David Eisinger

* Back to the Grind

2008-07-28T06:26:00Z

Clive Davis, from a piece on Wired exploring the mindset of a World of Warcraft player:

These explanations are all true, more or less. But I actually believe there’s another reason we’re willing to spend 20 hours a week grinding, and it’s far weirder.

It’s because we love it. We love grinding.

A great article, to which any long-term WoW player can relate. Nearly (gulp) four years after I started my first character, I’m still paying my $15/mo because of how productive it makes me feel. There’s always a goal in sight, and there’s usually a clear path to accomplishing that goal. Most of us have come to accept this, although it appears some players are still in denial:

Yes, the mindless, safe, predictable grinding is perfect for mindless, safe, predictable people. A few of us prefer the surprising and the novel; we play PvP.

Spoken like someone who hasn’t played WoW since 2005. Take it from a guy who pulled down 19K honor on Saturday by doing the same thing over and over and over again: it’s a grind, guy.

* I've Been Robbed!

2008-04-21T08:42:00Z

Mary just pointed me to a new web startup that seems to borrow heavily from some design work I did about a year ago. Mere coincidence or shameless rip? You be the judge.

The people’s exhibit #1: the design I did for hab.la in early 2007:

And what’s this? Digsby bills itself as “IM + Email + Social Networks”, but I call it a ripoff with a capital WTF:

I’m not sure what to think. The resemblance is there. Theirs has a little more depth; mine, a little more racism. I’d be more up-in-arms if I had any stake in hab.la or if I was trying to build a design portfolio, but as it stands, I’m pretty flattered.

* Life Updates Vol. 1

2008-03-17T16:18:00Z

HELLO WEB FRIENDS. Some brief updates: the new job is going swimmingly. I’m the primary developer on a smallish website we’re developing. It’s great to be able to work from professionally-designed website comps, and I’m learning a ton about testing and web application design. And check out the new viget.com — friggin’ awesome, huh?

Moving on up

Tooo the third floor. I’m moving into a new place in mid-April. I’m super excited; my two biggest gripes about my current apartment are the lack of space and how dark it is. This new place is great incredible — huge windows, tons of space, and a great view of Durham, and I can still walk to work. I’m looking forward to building my cave. Let me know when you can make it down, eh?

And speaking of visiting…

I’ll be up in NoVA this weekend, from the 19th to the 23rd — let me know if you wanna catch up. I heard there’s a great show in D.C. on Thursday.

* Moving On

2008-01-17T19:08:00Z

IN MAY OF 2006, I purchased this domain with the intention of starting my very own blog. I experimented with several site designs, but nothing I came up with effectively captured the feel of the time and place where I was. One day, I was out taking pictures of the area around my apartment. One in particular spoke to me, and that picture, shown above, became the foundation of this website.

FAST FORWARD one year: a small, Falls Church-based web company has decided to expand their operation to Durham. Their search for suitable office space eventually lands them in an impressive location in Brightleaf Square, with two cathedral windows looking out at the very same scene featured in the photograph above.

AS YOU MIGHT know, I’ve been an employee of Duke’s Office of Information Technology since I graduated in 2005. I’ve had the privilege of working with some smart, talented people on numerous enjoyable projects. I’m very thankful for the opportunities Duke has provided me.

BUT THE WINDS of change are blowing; the director of the Viget Labs Durham office, the very company I described earlier, found my website and contacted me about joining the Durham chapter of the Refresh tech network that they were starting. There I met some of the team, who encouraged me to apply for one of their open positions, and apply I did. I start on February 11th.

VIGET REPRESENTS AN INCREDIBLE opportunity for me. I’ll be doing Rails development full time. At this point in my career, there’s nothing I’d rather be doing. I’m only truly happy when I’m creating, and Viget offers plenty of opportunity for that, through team-based client work and contributions to open source. I’m sad to leave the friends I’ve made at Duke, but I’m not going far.

2007 ENDED ON SOMETHING of a rough note, but things are looking up, and the new year promises to be an exciting one. Best wishes to you and yours.

* Refresh the Triangle: Web Application Security

2007-12-07T13:18:00Z

At last night’s Refresh the Triangle meeting, Clinton Nixon (who should totally get together with Harrison Ford and have a presidential name-off) gave a great talk on web application security. He explained that a web application essentially takes data in, does something with it, and then sends it back out, and that a secure application needs to be secure throughout the cycle.

Topics included cross-site scripting, malicious file execution, and various kinds of injection attacks. I’m pretty familiar with SQL attacks, but I never gave a lot of thought to how easily POST requests can be altered (Clinton used the Firebug extension) to add new elements or to override values that are only enforced at the view level. Makes me cringe to think about all of the unchecked

person = Person.new(params[:person])

in my Rails code. You can check out his slides or links for more information. Additionally, if you’re into Ruby/Rails nerdery, poke through the Subversion repository he posted — he’s working with some cutting-edge stuff. The make_resourceful plugin looks particularly good.

Thanks a lot to Viget Labs for organizing this event, and to Shoeboxed for providing the venue, their office in Brightleaf Square:

Rails 2.0: It's done!

2007-12-07T12:37:00Z

Exciting day for web nerds everywhere. On top of all the new features, it's good to hear that they've focused on slimming down the codebase.

H2O RLY

2007-10-30T08:35:00Z

Casual Activist uncovers why bottled water is a total crock. Unless, of course, you're in Mexico, and the water es el color de mierda.

Kellogg's All-Bran 10-Day Challenge

2007-10-20T19:01:00Z

Click "On TV" and watch the commercial. So subtle. So disgusting.

Garbage Points

2007-10-18T19:33:00Z

A new sports blog from my friends Dhivy, Quang and Joe. These guys are great writers. If you're into sports, check 'em out.

The Incredible Em and Elastic Layouts with CSS

2007-10-12T14:10:00Z

Incredibly cool web design technique, where the whole layout resizes as text size is increased or decreased. Beautiful blog, as well.