January 2012
2 posts
2011, in songs
With the years albums documented with some difficulty and consternation, there’s a lot of very good records from this year whose albums were relegated by my fickle editorial to ‘merely good.’ That, or released on EPs that weren’t by Mogwai.
Unlike the albums that I ranked, these are arranged in a somewhat genre and mood themed playlist. The set is available as a handy Spotify...
2011, in albums.
Hark, a blog post! I don’t write as much as like to. I don’t have a lot of confidence in my writing tone at present, torn between short witticisms on Twitter, and lengthy documentation for technical consumption. That said, I consider the annual indulgence of reviewing the past year’s music as something quite easy to do. This year was quite difficult.
I’m predominantly a...
December 2011
1 post
3 tags
So, we've been keeping a little busy lately.
This is why:
We’ve been building something new! Come see: fly.twitter.com #letsfly
— Twitter (@twitter) December 8, 2011
Pro tip: Download the new Twitter for iPhone or Android and unlock the new Twitter on web. fly.twitter.com
— Dave Gamache (@dhg) December 8, 2011
I would like your strongest coffee served in a mug made out of your strongest coffee.
— Brian (@Truebe) December 8,...
August 2011
2 posts
Checkboxes, bitches, redux.
Exactly one year ago, I wrote a little post about Twitter’s OAuth experience, entitled Checkboxes, bitches. One thing led to another, and now I work at Twitter. So that went well.
Anyway, having been working in Twitter’s Platform Team for nine months, and taking on most of the front end work for the redesign of those very same authorization screens, I thought I’d revisit the...
“Obama added that while it may look ugly at times, politics is about Democrats...”
– Obama: Debt Ceiling Deal Required Tough Concessions By Both Democrats And Democrats Alike | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source
Truly, The Onion is America’s finest news source.
July 2011
1 post
Rejected Party Invitation
Annual Ben Party is coming up. This year—at no 2am, no less—I wrote two possible invitation texts. This is the one we didn’t go with.
The enhanced grip of white gloves grasped precariously on a shattered floorboard where some stairs had been moments ago. In slow motion, a nitroglycerin explosion tore through the east wing of the Motion Picture Director Michael Bay’s home. It was...
June 2011
2 posts
“Eisenberg said he quit after receiving a note from Facebook with suggestions...”
– Aaron Sorkin, Writer Of ‘The Social Network,’ Unfriends Facebook | TPM Idea Lab
5 tags
Life on Noire
I’ve been playing quite a lot of LA Noire lately. I’m enjoying it immensely. The story line, arcs, and episodic case structure are all remarkable good, and it’s a very playable game. (Inconsequential or very mild spoilers may follow.)
There’s a huge amount to enjoy about LA Noire. As Charlie Brooker said recently, it’s ‘the triumphant return of the adventure...
May 2011
1 post
“The page fails on a fundamental level—it’s supposed to be where you find out...”
– timoni.org - The most important page on Flickr
Much nodding in agreement as Timoni critiques Flickr’s most important and criminally neglected page. Barely changed since the site was launched.
April 2011
2 posts
Catching Trailing Whitespace in TextMate
Trailing whitespace is nasty, and there are various ways to go about catching it. There’s a neat way of running TextMate’s ‘strip trailing whitespace’ macro every time you save, for example, but that introduces an irritating lag if you’re twitchy with ⌘S like I am.
So instead, you can edit the language definitions for the languages you use:
{
name = 'invalid.whitespace';
...
A quick example of internationalising phrases
Internationalising phrases is harder than it looks, since it’s not just an exercise in swapping words and inserting variables. A common issue is the plural: The presence of an ‘s’ on a key word, based on the value of a piece of data you’re describing.
I’ve been looking for more complicated examples, though. Various foreign languages will change phrase in more complex ways as...
March 2011
5 posts
“A member of staff is now walking down the ethnically-diverse queue shouting ‘No...”
– Notes from the Regent Street Apple store iPad queue
A fine written entertainment from Mr Paul Haine, as we have all come to expect.
“First, and that’s an easy one, you need to pick the color. The iPad 2 comes in...”
– iPad 2: Black Or White? Wi-Fi Or 3G? How Much Storage?, App Advice
So I’m thinking I might just order the iPad from the internet rather than waiting for Apple Store lines to quiet down. A little research on the Black vs. White bezel decision got distracted by some quite excellent line...
“ The audience’s standing ovation was ecstatic, rapturous, genuine. Here, in this...”
– Salad Onions: Eleven very short stories about SXSW
“We simply cannot have democracy be held hostage because the minority wants to...”
– WI Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).
Republicans in Wisconsin clearly not on board with Federal Republican policy. American politics: Racing downhill, out of control, wearing nothing but a pair of lollerskates.
Source: Wisconsin GOPers Threaten Contempt For Fugitive Dems,...
February 2011
8 posts
Lords and Magpies
Yesterday, as everyone is no...
About that time…
I have a reasonably well known passion for music, a passion which so far outstrips my passion for blogging that I never actually wrote a ‘Best Of 2009’ music post. There’s one for 2008, and even that took a month to write.
So, no more. Late as it is, I’ve tried to assemble a little list. If anything I’m disappointed because there’s nothing really here that you...
File under: “Batshit insane analogies for current...
There are things that we can do in the air that we can’t do when our feet are rooted to the ground, we’ve tried skipping and it wasn’t good enough. Now, we’ve taken a running jump off a cliff, having knitted a parachute out of rope. Even though the rope wasn’t really designed for this, so long as we’ve bound it tight enough it will actually probably work well...
Hash, Bang, Wallop.
This week in web architecture, JavaScript routing hit the fan. Or at least, it did in vast majority of situations where the fan and all of its dependencies loaded over a reliable internet connection. A few were staring at a blank screen, or still trying to figure out how to navigate the new Gizmodo.
Tedious disclaimer because...
“For the pages in the application that we can do it, we create mirror HTML pages....”
– — The Daily’s editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo
Andy Baio has created a Tumblr blog to index all of The Daily’s content every day, linking to the web-based ‘sharable’ versions of articles primarily published through an iPad app. He expresses some concern about legal challenge, but later...
January 2011
4 posts
“Citizenship with a small ‘c’: proof not of birth or naturalization,...”
– Schuyler Erle on Twitter
This is something that has come to my mind quite a lot since I started living abroad. There’s a dissonance between the legal and emotional concepts of ‘residency’, ‘citizenship’ and nationality.
December 2010
1 post
Non-Titular
Titles appear to have quietly died again.
They used to be alive: In email subject and body form, in newspaper articles, books and academic papers. The first popular forms of independent, online writing imitated these, basing themselves on the opinion columns of print.
The earliest blogs (such as that of Ev Williams, circa 1998 briefly did away with headings for entries, and instead became...
November 2010
1 post
October 2010
6 posts
Trent Reznor discusses The Social Network... →
An excellent interview (as is often the way with DiS), with Trent Reznor providing substantial, thoughtful answers to everything. Really good read.
Source: Drowned In Sound
“You can’t be “fair and balanced.” You can only be fair or balanced. To be fair...”
– James Randi. Via lkm via thinkdrastic.
“I wouldn’t vote for me. I’d vote for someone who was, like,...”
– Comment by ferventspirit on the festival of lols that is Christine O’Donnel’s ‘I’m You’ campaign.
Source: Christine O’Donnell: ‘I didn’t go to Yale’ in latest TV ad - guardian.co.uk
September 2010
5 posts
Archived: The Second Annual Ben Party
August 4th marks my anniversary in this city. With each successive party the invitations become more elaborate, and since this year got organised on Facebook, I’m reproducing the text here for longevity. Also with the punchline image positioned in the right place as originally intended. Some pictures were taken, too.
Next year I think I’ll need to have more parties to encourage...
August 2010
41 posts
“We used to wait for it
Now we’re screaming
Sing the chorus again”
– The penultimate refrain from Arcade Fire’s “We Used To Wait”. Quoted not for depth or meaning or lyrical intrigue or anything at all except that reading it will immediately pop that bit of the song into my head. Might be my favourite moment on the whole record.
“We fully support Dove World Outreach Center and its efforts to put an end to the...”
– “Says ‘Right Wing Extreme’ founder Shannon Carson” … whilst offering the services of his Christian militia to defend a book burning.
What’s the catastrophic civilisational conflict equivalent of ‘head-desk’?
Source: Think Progress » Right-Wing Christian Militia Vows To Protect Florida...
