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.
Blog
Longer-form posts and essays.
Writing helps me think more clearly. This archive is longer posts; quick updates now live in notes.
Topics: AI, blogging, photography, programming, projects, Signboard
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, categorization, etc. are…
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 everyone is cut…
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%) and Argentina (8.6%)…
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 each company. It…
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 work there —…
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 ways. One: In…
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 in the world…
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.
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 serviced, and works…
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 last 2000 words…
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 the screen. If…
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.
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.
A small herb garden
Eliza and I planted a few herbs this past weekend.
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 to agree. At…
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 will not initiate…
Great World Cup Goals by Richard Swarbrick
So cool. You can see more great stuff from Swarbrick on his site. /via Devour.
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.
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. It‘s not clear…
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.
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 straight at it.
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 do in the…
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 come to a…