August to December
#It’s been an amazing year in my life, and this blog has suffered as a result. I don’t feel guilty about it at all, but I am sure I will wish I had more writing from in between some of these large gaps in time.
Since the last post here, let's see, some things have happened in my life. I got married, that was in September. I turned forty, that was in October. We launched League Pass Broadband, the product I had been working on since June, that was in late October/early November. We also adopted a lovely little pug, named Puka, in November. Each of these things deserve multiple posts here. I learned so much this fall. I have so much to be thankful for, and every day I hope I don't find some way to screw it up.
I don't think I will mothball this site, but I am much more active on Facebook, and Twitter, both of which are linked from this page. It is likely that I will update more here now that I have broken the seal, but you will get a lot more volume over at each of those places.
Some links from the future, or something.
#- Some great music to check out from Ian. The Ratatat remix of Party and Bullshit is the most listened to item in my whole iTunes library. I am checking out the rest now.
- Chandler 1.0 ships Interesting. I am wondering how it compares to the ones I use. Email integration seems like a great idea that other ones don't have.
- Datacase Launches. I still maintain that this is something that the iPhone should do natively.
Some Obvious Notes
#I’m updating Twitter, when it decides to be up, more than this blog right now. Between my guild’s pursuit of finishing Sunwell, my work on this NBA project I am on, and getting married in September, I have very little time to write, even though I want to. Today’s winner links worth sharing:
- Everyone likes the newest Apple Keyboard. Me included, literally.
- Sad to hear that Randy Pausch passed away. As I have said to anyone who would listen, you should read The Last Lecture, and watch the video. Make sure you have tissues around, I cried more than once.
- I am going to be up in Manhattan next weekend. Ping me if you want to grab a cup of coffee, or a bite.
Friday, the End of My Work Week links.
#- These game screenshots look amazing. Sign me up for lightsaber fighting Yoda.
- Radiohead catalog finally on iTunes. I already own it all on CD anyway.
- Turning 40 by SBJ. I met him at SXSW this year. He was scarfing down a muffin inside of Starbucks in an effort to get to his keynote on time. Nice guy. Messy muffin speed eater.
- Books to read box
- Keynote-esque Presentation Editor on the Web By itself, not super exciting. However, read the post for this "The most amazing thing about this is happening under the hood: the developer wrote a library that abstracts browser rendering engines using Canvas, SVG and Flash (on a per-need basis) into a unified language – Objective J which is – as the name suggests – a mapping from Objective C to JavaScript." Want.
- The Evernote Widget: Notebooks To Go
Some links from my new desk
#- Mini_Review: I have started using Plurk some. For the most part, I like it, but it needs an API, and other visualization options. Mobile Interface It supports more contact granularity than Twitter, and even groups. Flickr integration is decent, although they don't link to the photo page, just the raw picture.
- Finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union last night. I was entertained by it, but I guess I don't connect well with Chabon's writing style or something, it was a 3/5 for me.
- Mac OS X SVN users have a new choice today, Versions is in beta. Looks really nice, I will have to give it a shot this afternoon.
- Great Tip: Extract Icons using Preview.app
I don't sit at the same desk anymore
#So, as I think a lot of people know, Super Deluxe is being “folded into Adult Swim.” I feel like Super Deluxe was based on a fundamentally good set of ideas. I also think that we were learning as we went, and had demonstrated a great ability to learn from our audience, and make good decisions from that learning. However, companies as large as Turner make decisions that they have to make, and they make them based on a variety of reasons, not all of which are apparent or logical to someone outside the decision making process. I am sure that, for the senior management team, this was the right decision to make, and that’s their job.
I do, however, lament the fact that my amazing team of developers was dissassembled. For those of you who were on that team who might be reading this, you guys/girl were some of the finest people I have worked with in my career. I honestly felt like we could have built anything we were asked to. I wish that the senior management understood the value of keeping a development team intact, regardless of the product that they were working on. This is water under the bridge now, and I can only hope that I might teach my superiors to value development teams more in the future. Building a team, building process, and learning how to work with a large team of bright people is a challenge, and starting from scratch is a little discouraging, but I have so much learning to apply that it is also exciting.
I am working now for Turner Sports. I will be working on technology related to the NBA.com licensing deal. It's a pretty exciting project, with agressive deadlines already, and some new technology that hasn't even been created yet. There are going to be a lot of new faces here in the coming weeks, and I am looking forward to making the most of this opportunity to learn and do more.
Finally, to my Super Deluxe peoples, you folks are really unique interesting people as a group, and I just hope that I get to work with all of you again at some point in the future.
Wednesday Means I posted Every Other Day Post
#- I can't believe that the Ugly Doll store still has these red Kaiju Ice Bats. They only made 100.
- The Illumanati Awesome series of photographs. via
- Spreadshirt Test Lab 01: How much does that t-shirt shrink - The American Apparel T-shirt With pictures too.
- George Steinmetz takes insanely good pictures from his paraglider. Prints also available at his site. via
- I'm currently reading The History of the Hobbit, Volume 1. It's somewhat academic, but utterly fascinating. It's a true peek into Tolkein's writing process.
- I know most people only use Quicksilver as an application launcher, but it's so much more. 5 handy Quicksilver triggers is an excellent example of this.
- The Guardian tries to find out more about Pystar, the would be Mac cloner. Hilarious. The address changed?
Once a week minimum post.
#- I have been trying out the Evernote beta today. As a long time user of DevonThink and Yojimbo, and someone who has tested a variety of other options, I think it's great at the simple end. The advantage of being able to access all my notes via my phone is insane. Too many information managers. I still have a couple of invites, shoot me a note on Twitter.
- Video: Using Skitch with Evernote
- I spent some time today learning more about OpenID. This article, which is over a year old, helped me quite a bit. It's a lot simpler than you would think, and I am going to start using it for everything.
- This video had me laughing quite a bit on Friday. "Just two men, cruising the Castro for delicious, salty nuts."
- Rafe's Analyzing Git piece was along the same lines as I was thinking at the time. Hoping to get a chance to do a "deep dive" on Git this week. More importantly, I discovered The Thing About Git from the article. It's an excellent read.
- You Look Nice Today is my favorite new podcast this week. It's definitely an acquired taste, based on me testing it in the car while Sue was with me.
Day of the Mystery Bag Links
#- Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning via the ever awesome Anarchaia
- Crave: MacBook Air verdict: Seminal computer, five reasons. I don't agree that these are good enough reasons to call it a "Seminal" computer. He doesn't even mention the multi-touch support, which is probably the legitimate argument. Again, the Duo was in this space a very long time ago.
- The Tospom: A camera that plays catch I love this idea.
- Lots of net chatter about http://pitchfork.tv/. If you like Radiohead, you must check out this Bangers and Mash video. Must.
Cool Links I found or stole.
#- Leonard gets PownceFS working on the Mac. Leonard is smart.
- MultiClutch is a multitouch input manager. That means on the new Multitouch Macbook Pros and the MacBook Air, you can map custom gestures to a keyboard shortcut. That is pretty frickin awesome.
- I hacked up the start of our Wedding Web site this weekend using Wordpress and a theme I found online. It's not impressive, but it's a start. I need to replace that default grapohic in the top left corner with something. I wish I was more artsy.
- Funny to see posts about the Flip. I just won one at SXSW from Adobe, and it's pretty fun to play with so far.
- 8 Powerful Features of Safari That Few People Know About. I'm not few people I guess, but this article has some useful features I didn't know about in it.
I had Tacos for Lunch today
#- The new Ben Stiller movie looks good. At least the trailer does.
- Blizzard: we're working on OpenGL patch for Diablo II for Intel Macs. Sweet.
- The Vulture's weekly take on American Idol has become on of the high points of my week.
- popurls enterprise edition Already was using his good iphone version as my default iPhone time waster.
- Kil'jaedan iPhone Edition I made an iPhone wallpaper from the desktop wallpaper that Blizzard posted yesterday.
Tidbits: Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software?
#Tidbits: Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software? “I do not recommend desktop antivirus software for the average Mac user, but you need to take other precautions.”
I don't run antivirus software on any of my Mac OS X machines. In reading through the other things he says, I think that this article is something that Mac OS X users of all levels need to read. Most of this stuff is common sense to me, but it may not be common sense to you. The single most important thing to keep in mind, which he does not come out and explicitly say, is that you should not immediately trust anything online. That email that seems to be from your bank, or ebay or paypal probably is not. Look carefully at links before following them, and don't trust any source of information or software without first verifying that they are legitimate.
This can sometimes be very hard for a non-technical user to figure out, but I recommend that you err on the side of caution.
John Malkovich in a bathtub.
#- John Malkovich. I think this might be big for Super Deluxe.
- New Gnarls Barkley today. As good as the last one, but without the Crazy style breakout hit.
- Mashable: 19 Tools For The Best March Madness Ever I'm getting ready.
- Amazing digitzed VHS tape about the Internets from 1995.
- Aquos A gorgeous Vista theme.
Post Tornado Weekend Links
#The bump clubhouse was spared this weekend. It’s amazing how much damage the tornado did to downtown Atlanta and the neighborhoods directly East of it. Here’s some Monday surfing links:
- Weekly Resolution: I am going to try and make a weekly resolution every week from here on out. This week's is to swear less.
- Video: Internet Commenter Funeral Funny funny stuff.
- The Pitfalls of Your Constant Complaining and How to Stop It
- Things updated to 0.9. This has become my todo list manager, and this update added recurring tasks, which I really appreciate.
- My Favorite new band of the week: Grand Archives
- Return to Dark Castle Released The original Dark Castle game was one of the first really addictive Macintosh games in the late eighties. I am very tempted to buy this just to relive those dorm room days.
- Pro Tip: Use Gmail to filter out that unwanted spam from your non-Gmail POP account. I was getting 900+ spam messages a day at my oldest active pop address. It's as easy as going to Settings: Accounts in Gmail and adding your account information under "Get mail from other accounts." So far Gmail's spectaculor spam filter is batting 100% on filtering out the spam.
Post SXSW Link Post 1
#This will be updated a bunch today as I find more stuff going through the 13.5k articles in my copy of NNW. New Links at the top.
- OmniFocus coming for the iPhone Well, crap. Here's hoping Things for the iPhone comes too.
- Backing up Data for Non-techies
- How gamers are adopting the wiki way I attended this panel, and in fact, two of the questions referenced in the article were asked by me. There are interesting things happening in these silo communities.
- YouTube Extends their API's Chromeless player sounds interesting.
- An open letter to SXSW and all computer conference organizers Haha, he said "Web 2.0 Entitlement Jackasses."
- hillary is mom jeans
- Joost to stream March Madness They say it's only a test. Which means they know it's not going to work well. That honesty is refreshing
Monday before SXSW.
#Oh Hai. So much going on here in Atlanta. I am neck deep in wedding planning. I am also going to Texas on Thursday for SXSW Interactive. Some links from my MarsEdit dashboard to start your week off with.
- User Generated Web Video: FAIL I pretty much totally agree with this guy.
- Harper Collins is offering one of my favorite books of all time, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, for free online during the month of March.
- Actual Performance versus Perceived Performance. Really interesting analysis of file copies on Vista and XP.
- New Nine Inch Nails released online. I paid the five dollars to get a copy, but they are being crushed by the traffic. The ohmpark article I linked to talks about the genesis of this "experiment." White people like experiments. Also amusing, the name of the company payments go to is "The Null Corporation."
- I went to see Jose Gonzalez at the Variety Playhouse last night. Mini-Review: After missing his last three Atlanta stops, this show met up with all my lofty personal expectations. Jose is a marvel, and you should check him out.
- I received my new point and shoot camera on Friday, and spent much of the weekend playing with it. It's an impressive little beast, and I am happy to have a point and shoot that offers most of the manual control that my SLR does as well as RAW file output. Unlike the previous models, where the Panasonic was the same as the Leica, this one has some Leica fiddling with the image processing. Look in my FLickr stream for some examples.
Friday and a Long Weekend Link List
#Long Overdue for a link post. New Links added at the bottom throughout the day.
- Lincoln is Alive. Pretty funny video from work.
- barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com
- Mac OS X Application Code Signing Marc drops science, as always.
- LoL Tapirs Lawlz.
- Spore: Hands-on Preview
- AT&T Adds ExpressCard 3G Cell Data Option for MacBook Pro Bye Sprint.
Yankees Fans and Red Sox Fans Can Love Each Other.
#It's true. I am in love with, and now engaged to, a stupid Red Sox fan. I asked Sue to marry me this weekend on our four day jaunt to Puerto Rico, and for some reason she said yes. I don't post a lot about my feelings and personal stuff on this site, so I will keep this short. I am a lucky man, and I am very happy.
Monday Links on Dave Grohl's Birthday
#- Jolly Trooper combines Pirates and Stormtroopers into one t-shirt of awesomeness. Too bad I am not buying any more t-shirts.
- J.J. Abrams "Mystery in a Box" He's totally right. I now want to have a beer with him.
- Thing I don't understand of the day: Sarbanes-Oxley Act
- Google is coming out with nice iPhone versions of it's apps.
- This Maverick's mini-site is awesome. I wish I wasn't a fat video game playing blob sometimes.
Thursday Links
#- I am totally addicted to the Items We Carry group on Flickr.
- Shuttle releases a $199 Linux box. I love my ShuttlePC. It's the best desktop form factor in my opinion.
- Kid Robot dropped the second series of Munny Zipper Pulls today. I never managed to find a TV one from the first season.
- "BUG is a collection of easy-to-use electronic modules that snap together to build any gadget you can imagine." This is hugely interesting.
- Strobist tackles Film Noir lighting. It's in my top five photography blogs now hands down.
- New Blog of the Day: WTFCNN?
- Microsoft buying Logitech Dammit. I don't think that's cool for consumers at all.
- Transmit updated to 3.6.4. Release Notes.
- I am giving Things a test drive. Definitely an easy to learn application. Looking for some tips and tricks posts online, haven't found any.
- The new Beanie Sigel (iTunes link) is really good stuff in a sea of stale commercial hip hop. In other music news, a Twitter from Merlin Mann has led to me listening to way too much Entombed this week. Wolverine Blues (iTunes Link) was one my favorite CD's of the Early ninties. Man was I a badass in my own mind back then.
I wasn't really doing this.
#Some Links for Wednesday
#- I took a lot of pictures of the newly engaged Brian and Lori. You can find some of them in Lori's Flickr Stream. I loved taking them, and would be happy to do it for you too. Shoot me a message.
- Boosh
- NetNewswire is now free, as is Feed Demon. Wow, crazy move.
Be Nice or Leave
#Links for the Tuesday.
#- At home I use a Corepad C1 XXXL Deskpad. It's essentially a gigantic mousepad. I like the thing so much that I just ordered one for my desk at work, and a backup in case I wear the one at home out and they stop making them. I have paranoia that they will stop making anything I like these days.
- Bitesize. A Flickr set by one of my contacts who makes magic with toys and a macro lens. Must see.
- Adam's Top Toys in the '07 I don't own any of these, except for number 1, and I own all of those.
- Ars gets its hands on the Optimus Maximus, begins payment plan Sounds like this thing is actually going to be a reality soon. A very expensive reality.
- A Day at the Cat Show Geek Entertainment TV kicks some comedic ass at a cat show. Fraught with pussy jokes.
- Stream XM and Sirius To Your iPhone and iPod Touch - With a Little Help
- 2880 x 900 Curved Monitor I'm wanting one of these and a new Mac Pro 8 core....