I first heard about OAuth(Open Authentication) while skimming throught the Twitter API[link] where there was a notice that Twitter would be supporting OAuth in the near future.

When will Twitter support OAuth?

We'll be launching a private beta in January, 2009 (early February at the very latest). We'll be allowing pretty much anyone who can provide us with cogent and comprehensive bug reports to participate in the private beta. Once we're happy with how OAuth is working, we'll move to a public beta. Once the rest of the bugs are ironed out, OAuth will become the supported authentication system for Twitter, and HTTP Basic Auth will be deprecated after six months. via Twitter Api FAQ[link]

So what is Oath? It's an open protocol for working with protected remote data services, and it's a big step forward in data portability. A big part of the next iteration of the web will be the ability to have one profile, that follows you around, so instead of signing up for 8 social network services and filling out your profile on each one, you'll be able to take your one profile and apply it to whatever service you sign up for. OAuth while making a number of other data access scenarios more palatable, like RIA's, mashups... It will make it easier to build a social network or tool that not only interacts with other services you've signed up for, but pulls your profile info, and applies it or uses it across services. The reason it's so important is that by being open source and having the backing it does, it will evolve as similar projects are to be secure, free, easily accessable, and widely adopted.

For consumer developers, OAuth is a method to publish and interact with protected data. For service provider developers, OAuth gives users access to their data while protecting their account credentials. In other words, OAuth allows a user to grant access to their information on one site (the Service Provider), to another site (called Consumer), without sharing all of his or her identity. via Wikipedia[link]

Read more about the project, how it started and where it's going click here. Read over the docs click here. Grab an OAuth library for your language of choice here.

In light of some of my other recent posts, and a lot that's been going on in my personal life, I've reached the point where I have to rev things up. It's not the first time, but it's in my method to undulate between intense productivity and complete lethargy. It doesn't matter how far in or out you zoom, or the scope of things you consider, this pattern repeats itself regardless of what I do to regulate it and once again I'm giving up trying. Although it's probably relevant that I've learnt to master it better and take advantage of it more fully. Specific goals aren't relevant to this blog at this time, but they'll probably show up through my work, and writing and some point or another. With that said, I'm going on a productivity binge, I've already been awake for 9 hours, but I've got about 14 Keith and The Girl episodes to catch up on which works out to ~20+ more hours before I turn in. If all goes to plan I'll be up bright and early 3am Monday morning. I was just reading about this study on temptation that Kristian Ove Myrseth and Ayelet Fishbach of the University of Chicago and Yaacov Trope of NYU conducted recently. They wanted to see how our options and the availability of something, particularly indulgences that have negative long term effects, affect how much we want that particular thing. "Every self-control challenge is a tradeoff of one kind or another," and they seem to have uncovered that when the option to indulge in something we want is taken away, our wanting and craving for that thing increases. Read about the studies here: [link]

Youtube has a dimmer switch now.. Clicking on it dims the page around the video you're watching.. like a dimmer switch. It would be great if the whol page went black, but instead it goes dark grey and some elements on the page are still white, which is just irritating.

It seems the last week or so I've fallen behind in blog posting, laundry, twittering, working out, and a whole host of other things. I did manage to get a few things done work wise though. Typically when I start a new project I experience this hyper-focused state of being where I don't sleep, eat, or anything else beyond the bare minimum needed to survive-- during a typical bout 54 hour days separated by 4 hours sleep is normal; no alarm clocks or caffeine necessary. For some reason I've slipped into this without any particular thing being in focus, and the chance of actually focusing on anything significant over-ridden by reeally wanting to watch the inauguration, and being constantly glued to CNN for a couple days before, during, and after. The fact that I wasn't experiencing from or taking advantage of my state of mind to immerse myself in solving usability problems and establishing functionality paradigms, left me a wastefull lazy being. A couple months ago I'd wake up at 3am 6 times a week, run 8km in the freezing cold, do 200 pushups, 200 situps, and 30 pullups, and then start my day. Today(which started on Wednesday night) I've showered, done a quarter of my laundry, had breakfast, lunch, and got about an hours work done. Those few tasks have taken me about 12 hours to accomplish. It's gotten so bad that I am,  at this moment drinking directly from the Brita spout. Oh we have cups, a whole cupboard full, it's about 32feet from me to that cupboard and that vast trek involves steps; descending and the ascending on the way back, so I guess that's too far now. I'm actually starting to get flabby(a bit lets not get carried away) from living like this. It's time to make a change. I feel like saying it's gone too far, but it's not about how far it's gotten, it's about key lifestyle choices that over time precipitate into the unholy and indolent catastrophe that defines my current rut. All I have to do is change those behavior patterns and wait for liberal evaporation to do it's thing. Unfortunately I can't compress into the standard 24 hour day/night thing and so I never find myself in a position where I can say "Well, it's 6pm and I'm done all my tasks for today, now I can relax until tomorrow." Instead I have an infinite pile of tasks to get done before I retire and so for me just sitting around relaxing waiting for the date on my calendar to change is like a cigarrete smoker trying to quit and having 'one last drag'. It's a whirlwind, a downward spiral from there pulling me with intense gravity to where I am now in all this, and it gets worse, much worse. If I let it. Sure there are times when relaxation is needed and warrented but it's never with the goal of passing time. It has a purpose and a deeply analyzed function which has to result in a net increase in productivity in the long run to even merit the thought of it. So in order for me to be functional I have to be strictly disciplined. The one problem with doing that is that occasionally I'll be working on something and lose track of myself, I won't realize I've been focused on some task or error for 4 hours straight and then everything gets derailed and needs special adjustments and sacrifices to catch up to a speeding train. I have yet to find a way to grab my own attention say every 45 minutes, and I have yet to find a way to wake myself up after only a few hours sleep(when I'm not fully in the zone) that I can't deactivate before I'm fully awake resulting in me often getting back into bed and sleeping for 14 hours when I only wanted 4 or 6. But those two things would be luxuries if I every figured them out-- depending on external intervention to maintain discipline is a major pitfall and at its most basic level a cop-out. It means I have something else to blame for faltering which leads me to believe it wasn't in my control. So maybe I shouldn't be thinking of it at all.

Watching CNN's coverage of the crowds gathering in Washington this morning I'm vicariously filled with this sense of hope and unity with the rest of the world. Once when I was younger I had a similar experience while listening to Mandela's inaugural speech sitting on the floor in my parents bedroom while they watched it on tv. I can't remember if I was actually listening to the words or if I could grasp at that stage the full gravity of what he was saying but the sound and cadence of his voice coupled with the crowds response conveyed at it's most basic level a sense of just peace, forgiveness,  and movement to work together to make it a better place for everyone. The overwhelming sensation that washes over you when everyone in a room wants to do their part and the surety that a group of people can achieve their goals because they work together and support eachother. With that said, I found it amusing when CNN informed me that the Vice President is sworn in before the President. He seems like a nice enough guy but if something where to happen to Bush just after Biden is sworn in, Biden would technically be president for a few minutes until Obama could be sworn in. Got me thinking about a few things, like would Biden in that short time exercise his power? Would he jump up and down exclaiming something along the lines of, "I'm president Yippee!", I don't see how he could resist knowing that he gets to be President without having to deal with any of the issues. Would they try to swear Obama in any faster? Whom would the majority of the secret service(not like they're in short supply today) be assigned to protect.

We've put up an interactive chalk board on my company's website. Draw us something cool, fill out some optional details, and submit it for a chance to be featured in our gallery. If we like your website we'll contact you to do a spotlight on your blog/site/company. All the artwork submitted, including those that don't make the cut for the main gallery, will be featured here on FightSkillz with a link back to your site. Here are the links you'll need to check it out: Draw us something: http://www.chalk-it-out.com/#/Draw/ The main gallery: http://www.chalk-it-out.com/#/Draw/Gallery/ The runner up gallery: http://fightskillz.com/chalkboard-gallery/ You can submit as many chalk boards as you like, the sooner you submit the more people are gonna see it. While you're at Chalk-It-Out, have a look around we're a software development and consulting company. We build web, desktop, and rich internet applications, and offer a range of other services like brand creation and design, custom widgets, web sites and more.
If you want to record yourself drawing your ChallkBoard post it in reply to this YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38uTZwbUHdY http://www.prlog.org/10166524-fun-interactive-web-site-promotion.html

I should really be posting some code, cause it's been a while, but I had too... By Devshop on Blip.tv [link]

Google Operating System posted an article on browser upgrade trends, specifically people upgrading from Internet Explorer 6 to non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Opera during 2008. Read the post on Google Operating System [link]

I regrettably haven't recorded any music lately. In fact I've barely given myself time to play, but way back when I was like 16 I did take the time. Honestly I never really put a lot of effort into outlining the song, it was more of a play random stuff until I like the way it sounds, do some minor editing and convert it to .mp3. I guess people liked it back then, I put them up on my Myspace band profile and somehow ended up with 900+ fans/friends/whatever. After that I felt Myspace turning into the marketing frenzy born of the faceless soul draining vortex of the web it is today and deleted the account. I just happened upon some of those tracks in my iTunes right after some Frank Zappa, which may have influenced the way I feel about my own music. Anyway, this track is called Invisible Jungle, I name it that cause I'm an idiot. The inspiration for it came one day when I broke, I believe, the 3rd string on my guitar. It wasn't my awesome brazillian guitar or one of my electrics, no it was my first guitar--the $30 acoustic from Sears that buzzed horribly. Since at the time I didn't mind breaking it I decided it was a good opportunity to try a 4th string where the 3rd should go. This resulted in a tuning of E-A-A-G-B-E, which sounded interesting to me and I hit record. I should also note that the lone ride cymbal smack near the beginning was an example of lazy editing, if it wasn't there you would perceive a skip, jerk, or something to that effect which instead of simply splicing it out, I thought hitting a cymbal would be better practise. Clearly idiocy is my strong suit. Click the link below to play, right click+save as to keep. invisible-jungle

After losing ~8 minutes of my life to this I realized that while I could never regain those ~8 minutes I could have it take ~8 from the rest of you. I also needed to inform everyone that the French are in fact, until something better than this is invented outside of France, the best people... that's right, the best people around and making a statement like that without posting my reasons why would make me look crazy. (more...)