April 2012
6 posts
“A fanatic is one who redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim.”
– George Santayana (via Chuck Jones’ rules for the Roadrunner Cartoons)
Apple is a bad actor...
I am taking it as a given that you know about the DOJ lawsuit against Apple and a group of publishers over price-fixing. If not, I can provide links :)
But this is what is pissing me off: Everyone I seem to encounter in podcasting, the press, blogs, et al seems to be focusing on the Agency Model vs Wholesale Model thing. As such you have people defending Apple (and to a much lesser degree the...
Last night's fever dream...
Last night’s fever dream: I was on a Segway tour of Scotland and visiting the yarn mines — you know where the mine for yarn — because there was a piece in the local paper about how they had hit a rich vein of pastel yarn.
As I road up to the mine, my head covered in solar panels to keep the Segway charged, I came across a heard of micro-rhino’s on the way back to their pen.
The...
Nifty Snippets: Announcing Lineage →
My very good friend T.J. Crowder just announced his JavaScript library, Lineage.
JavaScript, being a prototype based language, is very powerful, and very fun to work in. Sadly it is also kind of half done (compared to something like Self, or Lua) in the inheritance department. You can do inheritance, but it takes a bit of work to get it right. As a result you see a lot of people with flat...
Mystery Theater: Five Minute Mysteries for the... →
I am very happy to announce that my app Mystery Theater is finally available for the the Kindle Fire! To my mind the Fire is the second most exciting tablet on the market. While the iPad is the best overal tablet computer, the Fire holds a big part of my heart. It is the perfect size, amazingly inexpensive (but not cheaply made), and travels with me often. For those of you not already...
March 2012
2 posts
“I like the “Objective” part, it’s the “C” part I despise.”
– Self (from an email about iPhone programming)
January 2012
2 posts
Apple, please stop being a crapweasle....
Apple,
Today you announced your push into textbooks. I think this is great, it is wonderful. Even greater, even more wonderful, is the fact that you have released a authoring tool for ebooks that is perhaps the best ever made.
iBook Author is an amazing piece of work. It really is, I am deeply impressed. I really, really, want to use it; unfortunately I can’t, because you are being...
December 2011
7 posts
“Inessential.com” sucks →
Look I normally like Brent Simmons’ blog Inessential, but this post… well how can I put it… sucks.
Aside from linking to a Google search, he doesn’t explain what he means, he doesn’t cite any examples, he doesn’t talk about where is might be useful (almost nothing is universally bad), etc. All he does is make a blanket dismissal and make it sound like he is...
More Mystery Theater Goodness!
At the beginning of the month I announced that I had made a new iOS app called Mystery Theater — Five Minute Mysteries. Well I am now happy and proud to announce that it is now available on Android*!
As many of you know I have a deep affection for old radio shows. So making this app was a labor of love. Since it helps to preserve these shows in a new form, and (hopefully) bring them to a new...
HTML5 is the new XML
Dear Apple,
Why don’t you have real time sales statistics? That way I could obsess all day long about how my insignificant (but fun!) apps — Mystery Theater, Japanese Haiku, & Haiku: A Picture in Three Lines — are doing.
Instead I can only check the day before, and am forced to be productive the rest of the time, and who wants that?
Mystery Theater: Five Minute Mysteries →
I am very happy to announce that my latest iOS app — Mystery Theater: Five Minute Mysteries — is now available in Apple App Store.
As many of you know I have a deep affection for old radio shows. So making this app was a labor of love. Since it helps to preserve these shows in a new form, and (hopefully) bring them to a new generation.
If I may quote myself: This app contains...
I am not innocent But convict me please Only of what I committed Add be assured They pain and pierce And with my soul regretted But that the tally known Tallied, counted, and writ That I’ve not admitted
November 2011
6 posts
Roller Coaster like sculpture in Germany (Magic... →
It looks amazing, I would love to see it in person and climb it steps; but one part of this article struck me. It is when the artists say:
…the sculpture subtly and ironically plays with the dialectic of promise and disappointment…
Look I love big words as the next over educated pseudo-intellectual, but that is taking it a bit far. I love art, and artists, but when they start...
Factoid...
A single Krill is approximately 1/3rd calorie.
The McRib as Arbitrage →
I am not a rib man myself, so the allure of the McRib has always been lost on me. But as an examination of the economic forces that drive when the McRib is available, and why it disappears from the menu; well this is fascinating.
It also occurs to me that “Pork Arbitrage” would make a great name for a Meatloaf cover band…
UIWebView is not always the answer...
Note: This is going to be a rather technical post, so apologies to the non programmers amongst you.
When it comes to drawing things on the screen in an iOS (those devices that include the iPhone, the iPad, and the iPod touch), it seems over and over again the answer you find is:
Use a UIWebView
Want to display some rich text on the screen? Use a web view. Want to show a PDF? Use a web view....
October 2011
1 post
“I couldn’t hear you over all the crazy in my head”
September 2011
4 posts
Avoid DIYBin.com like the plague
Disclaimer: Every story has two sides. This is mine, and should be considered my opinion (except for the areas I can explicitly prove).
After 46 days from the day I placed my order, I finally got a refund from DIYBin. As such I would suggest that everyone avoid them like the plague, and do not do business with them.
I don’t know if DIYBin is a scam (hoping people just cut their losses),...
Dear Open Source People...
(apologies to people who have exactly no idea what I am talking about here)
The day I will give OpenOffice [nee StarOffice, LibreOffice, NeoOffice] a fair evaluation, is the day I can receive a word doc that contains:
a table of contents
structured paragraphs (ie containing numbering and indentation via styles)
paragraph/section border
Make a handful of minor changes, save that document back...
After 27 years of waiting, I have Finally been summoned to Jury Duty. I am actually excited!
August 2011
4 posts
MicroSD
MicroSD because we needed memory as hard to find as a lost contact lens…
“Vision is only so good as it is borne out by practice. When it isn’t then...”
July 2011
2 posts
**god** do I *hate* [Markown](http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/)
June 2011
3 posts
This is why Clarence Thomas scares me
I don’t want to downplay the whole Anita Hill thing, but honestly it shouldn’t have had to get that far for people to say he wasn’t a good choice for the highest court of the land. In my opinion, there were so many reasons directly related to his actual job performance before that to disqualify him from serving.
Now we are reaping what we have sown:
Justice Thomas, who...
You say you don’t see a point in researching what you cannot have. I say you can’t know what you need until you know what is out there.
May 2011
4 posts
Deceptive Practices...
Despite the name, there are no actual camels in Camelot, and that just feels like false advertising…
Petition to stop Uganda's anti-gay bill... →
Once again Uganda is trying to pass a brutal law that carris the death penalty for homosexuality. This is wrong on the most fundamental level.
I honestly have no idea how much good this petition will do in real world terms, but I do know that blogging about it will help get the word out, and the more awareness we bring to this issue the greater the chance we have of stopping it.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t miss my mother…
April 2011
2 posts
I Am (self) Published (again)!
As most of you may remember I wrote a novel a few years ago. I got quite close to getting it published, but ultimately it didn’t happen. And then — because I wrote the book to be read, not just sit on a shelf — decided to self publish the book via Lulu. Later on I made versions for the iPhone and Android devices.
Well the world has changed a bit since then. And so I decided...
March 2011
9 posts
R.I.P
Ellie Mae Clampett 1997 - 2011. The best dog in the world.
In leu of gifts, she requests that cookie be given to the dog of your choice.
