of_love/newport/tqnpr recorded on Saturday.

We also learn more about the fabled hurdy gurdy.]]>
Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:15:51 GMThttp://matt.io/hazards_of_love/newport/tq
Oliver with Owesome Accenthttp://matt.io/found_things/Oliver_with_Owesome_Accent/toMay I present Oliver with the most delightful thing I've heard in months:
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Mon, 20 Jul 2009 04:14:16 GMThttp://matt.io/found_things/Oliver_with_Owesome_Accent/to
hey, yahttp://matt.io/found_things/hey,_ya/tl
Hey Ya:


Angels and Angles:


I Will Follow You Into The Dark:
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Wed, 20 May 2009 07:50:06 GMThttp://matt.io/found_things/hey,_ya/tl
benediction goes down together by himselfhttp://matt.io/hazards_of_love/benediction_goes_down_together_by_himself/tk

I leave you with four benedictions and one Mr. Worm, PhD:
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Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:32:36 GMThttp://matt.io/hazards_of_love/benediction_goes_down_together_by_himself/tk
you'll tell them everything's fine, then we'll put you back in your boxhttp://matt.io/technobabble/you'll_tell_them_everything's_fine,_then_we'll_put_you_back_in_your_box/tj
First, under your application drop down menu select Switch Desktop Mode and pick Classic Desktop. The Dell Launcher application was eating over 40MB RAM just to show the unnecessary animated application picker.

Next, launch a terminal and bring your old friends back:
sudo -s
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
# go ahead and reboot if upgrade installed a new kernel
# general goodies
apt-get -y install nmap vim vim-nox vlc minicom dict rrdtool aircrack-ng
# firefox goodies
apt-get -y install adblock-plus firebug mozilla-noscript flashblock
# programming goodies
apt-get -y install erlang mercurial haskell-compiler vlc minicom dict tinyscheme ocaml
# graph/image goodies
apt-get -y install gnuplot graphviz graphicsmagick-imagemagick-compat
# book writing goodies
apt-get -y install texlive-science docbook-* # will fail eventually because of a pdf being included in the HTML docs. after everything is downloaded run again without docbook-* and it'll setup the previously downloaded non-conflicting packages.

# for virtualbox
apt-get -y install linux-kernel-dev build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r` dkms

Download the latest virtual box from:
http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads
and install with:
dpkg --force-architecture -i <downloaded virtualbox .deb>


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Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:26:25 GMThttp://matt.io/technobabble/you'll_tell_them_everything's_fine,_then_we'll_put_you_back_in_your_box/tj
abouthttp://matt.io/technobabble/about/tiSat, 11 Apr 2009 12:45:47 GMThttp://matt.io/technobabble/about/tiwe see youhttp://matt.io/hazards_of_love/we_see_you/th]]>Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:11:54 GMThttp://matt.io/hazards_of_love/we_see_you/thalmost timehttp://matt.io/hazards_of_love/almost_time/tgstreamed on NPR (great quality). If you missed the live performance you can still catch the recording.

If you're wasting time until the show, check out the Vampire Weekend session from last year's SXSW (recorded March 13, 2008).]]>
Thu, 19 Mar 2009 10:17:17 GMThttp://matt.io/hazards_of_love/almost_time/tg