Category Archives: Personal

Open Keys

Open Key

I could write about many things, but instead I think I will relate the fact that for the second consecutive day, I locked my keys in the car. The details are inconsequential, and it’s a story everyone has heard before, so let’s start discussing solutions. In computing the key [pun] to failsafe systems is redundancy, so I have decided to take the same approach with the entry system to my car.

I’m going to allow anyone who thinks they would be willing to hold on to a key to my car to apply by email to receive a copy free in the mail. Only requirements are a name, phone number, and meeting my secret requirement which I will not disclose here.

Now I’m sure many of you are concerned with the security model of having numerous copies of my car keys floating around, but the manufacturer (Chevy) of my vehicle already thought of this, separating the entry and ignition functions into two separate keys. This has its advantages and disadvantages, as evidenced by the Saturday lockout when I had my ignition key but not the entry key. Access to my vehicle is something I’m willing to allow because trustees of the keys will be people I trust not to steal something from my car in the first place.

I have a number of people “pre-approved” for keys, including my parents, Grandmother, sister Charleen, Josh, Sarah, Sarah, Rachel, Rene, Rebbecca, Elissa, Iram, Mat, Chris, extended family, and selected staff at Kaveh Kanes, Tropioca, and Get Wired, but like I said before anyone is eligible. These people have been carefully selected for proximity and accessibility—at any given point in my life, I am never more than 5 minutes from at least one of these people. So there you have it! A trade-off of security versus accessibility in real life. We’ll see how this goes…

These limited edition PhotoMatt keys will be accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity and will be available in several styles to complement any key ring. They will also be hand tested by yours truly to verify that they truly work. Get yours while they’re hot. (Limit one per person.)

Secret of Age

Music, Personal

I’ve discovered the secret of growing old—subtlety. As I get older I find myself starting to really appreciate the shades of meaning in everything around me from art to architecture to music. Especially music. Truly great artists or groups that I may have appreciated only superficially before—Mozart, Radiohead, Frank Sinatra, John Coltrane—I’m now beginning to appreciate with more depth. What’s beautiful about great art, in any form, is that everyone can appreciate it on different levels. At a symphony concert you might have some people just enjoying the atmosphere and letting the music wash over them, you might have a critic listening and comparing it to past performances of the same piece, you might have a musician listening intently to one voice, or you might have a composer listening to the intricacies on how everything fits together, point and counterpoint. Each is perfectly valid, and I think that each can enjoy the music equally, regardless of intellectual depth. By that same token I think younger performers who may be incredibly advanced technically oftentimes lack a depth of emotion that seems to only come with age; this is particularly apparent in jazz.

It’s not just applicable to art either, you could say the same thing about relationships, almost anything. Do any older more experienced people have thoughts on this? (Old = older than me) 🙂

Houston

Meta, Personal

Back in Houston, finally, and it’s nice adjusting back to old habits and comforts. Besides family and pets, I think the thing I missed most were my speakers, and it’s bliss to hear high fidelity sound again. Uploaded the last day from the trip, so enjoy! I’m also working on some layout/design changes for this site. The plan is to have a different theme for every month.

Church Condemns “radical libertarianism” on internet

Personal

Ethics in Internet

The ideology of radical libertarianism is both mistaken and harmful?not least, to legitimate free expression in the service of truth. The error lies in exalting freedom “to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values….In this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and ‘being at peace with oneself’ There is no room for authentic community, the common good, and solidarity in this way of thinking.

Ouch. As a Catholic this harsh criticism from the Church concerns me. They seem to be having as much trouble as anyone adjusting to the changes brought on by the net.

New Site: Mullenweg.com

Personal

I just finished putting the finishing touches on what I consider to be an acceptable version of the new Mullenweg Home Page. I bought the domain a while ago (because you know it would have gotten snatched up otherwise) but haven’t done much with it except put my senior pictures in a subdomain. However towards the beginning I built a database schema for all the genealogy information my sister seems to be obsessed with now :). Anyway once all the data was in the database it was a nice project to create a frontend for it, complete with tons of useless trivia about each entry.
I’m also quite proud of the entirey CSS based layout that it’s done in. I’ve dabbled quite a bit in CSS in the past, but this is my first abandonment of tables in a production design. You can also do some cool things on the Site Prefs page using some fancy javascript and alternate stylesheets. Try it out!

Continue reading New Site: Mullenweg.com →

testing new system

Personal

Yes, I suppose it was just a matter of time before my egotist tendencies combined with my inherit geekiness to create some sort of blog. I’ve had an unhealthy amount of fun setting this up :). This will be a nexus where I talk about and comment on things that interest me, like music, technology, politics, etc. etc. Has anyone noticed that when I’m sick I get a ton of work done?

Editor’s note, Sept 2012: This was the first blog entry I made on a Movable Type-powered blog that used to live on matt.mullenweg.com. From what I can tell from the archives, I switched to B2 (a predecessor to WordPress) about four months later.