(This was originally written in May 2006, recovered from the archives of my old blog… my opinion has not changed.)
So, rather than spending time developing software we actually need, Microsoft is coming up with their own proprietary “competitor” to the JPEG format. Some lame photographer hack was quoted on ZDNet as being in favor of Microsoft’s newest attempt to lock us into their data formats, so here’s the opinion of a programmer/photographer who has actually read the spec.
Read more →
Wow. Joe Rogan went off on Kellog’s, saying pretty much what I thought (but from my non-stoner viewpoint) about their grandstanding against Michael Phelps.
http://blog.joerogan.net/archives/454
(warning: language)
Read more →
Apple usually hits the nail on the head when it comes to usability, but iCal just plain sucks. The user interface is completely unusuable, even for adding simple calendar items.
Turns out, the calendar app I enjoy using the _most_Â is Google Calendar, followed by Outlook.
Apple, with all their slick UI frameworks and latte-sipping HCI engineers, is simply _years behind_ the free web-based app from Google and almost as far behind Microsoft’s old and crusty email application.
Read more →
As a PK, I moved around a LOT when I was a child. A few nights ago, I had the sudden desire to look up all of our old childhood homes, plus the places I’ve lived as an adult, and make a map of them in Google Maps.
Call it nostalgia or whatever, it’s just cool to reach back into the deep cobwebs and try to remember something basic like “where I used to live,” and then to see the old homestead via Google Street View.
Read more →
Do you like to play around in InkScape, or want to learn how to design an SVG icon? Here’s a challenge for you…
Even if you don’t know it by name, you’ve seen the great icons from Mark James’ “Silk” icon library. You can download them here:
http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/
The designer is a genius at designing 16×16 icons, but web applications need bigger icons, preferably vector-based, to fit modern displays:
So, here’s the challenge: pick an icon and design an SVG file inspired by it.
Read more →
My brother, Joshua Tallent, will be giving a tutorial on formatting ebooks for the Amazon Kindle at the O’Reilly Tools of Change conference:
http://www.toccon.com/toc2009/public/schedule/detail/6712
If you’re there and are interested in the ins and outs of Kindle publishing, go check it out!
Read more →
I winced today when I heard Supreme Court Justice Roberts botch the wording of the Presidential Oath of Office.
There are no excuses. Roberts, of all people, should have the Constitution memorized backwards and forwards.
I’m just a normal citizen and I knew immediately what happened when I heard it. Obama, a Constitutional lawyer, obviously caught him as well, but recovered.
Sadly, I think Bush wouldn’t have even caught it if Roberts had accidentally started reciting the Apostle’s Creed…
Read more →
I haven’t been a UNIX admin in over 10 years and didn’t have time until tonight to figure out why my WordPress installation went bonkers. Apparently it was because I installed a new version of MySQL and it didn’t move the database files automatically.
So now I’m back… and successfully upgraded MySQL and WordPress again since they changed since the botched update.
Read more →
Forget OSS, we need OCC.
As in Open Cloud Computing.
By an “open cloud,” I mean something to the effect of:
an Amazon S3-type service of distributed hosting and virtual computing, combined with a set of virtual platforms that can be easily throttled and secured on any machine, combined with something like a Creative Commons license for using particular computing/bandwidth resources in the cloud, combined with an iTunes-like method for people to select which services can run on your free resources.
Read more →
Does anyone else have any suspicions about upstart-search-engine Cuil‘s privacy policy, given that one of their founders was the Homeland Security officer for IBM, and another VP was the communications director for the U.S. House Select Committee on Homeland Security?
Perhaps I’ve just been warped by 7 years of DHS-led privacy invasions and “public-private partnerships” with the telcos, but I have a little trouble accepting claims of privacy from a company whose leaders have been playing in that sandbox.
Read more →