Month: May 2007

John Philip Green, Pete Forde and I went out one night in Portland to check out Ground Kontrol, an place that’s both bar and arcade devoted to 80’s pinball and video games (I wrote a little bit about the arcade in Global Nerdy). Along the way, we passed by a glowing red neon sign that proclaimed “Jesus is Lord” and couldn’t resist posing beneath it. You know, just in case The Rapture happened that night, or perhaps we might get discovered as supermodels. You never know.

We took the Max, Portland’s light rail system, from the convention center to the stop at Skidmore Fountain. The place’s name is so spot on that it’s downright Dickensian:

The light rail stop at Skidmore Fountain, Portland, Oregon.

Here’s John, posing underneath the sign. Jesus, please send him some venture capital!

John looks like he believes. Testify!

Pete struck a good pose:

Pete: “Dear Jesus, please give me a brand new drum kit…”

And here I am. Yea, though I walk through the valley of darkness, I have no fear, for I have a big honkin’ accordion:

Me: “Yay-us! The power of the accordion compels you!”

Photo by James Duncan Davidson. Click to see it on its original page.

Yes, it’s total bias on my part, but one of my favourite moments from last week’s RailsConf conference — the premier conference for Ruby on Rails developers — was playing the intro musical number for the evening keynotes — me on accordion, along with conference organizer Chad Fowler on his ukelele. It’s not every day that I get to break out the accordion in front of an audience of 1600!

Photo by “sd”. Click to see it on its original page.

We took the Radiohead single Creep and changed it from a song about unrequited love and self-loathing to a little ditty about Rails and its creator, David Heinemeier Hansson. Here are the reworked lyrics:

Writing applications
Used to make me cry
But you wrote a framework
So friendly and dry

You’re a supermodel
And I hear you code too
You’re so effing Hansson
David Heinemeier Hansson

But I’m a noob
I barely wrote depot
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here

(Falsetto part)

Da da da da…
David Heinemeier Hansson
has_many
has_one

The song’s chords are pretty simple: G – B – C – Cm, over and over, so rehearsing it didn’t take very long. Here’s a video that Aaron Huslage shot during our rehearsal just outside the administrative area:

Here’s the video of the actual performance, shot by one “KeeperPat”:

This makes this the second RailsConf at which someone performed a musical number with the words “David Heinemeier Hansson” in the lyrics (why the lucky stiff did it last year with lyrics about how Hansson was killed by Robert Scoble after a flamewar). It’s a tradition now!

I’d like to thank Chad Fowler for going along with the musical suggestion and for being an excellent musical partner. Maybe we could do it again next year — perhaps a ditty where we mention everyone in the Rails Core Team by name?