Disqus - Latest Comments for Christopher Blizzard

Re: Tumblog Integration

Christopher Blizzard — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 08:56:35 -0000

Woot. Very excited to not see three posts from you every time you post something on whoisi.com.

Re: September 11th

Christopher Blizzard — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:11:46 -0000

My very first blog post was on September 10th, 2001. A strange date, turns out. I just re-posted something that my brother wrote on the 11th because I didn't know what to say.

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/html/2001/09/index.sh...

Re: Initial Thoughts on The G1

Christopher Blizzard — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:52:10 -0000

I wrote up my own comments after living with the G1 for a couple of days:

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=852

Sounds like you have a different starting point, coming from the blackberry and outlook. Interesting to get that other viewpoint.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

Christopher Blizzard — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:39:29 -0000

There's no Y axis. :)

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

Christopher Blizzard — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:56:31 -0000

Firefox + Addons means that if a human can read it, technology can pluck it out easily. Seems so odd that they work so hard to avoid the one thing that makes them popular and a centerpiece for content on the web.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

Christopher Blizzard — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 20:16:25 -0000

Love it. Love, love, love.

Re: Fred Wilson Dot VC

Christopher Blizzard — Mon, 11 May 2009 11:03:43 -0000

This single has been out of stock for a very very long time on amazon. Very sad about that. I _think_ you can get it on iTunes, though.

This was in the first 500 days of summer trailer along with some serious-sounding voice-over by Leslie Nielsen.

See also: Science of Fear: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1vkXxn65ec&fmt=18

You also might like Rogue Wave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86YGj5D6I3k

Re: What is whoisi.com? (Scripting News)

Christopher Blizzard — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:42:29 -0000

Full outline is here if you like:

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=348

And, uhh, thanks for all the traffic. I think. I'm filled with a deep fear now as I watch the logs stream by.

Re: What is whoisi.com? (Scripting News)

Christopher Blizzard — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 20:02:15 -0000

Yeah, I do. I suspect that as long as you and scobelizer don't link to it in the same day I might be OK. :)

I did a bunch of perf work ahead of announcing and and I'm glad I did. Still not doing any aggressive caching of data yet, though. So it all translates to a good number of database hits on a lot of those page loads.

Trial by fire. I love it.

Re: What is whoisi.com? (Scripting News)

Christopher Blizzard — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:42:34 -0000

I looked for a partner for a long time to build this with but couldn't find anyone else with the same passion, drive and time to dedicate to it. I was passionate enough to try it on my own. But I would have killed to have one more person. I often think that a team of two is probably the best way to build something - a web site, a company, a product - anything, really. But finding that match is really hard.

Re: A way for Twitter back in the pink? (Scripting News)

Christopher Blizzard — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 00:07:14 -0000

Totally with you here Dave. I would _love_ if there was a way for whoisi to pull that data from twitter in a far more efficient way. I'm going to try to build that API for whoisi as a demonstration at some point here just to try to lead the way.

As an example, at the top of this writing whoisi now has 1,467 twitter accounts listed. I'm turned my polling rate down to once every 30 minutes or so (or, really, random number between 1 minute and 60 minutes.) At that rate it's still once per second. Scale that up to 10k accounts or 20k accounts. The bandwith and CPU usage just to poll because we can't design something better is obscene.

For sites like this a nice publish/subscribe system with a way to "catch up" would be great. Requires tracking some state but let's be honest, most people can figure out how to cache a last known ID.

This is also one of the reasons (besides time) that there's no RSS feeds for lots of whoisi so far. I don't want to end up in the same situation as twitter or friendfeed. We can do better.

Re: I wish Twitter would partner with Gnip (Scripting News)

Christopher Blizzard — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:10:23 -0000

Haha, nice. I had some discussions with one of the guys @ gnip before I announced whoisi. They are doing some neat stuff over there.

Re: Oh happy day!? (Scripting News)

Christopher Blizzard — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:03:37 -0000

whoisi just grew support for identi.ca

Re: Personal Site of Bryce Roberts

Christopher Blizzard — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 22:36:13 -0000

I have no idea what it is. But it sure looks neat.

Re: Dear John Lilly of Mozilla: You are a craven, hypocritical vagina, and I hope you get crabs.

Christopher Blizzard — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 15:16:15 -0000

Actually, Mitchell drives a Subaru.

Re: New Speedway Boogie

Christopher Blizzard — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 08:31:36 -0000

I just leave this and the previous tab open and play them every once in a while through the day. This album will be in my hands shortly.

Re: New Speedway Boogie

Christopher Blizzard — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:00:39 -0000

There's this moment in this video, about 3:30 in that I love:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1jyta_fleetwo...

When she's singing and he raises his hand up to his chin. Gets me every time. Something really special there.

Re: New Speedway Boogie

Christopher Blizzard — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 15:23:42 -0000

Great stuff. Keep it coming.

Re: New Speedway Boogie

Christopher Blizzard — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 22:20:45 -0000

Love the last bit here -

"...you'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you..."

Thanks for this.

Re: New Speedway Boogie

Christopher Blizzard — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:14:09 -0000

Yes, wow, good. Love it.

Re: louisgray.com: Twitter Chokes Unauthenticated API Requests, Sites Gasp for Air

Christopher Blizzard — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 09:37:37 -0000

I had the same problem with whoisi.com which used the unauthenticated API as well. However, once I made the request they quickly whitelisted an account for me to use and I was back up and running in very short order.

I would happily use the authenticated API if it means that twitter can offer better service to its users and people like me that are using it in ways that twitter did not expect.

Re: Andrew Weissman

Christopher Blizzard — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 15:49:09 -0000

You are so right. I saw this on TV back when TV was something you had to watch live.

Re: Andrew Weissman

Christopher Blizzard — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:54:16 -0000

He's got a new tour going, you know. Going to be in Boston soon. I have a tab open in a window to remind myself to get tickets.

Re: betaworks

Christopher Blizzard — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:36:22 -0000

Haha, I tried this with whoisi. The lack of being able to create a place and sense of identity, create accounts and network with other people turns out to be kind of anti-user. I think that fundamentally that people like to connect with people.

Re: this is supposed to be a good thing?

Christopher Blizzard — Sat, 26 May 2007 09:33:27 -0000

Totally not related to the meat of your post, which I tend to agree with, but that's one of my favorite episodes of Sports Night. That reference draws a distinct picture in my head of what you are feeling right now.

A large part of Firefox's success was built on keeping Internet users safe. What happens when we reach the point where we need to start keeping people safe from Google as well? That, sir, is going to be a hard day.

Re: Nerd Muppets

Christopher Blizzard — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 10:45:02 -0000

Awesome.

Re: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

Christopher Blizzard — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 13:40:41 -0000

I loved that book. One little geeky think I loved in it was the fact that you can tell based on the amount of a certain type of carbon in your body what percentage of you is "made of corn." Mind blowing, really. With all the cheeseburgers and chips I've eaten in my life I'm sure I'm more than half corn at this point.

Corn has done a great job of domesticating us.

Re: good airport, bad airport

Christopher Blizzard — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:50:42 -0000

Yeah, I can't stand Heathrow either. The lines - sorry - queues eat away at my soul. You also forgot to mention the crazy inter-terminal busses that drive on the wrong side of the road.

Re: Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy

Christopher Blizzard — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:26:40 -0000

I was just going to put this on my amazon list when I suddenly realized that I've read it, quite a long time ago, on a lark. I don't remember the details of the book but I do remember how it left me feeling. The writing was thick and amazing. The story and characters felt completely naked to me. I remember being dazed by it for a long time after.

Re: Dr. Horrible

Christopher Blizzard — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 16:12:57 -0000

Huge piles of awesome. Thanks, John! Made my day.

Re: How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity

Christopher Blizzard — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 10:35:35 -0000

It's especially interesting given the way that the animation industry works. I did a little work with the studios at my last job and the usual model is that people are hired on in project-driven contracts. i.e. you're there to help render the latest toy story movie and that's it. The best people are offered contracts for the next project and most are let go. It's a brutal system.

It's good to see some thoughts on this front from one of the studios.

Re: one of my favorite software design blogs

Christopher Blizzard — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:20:06 -0000

I'm using Things now. It's changed the way that I work. Love it.

Re: Loaf

Christopher Blizzard — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:32:45 -0000

I still love the word Loaf. And Monkey. Also Pork. How about some Pants?

Re: Today, the slow moving train wreck ends

Christopher Blizzard — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:59:24 -0000

For what it's worth I had not seen either the MLK or the speech on race. And I am blown away by both of them. Finally, someone who talks to people like they are adults on the topic and someone who can at least give some hints as to the underlying story on all sites. Pretty excited and hopeful about tonight.

Re: Microsoft: A case study in mismanaging a business eco-system

Christopher Blizzard — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:26:48 -0000

Tim O'Reilly's recent essay on working on things that matter seems relevant here:

http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/work-on-stuff-...

"Take Microsoft. They started out with a big goal, "a computer on every desk and in every home," and for many years unquestionably created more value than they captured. They helped grow the PC industry as a whole; they built a platform that helped many small software vendors to flourish. But over time, they began to capture more value than they created: as the cost of PCs plummeted, hardware vendors had to survive on the slimmest of margins while Microsoft collected monopoly rents; bit by bit, Microsoft consumed its own developer ecosystem by building the features of successful startups into their own products, and using their operating system dominance to crush the early movers. As I've written elsewhere, I believe that Microsoft must re-commit itself to big goals beyond its own profitability, and to creating more value than it captures if it is to succeed. (Danny Sullivan wrote a great piece about the strategic relevance of this very idea just last week, Tough Love for Microsoft Search.) "

I tend to agree with this. Big companies with leverage need to be able to walk away from possible value with the understanding that the soft value of the ecosystem is more important than the short-term value of competing with those who complement them.

I think that one of the main problems is that that "soft value" is very hard to measure when compared with the hard dollars you realize that you're leaving on the table. And if you can't measure it it's hard to compete in a conversation inside of one of those companies. I can almost hear it in my head now where one guy says "these things help us" and someone else says "that's money we can return to our shareholders and they might grow to kill us anyway." So the money-left-on-the-table argument wins.

This is one reason why I'm a fan of companies that can look past the next quarter, or don't have to worry about that pressure at all. And I wonder what Microsoft would look like if it went private.

Re: Articles I’m digesting - Feb 13 2009

Christopher Blizzard — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 19:44:29 -0000

This is my saddest thought on the recent US federal bailout: it's $800BN without a single purpose. Money spread around to spur economic growth without growing anywhere in particular. What's the future to be?

To use a (bad) comparison I feel like they are trying to fill potholes in the current road instead of taking the road to somewhere else it needs to be.

Re: Water Footprint and the bottled water debate

Christopher Blizzard — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 14:29:38 -0000

Weird. I'm made crazy by the bajillion plastic bottles that are used. But beyond that? I could care less. (Other than we need a general carbon tax that might be included in the price of a shipped bottle of water.)