May 2010
17 posts
May 1st
13 notes
3 tags
Followup re: boobz
A few people have replied to my last post suggesting that the pixelation was part of the joke, since The Office is shot in mockumentary style, so it’s plausible that the fake production company behind the fake documentary are the ones we’re to believe inserted the pixelation, and I’m not postmodern enough to get that. Maybe. But I don’t think so, and here’s why: ...
May 1st
20 notes
April 2010
34 posts
2 tags
Apr 30th
53 notes
3 tags
Apr 30th
28 notes
3 tags
Apr 29th
53 notes
3 tags
Self-reblogging made simple
UPDATE (5 March 2012): Tumblr recently added official Reblog buttons to every post, including your own. However, they also removed the ability to reblog a post to the same blog it originally appeared on. Oh well. This bookmarklet is no longer necessary or useful, but I’ll leave the post here for historical reasons. Tumblr users: ever feel like reblogging yourself? TJ posted excellent...
Apr 28th
181 notes
2 tags
Apr 27th
56 notes
2 tags
Apr 26th
51 notes
Hey, remember this debate from last month?
smartasshat: dwineman: whileyouweresleeping: “I could be totally wrong about everything. But we could also do nothing and I think that’s pretty silly.” — Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Institute*, breaks it down for the Times who just asked whether she ever has any doubts about their mission. — From London. *Well fancy that, I just discovered SETI stands for Signals of ExtraTerrestrial...
Apr 26th
32 notes
Apr 24th
22 notes
2 tags
Apr 24th
28 notes
Listendaveshumka: Mitch Hedberg’s Jimmy John’s...
Apr 23rd
33 notes
Apr 22nd
19 notes
1 tag
Actors who actually exist in their movies
Two things about this post. First: it may not have been clear, but I wrote it as an “entry” in the weekly New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.1 I stated this in the tags and the click-through link for the image, but it turns out that Tumblr strips both of those things from the RSS feed, or at least includes them in a way that’s incompatible with Google Reader, through which I...
Apr 22nd
37 notes
“A PAPER TRAIL IS AN IDENTITY THIEF’S BEST FRIEND.”
– Some terrific advice Citibank printed on my credit-card statement. I love it when a creditor tells me the best way to manage my finances, because I know they have nothing but my personal well-being in mind. Thanks, Citibank! You’re right, of course. I should switch to Paperless Statements...
Apr 20th
33 notes
2 tags
Apr 19th
408 notes
Guys, I figured out this obesity thing.
The debate you’re all having is fascinating, it truly is. But you’re letting the real issue slip by you: We recently received a rather nice set of flatware we ordered from Woot. The larger one on the left is a dinner fork from the new set. The smaller one on the right is the serving fork from our old set. The real cause of the obesity epidemic is clearly that no one is paying...
Apr 19th
36 notes
2 tags
Apr 19th
22 notes
5 tags
Apr 16th
31 notes
Apr 16th
29 notes
1 tag
Apr 16th
22 notes
Wherein I am revealed as a force for positive...
omfgco: We noticed an interesting discussion over on Portland Food & Drink that we’ve had many times ourselves: horrible restaurant websites. Dan Wineman has summed up the frustration really well: either you’re listening to some electro-beat trying to find a menu (leading you to a huge, outdated PDF) or you’re on a mobile device and you get that sad flashplayer icon leaving you up...
Apr 14th
13 notes
“For many business people who are clueless about technology, software is exactly...”
– Reddit user GolemXIV, in a comment on Why the CEO of freezecrowd thinks he can get away with paying developers nothing. I’m adding “get testicle from founder” to my Objective statement immediately.
Apr 14th
9 notes
3 tags
Apr 13th
16 notes
kurafire: Your statement is inherently oxymoronic. Someone using tools of one platform to develop apps for another platform can’t possibly be “out of business” when the second platform disallows those apps, because their skill set and tools are for a different platform in the first place. Well, if your product is a cross-compilation tool targeting iPhone OS, then Section...
Apr 12th
15 notes
2 tags
Clarification
In my last post, I said this: Make no mistake: the App Store review process is for Apple’s benefit and Apple’s benefit alone. It does absolutely nothing to improve the platform. In response, Neven Mrgan, who is far more level-headed than I, emailed me with a counterpoint: Every app I’ve worked on got rejected at some point. In two cases, I’d argue the rejection was...
Apr 11th
15 notes
2 tags
“Consumers are also willing to experiment with new apps because they know that...”
– Steven Johnson writing for the New York Times. Er, Steve. No they haven’t. The App Store review process does not screen for malware or stability problems, because those are mathematically impossible tasks. The only automated screening I know of is for use of private APIs, and even that is...
Apr 11th
10 notes
Reprinted with permission
texburgher: Late yesterday morning, I received an unexpected email from Suzanne Schwalb, editor at Pauper Press and the person cited as the author of the recently released Tweet Nothings, the appearance of which so many of us have reacted with dismay and worse during the last two days. I’d written a mildly eviscerating Amazon review earlier that morning, but that wasn’t what she was writing about....
Apr 9th
61 notes
1 tag
Upcoming titles from Peter Pauper Press
Blog! The Big Book of Blogs (© 2010 Peter Pauper Press All Rights Reserved) Nine Digits: Ordinary People and Their Not-So-Ordinary Social Security Numbers (© 2010 Peter Pauper Press All Rights Reserved) Want, Take, Have: Publishing in the Digital Age (© 2010 Peter Pauper Press All Rights Reserved) Copyright: It Means Whatever YOU Want It To Mean (© 2010 Peter Pauper Press All Rights...
Apr 9th
38 notes
Regarding Twitter’s TOS
A few people have mentioned this section of Twitter’s Terms of Service, claiming it justifies the existence of Tweet Nothings: You agree that this license includes the right for Twitter to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals who partner with Twitter for the syndication, broadcast, distribution or publication of such Content on other media and...
Apr 8th
29 notes
3 tags
Did Suzanne Schwalb and Peter Pauper Press Rip You...
I went to Barnes and Noble today to see if I could find a copy of this awful thing, and there it was, right by the registers. I didn’t want to give my money to rip-off artists, so I took it to the Starbucksoid region in the middle of the store and wrote down* all the names. (It’s a tiny book, so this didn’t take too long.) Look at this, just look at it: See that there on the back of the title...
Apr 7th
46 notes
Apr 5th
5 notes
1 tag
I’m really more of an ideas man
Wife: I was going to make croutons but the baguette is too stale.
Me: Just freeze it with liquid nitrogen and hit it with a hammer. Bam, croutons.
Wife: (gets up to leave)
Me: Where are you going?
Wife: To the not-stupid part of the house.
Apr 4th
50 notes
1 tag
“Next WEEK? That’s like the WORST THING YOU CAN SAY to an early adopter.”
– Modern Family
Apr 4th
17 notes