Jesus. I knew Siskel and Ebert kinda disliked each other. But I had no idea it ever blossomed into full-blown, face-melting hate. You gotta watch at least through 2:45. "That's this week on Siskel. And Ebert. And the Movies. And the asshole. And that's Roger." Brilliant. (#)
July 22, 2008
July 21, 2008
9:41 pm
[I]t is important that you not hold initial ideas too precious. For if you do, it becomes easy for all of your further trials to somehow lead back to that initial idea, no matter how inappropriate it may later be proven to be. Yet it is likely that these facts will be lost on you.
Andy Rutledge, of Design View fame, on the risk of holding too tight to first ideas. (#)
I've bought a bunch of (pretty great) albums in the past month, and still this muxtape gets more play than the lot of 'em put together. Thank you, New Baby, wherever you are. (#)
July 20, 2008
I've been a huge fan of the "60 Seconds in the Life of..." series, but this is the first one that brought tears to my eyes. Even trees enjoy fireworks in DC on the Fourth of July. (#)
David Friedman of Ironic Sans created a neat (if slightly goofy) tool: It's a thesaurus that returns only words shorter than the one you've input. Though ostensibly created for twitter users looking to shorten their messages, I may actually end up using this in real-world writing. Brevity rules. (#)
July 19, 2008
The reviews for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight have been pretty darn good. I’m becoming more and more skeptical of reviews, but when Salon’s comics expert Douglas Wolk goes and points out, in total comic geek terms, what this movie could have been, I find it much harder to be completely in love.
Oh, this is just sublime. Ryan Sims of The Big Noob has put together a site where a different song lyric is featured with each entry. We're talking full page, using nothing but Helvetica and Georgia for display. Each is beautiful. Biggest bonus: there's a flash stream of the full song for each entry. (#)
July 18, 2008
So a friend of mine circulated this link earlier in the week, and I didn't pay it too much attention. The video for Radiohead's new video is nifty, but not really a huge departure for Thom and the gang. But then I noticed the visualizer tool. Holy smokes. This junk is completely rad. (#)
10:13 am
A snowclone is a particular kind of cliche, popularly originated by Geoff Pullum. The name comes from Dr. Pullum’s much-maligned “If Eskimos have N words for snow, X surely have Y words for Z.” An easier example might be ”X is the new Y.” The short definition of this neologism might be n. fill-in-the-blank headline.
Erin O'Connor, keeper of snowclones.org. I love the concept. Jeremy Keith has suggested an especially good one.. (#)
Two. Two! TWO Sesame Street links in a row! Mwa-ha-ha-ha! I know this is directed at my exact demographic, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. 1, 2, 3, 4 chickens just back from the shore. (via Virginia.) (#)
July 17, 2008
Cartoon of the week, for sure. For extra chuckles, try making up a couple different voices for Mr. Stuffy Pants. Typography humor doesn't get any better than this. (#)
11:10 am
Imaginary work is always easier to do than real work. It is much more attractive (being more quickly done) and once you see the imaginary work, it can be very difficult to identify the real work it masks. People estimating imaginary work often assume they have all the facts in hand when making their estimates, which assumption leads them to believe that there is no “big technical hurdle” preventing its implementation.
Jamis Buck, programmer for 37signals, on the public's tendency to underestimate the time and effort required to develop even the "simplest" features (via Gruber). (#)
July 16, 2008
3:45 pm
Apple, through its marketing and visual design techniques, is manufacturing an illusion that merely buying an Apple makes you part of an alternative community. But the technology they use is explicitly chosen to divide people into separate digital cells, and to position Apple as sole warden. When your business depends on people paying for the privilege of being locked up, the prison better look and feel luxurious, and the bars better not be too visible.
The Free Software Foundation, commenting on the precedent Apple is setting by walling off software development for the iPhone. Can't say I disagree (via Lifehacker). (#)
I don't pretend to understand even a tenth of this article, but basically scientists have found a possible weak spot in HIV and a weapon to exploit the weakness. Either the media hasn't caught onto this story yet or the article itself is deceptively optimistic about upcoming human trials. In any case, I'm keeping my eye on this one. (#)
July 15, 2008
To my eye, there's nothing distinctly Japanese about this product. It's a faux-terracotta vase. Hold it to your mouth and scream. It handles the muffling. In that sense, it's just a fancy pillow. But oh, the lovely Japanese promotional photos. How they make me smile. (via Ethan.) (#)
July 14, 2008
Craig Pickering of 37signals talks about the (in my mind unfairly) maligned UI for TripLog/1040, a native iPhone app for logging reimbursable miles during business trips. I hadn't heard anyone refer to UI elements as "stacked in time" or "adjacent in space" before. Excellent ways to sum up these concepts. It's also worth reading the developer's rebuttal to the vitriol being spewed over at Flickr. (#)
July 13, 2008
I don’t care to talk about the piece of the iPhone 2.0 launch that Apple botched. What I am interested in are the little gems Apple have added to an already brilliant device. Sure, native apps are great. But for me, the real news is that Apple has left almost all of the iPhone’s UI and core functionality untouched, opting instead to implement a handful of fixes and incremental improvements to the 1.x series software.
Created by fellow Charlottesvillian Anoop Ranganath, Graffitio is a native iPhone application that lets you browse "walls" created at or near your current location, and read short messages written by others who have visited that wall or add your own. Or create your own wall for any arbitrary location. Exceptionally cool without a lot of feature bloat. Well done, Anoop! (#)
I couldn't agree with Jeff Atwood more. The iTunes store has way more in common with circa-1996 AOL then it does with the modern web. And it infuriates me to no end. Sure, music from Amazon's MP3 store is superior in quality, lacks DRM, and has a cheaper ticket price. But when I'm deciding where to buy MP3's, Amazon's open-web model makes my decision that much easier. (#)