Where’s the peanut butter?!

After playing a little more with Twitter, I’ve set up a contact in my
phone which has notes describing the various short codes that I think
it has available. Here they are - not case sensitive, of course, and
with all going to twitter’s number (40404):

Requesting messages
• GET — get updates from all your friends
• GET USER — get USER’s last update

Turning messages on and off
• ON / OFF — turn SMS updates on / off (also WAKE/SLEEP and START/STOP)
• LEAVE USER — turn off updates from USER
• LEAVE ALL — stop getting updates from all your friends
• FOLLOW USER — turn on updates from USER
• FOLLOW ALL — start getting updates from all your friends

Messages to friends
• NUDGE USER — encourage USER to post something
• D USER MSG — send MSG to USER as a direct message
• @USER: MSG — send MSG as a reply to the last update from USER

System sorts of things
• WHOIS USER — get information about USER
• INVITE NUMBER NAME MSG — send an invitation to NAME at NUMBER to join twitter with an optional MSG.
• STATS — get statistics about your account
• HELP — get a short help message (not terribly helpful)
• TIPS — get a short, helpful message
• FOLLOWERS — see who’s getting updates from you

I’ve also made a couple other observations about twitter. Even if
you don’t have unlimited SMS, it could be useful and fun. Just set up
some friends and turn off following them. You won’t get flooded with
updates, you can request them if you want (with GET), and you can use
the web interface to see your friends’ updates any time.

Also, it doesn’t seem super compelling to ever send a
twitter direct message, but I think it could be useful if you wanted
to send someone a message who might currently be asleep or something.
If their twitter preferences say “don’t message me between midnight
and 6AM”, the message isn’t delivered immediately. In spite of my
attempt to send href="http://twitter.com/slipperyp/statuses/30695281">a fairly
uninteresting message in what I thought would be off hours for a
bunch of my friends, I didn’t confirm whether it wasn’t delivered to
them later at all (and was only available on the web) or whether it
was delivered the next morning when their updates were turned on. So
direct messages may never make sense…

Finally, keeping your href="http://twitter.com/slipperyp/statuses/32905141">profile public
may not be a super good idea. I haven’t decided whether this is
really that bad, but for now people seem to be able to start following
you without your consent. I think the practical impact would just be
that your messages start showing up on their pages (or they get a ton
of SMS updates about you which you’d already consented to make public
by not keeping your profile private anyway). If friendship were
necessarily reciprocal and felch had been able to push messages to my
personal page, that would obviously be bad/spam bait, but it’s not, so
maybe this is OK…

If I got a nickel every time I told my friends they should use a website because I thought it would be a better way to keep in touch than actually keeping in touch, I could satisfy my coffee habit for at least a couple days.

The latest installment in that enterprise is Twitter. It’s really not obvious how it works at all, so I’ll break it down.

Sweet Dick Willie says “Let it be broke”
• You go get an account
• You add me as your friend
• I probably reciprocate
• You decide how you want to get twitter updates. They can either be IM’ed to you from the twitter account or sent as SMS messages to your phone (or email but gawd email is SOOO 2005).
• I go to Twitter’s website and drop a note about what I’m doing (like “trying to get Nico to sign up for twitter”) - this gets sent to you (on your phone, over IM, email) because you’re following what I’m up to.
• You send a similar message or SMS it to 40404 (the place twitter uses for messages) and I get it because I’m following what you’re up to

Easy right? I’m guessing this works best when lots of friends are on it (and when you all have an unlimited SMS plan!), which is why I’m saying you should sign up and add me as your friend

Last week Dean and Britta played at the Triple Door in Seattle, which had been my favorite place to see shows ever. One of the friends I invited to come had asked “how does seating work @ the triple door?” It’s basically first come, first served with awesome tables, dinner served and a full bar, but what turned out to be the more interesting question was “what time do shows start at the Triple Door?” Because if you’re Dean and Britta, I guess it goes like this:

1. Scheduled showtime is 7:30.
2. Your opener cancels.
3. You start playing immediately at 7:30.

What could be more obvious to your fans than that if your opener doesn’t show up, of course you should go on when the doors open? So stupid. At least I got there just after 7:30 so I didn’t miss much, and what I did see was terrific. I’m just glad I wasn’t the poor couple who showed up at the adjacent table who got there just in time to be told it was last call and who only barely caught the encore.

1. Weekend of 4/7: went to Boston. Leslie got married (congratulations!). Saw Howard. It was cold.
2. 4/12: Kodi died. Sadness ensued.
3. Have signed up for twitter - need friends
4. 4/13: taxes final filed!
5. 4/13: signed up for Intiman season - need to convince more friends to sign up
6. 4/14: have been at work all day. Must go home…

As my sister’s only younger brother, I’m in the unique position to be able to wait until after midnight, her time, on her birthday and then post a message in my blog wishing her a happy 35th birthday! So happy birthday, Betsy! And I hope you don’t wind up suing my boss!

I don’t know how close we are to armageddon but I, for on, plan on sharpening my pitchfork just as soon as I get home based on this news. Thank god for this other recent news that Keith Richards was just quoted as having “snorted [his] father” to maintain the balance in the music world.

I heard about this story on last weekend’s episode of href="http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/">Wait, Wait…Don’t tell
me during lightning fill in the blank.

Host: A shoplifter trying to make a clean getaway from a
Seattle Linens and Things was foiled when his girlfriend
[blanked].

Contestant:Um - told him he’d snatched the wrong color towels?

Host: No…dropped her pet duck.

Could this possibly be anyone but the woman href="http://www.psoul.com/index.cgi/living/seattle/DuckOnTheBus.html">Tanya
noticed on her bus a while ago? See also the href="http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/308775_duck24.html">coverage
in the Seattle PI about this.

Here’s a great money-making idea for aspiring bloggers: find weird
stories in the news involving animals and start aggregating and
syndicating. Not all of them will be as funny as the duck-jackers (nor
as disgusting as href="http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/03/oh_deer.html">this
Wisconsin man Scott Adams wrote about who is facing charges after
being caught having sex with a dead deer in a ditch), but I’m sure
there are enough stories in the daily news and there is enough
interest to keep a modest income stream from this.