How to Count: Programming for Mere Mortals
This book doesn’t tell you how to program: it tells you how to think like a programmer. Excellent read, for anyone whose jumping into programming of any sort.
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Lion Recovery
This was my biggest concern with downloading an OS via the App Store: Apps like Disk Utility require a disk to use, as well as any reinstalling/wiping/recoving. Short answer: it’s all built in.
Not only did Apple come prepared with a workaround to using disks, but it’s a better and more elegant solution than the original feature.
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Remarks on Safari 5.1
The Good
- Swiping left or right in Safari will navigate back a page/forward in your history, and the animation for it is soooo wonderful.
- Safari now supports Do-Not-Track HTTP.
- Read Later list, though really honing into that whole “great artists steal” mantra with Instapaper, is really a delight to use. I want to see it integrated with applications and sync with my phone.
- After I downloaded Lion I headed over to starbucks. Safari works the same way as Mobile Safari when connecting to public wifi now, opening the login page in a separate window (the way it should be treated).
- Full Screen is nice, but hardly enjoyable if you’re as multi-tasked as most. Good for early morning RSS reading.
The Not so good
- Lion now has rubber band scrolling for all applications, including safari. This is cool for the most part, but theres a weird effect for sites with infinite scrolling (i.e. tumblr, facebook, twitter). Essentially, the computerI tried to get it on a screen cast, but right now iShowU HD is completely wonked on leopord, so no luck there.
More thoughts on Lion later, but for now, back to work.
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Dealing with a change of pace.
I’m experiencing a change of pace.
Ever since I’ve gotten back from school, my productivity has been all out of whack. At first, I was making incredible time, as I had no roommate, no realistic responsibilities, and a real desk to use.
But now, at home, there is no separation between live and work. While I was at school, my makeshift office has turned (back) into storage for anything that doesn’t exactly have a place in the house. The doors of the office are also made of glass, so privacy is never an option. If your in the line of sight downstairs, you will be disturbed.
I’ve just now positioned the router to get wifi in my bedroom, but a bedroom workspace is a recipe for disaster: I always end up losing concentration, relaxing vs. getting work done. Sitting on the bed gives me awful back problems, and we’re short an office chair for my desk in my room.
At school, I had 50 escapes. The cafeteria, 2-3 common areas around school (all in walking distance from my dorm room), not to mention simply the hallway of my dorm. At school, there was a bit of an unwritten rule: if the laptops open and the headphones are on, you are working. A quick hello is fine, but after that, you move along and let the poor guy finish his paper.
These are just a couple issues I’ve come across while trying to get to work this summer. It’s been rough.
So how do you keep working even when your workspace flips upside down? Here are some of the things I’ve done.
Go with the flow
I’ve been trying to fight my newly found “summer break” sleeping schedule (sleeping from 3am-11am, yikes). I tried a few days forcing sleep, waking up early, doing whatever I could to reset my schedule (11-7). But once I stopped fighting it and just powered through, it occured to me that there was a lot more silence at night, and distractions like Twitter and Facebook calm down past 11.Clean.
Whenever I can’t concentrate, my first reaction is to clean. A cluttered desk kills any chance that I have at productivity.Turn the distractions off.
The best times I’ve been able to work at school is when the WiFi died in my dorm (which was all too often, unfortunately). Grab Concentrate, the Mac OS X app that will disable apps as well as specific websites for a certain amount of time. -
Ok, you caught me.
I’m admittedly, the laziest designer in existence.
This is my new website. It’s coming together, and it should be done by Friday at the latest. I’ve been kicking myself to fix this sad situation of a website and this is my best attempt to get it done. Bear with me folks.
This is a lot about getting my act together. I’ve been skimming by the past few years on Twitter, but I’m quite tired of not being able to point people to a specific destination with my work and blog, so I finally lost it about two weeks ago and started hacking ideas together.
In the meantime, happy Monday.
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Ingrid Michaelson’s “Be Ok” ripped off… by Dell.
Come on dude. Seriously? Of all people to rip off Ingrid Michaelson (amazing musician/social media godess), it has to be Dell (who I thought was getting better at this).
I’m guessing this is one of those cases where someone on the production team has gotten a little to inspired by the song, but this is just blatant infringement, and there’s no way nobody couldn’t have noticed this (videos at the bottom of the post).
The worst part of it all is Ingrid is indie, meaning there’s no big record company to cease and desist for her (the one time they come in handy…). She’s indie. She’s not overflowing with money. For goodness sake, the music video for the song is for cancer research. Give the girl a break and use her song, credit her, and pay her some friggin’ money.
And ask permission, please.
The Original:
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Warner Music Norway calls student a brat on Twitter
You know, you always though Twitter was for connecting users and companies, not insulting them. Warner Music called out an 18 year old after he tweeted: “I’m pissed! iTunes is only allowing downloads of the new Dave Matthews Band album if you live in the US! And they complain about pirating”. (original, in Norwegian).
A Warner A&R Manager replied: “Then I suggest you steal it and write about the process in your stupid brat blog. We don’t want you to get upset.”. (original)
The rough translation of the tweets leave something to be desired, but you can see the whole story in english.
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Capo.app
Capo is the ultimate app for learning a guitar solo. You drop in a song, and Capo can adjust the pitch and speed of the song for you to learn any song you’d like (well, any DRM free song). The functions themselves work suprisingly well; bending pitch and adjusting speed often distorts the song, but little distortion was found when I tried.
Capo is $40 introductory (this is a bit high for two features if you ask me), and will soon be $50.
Now, if you can rip out vocals, change the pitch and export, i’ll buy that.
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IE6 Update
A lying, deceiving, devious and absolutely brilliant way to con IE 6 users into updating their site.
Although this isn’t the way to go per say, I would definitely begin to put javascript based messages up on your site to upgrade to IE 8. -
Sit Down, and Shut Up
As far as I’m concerned, a cartoon is completely irrelevant to this blog, but two words involved in this show are not: Mitch. Hurwitz. More commonly known as the creator of Arrested Development, the greatest television show on earth.
Entertainment Weekly would like to remind you that this show is not anything close to Arrested Development. It’s not, unfortunately. I would tell you not to compare it to it, but one, it’s Mitch Hurtwitz, two, it’s on FOX, and three, three of the AD cast members are major voice actors. It’s like they’re trying to remind you of Arrested Development.
That said, the show needs some work, but for the sake of Hurwitz, give the next couple episodes a try. At the very least, try and soak in the very interesting art style, animation on photo backgrounds. And the fact that it’s set in a ‘historic florida town’ which screams St. Augustine to me.