September 2012
1 post
3 tags
We rouse this Tumblr from hibernation mode for an...
I’ve been waiting for zero-downtime deployment from Heroku for over a year, ever since Splitwise started taking off.It’s seriously embarrassing to run a consumer app for tens of thousands of users, and to have that app grind to a halt for fifteen seconds every time you make an update (which is several times a day, usually).
Well guess what just quietly slipped through the back door at...
June 2012
1 post
May 2012
1 post
Reinventing the Clothes Hanger →
A simple, clever update to the clothes hanger. Make sure to watch past the 1:30 mark to see how it actually works – it’s a devilishly elegant tweak to the standard design.
February 2012
1 post
3 tags
November 2011
1 post
“Were I to choose an auspicious image for the new millennium, I would choose that...”
– Italo Calvino, from the Lightness essay in Six Memos for the Next Millennium (via viafrank)
October 2011
1 post
August 2011
1 post
July 2011
3 posts
Global Thermonuclear War (Luna)
I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about death recently — not intentionally, but it just keeps cropping up in the films I’m watching and the books I’m reading. Or in this case, the music I’m writing.
Below are the lyrics to a song I’ve been working on for Six Songs for the End of the World: an EP that I’ve started, abandoned, restarted, rewritten,...
Edward Tufte’s “Slopegraphs” →
I was just talking yesterday about Tufte’s original cancer survival rate slopegraph, which is probably my favorite data visualization of all time. Clear, concise, and compelling.
Anyone know of a source for good, modern serial...
If so, have any recommendations? I’ve recently started reading again in large amounts (I went through several thousand pages last month), and now I’m itching for something to follow, rather than to devour all at once.
I’m also just curious about the form…has it disappeared? Serial publishing was a huge thing in 19th century literature: most of Dickens’ novels, for...
May 2011
1 post
SplitTheRent on Lifehacker →
Woke up (or rather, was woken up) to this good news this morning. Now I just need to make sure our little start-up doesn’t crumble under all the web traffic when people actually arrive at work :)
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
1 post
Interactive Derp →
Sometimes I get bored and use my web-fu to do silly things.
February 2011
1 post
January 2011
2 posts
1 tag
7 Best Things of 2010 by Dave Gamache →
Simple and gorgeous.
October 2010
1 post
1 tag
August 2010
5 posts
1 tag
The Future of Self-Service Banking →
An interesting evolution of the ATM, though I have to wonder at some of the things that are left unsaid. (Accessibility? Price?) Still, it’s nice to see someone take on a redesign of a product that is (a) so ubiquitous, and (b) relatively unchanged since its initial creation.
The good news: Internet Explorer 9 seems like a big step forward from IE8 (and lightyears ahead of that scourge of the internet, IE6). It’s still extremely rough around the edges, but you can tell that Microsoft is earnestly trying to make it into a good product, and I really am hopeful that they succeed.
However, there are still plenty of things to get frustrated at, as evidenced by my...
An aborted attempt at a mashup from 2008....
Man. I’ve been working hard over the past 48 hours on my 10K Apart submission - something audio-related - and it’s really driven home just how fragmented the implementation of the new HTML5 <audio> and <video> tags are across browsers.
I’m sure most web nerds are familiar with the rift between Safari and Firefox over which video format to support, H.264 or Ogg...
July 2010
7 posts
10K Apart →
An interesting challenge: build a fully-functional, cross-browser web app in less than 10KB. I am all over this.
(Also, a brilliant move by Microsoft - this is a very smart way for IE9 to begin winning its way into the HTML5 crowd.)
Menomena :: Tithe
Got the new album in the mail...
3 tags
June 2010
4 posts
Coming home
Just bought my plane tickets – on August 10th, it’s back to Boston with me. It’s strange to think there’s only a month and a half left in this gap year adventure of mine. I’ll be happy to be back but very sad to leave.
In unrelated news, I got my Washington State Driver’s Permit yesterday, so for the first time in my life I can legally operate automobiles. Now to see...
prettydang →
I just rebooted my portfolio! It was a lot of fun not only to brush up the design, but to incorporate a bunch of newer HTML5/CSS3 features as well, like font embedding and CSS animation. (It was especially satisfying to build the manilla folder navigation bar with pure CSS.) Give it a look-see!
The Fabian Society →
She lies on her carpet and lets the throb of sound from below push against her with tiny orange hammers. When she closes her eyes the city washes over her, dark and sparkling, in a color she can’t put a name to, a strong and singular shade, like everything.
Andrew Cole has started updating again, and judging from his first few posts, his microfiction is just as fanciful and fantastic as...
April 2010
13 posts
Coldplay :: Life In Technicolor
The first time I...
My current reading material →
Because, y’know, gotta learn to drive eventually. Might as well do it in Washington.
htmlicious →
It lives! I’ma try to write a post a day for the first week or two in order to get things kickstarted, so if there’s a particular webapp you’d like me to cover, drop me a line!
Calling all webapps!
Know of any clever/useful HTML5 webapps? I’m starting a Tumblog to highlight some of the best in HTML5 applications, with a particular focus on apps targeting the iPhone and iPad. I’ll also be writing some tutorials on how to kickstart your own HTML5 applications, taking advantage of cutting-edge features like offline caching and local storage. If you’ve got any tips or...
Missed deadlines
So: my laptop was supposed to be fixed by today at the latest. The Apple Store is now saying it’ll be done by the weekend.
Granted, I’m still having plenty of fun with my shiny new iPad, but come on! I’m absolutely itching to create something with HTML or Objective-C, and I’m missing the one goddamn tool I need to do anything! I’ve lost an entire week of...
Thoughts on Opening Day
I’m not sure if my dislike of the National Anthem stems from the fact that no known performer can sing it without becoming a huge diva, or just from the fact that it’s not that good a song.
iPad impressions, pt. iii
(This is my first post from the actual iPad itself — and it looks like Mobile Safari doesn’t like Tumblr’s rich text editor. Ah well.)
In short: I like this thing a lot. The form factor is just about perfect, the on-screen keyboard is surprisingly easy to use, and the software itself is smooth as silk. There’s something very, very satisfying about lying back on the couch,...
iPad impressions, pt. ii
Pinch Pad works great. Like, really fucking great. The refresh rate on this thing is fantastic: the lines it draws are perfectly smooth, and lag is nonexistent.
I’ve already noticed one or two small issues (you can’t move the text cursor while typing, for instance) but it performs beautifully. It’ll still be missing online sync until I can get back my main laptop and finish it,...
iPad impressions, pt. i
Unfortunately, my very first impression1 is a negative one, because of an annoyingly stupid problem. See, the first thing the iPad asks you to do when you turn it on is to plug it into your computer. That way it can sync with iTunes and download all your music, movies, etc. Logical, right?
Well, it’s a bit of a pain when your only computer is in for repairs. Right now, I don’t have a...
Adventures in Apple
Guess whose MacBook Pro broke yesterday? (Hint: it was mine.)
The bad news is that my video card totally failed, meaning it doesn’t even work with an external display, which makes it totally unusable. I dropped it off at the Apple Store in the Village this afternoon, where they’ll be ordering the replacement part (2-3 days) and doing the actual repair (2-3 days). This means I’ll...
March 2010
8 posts
