March 2009
14 posts
don't make me love you
Whenever we create a character for the sole purpose of reviling it, eventually we come to see things their way. We have a kind of sympathy for these shuffling creatures, even though their entire purpose is to act as pinatas in some aggressive adolescent fantasy… So it is with Kevin, better known as K-Real, and occasionally Keazy… It was simple to imagine the young man as the product...
February 2009
18 posts
what's the frequency kenneth
Maybe you’ve heard about this… apparently there’s this high-pitched audio frequency that only younger ears can hear. Some shopkeepers in Britain have been deploying playback devices to discourage loitering. Even more enterprising students have been adopting it as a ringtone that their professors supposedly can’t hear.
You can test your own ability to hear it...
Irrationally looking forward to Will Ferrell’s Land of the Lost remake. I’m not a fan of his brand of “humor,” but I think this could work. I think I just figured out why: it’s as if the Mystery Science Theater 3000 guys got to actually produce their own remake of Jurassic park.
I do wonder if a dark, serious, Battlestar Galactica -style remake wouldn’t...
I came, I saw, I left a gift
I was always good at travelling light, but this time I took it to a whole new level.
The bulk of my luggage was my oldest things (plus a nice shirt to wear over everything). I left a funky smelling trail of faded tees, stretched socks and worn underwear in the lavatories across our great nation.
Vs.
The irony of Apple Store “Geniuses” vs. the upcoming Microsoft Store ”Gurus” is that all a Mac needs is a wise, helpful person to show the way; Windows requires a fucking genius to keep the thing working.
“Much has made of the trendiness in fixies… I understand the debate, and...”
– National Geographic Adventure on my precious Swobo
Microsoft won't leave me alone today
Crazy thought: what if Microsoft just gave up, bought Opera, and rebranded it as”Internet Explorer 9”? Wouldn’t that just solve an ocean of problems for them?
No, I don’t think it’ll happen either. But still.
Also Microsoft: “This is how small children behave.”
Also Also Microsoft: This desktop screenshot is the best — possibly only — hint I’ve...
“We also set each set of headphones a specific test – the ‘Hey Jude’ challenge....”
– iPhone earbud review
Austin is like Austin
For months I’ve been hearing, “Austin is like Portland, you’ll love it,” which is kind of a funny thing to say to a person who is leaving Portland because he doesn’t like it. Austin reminds me a lot of more of Salt Lake City.
The downtown is impressive. The streets are big and wide (minimum of 3 lanes in each direction, just like SLC). They’re building...
"Everything Buckets"
A few of people I know swear by apps like Yojimbo and Bento. I can’t get into them, something about the whole thing makes me nervous. Alex Payne has written a rant against these “everything buckets.”
I’m not sure if I agree with all his points, though. His argument hinges on the notion that people should be smarter about their file systems. In my lifetime of casually...
These reimagined programming books covers aren’t really good enough to post on the Book Cover Archive Blog, but a lot of the ideas are lol-worthy. (pictured: the legendary Gang of Four)
Writers Guild to blind and handicapped readers: we hate you.
Some publishers and agents expressed concern over [the Kindle’s] new, experimental feature that reads text aloud with a computer-generated voice. ”They don’t have the right to read a book out loud,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild. “That’s an audio right, which is derivative...
Obama rep-ruh-sents for humanists at the “National Prayer Breakfast”!
Could someone explain why Britain is the Western nation moving most quickly toward becoming a police state? They make the Bush/Cheney regime seem tame.
The relationship between photographers and police could worsen next month when new laws are introduced that allow for the arrest - and imprisonment - of anyone who takes pictures of officers ‘likely to be useful to a person committing or...
Still loving the hell out of Adobe Gripes. I think Adobe actually annoys me more than Microsoft these days; I’ve grown numb to putting up with IE6, and otherwise have no interaction with Redmond. Adobe, on the other hand, is a cancer that won’t go away.
Earlier today, a friend (whose work you’ve certainly seen on a particular major television network) commented: “Every...
the past, present and future of e-books
I bought a couple books from Peanut Press back when I used a Palm, nearly ten years ago. John Siracusa worked on their website, and is sharing his experiences and understanding of the e-book market. He covers everything from the technology to the insane relationship between publishers and booksellers. There are so many golden quotes here that I’m not sure where to start, but here’s one...
The new AV Club design seems like kind of a wreck. Not growing on me, unfortunately.
“We thought it was worth pointing out that it costs the Times about twice as much...”
– Nicholas Carson, Alley Insider
This post makes me pessimistic about the future of PHP. It’ll be around basically forever, but it’s hard to imagine anything exciting happening there.