Hi! I’m Brad!

I’m an award-winning software developer from Laramie, Wyoming.

Category: Uncategorized

  • I made Twitter work yesterday.

    Matt Jolley is an openly-gay high school senior from Worland High School (Worland, Wyoming). This photo is being rejected from his yearbook because it is "too political."
    Matt Jolley is an openly-gay high school senior from Worland High School (Worland, Wyoming). This photo is being rejected from his yearbook because it is “too political.”

    I saw a petition on change.org that troubled me greatly.  The petition is from Matt Jolley, a high school senior from Worland High School.  Mr. Jolley is an openly-gay senior, and his senior photo was reflection of that.

    But, unfortunately for Matt, his school board denied him the right to publish his senior portrait in the yearbook.  They reasoned that the photo was too political, and he must pay for the publication, since it was “an advertisement.”

    Please view and sign Matt Jolley’s Petition.

    So I did what I always do when I get mad: I got on Twitter, and I made shit happen.

    I started watching for celebrities to tweet.  When a celebrity would tweet, I would send them a plea to retweet a link to Matt’s survey.

    I sent these to dozens of celebrities.  And it worked.  In total, the tweets were shown to at least 300,000 people.  It cost me nothing, and earned Matt a lot of petition signers.

    Here’s the first successful tweet, sent to LGBT icon/MTV personality Dan Savage…

    Dan Savage retweeted it almost immediately, and then the petition started getting signed a little bit faster.  So I kept tweeting.  I follow a few celebrities, and I paid careful attention to them.  When they would tweet, I would tweet.  Within a few minutes, BAM! another retweet, this time from Chef Anne Burell.

    I kept this up for the greater part of yesterday.  Got a lot of traction by tweeting @adamlambert.  He didn’t personally respond, but his fans did.

    And then one final tweet, from @ChelseaVPeretti released a swath of new petition signers.

    Twitter is full of free publicity, and it’s especially full of well-followed people that are willing and able to help.  Had I worked harder, or had a team of people to help me, and used a hashtag to organize the campaign, this would have had an even greater effect.

    Regardless, this was a very fun use of a Sunday afternoon.  I learned a lot.  I received hundreds of retweets yesterday.  Not bad, considering I was in pajamas drinking wine all day.

    BTW, I’m still mad at @RuPaul for not retweeting.  He was on Twitter ALL. DAMN. DAY. and he didn’t retweet me once.

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    @bradkovach

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  • Twitter Hall of Fame: @vzwsupport

    I still laugh every time I remember this tweet

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    @bradkovach

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  • There is nothing rough about this…

    Nice exchange between two brands and a now-life-long user of both.  Kudos to Mead Five Star and Charmin for monitoring their channels effectively.

    It doesn’t always have to be 100% business 100% of the time.

    Mead Five Star and Charmin respond to @DJMikeBlau the right way

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    @bradkovach

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  • Increase PHP’s upload capacity

    Handy piece of code I use all the time when set up WordPress installation. Change the 30M to whatever you want. 2048M is good for 2 gigabytes.

    php_value upload_max_filesize 30M
php_value post_max_size 30M

    via Can’t get past the 2MB upload limit with .htaccess or php.ini drupal.org.

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    @bradkovach

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  • Reddit Comforts Men

    Always remember to respect his feelings. He feels that way for a reason and it should be honored. Don’t tell him not to worry as this will cause cognitive dissonance, which will only serve to aggravate his stress. Instead, show that you care and that you trust him. Don’t make him talk. It’s not very well known amongst women, I think, that guys can get extremely emotional. We are raised to be seen and valued as caretakers, and feeling like you’re a failure can cause you to feel worthless. There is no longer a way to be masculine, and so we cannot easily make ourselves feel better. You must, for now, show that you value him. No sex. Show affection. Sex is seen as a manly thing. He won’t feel like a man, and your wanting sex and his not wanting it will make him feel worse because he won’t seem very masculine. Do stuff you know he likes. Don’t ask him if he’d like to go; say that you’re going to do it and would like him to go with you. Politely insist, if you must. Make sure it isn’t something that’s too public. A walk in a quiet neighborhood, perhaps. If you ask him to go, he’ll say no, but if you show that you want him and say that you want to be around him, he’ll be more likely to go with you. Don’t say much, if anything. Just give him a hug and lead him. Seriously, take his hand and walk somewhere. He should be beside you, not behind. Don’t look at him, just walk by his side and comfort him by holding him close and leaning your head on his shoulder. He might start talking. If so, keep doing what you’re doing. No eye contact. Just listen. If he asks a yes or no question, simply hold him tighter or motion your answer with your head. Don’t ask questions to try and understand him better; just listen. Once he airs his thoughts and feelings, head towards bench that’s somewhere near home. Sit and listen some more. Once he airs his thoughts (if he does), take him home. You can cook a meal if you want, watch a movie he enjoys, cuddle perhaps. What he really needs now is time to reflect on what you’ve done. The point of not talking was to not distract him from his feelings. A distraction would be aggravating as it would make him feel like his problem isn’t important enough to be cared about, which would be even more demeaning to him. A time where he can be around you, but still not have to talk. You must not coax him into speaking. Most men need to process things on their own. That fact that he hid away from you shows that he is most likely one of those men. But the whole point of this is to show that you care for him, and thus, he is valuable.

    via http://www.reddit.com/r/AskWomen/comments/walu5/ladies_what_have_you_found_to_be_an_effective_way/c5bspmk

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    @bradkovach

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  • #challenge: Write an API

    If you manage a set of code, take some time today to improve your flexibility by replacing a certain set of code with an API.

    Common characteristics of an API

    • A logical group of functions surrounding a task or set of data.
    • A reusable system that is easy to document, and a joy to use.
    • Easier bug fixes.  Fix it once, and it’s fixed everywhere.

    You might have a set of tasks or functions on a website, or in a program that could really benefit from reduced code duplication. Things like…

    • Email systems.  Do you send emails a lot?  Reduce the work involved in sending emails, by writing a nice email API. $email->setSubject(“Hello!”); $email->setMessage($message); $email->setRecipient($to); $email->send();
    • Formatting systems. If you have structured semantic data, waste less time formatting it by creating a slick formatting engine.  Array goes in; formatted data comes out.$formatting->printUserList($users);
    • Logging API.  Create a simple system for you to write entries to a log file.  Rather than complicated stacks of code, use a simple function call like $debug->log(“There was a problem”)

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    @bradkovach

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