All my blog posts and articles
I was experimenting with a little known feature in Facebook, “Download Your Information” which will actually supposedly give you a copy of everything that is ‘yours’ on Facebook. The definition of what is ‘yours’ is fairly tricky of course: is what you posted on someone else’s wall ‘yours’ or ‘theirs’? And so on.
But what interested me was how they made double and triple sure that in fact it was me who was downloading my info...
Check out ‘Like a Full-Body Massage’: Thinking About the TSA(from James Fallows :: The Atlantic: “3) The ‘zero-risk’ mentality vs ‘acceptable’ risk. Every society accepts some risks as part of its overall social contract. People die when they drive cars, they die when they drink, they die from crime, they die when planes go down, they die on bikes. The only way to eliminate the risk would be to eliminate the activities — no driving, no drinking, no weapons of any kind, no planes or bikes. While risk/reward tradeoffs vary between, say, Sweden and China, no nation...
I happen to be reading iWoz, which is Steve Wozniak’s memoir/biography/whatever. It’s a very breezy easy read and fun if you follow this kind of thing. So naturally this caught my eye: “Woz then moved on to the topic of Android saying that Android smartphones, not the iPhone, would become dominant, noting that the Google OS is likely to win the race similarly to the way that Windows ultimately dominated the PC world. Woz stressed that the iPhone, “Has very few weak points. There aren’t any real complaints and problems.” (from “Steve Wozniak: Android will be the dominant smartphone platform“)
Of course Engadget may not have selected the particular headline that Woz would have liked, because he also lavished praise on the iPhone saying it has “”Has very few weak points. There aren’t any real complaints and problems. In terms of quality, the iPhone is leading.”
And, maybe, better than any ad that Apple has ever done…. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAhJTxC1C8w&fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0]
RubyConf 2010 was excellent. It was my first and probably not my last. Some general thoughts and then a master list of links (the real meat.)
Unlike most all ‘business’ type conferences and talks I have gone to, the RubyConf style of presentation (and perhaps the Rails or Ruby community — I don’t know where it stops) is beautifully minimalist. Very few words on slides, large and impactful photographs. Is it because no one uses PowerPoint and few even use Keynote? I don’t know. But there were no text heavy, bullet heavy word slides. And also, lots and lots of code (that part is definitely a geek thing.)
Here is a loosely organized set of links to the things that hit me most at RubyConf this...
This is very close to where I live, and people are amazed to know that you can actually go by boat from Arlington to Boston Harbor. This video is beautiful proof of that. [vimeo 16535358 w=400 h=225]
I tend to agree with this writer that: “With respect to airport security, it is remarkable how we have come to place Sept. 11, 2001, as the fulcrum upon which we balance almost all of our decisions. As if deadly terrorism didn’t exist prior to that day, when really we’ve been dealing with the same old threats for decades. What have we learned? What have we done?” (from News Flash: Deadly Terrorism Existed before 9/11)
I remember how just after 9/11 I was totally shocked, like everyone else, and fully supported the steps that were taken, the wars even, and continued to feel that way for a while…
Not ...
The problem with conferences is knowing what session to go to, right? Check out this talk called “ZOMG WHY IS MY CODE SO SLOW? Aaron Patterson. It’s really excellent. It has many specific pointers that I will be able to use as soon as I get back.
(Yes, in case you wonder: ZOMG)
Odd thing happened in a talk at RubyConf. Speaker asks all attendees who are using Windows to raise their hands. Looked to me like about 3% of folks here are on Windows. Now its a very biased audience but still an interesting number!
Check out this cool site developed by some Brandeis students who participated in the bootcamp-like course that I taught this summer. It’s called Definitious and it’s kind of a collaborative, semi-serious, semi-silly dictionary where anyone can define any word they want and others can vote the definitions up and down. Definitious. By the way, we are in already planning an expanded version of the course for this coming summer. It’s going to be even better!
I feel that I am finally mastering CSS and in doing so I am seeing some interesting patterns. It seems to me that it’s very easy to get into a situation where you have too many CSS rules that overlap and override each other in ways that are more complex than necessary. It seems like there could and should be a tool to ‘simplify’ or ‘clean up’ css and reduce the rules to the minimum necessary set to accomplish what you want. Clearly the browser when it applies CSS, no matter how messy and redundant, figures it out and does the right thing.
Here are some of the cases that I can see:
two or more css rules with exactly the same selector in different part of a file
two or more css files which ...
Check out Apple Begins Accepting Submissions for Mac App Store(from GigaOM: ** "At the Oct. 20 “Back to the Mac” event, the Mac App Store was announced alongside the next iteration of OS X, dubbed Lion (10.7). Apple then revealed that users wouldn’t have to wait until Lion’s summer release window to get their hands on the new distribution channel. Instead, the Mac App Store would be available for OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard within 90 days." (from: **Apple Begins Accepting Submissions for Mac App Store)
Suddenly it comes home to roost, directly, for BlogBridge. It would be great to offer it on the Apple App Store. However it is not inconceivable that Apple would ban Java/Swing applications. If anyone has real information about this, please let me know!
If you are into fonts and typography, you might enjoy this Infographic that will help you choose.
This is a weird development. Java is a super well established language, why would Apple decide to stop developing it: “Apple’s announcement that they would be ceasing future development of their version of Java for the Mac has generated concern amongst Java developers.” (from: Steve Jobs Comments on Apple’s Java Discontinuation – Mac Rumors.)
N.B. Apple is not saying they are ceasing support of Java, but development of Java. I guess on other platforms (Windows etc.) the Java support and the Java cod...
Two very contrasting ways of looking at our relationship with Pakistan. I don’t know where I stand, to be honest. If you are interested in the topic you owe it to yourself to read both articles, because I had a hard time finding an appropriate section to quote in each case.
Here is Johann Hari in The Independent, “Obama’s Robot Wars”:
“David Kilcullen is a counter-insurgency expert who worked for General Petraeus in Iraq and now advises the State Department. He has shown that two per cent of the people killed by the robot-planes in Pakistan are jihadis. The r...
This article by David Brooks in the New York Times addresses a problem that I was wondering about too. New Jersey cancelled the building of a multi-billion tunnel into downtown New York City. Everyone without exception says that the tunnel is crucially needed and will benefit New Jersey citizens enormously. Clearly, New Jersey cancelled the project because it could not afford it. I assumed that their position would be something like, we’ve already laid off tons of teachers, policemen and so forth, we cannot possibly pay for this, no matter how important, which seems on the face of it to be a hard to argue with position. So given that...
Here’s an insightful New Yorker article about procrastination. There are some useful ideas and techniques in this article. One of my favorites is the concept of ‘self-binding’ (not a form of masochism): “The idea of the divided self, though discomfiting to some, can be liberating in practical terms, because it encourages you to stop thinking about procrastination as something you can beat by just trying harder. Instead, we should rely on what Joseph Heath and Joel Anderson, in their essay in “The Thief of Time,” call “the extended will”—external tools and techniques to help the parts of our ...
You may not follow the news, but Curaçao is undergoing major constitutional changes, as are all the Netherlands Antilles. In fact, as of this Sunday, Oct 10, (“10-10-10”) the Netherlands Antilles will cease to exist as a legal entity. The easiest way to explain this to Americans that I have come up with is, that it’s as if all the islands of the State of Hawaii decided that they should all be their own state, the state of Oahu, of Maui, etc.
This is from an article in the BBC Caribean:
“A series of negotiations, with Holland in the role of part partner/part arbiter, resulted in an agreement in which Curacao and St Maarten will become ‘separate countries’ with direct ties to Holland.
The t...
Check out Fort Knox vs. the Barking Dog(from Benlog: ** "The Barking Dog model is different. You still build fences. Maybe even a fancy lock. But more importantly, you get a well-trained dog, maybe even two or three for redundancy. And you assume that some of your fences will fail, because that’s what fences do when faced with smart intruders. When they do fail, and someone comes in, that’s where the barking dog comes in. Your defenses may fail, but your detectors will sound the alarm, allow you to respond and, hopefully, recover from the intrusion." (from: **Fort Knox vs. the Barking Dog)
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Check out Actor Tony Curtis Was Buried With His iPhone(from iPhone Download Blog: "
Do you love your iPhone so much that you’d want to take it with you in the grave when you pass away? Famous actor Tony Curtis died last Wednesday and was buried earlier today in Las Vegas with a few of his favorite personal items, including his iPhone.
According to MSNBC, *“Actor Tony Curtis w...
