Category: It Happened to Me

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?

9:30 a.m., Saturday May 1st, 1999 — eight years ago today:

“That’s the last of the boxes, Mom!” I said as I walked through the front door of my parents’ house. It was spring cleaning day, and my job was to take junk out of the basement and bring to to Goodwill.

The older British man sitting in the kitchen looked at me with a somewhat perplexed expression as I poured him his cup of tea. He was my sister’s friend’s father, and he had come to pick up his daughter’s belongings. She had no place to store her stuff while she was off in Nairobi, and my sister had volunteered the space.

“Oh,” I said, realizing what he was looking at, “the purple hair. It’s an experiment.”

“It’s…er, jaunty,” he replied. “Really comes out on a sunny day like today. You don’t find it…shall I say, career-limiting, do you?”

“Not really. I’m a computer programmer, and I run my own business with a friend.”

“And your clients?”

“They don’t have a problem with it, either. In fact, I think it reassures them. They’re not just buying our services, they’re also buying a bit of that Wired magazine image, too.”

He smiled, and Mom entered the kitchen.

“Joey, is that accordion in the foyer yours?” she asked.

“Yes it is. Isn’t it a beauty?”

“It’s nice. I didn’t know you played.”

“I don’t. Not yet, anyway. Karl and I are going to try busking on the street today.”

“Really? What will you play?”

“I know some chords to some pop and rock songs. Simple stuff. We’re just going to try it out and see what happens.”

“Who’s going to sing?”

“It might have to be me. Karl seems to know only the lyrics to his own music.”

“You? Sing? Uh-oh…” she said with a smile.