March 2008
28 posts
Offices and The Creativity Zone →
I’m a huge advocate of allowing employees to work from home when they want or on a schedule that’s the most conducive to how they work, and Dan Benjamin explains why better than I ever could have:
Most people’s work environments, most typical offices, are actually harmful to the ability of developers, designers, writers, and other creative people to get into The Zone (see below)....
Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison →
For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades.
Edison’s legacy is safe, though: the...
The Do-Nothing Effect
It occurred to me recently that on the days I spend most of my work day doing nothing (or at least nothing intellectually stimulating), I spend my night/weekend doing the same. I acclimate to doing nothing and that’s a hard cycle to break. Sure, I may force my way through my RSS feeds, I may “read” a few of the more interesting-looking articles, and I may even blog about one of...
Marco.org: How to make good coffee →
Anyone who tells you that making the perfect cup of coffee isn’t an art form is a liar, if you ask me. And for those of you interested in learning this dark art, Marco just gave away the secret.
Of course, if you just can’t seem to get your coffee quite right, there are $11,000 and $20,000 coffee makers that might be able to help you.
Music Tumblelog Seeks New Contributor →
Tuneage is once again putting out the call for a new contributor:
Tuneage has surprised us all. In just over one month, it has already exceeded every expectation we had when we started it. With that in mind, we’re turning to the tumbling masses to find another contributor to our humble tumblelog.
"Garfield Minus Garfield" A Troubling Lesson on... →
Garfield Minus Garfield has a simple formula: erase (presumably through the magic of Photoshop) every instance of the irrepressible, overweight feline, leaving only Jon Arbuckle to talk to himself. The results are devastating (and hilarious) treatises on loneliness, without punch lines or jokes, reminiscent of the appallingly bleak early Peanuts strips.
The Riff may be over-analyizing G-G, but...
E-voting vendor blocks security audit with legal... →
From the article:
New Jersey election officials have scrapped plans for an independent audit of Union County voting machines because the vendor, Sequoia Voting Systems, says that unauthorized third-party security reviews would violate the county’s license agreement. Sequoia threatened the county with legal action when it learned that election officials were planning to send the machines to...
Can’t Grasp Credit Crisis? Join the Club →
It has been going on for seven months now, and many people probably feel as if they should understand it. But they don’t, not really.
David Leonhardt explains how the subprime mortgage market can cause the economic problems it has. Very use for someone like me who has had no idea how all these financial pieces fit together.
incessant rambling →
A tumblelog called “incessant rambling” that doesn’t have a single post. Ironic? You bet.
Cubo.cc →
This site, although well done, gives me the serious heebeejeebees. (via yewknee).
Why bother having a resume? →
Seth Godin brings the interesting:
This is controversial, but here goes: I think if you’re remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular, you probably shouldn’t have a resume at all. Not just for my little internship, but in general. Great people shouldn’t have a resume.
Radical? Maybe, but nonetheless interesting.
In the past, I’ve balked at applying for jobs I know...
Busy vs. Productive →
Brad Bollenbach:
Busy-ness is impressive. It puts you in the heat of the action. It gives you an elevated sense of importance. You’re always late for social engagements, barely have enough time for family get-togethers, and hardly get a moment’s sleep. […] Of course, it’s all just an illusion
While the “busy” people in my office number in the hundreds, the...
3/14 is Pi Day, not Pie Day
Squandering all that delicious potential, every year math nerds people rally around the irrational to honor Pi. I thought I’d join the fray this year and track down two links that let you play with the beloved Pi:
The first link is an applet that lets you putz around with this visualization of Pi that amounts to little more than colored noise.
Once you’re done zooming, scaling, or...
Reznor's one-week take for 'Ghosts' →
Greg Kot:
A week after releasing his four-volume instrumental work “Ghosts I-IV” through his Web site, Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor is reporting that he amassed more than $1.6 million in orders and downloads.
Radiohead may get credit for doing this first, but Reznor’s model is better, smarter, and more likely to gain wide adoption.
Six-Word Reviews of 763 SXSW MP3s →
Paul Ford listens to all 763 songs offered in the SXSW music showcase torrent then categorizes, describes, and rates each one. Somewhow, he then manages to generate stats for everything. (via Tuneage)
Launchball →
Need a new flash game to distract you at work? Here’s one, but consider yourself warned, it’s addicting. (via squandrous)
Gone, Without a Trace →
Newsweek author, Steven Levy, loses his on-loan-from-Apple MacBook Air:
When something is thin enough to fit into an envelope, light enough to sit on your lap for a couple of hours without discomfort and so compact that it doesn’t even bulge in an airline seat-back pocket, wouldn’t it make sense that one could lose track of such a thing? Even if it is a computer?
Oh, to have such...
CustomCSS Tumblelog Theme →
A short while back, Richard and I decided that Tumblr needed a sandbox theme. This past weekend, we put our money where our mouths are.
The end result is a theme we call {CustomCSS}, and the idea is to provide a solid base theme on which people can apply their own styles. So, we’ll give you the theme and you provide the stylesheet. Think of it as CSS Zen Garden applied to Tumblr themes.
...
Add MultiTouch Gestures to Any App →
Will Henderson describes his (beta) app, MultiClutch:
Basically, MultiClutch allows you to assign custom keyboard shortcuts in a given app to a given gesture. Want swipes to change tabs in Safari? Done. The same in iChat? Done. Want zoom-in to open emails in Mail, zoom-out to close windows in every app, and a swipe down to bring up Quicksilver? Done done done.
My desire for a new MacBook Pro...
37Signals: Workplace Experiments →
I recognize the way 37Signals runs their business doesn’t necessarily generalize, but I think they have a lot of good ideas and there is a lot to be learned from them. A quote later in the article actually caused me to double-take; the quote was in reference to discretionary spending:
If there’s a problem, we’ll let the person know. We’d rather trust people to make reasonable spending...
Do Coat Hangers Sound As Good Monster Cables? →
As it turns out…yes. Yes they do. (via Daring Fireball)
When's the last time you really listened to an... →
Graeme Thomson:
Does anyone still do this when they get a new release: sit down and physically play it over and over again while giving it their sole, undivided attention?
This article is ridiculous, and not only because it’s based on the flawed assumption that albums are necessarily better than singles. I prefer whole albums to singles, but just because I do or Graeme Thomson does,...
Sanity prevails: IE8 will default to... →
Surprisingly, Microsoft has changed its mind. Internet Explorer 8 will default to true standards compliance after all, and instead, developers who want IE 7 behavior will have to explicitly choose it.
