Year: 2015

I am not all that eager to jump into the recent discussion on ads and ad blocking. Over the last near decade, however, I’ve mentioned advertising a few times here on my blog so I decided to go back and curate a few pull-quotes that help to show my opinion on the subject. Here are the…

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Nick Wynja writing on his personal blog about completely ditching any analytics: I’m interested in seeing if anything will change with what I publish since I no longer have analytics telling me what people are clicking on. I’ve never paid too much attention to this site’s (admittedly small) traffic numbers, nor experimented much with topic…

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Gabe Weatherhead at MacDrifter on using Reminders to create lists of map locations: Reminders is also great for vacation planning. I keep a list of map locations for New England breweries in Reminders. When I recently took a trip to Portland Maine, it was a simple task to put the map list in the order…

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I strongly dislike the TV model. The always-on, million channel, ad ridden model. But I love watching things on my TV. So, for many years Eliza and I have had both a DVR and Apple TV connected to our living room, pub, and bedroom TVs. This has allowed us to control the TV model to…

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The discussion started by the Internet Archive’s Brewster Kahle that I linked too earlier this month is starting to ripple out over the web. Neocities, a free web site hosting service, has implemented IPFS — which is shorthand for a peer-to-peer filesystem. Starting today, all Neocities web sites are available for viewing, archiving, and hosting…

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If the kayking photos that I publish to my blog or Instagram aren’t enough to get you into the water perhaps 500px’s latest post will help.

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Since I’ve covered this topic in several sprawling posts here on my blog I wanted a single place to link to about why I unsubscribe from all feeds and unfollow nearly all Twitter accounts a few times a year. Here are some questions I’ve gotten about it. Why go through all of the trouble? Doesn’t it…

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A few times a year a few of our friends get together, start a fire in a field, set off a few fireworks, and enjoy each other’s company. Here are a few photos from the last two fires.

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Ben Brooks on The Brooks Review writing about removing mental overhead on his iPhone’s home screen: The most immediate change that you notice: there is a lot less mental overhead involved in using your phone. If you take a look at my current home screen you can see that I have only 16 visible app…

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I like to keep my browsing history and cookies intact for as long as possible. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve searched my browser’s history to find a site I viewed months ago. And, cookies keep me logged into the services I use most. The latest version of Safari keeps a single year of…

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Fascinating read on Brewster Kahle’s blog (he founded the Internet Archive) about restructuring the fabric of the web to be distributed like the Internet is. Contrast the current Web to the Internet—the network of pipes on top of which the World Wide Web sits. The Internet was designed so that if any one piece goes…

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Last paddling season I managed to squeeze a paddle in a few times per week. Perhaps I did this because it was new to me (last year was my first time kayaking) and I didn’t mind folding and unfolding the Oru 8 times a week. This season I’ve gotten out a little less so as…

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The app that keeps on ticking… NetNewsWire 4 for Mac and iOS has been released by the folks at Black Pixel. Syncing is free. Nice.

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Given my site’s new theme (which purposefully looks as if I coded it when I was 16 in celebration of the new Star Wars film this December) I’d be remiss not to link to this story on The Verge about BB-8. What a great toy.

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Super simple yet incredibly great iOS application from Josh Hrach, Countr helps you count things without needing to write down a bunch of numbers. The app is quick and small. I can think of a few good reasons to have this app and I can’t think of any reasons not to.

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For years and years the only way to create a button on a web site that would copy something to the visitor’s clipboard was to use a Flash shim of sorts since Flash had an API that could access the clipboard. It looks like Mozilla is going to step in and change that requirement where JavaScript…

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Kylie Timpani writing on the Humaan blog: The tricky thing, however, is that people are now finding themselves in unknown territory unsure of how exactly they should contribute. While I’m not a developer I have had conversations with developers where they have specifically pointed out that they don’t think it is their place to offer…

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A few weeks ago a friend told us he was willing to part with his kayak. I knew I wanted it immediately because I knew it was only a year old, I knew how much it was worth, and he was parting with it for a very fair price. However, I hadn’t yet gotten cross…

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Until recently iOS 8 has been a fairly solid release. I had issues with iCloud syncing — as everyone has — since the beginning but overall iOS 8 – 8.4 gave me little trouble. I do not know if updating my iOS devices (iPhone 6, iPad Air 2) to iOS 8.4.1 is the culprit but…

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In less than a month we’ll be heading back to Sandbridge, VA for a little getaway. We don’t normally go to the same location back-to-back for vacations but we had a great time last year and we hope to repeat it. Here are a few photos from the GoPro from last year. I know, I…

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On our way back to Coalwork after walking all the way across town for yummy Indian food last week Kyle and I saw an abandoned mini golf course.

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Martin Fackler for the NY Times in 2011: While some are so old that the characters are worn away, most were erected about a century ago after two deadly tsunamis here, including one in 1896 that killed 22,000 people. Many carry simple warnings to drop everything and seek higher ground after a strong earthquake. Others…

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Cat Johnson marks the 10th anniversary of coworking over on the Shareable blog: Ten years ago this month, coworking was born in San Francisco when Brad Neuberg set up some card tables and invited people to work alongside him. There are now over 3,000 coworking spaces worldwide. I’m happy to be part of coworking in…

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Gus Mueller, on his blog, about taking the time to squash bugs that weren’t even reported in Acorn: It took months and months of work, it was super boring and mind numbing and it was really hard to justify, and it made Acorn 5 super late. But we did it anyway, because something in us…

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MG Siegler on (bleh!) 500ish/Medium: As we saw a couple days ago at Disney’s D23 Expo, the last deal is the focal point for the company for the foreseeable future. And it’s looking like it may be the steal of the bunch. He goes on to write why he thinks the Lucas/Disney deal was such…

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Speaking of jwz, last night he weighed-in on the continuing trend of companies pushing the culture that to succeed in tech you must never sleep. He did so by pointing to a bunch of his older blog posts on the subject. I recommend you read them. Ultimately, though, this is his message: Instead of that,…

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jwz: It’s possible that HTML email is my fault. Thanks Jamie. :’(

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Eliza and a few friends floated down the Delaware River in tubes so I joined them by paddling around with the yak.

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John Ellison, who is blogging about each day that he interns at Clear Left in Brighton, UK writes about the value of a great project manager after 16 days on the job: We had so many different threads working in different directions and as soon as Clare jumped on the project the threads were working…

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YouTube will not allow me to comment without a Google+ account so I’m putting my comment for Sam Soffes’ daily vlog post right here: “I think I like personalsam for the same reasons I’ve always enjoyed reading personal blogs. Living and working online since I was 14 could have been a lonely endeavor but tweets,…

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Mark Gurman, as per usual, has the skinny on the next Apple TV. We have two Apple TV’s in the house and two at work. At home we use the Apple TV every single day. If that Mark is laying out ends up being the reality of what ships we’ll buy two immediately.

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Eliza and I visited with a few friends in Brooklyn PA a month or so ago. Nice place to go for a walk but man oh man there were a lot of dead things on the road.

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WordCamp Scranton happened in mid-July. I mentioned it once or twice.

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SelfControl: Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click "Start." Until that timer expires, you will be unable to access those sites–even if you restart your computer or delete the application. Emphasis mine. /via Mike Rundle on Twitter.

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I use Evernote on my desktop, tablet, and phone. I don’t particularly care for their applications* but the service and structure works well enough that I’ve been productive using them. Jeremy Brown, a local designer and developer and frequent Coalworker, recently wrote about Alternote: It’s clean, and it’s generally nice to use. What’s good is…

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I shared a photo on Instagram/Facebook of a recent paddle on White Oak Pond and within seconds a perfect stranger suggested I paddle Dunn Pond due to its similarities. I love White Oak Pond so the first opportunity I had I went to paddle Dunn Pond. I’m glad I did. I ended up shooting more…

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This is what can happen when two little girls grab your camera and shoot over 100 photos in a matter of minutes. 🙂

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Last week a few of us walked to Ale Mary’s — which I recommend if you haven’t tried it yet — and I took my GoPro along. I’m digging these.

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Bradley Chambers, commenting on a new feature in the latest beta of iOS 9 that will allow the iPhone to switch to cellular data when a Wi-Fi connection gets weak: This is going to be huge for Siri. One of the places that I typically use Siri is backing out of the driveway at home…

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The Sweet Setup: The Belkin Qode Pro is the Cadillac of iPad keyboards. It comes with a shell for the iPad to clip into that works in conjunction with the keyboard itself. When you’re done working, simply pull the iPad away from the magnets in the base and supporting piece in the back, and the…

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In this “year of the smartwatch” I’m happy I stumbled across the Timex Datalink. From Wikipedia: The Datalink line was introduced in 1994 and it was co-developed with Microsoft as a wearable alternative to mainstream PDAs with additional attributes such as water resistance, that PDAs lacked, and easy programmability. Microsoft would give these watches away…

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Will Freeborn, whom I’ve featured on The Watercolor Gallery, recently put together a bit of stencil work for a local bakery in Scotland. I thought it was a cool post on his blog. They also ask artists to make stencils for their bread, I was asked if I wanted to join in. The way the…

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Walter Chang traveled the world for 3 years and then made this video and wrote this on Medium: Yet, traveling in this manner is really an educational experience and an investment in yourself. You get to see how other people live and how they view life. You also get time to reflect on your own…

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Leo Marini on Quartz: Indonesians surveyed by Galpaya told her that they didn’t use the internet. But in focus groups, they would talk enthusiastically about how much time they spent on Facebook.  When AOL was at its height many thought it was the internet. Now, those using Facebook don’t even know they are using the…

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