Blog

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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Paul Stamatiou, on 10 years of blogging: For me blogging here is an outlet for creativity and an eternal personal project where I can tinker with design ideas and various web technologies. As good as any reasons to have your own blog. He also notes this about personal sites: The era of the personal website […]

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Kurt Wagner on Re/code: Trevor O’Brien, who joined Twitter a year and a half ago from YouTube and oversees product for Twitter’s iOS and Android apps, is departing the company, according to multiple sources. Based on the application updates I’ve seen these last few months I’d say O’Brien wasn’t overseeing much of anything. The state […]

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Jeffery Milstein specializes in aerial photography. Here is his collection of cruise ships. /via iGNANT.

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Jay Torres discusses the Apple Watch on Mark Miller’s series Watchscreen: I now always have my phone on silent and rely on my Watch to let me know of any texts. It’s subtle so it doesn’t interrupt anything, and the haptic touch is strong enough to let me know someone has texted me. As someone […]

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Maria Popova on her incredibly good blog Brain Pickings: Indeed, he knew value of undisturbed creative labor and protected it fiercely, unafraid to stand up to the most powerful man in Europe. Unable to bear the interruptions any longer and determined to do his work on his own terms, he left Rome and returned to […]

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This is great. ~karlen on tilde.town reads aloud bits on the web that says “no one will ever read this but”. My only wish was that this site linked to the source. /via Andy Baio.

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Interesting write-up on Medium by Pasquale D’Silva Creative Director at Elepath. He says this about Spotify: One of the most spatially confusing, while popular pieces of consumer software. To describe how Spotify’s interface makes use of space, would be to describe a rat’s nest of wires. I challenge you to effectively sketch it on a […]

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Kyle Eschenroeder over at The Art of Manliness: Then there is the person scrolling through Lifehacker collecting listicles. Reading and re-reading the same hacks spewed out a thousand times. This is the person who won’t go to the gym until they know for a fact that they have the “perfect” workout regimen. This is the […]

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Maciej Ceglowski, operator over at Pinboard, in a talk in 2014: The Web belongs to us all, and those of us in this room are going to spend the rest of our lives working there. So we need to make it our home. You’ve likely already read the transcript of his talk but I thought […]

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Good move from GoPro. They’ve created a licensing platform for stock videos made by GoPro users. Christopher Heine for Adweek: At launch, GoPro Licensing will feature more than 600 videos from amateur and professional videographers with whom the San Mateo, Calif.-based company has struck licensing agreements. It plans to continuously expand the number of clips […]

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Kyle Ruane, on his personal blog: It’s no secret that the more this region (Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, everywhere in-between) becomes comfortable with technology and success within that industry, the greater our ability will be to develop and keep homegrown talent as well as attract entrepreneurs from other areas. This conference was another big step in the right […]

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Jason Major, writing for Universe Today: More than just a pretty picture of our blue marble, this image will be used by the EPIC team to help calibrate the instrument to remove some of the blue atmospheric haze from subsequent images. Once the camera is fully set to begin operations daily images of our planet will […]

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Manton Reece, on his personal blog about quitting his “day job” and going full time indie:  I thought it would be fun to do a series of blog posts about the early part of this transition. For the next couple weeks, as I wind down one set of projects and ramp up new ones, I’m […]

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