Blog

Writing helps me think more clearly. I write about what interests me such as blogging, photography, technology, social media, and my personal creative projects.


Filter by: Asides, Snaps, TIL

Series: Diversions, WIS, typicalday

Topics: blogging, photography, programming

  • Tumblr Kit by Matthew Buchanan

    Tumblr Kit: A jQuery framework for ajax loading post content via Tumblr’s v2 API and rendering it in your document using customisable JsRender templates. See the demo. Interesting. Works well and is a pretty great framework already.

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  • Brett Terpstra’s sweet Mac setup

    Brett Terpstra, the guy behind nvALT (among many other things) which is literally open all day long on my Mac, was recently featured on Shawn Blanc Sweet Mac Setup series. Excellent all the way through. So much software. I’m an app junky, and I try everything that I’m remotely interested in. Even some things I’m not. I

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  • More writing tips from McSweeney’s

    Colin Nissan (great name, by the way) writes The Ultimate Guide to Writing Better Than You Normally Do. Great list… here’s one tip: STUDYTHERULES,THENBREAKTHEM Part of finding your own voice as a writer is finding your own grammar. Don’t spend your career lost in a sea of copycats when you can establish your own set

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  • Seoul food on la mode*

    I have so much food envy right now.

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  • The Infinite Monkey Cage Podcast

    I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the archive of The Infinite Monkey Cage Podcast – a very scientific and nerdy podcast aboutastrophysicsamong other things. It stars Brian Cox of the Wonders of the Universe and Wonders of the Solar System series – which I adore.

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  • Reeder 3 for iPhone release (now supports Fever)

    The latest release of Reeder for iPhone has just hit the App Store. All sorts of goodies in this release – copiously described and illustrated by Shawn Blanc. However, a big, big thing that most posts aren’t mentioning is that Reeder 3 for iPhone supports Shaun Inman’s Fever. Why is this a big, big thing?

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  • WordPress 3.4 released

    The latest version of WordPress has been released featuring a pretty great live theme preview feature. Theme developers will need to do a few things to make their themes compatible. Upgrade!

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  • 21 tips to start blogging by Chris Brogan

    Chris said not to share this list but also said that every rule on this list was breakable so here is me breaking the rules and sharing the list anyway. My favorite is #3: 3.Start writing. I’m a bit biased but I truly believe everyone should have a blog. And a Twitter account. One thing

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  • Andrew Kim reviews the new iPad Smart Case

    Andrew Kim, at the speed of light, has already reviewed the new iPad Smart Case. Spoiler: he doesn’t love it. I had high hopes for this case but it’s simply lacking in proper execution. This is the first time I’ve ever been disappointed this badly by an Apple product. I’m returning it tomorrow. I’m glad

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  • CodeIgniter 2.1.1 released

    CodeIgniter 2.1.1 has been released. Looks like a pretty solid point release to sure up a few pain points. I use CodeIgniter to build Nilai so I’ll be working on upgrading this weekend.

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  • Jimmy Fallon, Carly Rae Jepsen & The Roots Sing \”Call Me Maybe\” (w/ Classroom Instruments)

    More "Music Room" stuff, Jimmy. Instant classic.

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  • Seneca Lake, Late Spring 2012

    All photos taken with iPhone 4 using Hueless.

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  • Pizza Delicious and Facebook Ads

    This is going back to mid-May but I’ve wanted to chime in on this NPR article about Pizza Delicious in New Orleans and their attempt to use Facebook Ads to drum up some more business. The campaign cost them $240 — almost $1 for each new Facebook fan they got from the campaign. "Is that

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  • The new Foursquare app

    Foursquare just updated their iOS application and I think it is great. MG Siegler sums it up: A day into using it, I agree that new Foursquare is a significant improvement in a lot of ways. There’s always been a lot more data than check-ins flowing through Foursquare, but much of it was hidden behind

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  • Google Maps will get better 3D

    I use Google Maps almost daily. Not just for traveling or directions but also to explore the world around me. So, I’m happy that Google is investing time, energy, technology and lots of money into Maps. I’m not too happy about this bit from Frederic Lardinois at AOL Techcrunch: Google doesn’t want to say when

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  • Notebook over iPad

    I’m going with a notebook today.

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  • Tag

    Found, in the alley behind the Viddler offices.

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  • A brief history of John Baldessari

    Narrated by Tom Waits. I recommend 720p fullscreen. /via David Karp.

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  • \”Do not disturb\” option in Mountain Lion

    According to The Verge Apple has added a Do Not Disturb option to Mountain Lion’s Notification Center. (Wow, that was a lot of capital letters.) Might we also see this feature in the upcoming iOS 6? This is great for my focus training program. I’m very much looking forward to Mountain Lion.

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  • Mushroom potential

    If I would have found this mushroom sooner it could have been dinner.

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  • Traffic, or popularity, isn’t always good

    Lars Martinson’s website usually averaged a hundred hits per day. He submitted an ebook to Reddit and received nearly 50,000 hits in a single day. Great right? Well, not really. He only sold 23 ebooks. He also learned a few valuable lessons and he jotted them down in 3 Things I Learned When My Site’s

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  • Will apps be announced for the Apple TV next week?

    I’ve had an Apple TV for a while now and I love it. I use it all the time. And, I’m guessing, with Mountain Lion I’ll be using it a lot more. But I’ve got no reason to upgrade to the latest Apple TV (save the 1080p resolution) since the software updates come around for

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  • Joe Kraus and the Culture of Distraction

    Great presentation by Joe Kraus on the Culture of Distraction and how we’re all training ourselves to be less able to focus on any one thing. STOP WHAT YOUR DOING AND WATCH IT NOW. 🙂 My take? I think I’ll develop a training program that works the opposite way. Over a year ago in a

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  • The American West photographed by Timothy O’Sullivan circa 1870

    Absolutely stunning photography from Timothy O’Sullivan in the 1860s and 1870s. He would have had an amazing Instagram account.

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  • Paul Miller’s year offline is incredibly interesting

    Paul Miller, a writer for The Verge, somewhat recently decided to take a year off from the Internet. You can call it a stunt if you’d like to – but it is turning out to be one of the most interesting public experiments I’ve ever seen online. A recent piece and video by Miller was

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  • The Samsung Chromebook Series 5 550

    CNet takes a good look at Samsung’s new Chromebook 5 550. It appears that the launch of Google Drive has done wonders for Chrome OS.

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  • Instagram filters for Adobe Lightroom

    Casey McCallister has put together some great filters for Adobe Lightroom that resemble the filters in Instagram. Some say they aren’t perfect replicas but I couldn’t see how they could be. I think they’re pretty good. Good idea. And I’m glad he’s charging for them. /via The Verge.

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  • Jodie Foster reads Carl Sagan’s Contact

    Yesterday, while I was sick on the couch, I did what I usually do when I’m sick. Watch Contact. I’ve never read the book from which the film was adapted – Carl Sagan’s Contact. But this led me to poke around and I found something I’m thoroughly enjoying. Jodie Foster reading an abridged, and performed,

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  • The Middle Ages: Then vs. Now by Pleated Jeans

    Pleated Jeans presents – The Middle Ages: Then vs. Now. I still carry around a leg of turkey from time-to-time. /via Laughing Squid.

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  • Jay Torres and food truck etiquette

    I love street food. Jay Torres, who used to work on a food truck, has some great lessons in food truck etiquette to share. Listen up. I’ve been wanting to write something like this for awhile, but I didn’t want to do it while I was still working on a truck. I didn’t want to

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  • A tribute to the AeroPress

    Adam Lisagor of Sandwich Video presents AeroPress "Ritual": I laughed out loud (or, LOL’d as the kids say). /via Jay Torres.

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  • Bits about being or feeling finished

    I think everyone who is addicted to their work runs into this problem of constantly feeling like there is more to do. And let’s face it, all of us that have been working with computers since about the time we learned to ride a bike are addicted to our work. We love it. However, by

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  • Google removes 1 million links a month from search results

    David Kravets for Wired: Each month, Google removes more than 1 million links to infringing content such as movies, video games, music and software from its search results — with about half of those requests for removal last month coming from Microsoft. Interesting stuff. I’m surprised that number is so low. I’m not surprised that

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  • Matt Mullenweg on a much more simple WordPress

    First, yes please. Now, Matt Mullenweg on what tablets should mean to WordPress: How we democratize publishing on that sort of platform will not and should not work like WordPress’ current dashboard does. It’s not a matter of a responsive stylesheet or incremental UX improvements, it’s re-imagining and radically simplifying what we currently do, thinking

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  • Coda 2 and Diet Coda now available

    Coda 2 and Diet Coda are now available. 50% off until tomorrow. Just picked up my copy. Take that Duke Nukem.

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  • gTar – The first guitar that anyone can play

    Speaking of Kickstarter (I’ve mentioned it many times). gTar, a guitar-playing learning tool that uses an iPhone to teach you how to play, is a new project on Kickstarter that seems to be a smash-hit right out of the gate. It hassurpassedits stated goal of raising $100,000 in less than 24 hours. Who knows where

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  • Justin Kan’s first programming experience

    Justin Kan about his first experience using programming on the job: A couple more hours of applied effort and I had a macro that looped through all the images in a directory tree and laid them out in Excel. I spent the next four days surfing the web and handing out files. The first time

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  • Om Malik interviews Kickstarter founder Perry Chen

    Om Malik sat down with Perry Chen for a really great and in-depth interview about the success of Kickstarter. I think, we’re able to offer people the ability to overcome that one core roadblock — the funding — and then additionally allow people to build this community and nurture an audience around a project. I

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  • Pete Rose: Here Now

    A great short film about Pete Rose day-to-day. I hired Pete Rose in Atlantic City in 2003 when I worked for a sports memorabilia company to sign autographs. Out of the 45 or so athletes I worked with during my time there, including many hall of famers and still-working athletes, Pete Rose was one of

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  • TechCrunch isn’t about tech

    An excellent point by Alex Payne on something that always bothered him about TechCrunch: For a publication with “tech” in the name, technology only ever seemed ambiently present in TechCrunch’s reporting. Software and hardware are background music for the site’s real interests: money and power, success and failure, who’s up and who’s down. TechCrunch often

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  • Coda 2 and Diet Coda available May 24th

    Not-so-hot on the heels of my interview with Panic in September 2009comes Coda 2 and its sister? iPad app Diet Coda – both available on May 24th. Coda 2 looks like an amazingly big update.

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  • Farhad Manjoo spends a week with Bing

    Like Mahdi Yusuf’s month-long foray using DuckDuckGo Farhad Manjoo spends a week with Bing. His first impressions were good: The new Bing is like the old Google—your results are presented on a clean, uncluttered page consisting of a lot of links and a few unobtrusive ads. But, like so many others, he realized how trapped

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  • GitHub for Windows

    GitHub just released GitHub for Windows. Remember what I said about GitHub for Mac? And about git getting easier? It goes ditto for this application.

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  • Open Graph tags using the Viddler API

    Fellow Viddler team member Jeff Johns explains how to use the Viddler API to generate Open Graph tags. One possible use case? Making your video thumbnail, and playable video, appear on Facebook’s News Feed whenever someone links to your website.

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  • Adobe Shadow

    Interesting project by Adobe – Shadow is a way to share your current browser’s location with a bunch of different devices. In the demo embedded here it shows how easily it would make testing a site layout or web app on all of your devices at once. Pretty slick.

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  • How Yahoo! Killed Flickr

    Matt Honan of Gizmodo: The site that once had the best social tools, the most vibrant userbase, and toppest-notch storage is rapidly passing into the irrelevance of abandonment. Its once bustling community now feels like an exurban neighborhood rocked by a housing crisis. Yards gone to seed. Rusting bikes in the front yard. Tattered flags.

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  • The downsides of experience

    Justin Kan pontificates about experience and how he at one point thought experience was worthless. However, once he had some experience he began to believe it to be very valuable. It does come with some drawbacks and this one is a biggie: It’s been said before, but when you have a lot of experience in

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  • Simperium

    Brought to you by the guys at Simplenote,Simperium"is a service for developers to move dataeverywhere it’s needed, instantly and automatically." Impressive demo video as well as samples that include a video demonstration and code on Github for each one. /via Shawn "I know a lot about keyboards" Blanc.

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  • Marco Arment streamlines U.S. currency

    Like many Marco Arment thinks it is time to streamline U.S. currency: 1 cent: I don’t care whether we keep these. I’ll still keep them in a bowl and eventually bring them to a Coinstar machine for Amazon credit. 5 cents (5x previous denomination) 25 cents (5x) $1 (4x): I don’t care whether it’s a

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  • The problem with advertising

    The problem with advertising is that the customers will always be the advertisers and they will always want value for their ad spend and value typically comes from compromising the viewer’s experience. Countless well-meaning, tasteful, and respectable people have taken a swing at making friendly advertising that is both respectful of the viewer and valuable

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