May 2010
17 posts
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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:
...
April 2010
34 posts
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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...
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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...
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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...
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...
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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...
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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...
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.
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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...
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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...
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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...
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....
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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...
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...
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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...
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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.
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Next WEEK? That’s like the WORST THING YOU CAN SAY to an early adopter.
– Modern Family