Lest all y’all think life these days is all going to see bands and fun trips to beaches and mountains, I’ve actually been busy with the software thing this whole time too. A couple of big project milestones in my day job. Firstly one of my projects, the Data Rights Protocol, has reached version 0.9 and we’re entering the initial deployment phase, which involves passing live data end-to-end among consortium members to implement actionable consumer data rights requests. Meanwhile, we also put up a new web site where you can learn all about it at:
https://datarightsprotocol.org
Second, another project of mine, Permission Slip, is going live with version 2.0 of our this week, including an all-new android version of the app. And there’s a new web site for this one too:
Finally, we’re getting very close to releasing version 3.0 of the Global Jukebox. This is a major rev I’ve been working on for months with Martin. One big new features is an all-new map visualization that starts with a spinning globe, and is much more powerful, flexible and performant than the old one. The other big thing is the app now has routes to express the app state as a unique url. Each of these was a big lift, and we’re now in the final phases of QA and tweaking the styles and messaging on the landing page. So watch this space for an announcement sometime soon. But for now you can get a sneak peak on our staging site at:
https://stage.theglobaljukebox.org
In the world outside of work, it’s been one of the rainiest Septembers I’ve ever experienced. Three out of the last four weeks it’s rained some or most or even all of the weekend, were’ talking epic, heavy, ark-building rains here, to the point where I’ve only gotten out on my bike one Sunday the whole month for a big ride, and not at all for a weekday evening in the last two weeks. The days are getting shorter faster, so soon the opportunity for a ride after work will be gone.
As luck would have it, we did go out to see another concert last weekend. It was Superblue, a funk-fueled collaboration between Kurt Elling and Charlie Hunter, at Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village. Poisson Rouge turned out to be a pretty nice club, although the waiters were kinda disorganized and incredibly slow. The band itself was great. The opening act was the horn section from the main group, backed by a different rhythm section. They were really fun, funky and entertaining. At one point the trumpet player switched to tuba and the trombone player to beatboxing, leaving just the sax player. They did a Stevie Wonder medley which was just mind blowing.
The main act was most excellent too. Charlie Hunter plays a guitar with extra strings and an octave effect so it functions as both the bass and the guitar for the group. Needless to say his technique is innovative and incredible, but he spent most of his time in the pocket, just groovin’ and grinnin’. Kurt himself was great, picking diverse source material such as “Naughty Number Nine” from Schoolhouse Rock, delivering them with powerful, soulful phrasing, and interjecting philosophical soliloquies a la Elwood Blues.
Just yesterday we were supposed to see yet another shoe, Tuck and Patti at the Irridium, but it got cancelled due to the weather. There were such heavy rains and flooding in New York City that the seals in the Central Park Zoo escaped their enclosure and were were freely swimming/sliding around the whole zoo. I guess they went back on their own without having to be rounded up.