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Month

September 2011

39 posts

The Only Good Thing Gizmodo Has Published This Year → gizmodo.com

I loathe giving them pageviews, but here it is. For your viewing pleasure.

Sep 30, 20119 notes
#Gizmodo #iPhone #Apple #review #funny #humor #lol #tech
"Choke-a-Cola" → joystiq.com

Welcome to the last 2.5 million years of human evolution.

The liberal, modern, humanist, empathetic, high-functioning member of society in me wants to disagree with this article.

The pragmatist in me things that this is what’s up. Over-stimulated latch-key punks best recognize.

Sep 30, 20111 note
#gaming #Mark Bradford
Espresso 2 → macrabbit.com

Espresso 2 just went stable. Great static web development editor. Pretty fantastic CSS tools too.

I used the Espresso 2 “Kaboom” test releases from the first alpha iteration to make sites that are in production, and I loved every minute of it. It does a really good job of getting out of the way, so if you’re more of a text editor person then you should be able to adapt pretty quickly.

Sep 30, 201110 notes
#Macrabbit #OS X #Apps #Web Development #Web Design #Espresso 2
Corrections | The Onion - America's Finest News Source → theonion.com

Good for a giggle.

Sep 29, 20111 note
#The Onion #humor #lol #funny
Sep 29, 201145 notes
#check yo chart #Excel #politics are fun
Gradient App for OSX | The Missing Link between Web Designers and Colors → gradientapp.com

ohmygod. This. One million times, this this this.

Sep 29, 201112 notes
#OS X #Mac #Apps #CSS #CSS3 #CSS Gradients #Gradient app #beta #web design #web development
Acer: Ultrabooks will eat iPad’s lunch… Next year [9to5 Mac] → 9to5mac.com

Fascinating that they think they’re competing with the iPad.

Mind-boggling that they think these things even can compete with the iPad.

Sep 29, 20118 notes
#tech #ultrabooks #ipad
Daring Fireball: Amazon's New Kindles → daringfireball.net

John Gruber weighs in on the new Amazon Kindle devices. Top notch writing, as per usual for a long-form DF article. Buried inside, though, is perhaps the single most refined, cogent, and well-articulated description of what Apple (and potentially Amazon) got right and what everyone else is doing wrong in the “tablet space”:

Amazon built an alternative to the iPad, rather than a direct competitor. It’s a different market segment. As Steve Jobs explained back in 2010 at the introduction of the original iPad, there’s unexplored territory between smartphones and laptops.

Read the rest. It’s the stuff.

Sep 28, 20118 notes
#Tech #Android #iOS #iPad #Apple #Amazon #tablet #Kindle #Kindle Fire
Sep 28, 2011
#Married to the Sea #comics #web comics
Neutrinos Faster Than Light, or FPGA artifacts? - Zorinaq → blog.zorinaq.com

I don’t talk about it too much, but I am a physicist as much as I’m a software engineer. This whole neutrino thing has been a little fascinating, and there’s been a great deal of healthy debate about what exactly is happening.

This has been the first time I’ve seen someone call out the tech instead of the science, and it’s pretty interesting.

Sep 26, 201120 notes
#CERN #OPERA #faster than light #neutrino #FPGA #tech #science #physics
Like a Phoenix from the Ashes → blog.macromates.com

I don’t want to totally spoil it for you, but if you fall in to all of the following categories:

  1. You are a Mac geek
  2. You write a lot (code or otherwise)
  3. You are a Text Editor geek

Then you will be fucking geeked by a 1 paragraph blog post.

Sep 26, 20115 notes
#Mac #OS X #text editors #nerdery #vaporware
Sep 24, 2011

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joqueneth replied to your post: I’m over it, Tumblr

Are the spambots too numerous for you to simply block them?


In fact, I do block them. Every time I crush one, several more pop up. It reminds me of something.

Sep 23, 2011
#joqueneth
Should I Email Marco Arment? → shouldiemailmarco.com

I was a little under the weather yesterday, and I spent most of the day catching up on my Build & Analyze episodes. After listening for a few hours I ended up getting bored and making this.

Sep 23, 20111 note
#Marco Arment #5by5 #Build and Analyze #Build &amp Analyze #the jackals #Should I Email Marco?
I Was Playing "Another World" On My Lunch Break

Another World 1

The updated graphics are both modest and stellar. The mood and emotional depth of the game hasn’t been sullied in the slightest.

Another World 2

I’ve been dying for this game to be remade. It’s weird. I never made it very far in this game as a kid. In fact, I’m almost positive that in the 45 minutes I played the game over lunch, I got farther than I ever had as a kid.

Another World 3

And even in that short time, this game made a lasting impact on me. I’ve been dying for this game to be remade for years. Part of it was the mood. I remember the gut feeling I had when I first turned this game on as a kid. A gut feeling that at the time there was definitely not a single other game out there like it. There was another thing that burned this game in to my memory forever though.

Another World 4

As I had said before, this game was hard. It’s why playing it for hours as a kid didn’t get me much farther than I could make it as an adult with experience in platform gaming. The remapped touch controls lend themselves quite well to the nature of the game. Everything is pretty intuitive.

Another World 5

This guy right here. You start the game off as a particle physicist. Your experiment goes bad, you end up on another world. The most striking thing about this game is the sense of urgency and dread. Without trying to spoil too much, from the second you gain the ability to control the professor, you are at risk of dying. Yet at no point does the game ever feel unfair or frustrating. You quickly befriend this fellow upon de-caging, and spend a good portion of the game trying to escape from a group of captors. All the while making sure his ass doesn’t get fried. Or yours.

Another World 6

I still remember the exact sound your alien friend makes the moment you smash open the cage. Hearing it again sent shivers up my spine. This game was eons ahead of its time in terms of crafting an unnerving and engrossing gaming experience. The stunning (for the time) scenery and complete lack of dialogue (aliens don’t speak English, ass) certainly lends to the mood. A true masterpiece.

Another World 7

Buy this game. It’ll make for a good weekend.

Sep 23, 20113 notes
#Another World #Out Of This World #iOS #gaming #iPhone
Another World - 20th Anniversary [iOS App Store] → itunes.apple.com

It’s finally here.

I remember this game from my childhood.

In fact, I remember two things about this game from my childhood.

  1. It’s awesome.
  2. It’s hard as shit.
Sep 23, 201113 notes
#gaming #iPhone #iOS #apps #Another World #Out Of This World #nostalgia #finally
I'm over it, Tumblr

Lock up the spam bots that intentionally target articles about new technology and consumer gadgets. Seriously. I’d rather live in a world where all of my posts had 0 notes on them than put up with this crap.

I’m a nerd. Don’t make me self-host on Jekyll. I have that kind of power. I’m only here out of the kindness of my heart and for the social features. But since the social features are frighteningly crippled, I’m just left with kindness. And I’m not really all that kind.

Sep 23, 2011
#Tumblr #spam #bots #first world problems #airing of grievances
News Hounds: Bill O’Reilly Threatens To Quit If Higher Taxes For Millionaires Are Enacted → newshounds.us

Everybody wins.

Sep 20, 20113 notes
#politics #Republicans #Bill O'Reilly #Papa Bear
Sep 19, 2011753 notes
#LOL
Sep 15, 20112,197 notes
xdissent/ievms - GitHub → github.com

This made the rounds on the internet quite a few weeks ago and got a lot of attention. I’d like to think that I’m not late to the party, rather, I took my time before I decided to talk about it.

Short version: This is awesome.

Long version: This is really awesome.

From the Readme:

Microsoft provides virtual machine disk images to facilitate website testing in multiple versions of IE, regardless of the host operating system. Unfortunately, setting these virtual machines up without Microsoft’s VirtualPC can be extremely difficult. The ievms scripts aim to facilitate that process using VirtualBox on Linux or OS X. With a single command, you can have IE7, IE8 and IE9 running in separate virtual machines.

Absolutely brilliant. Support for IE6 would be nice, but on the other side of that token, even Microsoft has announced end-of-life for IE6 so I couldn’t care less.

If you make web sites on a non-Windows box, and you haven’t yet gone through the trouble of setting up Internet Explorer virtual environments, then run this script. It’s genius.

Sep 15, 2011
#Internet Explorer #Web Development #Web Design #Virtual Machines
Bachmann claims HPV vaccine might cause ‘mental retardation’ [WaPo] → washingtonpost.com

So many problems here.

  1. The anti-vaxer agenda is terrifying and dangerous. Thanks, Jenny.
  2. Whether or not you’re against pre-marital sex, promoting abstinence only without PROPER sex-ed along side it while blaming a vaccine for promiscuity is nothing short of irresponsible and fear-mongering.

Somehow, Bachmann has managed to fuse both of these evils in to her campaign platform. You go girl.

Sep 13, 20113 notes
#GOP #GOP debates #Republicans #anti-vaxer #Bachmann #Michele Bachmann #insanity #politics #woo #sex ed

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cbuck replied to your link: HTC chairwoman Cher Wang: we might buy a mobile OS, if it feels right [Engadget]

You know, I would REALLY like to see webOS find a good home. I kind of dig it. But then again, I only used it while standing at the tablet display at the local MicroCenter… :)


I really like webOS. I’ve played with webOS phones and I thought about snagging one from eBay or something as a tinker toy a few times. I want to see it stay alive more than anything, to introduce some truly healthy competition in to the market. But for that to succeed, the sluggishness needs to be polished away while also bringing in third party developers. I don’t know if HTC is the company I want to see snap it up. I think one of webOS’s strongest points is its UI, and HTC likes to customize the jeepers out of everything.

Sep 13, 201123 notes
#cbuck #webOS #HTC #smartphones #tech
Point Break Remake Announced → comingsoon.net

That’s enough Internet for me today, thankyouverymuch

Sep 13, 20112 notes
#movies #remakes #Point Break
HTC chairwoman Cher Wang: we might buy a mobile OS, if it feels right [Engadget] → engadget.com

The report goes on to make strong mention of HP’s recently-backstabbed webOS platform, but stops short of suggesting that it’s the only OS in the running.

What the fuck else are they going to buy, Bada? Symbian?

Sep 12, 201119 notes
#tech #HTC #smartphones #webOS

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cbuck replied to your post: cbuck replied to your link: 1Password on the Mac…

I was speaking about the paid version… May haps it has changed. I haven’t. :)


Well in that case. Nobody wants to pay for something twice. The Mac App Store handily prevents that from happening anymore though.

Sep 10, 20111 note
#cbuck
Browser Incorrect → mobileapps.blackberry.com

Well, fuck me.

I can’t take all the credit for this; I saw it on Daring Fireball.

If you want to know what’s happening here, this is the download page for the BlackBerry App World app. BlackBerries will let you download apps on your computer and install them over USB on to your phone. Well, they’ll let you do that if you have Internet Explorer. Because yeah.

Anyone who tries to claim that RIM isn’t out of touch is full of shit.

Sep 9, 201128 notes
#RIM #tech #smartphones #BlackBerry #App World #Internet Explorer #wtf

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cbuck replied to your link: 1Password on the Mac App Store

My beef:: The app with hassle you incessantly to upgrade and then you are handed a bill for 40$ shortly after. Happened once, and I thought, “I must have missed something.” I paid. The second time, I promptly zapped it and I have NEVER looked back.


I’ve never tried the free trial version, so I’m not sure how annoying their upgrade pitch is. I also have very little experience with the Windows version of the software. In the Mac community, 1Password is a highly regarded program with rave reviews coming from the far reaches of the Apple community so I took the plunge right off the bad. I’ve used the Windows interface (I have a dual license and I use it on my Windows partition at work), and I do have to say that it’s really terrible looking on Windows. That being said, I spend little time in the application itself, relying more on the browser plugins, which look the same on all OS’s.

I never judge an application on how its trial version behaves. While it might be annoying for a trial version to constantly pester/remind the user about upgrades, I will never consider it a strike against the full version of the product as long as the trial version isn’t so feature-hobbled that it still manages to present what the software does on a day-to-day basis. I’m a firm believer that the price of software is not about its explicit value, but about whether or not the user gains enough value from the software to justify its cost. 1Password has proved to be worth every penny I spent on it. If you’re more in to the free-as-in-beer types of programs, then no, 1Password probably isn’t your bag since they will eventually expect you to fork over money for a license. I’m the kind of person who has zero issues with paying for software that I find valuable. Show me two similar pieces of software, one free and one paid… if the paid one is better, even if it’s just by a small fraction, then I’ll give you my money in a heartbeat.

Another reason I enjoy 1Password is that AgileBits doesn’t touch your data, at all. LastPass is a popular alternative solution (and they have a free offering), but they maintain a copy of your data on a server somewhere. 1Password only exists where you tell it to exist (in my case, Dropbox for device syncing purposes). Dropbox’s security issues aside, all of your data exists inside of an encrypted file that never goes where you don’t tell it to and can’t be opened without your master password.

Sep 8, 201116 notes
#cbuck #tech #1password #software #security
1Password on the Mac App Store → itunes.apple.com

It’s also available for Windows directly from the AgileBits website.

1Password is the absolute best way I have ever seen to remember just one password for all of your logins while not feeling guilty about it.

And if you’re not the kind of security obsessed person who thinks about the risks of having the same password for all of your accounts, then, you should be… and this is the app that makes it easier than ever to be that person.

The short and skinny of it is this: while you might not care if something like your Facebook or Twitter passwords get skinned, the types of people out there who target “insignificant” services like social or game sites are doing so knowing that most people use the same password for almost everything. Once they know one of your passwords, they probably know quite a few. And things get really dangerous once they can figure out your email password. The advent of mass storage email services have led so many of us to use our inbox archives as clearining houses for personal information. And even if you do have a few trickier passwords in use for a few more vital sites, if a bad guy gets a hold of your email account credentials, then they can just go around to all of your sites, guess your username (we all re-use those too), and then hit the “Forgot Password?” button to start getting free goodies emailed to the account that they have already compromised!

Get proactive. Get 1Password.

Sep 8, 201112 notes
#1password #agilebits #software #tech #security #passwords
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

themattsmith:

erikonymous:

image

source

Sep 7, 201166 notes
Git Is Simpler Than You Think

nfarina:

It was about one year ago that we switched to Git. Previously, we used Subversion, through the Mac app Versions, which (rightly) holds an Apple Design Award.

I made the executive decision to leave our comfy world of Versions because it seemed clear that Git was winning the Internet. There was much grumbling from my teammates, who were busy enough doing actual work thank you very much.

But I pressed forward. We signed up for accounts on Github. We learned how to type 'git push' and 'git pull'. We became more confident. Git is just like any other source control system! But it wasn’t long before one of our devs called me over to look at a…situation.

Read More

Tech tips, In Plain English. I’ve never understood the need for programmers to write “introductions” to at topic in Highborne Tongues.

Nick Farina writes really, truly great articles about development. If you aren’t listening, you should be.

Sep 7, 2011636 notes
#tech #git #programming #version control #in plain english
Simplified model in recent climate paper doesn't even conserve energy [ArsTechnica] → arstechnica.com

Ars discusses a paper by Andy Dessler; a paper that presents a critique of the recent paper by Roy Spencer and his climate model. You know, the paper that caused all the hullabaloo and made the editor of the publishing journal resign from shame for not having vetted it more properly.

A climate model that violates conservation of energy is a bush league mistake. This means one of several things:

  1. Roy Spencer carried out bad science in the name of results that would push an agenda. Bias will be bias, but evidence and science are unavoidable. Validating a model that violates a fundamental rule of physical science is inexcusable. In this case, Dr. Spencer is demonstrating very poor scientific ethics.

  2. Roy Spencer carried out bad science because he is bad at science. In spite of the fact that he carries a Ph. D., he is clearly an idiot. In this case, Dr. Spencer is demonstrating very poor intelligence.

In either one of these cases, the most upsetting thing is that Dr. Spencer would have thought he would get away with it. Thus, in BOTH cases, Dr. Spencer is demonstrating that he is a complete and utter buffoon.

Sep 7, 2011
#science #Roy Spencer #Andy Dessler #climate change #scientific ethics
Cozy and charming "Conan" TV studio in Burbank → airbnb.com

There are worse places to stay in Burbank.

Sep 6, 20112 notes
#airbnb #conan obrien #team coco
Juneau woman saves dog from bear with well-aimed punch: Bear Attacks | Alaska news at adn.com → adn.com

She said she feared for her pet’s life and, in an instant, ran over and punched the bear right in the face to make it let go.

Sep 6, 20114 notes
#Alaska #Bears #In The Face #puppy love #beats #battlestar galactica
MacBook Air vs. Aspire S3, IdeaPad U300s, and Portege Z830 ultrabooks [This Is My Next] → thisismynext.com

Case in point.

The MacBook Air is

  1. Still Thinner.
  2. Has better thermals (look at all of the vents and what-have-you decorating the ultrabooks).

Obviously I have no idea what the battery life is like on these things, so I can’t comment, but I’d be willing to bet that the Air will still get more mileage; this is a combination of their strong industrial design and their heavy investment in to optimizing OS X for mobile computing over the years. I was a Windows and Linux guy for most of my life, and even up in to Windows 7 SP1 and a smattering of Linux distributions, nobody can touch OS X in areas like responding to lid openings and connecting to wifi.

Sep 3, 201122 notes
#Apple #OS X #macbok air #ultrabook #laptops #computers #tech
On the word "Ultrabook"

Apple effectively created a new category of computer with the new version of the MacBook Air. At least, that seems to be what has happened.

Really, they created a laptop with great portability that nobody else could compete with, so the rest of the computer industry created a market around it and gave it a name to try and segregate competition in to niches. Investors like that sort of asshattery. It lets them mitigate damage from comparing poor growth in markets by isolating areas of poor performance. Apple, of course, didn’t have anything to do with the creation of the “ultrabook” category.

As far as they (and I) are concerned, the MacBook Air is just a laptop. An amazing laptop. Which will continue to decimate the competition.

Ultrabook sounds fucking stupid anyway.

Sep 3, 201114 notes
#tech #Apple #computers #MacBook Air #laptop #Ultrabook
Sep 2, 2011517 notes
#rant #checks
Play
Sep 2, 201163 notes
#It's always sunny in philadelphia #themattsmith #video #youtube
Bored UCLA Student Joins Libyan Rebels → wired.com

Exactly what it says on the tin. Someone needs a hobby.

Edit: I definitely think the cause of the Libyan rebels is a noble one, and that it’s also a nice gesture that this kid wants to help them. But really, this is insane.

Sep 2, 20111 note
#Libya #Rebellion #WTF #first world problems
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