August 2010
3 posts
Lap Desk
Usually I get fed up with my laptop being too hot on my legs and stick it on the ottoman and lean forward uncomfortably. Today I grabbed a spare piece of MDF board that I had laying around (we needed some cabinet shelves), wiped it down real good, duct-taped the edges so they aren’t sharp, and threw a Givoo sticker on it. Voila! A convenient, cheap (uh, free?) lap-desk. As a nice added...
4 tags
The Internet is for Porn, and Being Wrong.
One of the greatest things about the internet is the relative anonymity it affords users. It takes a lot of the consequences out of being wrong, thus empowering people to try more. A person will answer questions with flat-out wrong answers, share terrible photos they took, and blog about dates gone wrong, all right out in public. They’ve let their guard down for the benefit of learning and...
3 tags
Behance Network = Liars
So I’ve been reading “Making Ideas Happen” over the last couple of weeks, and it talks about the Behance Network quite a bit (the CEO wrote the book). I figured I’d give it a shot. There were several issues with their signup process, and I ended up writing into support about one. In short, they require an invite code to signup, and then the signup process is multiple pages. If you stop...
July 2010
3 posts
2 tags
I’m struggling to create work that I want to create lately. I sit down and start developing photos and I just start feeling antsy and moody, and my photos end up looking like I’m trying to create something depressing. I can’t think clearly, and as a result, I feel lost in Photoshop and can’t get my photos to give off the emotion I want them to.
WTF is wrong with me?
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June 2010
1 post
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Karma determined to be “Unfair”
Just caught this juicy bite over at NPR: (emphasis my own)
“Basically it’s a cash business, and they don’t keep track of how much they’re selling,” Lee said. “But the big concern is they don’t know how they can come up with the proper documentation to show they have a certain income.”
Not paying taxes is, of course, illegal. But St. Bernard Parish...
May 2010
7 posts
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Imagine
Fighting off the mid-day drowsies, I shot out to my favorite coffee shop (Once Over Coffee Bar, naturally). I’m glad I did, because I realized what a gorgeous day it is. It filled me up with passion and love, and got my creativity gushing. When that happens, my mind opens and I’m able to see things more clearly. I realized that it’s not that today is any more gorgeous than...
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Mac OS X Bug
When you try to copy text from a system dialog/modal window (like the ones Time Machine frequently spits out) you can select text, right click, and hit Copy. Only it does’t actually copy the text to your clipboard. Nice, huh?
April 2010
8 posts
1 tag
In case you were wondering for a brief second...
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It’s been decided. Moving a Time Machine drive to an Airport Extreme might just be the worst available product experience from Apple. It’s pretty terrible. Money and dozens of hours of lost productivity down the drain (between research and unavailable computer for heavy disk operations).
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Successful startups take their time
I really dislike the implication that in order for a startup to succeed or for an entrepreneur to really be an entrepreneur that time sheets need to look fucking ridiculous and personal time should be sacrificed. Chances are, if you’re doing it that way it’s because you need to prove to yourself that you’re not a fuck up. If that’s not it, you’re trying way too hard...
Frameworks for Dummies
You want a framework with a small footprint.
You need exceptional performance.
You need broad compatibility with standard hosting accounts that run a variety of PHP versions and configurations. Strangely, my organization doesn’t run across 14 different versions of PHP and 4 “hosts”.
You want a framework that requires nearly zero configuration. Zero configuration means...
2 tags
Free 15-Day Trial!
If you’re going to offer me a free trial, instead of trying to cut me off as quickly as possible you should probably wait until I’m hooked. Giving me 14 days to use Soulver was a bad move. I played with it for a minute, quit the app, and had a need for it a few weeks later. When I opened it my “Trial” had expired, so I found something else to get the job done and now...
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Sex doesn't wash out.
I played with Chat Roulette for 10 minutes today and saw more penises than faces. Real-time video sharing appears lends itself to that sort of environment because our society says that sexual expression is not okay. Opponents to sexual expression are under the impression that they can change sexual behaviors by banning pornography, criminalizing nudity in public places, and scorning people that...
You know your web app is in trouble when nobody lets you know a core piece of functionality is behaving strangely. You know it’s especially bad when over 1 million people use it before someone says something. And you know that I’ve got a lot of work on my hands by the way I know this.
Quit working for the future… →
March 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Clickable-ness
With all the “call to action” button obsession lately I’m surprised nobody has said anything about what I like to call “clickable-ness”. Essentially, if you want a user to click on something it has to feel clickable. Here’s my rough criteria on what makes the ultimate clickable button:
Interaction — when I hover, encourage clicking; when I click, react...
Idea: No Health Insurance = Lower Priced...
I was bullshitting with some people at a party the other night and we got on the topic of healthcare / health insurance. I was thinking about the economics of the situation and it hit me: if we get rid of health insurance, healthcare prices have to come down. If people can’t afford health care, and the government doesn’t step in and pay for it, doctors will have to charge rates that...
February 2010
9 posts
2 tags
Fuel
Please tell me I’m not the only person in the world that FEELS code. That I’m not the only person that feels like a powerful piece of code becomes something of its own when given life by people using it. That I’m not the only person that feels like code on a page is design whose aesthetic speaks volumes about its quality. Please tell me I’m not the only person in the world...
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Designers are close to the users. They understand needs and behavior. Engineers are close to technology. They understand what’s possible.
Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500 (M)
So I got this guy today (I love Amazon’s prime shipping rates; $7 for overnight, Saturday delivery). So far, so good. They actually removed a button from the video I saw on it — now it’s a single button to scan, and it turns off when you close the lid. Awesome. We went through the filing cabinet and scanned anything important that we would really want to have in case of a fire....
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Open Letter to Netflix
Please pull your collective heads out of your collective asses and allow playing of videos with Google Chrome. It works fine if I spoof my user agent which I don’t want to have to do anymore. It’s bullshit to disable it on a browser that might be buggy – instead provide a message saying it’s buggy and might not work and I can proceed at my own risk.
Oh, and quit making it harder...
WatchThis is my typical YouTube experience. I swear I thought I was for net neutrality, but it appears it doesn’t matter — YouTube will remove itself from the game by serving up video at the approximate rate that a *dead* turtle crawls.
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Job Interview Tests
The example code tests some of the quirkier attributes of JavaScript engine behavior. I’ve seen similar quizzes in the past, sometimes by people saying that they use it as a test during job interviews. I think doing so is both disrespectful to the candidate as well as generally useless. You don’t encounter this type of quirk every day, so making that the minimum to get a job is about as useful...
January 2010
4 posts
3 tags
Dear Threadless.com
Dear Threadless.com,
You got me with your support of the art community and $9 & $10 sale days. At first I was stoked – I was getting some great printed tees for a great price. When they arrived in the mail, I was every bit excited and wore them with pride. Once or twice, anyways.
See, that’s the problem. Though they fit great when I got them, they’ve since shrunk from adult...
Archive Mail in Apple Mail.app
I’ve been trying for the last few days to make managing my several email inboxes less time consuming and more productive. I don’t like forgetting to respond to an important email, I already have unsubscribed from newsletters and such I don’t want to hear from, and I’ve tried flagging important emails to come back to later.
I also have several mailboxes and rules to direct...
1 tag
GoDaddy is Entering Used Car Sales Market
I jest, but not because they aren’t suited for it. They refuse to make anything easy to do, hide behind layers of obscurity and pseudo-complexity, cram offer after deal after sale in my face the whole time I’m “shopping”, and guarantee to get me the best price out of anybody. It seems the only thing they have yet to stoop to is handing me the CarFax report for a domain that...