Matt Mazur

Hey ya’ll,

This blog is going on hiatus for a few months while I take care of some other commitments.

I’ll still be available by email if you need to reach me.

All the best,

Matt / matthew.h.mazur@gmail.com

AOL-Files

• Remembering AOL's FDO91 Programming Language January 28, 2012
• AOL-Files Head Nod August 8, 2010
• Adrian Lamo AOL-Files Profile June 26, 2010
• AOL-Files Fanfare on Digital Gangster June 20, 2009
• AOL Modal Tool April 29, 2009
• Exploits Online, AOL-Files.com's Precursor December 14, 2008
• AOL-Files Fanfare October 17, 2008
• AOL-Files.com August 17, 2008
• Nostalgia August 14, 2008

Design

• A Simple Fluid-Fixed Layout May 19, 2010
• One Way to Discourage Design Theft February 20, 2010

Domain Pigeon

• Lean Domain Search Launch Report January 17, 2012
• Domain Pigeon: Deadpool November 7, 2010
• Domain Pigeon on Smashing Magazine September 15, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Fixed August 25, 2009
• Wordoid May 22, 2009
• A Long Road Forward May 17, 2009
• Post Mortem May 13, 2009
• Finding Great Domain Names with Mechanical Turk May 13, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Adwords April 25, 2009
• Finally: Credit Card Processing April 24, 2009
• TechRadar Article April 12, 2009
• Obsessable.com Article April 10, 2009
• Domain Pigeon makes it to Digg's Front Page! April 10, 2009
• Lessons Learned Article April 10, 2009
• Inquisitr Article & A Lesson Learned April 10, 2009
• Website Magazine Article April 10, 2009
• CNET! April 9, 2009
• Here we go. April 7, 2009
• Back to Work March 22, 2009
• Updates March 21, 2009
• A Brief HackerNews Traffic Analysis March 18, 2009
• Six Lessons Learned from Domain Pigeon's First Six Weeks March 15, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Adds the # of Google Search Results March 2, 2009
• WebHostingShow.com on Domain Pigeon March 2, 2009
• Hi March March 1, 2009
• Losing Focus February 22, 2009
• Minor Updates and Dancing with Google February 21, 2009
• OK, Available February 20, 2009
• More Updates February 19, 2009
• Surprise: New layout February 18, 2009
• Free Domain Names! Well... kind of February 17, 2009
• Matt Cutts on the Structure of a Google Search Result February 16, 2009
• Domain Pigeon #11 for "available domain names" February 16, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Free w/Automatic Updates February 16, 2009
• The Importance of 168 February 11, 2009
• Czesz February 9, 2009
• Domain Pigeon 180 February 9, 2009
• The Road Forward February 8, 2009
• Homepage Updates February 7, 2009
• Wow February 6, 2009
• Ugly February 5, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Homepage Updates February 4, 2009
• Strategizing with Google's Keyword Tool February 2, 2009
• Improving Domain Pigeon's Two Most Important Pages February 1, 2009
• Domain Pigeon Title February 1, 2009
• Small then Large February 1, 2009
• More Press: Frusketing.com January 31, 2009
• Milestone: CNET Coverage January 31, 2009
• Small Adjustment, Big Improvement January 30, 2009
• Launch Day Followup January 30, 2009
• Improving the Availability Dropdown January 30, 2009
• Troubleshooting: /MSOffice/cltreq.asp January 29, 2009
• The Green Light Flashes, the Flags Go Up January 29, 2009
• Delayed Launch January 26, 2009
• Toying with SQL Injection in Rails January 24, 2009
• The Importance of Following Through January 22, 2009
• "Engines pumping and thumping in time" January 21, 2009
• Did you Know? January 19, 2009
• "Reluctantly crouched at the starting line" January 15, 2009
• Git+SSH+Github+Dreamhost+Capistrano=Great Success January 6, 2009
• 12/16 Domain Pigeon Updates December 16, 2008

HNTrends

• Farewell HNTrends November 5, 2010
• An Amazing JavaScript Port of HNTrends.com Using Raphael JS June 25, 2010
• HNTrends Data Analyzed (link) March 9, 2010
• Six Months of HackerNews Front Page Data March 7, 2010
• Introducing HNTrends.com September 7, 2009

jMockups

• Lean Designs Now Supports Hybrid Width Website Layouts May 30, 2011
• Lean Designs Will Disrupt Web Design May 12, 2011
• March Madness: Preceden Gets Some Love, jMockups's Grind Continues April 6, 2011
• February in Review: Life Tracking, Major jMockups Updates, and Preceden's Best Month Yet March 4, 2011
• Launch! jMockups Website to Mockup Converter February 19, 2011
• Seeking Alpha Testers for new jMockups Import Tool February 6, 2011
• jMockups and Preceden January Review February 5, 2011
• 2010, 2011 & a $4K/month Challenge December 17, 2010
• jMockups Launch October 26, 2010
• A Public Commitment to Launch jMockups October 7, 2010
• Recurring Billing Fun September 15, 2010
• Comparing Recurly, Spreedly, and Chargify August 7, 2010
• jMockups August 4, 2010
• What I'm working on July 21, 2010

Poker Bot

• Burning Bridges and Getting Banned From Full Tilt Poker January 23, 2011
• Poker Bot Preflop Strategy Explained December 10, 2010
• Poker Blog #2 Archive November 7, 2010
• Italian Poker Club Article on Poker Bot Development October 5, 2010
• Poker Bot Strategy for Postflop Play October 4, 2010
• Poker Bot Preflop Strategy October 1, 2010
• Joffe Decks September 11, 2010
• Confessions of a Bot Runner Article June 26, 2010
• How to Calculate Your Equity vs Every Other Hole Card Combination March 14, 2010
• Poker Bot Command Line Tool - AllHandsDesc March 7, 2010
• A Poker Bot Comment Worth Reading October 22, 2009
• Building a Shortstacking Poker Bot - A Visual History October 18, 2009
• Experimenting with a Neural Network-based Poker Bot October 13, 2009
• Modeling Human Clicking Behavior on PokerStars July 2, 2009
• PokerShark: Gaining an Edge at Online Poker June 29, 2009
• No Limit Hold'em Poker Bot Profits by Effective Stack Size June 27, 2009
• Introduction: Heads Up No Limit Hold'em Sit-n-Go's June 27, 2009
• Poker Bot Q&A, Round 1 June 18, 2009
• Talking to Nobody: Conversations with a Poker Bot June 16, 2009
• Poker Bots: Handling Talkative Opponents June 15, 2009
• How do you measure a poker bot's success? June 14, 2009
• Improving PokerStars's Bot Detection Techniques June 13, 2009
• The Last Day I Played Online Poker June 12, 2009

Preceden

• March Madness: Preceden Gets Some Love, jMockups's Grind Continues April 6, 2011
• Preceden's 15 Days @ $30/Day AdWords Results March 29, 2011
• A/B Testing Preceden's Homepage - Round 1: 37% Improvement March 13, 2011
• AdWords: Week 1 Results March 13, 2011
• How to Calculate Your AdWords ROI for a Freemium, One Time Purchase Web App March 5, 2011
• February in Review: Life Tracking, Major jMockups Updates, and Preceden's Best Month Yet March 4, 2011
• jMockups and Preceden January Review February 5, 2011
• I Eliminated the Free Plan from my Web App for a Month: Here's What Happened. January 2, 2011
• 2010, 2011 & a $4K/month Challenge December 17, 2010
• What I'm working on July 21, 2010
• On (Not) Emailing Bloggers June 21, 2010
• Adding a Survey to Preceden with Wufoo May 24, 2010
• Preceden's Homepage Heatmap May 21, 2010
• Preceden's Paid Conversion Funnel (Infographic) May 16, 2010
• Preceden 20x Faster May 9, 2010
• Preceden Updates May 1, 2010
• IE8 on OS X April 11, 2010
• Disk Inventory X Eye Candy April 10, 2010
• And then there were two April 6, 2010
• Using Delicious Tags to Describe Your Site March 23, 2010
• Charts, an LLC, and LifeHacker Coverage March 22, 2010
• Ancient Greek Timeline March 14, 2010
• White Headers, Flinging Timelines, and a little Momentum February 24, 2010
• Embeddable Timelines February 20, 2010
• Post Launch Traffic != Success February 19, 2010
• The Preceden Blog February 11, 2010
• Reflections on Preceden's HackerNews Launch February 11, 2010
• Announcing Preceden February 7, 2010
• Preceden Updates January 9, 2010
• Five changes that have helped me be more productive December 8, 2009

Programming

• How to Switch Your Cedar Heroku App from Webrick to Thin January 18, 2012
• Integrating Big Huge Thesaurus's API into Lean Domain Search January 18, 2012
• How to Automatically Back Up your Heroku site to Dropbox October 11, 2010
• Django Masterpiece June 2, 2009
• Revolution May 13, 2009
• Why to Set a Time Limit on Password Reset Emails December 1, 2008
• Macs: Productivity made Easy November 4, 2008
• Focusing on Productivity November 2, 2008
• Good Design is Easy, Great Design is Hard October 13, 2008
• Function vs Design September 30, 2008
• Scriptaculous Troubleshooting September 25, 2008
• Narrowing Down a Path September 7, 2008
• Zend, its Not You, It's Me... Why Hello There... August 10, 2008
• The Wrong Way to Get Noticed by YC August 8, 2008
• Ajax Lab: Draggable w/ Memory August 3, 2008
• Ajax Prototype Lab: Draggable Objects August 2, 2008
• Ajax! August 1, 2008

Quotes

• QUOTE: We are thinkers, dreamers, explorers, artists, writers, engineers August 4, 2010
• Quote: "I just wanted to become really rich and do it on my own terms" June 29, 2010
• Quote: "Every system has two sets of rules..." October 14, 2009
• The Art & Science of Seductive Interactions September 30, 2009
• Quotes September 13, 2009
• Feynman: Take the World from a Different Point of View June 28, 2009
• "Determine Never to Be Idle" June 27, 2009
• On Spirit March 1, 2009
• Some Reasons Why Your Startup Could Succeed February 14, 2009
• Meaningful Work December 31, 2008
• That Graham Guy on Credentials December 16, 2008
• Clay Shirky December 13, 2008
• Hire Yourself December 6, 2008
• Entrepreneurial Quotes December 4, 2008
• TED & Malcolm Gladwell November 23, 2008
• URI.parse November 8, 2008
• Branden on the Art of Living Consciously October 22, 2008
• PT Barnum on Business September 21, 2008
• Legal Q&A August 27, 2008
• Chris Wanstrath August 21, 2008
• Pricing Strategies August 19, 2008
• Money, Startups, Ideas August 5, 2008
• Quotes August 4, 2008
• An Investing Principles Checklist August 2, 2008
• Quotable Roosevelt July 30, 2008
• David Hansson on Startups July 29, 2008

Startups

• What are you working on? How can I help? January 15, 2011
• Startup Blogs To Make You a Better Entrepreneur December 19, 2010
• Startup School was a Blast November 9, 2009
• Notes from Startup Bootcamp October 13, 2009
• Link: 12 Ways to Blow Your Investor Pitch June 13, 2009
• Philly Emerging Tech - Day 2 March 27, 2009
• Philly Emerging Tech - Day 1 March 26, 2009
• Entrepreneurship is Getting Easier March 13, 2009
• In Praise of Audiobooks March 8, 2009
• Wolfram Alpha March 8, 2009
• Make Something Mothers Want March 5, 2009
• Carnegie on Making Something People Want March 3, 2009
• On Money March 1, 2009
• Make Something People Want? January 26, 2009
• That Graham Guy on Credentials December 16, 2008
• Hire Yourself December 6, 2008
• Domain Name Services August 30, 2008
• Decision Time, Old Guy at B&N, and Executive Summary August 30, 2008
• Hacker News Top Submissions August 12, 2008
• LLC or Corp Notes - Partnerships & LLCs August 10, 2008
• Early Adapters August 5, 2008

Misc

• Be Right Back July 17, 2011
• Blog Posts by Category December 29, 2010
• The Universal Singularity September 9, 2010
• Clever AIM Spam June 26, 2010
• Bitmap File Format October 3, 2009
• Break September 24, 2009
• The Appearance of Accomplishment September 16, 2009
• Dinner with Raffi September 13, 2009
• Blog Layout Tweak September 9, 2009
• Philly Build Guild, Round 2 August 18, 2009
• Python with crontab on Mac OS X 10.5.1 Leopard August 17, 2009
• Progress with Flash: A Dead-Simple Chart July 30, 2009
• Ads vs Content on Kaboodle July 29, 2009
• Entrepreneurs Can Change the World July 26, 2009
• Flash: First Project July 12, 2009
• Identify The Essential July 5, 2009
• Persistence July 4, 2009
• Learning Flash June 25, 2009
• Go Fish! June 21, 2009
• Man Builds Toothpick City June 21, 2009
• The Traditional Employee Model Sucks December 11, 2008
• Philly on Rails! November 18, 2008
• Go go go November 17, 2008
• Git Resources November 9, 2008
• MBA Considerations November 8, 2008
• URI.parse November 8, 2008
• Heroku it is November 3, 2008
• Updates September 3, 2008
• Ping Back Spam from autocarsinsurance.net August 30, 2008
• Updates August 25, 2008
• Netflix Delay Notice August 14, 2008
• Zend_Loader July 28, 2008
• Link@Startup Business Models July 27, 2008
• Google Should Do This July 24, 2008
• Progress July 21, 2008
• Horizons July 17, 2008
• Knowledge Connects Everything. July 16, 2008
• WSJ July 16, 2008
• Quotes July 15, 2008
• Learning Zend Framework July 14, 2008
• Learning about YouTube July 14, 2008
• First! July 8, 2008

A good friend of mine, David Mangold, recently started an excellent blog called The Universal Singularity, which covers topics ranging from the implications of the discovery of water around carbon stars to ongoing efforts to build subaqueous human colonies.

Here’s a quote from his going series on his philosophy of existence:

“Cosmic evolution”, “biological evolution”, and “technological evolution” are not separate processes, but one in the same. This is central to the theory of Universal Singularity. While we necessarily create categories in the observed world to assist us in understanding it, they have little intrinsic meaning. Was there a fixed time at which cosmic evolution gave way to biological evolution? Or a time when suddenly biological evolution was replaced with technology? Of course not. Rather, the whole process is a continuum, a gradually changing system that tends to create pockets of ever greater organization and complexity. We humans, like the rest of the Universe, are the result of this process. Actually, “result” is the wrong word. We are this process. We are small bits of the Universe that through this process have gained a level of awareness that allows us to question our origins and our fate.

You can read more on his blog here.

I received the following AIM message a little while ago:

Curious, I responded back to Qtpiegirl8394. Here’s the transcript:

Qtpiegirl8394: let me know when you have your username

I thought this was pretty well done for several reasons:

• Most of the AIM spam I get is a simple “Hey click here to chat with hot girlz”, which is easy to identify as spam. With this, I got an IM from an official-sounding screenname (TMorganDirector), which asked me to contact another screenname due to technical difficulties.  Had it not been for the disparity in screennames (TMorganDirector vs Qtpiegirl8394), it would have been hard to tell this even was spam.
• The bot, which asks me whether I am a bot, seemed to keep track of where we were in the conversation. It starts out with a hello, who is this, and little by little leads me towards the webcam site. Most of the responses are generic enough that they work regardless of what I am actually saying. For example, it said “who is this again?” I said “you sent me an IM” and it said “oh yeah!”, but it probably would have said “oh yeah!” regardless of what I actually said because it knew it had just asked me that question.
• It also analyzed what I was saying because when I asked “are you real?” it responded “i’m as real as they come 100% live in the flesh”. Pretty good.
• The URL that it gave me contains her screen name (good), but then directs me to a generic looking webcam site (you can replace her name in the URL and it still redirects to the same page). They’d probably do a lot better linking me to something that looks like a profile page that contains a picture of a beautiful woman, her screen name (taken from the URL), and a big green “Chat now!” button at the top of the page. They could even embed a video with a girl saying “Hello? Can you hear me?” which would fool a lot of people.
• Another complaint is that it kept responding back to me even when I wasn’t saying anything (such as the “what? I’m definitely real I hate fakes” at the beginning). The whole “i’m sorry i get forgetful who is this again?” is a big red flag too since she allegedly just IM’d me–I wonder why the programmer included that.

Not bad though.

I bet the conversation rates on this method blow the direct-spam rates out of the water. They could do a lot better still with some calculating A/B tests.

I put together this chart showing the organization of a small Bitmap file:

(click to expand)

I used Wikipedia’s Bitmap File Format article in conjunction with UltraEdit and PowerPoint to analyze this 10 x 10 pixel Bitmap image:

There are only two bytes unaccounted for: the 6B 22 at the end of the file. Anyone know what their purpose is?

If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would take 19 days to define it.

– Albert Einstein

I’m taking a break this month in order to brainstorm and figure out what to work on next.

I hope to start hacking away again sometime during the next few weeks and honestly I can’t wait; the idleness is driving me crazy ;)

Twitter made the news today because of CEO Evan William’s disclosure to employees that the company is valued at $1 billion.

Humorously, I also came across this today from the Editor in Chief of Esquire, David Granger, in the Letter from the Editor section of the October 2009 issue:

“We live in a culture that has begun to prize the appearance of accomplishment over actual accomplishment–it continues to amaze me that private enterprise and venture capital spend so much time and energy (not to mention cash) on “innovations” like Twitter and other forms of social blathering rather than marshaling the energies and talents of our engineers to create new industries to replace the ones that enabled the American Century.”

I admire Twitter for building such a seemingly simple product that appeals to so many people, but I can’t help but agree with Mr Granger: is this the best we can do?

Update: Sara Lacy posted an article on TechCrunch with similar sentiments.

edw519 responded to her article with the following comment on HackerNews, which, like most of his stuff, is thoroughly thought-provoking:

Investor: What are you building?Entrepreneur: Artificially intelligent software that automatically builds sophisticated business applications based on the enterprise’s business rules.

This evening I was lucky enough to have dinner with Raphael Mudge, founder of the recently acquired proofreading startup After the Deadline.

This was a good week for him. On Tuesday Automattic announced they had acquired After the Deadline back and incorporated it into WordPress.  The announcement was immediately followed by a flurry of press coverage and widespread admiration of his success. As someone eloquently put it on HN, “It takes cast-iron balls the size of cantaloupes to make a product that competes against companies with six orders of magnitude more funding… and succeed.“

Raffi, as he is known on HackerNews, is easily one of the nicest guys I’ve ever met. His optimism is contagious and his passion for his work is second to none. Smart too: did you know that After the Deadline uses a neural networks to identify errors? Yeah, wow.

Well done sir. Congrats again.

Frustrated with the growing length of the navigation bar on the right, I made some changes.

Before:

After:

This was largely inspired by Fred Wilson’s AVC blog, which was designed by Nathan Bowers.

I postponed writing the little bio snippet for a long time mostly because I had no idea what to say. Those 35 words, believe it or not, took about two hours to get right and knowing me, they’ll probably change completely within a week. I think the extra color adds a nice touch too.

The second Philly Build Guild meetup was tonight and like the first, we all had a great time.

One notable difference from the Philly.rb meetups is the higher number of entrepreneur-programmers who attend. There was a guy there tonight who talked at length about a Series A round his company was supposed to get, only to fall through at the last minute. Most of my knowledge of that realm is through Paul Graham’s essays and accounts on HackerNews; it was nice to meet someone who has actually gone through it.

One amusing stat which I forgot to mention last time was that someone asked “Is there anyone here who doesn’t have an iPhone?” and only 1 out of the 12 of us had that dubious distinction.

Oh and how in the world do you pronounce Django?  Duh-jango? Deh-jango? Jango? What a name.