Z/1 Unaweep · So, I bought this new pair of sandals and they’re just so great I had to pass the word along ...
[5 comments]
[5 comments]
On Being the New Boss · There’s been a lot of linkage this week to David Lowery’s Meet The New Boss, Worse Than The Old Boss? Lowery is a music-biz insider, and says he’s also a geek; and he really, really hates people like me. He makes some really interesting points; unfortunately, he comes across as a jerk ...
[8 comments]
[8 comments]
Diablo III · I’m really not much of a gamer; but I did the Diablo dance back in the day, and have enjoyed revisiting the franchise. Herewith remarks on that thing that’s been responsible for so many red-rimmed eyes at early meetings this last couple of weeks. D3 isn’t just flawed fun, it’s interesting in a serious way, I think ...
[3 comments]
[3 comments]
Florian · There’s this blog called FOSS PATENTS written by a Florian Mueller, and when a software-patent-related issue heats up, reporters often seek out his comments for their stories. I’m not sure this is a good idea, and I’d like to offer some evidence; articles he wrote on a currently-hot story back in October 2010 and November 2010. This is a small but representative sample of his (many) offerings on the subject ...
[11 comments]
[11 comments]
Uncrippling Tablets · David Weinberger points out in Will tablets always make us non-social consumers? that tablets imply a less-interactive “lean-back” relationship with the Internet and thus the world. It’s possible we can fix this by just uncrippling the keyboard; I can’t really have a conversation with the world if I can’t jam text in fast, interrupting bursts of high-word-flow with flurries of local edits. I sure don’t want to live in a lean-back world.
[6 comments]
[6 comments]
Browsers and Apps in 2012 · It’s like this: The browser’s doomed, because apps are the future. Wait! Apps are doomed because HTML5 is the future. I see something almost every day saying one or the other. Only it’s mostly wrong ...
[12 comments]
[12 comments]
Red · Particularly intense botanical red; it remains the Achilles’ heel of the sensor in many (all?) digicams. I often see things in my garden that I just can’t get close to with the combination of camera and screen; hm, perhaps the problem is computer screens not camera sensors? Here we have some Japanese maple leaves against blue sky ...
[1 comment]
[1 comment]
CL XVII: Faraways · It’s May so Cottage Life is recurring. On the island, many of the things one sees and wishes to photograph are far away thus must be captured through fairly specialized lenses which tend to impose their perceptions, particularly when the lenses are elderly and actually not that elite. Here are three of those ...
[4 comments]
[4 comments]
Sensplore · I’ve been working on some ideas for clean-screen apps; instead of controlling them with the touch screen, you wave your device around or tap it or shake it. To do this, I’ve been learning about the output of the sensors you find on Android devices. I’ve found that the documentation, while complete, contains some scary-looking math and assumes you know more about quaternions and rotation vectors than the average developer. Well, more than I do ...
Sensor Kinetics Pictures · Recently I’ve become interested in the sensors that live inside Android devices, and how to use them. It turns out that interacting with them is a little on the non-obvious side, as is interpreting the read-outs. So I drew some graphs. [Update: The graphs were wrong. So I deleted them. But I’m about to post a better version.]
[3 comments]
[3 comments]
Ghost Fluff · Actually, the title is The Ghost Writer; I first noticed it in a movie my neighbor on a plane was watching and thought the visuals were pretty good. Which is relevant because the book turns out to be more or less perfect airline fluff: High velocity, a powerful hook into the real world, and very competent writing ...
[4 comments]
[4 comments]
A Million Lives Saved · Well, not really. But my LifeSaver 2 app has now uploaded over a million calls and messages for a temporary stay in the cloud and (in theory) transfer to other devices. This is not as impressive as it sounds since the number of unique users is still just a few hundred; but it pleases me nonetheless. I observe that the number of downloads is quite a bit smaller; it seems that people upload, and then it takes them longer than they thought to get their new device brought up and LifeSaver installed; long enough for the cloud scrubber to have erased their upload, so they have to do it again ...
[4 comments]
[4 comments]
Same Old Sex Organs · Of plants, I mean, of course. Which is to say, around this time every year I get all deranged about the flowers and inflict loads of pictures of them on you. If this sort of photographic cliché offends or (worse) bores you, stop right now and move on to the next blog ...
[2 comments]
[2 comments]
