by Augie De Blieck Jr.
Stumbled across this and felt the need to post it on the eve of WWDC 2013.
This is from my first Apple computer purchase/unboxing. Pictured are the Power Mac G5 box, extra RAM from Crucial, and an OS X “Missing Manual” book I bought at Amazon. This picture is from September 2004.
These days, I’m on a 27″ iMac. That PowerMac was replaced a couple of Christmases ago, though it’s still on the floor underneath my desk.
Hello, Fail Whale, my old friend…
Got this tonight when trying to reset my password by receiving a text message. I guess the SMS server was overloaded. To think, Twitter started as a texting-based service. Can you imagine only updating Twitter via text message today? Crazy.
I love this story, but this part made me laugh out loud:
More specifically, I’m married, have a mortgage and we just had our first child in October. So in November when my firetruck appeared on eBay and I brought up the topic of purchasing a large red truck for the millionth time in our relationship, my wife had more important things on her mind. In a moment of weakness, she angrily said “I guess I can’t stop you!” making it enthusiastically clear that she wanted me to immediately buy this particular truck and not pass on an epic opportunity to put a check mark next to a lifelong goal.
As guys, that’s what we do. Whittle down our wives until they don’t say “no” explicitly, then use that as our permission. =)
Animaniacs is twenty years old this fall.
AAAAUUUUGGGGHH!!!!!
Google today announced that they’re shutting down Google Reader on July 1st. It’s a product they’ve willed out of existence, with a steady stream of neglect. That’s why this quote seems a little two-faced:
“We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites,” SVP of Technical Infrastructure Urs Hölzle writes in the blog post. “While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined….”
Of course it has. It’s been broken for months for many people and Google did nothing about it. They’ve decided to put all their eggs in the Google+ basket and gave up on Reader a long time ago. And Google honestly wonders why usage declined? Because they abandoned the ship! Nobody knew is coming on board a sinking ship. Google is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The good news is that with Google relinquishing its overwhelming majority of the RSS Reader market, this might just pave the way for others to “innovate” in “the space” and give us something new and better. And, as many have already joked, that’s when Google will swoop in and buy them. UGH
One of the competitors, Feedly is down for the count tonight. Too much traffic in the wake of Reader’s demise, I bet.
But who can replace Google Reader for me? Here’s what I need:
It doesn’t need to be free. In fact, I’d happily pay for this service, just because it makes it less attractive a company to be bought up and dismantled by the likes of vultures like Google.
Google also announced the departure of Android guru, Andy Rubin, who’s moving on to other projects at Google. I’d put my bets on a Google Watch. They need to catch up faster to Apple than they did with the MacBook Air, so now they’re trying to catch up to the rumors of what Apple might be doing. (Seriously, take a look at the Chromebook and tell me it doesn’t just look like a cheap MacBook Air, years later. Hey, it’s got a Samsung logo on it, so the pattern holds…)
Stick with it to the eight-three-naught mark. That is where he drops his bomb. Post-bomb, it is a strong talk that makes lots of sense. I give you now, Guy Steele:
As a programmer, never underestimate your ability to come up with ridiculously complex solutions for simple problems.
— Thomas Fuchs (@thomasfuchs) January 29, 2013
I could write a book on the craziness that goes on in men’s rooms. I could name it something like “Blowing the Stall Door Open,” but I’m sure someone’s seen that happen already. Here’s a recent example of the kind of nuttiness that will either make you cringe or laugh or want to strangle someone:
Guy finishes his business at the urinal. It’s self-flushing, so he’s safe from germs so far.
Then he goes over to the paper towel dispenser and pushes on the handle to get some paper towels. This man — who we’re about to discover is a germaphobe — just used his dirty hands to soil the paper towel dispenser. Thanks, pal!
He goes over to the sink to do a full handwashing. The water is automatic, but the soap is in a dispenser you have to touch to get. I’m guessing — though I couldn’t see at the time — that he used one of the paper towels to prevent his dirty hands from touching the dirty soap dispenser. Too bad the towel dispenser didn’t get such courtesy.
So he scrubs his hands like a doctor. The soap goes between each pair of fingers vigorously. He’s seriously about this. When he’s done, he dries his hands carefully with the paper towels he previously pulled off and touched with his dirty dirty hands.
Once dried, he disposes of the towels in the open garbage receptable, takes a step towards the door, and GRABS THE DOOR HANDLE WITH HIS BARE HAND, opens the door, and walks out.
He went through that whole charade to keep his hands “clean” only to fail on the last step and touch the bare door handle.
STOO-PID!
This man has a lot to learn from Dan Benjamin and Merlin Mann.
Let’s see how embedded tweets work on this blog:
Blame everybody, that’s what i say. Blame heroically. Blame with a passion to shake the heavens. Blame without fear, and don’t ever stop.
— Tom Spurgeon (@comicsreporter) January 21, 2013
Thanks for playing along with today’s test. Regular posting resumes tomorrow.
I had a crazy idea for learning a new foreign language.
Why not use a comic strip? I’ve heard plenty of stories of people who learned English by reading comic books, so why can’t I learn, say, French by reading familiar American comic strips in French?
The daily comic strips are all online in America in English. Surely, there is another country that also puts up the color strips translated into their language. And they’ll be showing the same strip on the same day, too, right?
So you could read the English comic strip in one browser window and then the French comic strip in another, side by side. The language used in comic strips is very conversational, usually. So that would help you to learn some basic vocab easily, I would have to think. At the very least, it would help re-enforce lessons learned in a more structured language course. Or it could just be good practice and exercise.
I think I will work on this for a future Pipeline column, but maybe there’s an obvious answer. Maybe one of the main comic strip websites in America has a direct link to a French translation or Spanish translation on their own website. I don’t know, I haven’t researched it yet
But, please, if there’s an easy and obvious solution to this issue, let me know. Leave me a comment or send me a tweet or something. Thanks.
In a perfect world, this could be automated with a third party website that would grab the strips off both pages and show them together on one page for you, perhaps with a Google Translate plug-in in the middle. Even better, imagine if the strips could be OCRed and auto-translated for you.
Done as a standalone tool for personal benefit with proper screen-scraping, though, it might go unnoticed. Just don’t open-source your scripts and let them get popular.
I will let you know what I find in a future addition of Pipeline at CBR.
Addendum 1: As it turns out, GoComics.com offers a Spanish translation of their strips each day. I just tested it with Garfield. If only they offered a French translation, too… That’s what I really want to learn.
Addendum 2: This blog post started out dictated into my iPhone in the Drafts app, which I highly recommend. The voice-to-text translator, though, does not like “comic strip” very much, translating it differently each time. My favorite was “coming train.” As the old saying goes, “The light at the end of the tunnel is often the lights of the on-comic strip.”
“I’m now down inside your pants pocket.”
This is a great short video showing ways in which a pickpocket can steal a watch, a wallet, or a cell phone with you being none the wiser. It’s all about misdirection and sleight of hand. It’s the magic of the streets, except with stuff actually being stolen. Watch the video; it’s awesome. But, kids? Don’t try this at home. Or on the streets. Thanks.
I’ll also admit to a fondness for traditional units. They arose organically to meet specific needs. Inches are for things we hold in our hands, feet are for the buildings we live in, and miles are for our towns. There’s a certain rightness to using different units on different scales rather than just sliding a decimal point one way or the other. The metric system was imposed from above by an elite; customary units were crowdsourced.
–> Dr. Drang (“Furlongs per fortnight”)
( See part one from last week. )
There are interesting side effects to keeping an empty inbox that I hadn’t considered before I started this.
I now see just how much junk mail I get on a daily basis. How many sites have I bought something from in the last ten years without unchecking the box that says, “Tell me about your future special offers!”? It looks like all of them. I go to bed at night with no emails in my inbox, but wake up to 30 of them, 28 of which get easily deleted. When there’s two thousand emails in your inbox, you don’t notice the latest 20 or 30 mixed in that are pure junk. I’m starting now to go back and unsubscribe to some of those email lists, so I’ll have less clicking to do. You like to believe you’ll have a use for that store’s coupon someday, but then realize you have a year’s worth of those expired coupons already cluttering up your mailbox.
Speaking of which, I love keyboard shortcuts. If I couldn’t use the j and k keys to run up and down the list, while hitting the x key to check off an email, I’d go nuts. That much clicking with a mouse would lead to RSI in no time. If you use Gmail, do yourself a favor and learn a few of the keyboard shortcuts. I discussed some of them here a while back.
I trust search. I have to. All of those emails that I used to keep around just in case I needed them are now archived. Out of sight and out of mind. Except, inevitably, I think of one I need. Then, it’s easy enough to use the search bar to find it with a couple of key words or phrases. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, it’s quick and useful. Best of all, it keeps my inbox clear.
I’m not quite as rigorous about this as Merlin Mann, who’s espoused only reading emails you have time to answer right away. Many times, the things I can’t perform an action on are because of my location (“context” in GTD parlance). I can deal with it at home, but can’t click on a link to a popular website blocked at work. But I think blocking out that time every night to run through the emails serves the same function.
I check my email less. I’m fine with letting it pile up now, because I know I can run through it quickly. Checking it every ten minutes doesn’t matter much to me. It’s a distraction, in fact. I have better things to do.
Also, I email less stuff to myself. I’m self-filtering more, not sending myself those things I’d like to get to if maybe I happen to have more time. I don’t want the clutter in my inbox or “__Answer” folder. That being said, I’m more likely to email myself things I know I can file neatly away somewhere. That might be a link to a story to discuss in next week’s column, a random quote of the day from my daughter to put up on Facebook later, or even a link to a web store sale I want to take advantage of later.
I’ve been at Inbox Zero for about a month now. My __Answer folder currently has six emails in it older than a day. Some of those are on hold until I hear back from someone or until I have the time to do the action they’re leading me to. That might not be until the weekend. That’s fine. I wish the mailbox would be completely empty, but I’m fine with a minor bit of clutter in there, since I review it every day and keep up with what’s going on. Nothing gets lost. That’s key.
So, Inbox Zero. I like it. And I didn’t need to see “January 1″ on my calendar to start it. But if that’s what you need to spur you on to it, use it. Sometimes, the best tricks we can play are the ones we play on ourselves.
Programing is hard enough. You don’t want to be using idioms which are difficult to distinguish from bugs. You want to be writing things which are hopefully clearly right.
