While there are some strange redundancies and it’s missing a nice build tool and dependency/include system, I really do like Yahoo UI Library, mostly because it is easy to follow and the basic example widgets are far more refined than other UI libraries.
Here is a link to YUI Cheetsheets in PDF.
As the BART pulled in to the penultimate stop, I was half a dozen pages from the end of tuesdays with Morrie: an old man, a young man, and life’s greatest lesson, a “long paper on what was learned” as the author comes to the terms with the slow deterioration and death of his favorite teacher.
An old lady who sat across from me for most of the train ride, looked directly into my eyes and said, “That is really good book.” She smiled.
“Yes. I have to stop reading now, because I’m liable to cry if I finish it.”
(I’ll confess my eyes were a little bit wet.)
A couple days ago, Hong sent me an eCard announcing that Plaxo had the new holiday borders live on the Plaxo eCard site.
Actually, he used my favorite new border, “snowflake”. Tiffany, Michael, and Martin did the design based on a template that Bill had suggested to me for the flowers border that he did.
(Okay, I also like the “sled” border, but that’s mostly because I had to tweak the rendering algorithm so that the watermark on the preview wouldn’t ruin the dog sled. The other new borders are confetti, giftbox, snowglobe, and pine.)
In my eCards talk, I should fix that slide that explains how I wrote the rendering engine that creates these borders. It’s so simple, but very hard to explain.
By the way, if you want to send one of these cards, go to Plaxo’s new Holiday eCards page, it’s a much more fun start point. (Thanks to Bill Scott and the YUI team for making my life easier.)
Joseph sent me this article, in which the writer switches from Windows to a new MacBook Pro (the same one I own).
In doing so, he found the easiest way to import his Outlook contacts into Mac OS X Address Book was just by using Plaxo! While he was being tongue-in-cheek, I noticed Derik DeLong uses Plaxo as the Address Book store in a free dotMac service. (Like him, I still pay for my dotMac account, which is a carryover from the old free iTools days.)
Plaxo indeed a great way of importing your contacts between platforms. I use it every day to keep my Windows data in sync with my Macintosh and I can’t wait until the day my iCal calendar can sync with my work’s Exchange server via Plaxo.
Digg pointed out this article which states:
A committee of experts looked at all the possible excuses — biological differences in ability, hormonal influences, childrearing demands, and even differences in ambition — and found no good explanation for why women are being locked out [of science].
Umm, what about sexism? Or is that too obvious?
[Short biographies of three famous physicists after the jump]Continue reading
I had an argument today where a kid at work was spouting the near-complete repertoire of game console myths. Here is an annotated list of facts:
Microsoft lost at least $4 billion on the original Xbox (not $2 billion as many claim).
Microsoft has rather consistently sold just south of 2 million Xbox 360 units a quarter, every quarter since its release. (I believe they might just barely break 2 million units this quarter.)
Yes, that’s right, the Playstation 2, though six years old, is still the #1 selling console worldwide. Also the Wii has almost caught the Xbox 360 even though it was not available in Japan or Europe and for only 11 days in the United States and Canada!
Microsoft had expected the Xbox 360 to be profitable by mid 2007, but that is behind schedule and they won’t turn a profit until 2008.
[Reasons why after the jump.]
Continue reading
Blake Robinson is the lone pro-Zune voice in the CrunchGear wilderness. (Probably because they weren’t bribed like the Gizmodo folks were.) When commenting about their new commercial, I wondered if he’s found any Zune love out there.
An interesting thing he mentions in passing: he leaves the WiFi off because of battery drain. Remember five years ago CmdrTaco uttered the fabled words about the iPod release:
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
Drew showed me this nice trick to zero out a Plaxo account (something I need to do a lot because of testing).
Simply go to Manage Folders, Create a new Contacts folder, and then delete the old one.
Warning: I don’t know what happens when you sync down to your desktop client. My solution is to run the Plaxo for Mac Uninstaller (in /Applications/Plaxo), zeroing my account, and then reinstalling Plaxo. This will have my desktop data overwrite Plaxo.
In an internal mailing list, a friend sent around these photos. Here is one:
The interesting thing was back in February, Mark Jen sent those same shots to me and the graphics design department. I composed a reply, but never posted it. I guess I better do something about that.
Very striking images! How did they take such amazing “postcard” shots? Are they real?
I guess it depends on your definition of real. It’s actually pretty easy to get that postcard look. Here’s an example from a photo I took:
Nikon D70, Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5G DX
UV
1/500sec @ f/9, iso 800, 35mm (52mm)
[A discussion of capture and editing of landscape photos after the jump]Continue reading
Yesterday after a particularly nasty source code integration, Hong mentioned that we should celebrate with a little bit of soju. Discussions of soju led to him mentioning Japan’s version and then me mentioning that the Chinese have a version of their own: the most memorable being the infamous Moutai.
Soju is often cut down with something like lemonade and soda for taste and then drunk with friends in shots from a carafe. Whether cut down or straight, you can get deceptively drunk quite quickly because someone is always filling your glass.
Moutai is very memorable because it’s high alcoholic content (the sip I had of one last Thanksgiving was around 106 proof) and a distinctive grassy aftertaste. I have no clue how the Chinese drink Moutai, I only know that they drink a lot of it. It probably involves a lot of “Gangbei” followed by a quick downing of the entire drink before your brain figures out what you’re doing to it:
In 1995, I met a friend of the family who spent the the 60’s and 70’s studying and teaching Ancient Chinese Art in Communist China. Many of his stories involved having to drink large quantities of Moutai (or small quantities, as one of them involved getting to pick out some moutai at a distillery). He mentioned something in passing that I found very true regardless of the culture: people can’t trust you unless you are willing to drink with them.
I read recently (coincidentally twice: first in a book
Here is an interesting anecdote from that event:
Alexander Haig, a Kissinger aide who had experienced the effects of Moutai on a China reconnaissance trip, cabled Washington: “Under no repeat no circumstances should the President actually drink from his glass in response to banquet toasts.”
106 proof “wine”? Yep, that sounds about right.