A few more hands before our friend Burke goes away for two months.
Last August I complained about Tumblarity and I wasn’t alone. Many people didn’t like how Tumblarity motivated the Tumblr community to post and repost drivel and I’m very happy to see that the Tumblr team has, as far as I can tell from my desk, decided to do away with it. But I also said this about how Tumblarity could still be of use to Tumblr:
“If it was a hidden ranking system then people wouldn’t be driven to do things only to increase their rank and it could still be used for valuable things like Tumblr’s directory.”
I don’t know if Tumblr repurposed Tumblarity to help power their new Directory but credit where due I’m glad it isn’t on Tumblr in a way that motivates spamming any more.
This is too awesome for words but I’ll try my best anyway. Jorge Garcia, whose blog I’ve been subscribed to for – well, a long time now, has started a LOST podcast – aptly named Geronimo Jack’s Beard (presumably in tribute to Geronimo Jackson which has been mentioned on LOST a few times over the years).
What makes this podcast awesome (besides the fact that sidekick22, Jorge’s lady friend Bethany James Leigh Shady, and Jorge himself are doing this themselves) is that they started putting together this podcast in August 2009 when LOST began shooting Season 6. They’re releasing these episodes now, since LOST has premiered Season 6 Episode 1 already, and anything they talk about (the script, the shooting, etc.) wouldn’t be considered spoilers anymore.
I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again – Jorge’s character on LOST, Hurley, is my second-favorite character on LOST. Charlie, is my favorite and probably always will be. This is now my second favorite podcast too. Terry Gross’ FRESH AIR on NPR will more than likely always hold that top spot.
Jorge & Beth – if you’re reading this; this was a really great idea and I sincerely appreciate you sharing it.
For months I’ve been using Chromium the open source browser that powers Google Chrome. Using Chromium had its advantages and disadvantages. I had the bleeding edge of what was offered by the Chromium team – whether it was stable or not. But, I also had to manually update my personal copy of Chromium on a nearly daily basis.
Not anymore. I’ve been wanting to switch to the Google Chrome Developer channel (or, the still pretty darned bleed edge releases) for a few weeks but hadn’t had the time to figure out how. After I saw my friend in bleeding edge Chromium releases Justin Blanton take the plunge I began hunting. Turns out, it is pretty easy once you found the right link.
I found this link via the Chromium Blog – but there is an Early Access Release Channels page that explains what each release channel is, its purpose, and how you can get involved. The nice thing about these channels is that these are releases of Google Chrome, not just Chromium, and as such are slightly more stable and refined then the Chromium nightlies I’ve been using. Updating to the next release is also easier in that it happens within the application itself and it continues on the same channel you choose be it beta or developer.
Left: Chromium Right: Google Chrome Dev channel
For example, remember how I complained about Chromium’s Bookmark Manager? Remember those hideous buttons? Well, they are much nicer in Google Chrome then they are in Chromium. Take a look at the graphic that shows the difference between the two. Though the action button doesn’t do much (yet) it does fit much nicer into the Mac ecosystem. Obviously the source list on the left is much nicer as well.
Switching from Chromium to Google Chrome was made all the more easy due to Google’s free Bookmark Syncing service. If you’d like to help test the very latest build of Chrome follow the links on that Early Access Release Channels to download your flavor of Chrome based on which channel you’d like.
Who says blogs are dead? Lets have a live discussion about tonight’s upcoming episode of LOST Season 6, live, right here in the comments on my blog.
To participate simply leave a comment below and wait for some replies. If you want, share a link to this post via Twitter, Facebook, or anywhere else you’d normally have this type of discussion nowadays.
(Consider each comment the beginning of a discussion. Click “reply” to reply to a specific comment.)
Or, maybe we should call it Talk Internet now? Talk radio still sounds better. Anyway…
Dan Benjamin, who like me has always been a very big fan of talk radio, has launched a new network for audio podcasts called 5 by 5 Studios. I’ve listened to the first few episodes of each of his shows and so far so good. If you’re a fan of talk radio give Dan’s new network a listen.
Something for everyone.
Icon Dock (love the name, branding, pretty much everything) has just released a set of 50 icons based on today’s popular social media services in full vector including the one I love most. Very nice and very free.
Be sure to check out their other products. Thanks Icon Dock.
/via David Kaneda.
Pack, by fellow Viddler team member and friend Andrew Smith, is a great utility to compress your CSS and JavaScript for deployment. The real meat of Pack comes from its ability to take an entire directory of scripts and compress them using a set of instructions. Nice work Andrew.
Neven Mrgan just changed my perspective on the name iPad. I don’t particularly care for it. However, Neven compares iPad to the name of some of the top gadgets currently getting press. Turns out, iPad is an excellent name now.
LOST Season 6 starts on Tuesday. LOST Seasons 1 through 5, all one hundred and one episodes, are now available via Hulu to help you catch up!
Here is a great example of a good extension written for Google Chrome. The RSS Subscription extension is built by someone on the Chromium team and it brings in the unified feed icon button into the location bar to subscribe to any feeds found on a site. Works perfectly, fits naturally, has a fair amount of options.
I had published a placeholder link for the iPad when it was announced. I’ve now updated that post to include my impressions of the iPad based on the video, announcement video, and Web site.
Kyle Slattery, whom you all should know by now, has also published a post about comparing the physical keyboard input with that of his DROID and the challenges faced by device manufactures that provide both a physical keyboard and a multitouch interface.
Found this little gem tonight after I had made the mistake of ignoring a file that I had already added to my repo and had committed more than one change to and wanted to remove the file from my commit history completely.
“One problem I see quite often in the #git channel on Freenode is that beginners get confused as to why a file doesn’t disappear from history when they place it into their .gitignore file.”
Well, I’m that beginner he speaks of.
To ignore a file from being tracked by Git simply create a .gitignore file in your root working directory with a list of files or directories that you want Git to ignore the changes of. Typically this is good for configuration files, error logs, or temp directories that might be filled with junk.
Pretty simple. However, I had a config.php file in my project for quite a few commits before I wanted to remove it and stop tracking changes. I didn’t go about this the right way and I actually ended up publishing sensitive information to a public place. Eek! So, to help all of you, here is how you do this properly (using my config.php as the example).
I know that it is bad form to remove a file from the commit history as general practice however in this case I had very little choice. I hope this saves any of you that find this the time and stress it temporarily caused me.
Playing Scrabble this evening this rule came up. How many points does a player get if they use all 7 tiles if some of their tiles fall on premium squares?
“If a player uses all seven of the tiles in the rack in a single play, a bonus of 50 points is added to the score of that play (this is called a “bingo” in Canada and the United States, and a “bonus” elsewhere). These bonus points are not affected by premium squares.”
Well, that settles that.
So, it has finally been announced.
Now, what do I think about it? I have to admit that since it was announced, about 36 hours ago now, my opinion of the iPad has swung back and forth like a blade of grass in a stiff breeze. I sit here (on the couch no less) wishing I had an iPad to write this on while at the same time thinking the device is utterly frivolous. I have a Macbook Pro and an iPhone, why would I ever need an iPad?
But, who cares if I actually need one. What do I think about it? Here are the surprises, the bad, and the good.
There were good surprises too but I’ll just throw most of them into “the good” list.
I haven’t had an opportunity to use the iPad yet – which I presume won’t happen for months – but I didn’t see much that was bad about the device. Nearly everything I saw was incredibly well thought out and looked easy and dare I say fun to do.
All this and I haven’t put so much as a thumb on the device yet. I can’t wait to get my hands all over this thing though I’m still not sure I’ll buy one.
On the cusp of an announcement from Apple later this afternoon (or morning if you’re in San Francisco where the event is taking place) I thought I’d roundup my favorite posts about the Apple Tablet up until today.
That is really about it. We’ll see how all of this stacks up in about 4 hours and 10 minutes.
As a sort of pet project of mine I’ll be committing updates to a Google Chrome Extension for Viddler.com. There is very, very little there so far but there will be more over time. If you have a hand for creating cool Google Chrome Extensions feel free to contribute.
When someone says they are going to go freelance this is the first piece of advice that I give them.
“Work for free
or for full price.
Never for cheap.”
/via we(heart)it.
SUV on roof
Saw this at 12:30 on Sunday afternoon at the intersection of Routes 106 and 247. Everyone seemed to get out OK though.