30th of April, 2008
The last few exams I’ve taken have all included double negative questions which, when they’re multiple choice and worded the way they are, makes it really hard. I’ve gotten questions wrong where I knew the answer but was so confused by the cryptic question I marked it wrong. Continue reading →
The best use of Twitter data I’ve ever seen and beautifully executed, I could watch it for hours. The words love, wish, think and hate are big players in my Tweet Cloud. As a side note, not to pick on Twistori but why does everything have to be “the first step” — Twistori works great on it’s own, move on!
It seems both reckless, amateur and extremely well done. I love the dacking.
Family and friends had urged Dale and Leilani Neumann to get help for their daughter, but the father considered the illness “a test of faith” and the mother never considered taking the girl to the doctor because she thought her daughter was under a “spiritual attack,” the criminal complaint said.
She had diabetes. As someone with a sister who has diabetes I know exactly how treatable it is and how horrific the consequences are if it’s not treated. This makes me sick to the pit of my stomach. Via Kottke.
Fascinating talk from the Web 2.0 conference with some commentary from Clusterflock too.
My mom has often asked me, in a tone of disdain, how people find the time to do so much stuff on the Internet—stuff that she thinks is, with a few tiny exceptions, worthless—and I’ve been saying to her for years, “They spend less time than you do slackjawed in front of the TV.”
From Tumblina and 9 phrases men use from Testumblrone. Read the women’s first. Very funny. Via Ross Hill.
Another fantastic extension to the set of icons I use in OS X.
The second Brisbane BarCamp is on at the end of next month. I was overseas for the first but I’ll definitely be attending this one. I’ll also be presenting on something like creating WordPress themes or GTD or blogging, I don’t know, something I’m an “expert” on. There’s where and when details on the Facebook event page. So if you want to see me talk some shit in front of a projected TextMate, come along!
Is that it now? Are we done with the amazing phenomenon that is putting Mentos in Diet Coke? Cool photos nonetheless. Via Coudal.
Funniest (non-xkcd) online comic I have read in a long, long time from Penny Arcade. Via Waxy.
Very cool HD timelapse video of the creation of Science Machine by Chad Pugh. I was going to buy the print until I measured out how big it was.
This is something I’ve been meaning to make myself for a long time. It’ll come in really handy.
Packed full of absolutely fantastic advice. My favourite stuff is all about not needing to rush, you just need to be good. Also trying to take focus off “being the best”, you don’t need to be the best, you just need to be good. My favourite quote:
You don’t have to be a fucking genius.
I took the question to mean something you could very easily obtain but are not — like fasting or abstinence or something like that — not something just because you lack the money — like a BMW 5 series. Great comments nonetheless. Clusterflock is one of the few places where I still love the comments.
This is super cool. It’s three dimensional so you can see what it looks like from different angles. Quite a hefty price tag though — 80,000 Yen or 827AUD.
17th of April, 2008
What bothers me most about Photoshop is the administration — creating new layers, having to select between layers, making shapes by way of first making a selection, having to confirm transformations, etc. They’re barriers to the flow of creativity. It’s a big part of the reason I use Illustrator, drawing an object creates it’s own pseudo layer that works just like a layer without the forced administration. Objects can then be moved and modified freely. Anyway, Scribbles is a relatively new drawing app with a super simple and intuitive interface and layer system.
This has got to be a joke but it seems like it would have just been too much work to be a joke. I love the “see what’s on your employee’s laptops” line. I am just at a complete loss for words, how does this stuff even get made?
The latest This American Life episode starts with Ira talking to ex-soliders about normal life after fighting on the front line. He asks “does normal life seem kind of… stupid now?” I imagine it very much would. How stupid would things like choosing which brand of pasta sauce to buy at the supermarket or say, fixing a display bug in Internet Explorer 6 feel after literally fighting for your life every day?
It alternates between his story and the story of elevators in general, both are extremely interesting. Nicholas White, the ex-Business Week journalist who was trapped has had his life changed forever by the experience. Also at the New Yorker is amazing time lapse video of the 41 hour ordeal. Because it was an express elevator opening the doors revealed a solid brick wall.
An interesting detail is that White lacked a watch or a phone so was completely unable to know what time it is. It’s impossible to imagine what it must have been like.
I could not agree more with Garrett Murray here. It’s ridiculous. Murder (bloody, violent murder in the case of video games) is a crime, it ends people’s lives. Sex on the other hand is not a crime, it’s in our biological nature, it’s enjoyable, it’s a mandatory requirement to create life. Yet sex is considered more obscene than violence. Stupid.
Merlin Mann does a series of really brilliant 30 second sketches as that phone guy. I have no idea how it took me so long to come across this but it was worth it, the last half an hour has been filled with entertainment.
Andy Baio calls it a thing of beauty and I couldn’t agree more.
Making fun of the ridiculous phenomenon that is people filming the opening of a box.
