Archive for March, 2008

Dicing with the iPhone

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

In an odd combination of non-day-job-work and play, I found this: "I started working with the audio toolbox on the iPhone today. This morning, I added sounds to the little dice rolling application I've been writing. I recorded a total of fifteen sounds, five of a single die being rolled, five ...

What Microsoft can teach Apple about software updates

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

ZDNEt's Ed Bott writes (in all seriousness): "For the record, I think Apple is dead wrong in the way it’s gone about using its iPod monopoly to expand its share in another market." Ed continues with examples of why he feels Windows Update discloses more than Software Update and does it the ...

Getting the media into my head.

Tuesday, March 25th, 2008

I only listen to one podcast at the moment and working through their back catalogue takes some time (I'm currently at the end of 2006 to give you an idea). Each of their episodes is around 1 hour long and the journey to work takes about 25 minutes so I ...

Do not go gentle into that good night

Monday, March 24th, 2008

"Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light." - Dylan Thomas I'm not talking about 'death' of course, but the notion that 'going dark' is desirable. I recall someone accusing me of being addicted to the Internet which, despite being true, is also utterly ...

Subnotes

Saturday, March 22nd, 2008

I've got two 'subnotes' in the house here. An Asus eee PC and a MacBook Air. Yes, it's true that the MacBook cost five times the cost of the eee PC but the differences are startling. AttributeMacBook Aireee PC Screen res/size13" @ 1280x8007 inch @ 800x480 Screen border

Loonies all around

Friday, March 21st, 2008

"I see that you yourself are from Belgium. One can hardly imagine a more America-hating socialist European nation than that."

Simplicity and the Brand

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

I love this. It's a very simple and concise way of showing how bad user interface design can be and it draws on our experiences with media darlings Apple and Google. While the implementation details may differ (entering a search term is very different to submitting taxes), there have to ...

1000 fans

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

Mike Cane 2008 provided the following interesting link: A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living. Assume conservatively that your True Fans will each ...

IE8. Damned if they do.

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

In the argument about what is the right thing for IE8 developers to do with regards to web standards I have little sympathy. They built this mess and now they're going to be stung for it. But I don't really care about that. Joel Spolsky says:DOCTYPE is a myth. A mortal web ...

nerdz

Thursday, March 20th, 2008

PeeJ noted this link to The Nerd Handbook: Really it's a couple of pages describing how to meaninfully interact with a nerd who is painted for the most part as being a borderline Autistic with directional (and somewhat immutable) focus. ...control issues mean your nerd is sensitive to drastic changes in his ...