monkinetic weblog

Intercom.io and feature discovery

2012-03-01T14:50:00-07:00

This is really a two-part post squished into one post, and it’s pretty nerdy

After a recent – really good – customer experience with sprint.ly that was started over their Support channel, I looked around and discovered they were using Intercom for their support/outreach tool. I created an account (free while in beta!) and started messing with it for Pushcode.

Intercom does a fabulous job introducing you to new features byt doing three things:

Tease you at the bottom of the screen with a message: “You should enable secure mode to protect your users”. There’s a “No thanks” link to make it go away, and a progress bar based on how many of these recommendations you’ve actually implemented.

If you click: Intercom pops you to a screen that shows you exactly the javascript code (even customized with your app-specific ids) to add to your page to enable the suggested feature.

Finally: when you’ve got the code implemented they can tell from the traffic coming from your site that you implemented it, and they adjust that little progress bar.

It’s amazing. I want to implement every feature they throw at me. More, please.

The nerdy part

Intercom provides PHP and Ruby sample code for generating the MD5 hash required by one of their security features:

  user_hash: ‘<%= Digest::SHA1.hexdigest(‘randstring’ + current_user.email) %>’

Pushcode is written in Django and Python, and of course I know how to MD5 a string in python, but it’s doing so in a template is not a built-in. I implemented a simple template filter that does it for you:

Feel free to grab the code and improve on it (though it’s pretty stinkin’ simple).

Sparklines from Graphite

2012-02-16T14:25:00-07:00

I decided I wanted sparklines for an app dashboard I’m working on, and wondered if I could get them straight from Graphite’s URL API. Turns out you can:

http://your.graphite.example.com/render\
?from=-2hours\
&height=20\
&until=now\
&width=120\
&hideGrid=true\
&hideLegend=true\
&hideAxes=true\
&bgcolor=white
&fgcolor=black\
&margin=0\
&colorList=black\
&target=alias(stats.your.metric.here)

Life Hacks

2012-01-17T13:26:00-07:00

A short collection of tips & hacks I’ve been implementing lately:

Move the Sugar: When I decided to go ahead and add a single teaspoon of sugar to my coffee, I had to move the sugar to a new location so that I could disassociate it from my previous tablespoon-plus regime in the old location.
Working-from-home Hack #1: Wear Shoes: Bare feet, socks, and slippers (I’ve done all three) put me in a chill-out mode. Switching to my newly purhcased hiking shoes makes me feel like I can stomp on anything, including software bugs. Weird, but WFM.
Working-from-home Hack #2: Turn On Some Lights: Sitting in a dim room staring at a monitor just makes me want to play MineCraft. A couple lights brighten my mood and my productivity.
Do It Now: I’m a fabulous procrastinator. Right now when I see something needing doing, I’m trying to do it — and that’s easier to do if I implement point 2.

More as the situation develops.

Habits Update

2012-01-17T09:35:00-07:00

I posted a week or so ago that I was starting to work on my health, cutting a lot of carbs and sugar out of my diet, and focusing on foods that were actually profitable for my body. Here’s an update:

Say What?

So apparently the scale thinks I’ve lost 7 pounds this last week. #lowcarbs
— Steve Ivy (@steveivy) January 17, 2012

As I mentioned on Twitter earlier, my scale seems to believe that I’ve dropped 7 pounds in the last week, after cutting out most sugar and a lot of the carbs I was existing on. I have no reason so far to doubt it. I don’t know that those pounds missing are visible yet, but I feel much better. My energy level isn’t peaking and diving all day – I’m more consistent. This is making me more productive – both in front of the computer and not.

Changing habits, and making new ones, is the name of the game here. In my first post I talked about my coffee (more, my cream and sugar) habit, and how it was killing me slowly. Since then, I first cut back to unflavored, unsweeted heavy cream, and no sugar. That simply wasn’t tenable, so I’ve gone back to unflavored half and half (the flavored ones are sweetened to the tune of over a teaspoon per tablespoon of creamer – 1/3 the mass is sugar!!) with a flat teaspoon of sugar.

For a week I was avoiding the sugar container in the cupboard, and had almost trained myself to reach around it for the coffee. But when I decided that I wanted to start using some sugar, I knew I’d have to make sure I didn’t fall back into the Old Ways. So I moved the sugar container to the pantry, and told myself “one teaspoon” – I even used the measuring spoon. Must make new habits!

This would have been awful just 3 weeks ago – I was inured to the taste of sugar and it would have tasted terrible. But now I can taste the sweetness in just a teaspoon (4g) of sugar. I’ve also cut out a lot of other foods with “hidden” sugars (goodbye orange chicken :–( ).

Go Outside!

In addition to the food changes, I’ve started working on getting more active. I finally found a pair of hiking boots that work for me — Merrell Moab Ventilators (wide) — so yesterday the family and I tackled Piestewa Peak, a brutal climb up 1.2 miles of, basically, stairs. The Summit trail starts at 1400 ft., and ends at 2608 ft., for a 1200’ rise.

While Jodi and the girls turned around at the 2/3 mark, my 8yo son and I pushed up to the top, and he made it like a champ. I feel great today but imagine that my body will have it’s revenge soon enough!

Nevertheless, I’ve got several hikes planned in the near future at some of our favorite spots, and I’m going to get out on the bike more as well. I’m off to a good start, and I’m going to make this year count.

Yelling at Kastner

2012-01-10T16:45:00-07:00

Erik Kastner and I have a sort of running gag going where I try and come up with some awful pun or cultural reference to greet him with in the morning, with a screeam of “KAAASSTNNEEEERRRRRRR” somehow worked in. Sometimes they work and sometimes they… don’t.

Now you can decide.

Habit Breakpoints

2012-01-09T10:40:00-07:00

One of the results I want to see from this year is to drop about 15 pounds from my “I-sit-at-a-computer-all-day” belly. I’ve never been a “dieter”, and I’ve scorned traditional diet foods / drinks, especially those with the artificial sweeteners in them, and prided myself on my commitment to good old-fashioned American refined sugar. Oh, I do love my sugar (and likewise, the sugars-in-waiting, carbs).

But over the last year I’ve grown forwards at a much faster rate then, say, upwards. Sideways hasn’t fared a lot better. I still enjoy the occasional hike or bike ride, but I haven’t got the energy, stamina, or interest to do the outdoorsy stuff Jodi and I used to love. This started to bug me, as did the decidedly forward thrust of my various American Apparel nerd shirts.

So after talking to some friends in the medical profession about it, Jodi and I decided to check out Jorge Cruise’s Belly Fat Cure book. Now, I know. It pains me to even link to a possibly faddish diet book with the words “belly” and “cure” in it. But the research we have been doing lends credence to the main idea behind the book: that sugar and carbs (including hidden sugars in all kinds of foods) are the thing that trigger our bodies into storing fat (via the insulin produced by the body in response to sugar in the bloodstream).

So, while we may or may not stick to the exact plan outlined in the book, we’re definitely starting already to reduce the amount of sugars we intake, and carefully checking foods we already have for those grams of sugar (4g of sugar is about a teaspoon of granulated refined sugar). And the thing that’s making it tough is the collection of unconscious processes we’ve developed for living life without having to think too much: habits.

Morning Coffee Notes

Take my morning coffee, for example – this is one that’s killing me. I’m no hipster. I like my coffee sweet and de-bittered with an artificially-flavored store-bought creamer. Getting a cup of coffee for me looks like this:

Take down a mug
Pour ¾ full with coffee (brewed dark with about 2 Tbsp of grounds/cup)
Reach up to coffee cupboard
Take down Tupperware™ container of sugar
Add a ludicrous scoop of sugar
Snap lid back on sugar container
Close cupboard
Carry mug to kitchen island (I work from home)
Open refrigerator
Remove large container of creamer
Cream-ify coffee
Close creamer
Replace in fridge
Stir coffee
Place spoon in sink
Enjoy!

This all takes about 45 seconds max, and can be accompished while checking email on the iPhone, talking with Jodi about the day, or humming Prodigy tunes, and I can be back at my desk going “where did this coffee come from?”. It’s engrained. The human mind has an incredible capacity to store repetitive tasks in some kind of highly optimized, opaque data structure that can be played back without any input from the higher-order brain.

As a nerd, I love this. The times I’m paying attention, it’s a little rush going through this ritual with precision and efficiency. No time is wasted between getting a mug and that first sip. But… now I look at that ludicrous scoop of sugar I’ve been using, and get a little sick to my stomach. I have little doubt that this insidious – and oh so delicious – ingredient has been contributing to my expanding circumference.

Breaking Point

My morning routine obviously needs some changing, and with it being so ingrained, I need some ways to break up the routine so my higher-order brain can make some decisions. In programming we call these “breakpoints”, and when debugging, the program will pause at the breakpoint and let us examine the state of the decision tree and what the program is going to do next. So, I’m doing some simple life-hacking.

My first step was to put a small thing of Truvia (a sugar substitute based on Stevia) next to the malicious sugar container in the cupboard. It’s in the bright white and green packaging it came in, so it draws my attention and triggers a decision – proceed to the normal ludicrous scoop of the blissfully evil sugar, or try switching to something less likely to asplode my waistline and push me into diabetes?

Seeing as I don’t much care for the taste of Stevia (and by extension Truvia), I’ve tried (by steps):

reducing my application of sugar by 2/3
replacing ½ of that with Truvia
not using sugar altogether

So far step 3 is working the best: only reducing the sugar to 1/3 my previous amount still adds enough to trigger my craving for more. Truvia is sweeter than the equivalent amount of sugar, so reducing the sugar yet again by half and adding Truvia made it sweeter, but still had the strange taste I associate with artificial sweeteners, and the added sweetness seems to still trigger my sweet tooth.

Getting rid of the sugar completely has been a hard adjustment, but in the long run is going to be the best for me. And the habits die hard: I still reach for the sugar container when fixing a cup, then have to put it back. Perhaps the next breakpoint will be to just remove it from the cabinet.

Life-Hacking

Ultimately, this whole quitting-sugar thing is one huge life-hack: we’re trying to disrupt lifetimes of sugar addiction and do some major mental and physical re-wiring. It’s too early for me to know if it’s working, but I’ll probably post on my progress over the next few months. Have any eating habit hacks to share? Ping me at @steveivy on Twitter or Google mail.

Accounting for Web Services

2012-01-02T13:22:00-07:00

Heading into the new year, Jodi and I have been working with our bookkeeper to re-categorize some of our expenses, and we’re realizing that some of the costs associated with running a web service don’t fit easily into standard accounting categories. If you’re running a small business / web services company, how do you categorize the following?

Subscription services like Github?
Hosting services like Linode
Domain name purchases
SSL Certificate costs

Any guidance or ideas would be appreciated! Ping me @steveivy on Twitter or steveivy at google mail, and I’ll post a followup with the results.

Merry Christmas 2011

2011-12-24T12:22:00-07:00

See you next year!

Sickie

2011-12-15T13:29:00-07:00

Our sick 10yo watching Land Before Time movies, right outside my office.

At least it’s better than listening to the 6yo watching Barbie movies. Barely.

What it is is beautiful

2011-12-15T10:48:00-07:00

This brings a tear to my eye, for what was, and what is.

The Daring Fireball App

2011-12-14T14:12:00-07:00

Maybe someday there will be a Daring Fireball app, but I still haven’t thought of a reason to make one that would be better than just reading DF on the web.

When I read John’s comments in his latest Fireball post, my initial reaction was to completely agree. Daring Fireball is a well written, simply designed, and great blog. Almost immediately thereafter, however, I had a thought: what if there was an app that, once purchased, allowed you to comment on Fireball posts? Sort of pay-for-play if you will. The app would:

Handle some kind of authentication
Send push notifications of new Fireball posts
Allow the user to comment on posts
Send push notifications of new comments for any post that the user commented on

Importantly, the comments would only be available in the app, not on the public web, similarly to how Instagram works. I think this would raise the bar on who is going to comment and what they say, in that 1) only other paying DF App users would be participating in the conversation, and 2) no publicly-visible comment view to attract trolls.

Good idea? Bad idea? Too much like the “get our app” popups on the big media sites?

Obnoxious

2011-12-07T20:10:00-07:00

Term.ly defines “obnoxious” as:

obnoxious adjective causing disapproval or protest; “a vulgar and objectionable person”

Around our house we’ve taken to defining it for the kids as “annoying, on purpose”. Everyone knows what that means.

Raising a Leftie

2011-12-04T18:09:00-07:00

My 8 year-old son is left-handed in a family of right-handers, and I’m looking for tips to help him make the most of it without feeling like the odd-man-out. Neither of his siblings care, so I’m not worried about him taking flak at home, but he’s picked up a variety of techniques for doing things and I want to know how to best help him. He writes and eats left-handed, but kicks right-footed. He throws a frisbee ambidextrously (though throws stronger left-handed, but prefers right-handed). He plays violin right-handed. It’s very strange.

For Christmas, we’re getting him a 36” student guitar that I could get strung left or right handed. I’ll teach him to play, but I’m not sure whether to encourage him to play leftie or rightie. Thoughts?

Swan Swan H

2011-12-03T10:44:00-07:00

Derek Powazek remembers, and offers a strange, beautiful explanation for, one of my favorite R.E.M. songs, Swan Swan H. (It’s listed as ‘Swan Swan H’ on the album tracklist, but everyone calls it ‘Swan Swan Hummingbird’ after the first three lyrics.) I too learned to play the song, and while I don’t have the same associations Derek does with the tune (it can only be described as haunting), it is one that has always touched me deeply.

And damn, Derek:

I jumped out of bed and drew this on the whiteboard in the hallway,

Whiteboard in the hallway: what a nerd. *jealous*

I’ll leave you with a teaser for Derek’s theory on the meaning of the song title:

LOUDER Dubstep

2011-12-02T12:26:00-07:00

Enjoying this track quite a bit, and the dancing is incredible.

A little more Responsive

2011-12-01T23:10:00-07:00

Erik Kastner was kind enough to fork my blog and help me fix the layout of this site at iPhone sizes (thanks Erik!). Behold the power of the open-source weblog.

I really need to understand Responsive Design

2011-11-30T21:57:00-07:00

‘Cause this site looks like crap at less than 700px wide.

New site: kinda like the old site

2011-11-30T13:38:00-07:00

After procrastinating for many months, I’ve finally moved this site off of Typepad and into Octopress the fancy-pants Jekyll variant. This is no means any kind of indictment of Typepad — it’s a great platform that has served me well for a few years. But it was time for a change: the hacker, poker, and pusher-of-buttons in me needed a new platform to hack, poke, and push on.

The site is now hosted on Linode, who are awesome, the blog is simple to update and snappy to serve. There are some differences, visual and otherwise. The design is more responsive now (through the small sizes are not perfect yet). I’m also not linking to the monthly archives any more in the sidebar, though you can access them through the Archives link in the main nav. I’m also including recent tweets and a list of some of my github repositories, since they came standard with Octopress and they’re kinda neat, in a nerdy way.

This is also a bit of a life-hack: by switching platforms I’m hoping to get back to the heart of why I started blogging. It was simply about having a platform for sharing my life and interests, regardless of what everyone else was doing, and that’s where I want to get back to.

I Need a New Coffee Maker.

2011-11-22T07:04:00-07:00

For Christmas this year, the “office” will be buying me a new coffee maker. I love my coffee. Like any nerd, caffeine is a staple of my pre-2:30pm routine. However, I do not:

Feel the need to either “simplify” or “purify” my coffee-making “experience” – IE, spend 25 minutes making a contemplatively pure cup of slow-dripped, organically-grown, fertilized-by-unicorns, hand-ground coffee.
Need a $600 espresso machine with its own water supply, 14-stage carbon filter, and included barista named Pablo.
Want a machine that requires individually-packaged, multi-flavored “capsules” of coffee to do its job. I have an excellent coffee shop that imports and roasts their own beans – daily – a mere 2 miles away.

So, while the Aeropress may be the stuff of coffee purists’ dreams, I just want a good-quality automatic coffee maker that can take a reusable filter, and preferably (better yet, optionally) can dispense straight into a cup (I’m sick of coffee pots).

Any recommendations? Ping me on Twitter or steveivy at google’s email service dot com.

Porting from Jekyll To Octopress

2011-09-24T00:00:00-07:00

Step one, ask Imathis to clone your blog and convert it for you. :–)