August 2007
Skim →
New OS X PDF viewer with lots of interesting features.
Torontoist: Challenge: Kensington Savoury Snack... →
In Kensington market (Toronto) and want hippie food? Read on.
Be Careful What You Joke About →
And the Pogue on emacs, with a nice little history lesson.
Arguments For Things I Don't Believe, 1: ... →
This post is appealing for two very separate but very interesting reasons, 1) it demonstrates some of the problems facing string theory (beware, some fancy science stuff within), and 2) it offers a good description of careful thinking, maybe even “scientific” thinking, viz,
“First in a prospective series of my own versions of the best arguments for conclusions I don’t personally...
Chicago Cancels Municipal Wi-Fi Plan →
Ubuntu Hardy Heron Announced →
Should my sister upgrade? What about my grandmother ?(kidding, only my sister is running Ubuntu).
Getting schooled on macros →
David Pogue makes a comments about macros, emacs fanboys go nuts, Merlin comments. Cool.
Apple sends out invites to Sept. 5 event. We... →
Probably a new ipod, maybe the “real” video ipod?
Inquisitor 3. Spotlight for the web. →
Add Firefox-esque automatic searching to Safari, my new browser of choice.
Ooh, Not Good: TrekStor Calls MP3 Player ‘i.Beat... →
Oh my.
Pantone’s Missed Chance →
Pantone, the colour people, got acquired by X-Rite. They could have been the next big thing on the internet, selling all sorts of colour calibration software and such, but then the bombed it all.
Heather's peer review rates: from free to $5,000... →
Awesome! An article on the rationale of giving free editing and reviewing work to multi-million dollar trans-national corporations. I have thought this is crazy for a long time, seriously, why is it that when you produce something you need to PAY to be able to provide it to others of YOUR choice? And likewise, why would you do work for free only to have your rights abnegated like this?
Is it legal to unlock your iPhone? →
Duh, yeah, the DMCA has an exception for unlocking cell phones to legally connect to other carriers. Exceptions, of course, aren’t exemptions, so it is still prima facie illegal to unlock the iPhone, but then the exception kicks in—-just like fair use.
Dapper to Launch Instant Facebook AppMaker →
Apparently you too can make a Facebook app with just basic computer skills, or more or less. You need a Facebook developer account, but otherwise it is pretty much drag and drop, and then toss in some Facebook numbers for the API.
Subsume: Facebook updates via Growl and Address... →
Gosh, if you are running OS X and have the excellent Growl installed, you can make all your Facebook updates stream right to your desktop, one annoying dialog after another.
How to Change the World: How to Get a Job on... →
Guy Kawasaki gives some excellent advice for finding a job, especially by using Craigslist.
WatchLululemon, straight out of Vancouver, recently went public. Wallstripped does a brief review of the IPO and Lululemon’s products. Wallstrip IPO’s: Lululemon athletica inc. (LULU) | Wallstrip
“If the pun wasn’t intended, you should have edited it out.”
– Kung Fu Grippe
Teen Hacks $84 Million Porn Filter in 30 Minutes →
Toronto, cafes, and pastry
Why is it that Toronto can’t seem to put together a decent cafe scene? There are plenty of hip people, and certainly a large enough population to support a wealth of good cafes, so why is there such a dearth of good coffee and good pastry?
To be fair, there are a number of places to get a decent baked good, such as Patachou or Pain Perdu, but both these places make their coffee in a...
War Nerd - RPG vs. M1 →
Classic. War Nerd shows that it isn’t all about the hardware.
How a computer game glitch could help to fight... →
The epidemiologists look to the World of Warcraft for some answers. Turns out that a WoW plague got out of hand a year or so ago when it was supposed to affect only very high-ranking characters, but was improperly quarantined and affected everyone.
I'm learning sed, that wily UNIX stream editor
s/@f1(\([^)]*\))/\fB\1\fR/g
/@f1(.*/{
N
s/@f1(\(.*\n[^)]*\))/\fB\1\fR/g
P
D
}
W00T, that is some fun regex, escaping, and switching, good times.
BTW: Hire me because I can manipulate your text like I can manipulate your wife.
No Luck Club - Ski Lesson →
“Sun is fighting back with a new feature called Java Kernel in Java 7. Java...”
– I, Cringely . The Pulpit . Swimming with the Fishes | PBS
Entropy as a measure of dating-ness
From Abram:
I suggest a new measure of humans (or at least a reasonable proxy for
uniqueness): entropy
Entropy is a measure of information or how much something can be
compressed. Essentially we could find a standard coding system for
multiple aspects of a man, write it out using plain-text and then take
the entropy of the characters, the words, the n-grams and use that to
measure...
Swimming with the Fishes →
Cringely writes his weekly article, this time on the odd but facinating tie-ins between a new Web 2.0 fishing site and the US department of defence. Apparently the tide as turned (ahem), and the innovation is now flowing (ahem) from the consumer market to the military market. The fishing site is so linked up, so video and real-time action, that the DOD wants the technology for the battlefield,...
Engadget announces first full-software iPhone... →
It’s official, the iPhone is unlocked. Will I get one now? Maybe.
Deezer | Music on demand, free music without... →
Holy damn! This is a hell of a music streaming service. Basically, stream music as you want, includes lots of commercial stuff (obviously illegal, what whatev’)
iPod Touch - the New Flagship iPod →
Just returned the Nokia N800 (wasn’t doing things like it should). Would kill for a new iPhone-minus-the-monthly-bill iPod device.
The "Loudness War" and the Future of Music →
Dynamic range, and the lack of it in modern recordings, has been brought to my attention a number of time recently. I used to hate albums with huge dynamic range—-those Beethoven symphonies and such—-but this was just because I would like to listen to my music fairly loud, but didn’t want to shake the house for the bass hits. These days though, having a little less bass around,...
I see your hippopotomonstrosesquipedalianism and... →
Scientists love their big words.
Disable drawer thumbnails in Preview.app →
Speed up load time for Preview.app when it opens large PDFs (especially those “scanned” in).
The Futurist: Why Vizio Is Now The #1 Flat Panel... →
Smoothya later →
A detailed description of the font aliasing and rendering technologies used in Windows and OS X.
The Lockdown: Deadbolt walking →
How to crack even the most secure locks, with just 1 minute and a screwdriver.
David Pogue on Macro programs →
Apple to usher in era of Mac OS X-based iPods →
Boing Boing: Opening up the American lawbooks →
Digital Music: Stream Music On Demand with Deezer →
WatchOAK MONSTER Time - Episode #298