chrishitchcock.com

Feb 8

Ruby Keeler

I was walking Obie after work and listening to A Confederacy of Dunces. I was listening to the part of the story where Ignatius is talking to Dorian Green about getting a political movement going. Dorian mentions that he is in a “Ruby Keeler phase”.

After dinner I was reading the Five Dials publication on David Foster Wallace (PDF via Daring Fireball) and one of the eulogists called David the “Ruby Keeler of fiction”.

Two mentions of Ruby Keeler in a single day — kind of weird.

Feb 4

More from that iPad UI Conventions set on flickr. I haven’t seen this form support in the iPad version of Numbers before. I wonder how customizable this is?

Collection of iPad UI Conventions

Fraser Spiers has collected various iPad UI conventions from the videos that have been released so far.

I got stuck looking at this one for quite a while:

Those options look sort of lonely there on the underside of the map. I imagine the controls would probably look less lonely when in the map is in landscape view. I’ve been trying to think of a different page curl direction that might look better, but I can’t imagine one. You’d still end up having that empty space somewhere.

Feb 2

thisiswhyyourefat:

Pizza Hut Hersey’s Chocolate Dunkers

(submitted by sophie via Pizza Hut)

Oh wow. I really don’t like Pizza Hut (too greasy in the wrong places), but these look really good. I may have to go pick an order up.

If you like The xx, listen to this

indierawk:

adrifting:

Friday, NPR’s World Café had guest, The XX, on the show. It was aired on the national feed this morning and WOW.

You must listen to the last set they do. It is a live version of “Night Time” leading into “Infinity”. It is absolutely stunning.

Required listening, so get to it!

Not much to add — good sound.

Jan 29

HyperCard

Wouldn’t it be great if Apple came out with something like HyperCard for the iPhone/iPad they would let people put together simple apps?

I envision the designer program actually running on the iPad letting you make simple apps that you can pass around to friends. It would be nice if the apps could target either the iPad or the iPhone. These new HyperCard apps should probably bypass the AppStore so that the store doesn’t get filled with a bunch of recipe databases.

I killed a lot of time as a kid messing around with HyperCard. It would be cool if another generation got a chance as well.

Jan 28

There will be much more to come online and in next week’s magazine, but for now, we are making twelve of his New Yorker stories available to all readers through our digital edition

meaghano:

woot.

The stories are reprinted as images from the magazine. I had queued all the links in tabs hoping to add them to Instapaper to read later, but no deal.

I wish someone would make some sort of thin computer that I could use to curl up and look at websites like this with. Maybe someday.

Archives.gov

My mom emailed me today asking about some statement that George W. Bush made while signing the McCain-Feingold act in 2002. I found links to the press release of the signing, but the links didn’t exist anymore on the new whitehouse.gov. I tried to search for Bush’s press releases using the search field on whitehouse.gov and couldn’t find anything. Any record from pre-2009 seemed to be gone.

I ended up finding the press release via the Wayback machine on archive.org.

This got me thinking though, where are these press releases and the old whitehouse.gov site currently stored? I searched google with the exact title of the press release and came across this:

http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/03/20020327.html

Which is an archived version of the press release at archives.org, the site for the National Archives. It turns out that the entire whitehouse.gov website was archived before the new website was put in place. You can go and navigate the old George W. Bush whitehouse.gov and pretend like it is 2005 all over again. The front page shows the former President and First Lady walking out of the White House. The whole site is frozen in time at 1/20/2009.

Poking around I found this whole list of different versions of whitehouse.gov that existed during the Clinton presidency.

Jan 27

econstories.tv

Prepared to get schooled in my Austrian perspective

I just listened to the latest Planet Money podcast featuring this rap. Pretty funny. The random Ke$ha review of the rap video was great.

Jan 25

Shaving

I recently decided to try out some old-school shaving cream after my last can of Gillette Gel stuff ran out. I picked up an Omega badger brush and a jar of Taylor of Old Bond Street shaving cream.

A few quick impressions:

The brush I bought came with a cheap “stand” that lets the brush air out. It is just the piece of plastic that held the brush in its packaging. It would be nice to get a real stand for home and use the included stand while traveling.
The shaving cream is sandalwood scented and is tad on the strong side. My bathroom smells of sandalwood for the next day or two after shaving. I’ll probably try a different fragrance when this stuff runs out.
I noticed a difference right away with my first shave. My Mach3 would glide effortless along my face. My neck wasn’t as irritated as it usually was.

Overall, I am impressed.