Year: 2011
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Hurricane Irene as seen by NOAA GOES-13 satellite
 Easily [the most impressive photo of Hurricane Irene](http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/6083128930/in/photostream/lightbox/) and it was taken by NASA’s NOAA GOES-13 satellite.
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CodeIgniter, now on Github
I don’t use PHP often but when I do I use [CodeIgniter](http://codeigniter.com/). And now [it is on Github](https://github.com/EllisLab/CodeIgniter).
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Companies are buying iPads in bulk
Orders like these surely help the iPad maintain its dominance in the tablet (read: iPad) market. [United Airlines just picked up 100,000 iPads](http://www.splatf.com/2011/08/ipad-united/ ) for their employees and [the Tampa Bay Bucs got one for each of their team members](http://www.splatf.com/2011/08/bucs-ipad/) (50 ). And I thought owning two iPads was a lot.
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High praise for The Economist for iPad
Ryan Singer of 37signals [about The Economist for iPad](http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2995-the-economist-on-the-ipad-perfect): > "I don’t get to say this often: it’s a perfect execution." Though I have purchased books I have yet to purchase or subscribe to a magazine or newspaper on the iPad. Ryan’s praise for The Economist may change that.
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Jig
[Jig](http://jig.com/) is a new service from Joshua Schachter, who built del.icio.us, that is a place to find things you need. You can’t buy a new watch on Jig but you can ask people for suggestions on the best watch to buy or where to get the best price on a certain watch or even how…
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Quality is contagious
Kyle Neath on [_Relentless Quality_](http://warpspire.com/posts/relentless-quality/): > "Broken windows are the reason most large software projects suck to work on. A little technical debt here, a few shortcuts there, and pretty soon you’ve got a codebase so full of broken windows that no one even cares if they throw another pile of broken glass on the…
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Using Markdown
I know I’m late to the game but I’m now using John Gruber’s [Markdown](http://daringfireball.net/markdown) for writing on this site as well as documentation at work. I’m thoroughly enjoying it. Oh, I’m using [Mark Jaquith’s](http://markjaquith.com/) [Markdown on Save WordPress plugin](http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/markdown-on-save/) and it works great.
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3,000 hours of television from 9/11
Archive.org’s collection of [3,000 hours of television from 9/11](http://www.archive.org/details/911). Chilling. /via [Andy Baio](http://waxy.org/links/).
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A shorter URL for Google Maps
> "Starting today, when obtaining a link to a Google Map using the ‘Link’ button on the upper right-hand corner of the page, you now have the option of obtaining a convenient, shortened link by clicking on the ‘Short URL’ check box. Shortened URLs can make it easier to coordinate events and share maps with…
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Piano Across America
[Dotan Negrin](http://pianoacrossamerica.com/) is traveling across the United States playing an upright piano he drags along with him in his truck. He’s living off donations given to him while he plays in some really cool locations. I’ve been enamored with his posts for months and I’m finally getting around to sharing it. I hope that when…
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Forecast, let your friends know where you’re going
Interesting niche that I know many would love to see filled by Foursquare et al. [Forecast](http://foreca.st/) is a mobile application (iOS/Android currently) that lets you tell your friends _where you will be_ and _when you’ll get there_. Then, when you arrive, you can quickly check into wherever you are via Foursquare. /via [Brian Shaler](http://brian.shaler.name/).
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How to: Swap events and projects in iMovie
I’ve been messing around in iMovie recently and a few of the video tutorials I ran across confused me because they showed the events viewer on top of the projects stage. This allowed for a much, much larger editing stage than the default iMovie view. Turns out this is very simple to do. To swaps…
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Ludum Dare
A 48-hour solo hackathon for game developers to create a game. Pretty fun. Shaun Inman, who just released The Last Rocket for iOS, put together a quick game called Data Entry Sentry that works on an iPad (or any Webkit browser). Fun to play. I don’t know where he gets the energy.
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PicPlum – Send printed photos to family easily.
I’m sure there are a million uses for [PicPlum](http://picplum.com/) but I can’t think of a single reason why someone with children and extended family wouldn’t choose to use it to mail printed photos automatically each month. PicPlum is everything printing photos usually isn’t; easy and affordable.
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Just missed
I was using Eliza’s new Sigma 10-20mm and happened upon this dragonfly. If only I realized that I had to be at least 1 foot away to truly get him in focus. Oh well, this is how we learn.
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Recent software problems
I’ve been having some software problems lately and I thought it would be interesting to jot down what they are. Or, maybe just cathartic. Fun for me more than for you, dear reader, but alas this is my blog and I can cry if I want to, cry if I want to, you would cry…
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Goodbye webOS, we hardly even knew you.
HP has scuttled several webOS powered devices including the TouchPad and Pre phones. Their press release leaves the future of webOS rather open… HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward. Presumably the webOS team inside of HP/Palm isn’t so large that it costs HP a ton of…
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Hidden settings in MPlayerX
I’ve switched to using [MPlayerX](http://mplayerx.org/) ([App Store](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mplayerx/id421131143?mt=12)) since upgrading to Mac OS X Lion because it can play many more formats than Quicktime and is, in many ways, much better looking than VLC. Today I’ve stumbled across [a slew of hidden settings](https://github.com/niltsh/MPlayerX/wiki/Some-settings-you-can’t-find-in-the-UI) that you can’t find via the UI.
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How browsers work
What happens after you hit Enter on a browser? A lot. And the people over at HTML5 Rocks have taken the time to explain every nitty gritty detail about [how a web browser works](http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/internals/howbrowserswork/). You’ll need to freshen up that beverage before you sink your teeth into this article. If you don’t have time now…
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Tweeting for steak
Guy half-jokingly tweets that he wants a steak hand-delivered to an airport terminal from one of his favorite restaurants. They show up with a free meal. [Great, fun story](http://shankman.com/the-best-customer-service-story-ever-told-starring-mortons-steakhouse/). Pardon me while I tweet about that new Jeep I’ve been wanting.
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Ireland, ready for our arrival
We’ll be heading to Ireland in a few months. According to these two screenshots from Google Maps Ireland is ready for our arrival.
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Uninstalling applications on Lion is arguably more difficult
When I switched to the Mac I was surprised how easy it was to install and uninstall applications in OS X compared to the horrible installer workflow and the Add/Remove Programs Control Panel of Windows. For those that are unaware, prior to Lion installing an application on the Mac went something like this; download a…
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Control Spotify using Alfred
Speaking of Alfred, Jeff Johns (fellow Viddler team member) has released an Alfred Extension to control Spotify.
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Introducing Shh: An AppleScript and Alfred Extension to close all those noisy streams
As the work day progresses I find myself with more and more "streams" open. Not long after I log onto my computer in the morning Twitter, Skype, iChat, Mail and other streams are open and active and at multiple points throughout the day they steal my attention. However, there are times when I just want…
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Marco Arment reviews Coffee Joulies so we don’t have to
Thank goodness for people that are geeks about different things than I am and are willing to share their findings with the world. That is exactly what Marco Arment is (a geek about different things than I am, willing to share findings) when he reviews Coffee Joulies (which started as a Kickstarter project). When he…
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Web Actions
Tantek elikshares his thoughts on Web Actions for pages on the web. You may have already seen similar things over the years like share, digg, like, 1 and follow buttons. Now Tantek suggests that we call them all Web Actions and to follow a certain recipe when creating these services. A good read and a…
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I wouldn’t shop at forumsstore.com
[ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] I thought I’d drop a note, for Google more than anything, that I wouldn’t shop at forumsstore.com (which I won’t link directly to). This site comes up on Google as having some fairly great deals on products like DSLR camera lenses. What I will link to is a forum thread where some…
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The plusses and minuses of Google+
This might get a little long in the tooth so you may want to top-up that beverage. Google has run me over like a freight train. Over the last few weeks I’ve been living on it instead of Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare. In fact, I made the prediction that Google could replace many of the most…
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How we watch Netflix
I’m pretty surprised by the statistics that show how people watch Netflix (and Hulu). Arguably the worst experience is on the computer and the best experience is on the Apple TV. And yet the worst is the most and the best is the least. /via Dan Frommer.
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The cost of The One Ring
Speaking of Weta, did you know that you can purchase the ring of power for only $2,500 USD? Sounds like abargainto me.
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Weta Workshop
A great video out of Weta Workshop that played in front of a limited theatre release of The Lord of the Rings recently. Watch in HD and in full screen for the full effect. Looks like a great place to work for an artist of almost any type. /via TheOneRing.net.
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Check-in services need to get much faster and more valuable.
Foursquare is currently winning in the check-in services space but I believe it is still anybody’s game because there is still a lot of work to do. Even though I "know" people that work at Gowalla and their sense of design is practicallyunparalleledin the check-in service space – Foursquare simply works better and that is…
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Texters by Joe Holmes
Fantastic photo gallery of people on their mobile phones by Joe Holmes. /via Jason Kottke.
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Writing helps you think
This isn’t news to anyone. But I thought that Meagan Fischer had an interesting way of stating this in a recent post. "For me, that’s the real beauty of writing. Ideas can be noisy, heavy things. Trying to ignore them is like trying to ignore a bored cat. It will sit on your chest while…
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How much sunscreen should I wear?
[ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] The answer is: more than you probably expected and far more complicated.
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What is your string?
My cat Pickles goes crazy when he sees string. Whether it be the pull-string for our window shades, a loose string from a piece of clothing – just about any string he’ll go bonkers for. So much so, in fact, that he’ll nearly injure himself and others to get the string. Nothing else matters in…
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An iPod Nano watch was never a good idea
[ad#Adsense: Horiz 468] But it sure did look cool. I was bent on getting the Tik-tok and iPod Nano to use as a watch since the very first day I came across the Kickstarter project. I didn’t care if it would make sense as a watch – I thought it looked awesome. So, I did…