Brian Alvey

Marc Orchant was a long-time Weblogs, Inc. Network (WIN) blogger. He was the first blogger I got email from when our servers were hacked during my anniversary trip in July 2005. Sadly, he’s not the first WIN blogger I knew who has died.

At our WINstock dinner two short years ago, Marc didn’t have a problem with my dev team pirating his company’s ssh client, SecureCRT. He even offered to get them legitimate copies and thanked my guys for spreading the word about the product.

He suffered a massive heart attack a week ago and died earlier today. According to the last couple of posts he wrote about quitting Facebook, he was only 50.

He left WIN for ZDNet in early 2006, sending us a message titled “So long and thanks for all the fish…er, fun.” I congratulated him on the move and he had nothing but positive things to say about his experience with us.

The fact that everyone, without exclusion, at WIN was completely supportive and understanding made the decision a lot easier to make. And it’s been a very positive move – I’m writing at a length that’s more comfortable for me and working from a platform much more focused on the level of geek/tech I’m passionate about.

I was really excited for him. A few months ago he made a similar jump out of ZDNet and into blognation USA in a post called So long and thanks for all the fish. (Do you see a pattern here?)

He was a talented, professional and prolific writer and we were lucky to have worked with him on our little blogging network as long as we did.

There’s a Wikipedia page with the speech Nixon was prepared to read in the event that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin didn’t make it home from their trip to the moon.

I think about these kinds of contingency plans companies prepare all the time and sometimes you even read a headline that was written expecting an election or sporting event went one way when it really went the other after the story was published. It’s wild to read what we might have been hearing Nixon tell the country if problems had prevented NASA from bringing the two astronauts back to Earth safely:

To: H. R. Haldeman
From: Bill Safire
July 18, 1969.

IN EVENT OF MOON DISASTER:
Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by the nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at the stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

PRIOR TO THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT:
The President should telephone each of the widows-to-be.

AFTER THE PRESIDENT’S STATEMENT, AT THE POINT WHEN NASA ENDS COMMUNICATIONS WITH THE MEN:
A clergyman should adopt the same procedure as a burial at sea, commending their souls to “the deepest of the deep,” concluding with the Lord’s Prayer.

Chilling!

When I was outed on Twitter, I did a recap of some of my favorite tweets like Matt Heerema and Jeffrey Zeldman do.

Here is another list of some select Twitter statuses, in the very un-blog-like oldest-to-newest order:

• “Would you like me to leave some of this here, as a warning to the new bottles?” http://tinyurl.com/2lj4jt Sep 13
• Just sang Mr. Roboto 50 times. My throat is killing me. Sucrets? Sucrets? You got a Sucrets? Sep 14
• I have a layover in Dulles right now. Why do I feel an overwhelming urge to get on a conference call? Sep 19
• A Pirate Physicist asks: How many joule seconds does it take to walk the Planck? Sep 19
• Ever since that spider bit my hand at the science fair today, I’ve beennn feeeling funnnny. Noww myy hanndss arre sticckkinnng to thhe keys. Sep 21
• “Hey beautiful, I’m just talking to my kids, the back door’s open” replaces “Don’t tase me bro!” as quote du jour. http://tinyurl.com/24bbdl Sep 25
• When Daddy X-acto knifes Captain America’s mighty shield, all those who chose to oppose his knife must yield… Sep 29
• Just hit 300 contacts on LinkedIn. It’s either time to switch to Facebook and start over or blog declaring LinkedIn bankruptcy. I’m torn. Sep 30
• If The Office was 5 minutes long and had nudity, I would watch it every week: http://tinyurl.com/ynrsd5 Oct 01
• @gwenstefani I know you’re secretly following me on Twitter. Happy 38th birthday, Gwen. Go b-a-n-a-n-a-s! Oct 04
• Did anyone *not* expect the Isiah Thomas and MSG verdict? When will you all realize: the Knicks never win. Oct 04
• Not a big fan of Mr. Choketober right now. Some offense from our regular season MVP could have meant a win. That and no plague of insects… Oct 06
• Watching kids’ TV right now. That Benny is a Dora bull! Oct 06
• Rushing a wedding like Pam and Rick’s, it’s tough to remember all the details. Like finding a videographer for the wedding night. Congrats! Oct 07
• Just saw the official medical reason why Roger Clemens was pulled from the game last night: he has a 45-year-old left hamstring. Oct 08
• How lame are you to send me marketing spam addressed to “Brian No longer with company”? I’m no longer at the company! Get it? Oct 09
• Early morning rehearsals with my new band: The Wide Stances. Our slogan: We get your toes tapping! Oct 10
• Got my first AOL layoff-related IM, “I can FedEx it to you with this empty box I just got from AOL.” Was kidding. Grim day turning grimmer. Oct 16
• Just found out that the Detroit Marathon is 26.2 miles long. That’s strange. I could have sworn it was an 8-mile race. Oct 21
• Buzz Lightyear has midlife crisis, buys sports cars and chases women. TMZ’s photo caption: “Two Infinitis…and a blonde!” Oct 22
• @gavin In light of recent news your rapper name “David Cop-A-Feel” isn’t so cute anymore. Definitely go back to using “Sir Milks-A-Lot”. Oct 23

I need to do these recaps more often. It’s therapeutic.

Ten years ago today Niki and I got engaged in Mystic, CT.

I often think about how different we were back then from how we are now and I’m stunned at how lucky I was that we found each other — even more so that we decided to spend our lives together. I thought we were pretty close back then, but I had no clue how much closer we could actually get.

Yesterday, without thinking about the consequences, I Twittered the following: “In Tampa for my big job interview. Just saw Girardi in the airport parking lot. Small world.” I like letting people know what’s going on with me, but sometimes I should think before I tweet.

Yes, it’s true. I have been interviewing with the Yankees to be their manager next season. I am one of their top four candidates and we’re already talking salary, number of years and what I’ll be doing with my comic book publishing company and my new content management system while I focus on getting our team back to the World Series.

In case you hadn’t heard, I reported here first the news that Joe Torre had turned down his contract offer.

Blogs are all about transparency, so to give you an inside look at the process here is a message I sent to George Steinbrenner’s sons this morning:

Dear Hal and Hank,

I wanted to thank you again for the opportunity to interview with you yesterday. I’ve been giving your final question about the other candidates a lot of thought.

Here are my opinions on my managerial competition:

Tony Peña was a great catcher and we all know that catchers understand the game and how to manage it on average way better than any other position player, but he is too valuable to lose as first base coach.

Joe Girardi is a good kid. Another great catcher — the one who caught David Cone’s perfect game in ’99 — but management-wise I think he’s lacking. Sure he was National League Manager Of The Year two seasons ago, but that’s the National League. What if he puts a pitcher in the batting lineup by mistake? Plus, he’s a pretty good broadcaster on your own YES network. I think he deserves more time on camera.

And what can I say about Don Mattingly? First, he’s not a former catcher so managing doesn’t come naturally to him. Second, how can you trust a guy who is famous for stealing food from little kids? Sure, he was screwed out of the ’86 MVP award. (Who gives a pitcher both the Cy Young and the MVP award?) Of course it’s bogus, but is it really your responsibility to heal his old wounds by giving him Joe’s old job?

Anyway, I hope those were the kinds of assessments you were looking for. I’ve got a million more and I can’t wait to get started working with your organization.

Thank you again for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Brian Alvey

So there you have it. I could have gone the other way and focused on my competition’s positives, but why help them choose someone else for my job?

By the way, Hank and Hal used the word “bogus” like fifty times during my interview, so I used it in my note to them as a subconscious bonding tool. It’s a subtle thing, but as you can see I do subtle really well.

After not thinking about LOGO for years and years, it appeared to me twice this week.

The first time was when we were taking a tour of a school my older son might go to next year. They had computer generated drawings in the hallway and someone pointed out that they were teaching LOGO in the computer lab.

The second was in a Wired article this week called Forward 40: What Became of the LOGO Programming Language? The article covered the history of the LOGO programming language and talked about the only thing I remember from using LOGO in fourth grade.

In LOGO you’d type in commands and then a little turtle would carry them out. The turtle was just a triangle and as it moved it would draw out lines with its tail. If you told it this:

FORWARD 50
RIGHT 90
REPEAT 4

then the turtle would draw a square. Of course my favorite was:

RIGHT 1
FORWARD 99999999999

or whatever the highest number was that it would accept. I think you could only tell it to move something like 9999 and then you’d have to follow that with a REPEAT 9999 command. that would cause the turtle to turn slightly and then speed up the screen drawing these overlapping lines across the screen to the right — sort of like messing with the horizontal hold on an old black and white television. It was a trip.

The Wired article invited people to share their own LOGO stories, but I figured I’d put mine here since I hadn’t heard of LOGO since fourth grade and now I’ve heard it come up twice in a week. Wild.

TechCrunch reported that Propeller.com has been doing better than Netscape.com since AOL took the Netscape domain away from the social news team and turned it back into a portal.

The conclusions they found included:

• the audience must have been really loyal to the social news site
• that Jason and the entire Netscape social news team were vindicated for their efforts
• AOL’s latest move destroyed the Netscape brand by another 50%

I think they’re missing the story here. The real conclusion a savvy reporter should draw is that the Propeller team needs to be careful to stay under the radar or a middle manager at AOL is going to take their new domain name away. Just look at all the built-in traffic it has!

I’m betting that the social news site will live at either Compuserve.com or Switched.com by Christmas and Propeller.com will be an instant messenger client.

Joey Manley, who knows a lot about publishing web comics, wrote a great article covering the ComicMix Phase Two launch and focused on the quality of our online comic book reader.

Overall he was really kind to us. Being that he’s a guy who has obsessed over the problem of reading comic books online, his positive review means a lot. He said that there was nothing wrong with the interface, but added that there were a few extra things he’d like to see — some missed opportunities.

First, Joey asked for permalinks to individual comic pages. His commenter Bill said “Comments per page are a must for webcomics.” Commenter Gerhard Bahnsen said “permalinks are a total must” and likes it when each page is commentable. Are you sensing a theme here?

Like Joey Manley, I have obsessed over how to read a tall multi-page comic book online for quite a while and I have some reasons for not having permalinks. There is a solution that lets people link straight to a specific page within an issue, but I’m still not sold on having comments for each page. That topic deserves its own blog post and will get one this week.

Second, he asked for full-content RSS feeds. I could see if I was an independent webcomic artist and my primary goal was to tap into the audience that already read webcomics via RSS feeds. I’d put my whole 60K three-panel strip into a feed for free at full size. I wouldn’t care what method people use to read my daily strip as long as they read it. But providing full-content feeds of multiple full-color 1MB comic book pages — not in our current online reader and not as part of our site — isn’t high on our list. We pay our creators competitive industry rates, you know.

We will definitely have RSS feeds to alert people when our new issues get published and feeds for just about everything else on our site soon. Those feeds will include preview images, probably thumbnails, but not our giant 1024×1574 images.

Joey said that there were probably more ways the site could be “bloggified.” I agree! I’ve built blogging platforms before and, although this is not running on a purely blog publishing platform, I will not be leaving many standard blog features out. The only reason they’re not in there now is that this new platform was built from scratch in the last two months. I left my old platform behind at AOL along with a pretty stellar development team. Hey, that’s the subject of another upcoming post.

His commenters pushed for even more:

Gerhard suggested adding a way to save what place you were at in a story that’s longer than a five-page installment. Fantastic! We were working towards something like that, but it was more along the lines of remembering what issues our members had read. We will add that to our list. I already told Christoph he needed to add that “remembers your place” feature for his inline podcast player months ago. Why do I not think to add these things to my own products? 😉

He asked for a few other features that we have coming up in Phase Three, but rule number one of Phase Three is “No one talks about Phase Three.”

Gerhard didn’t like having to search all over the site to find our issues. Great observation. With just one comic to show the world on Tuesday — and only a couple in the first week — we hadn’t yet had some of the listing pages working. You pretty much had to click the promo links at the top of the home page or on the covers on the home page. Navigation options will increase as we add more content and as we, um, add more navigation.

As of Friday morning we have a primitive comic issues listing page that you can get to from the “Comics” tab at the top of every page. It’s not exactly how we’ll be listing our issues in the future, but for now it works like a blog’s home page — listing content with the most recent stuff on top.

I’m loving these discussions about how best to read tall multi-page comic books online. If you’ve got any suggestions, let me know.

You all know that stars like Mark Cuban, Jason Calacanis, Peter Rojas and Harvey Levin use my old blogging platform, but are there any other famous people using Blogsmith?

Sure there are!

Niki had the food channel on yesterday and I asked her if we were watching Bobby Flay. She said it was Tyler Florence. Ah, I remember that name because I saw him in Blogsmith. He blogs at the clever domain AOLFoodBlog.com. I should have known it wasn’t Bobby Flay because the guy didn’t look stoned. I’m sure Bobby Flay is drug-free, but to me he always seems high. Maybe it’s because he’s a guy who’s always cooking and I’m just reading into it.

Today I clicked on an AOL news story and saw a sidebar listing some featured blogs. Weblogs, Inc. ones? Of course not, but I did see a few names I had heard of before. One was Mo Rocca from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart. He can be found on AOL’s evocatively named group blog News Bloggers. If you just want to go to Mo, you can find a listing of Mo-only work.

More you say? Sure thing.

Here’s Regina Lewis’ blog. She’s on the DIY Network and all over TV.

And Blogging Stocks recently added Jim Cramer from TheStreet.com and CNBC’s Mad Money.

It’s always wild to see someone on TV who also uses Blogsmith for their blog.

I enjoyed Ryan Block’s response to Nick Denton’s assertion that Gizmodo’s traffic has passed Engadget’s.

The most interesting section was the one where Ryan addressed Denton’s claim that “Engadget had… in AOL, a corporate parent which funneled through new visitors.”

“Oh Nick, how I wish. According to our internal traffic systems, yesterday, our second biggest day for traffic ever, AOL referrers accounted for 0.2% – yes, less than one half percent – of our total page views. On our biggest day ever, the day the iPhone was announced, our AOL referrers accounted for a record 2.1%; in all of August, they represented less than 0.5% of all traffic. The vast majority, I believe, are just coming from AOL search (which uses Google, where we’re routinely higher ranked than our competition), too – not from promo.”

It’s bad corporate strategy for the past of online publishing (portals) to have its hands on the steering wheel while the present of online publishing (blogs) sits in the back seat repeatedly asking, “Are we there yet?”

A better strategy would be to find the future of online publishing.