The Zaksoup Blog

Just pledged $25.

Thu, 03 May 2012 19:31:20 -0700

We're not gonna take it!

Wed, 02 May 2012 23:34:19 -0700

A cat.

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:19:04 -0800

A cat.

NDA? OK.

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 09:03:56 -0700

In response to a discussion on twitter between myself, @toxinide (Fabio Basille) and @dezinezync (Nikhil Nigade) I thought I’d right up this blog post.

Fabio had tweeted saying “I never like signing NDAs, if you want to hire me you should trust me as well, it’s my job after all… :/”. It is an understandable dislike, signing contracts, especially those that seem to insinuate that you are untrustworthy. However, when you work with clients who’s income is based at least in large part on the success of one or two apps it is important to understand a few things.

First, an NDA does not indicate a lack of trust. It doesn’t indicate anything about trust. Trust must be earned, just like anything in the business of freelancing. If a client comes to you, or you apply for a posted contract job, and they don’t know you personally or from previous experience, expect an NDA. It’s not saying they don’t trust you, it’s saying that they feel very strongly that they need to protect themselves from somebody, not you, that would steal their ideas or code. In the words of Lord Cutler Beckett (although, if your client seems like they’re bent on domination of the world’s oceans for their own personal graft perhaps you should avoid them): “It’s nothing personal, It’s just good business.” And good business it is; if you have no plans of leaking any information that is protected under the NDA then you have nothing to worry about. So what if the damn thing takes you 30 minutes to read? Sign the contract, get the job, and hey! You’re a freelancer. You can reasonably bill them for those 30 minutes, as without spending that time you wouldn’t even be there.

Second, the client is always right. In this business, clients are ornery, bossy, controlling, freaks. It’s the nature of the beast. They’re paying you, it’s part of the deal. It may be your job to design and develop, but it’s not your job to keep your mouth shut. Just take a look at Dribbble. The entire philosiphy at Dribbble is to share what you’re working on, be it your own personal project, or for a paying client. But why, you ask, don’t they just ask me not to share? Well, dear reader, that is what they are doing when they give you an NDA. They are asking, only in this case, it means there are legal repurcussions if you do share. Once again, in many cases there is quite a lot of money riding on small projects and one lose-lipped employee can cause it all to go down the drain. You know, and I know, that you’re not that person. The client who’s never worked with you before doesn’t.

Third, all things considered, NDAs indicate that the client is on top of things legally. I require a contract with all of my clients, and many refuse to sign. I refuse to do the work in that case. Contracts are a necessary evil, and it’s just another part of the job that we all have to deal with. Don’t be offended by it, as that only means that you won’t get the job. Sure, if you’re @SoftFaçade you’re probably not hurting for work all that much and can afford to lose a few clients because of contractual issues. But if you’re not, then take the time to do your due diligence, read the NDA, sign it, and get on with your work. If you truly love what you do, you shouldn’t let an NDA get in your way.

- Zak Auerbach is a developer from San Diego. He’s signed over 120 NDAs in his short career, most of them for the same company. He’s also got a jewfro.

An email re: mobile me

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 20:42:21 -0700

A good friend of mine just emailed me this, if any of you are interested…

Hey Zak!
I was totally just creeping your twitter page, and I saw you tweet about customizing outgoing mail to use your zak@zaksoup.com email…and I just wanted to let you know that on the server side of things, Apple has disabled that for now. (and the only true way to get email to come from your domain is to have it setup as such on the server side.)

If you just change headers, or route it through Gmail, you will end up with issues, because if you would need a complex SPF record, DKIM would be very difficult to setup and your email would most likely show the “on behalf of thing” (for example, messages will show that they are from:”zak@zaksoup.com on behalf of zaksoup@me.com” or whatever.) If you have the ability to use a custom SMTP server, you might be able to accomplish this, but even then, you still need it to be sanctioned by iCloud.

Ever since MobileMe was released and had similar functionality to Microsoft Exchange, everyone wanted custom domains, but Apple still has not given in. As of now, the only way to get a good synchronized email, calendar, contacts, and task list system is to use Microsoft Exchange, or Google Apps. I think that until Apple allows custom domains, and opens up a hosted Mac OS X Lion Server reseller program, iCloud/MobileMe will never take off in the business/professional world.

Anyway, just thought I would share my knowledge on the topic, in case you were still wondering. I would love to help you out with your email setup if you need it…I do this kind of stuff all the time, and was trained by some industry experts that I did an internship with last summer. :)

Hope all is well!

-M

Valiocon

Mon, 16 May 2011 22:27:00 -0700

Every now and then you see something or meet somebody and you just can’t help but get really happy. That happened this weekend at Valiocon. I’m still smiling. I just had an awesome time with all those incredibly talented folks.

I’ll have a full writeup of my thoughts tomorrow.

Connecting to MongoHQ with PHP

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 19:44:00 -0700

It’s actually deceptively simple.

The standard PHP mongo pecl extension goes like this: $databaseVariable = new Mongo(“mongodb://[urlwheremongoishosted].com”);

With MongoHQ it’s basically that form. You must know a couple of things first. The Server your database is hosted on, the port it’s on, and the database user and password. For example, my app’s databse page looks like http://d.pr/HuPX

after you create a user just set up your mongo class like this:

$databaseVariable = new Mongo(“mongodb://[database_username]:[password]@[server].mongohq.com:[port]/[database_name]”)

easy peasy

I got a job!

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 22:17:20 -0700

Sorta, but still, A JOB! WOOHOO.

Thus, I am incredibly pleased to announce I am now a “Web Developer Intern” with Participatory Culture Foundation. They make Miro (it’s awesome!) and this new thing called Universal Subtitles. If anything go check out Unisubs. It’s an awesome way to blow off a few minutes of boredom, and you’re contributing to a great project!

It’s a great team, and I’ll be working with some amazingly talented people, so I’m really excited to be telling you all this. If you feel so inclined, go check out my bio, and (horribly ugly avatar) on the pculture about page (you’ll have to scroll aaaalllllll the way down).

I also like parenthesis

Bloggers Block

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 22:09:34 -0700

I haz it.

The dickbar shouldn't have surprised anybody.

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 20:37:29 -0800

It’s simple really, twitter needs to make money. So far you’ve been using a free service. This free service has no paid version, and no benefits for donors or paid members. The ONLY revenue that the service has is from advertisers.

The question is not “how dare twitter add what amounts to an advertisement to my FREE twitter app” but “how dare we complain about it.”

Are we so entitled to free everything that we throw a complete fit when the service attempts to make some money? So far twitters entire business model consists of “MAKE MONEY FROM INVESTORS, AND HOW.” I’m sure it looks great on paper, but in practice it’s not sustainable.

In short, you get a free app from a free service for free with no limits and you have the audacity to complain about an advertisement? One advertisement? literally, 34 pixels. Quit whining, you entitled babies.

An apology and some justification walk into a bar

Tue, 01 Mar 2011 21:24:44 -0800

Well I did it. I achieved the status of “guy who pissed people off” that is generally reserved for n00bs and assholes. Since I don’t consider myself to be one of the other (although that is certainly up to debate by you fine folks) I decided to write a little blog post about why I said what I said and apologize to those who I accidentally insulted.

@zaksoup OH WOW srsly i just caught up with your tweets. As someone with a load of absolutely nothing in your portfolio you have no leg to stand on. Please quit your moaning and appreciate the work people are putting in for theirs and YOUR BENEFIT. Small icons aren’t as easy as you might think so stop talking shit.

Robbie Pearce (@heartofpixels) tweeted my after My first post which featured his 32px set. He’s right. I don’t have a portfolio of design, and I don’t really have any leg to stand on other than my admittedly strong opinions.

What I do have is a big head and a large mouth. My point wasn’t that the sets are bad. We all know that Robbie is a damn, damn, good designer. My point was that there’s a huuuuge amount of 32px icon sets already out there that these great designers like Robbie are simply adding to. While they exhibit good design, in my opinion, these sets don’t display the artistry that a good web design or larger icon (128 or 512) shows.

Compare:

I see that Dr. Dre icon and am blown away. It’s truly amazing. Then I look at the small set and just feel like somebody who creates such an amazing icon is wasting his time with these tiny little icons.

Compare:

There’s such a huge difference between the amazing quality and artistry involved in the first icon in both comparisons and the second screenshot that it’s hard to believe they were created by the same designer.

This is where my angry (rude, assholish, douchebaggery) tweets come in. I don’t know why I felt justified to criticize Robbie and Prekesh. I’m not a designer. I’ve never pretended to be. I’ve never claimed that I could do what they do. I have an immense respect for them, and I broke that respect with my tweets.

Let me set this straight. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to you, Robbie, for unfairly singling out your set and then ranting about it. I’m sorry to you, Prekesh, for constantly bashing the awesome work you’ve done to create a set of 120 icons and never once telling you how awesome you are. I’m sorry to everybody who’s created a 32px icon set purely in the interest of creating something for the community.

However.

I stand by my opinions. People who are as damn good as Robbie and Prekesh could be working for Apple making millions doing large icons (exaggeration but you get my point) and it makes me feel like they’re wasting their talent. I respect them too much to just go “OOOOO PURDY I LUV YOU HAVE MY BABIES” every time they post something on Dribbble or Forrst.

I have an opinion and you’re gonna hear it if I have to fucking shove it down your throat.

Sincerely,

Zak Auerbach

P.S.

Jonah Cohen pointed something out to me that I hadn’t thought about. Both Robbie and Prekesh have chosen this as a professional career and take their work very seriously. Who am I to just come out of the woodwork and tell them that they did something wrong.

It’s tough balancing saying something that you think should be said and staying respectful and polite and understanding the feelings of others. It’s certainly something that I’m still learning and haven’t mastered yet. I think that this is a good lesson for me to have.

When Honest = Douchebag, You're Doing It Wrong.

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 18:01:00 -0800

I must admit, I’m rather disappointed that I’ve had to get to the point where I’ve experienced this phenomena enough that I am annoyed enough to write a blog post. If you’re at all familiar with how I blog then you’ll know: I don’t. Basically my blog is where I sporadically write about things that most people don’t give a shit about. Thus, I continue my time honored tradition.

Today’s Topic: Why some people think that “honesty” is a free pass to be an asshole, and how they are wrong.

Why do I care? For that matter, why should you? Perhaps you shouldn’t, and perhaps you don’t. This blog post is mostly an ego stroke for me (full disclosure). I want to elaborate on my opinions regarding this topic. If you don’t care, or if you are going to just bitch and moan about how you think that I’m wrong, don’t read the post. It’s a waste of both of your time and mine to pointlessly debate this.

Okay. Let’s get started.

The K eyboard Warrior

The internet has eradicated responsibility. People can say just about anything and have zero real life repercussions. This leads to an interesting excuse people make. For some reason Keyboard Warriors know that what they are saying is going to be considered “bad” by those of us who follow the rules of the social contract. So, rather than just following the same contract themselves, they put their bile under the guise of “honesty.”

I’m gonna say it right here. That’s bullshit.

Honesty is great. If somebody is going to make something up in order to not hurt my feelings, I’ll tell you, I’d rather they just be honest and risk hurting my feelings. I’m a programmer. If my code is messy, tell me! You won’t hurt me, my job is to write un-messy code. What does hurt me is telling me that my code rocks when it really sucks.

The Keyboard warrior is honest. I won’t ever say otherwise. But they’re also completely outside of the curve. Their honesty is anything but refreshing. The keyboard warrior does not say “hey man, your code is pretty messy. You may wanna check that out.” Instead, they say “Dude, what kind of retard are you? Your code looks like a fuckin’ five year old slammed on a keyboard for an hour. Jesus christ, I’m never recomending you to any potential clients.

:D”

For some reason, they seem to think that ending these little spews of assholeness with a smiley face makes everything alright. The “:D” is also replaceable with “just sayin” or “I’m only being honest to help you.”

No.

Just no.

Nobody wants to be insulted, and nobody wants to hear about how their work makes them look like an idiot. I can come to that conclusion on my own after hearing what the normal people say about it, thank you very much. Don’t for one minute think that the douchebag version of honesty is refreshing. It isn’t. It makes me angry.

Then, there is the KW who thinks that the whole world wants to hear about all the shitty things he does. You know who that is. He’s the guy who posts to twitter “I laugh when I read about people dying, children being raped and bad things you should not laugh at in general.” That’s a quote. Somebody actually tweeted that. They followed it up with “If I still follow you, you have earned the great price of awesome.” and “Yes, you may consider me a huge asshole, but at least I’m honest, compared to the rest of the fucking retards out there.”

I’m just not sure what to say about that. Honesty does not mean barfing up your fucked up “opinions” upon the rest of the world. Trust me when I say, nobody wants to read that shit. It’s gross. Saying that you’re only being honest doesn’t change the fact that you are one fucked up asshole.

Honesty is not a free ticket to just spew all the hateful ridiculous spite-filled rantings that you think we want to hear about.

One more thing: If somebody suggests you use a service, and you don’t like it, the only thing you need to say is “I don’t think I/we should use [that service].” You don’t need to write a three paragraph email detailing exactly why (the two emails from) that service is so horrible and how you “will be rejecting your request” to join. It’s unnecessary. It’s just a way of stroking your overlarge egorection. I read that email and translate “I don’t like what you want me to do, so instead of being mature about it I’m going to just write bullshit until I can get my overlarge self concept under control”.

I’m just sayin’

P.S. @JamesDraco brought up a good point. There are also enablers. Some people who are too cowardly to post their own “honest” bullshit, they instead applaud the Keyboard Warriors for their “honesty” and “integrity.” There is no integrity in being rude or offensive, and there is no point in telling people that they should keep it up. Don’t enable KWs

My real posterous

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:17:44 -0800

If you read this you should go subscribe to soundsoup.posterous.com as I will be closing down my zaksoup posterous for now.

Posted via email from zaksoup’s posterous | Comment »

Begging

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 18:32:36 -0800

I beg for a lot of shit, quite often. Most of the time, I jest. Now, I am serious. On tuesday an external hard drive of mine that due to a slightly strange situation was the only piece of equipment that had my work and composition files on it was destroyed. The quote for repair is over $1000 and I don’t have that money right now. I have also been saving up to buy myself a new instrument. For the past year or so I’ve been putting away every bit of money I can find to get myself a Keytar, after seeing Chick Corea play one in concert. I really really really want a keytar. So, if you wouldn’t mind helping me get one by donating to my Keytar/Hard Drive fund. What do you get if you do? For every $5 you donate I’ll give you an hour of coding time. Do you have a design? Or want some PHP done? Or want me to give you a lesson in Javascript? $5/hour is a steal. Please help me.

My direct donate link is here or you can go to my website and see the excellent work that Stephen Revesvesezezeesvs did on designing a keytar for me to lust after. http://zaksoup.com

Thanks, <3

-Z

Steve Jobs on Trailers Rejection

Sat, 10 Jul 2010 08:55:49 -0700

grantjonah:

Spencer Schoeben (who’s dad used to be close with Steve, which is probably the only reason he replied) sent an email to Steve Jobs (along with a dozen other people on Twitter) about the rejection of Trailers, and to our surprise, he responded. And excuse the subject line, Spencer saw Steve with his dog once. Emails are in order from oldest to newest.
Read More

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: iPhone 4 and mobile web app icons

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 10:38:10 -0700

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: iPhone 4 and mobile web app icons:

Let’s say you’ve got a mobile web app, such as my own Glyphboard. Since it’s built using no images whatsoever - I rely on CSS effects instead - it looks great on the new iPhone’s mindblowing Retina display.

Well, there is one image, of course - the app icon. If you’ve read my post on the…

Musicians will find this funny.

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 14:33:52 -0700

breakthetrend:

Sweet Child O’ Mine (Swing Version) by plamere

(via jhnmyr)

Soupr + Equili = <3

Mon, 31 May 2010 12:12:00 -0700

Remember yesterday when I told you about this guy who was an amazing designer and programmer? Well, his name is Martin Sorensen and he’s amazing.

“So, Zak, what’s the dealio here?” you ask.

Well, let me splain you. Martin is an amazing designer and developer from Copenhagen Denmark and for the past year has been working on Equili, his own URL Shortener and Media host service. We were talking over aim and I told him about Soupr. I think we were both mutually impressed with the work each-other had done. So then a day later I suggested to him “well, why don’t we work together.” We both liked the idea and decided on a plan of action.

The Plan:

Soupr is still going to happen, as is Equili. Equili will be Soupr and Soupr will be Equili. Equili will be the “service” that is powered by soupr, much like droplr and cloudapp. Soupr will be the “engine” behind Equili, the code that makes Equili tick, and it will be available for free download onto your server for your own personal use. All of the cool features planned in Equili will still be there (support for groups) as well as the cool features of Soupr (theming).

We will be working throughout the summer to bring you the best possible experience, and the best possible app that we can create. I think that you will be as excited as I am when you see some of the stuff that is happening.

For now, head over to http://equi.li/souprsite/ or http://zaksoup.com/ to see the splash page that he’s created for the upcoming Equili + Soupr merger.

The future of Soupr.

Sun, 30 May 2010 13:03:54 -0700

So. Hey. It’s been a while. Yeah. Soupr. Soooooo. Um, Lets start with some history.

I started work on Soupr about six months ago as a project to really get myself confortable with PHP and MySQL, as well as learn the ins and outs of developing software in general. It quickly became apparent to me that people other than I were interested in using it, which surprised me. As such, I expanded the scope of the project to include some cool features like theming, as well as support for tagging and grouping. Built in Youtube embedding quickly followed. THEN (queue dramatic music), school reared its ugly head. Preparing for college applications and SATs, along with the ACT and just homework in general, took up ever increasing amounts of my time. Soupr got relegated to a much lower level of priority. Every time I committed to a release date, it seemed like something immediately followed that would negate all of the time I’d set aside for Soupr and crush it in a torrent of toil and trouble. And so, here we are, three months post original release date, and it is still not ready.

I cannot begin to express how sorry I am to all those who have been waiting for this, but I regret to have to tell you that it is going to take even longer.

On the other hand, at least that is the bad news. The good news is that someone (he has asked to remain anonymous for now) will be joining the “Team”. He is a stupendous designer and programmer; we will be working unceasingly to release Soupr by the end of the summer. As it currently stands, Soupr is, of course, in progress. I will be eliminating the remaining few bugs and announcing release it before we begin on “2.0” (what? did someone say something?), but it will be a measly teaser of what is to come.

I would like to express my thanks to all of the generous people who have contributed to Soupr to date: Daniel Waldron created the amazing icon, Matthew Reakus donated the initial designs, and Mathieu White kindly helped to code much of the HTML involved. I’m sure that there have been more than just those three, but if I named everyone we would be here all day, so, from the very bottom of my heart, let me just say thank you, gracias, merci beaucoup, dankscheen, domo arigato, grazie, obrigado. Without your constant, consistent support and aid, I would never have achieved as much as I have and I know I wouldn’t have even possessed the bravery to start.

Regards, Zak Auerbach

Adding CSS3 properties to CSSEdit's auto-completion

Thu, 20 May 2010 20:58:02 -0700

Adding CSS3 properties to CSSEdit's auto-completion:

Today, MacRabbit pushed out the first update for CSSEdit since early 2008, which had me hopeful that they’d updated the automatic syntax completion to match that of Espresso. Alas, I was unsurprised to find that they hadn’t.

After searching Twitter to find out what the actual changes were…