Move Your Money

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I usually only use this WordPress blog to write about WordPress plugins I write and the occasional funny anecdote, but I wanted to share what I think is an awesome initiative I have found called Move Your Money.

The global financial meltdown of 2008 has been fascinating for me: not the outcome, but reading about what happened. If you know nothing about it, the movie Inside Job is a good place to start I suppose, but it doesn’t really tell the whole story and comes off as a little hack-y.

I read The Big Short . It really ignited my interest to explore the disgusting inner-workings of Wall Street. Mainly after I saw this 60 Minutes episode:

My favorite book on the crisis is Griftopia by Matt Taibbi:

You can also check out these fascinating eps of PBS’s Frontline on Netflix (also Instantly-watchable):

Breaking the Bank, focuses on Bank of America’s accusation of Merrill Lynch
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/breakingthebank/view/

Inside the Meltdown, focuses on Hank Paulson and the Bailout
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/meltdown/view/

Anyways, these are just a sampling of the things I have watched and read that have filled me with rage, bewilderment, and a complete sense of powerlessness. Yay! I mean really, there is nothing almost anyone could do that would change anything when it comes to Wall Street.

BUT, there are a few things you can do to minimize the financial raping that any one individual bank can thrust onto you.

1) Don’t use Credit Cards

Easier said than done, believe me I know, but I got fed up and just paid off all of my credit cards in full. At the height of the crisis, all of my lenders jacked my APRs to 30% interest. Thanks, assholes. Being lazy and despondent, I made minimum payments and allowed my balance to hover near max. If you ever want to know for sure how bad of an idea that is, take a gander at your credit report. One of the single biggest factors in your credit score is your debt-to-credit ratio. It’s simple math: if you have a $1000 line of credit and are using $995 of it, your score goes down. If you are using 0% of it, your score goes up.

Now, let’s say you have 5 cards that all have balances. You might think to yourself, I should pay off all 5 balances and then cancel 4 of them. Not so fast…. closing accounts fucks with your credit. You can actually do damage by removing them. Does this make any sense? No.

Anyways, I recently paid off my MasterCard and my Chase / Best Buy Card. Those fuckers still charge me $3 a month for the honor of having a $0 balance, but they can’t hurt me anymore financially.

Allie recently paid off her CapitalOne card in full. They keep calling her trying to suggest ways for her to get into financial peril. They suggest taking a vacation, paying bills, taking out a fucking cash advance! When she counters with “No, you assholes raised my APR to 30% without any warning, I am never using this card again” they say “don’t you want to close the account?” she says “no, that will hurt my credit even more.” Their actual response: “Whatever.” Click. Dial Tone.

2) Leave your Big Bank, do your banking at a local Credit Union

Brian Gitman turned me on to this over dinner at the ever elegant and delicious Hooters on Saturday night. From Wikipedia:

A credit union is a cooperative financial institution that is owned and controlled by its members and operated for the purpose of promoting thrift, providing credit at reasonable rates, and providing other financial services to its members.[1][2][3] Many credit unions exist to further community development[4] or sustainable international development on a local level.[5]

Here is the definition of a Big Bank. From CapitalOne:
“Take out a cash advance at 30% APR” … “Whatever”

I am only now learning about Credit Unions, so I don’t have anything to report yet, but definitely check this out: http://moveyourmoneyproject.org/

3) Follow the developments of projects like BankSimple

Check it out here: https://www.banksimple.com/

The former lead developer of Twitter, Alex Payne, is working on this project. Once it launches, count me in as one of its first customers.

New Plugin, “Like Buttons”

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http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/like-buttons/

I uploaded this plugin to Subversion this morning without any screenshots or much documentation, and it’s already been downloaded 250 times…

What it does? Adds “Like” buttons to your Posts / Pages / Custom Post Types so you can create a circular traffic vortex between Your Blog and the ‘book.

Use these functions in your theme:

// in the Loop - for posts / pages / custom post types
the_like_button()

// a Like button for your blog / website, put it anywhere!
the_blog_like_button()

// use this if you don't want to register your app
the_like_iframe()

Although the JavaScript init function that loads Facebook’s API asks for an APP ID, I think you can get away without having one if you are only going to use the Like buttons and not add any Facebook Connect features.

This is a beta release but should work just fine. Enjoy.

Don’t let your ID(s) Expire!

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More appropriately, don’t lose your Social Security card! Here is the Catch-22, Murphy’s Law, Circular Hell I am finding myself in today.

The Problem
I have a flight tomorrow at 8am and no valid forms of ID (which may or may not be a problem, they don’t mention forms of ID having to be non-expired here)

  • My licensed expired in August… eh so what? No bars care, I live in NYC and don’t drive anywhere, plus I have my passport
  • My passport just fucking expired

The Social Security Card
My Social Security card is SOMEWHERE in a giant box of shit I brought home from college at my dad’s place in Tennessee. I needed a SS card TODAY to get a NY State license to replace my expired FL license. I went to the SS Office on 48 btw 8th Ave and Broadway to apply for a replacement / get the temporary one to take to the DMV. After over an hour of chilling in the waiting room / 3 eps of Louie on the iPad, I arrived at the window only to be told that I needed a valid ID to apply for the card. I explained the situation, short of saying “go fuck yourself” she told me that none of my expired shit would work and that the only other piece of info that would work would be a medical record of some sort from a Primary Care Physician.

  • I don’t have a Primary Care Physician
  • I haven’t been to the doctor since I moved to New York

So, awesome! She suggests I go to a free clinic and have them print off the info blah blah. Thanks, God.

The DMV
I decide to go to the DMV and see if there is anything I can do there without a Social Security card. Short story even shorter, the answer was no.

Passport Renewal
I Googled “same-day passort” and a bunch of passport expeditors in Koreatown (close to where I was for the DMV) showed up. Granted, same-day Passport renewal is ~$400, but I was getting desperate. I sauntered over to Rush Passport Inc and sat down with one of their associates, and the moral of the story is… you can’t get same day service unless you are travelling internationally.

The Free Clinic
So I Google’d FREE CLINIC on my fucking phone, bewildered that this was happening to me, and sure enough, 2 blocks up = www.DrWalkin.com, on the 2nd Floor of a Duane Reade near the Empire State Building. I walked upstairs and explained my situation to the lady at the front desk.

  • You have to have Valid ID to see their doctor
  • They can’t print the form I need to show the SS Card people

That lady gave me a sheet of paper that had the address for Beth Israel Medical Center’s Walk-In Clinic.

Beth Israel Medical Center’s Walk-In Clinic
So I go to this clinic and explain to them in my best “Hey sorry to bother you / this is going to sound crazy but” tone the situation with the SS Card and the license and how one needs the other etc. They tell me what I need is a note from my Primary Care Physician (I don’t fucking have one) , and they can set me up with that and make an appointment for a PHYSICAL… TOMORROW… at 8:30am…..

Conundrum
There is quite literally nothing I can do to get a valid ID before tomorrow. If I move my flight and go to the physical > SS Card place > DMV tomorrow…. there is no guarantee I will get everything squared away and make my new flight, I mean I should be able to… but…

My expired license, expired passport, birth certificate, check book, credit card, insurance card, W-2 from last year, pay stub from last week were not enough identifuckingcation to get a replacement Social Security card.

Conclusion
There is not a goddamn thing I can do without the Social Security card. I also don’t want to move my flight. The TSA’s website says nothing about expired documents, only that the documents must have the expiration date on them. The DMV’s website has Valid / Non-expired / and specific expiration rules for documents of every kind. TSA is vague and seems like there is a way to deal with people who have NO documents, much less expired ones.

I think I am going to go to the airport and risk it at 6:30am. If they turn me away, I will rebook my flight right there then go to the physical and then go through the circular rape dungeon of the SS Card place and the DMV, and THEN, make my way BACK to LaGuardia for what I’m sure will be congested and delayed takeoff.

Kill me.

Concerts I Attended in 2010

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12.04.2010 The Walkmen, Terminal 5

10.19.2010 My Morning Jacket (performed It Still Moves), Terminal 5

09.17.2010 Vampire Weekend, Radio City Music Hall
09.11.2010 Dirty Projectors, Terminal 5

08.24.2010 Tom Petty / My Morning Jacket, Meadowlands
08.12.2010 Grizzly Bear / The Walkmen, Governor’s Island
08.07.2010 Local Natives, Governor’s Island

07.29.2010 The National, Terminal 5
07.28.2010 The Black Keys, Central Park Summerstage
07.17.2010 Dave Matthews Band, CitiField

06.20.2010 Band of Horses / Grizzly Bear, W’burg Waterfront
06.18.2010 Band of Horses, Grand Central Terminal
06.09.2010 Plants and Animals, Bowery Ballroom
06.04.2010 Stars, Music Hall of Williamsburg

05.27.2010 The Hold Steady, Variety Playhouse, Atlanta, GA
05.26.2010 Bon Jovi, Giants Stadium
05.21.2010 LCD Soundsystem, Terminal 5
05.16.2010 Metric, Terminal 5
05.09.2010 Jonsi, Terminal 5

04.25.2010 Karl Denson’s Tiny Universe, Brooklyn Bowl

03.26.2010 Spoon, Radio City Music Hall
03.11.2010 Soulive w/ Questlove & Rahzel, Brooklyn Bowl
03.09.2010 Soulive w/ Charlie Hunter, Brooklyn Bowl
03.05.2010 Muse / Silversun Pickups, Madison Square Garden

02.26.2010 John Mayer / Michael Franti & Spearhead, Madison Square Garden
02.23.2010 Andy McKee, Highline Ballroom

01.23.2010 DJ Pauly D, Sutton Place
01.18.2010 Vampire Weekend, Webster Hall
01.15.2010 Julian Casablancas, Terminal 5

The Best (My Favorite) Songs of 2010

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This is a much different list than My Favorite Albums of 2010. That list contains a lot of my favorite songs of 2010, but this is list is made up of songs I love regardless of the what the album sounds like. Also, I didn’t wanna repeat the YouTube clips I posted on the Albums list blog post.

Eminem ft Rihanna, “Love the Way You Lie”

This video has been viewed 230 MILLION times on YouTube. 230. MILLION. Times. Wow. I don’t care what anyone says, I love this goddamn song. I got goosebumps when I just listened to it again. Cameos from Megan Fox and Charlie from Lost.

MGMT, “I Found a Whistle”

Congratulations disappointed pretty much everyone that listens to music, but I really really love this track, and it almost completely makes up for what I don’t like about the album.

Katy Perry, “California Gurls”

Katy Perry: super hot in this video. This song has “a good beat.” Girrrrl, I love a good dance tune!

Sleigh Bells, “Infinity Guitars”

Sean Powell turned me on the them. Weird. Awesome. Weirdly awesome.

Eminem, “Not Afraid”

Eminem is pretty much the best there is, at everything he does. These tunes just grab you, whether you want them to or not.

Wavves, “Post Acid”

Cool and noisy. A great album as well. Interested to eventually see them live.

Big Boi ft Cutty, “Shutterbugg”

Big Boi is still making hot records.

The Dead Weather, “Hustle and Cuss”

This album sounds amazing, the tunes overall don’t translate that well live (they can’t recreate the sonic range of the album live), but this one cuts through.

Kanye West ft Pusha T “Runaway”

I haven’t gone apeshit over the Kanye record like everyone else, but I like this cut.

Broken Bells, “The High Road”

This album is really good. Got into it way after the record came out. I like this track a lot better than “The Ghost Inside” (the one with the video with Christina Hendricks in it). James Mercer is one of my faves.

Katy Perry, “Teenage Dream”

Another solid as fuck pop anthem. Seriously, I don’t care what anyone says, love this tune. Plus she’s a doll!

Cee-Lo Green, “FUCK YOU”

One of the greatest songs ever written. One of the greatest performances by one of the greatest performers.

B.o.B. ft Haley Williams from Paramore, “Airplanes”

I actually love Paramore, mostly cuz of Haley. This chorus was in my head for about 2 months straight when I first heard it.

Matt and Kim, “Cameras”

This is by far their best record. Their Times Square nude video thing for that other whatever song was stupid and way-over-the-top hipster. This tune is great.

The Best (My Favorite) Albums of 2010

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1. High Violet, The National

In July, SPIN Magazine decided to celebrate their 25th Anniversary with 5 shows at Terminal 5 in New York City – Flaming Lips, Smashing Pumpkins, Spiritualized, The Black Keys, and The National. I almost went on Wednesday to see The Black Keys but turns out they were playing earlier in the night at Central Park Summerstage so I saw them there instead. On Thursday, I went to a taping of The Colbert Report with some friends. Upon leaving the taping, I got a call from my friend Adam.

Adam had just purchased 2 tickets to see The National from a co-worker and wanted me to go with. I was a few blocks from Terminal 5… Sure! Terminal 5 was awesome that night as soon as we walked in, dressed up in a mood of celebration for SPIN.

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I had never seen The National. A few of their tracks had shown up on a Genius playlist here or there, but I was only a casual listener. That changed at Terminal 5 that night in July. They walked out to the stage with little bombast and started into the opener, “Start a War.” I instantly knew they were beyond good. “Anyone’s Ghost” followed. “Bloodbuzz Ohio” and I knew it was getting crazy good then… BAM… “Mistaken for Strangers.” All night…. So. damn. good.

They are my new favorite band. High Violet is a dark masterpiece, if you can call anything they do a masterpiece after 2007’s Boxer.

2. This is Happening, LCD Soundsystem

LCD Soundsystem announced  that they were going to play shows at Terminal 5 this summer on their website, about an hour before tickets went on sale. I got tix to night #2. 2 more shows sold out. They announced secret shows at Music Hall of Williamsburg and Webster Hall day-of at 9am on random days leading up that sold out instantly.

One of the few concerts I have been to that felt like a true New York City experience, like you were at an event that could happen any other place, but it wouldn’t be the same. The band, their history, their hometown.

We tend to wear out albums when we listen while we work at eMusic. This album came dangerously close, but I could listen to “I Can Change” everyday forever.

3. The Suburbs, Arcade Fire

The most epic album of 2010, in every category. This is one of the few albums that gets better every single time you listen to it. What started out as being too many songs now isn’t enough. What sounded repetitive now sounds like creative genius.

The Arcade Fire / YouTube event earlier this year at Madison Square Garden would (will) make one of the great concert films of the 2010s. Arcade Fire are at their best, and in the live concert realm, they have few peers, if any.

4. Lisbon, The Walkmen

What a surprise. I tried throwing on a few of their albums in the background at eMusic at few times, never caught on. They make you work for what you get. Not on Lisbon. It is a great set of songs – like a scruffier Beirut, and with way more attitude. Grizzly Bear guitar with less esoterica.

5. Gorilla Manor, Local Natives

While Venice Beach is probably more Bohemian than Greenwich Village these days, Silver Lake is becoming (is) LA’s soiree into hipsterdom, and already seems cooler than Williamsburg. That’s where these dudes are from.

When I saw them at The Beach at Governor’s Island this summer, they remarked that it was their biggest show to date. I was lucky to be there.

These tunes are awesome. The most killer harmonies. They can play AND write hip tunes.

6. Contra, Vampire Weekend

I saw Vampire Weekend twice in 2010: in January at Webster Hall the week their album came out, and at Radio City Music Hall in September. Webster Hall was so sold out I had to buy scalped tickets outside. They were $75. No one would come down to the show with me due to the price, so I bought 2 and sold one to Jason Hammonds for $40. The only problem, they were fakes. We were at the bar for an hour before the show and the ticket scalper was long gone by the time we got in line. AWESOME. I waited outside the venue with another dude as every single in front of us went in line. Begged venue staff to let us in. Offered to bribe doormen. Nothing worked. We weren’t gonna give up. We considered scaling the roof. 5 minutes before the show… a miracle happened.

A ticket broker was supposed to have 15 people on his list. The door girl at Webster Hall fucked it up. To make up for it, she said he could bring in whoever he wanted. He walks outside, says “Who wants to get in for free?” The other dude and I almost started weeping with joy. Needless to say, we got in.

This is a solid solid disc, which is why, by September, they were playing 3 sold out shows at Radio City. A great NYC band.

7. Heaven is Whenever, The Hold Steady

I saw The Hold Steady at the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta this summer. I was reminded instantly why they are one of my favorite bands. Aside from writing one of my favorite songs of 2010, “The Weekenders,” they demonstrated what being an ass-kicking professional rock ‘n roll band from Brooklyn (via MN) looks like.

8. Transference, Spoon

I’ll admit, was not a fan of Spoon’s show at Radio City at March, but that was all the front-of-house sound guy. They kicked ass at Bonnaroo in 2007. This record is no different from all of the others, just making one of the best records of the year every time they show up to work.

9. Infinite Arms, Band of Horses

I saw Band of Horses twice in 2010 (I’m lucky as fuck). The first time was an AOL-sponsored event in Vanderbilt Hall at Grand Central Terminal for a small crowd of 200-300 people (we were 5 people back!). The other was at Williamsburg Waterfront in a concert so epic Grizzly Bear OPENED for them.

This disc is great for people who love this band. It is no Cease to Begin (nothing is), but it sure is satisfying.

10. God Willing and the Creek Don’t Rise, Ray Lamontagne and the Pariah Dogs

There are tunes on this record that make my body twist and turn from the soul in Ray’s voice. The guitars sound SICK. There are enough tunes on here that will kick your ass to make the whole album worth the effort. Does it ever get any better than “New York City’s Killing Me”?

Movies v0.4, now with MediaElement support!

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Just checked in v0.4 of Movies.

In the past couple months, I have learned a LOT about dealing with video on the web. I would describe the experiences I have had as “bone-crushingly painful,” “annoying,” and mostly “a gigantic waste of life.”

In my work building sites with WordPress, and with the work I have done at eMusic, I have been trying to find a default solution to use for video that works cross-browser / cross-platform / everywhere. Something painless, beyond easy, that degrades gracefully.

Here are my observations so far:

  • Ogg Theora (the video codec Firefox supports for native HTML5 Video) plays like hell in Firefox (or I’m encoding it wrong… nah, it plays like hell in Firefox)
  • Flash is mostly better than HTML5 Video in all cases except for WebKit browsers
  • a unified UI is way more important than broad HTML5 support
  • Flowplayer (VideoJS‘s Flash-fallback) is a bag of hell
  • MediaElement gets more right than VideoJS

Accordingly, I have made MediaElement the default player for Movies. You can still use VideoJS by editing one line of  code in the plugin file (you will get an admin warning that makes this painfully obvious) if you want, but I am going to recommend that MediaElement wins this fight.

I haven’t abandoned VideoJS. I updated the JS/CSS to the latest release, and I will keep a watchful eye on their development.

Because MediaElement maintains a consistent UI, I am only setting the MP4 source for the Video tags that are rendered. Flash beats Ogg Theora to a pulp in Firefox – it is sad by how much.

I have also added a new function to the Movies API (the_flash_video()) which will render only the Flash embed code on the page (no HTML5 Video tag) if that is what you desire. I found a use case for this when working on a Theme I am porting from Tumblr – stay tuned.

Rate v0.2 is pretty good, doesn’t break

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I have received a lot of feedback from the WordPress community about my ratings plugin, Rate. I squashed some bugs and added some features and can now take this thing out of what I like to call “Beta.” If this thing breaks when you install, I am now officially an asshole.

You still need to insert the_rating() and the_comment_rating() into your theme – see screenshots on the plugin page – but I wrote some filters using the Plugin API that will insert the ratings widget into the comment form, so you can rate a post/page/product/thing while commenting, instead of after commenting. I probably should have started with this functionality, but it took a while to figure out the best way to do it.

Even though comment_karma is a field in the $wpdb->comments table, the comment_karma field will not be saved with the other comment fields if that field is Post’d along with the other values, so I actually have run a second database query after the comment has been inserted to save the rating (comment_karma) along with the comment data.

Weird and annoying.

Anyways, this thing should work like a champ now. I also fixed the_rating() to display a more accurate average of the ratings. Instead of just doing SELECT AVG(comment_karma), I added this logic: WHERE comment_karma > 0. Once again, duh, but at least it’s fixed NOW.

New Plugin, “Rate”

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Update: It broke! Update to 0.1.1 please!

Disclaimer #1: Beta Release, it might break

Disclaimer #2: I am not a maniac, the only reason I am writing so many plugins right now is because I have a lot of freelance projects, little time to fuck around, and a desire to save my solutions for future use

I am well-aware that there are 5 million Ratings plugins for WordPress, and (from what I can tell) most of them suck. The amount of bad inline JavaScript and disgusting HTML that most of them produce is just sad. Ratings are a little wee feature of a site, not a monstrous piece of architecture that need to jam itself into every corner of your  code base.

That’s why I wrote “Rate.” In sticking with my verb naming scheme see (Tumble and Shuffle), I have tried to make ratings as painless and clean as possible.

There are 2 functions that display ratings:

the_rating()

and

the_comment_rating()

Your users rate your Page / Post / Product whatever in the comments section, and the average rating from all of the Page / Post / Whatever’s ratings is accessible with the_rating(). Rate makes use of the oft-overlooked and under-utilized comment_karma field in the wp_comments table.

The functions don’t install themselves automatically, you must insert them into your Theme in the appropriate places. The ratings styles are loaded by default from within the plugin directory. If you want to override with your own styles, drop a rate.css file in your theme’s directory and the rate plugin CSS won’t load, yours will!

I really thought I could download a plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory that would suit my needs. I installed PollDaddy the minute I realized that it supported ratings. PollDaddy’s implementation is disgraceful and completely un-override-able. Aside from having inline event handlers (which is ghetto), the styles are written dynamically with JavaScript which makes them virtually impossible to override in CSS. The presentation options/settings are pretty limiting as well.

Hopefully Rate will grow and mature into the cleanest and best ratings plugin for WordPress.