My car got another flat, and that’s probably going to cost me. I drive it so little that I’m seriously wondering why I own it. After all, paying for the carport costs me almost half what my car payment used to be.
How did I get here?
Category: arts and letters
Microsoft’s answer to Ellen Feiss
A continuation of my Why WROX failed theory:
Last week…
Me: Lauren is a cheap ass. 😀
“I’m a P.C.” sounds like the person has bladder control issues. “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person” is so much better.
M—: Oh yeah, I saw that yesterday… It’s a good commercial though. 🙂
Me: Only because she’s a redhead.
Me: Admit it.
M—: Haha.
The beauty of this ad is that finally Microsoft hits the right buttons in these politically divisive and tough economic times.
Too bad there’s no mention of Microsoft products. Seems like HP should be airing this.
Ahh… good times
Tire swinger
Reading the comment rage on this article makes me smile. Michael Scherer’s career strategy is not a good one. But a piece of political vocabulary passed me by. 🙁
“What’s wrong, Mikey? The White House won’t provide you with a tire swing, like Uncle John did?”
—donovong comments on Swampland
and
“DougJ, I think the simpler explanation is that Michael Scherer is a ‘Tire Swinger,’ and he’s still pissed that Obama rumbled his man McCain in the election.
“Look back at Scherer’s loveletters to McCain during the 2008 campaign season, and you’ll start to see a pattern of resentment against the “new guy” reformer that Obama was perceived as.”
—cfaller comments on Balloon Juice
Does anyone know what this means? It probably has something to do with this:
In any case, it’s an amusing image, even if I don’t understand how it got from there to here.
Continue reading about Rush-Obama game theory after the jump
Kindle hits the iPhone
One of the iPhone updates I downloaded last night was the New York Times app. Trying to figure out how it was better than the previous version I was hit with the announcement that there is a Kindle app for the iPhone.
Here are some screenshots with commentary:
The Kindle icon is nice. I put the app next to Stanza which is, by far, the best free book reader for the iPhone. Yeah, my battery is running out.
This screen is the same as the Kindle 2’s UPC symbol.
All my purchased books are synced and the covers are in color. Nice.
On the other hand, none of my sample chapters synced, none of my documents synced, and my magazine subscription The New Yorker didn’t sync. I was hoping to see the latest cover in color on the iPhone. 🙁
Kindle app wirelessly synchronized my page position from my Kindle 2. Slick! You flick tap to change the page, tap hold to pull up the menu. They’ll probably have to change the navigation UI to be more in line with other iPhone readers.
For some reason the scroll is too slow for page flipping. You flick to fast you just get a white screen. You can change the font size but you cannot rotate the display.
Images on Kindle books are supposed to be color. Not for me! Maybe it depends on the book, but the print version of this book is clearly color, while the Kindle version is black and white. Also you can’t pinch zoom or tap zoom any of the images. So much for using the Kindle for my pr0n needs. Argh!
There seems to be a bug where both “Beginning” and “Cover” jump to the cover. Beginning is supposed to jump to the first readable area.
Note that the app syncs my notes and marks from my Kindle 2.
The jump menu is the only thing clearly better on the iPhone. I can jump to the section with just a flick and tap. Those of you who take a lot of notes know how frustrating it is to navigate the Kindle 2’s eInk display.
BTW, there is no text-to-speech. This is disappointing. I know the iPod has spoken menus and there is a way sync high quality voices to it. I’d love for a high-quality voice like Alex read my books while I’m driving (and then sync my book position back to my Kindle 2.
[If I have time I’ll archive my notes later in this article]
My monkey typing resonates
“We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.”
—unknown
Your humble author at work writing this article.
I love to quote people quoting me. I do this by creating a vanity feed— I like to look at it as stalking myself. Skimming my vanity feed last night, I read this:
Terry Chay once said something that resonated with me — one of the few things, actually — and it was something like this: complex > complicated, and that simple does not necessarily mean “not complex”. The point is that you can have a complex implementation that covers many use cases, without the implementation being complicated, and with the API still being relatively simple.
—Matthew Weier O’Phinney
Only a few? Geez. I’m (almost) hurt. Next time, I see you, I’m going to call you Matthew O’Phinney.
For reference, here is the talk where Matthew is referring to, along with other previous references.
Since, like Matthew I work on a framework, I thought some of you might find this simple/simplistic complex/complicated distinction resonates with you as you write code.
I can’t claim credit for this idea. It comes from a different monkey, well before the internet:
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
—Albert Einstein
Kindle Clippings 2009-02-27
Kindle saver
North Beach, San Francisco, California
North Beach, San Francisco, California
Panasonic DMC-LX1
1/5sec, ƒ2.8, iso 100, 6.3mm (28mm)
No, this is not a sticker. This is the Kindle when it’s asleep. That’s the magic of e-Ink.
I found that you can’t clip from sample chapters 🙁 Major bummer!
To see a definition on the K2, just navigate to the left of the word and it pops up automatically. Here is a tip I found useful when setting your ad-hoc chapter markers just so.
Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com)
– Highlight Loc. 524-27 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 10:26 AMTip: You can quickly create a bookmark by either holding down the Alt key and pressing the B key, or by moving the 5-way up or down to go into cursor mode and then pressing the 5-way controller twice.
I cancelled my New Yorker (print) subscription and started it up on the Kindle. The New Yorker is nearly ideal subject matter for the Kindle. Note that while you get the cartoons, the cover art and any article art aren’t reproduced in the Kindle edition. 🙁 Amazon, please fix! Another note is that since they are Condé Nast, you can, with some finagling get the the print version much cheaper than the Kindle version.
The K2 version doesn’t have the ads so I don’t know how I feel about that. But if I really need such a think, I can just buy The Complete New Yorker.
The New Yorker (The New Yorker)
– Highlight Loc. 1818-19 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 09:18 PMThe problem with playing someone whose default setting is tabula rasa is pretty obvious, and the primary qualification that Dushku brings to the part is that she graduated with honors from the Royal Academy of Cleavage.
I like the expression at the end of this clipping. The article is a critical review of Joss Wheedon’s Doll House.
Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com)
– Highlight Loc. 642-44 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 10:47 PMTip: You can also play or stop Text-to-Speech by holding down the Shift key and pressing the Symbol key
The Kindle Text-to-Speech is much better than MacInTalk which came with the original Macintosh, but it’s nowhere close to where that technology has gone. I use this tip when I’m showing someone the text-to-speech and I need to stop it quickly.
Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com)
– Highlight Loc. 701-2 | Added on Thursday, February 26, 2009, 11:57 PMTip: You can also narrow a search in the Kindle Store to an author’s name by typing “@author” followed by the author’s name.
A shortcut. I use the Kindle Store a lot, but not to buy. I’ve read about a half dozen first chapters today.
Kindle 2 User’s Guide (Amazon.com)
– Highlight Loc. 1043-45 | Added on Friday, February 27, 2009, 12:14 AMTip: If you would like to avoid the fee, address the e-mail so that the second part of your Kindle e-mail address is @free.kindle.com. After sending to the @free.kindle.com address, a link to the converted file will be e-mailed to your Amazon.com e-mail address. You can then download the file to your Kindle’s documents folder via USB using your computer.
What can I say? I’m a cheapskate. 🙂
The Kindle is a better conversationalist
Sushi on North Beach, North Beach, San Francisco, California
Sushi on North Beach, North Beach, San Francisco, California
Nikon D3, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G
1/60sec, ƒ2.8, iso 4500, 35mm
As you can see, my Kindle 2 gets more women than I do. I may have a weakness for women who read books, but Marie seems to only have a weakness for books. Major bummer.
Continue reading about getting free books on your Kindle after the jump.
Dustbin of history
“Couldn’t care less about George Bush, he’s just a gutless spoiled brat asswipe that belongs in the dustbin of history. A Wiki entry a hundred years from now beginning with ‘GW Bush elected 43rd president of the United States. WTF were they thinking?’”
—Tsulagi on Balloon Juice
I found this quote amusing.
One interesting thing I’m noticing from that thread is that I can now agree with the points both sides are making even though I reserve my opinion on the matter. That’s how I used to be feel about politics back in the 80’s and early 90’s.
Even though my opinions were wrong then, it’s nice to feel that being wrong is an option.
After all, we learn by being wrong.
Firestarter
Well the Kindle 2 came out today so I preordered it.
This morning two people IM’d me about it so I decided to give the first my Amazon referral bucks. I give Amazon bucks semi-randomly to various friends and he asked me how I do it.
I use a “Buy from Amazon” bookmarklet I wrote to make life easier.
You can drag that into your toolbar if you like. One nice thing is to remove the second prompt and just replace the href with the tag to yourself. I keep it this way so that I remember to put the associate ID of one of my friends since I put them on rotation.
Anyone else wonder why Amazon decided to call it the Kindle? Shouldn’t it be something more akin to Treehugger? I thought Green was in.
Ode to Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance has been delaying a release for a month and a half. As a consumer facing website, we normally have two code pushes a week. It’s a major rewrite, sure, but at this point we’re at about 20x the bug count of any previous release. The bugs are no longer: “You do this and the site goes down” but more along the lines, “You do something that nobody in their right mind would do and sometimes you get an error message, but everything is fine if you reload the page.”
Continue reading about Drunk with power and other random reasoning after the jump
Seven things: Basura and Bathrooms
This is part one of a seven part Seven Things post. (I’ll explain later.) This first one was inspired by Andrei’s affinity for languages.
#1. I once peed in the women’s bathroom.
At work, a blue trash can reads “SAVE. Recycleable cans and bottles. Custodians do not throw out.”
Then, it “helpfully” adds: “NOT BASURA.” Basura being the Spanish word for trash.
I walk by amused.
Continue reading about Linguistics isn’t logical after the jump