Year: 2014
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Blogging every weekday for 30 days
Who’s in for the challenge? I’ll give it a shot. Fred Wilson pointed to Lockhart Steele and Elizabeth Spiers. Spiers mentioned trying it for 30 days so I thought that was a good idea. Writing has never been an issue for me. I’ve typed a bunch of posts here. But I’ve strayed from the personal…
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SeaKayakPodcasts.com coming back Sept 1
My favorite kayaking podcast at SeaKayakPodcast.com is coming back on September 1st. Host Simon Willis: We have recorded quite a few fascinating chats and the first will be an absolute cracker. The new podcasts start on Monday 1st September. We‘ll hear from Scott Donaldson who spent almost three months in a kayak, paddling 1300 miles…
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Speed is the only filter in Instagram Hyperlapse
From a piece in Wired about Instagram’s new app Hyperlapse: Once you start using the app, you quickly see that replay speed itself becomes a novel, alluring tool: For pets and people, replaying at about 1x gives you the sense that you’re creating a tracking shot like that Copacabana scene in Goodfellas. The higher replay…
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The golden age of Twitter is over
I said that this morning to Kyle. That the golden age of Twitter is over. I couldn’t think of a more eloquent way to put it. The Twitter we fell in love with is actually gone already. It no longer exists at all. In fact, it is tough to even see the remnants of that Twitter…
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Congratulate before you ask
When a new product is announced more often than not the first comment I read is someone asking for features which this new product does not have. To illustrate; if your grandmother made you delicious, homemade chocolate chip cookies and you — looking grandma directly in the face — ask “What, no ice cream?” Most recently I…
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Just pick one
Shawn Blanc, on making a decision on how to get fit: Something I’ve learned over time is that when you’re facing a decision and you know you need to act, it’s often best to just do something — anything — and then figure it out as you go. I can recommend, from vast experience in…
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App rot
Marco Arment: I picked on the iPad earlier because its problem is deeper and more visible than on the iPhone today: while the iPad has most of the pricing and competitive pressure of the iPhone, the iPhone’s immense installed base can hide the problems for longer. The iPad has a much smaller installed base, so…
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First morning paddle
On Sunday I was able to get out early for my first morning paddle ever. Paddling in the morning is completely different than the afternoon or evening. I wasn’t prepared for the subtle differences, namely; the air is cool, crisp
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William Shatner and Facebook Mentions
For reference: App Constellations. First, William Shatner has a Tumblog. I’m cool with this. Second, he wrote about Facebook Mentions — yet another app from Facebook specifically created to help “celebrities” with managing their Facebook accounts. He writes: I’m not quite sure why Facebook released this app for “celebrities”. It seems to be ill conceived. I…
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Rap Genius didn’t raise $40M
It turns out, it was bigger than that. I’ve seen a few tweets and heard a few comments this weekend along the lines of “Rap Genius raised $40M? I quit.” Funny. But pretty far off the mark. Surely you think that while Silicon Valley is willing to be a bit nutty about apps that do little…
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Two paddles this weekend
I managed to get away from work on Friday and do some paddling. Then, on Saturday, things happened to align where I could meet my friend Andrew for a second paddle. Very happy Colin indeed. Here are some photos I snapped on the gram.
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Walking the Glen Gour to Strontian
Simon Willis, someone who has been a huge inspiration to my kayaking endeavors with his Sea Kayak Podcasts series, recently went for a hike. I love this bit: Show me an horizon, an overlapping series of ridge lines or a valley stretching into the distance and I yearn to discover what lies behind those hills,…
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FrenchGirls hits 1M installs, raises $500k
Our friends at Appek, a company just a few miles south from Plain in Scranton, recently hit 1,000,000 installs for their selfie-drawing app FrenchGirls. The concept is pretty simple; take a selfie, submit it, the community sketches something in return. What you get in return isn’t always a sketch of your selfie. Sometimes it is a message,…
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Pinboard turns 5
Pinboard, the excellent bookmarking service, recently turned five. Here is Maciej Cegłowski on the Pinboard blog: Now back to some beard-stroking: I see my role much like a small-town praire banker in the 1880‘s. My job is to project an aura of calm, solvency, and permanence in an industry where none of those adjectives applies. People…
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Urllib3 and Stripe’s Open-Source Retreat
In April Stripe announced an Open-Source Retreat. A little over a month later they had chosen three grantees. Though unannounced on the company blog, Andrey Petrov wrote about his experience working on Urllib3 at Stripe for two weeks over on Medium: Last week completes my two week grant from Stripe to work on urllib3 full…
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A paddle between storms
Last night there was a thunderstorm warning for our county. I desperately wanted to get out kayaking since I hadn’t all weekend. So, I opened up Dark Sky and found a slot of around an hour in between storms and I went for it. I’m glad I did. Easily the best paddle I’ve had so far.…
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The future of blogging
I don’t know what the future of blogging is. I go back and forth between feeling that the glory days are long over to feeling that the best is yet to come. Some think that today’s social web, while it has stifled blogging tremendously, will still end up providing some value to independent blogs in…
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What Matt Krizan learned paddling the California coast
Matt Krizan paddled the California coast in a 36-day expedition. Dave Shivley wrote about what Krizan learned for Canoe & Kayak. Here is what happened on day two: Four miles offshore, the zip-tie linking his left steering pedal to the rudder snaps. Krizan must act. He spots a channel through 8-foot faces breaking on what…
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Kurkdjian on Vimeo
I’ve been following Guillaume Kurkdjian’s Tumblr for awhile. He posts “weekly animated gifs”. But, what’s better than a gif? An animation with sound. Vehicle #4 – Food Truck from Guillaume Kurkdjian on Vimeo. Check out his recent videos on Vimeo.
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Agency or Product?
Richard Banfield, on Medium, in a piece titled The Myth of the Design Studio Turned Product Company relates how he feels it got started by 37Signals: In the process of doing that they unknowingly started the mythology that every design or development studio should become a product company. I’ll just state, flat out, that not…
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Aperture shut
Jim Dalrymple, on The Loop: Apple introduced a new Photos app during its Worldwide Developers Conference that will become the new platform for the company. As part of the transition, Apple told me today that they will no longer be developing its professional photography application, Aperture. I have a hard time caring anymore. Photo storage,…
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Home office 2014
Due to an influx of work at Plain I found myself working from home this weekend. It wasn’t so bad. Great view, good Cornflakes.
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Wolfram and the World Cup
Speaking of Wolfram Alpha (I mentioned them yesterday). Wolfram Alpha was used to try to predict the outcome of the World Cup. Again, Brazil is the favorite, but with a 32% chance to win now. After its impressive victory against Spain, the Netherlands’ odds jumped to 23.5%: it is now the second favorite. Germany (21.6%)…
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Google I/O Keynote 2014
I do not think it is fair to compare Apple’s WWDC keynote with Google’s I/O keynote. It should be fair. But the two simply do not compare. It should be fair because WWDC and I/O are both developer conferences. WWDC and I/O both begin by largely attended, well rehearsed, staged keynotes by top executives at…
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The myth of the cool office
This piece on The Wire is over a year old but this morning Unmark reminded me that I had read it last year around this time. I think it still rings very true today. In general it speaks to how the perks of the modern-day tech company are really a waving-of-the-hands to entice people to…
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Vox Media acquires Editorially
The team behind my favorite, yet now defunct, service for collaborating on the written word — Editorially — is joining Vox Media to work on Product. From the outside this seems like an excellent fit for both teams. But, also important, it will work out for those of us that loved Editorially in two key…
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My Great Grandfather’s pocket-watch
This is my Great Grandfather’s pocket-watch. A few weeks ago my father gave it to me and I wore it for the first time yesterday. I have a lot to say about it, but for now due to time I will just say this… this watch is at least 70 years old, has never been…
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RunPee
Have you ever wondered when would be a good time to go pee during a movie? Or, whether or not you should wait through the end credits? RunPee will tell you these things. The design of the app leaves much to be desired but if it works it is an excellent idea for an application.
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The great unbundling continues
Dave Morin, CEO of Path, recently did a small AMA on Product Hunt. He pointed out this article on Wired about Path breaking apart its mobile apps into other applications. Something I wrote about recently as well. Here is some interesting bits from the article. All this “unbundling” is a response to multiple market forces…
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Frank Chimero AMA
Frank Chimero did a wonderful “Ask Me Anything” session on Designer News earlier this week. I loved this bit about the window of approval on your own work: Writing and publishing a book is hard. Here‘s the tough part: you have a window of approval on your own work. For me, I typically only like the…
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Magic Hour from Oru Kayak
I paddled for about an hour last night on the way home from work. I think I’m starting to get used to this routine. Of course, there is a square crop.
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PaperLater
Tom Taylor, the maker of Satellite Eyes (among other things), has been working on a way for people to receive print versions of the things they’d like to read online. It is called PaperLater. He writes: PaperLater lets you save the good bits of the web to print, so you can enjoy them away from…
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Slingshot
In an effort to further confuse us as to which of their apps to use for what purpose… Facebook introduces Slingshot. The app isn’t yet available but there is more detail on TechCrunch. The “reply to receive” is interesting and has been sort of present in other apps like Rando.
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Evening at Mountain Mud Pond
Friday, after work, I went for a short paddle on Mountain Mud Pond. This pond is on my way home from work.
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Great World Cup Goals by Richard Swarbrick
So cool. You can see more great stuff from Swarbrick on his site. /via Devour.
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Tesla sort of opens up its patents
Tony Stark, I mean, Elon Musk on the Tesla company blog: At Tesla, however, we felt compelled to create patents out of concern that the big car companies would copy our technology and then use their massive manufacturing, sales and marketing power to overwhelm Tesla. We couldn’t have been more wrong. He also writes that “Tesla…
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Yaron Schoen in Net Magazine
My good friend, and co-writer of Space Bits, Yaron Schoen was recently interviewed in Net Magazine — which takes the name Creative Bloq online for inexplicable reasons: I honestly am not so sure that the tech community fully embraced the role of the designer as much as it likes to claim it did. I have…
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Adam Magyar
Joshua Hammer on Matter/Medium in Einstein’s Camera: Adam Magyar is a computer geek, a college dropout, a self-taught photographer, a high-tech Rube Goldberg, a world traveler, and a conceptual artist of growing global acclaim. Good piece. What an amazing talent Magyar is. I suggest you check out his site.
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Jurassic World
Jurassic World, the fourth installment in the Jurassic Park franchise, is coming next June. E! Online has a few preview images and says this about the synopsis: Jurassic World takes place 22 years after the original blockbuster Jurassic Park. In director Colin Trevorrow‘s upcoming sequel, Pratt plays a scientist who conducts behavioral research on raptors.…
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Bret Victor: Seeing Spaces
Bret Victor designs tools. Tools that help you see, or measure and analyze, what you’re working on while you’re working on them. I’ve mentioned him before. This latest presentation by Victor describes a space that can help people who make things do the same things in the real world as Victor’s tools have helped people…
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The Pirates of Pangea
Last night I stumbled across this tweet from Neill Cameron on Twitter. Which I favorited. Which automatically syncs with my Unmark account. Which led me to his new site this morning. Which led me to discover his Pirates of Pangea gallery. A wooden ship, on top of a Brachiosaurus, with a girl riding a T-Rex…
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How Jurassic Park went digital
The special effects in Jurassic Park were originally planned to use animatronics, stop-motion animation, and other traditional effects of the time. But, contrary to the opinions of some, a few “mavericks” at ILM thought they could pull it all off digitally. If I listened to “You will never”, T-Rex would have never have been built. Great video.…
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It is that time of year again
On average I save the lives of three or four of these each time I mow my lawn.
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Learn Swift dot tips
Want to learn Swift, the new programming language from Apple? I’d say start by watching the WWDC Session videos. Then, hit up this curated list of Swift resources. /via Marc Edwards on Twitter.
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The greatest show on earth
Horace Dediu: For them WWDC had a great deal of meat. Indeed, for them, it was probably the most significant event Apple ever staged. Again, agreed. It took all my strength not to capitalize Earth. Perhaps Dediu meant dirt. So I’ll leave it.
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Why we write
Mandy Brown: You cannot know what you know until you’ve written it. As you write, you learn what you know—or, more likely, what you don’t know, which, let’s face it, is most everything. I have hundreds of unpublished drafts for this blog, yet, I’m so happy that I wrote them because I was able to…
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Back to Apple
There are hundreds of thousands of third-party apps that you can use on your computer, phone, and tablet. Some of them are amazingly good and far better in a number of ways than what ships with these devices by default. By using third-party apps, however, you sometimes give up a level of seamless integration between…