February 2010
18 posts
“This was an epiphany. I publish my work in HTML, people primarily read my work...”
– —Mark Pilgrim on The Setup
Emphasis mine.
“Picking the right text editor will not make you a better writer. Writing will...”
– Mark Pilgrim on The Setup
January 2010
27 posts
“Yes, we already had a big year planned for 2010, with several long-anticipated...”
– The Omni Mouth » iPad or Bust!
Very cool in itself, but I think this is also a huge instant reward to Apple for launching the iPad with iWork. They gave over substatial presentation time to highlight the iPad’s capability for productivity and business software, that it goes beyond media...
“We’re also going to begin phasing out our support, starting with Google Docs and...”
– —Official Google Enterprise Blog: Modern browsers for modern applications
My question is how will Google implement this? There are two ways: The right way is to stop serving scripts and complex stylesheets to IE; you let the browser’s default styling handle rendering of the information...
“If root did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. In a world with only...”
– —Myself, on my other blog
Posted about hacking in closed systems, my favourite Mac OSX hacks, and how in a new, closed world that has reinvented many of the common expectations of computers, we have to rediscover hacking. I’m confident the native parts of iPhone OS won’t be closed...
Unrefined thought on the iPad closed system/open system/old world-new world/learning to programme meme: We learned to programme and it made us smarter, better, improved our brains. We fear a world in which people cannot improve their brains in the same way. We fear that simpler, more refined interfaces will close off a route to getting smart, that people will be stupider as a result, or that...
“I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming, scientific...”
– —President Barack Obama, 2010 State of the Union Address
Oh, snap.
“I wouldn’t want to take away your joy and surprise on Wednesday when you...”
– —Apple COO Tim Cook
You know what? I’ve been entirely blasé about this whole remodel-the-universe Apple Tablet stuff. I have an iPhone, and a MacBook, and a Mac Mini media centre, and in this Apple-loving mesh I cannot work out where I’m supposed to fit a third handheld device and get...
Filibuster 2.0: How 41 Senators Control The... →
TPM’s historical overview of the Senate filibuster rules, allowing a block-voting, power-at-all-costs opposition party to grind America to an embarrassing standstill. Glad of this, since in the years following my A-Levels I’d forgotten how it worked. (I think my brain rejected the knowledge because it was too stupid to be real.)
In a black-humoured twist to the practice of political...
“All I wanted was something new that absolutely made sense to me, and reflected...”
– Simon Collison: Redesigning the undesigned
Design is not my talent. I hold some awareness of technique, I recognise where particular tricks could work, but I just don’t have the skills or practice to realize ideas visually. Critique, I can do quite well (biased back toward a design’s...
“This, of course, can easily be misunderstood as some kind of scam, leaving...”
– PlayCatan - “Verified by Visa” disabled
Verified by Visa is a Phishing Training Application disguised as a security enhancement. Normally, criticism of the system by non-morons centres around the idea that inserting a crude interface into the UI of another site, people are be taught...
“The point of the foundation is to ensure free access, in perpetuity, to the...”
– —Wordpress Foundation
Via. Hanni.
The sentiment here is powerful, but whilst providing the means to maintain a piece of software free forever is a good thing, my immediate thought was to how we might offer the same kind of insurance to the content that people create with it. I’m not...
How important is it that my posts are on Tumblr?
Hello, dear reader.
I’m slowly getting around to consolidating what I write online. Writing on Tumblr has been a good experience, and using it I’ve learned to write regularly again. There’s a hard to describe allure to the Tumblr Dashboard, which I still use from time to time even though Fever is a great feed reader… perhaps it’s because Tumblr’s RSS output is a bit...
““Kraft have a proud record of creating entirely new substances from a range of...”
– WILL CHOCOLATE BUTTONS TASTE LIKE SHIT? ASKS BRITAIN – The Daily Mash
Cadbury got bought by Kraft (“the US-based fabricated cheese and industrial bleaching conglomerate”.) Which may or may not be less awful than it being bought by Hershey, which was on the cards for a while too. Regardless, The...
“People love narratives. They go to the movies to indulge in someone else’s...”
– —Avery Edison’s Internet Website: A conversation about the conversation.
♥ this entire paragraph forever.
“Fuck “Auntie Beeb”, the BBC is more of a dead cool uncle. Sure it does some...”
– —Lowndeszy, in the DiS comments
(BBC apologises over Coldplay and U2 promotion / Music News // Drowned In Sound )
“Yes, his network is called ‘comedy’, but we live in a day where Fox is called...”
– —Storm, in the TPM comments.
Concerning to ongoing relevance of Jon Stewart, in the aftermath of his interviewing infamous ‘torture memo’ monster John Yoo.
Song of the Day
River of Brakelights - Julian Casablancas
Got given a copy of The Strokes frontman’s record over Christmas. In part, it does a good line in the neither-here-nor-there, ambling and non-descript that the last Strokes album suffered from, but it also contains a couple of absolute gems, and for that I will give the man immense credit.
I’m in obsession over the bridge and chorus for...
BenWard: I don’t understand why TechCrunch is a featured corporate user on the Github frontpage. §
RellyAB: Perhaps they are putting the Git into github? §
http://instantrimshot.com/
