February 2012
17 posts
4 tags
Diablo III: The Real Geek Event for 2012
There will be an iPad 3 sometime in the next few months. iOS 6 will happen later this year as will the 6th-gen iPhone. Mountain Lion will be upon us this summer. But the event that’s really going to set geeks on fire this year is Diablo III. Everything will pale in comparison to that. Also, is the next StarCraft installment still happening this year too?
2 tags
Lyric Websites are the Trashiest Places on the...
Music is a very important part of my life. I don’t pay attention to lyrics much though. However, there are times when I want to read the lyrics to a song. Google “[song title] lyrics” and click on the first result. This will always lead to one of the worst experiences one can have on the internet. Lyric websites are some of the most user-hostile websites in existence. They are...
iOS: UIView Rounded Corners
This code will add rounded corners to a UIView.
4 tags
4 tags
Minimal Mac: Microsoft's Biggest Miss →
minimalmac:
Then, she explained, the iPhone came. There was no Office. People got things done. Then the iPad came. There was no Office. People got things done. Android came. People got things done. All of those things that they, just a couple of years ago, were convinced they needed Office to do. They got them done without it. And thus, the truth was revealed.
I would also add that Google...
4 tags
OS X Mountain Lion →
I was just thinking this morning if Apple would do an OS X version of Reminders. I thought they probably wouldn’t because they see that kind of thing as belonging with iOS. If you always have an iPhone or iPad at your side why would you also need a Reminders app on your computer?
I’m glad I was wrong. Also, Messages Beta!
Minimalism: Spotlight Over App Launchers
Spotlight comes with the operating system. It’s already there. It’s going to index your hard drive and store that index somewhere. You may as well use it. Dedicated app launchers do have a bunch of features that Spotlight doesn’t but I don’t need those features and I don’t want a second index sitting on my hard drive for something I would only use once in a while. I...
3 tags
An iOS Catalogue/Store App Template
One of the more challenging things about iOS development is moving past simple examples to something more complex. Unlike web development, iOS apps are not just a bunch of views which can arbitrarily link to each other. It’s more structured. Putting together an application which has the right kind of UI elements in the right places all working together is not trivial. Table views are easy...
A Wave of Distortion
There may not be a scientifically way to ever measure this but I’m wondering… is there a wave of executives and managers who read the Steve Jobs biography and are now trying to establish their own reality distortion fields by asking unreasonable things from their subordinates and expecting it’ll all turn out awesome?
Earth and Mars
There are two meanings of the word ‘earth’. First, ‘Earth’ is the proper name of our planet. Second, ‘earth’ is a word we use to describe soil or dirt. Farmers say they “work the earth”. They might pick up handfuls of soil, rub it in their hands to determine its quality and say, “The earth is rich in minerals here.”
Assume we eventually...
Social Networks and Inertia
When it comes to social networks we geeks can be very fast and nimble. We’ll jump into any new social network that crops up just to check it out. Besides Facebook and Twitter, most geeks have probably also played with Pinterest, Instagram, Path, Google+, Stamped, GetGlue, etc. Checking out new stuff on the Internet is in our DNA. It’s what we do. When something better comes along we...
Jeff Atwood Leaves Stack Exchange →
Great post. Beautiful sentiment. One way I look at it is like this. Every day my kids are a little bit bigger than they were the day before. Literally. It’s really easy to spend a decade of your life working and justify it by telling yourself you’re providing a better future for your family. But kids go from eight to eighteen in those same ten years and you’re never going to be...
Developer Tip: Don't Paste SQL Results Into Emails
If you’re a developer who has to communicate with other people at all here’s a tip. Do not paste SQL results into emails.
The output from the MySQL command line is intended to be displayed in a monospace font so the columns line up neatly. There’s no guarantee your email will be read in a monospace font. It’s very likely it won’t be.
It’s going to wrap. For...
The PaperMate 1.4b →
Stephen Hackett reviews the PaperMate 1.4b. The black version has been my pen of choice for the past few years. Ultra smooth. Nice dark consistent lines. Nice to see it getting some attention.
AAPL Orchard: Not Everyone Copies Apple →
One company sees themselves as being accountable to their customers. Almost every other company in the world sees themselves as being accountable to their shareholders.
“You are blinded by the love of the office you hold.”
– Albus Dumbledore
Covering Up Browser Languages
I’ve been a web-developer for over fifteen years. Over the course of those years I’ve learned to trust my instincts. Going with my instincts usually serves me well and going against them usually causes pain. Right now, my instincts are telling me that languages like HAML, SASS, and CoffeeScript are going to cause me more pain than good.
Web browsers use three different languages to...
January 2012
14 posts
Background Image on a UIView
Here’s a snippet of code you can use to add a background image to any UIView.
Enjoy.
Understanding the bin, sbin, usr/bin , usr/sbin... →
Interesting reading if you’re a UNIX geek. I’ve always wondered what the difference was between bin, sbin, usr/bin and usr/sbin. Turns out it has a lot to do with disk sizes back in 1971.
Clear App: A Todo App →
Well, this looks pretty darn cool!
Why Signing and Dating Code Comments is a Good...
I’ve been signing and dating my code comments for a couple of years now. I started doing it because it seemed like a good idea at the time. First, you should be aware I believe most comments should explain why instead of what. The why comments comprise the vast majority of my comments and those are the ones I sign and date. It’s like a simple signature for code.
For example:
# This...
iBooks Ideas →
via Matt Gemmell. So much potential with iBooks 2 and iBooks Author.
Code Comments Should Explain 'Why' Instead Of...
I’m a comment minimalist. I don’t believe in commenting what code does. That should be plainly obvious by reading the code itself. More useful is why a block of code exists or why it was written a particular way. These are the questions I ask most often when reading code (including my own) so I try to be conscious of it when writing code.
If I’m writing something I think might...
iPhone and Keys in the Same Pocket? →
Most interesting tidbit from this article is that Steve Jobs carried his iPhone in the same pocket as his keys. Really?! My iPhone doesn’t share pocket space with anything else specifically because I don’t want to scratch it.
Jonathan Coulton on MegaUpload →
Jonathan Coulton has some intelligent things to say about the SOPA/PIPA/MegaUpload drama of this past week. I know there are a lot of people who will pirate stuff just for the sake of pirating it. It’s not a “lost sale” because they never would have bought it in the first place. But having it on their hard drive illegally somehow makes them cooler. Go figure.
Clear Indications That It’s Time To Redesign →
While I don’t agree with everything in this article — many people rely too heavily on metrics rather than their own intuition — I particularly like the section which describes how a website can become totaled.
While there are many ways to tackle tech and UX debt on an incremental level, there comes a point when the website, in essence, becomes “totalled.” Like a car that has...
Deliberate versus Automated Sharing
As automated — a.k.a. frictionless — sharing becomes more widespread I’m finding myself pulling back from social networks more. It’s not because I consider the music I listen to or the shows I watch to be private information. It just adds to the noise. Unless a conscious decision is made to share something it doesn’t really have much value.
I don’t care what...
Important Reading on Household Debt versus... →
They’re not exactly the same. It’s not that government debt doesn’t matter at all but you can’t compare it to a family’s finances.
Skipping the 4S
I’ve been eligible for the full subsidized price of an iPhone 4S for a month now. I still haven’t run out and bought one though. The burning desire to have one just isn’t there. It occurs to me that I’m extremely satisfied with my iPhone 4 which I’ve had for 18 months. The 4S is faster but that doesn’t mean the iPhone 4 is slow. It’s still the best gadget...
December 2011
8 posts
Reasons to Not Use the Self-Checkout at the...
You’re paying with cash. A human cashier can process a handful of bills and change much faster than you can feed it into a machine.
You’re buying produce. A human cashier deals with produce all the time. They have the routine down pat. They can ring up your cantaloupe much faster than you can navigate through the menus looking for ‘cantaloupe’ only to realize it’s...
Programming Fonts
Twice during the past year I’ve tried using Inconsolata as my main programming font for several weeks at a time. It seems to be the one the cool kids are into now. It’s certainly very nice and modern. Especially at larger sizes. But I’m switching back to 12pt Monaco again. Monaco has a certain “weight” to it which I find comforting. Inconsolata feels a little too...
Text Mate 2 Alpha
I’m really happy to see the TextMate 2 alpha released earlier this week. However, it’s more of a symbolic release than a real usable everyday editor. That should be obvious from the “alpha” label. Normally I wouldn’t bother to download and try out alpha software but this is TextMate 2.
This alpha this week is official confirmation that TextMate is not dead as many...
Simplicity →
I absolutely love this. Good writers have a knack for saying exactly what I’m thinking but can put words to those thoughts which I can’t.
Don't Be a Free User →
Online services do cost money to create, operate and maintain. Bandwidth isn’t free either. I do love Instagram and Stamped but how do they plan on sustaining themselves over the long run? Even if they charged 99 cents for the app they’d have a lot more revenue than they do right now. Maybe premium services like additional storage, prints, high-res photos. Just not ads please....
Facebook Confirms Gowalla Acquisition →
According to this Mashable article Facebook bought Gowalla but not their service, technology or user data. They’re getting just the people. About 30 of them if Wikipedia’s information on Gowalla is accurate. I would image Gowalla’s employees had an opportunity to opt-out of the transition so the final total is probably less than 30.
I really like Gowalla as a check-in service....
Music Emblematic of the 2000's
The first ten years of the 2000’s are over and this post is about a year late. What music is going to emerge as truly representative of that period? More importantly, what do we call that decade? So far nothing has emerged in the pop-culture lexicon as a short and catchy name for the first ten years of the 2000’s. That, I think, is the biggest problem when trying to identify the music...
November 2011
3 posts
iTunes Match First Impressions
I’ve been playing around with iTunes Match over the past couple of days. Here’s some early thoughts.
Wouldn’t ‘iTunes in the Cloud’ be the more appropriate name for this? That’s essentially what it is. It takes your iTunes library and playlists and puts then in iCloud.
This is biggest and most important thing Apple has done with iTunes since opening the...
Georgia Pro and Verdana Pro →
I absolutely love the design of this page. Text on the web has rarely looked this beautiful.
“The iPad is a wonderful web browsing device. To ignore that, or treat it as a...”
– John Gruber
October 2011
4 posts
AT&T == Pure Evil
Received this thoughtful note from AT&T:
Dear Michael Luton,
Because you’re a valued customer, we’d like to help you save on your monthly bill. By upgrading to Messaging Unlimited, you’ll have unlimited text, picture, …
The point of this email is to tell us that we’ve already been put into the unlimited text plan because they’ve eliminated the lower-cost...
Losing Santa Claus
For us geeks who are also Apple fans, each keynote was a little bit like Christmas. We never really knew what we were going to get but we knew it going to be cool. We might have a rough idea based on what we’ve been asking for but it was always a mystery until Steve actually got on stage and delivered the goods.
Because of this secrecy we were surprised and delighted when he showed us new...
2 tags
Infectious Passion
After a Steve Jobs presentation many Apple fans would walk around with a giddy sense of euphoria. We’d float through the day in an anticipatory kind of excitement knowing our lives are about to be improved in a meaningful way. The more cynical refer to this as the Reality Distortion Field. This was usually meant as a slight to indicate Steve was playing us in order to get us to buy more...
Free iPhones
This may have been the single most important thing Apple announced today. iPhones no longer cost money. A 3GS can be had for free. Remember, at the beginning of the talk they gave the iPhone’s market share as a percentage of all mobile phones. Not just smartphones. This was why. Dumb phones have officially been marked for death. If a non-geek goes into a store to re-up their contract and the...
September 2011
13 posts
Samsung's Counterfeit iPads →
I didn’t know the copying was this bad. Seriously, this is completely shameless. How can you not think of these as simply counterfeit iPads? Previously I thought Apple was a bit extreme in asking for injunctions to prevent these from even being sold. But if this is what Samsung is doing then Apple has every right to go after them with all the legal muscle they have.
2 tags
Text Mate 2.0 Still Alive →
This is really good news. I’m hoping the alpha can be installed parallel to the 1.x version.
Thinking about the F8 keynote from yesterday. Facebook is very focused on the desktop browser experience. Mobile almost seems like an afterthought. The new Timeline is begging for an awesome media-rich iPad app though.
HP's ousted CEO will take home $25 million →
Isn’t this the exact opposite of how an incentive plan should work? Common sense would dictate the following assumptions. From the point of view of the employer…
1) We’ll pay you a salary based on how good we think you are.
2) If you do a really good job and hit your goals we’ll give you some extra money once a year.
3) We’ll give you some stock too. This is...