RIP MCA

"As we were leaving he called me over to him and said, 'next time you get a Lionel Richie record instead of ours, keep it, he's the shit.' Then he hugged me. Greatest night ever." —MCA

[via Best of Metafilter]

Social Security

This is a great Rolling Stone piece about Social Security.

[via Best of Metafilter]

Android + Cloud Music

Mobile music is mostly a wonderful experience these days thanks to streaming services like Rdio. But due to licensing issues, we're left to manually deal with small-but-crucial catalog holes — think the Beatles, Zeppelin, etc.

How to do this without resorting to weird desktop apps (like Google's service), convoluted syncing (think Amazon's service), and non-cross-platform solutions (like iCloud)?

Dropbox.

It turns out that if you Favorite music files in the Dropbox app, the Play Music app can see and play them. Unfortunately you have to Favorite them individually (starring folders is being discussed), but for a few must-have albums it's quick. And because you're using the native music app for playback, you can also scrobble.

"an Illusion of Value"

Nick Bilton in the Times:

"'It serves the interest of the investors who can come up with whatever valuation they want when there are no revenues,' explained Paul Kedrosky, a venture investor and entrepreneur. 'Once there is no revenue, there is no science, and it all just becomes finger in the wind valuations.'" 

"When small start-ups I’ve spoken with do make money, they often find it difficult to recruit additional investment because most venture capitalists — and often the entrepreneurs they finance — are not interested in building viable long-term businesses. Rather, they’re interested in pumping up enough hype and valuation to find a quick exit through an acquisition at an eye-popping premium."

Prepaid Cellular Data

I've been experimenting with this since last summer, and have been meaning to write up my results, but Skylar beat me to it: How To Reduce Your Smartphone Bill to ~$30/month

My bill is more like ~$25/month because I don't use much (if any) "voice that's not data" at $0.10/min. And the only reason the bill is "per month" is because AT&T expires unused data after 30 days, which is preposterous.

A few other related things:

• here's Matt's writeup
• this Wikia site lists all the US services that provide prepaid data
• I've tried SIP over 3G/4G and the quality just isn't quite there, so I'm sticking with AT&T's $0.10/min service until something better comes along
• when I'm on wifi, I use GrooVeIP

Unlocked phones + prepaid data + Google Voice = FTW

---
Update, 2012-05-14: apparently as of 2012-04-18 AT&T has decided to couple prepaid data with a recurring monthly voice/messaging plan, effectively doubling the price for folks with usage patterns similar to mine. T-Mobile's $30 plan appears to be the next best thing.

How to Take Long Web Page Screenshots on a Mac

This MetaFilter article answered the question in 2006, but for 2012 and Lion, David Chin's blog has the method that worked for me:

1. pull up the page in question in Safari
2. open Skitch
3. in the Skitch menu, select "Snap Safari"

Cornerhost

Re: Mat's Gizmodo post:

About 10 years ago I'd just finished college, and was weeks away from embarking on a 'round-the-world backpacking trip. I was hoping to publish photos and posts on this weblog as I made my way country to country, and was doing some research on unix hosts that could serve my site. Cornerhost crossed my radar, and I liked its positioning as having a friendly, human touch.

I had a few questions for them, so I sent them an email to get a feel for their support. Michal responded within hours and I was really impressed, so I sent him a few more questions, including:

2001-12-12 

Cornerhost sounds like an awesome personal project of yours... but (and this may sound morbid), what happens if something happens to you? :/

His reply:

Whew. Well, that's a good question, and one I'd not thought about to be honest. (denying my own morality here... )

The server is hosted at rackspace, and they withdraw money from my corporate account, so in theory the server would just keep plugging along until I ran out of money. :) You'd definitely have enough time to figure out I was dead.

And it is a corporation, so the company exists independently of me.

I do have a few trusted friends with the technical skills to maintain the service, or at least find it a good home.

(Once I have some employees working for me, this issue will certainly clear up)

Huh. These are all kinda rough answers. Like I said, I'd never really thought about it. Thanks for bringing it up. I'll give it some more thought.

Huge props to Michal for sending such a warm and honest reply, but the low bus factor worried me. I ended up sticking with Dreamhost, which I highly recommend if their offering matches your needs.

Michal just posted an update on his blog, for those following along. Hope he pulls through whatever's happening in good spirits and health.

New Adventures

Today is my last day at Rdio. I joined two years ago when Carter recruited me to help with some product management, in preparation for our eventual launch. Post-launch I hired some great folks to ramp up our user-facing operational program (community / social / support / etc.), and tapped into some prior experience to help April get our blogging efforts off the ground.

I've always wanted to work at a startup, and I learned a tremendous amount during my time at Rdio. I got exposure to a new-to-me group of entrepreneurs, as well as the sausage-being-made process that is the creation and marketing a new consumer service — which, it turns out, is incredibly challenging. I've also learned that my personality is better suited to earlier-stage, scrappier (and riskier) ventures — my skillset and aspirations are quite unique, and have never found an obvious home in later-stage org charts.

Fortunately Domainr is humming along nicely, and I'll be able to spend more time on it going forward. Randy and Cameron are almost done porting it to new infrastructure, which has understandably taken a while given their duties at Square. We'll be iterating on it soon, time-permitting.

In the short-term I'll be working on a project for Dan and Pete, who've done a fantastic job executing post-Google. We were fortunate enough to be part of Marissa's flock back in 2007, and I'm really looking forward to working with them.

Longer-term, I'm taking my time to find the right combination of people, values and mission with which to fully align my time. If you hear of anything I might dig, or know some folks with whom I should chat, get in touch.

xkcd on money

Things that leapt out at me from xkcd #980:

• $5.63 — daily interest on average credit card debt
• $110.30 — average monthly cost of a smartphone bill.
• $1,820 — one Starbucks latte per day
• $3,050 — a daily pack of cigarettes for a year (NJ)
• ~$4M — amount needed to live comfortably off investments
• tobacco
• ~$11B — annual US spending on lung cancer treatment
• ~$14B — annual US spending on tobacco marketing
• ~$90B — annual US spending on tobacco products
• misc
• the annual cost of owning a dog vs. a cat is roughly the same
• the average hourly wage for a production worker has stayed roughly the same since 1965, but CEO pay during that time has increased over 1000%

Randall is my hero.

Gaming, Marathon, and AFC Ydnar

Tl;dr — gaming is hella fun, Bungie is awesome, and Randy Reddig is a genius. For a smile, visit the links below to go back in time.

Background

After a nearly decade-long hiatus, lately I've been getting back into gaming — specifically Bungie's Halo series for Xbox, and a few other iOS and Android games. I was a die-hard Marathon player way back when, and vividly remember Halo's public unveiling at MacWorld '99. My nerd-tastic devotion even went as far as participation in Marathon's map-making/mod community, which is where I first encountered "AFC Ydnar" and his legendary map, Pfhactory.

Playing through Halo has been a blast, and has brought back some great memories. It prompted me to brush up on Bungie's fascinating history, and 17 years later Marathon still has an active community of fans and hackers, complete with Mac OS X and iOS ports and even a filesharing network.

Ydnar

For some reason, "ydnar" stuck in my mind. It's distinctive and unique, and is "Randy"spelled backward. In the mid-90s I was a teenaged Mac gaming nerd in southeastern Ohio, and this guy Ydnar was somehow dialed in with the actual Bungie people, which blew my mind. He was doing multiplayer sessions with them, designing textures and maps for Marathon Infinity, and even doing web stuff. I and the rest of the community held him in the highest of regard! For example:

The Battle of Brooklyn

Hangar 96

http://forums.bungie.org/story/?noframes;read=41603 — "At the age of 17 Randy Reddig created the Mac game Troubled Souls. It won a 1994 Macintosh Game Hall of Fame award for Best Brain Game."

http://forums.bungie.org/story/?noframes;read=26905 — "This level is interesting in that 3 people worked on it: FM, ydnar, and Colin James. Ydnar's core architecture is stunning, as virtually the entire level is a single open space, along with the 4 towers and very long views."

Inside Mac Games' Marathon mapmakers' IRC roundtable (ftp!)

Marathon Trilogy level credits

12. Whatever You Please — "This was Randy's first level, and he designed it on Double Aught's first hardware purchase ever, the 7100AV. Greg told Randy to name the computer 'Whatever You Please', and so he did. I guess he liked it so much he named the map too. If you've played the 'hard path' on Whatever You Please, you know that this level can be one of the most difficult in the game. Well, Ydnar's original design was just about that hard on the 'easy path', and the 'hard path' was impossible. We used to routinely run out of fusion batteries and be unable to finish. Greg got tired of taking a lava bath and Ydnar scaled back the difficulty so that mortals could complete it. It's one of the more fun levels, in my opinion. Try the 'hard path' (the moving pillars above the walkway)--it's really tough."

20. A Converted Church in Venice, Italy — "Ydnar cranked out Converted Church near the end of Infinity, and it's one of his more complicated designs. The twisting passageways, lava channels, and all those #*^% switches emerged from a design that neither Greg nor I could figure out while it was developing, we just stood back and said, 'Wow.' The level has Ydnar's trademark geometric shapes, with lots of sharp angular features and overlapping hallways. Like the design, I have no idea where the name came from."

24. You Think You're Big Time? You're Gonna Die Big Time! — "Ydnar designed this level in record time. I think it's my favorite to play. Greg made the physics models and the black Phfor. He also came up with the chip trick for getting to the secret area with all the guns and ammo. Come to think of it, we should play this level net. The line is from Carlito's Way."

25. Aye Mak Sicur — "No matter how you spell it, this is the motto of the Kirkpatrick clan: I Make Sure. According to the family coat of arms, the Kirkpatrick claim to fame is stabbing one of Robert the Bruce's enemies in back after the Bruce wounded him in a duel. The miscreant was foolishly hiding in a church, but the Kirkpatrick went inside and 'Made Sure' he was dead. As many people know, this map is based on Phfactory, the map that Ydnar has been working on since the dawn of time. In fact, work on this map spanned the entire development of the game, right up until the last moment when Ydnar was putting the finishing touches on it. It's one polygon short of the 1024 Marathon limit."

http://forums.bungie.org/story/storyarchive.pl?read=5251 — "Randy writes about his own level Ne Cede Malis"

ydnar on Infinity — "Shamelessly archived from Double Aught Software's first generation web site in early 1997. Those who were around at the time will no doubt remember how innovative those early Randy 'ydnar' Reddig designs were."

The Finn on Double Aught and Duality — "Randy was also responsible for the early DA websites. These sites were a lot of fun -- very "designy" with lots of hidden messages, hints and clues many of which only made sense when going back to look at them later. Randy left DA before it had completed its run. more ydnar trivia: ck (Colin Kawakami) once told me that he thought Randy was the best Marathon netplayer he'd encountered. Randy only used the keyboard (the default settings) disproving the theory that mastery of the mouse was essential for netplay. Check out the Battle of Brooklyn films to see Double Aught employees in action in Marathon netplay."

Miguel Chavez — "When I chatted with the DA guys at E3, they mentioned that alot of their HTML inspiration came from jodi.org and some other website whose name escapes me at the moment. I think it goes without saying that Randy's javascript and frame html work on some of the later Duality/DA webpages was nothing short of genius. To come up with such creative brain hemmorages like that by writing code the *wrong way*...."

Colin Kawakami — "There were nights when the earth's orbit poised on a longitude's edge directly beneath the Double Aught offices, and I was able to see three seconds into the future. Those three seconds didn't spare me from a humiliating death at the hands of greg, or ydnar, or monkey, but there might have been a moment of hope, and a pause where I was struck with the absolute FUN."

...and lots, lots more

Now

Ten years later I was living in San Francisco (working on Blogger at Google), and had gotten to know some of the LJ and 6A folks. One night at BradFitz's place someone said "Ydnar" out loud, a name I hadn't encountered in at least a decade. Could this be the same AFC Ydnar from my gaming past? A quick search revealed that coincidentally, Randy also lived in SF and was working at 6A!

Krissy T introduced us in late 2007, and having both left our jobs around the same time in 2008, we went on to start a company together with @ceedub and make Domainr. Though we each have day jobs we still hang regularly, hacking on Domainr and enjoying life in the Bay Area.