January 2011
57 posts
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Marco Arment on the upcoming MacBook Pro refresh →
Spot-on analysis. My personal take on the new laptop lineup, based largely on Marco’s predictions:
11” MacBook Air, maybe with a speed bump/other minor upgrades.
13” plastic MacBook, maybe with some minor upgrades.
13” MacBook Air, maybe a speed bump and other minor upgrades, replacing the 13” MacBook Pro. The current Air almost completely obviates the need for...
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Excerpt from Pitchfork's interview with Antlers...
Pitchfork: I imagine it's tough to stay connected with the songs while not being miserable all the time, how did you figure out a way to balance that out?
Silberman: We went on tour with Frightened Rabbit a little while ago and I was asking [frontman] Scott [Hutchison] about this, and he said, "It's [the audience's] now. You'll sing it to them, but they're the one singing it. You can let it go and give it to them." That's how I managed to keep going.
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Schiit Lyr headphone amplifier →
I apologize in advance for being the nth person to make this joke:
How does it sound?
Like Schiit.
Seriously, though. Six watts per channel for a headphone amplifier? There are power amplifiers with less juice than this. This should be one hell of an amp.
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Macworld reviews the Netflix app →
In many ways the iOS Netflix app is transformative. It’s awesome to have access to such a huge library of streaming TV and movies on convenient, portable devices.
But that awesome functionality has let them slide with a crap interface, particularly on the iPad. That’s no excuse.
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Snipers for Vipers →
It’s all class here in the “Show Me” state.
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Will Apple give up its dock connector in favor of... →
Nope. Not any time soon.
This EU thing that everyone’s talking about allows for adapters, and since the dock connector supports USB, a micro-USB adapter should be easy.
The dock connector supported firewire in the past; now it supports USB. It as supported composite, s-video, and component video out. It supports analog and digital audio out. It supports faster charging than standard...
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250k gallons of beef fat closed Houston ship... →
Old, but hopefully still good enough to post.
So gross. But it also kind of reminds me of making soup.
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Austin's Jester King brewery will soon be open →
Had their “Commercial Suicide” English Mild at the Dancing Bear (Waco’s best beer bar by a mile, if you’re curious) over the holidays, and I’m excited about checking out more of their stuff.
I’m even more excited to see so many breweries opening up in Texas, even if Austin claims most of them.
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The first iPod touch competitor →
It’s nice to see another “smart phone without the phone” (we used to call that a “PDA” a decade ago) on the market.
I really do hope for a vibrant, competitive portable computing OS landscape, and between iOS, Windows Phone, HP/Palm’s WebOS, Android, and RIM’s upcoming QNX-based tablet OS, we could be headed that way (if WebOS and Windows Phone’s...
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Just kidding
Really, thanks to everyone who reblogged my Angry Birds post. This is the most successful I’ve felt in the past three hours.
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Experiment
Angry birds, angry birds, half-assed amateur science, angry birds, math, math, angry birds, physics, lack of effort, angry birds, angry birds. There’s a lesson to be learned here. But probably not a good lesson.
Reblog this.
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Angry birds as an expression of the human... →
The complex math our brains are capable of is amazing, and the fact that it’s approximate and completely non-numerical makes it all the more fascinating to me. I’d love to understand how our brains can instinctively figure out the flight path of a thrown ball, but (most of us) can’t do relatively simple multiplication in our heads.
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Nixing the "dear" →
It’s nice to see etiquette standards evolving.
Personally I find starting business communications with “dear” feels presumptuous and inauthentic. I don’t think addressing someone by their name feels at all abrupt, and I think its tone fits business communication quite well.
When it comes to personal communication, I say just write what you feel. Use “dear”...
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Stereo →
Beautiful.
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Never said about restaurant web sites →
Cheers for putting together a list of the incredibly common sins committed by poorly-designed restaurant web sites (which is most of them). I could speculate as to why restaurant web sites are almost universally bad, or talk about what happens when somebody designs a web site (or software) that they won’t actually use, but shit, the extent to which they’re bad makes the explanations...
Schiit Lyr headphones amplifier →
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Neko Case raffles the car from the cover of Middle... →
I think it’s one of the most bad-ass album covers of all time. Neko Case, crouched on the hood of a Mercury Cougar, with a sword, like something out of a cross between Kill Bill and Death Proof.
Honestly, I probably love it more than the album itself. I’d totally consider hanging up a giant version of it in a prominent place in my home, if Cindy would let me.
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College students may lack scientific literacy →
In other news: so do many scientists. And almost all adults in general.
Is anyone really surprised by this?
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Pitchfork looks back at the Dismemberment Plan's... →
What a great album. Hard to believe it’s over ten years old, and that I’ve been listening to it for, what, eight or nine years? The band still sounds as fresh as ever to me. Thanks to Pitchfork and Thom for getting me into it.
I certainly wouldn’t mind a new D-Plan album, though. Although in some ways, Travis Morrison Helfighters’ ‘07 All Y’all came...
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Polarizing women get hit on more often →
Some pretty fascinating data mining here. If a lot of guys think you’re moderately attractive, you’ll get hit on less than if some guys think you’re hot and others think you’re ugly.
Sort of makes sense.
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Audiovox to buy Klipsch →
Audiovox is company that owns crap brands like Jensen and formerly great brands like Acoustic Research.
I’m not personally a big fan of Klipsch’s design philosphies, which focus on high efficiency speakers, but they’re an important speaker brand with a rich history that played an important part in the development of hi-fi, and many of their designs are still well-respected....
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Airlines make it even more difficult to give them... →
Shopping for a plane ticket is probably the most consumer-hostile experience I have to go through on any sort of regular basis. And airlines are some of the most consumer hostile businesses around—right up there with cell phone service providers and health insurance companies. Plus the airline industry as a whole seems dead set against achieving any sort of success. So I shouldn’t be...
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Apple to combine iTunes and Safari? →
I highly doubt it.
Apple doesn’t really care about Safari’s marketshare. My best explanation of Safari for Windows is that it is a convenient byproduct of Apple porting Webkit to Windows, which was necessary to provide an interface to the iTunes store. I doubt they really care about Safari’s marketshare outside of the mobile space.
Plus, there’s already a chorus of...
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Apple to combine iTunes and Safari? →
I highly doubt it.
Apple doesn’t really care about Safari’s marketshare. My best explanation of Safari for Windows is that it is a convenient byproduct of Apple porting Webkit to Windows, which was necessary to provide an interface to the iTunes store. I doubt they really care about Safari’s marketshare outside of the mobile space.
Plus, there’s already a chorus of...
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Rock Band developer Harmonix purchased for less... →
…and responsibility for lots of debt.
Sad, considering what a great project they put out.
Anecdotally, it seems like Rock Band sold a shit-ton. So, where did it go wrong? Gross mis-management? Inventory problems with plastic instruments? Horrible licensing deals? I know sales in the post-Rock Band 2 era haven’t been what they were expected to be, but hell, this still surprises me.
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Rock Band developer Harmonix purchased for less... →
…and responsibility for lots of debt.
Sad, considering what a great product they put out.
Anecdotally, it seems like Rock Band sold a shit-ton. So, where did it go wrong? Gross mis-management? Inventory problems with plastic instruments? Horrible licensing deals? I know sales in the post-Rock Band 2 era haven’t been what they were expected to be, but hell, this still surprises me.
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iPhone New Year's alarm bug →
I believe this is the second time this year there’s been a major iOS alarm bug. Which is pretty much unacceptable, and whoever was responsible for this should be very embarrassed. Time/date issues are such an obvious source of potential bugs I can’t believe this portion of the code wasn’t under heavier scrutiny.
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iPhone New Year's alarm bug →
I believe this is the second time this year there’s been a major iOS alarm bug. Which is pretty much unacceptable, and whoever was responsible for this should be very embarrassed. Time/date issues are such an obvious source of potential bugs I can’t believe this portion of the code wasn’t under heavier scrutiny.
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Daring Fireball's John Gruber on the Arizona... →
Every now and then, it’s nice to see Gruber apply his sober logic to situations outside of technology. I think if everyone’s opinions were as thoughtful as his, the world would be a better place.
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Daring Fireball's John Gruber on the Arizona... →
Every now and then, it’s nice to see Gruber apply his sober logic to situations outside of technology. I think if everyone’s opinions were as thoughtful as his, the world would be a better place.
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Forbes interviews Brock Wagner of St. Arnold's →
Not my favorite brewery in Texas, but they certainly do great work, and their success is very impressive.
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Forbes interviews Brock Wagner of St. Arnold's →
Not my favorite brewery in Texas, but they certainly do great work, and their success is very impressive.
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If it can be misused, it must be bad →
The times has the afore-linked article with the provocative (to me) headline “Against Headphones”. The writer quotes some statistics about young people, hearing damage, and the prevalence of the iPod, then proceeds to make the tenuous jump to the social difficulties that headphones cause.
I really don’t like the argument that just because something’s harmful if used...
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If it can be misused, it must be bad →
The times has the afore-linked article with the provocative (to me) headline “Against Headphones”. The writer quotes some statistics about young people, hearing damage, and the prevalence of the iPod, then proceeds to make the tenuous jump to the social difficulties that headphones cause.
I really don’t like the argument that just because something’s harmful if used...
Required reading →
I learned something today.
Required reading →
I learned something today.
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"I just want a dumb TV." →
Amen. There’s no point buying a TV with any sort of content delivery mechanism built in, because it will be out of date soon, while the monitor will last for years.
Except Josh Herrman doesn’t go far enough: “Buy TVs with perfect pictures, nice speakers, and an attractive finish” [edited for style and typos]. No TVs have nice speakers. Buy a TV with a nice picture....
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The tradeoffs of beautiful artisanal cocktails... →
The pretentious mixologists that the writer complains about have brought us a magical world of yummy adult candy. If the price is that a few squares feel unwelcome, so be it. I certainly never get tired of watching people get angry when they find out that an establishment refuses to serve, say, Anheuser-Busch products or vodka.
I’ll let the bartender make fun of my shitty taste in liquor...
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The tradeoffs of beautiful artisanal cocktails... →
The pretentious mixologists that the writer complains about have brought us a magical world of yummy adult candy. If the price is that a few squares feel unwelcome, so be it. I certainly never get tired of watching people get angry when they find out that an establishment refuses to serve, say, Anheuser-Busch products or vodka.
I’ll let the bartender make fun of my shitty taste in liquor...
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Swamplot's nominees for Houston Parking Lot of the... →
I love Swamplot and really should read it more often.
Some great choices here. The Rice Village rooftop lot is crazy with very small parking spaces. The Southwest Freeway parking lots are bizarre. Khon does great things with the Mekong Shopping Center lot. The deteriorating condition of the Hobbit Café’s lot is epic. I-45 is a good joke (or a bad one, depending on whether you’re on...
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Swamplot's nominees for Houston Parking Lot of the... →
I love Swamplot and really should read it more often.
Some great choices here. The Rice Village rooftop lot is crazy with very small parking spaces. The Southwest Freeway parking lots are bizarre. Khon does great things with the Mekong Shopping Center lot. The deteriorating condition of the Hobbit Café’s lot is epic. I-45 is a good joke (or a bad one, depending on whether you’re on...
Urban decay in Detroit →
Purely rhetorical: what is it that makes urban decay so damned beautiful?
Urban decay in Detroit →
Purely rhetorical: what is it that makes urban decay so damned beautiful?
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Analysis of level design in World 1 of Super Mario... →
Some very interesting observations of how these levels serve as a tutorial without obviously being a tutorial.
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Analysis of level design in World 1 of Super Mario... →
Some very interesting observations of how these levels serve as a tutorial without obviously being a tutorial.
Update: more Super Mario Bros. 3 level design analysis.
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“Hobbies are funny, though. Stick with one long enough and it can transform from...”
– The very savy Michael Gartenberg on the Apple TV.
I certainly hope so for reasons completely unrelated to the article.
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“Hobbies are funny, though. Stick with one long enough and it can transform from...”
– The very savvy Michael Gartenberg on the Apple TV.
I certainly hope so for reasons completely unrelated to the article.
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Anti-virus software company: "you should buy our... →
What the headline really says is that Apple’s platform will see viruses this year, etc., etc. But I went ahead and read between the lines and translated the main point of the story for you.
I feel like they say this every year, but I’m too lazy to prove it.