chrishitchcock.com

"The system administrator, whom everybody calls Taco, is too shy to eat lunch with the rest of the..."

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:54:26 -0500

“The system administrator, whom everybody calls Taco, is too shy to eat lunch with the rest of the team. On those rare occasions where he is away from his swivel office chair, you will notice a triangular-shaped salsa-colored stain on the seat where drippings of his many Mexican lunches fell between his legs, insuring that nobody takes his chair, even though it is the superior Herman Miller variety that the company founders bought themselves, not the standard-issue Staples $99 special that causes everyone else back pain.”

- Joel Spolsky in his Mercurial tutorial.

I’m only on the second part, but it been a pretty fun read so far.

Three years? I didn’t know I had a blog at tumblr for...

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 08:22:27 -0500

Three years? I didn’t know I had a blog at tumblr for that long.

"Faith is the hope that charity is not vain"

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:13:00 -0500

“Faith is the hope that charity is not vain”

- Albert Guerard in his This I Believe essay.

Not sure if this is his quote or from some other source. Google seems to return parts of 1 Corinthians when I do a search, but no direct quotation.

Sleigh Bells: The duo met and formed in 2008, when Miller was...

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 10:25:30 -0500

Sleigh Bells:

The duo met and formed in 2008, when Miller was waiting tables on Alexis and her mother in a diner. Miller mentioned he was looking for a female vocalist to work on a musical project with, which Alexis’ mother immediately volunteered her for.

(video via Sterogum)

alisonagosti: Twitter is where I get you drunk and talk you into coming home with me. Tumblr is...

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:55:03 -0500

alisonagosti:

Twitter is where I get you drunk and talk you into coming home with me. Tumblr is where I lock the door and force you to look at my antique moth collection.

I already liked this, but it was funny enough that I had to reblog it.

"My guilty little secret is goodreads. They have a quote section with a selection that is so much..."

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:38:00 -0500

“My guilty little secret is goodreads. They have a quote section with a selection that is so much better than, say, Bartleby. Much more up to date. But I do also use lots of quotes from the books I read. Sometimes I think I could use the entirety of Lorrie Moore or Margaret Atwood’s works and pair each and every sentence perfectly with TV images.”

- -Slaughterhouse 90210 on how they come up with the quotes to pair with the various TV screencaps on their blog.

I’ve wondered this myself several times. I didn’t know goodreads had a quote feature.

A year in the life of an iPhone Developer

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 11:22:40 -0500

I saw this post on Hacker News today about an iPhone developer waiting on Apple to approve his latest app. The first App he created was rejected by Apple after eight months, so he is a bit unsure of what to expect with his newest creation (a Boy Scout merit badge app).

I clicked around to see what other entries were on his blog and saw that he has only posted five entries. The timeline they describe is an interesting snapshot of his life as an iPhone developer:

I’m an iPhone Developer (3/13/2009) — In this blog entry you see the developer’s hopes and dreams for what is to come and the milestones he can’t wait to hit.
I’ve submitted my first application (3/17/2009) — His “Ask Obama” app is submitted to Apple for approval. His brother ridicules his love for Apple, but the developer soldiers on.
The Waiting Game… (3/20/2009) — He is still waiting after a week to see if his app will be approved. He also links to a story about $600,000 being spent to build an app. He is glad he only spent $1000 so far (mostly on a MacBook and an iPhone).
And the Verdict Is… (12/4/2009) — The developer finally gets word that his app is rejected because it shows political content, which is verboten outside of educational uses. It is a shame it took Apple this long to get back to him.
I’m doing it again (2/25/2010) — Finally, almost a year after the blog was started, the developer is going at it again with his merit badge app.

Seeing the arc of excitement, pride, anguish, disappointment, and finally a sense of tentative excitement laid out like that was really interesting. I admire his desire to stick to the path he started out on. I wouldn’t have much desire to do another app if Apple didn’t bother to get back to me within eight months.

"As I’ve written probably too many times, I think one of the under-recognized strengths of Lost is..."

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:58:01 -0500

“As I’ve written probably too many times, I think one of the under-recognized strengths of Lost is how the structure of the storytelling reflects what the show is about. Long before the characters started traveling through time, we were traveling through time, via flashbacks and flash-forwards. And now it seems that this season—in which the story is split between two realities—is going to be devoted to alternate realities within the two realities. Choosing a side in the coming island conflict isn’t just a matter of allying with friends against enemies. It’s also about subscribing to a worldview. It’s about picking a reality to live in.”

- Noel Murray in the AV Club review of Lighthouse

Wikipedia: Snowclone

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:58:53 -0500

Wikipedia: Snowclone:

This was mentioned in a recent posting on Mark Pilgrim’s blog.

I’m so glad we have wikipedia to catalog ideas like this.

Snowclone:

An example of a snowclone is “gray is the new black”, a version of the template “X is the new Y”. X and Y may be replaced with different words or phrases – for example, “comedy is the new rock ‘n’ roll”. Both the generic formula and the new phrases produced from it are called “snowclones”.

dive into mark: Simplicity is hard. Let’s go shopping!

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:55:20 -0500

dive into mark: Simplicity is hard. Let’s go shopping!:

This reminds me of what life is like at home.

Video

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 12:26:07 -0500

My first attempt at making this eggs in a basket recipe I saw on...

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:28:56 -0500

My first attempt at making this eggs in a basket recipe I saw on Salt & Fat.

Shortly after this picture I had to flip the whole creation since my bread was burning. I don’t think I had my pan hot enough before putting the egg and bread in.

Ruby Keeler

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 22:09:10 -0500

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.

More from that iPad UI Conventions set on flickr. I...

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:38:01 -0500

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

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:43:36 -0500

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.

thisiswhyyourefat: Pizza Hut Hersey’s Chocolate...

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:17:02 -0500

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

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:10:48 -0500

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.

HyperCard

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:54:04 -0500

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.

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

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:24:07 -0500

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

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 09:01:04 -0500

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.