Four hours compressed into two and a half minutes. Spends an equal amount of time with each toy. Via Kottke.
Amazing Time-lapse Video of a Baby Playing ∞ (29th of January, 2009)
The Windows Shutdown Crapfest ∞ (28th of January, 2009)
An ex-Microsoft developer talking about the difficulty in creating something as simple as the off button in Vista.
Also each team was separated by 6 layers of management from the leads, so let’s add them in too, giving us 24 + (6 * 3) + 1 (the shared manager) 43 total people with a voice in this feature. Twenty-four of them were connected sorta closely to the code, and of those twenty four there were exactly zero with final say in how the feature worked.
If every one of Vista’s features has to go through this kind of bullshit I completely understand why Vista sucks to much.
Smarter Car
28th of January, 2009
University forced me to drive. I didn’t live on campus, it doesn’t sit on a train line and to get a bus from my home to school took three buses, an hour and 40 minutes, assuming buses ran on time. The drive would take 30 minutes on a good day. I had little choice. About a month before graduating I was reading a lot about fixed gear bicycles, they sounded like something I’d enjoy so I bought one. And it turns out I did enjoy it, a lot. Riding a fixed gear bike felt great and I started using it to make the 3km journey to the pool and back each day. Continue reading →
Adobe UI Gripes ∞ (27th of January, 2009)
Fantastic tumblelog full of swearing and screenshots tearing Adobe application UIs apart. Via Daring Fireball.
The Setup ∞ (23rd of January, 2009)
Series of short interviews with notable internet people about the hardware and software they use to get their jobs done. I find this kind of stuff very interesting.
Fontcase 1.0 ∞ (22nd of January, 2009)
My favourite font manager for OS X has released their 1.0. It’s even better than the pre-release betas which were even better than anything else available. It costs €35 which is pretty steep when translated to Australian dollars but if you have a lot of fonts or spend a lot of time wrestling with Font Book, it’s worth it.
NPR’s StoryCorps (iTunes link) ∞ (21st of January, 2009)
Moving short audio stories told from one relative or friend to another. The latest episode, What Can Really Change a Day, is particularly good.
1001 Rules for my Unborn Son ∞ (19th of January, 2009)
Could also be called “how to be good man”. I don’t agree with them all but they’ve got me thinking about what kind of person I am and how I can be better.
Microsoft Songsmith ∞ (13th of January, 2009)
How is it possible that these videos continue to be made at Microsoft?! Every single one of their embarrassingly lame and terribly acted commercials involve a marketing or sales pitch of some kind. Songsmith is clever but I don’t know how it could be put to real world use.
People Who Deserve It ∞ (9th of January, 2009)
“Socially responsible reasons to punch someone in the face.” Regularly updated, very funny writing. I love that they have appropriate photos accompanying each post. A few of my favourites: “Everything’s an Emergency” Girl, Cell Phone Shuffler and Grown Man Who Refuses to Eat Crusts. Via Kottke.
The Dial Up Kid ∞ (8th of January, 2009)
Perfect facial expressions. Via Garrett Murray.
Bokeh Type ∞ (8th of January, 2009)
A beautiful experiment by Cameron Adams that turns characters you type into out of focus lights.
GarageBand ’09’s Music Lessons
8th of January, 2009
The newest addition to GarageBand is basic and artist lessons. It is was an audio editing application, the same way iMovie is a video editing application, the same way iPhoto is an image organiser and editor. Now it includes lessons on how to create the content you might use GarageBand to edit. Putting music lessons in GarageBand is like putting photography workshops in iPhoto or public speaking tutorials in Keynote or writing exercises in Pages. They’re related but the software is supposed to be the tool, you provide the content. Continue reading →
RGB Digital ∞ (7th of January, 2009)
Not the prettiest website but through their online uploader they do beautiful, large photographic prints for dirt cheap and courier them out next day.
prettify* ∞ (7th of January, 2009)
Nice icons and wallpapers for the discerning individual, collected and curated.
Garrett and I share very similar taste, I’ll use this often.
All songs in iTunes Store DRM free ∞ (7th of January, 2009)
Holy shit! I missed this while wading through piles of Macworld news. This is fantastic, I will now happily recommend the iTunes store to friends and family that want to buy digital music and I might even start using it myself.
Macworld 2009 Keynote Video ∞ (7th of January, 2009)
New iWork, iLife and 17″ MacBook Pro. No surprises at all for the second year in a row, I won’t miss Apple’s presence at Macworld.
Picasa For Mac ∞ (6th of January, 2009)
Looks very, very strange. Custom UI elements that don’t look like anything I’ve seen anywhere else, on the web, in Windows, in OS X, Java’s UI libraries, GWT, nothing! They have used the Finder’s folder icon though.
Sensationalist Headlines Followed By Senseless Drivel
6th of January, 2009
Altgate’s Microsoft Buys 37signals For $300 Million post is a great example of the kind of bullshit writing and lack of integrity that dominates popular blogs these days. Despite the title, Microsoft isn’t buying 37 Signals, it’s an utterly false, sensationalist headline to get people to visit the site. A prediction and misguided reasoning behind why it’ll happen in 2009 follows. Continue reading →
I Hardly Knew Her ∞ (1st of January, 2009)
Simple app for better Flickr photo browsing. Just add the Flickr username to the URL. Looks fantastic with my latest uploads from New Year’s Eve.
Design Critique ∞ (1st of January, 2009)
BUT, on that same subject, Sandra, what can you do to really make the new design “POP”? I want it to really POP off the page. People get many letters every year, and I want ours to be the ones that never get thrown away — just because the POP is literally almost audible. Even in a desk drawer. I want our letters on bulletins boards because of all the POP.
This is what Merlin Mann is best at.
Hire Me!
1st of January, 2009
It’s my first year out of university, I have a huge student debt, need to move out of home and I’m broke! Time for some freelancing, some serious freelancing, I mean full time. Well, not exactly full time, there’s two of my own projects I’m working on but I need to eat in the mean time. So what sort of things can you pay me to do for you? Let me tell you! Continue reading →
Espresso Public Beta ∞ (31st of December, 2008)
Promising web development all-in-one from the makers of CSSEdit. Beautiful website too, it’s a shame they had to drop in the Digg widget.
Fuck You 2008 ∞ (31st of December, 2008)
Website by Lachlan Hardy (who’s had a bad year) that collates tweets containing the words “fuck 2008″ and “fuck you 2008″. 2008 hasn’t been a terrible year for me but I’m glad it’s over.
Software Alex Payne Paid For But No Longer Uses ∞ (30th of December, 2008)
Interesting lessons learnt. Every game I’ve bought for the iPhone I regret buying. Via Daring Fireball.
