Alternate.org

I’ll be blogging here some more. Soon.

A (great, awesome) freelance client sent me a Mino Flip HD for Christmas. Just trying it out at the Zoo Lights the other night.

jimray:

Perfect

clientsfromhell:

Client: I already know what I want for the logo. It's a house, with a face, and it's on wheels with an exhaust pipe coming out of the back which is shooting out smoke in the shape of dollar signs.

moltz:

When I wanted to write my fan fiction for a technology company with a market share under 5%, I didn’t need some special month to do it in!

What Moltz doesn’t realize is that CARS made every month a special month.

jimray:

Stewart gets the last word in the FOX/White House tussle

This is fucking amazing. It’s stuff like this that makes you realize how much effort Apple puts into the little things. finermac:

If you have a folder that is named "Round 1"�, and you Option + Drag/Drop to duplicate it, the new folder will automatically be named "Round 2." Do it again and you'll have "Round 3". Editor's note: Can anyone test this in pre-Snow-Leopard versions of Mac OS X? I'm not sure whether this is exclusive to 10.6. Update: One commenter reports this works in 10.5.8 Leopard.

My school newspaper column was called Cognitive Dissonance.

natashavc:

Senior year at ‘nutrition’. Bouncing Souls Hoody, dress code violating beanie and an overall shitty attitude. I was kicked out of my drama class this year. I also had a newspaper column called DISSIDENT DISPATCHES.

I had 54 tardies to my first period (photography) and was not allowed to walk at my graduation. I slept in that morning and then drove to the beach — which is the best way to spend your high school graduation.

Yes. A boy was reported to be in a home-made balloon that was sailing thousands of feet in the air at over 20 miles an hour. When the balloon landed, the boy was not found to be where everyone had assumed he'd be. The worst was feared, that he'd fallen out. Shortly after contemplating this, the next answer was that maybe he was scared for letting the balloon go and had hidden, or that the entire thing was a publicity stunt by an admittedly eccentric family. I got very sad when I heard the latter, not because I felt it was true, but because I didn't like the truth of how quickly our society jumps to that kind of conclusion. "HOAX"� they scream. "PUBLICITY STUNT"� they yell, and turn it into a media circus, either way. I guess I don't believe it was a PR stunt or anything of that sort, because, well, I like to think people are better than that. I'm probably wrong. But I think I'd prefer to be the kind of person who's wrong about this kind of thing than to be the kind of person who's right about it.

uptonic:

10GUI: New thinking in human-computer interaction (http://10gui.com/)

I really can’t decide if this is insightful or hooey.

moltz:

[Dashboard appears to be choking on the frame so click through to see the video.] (Via TPM)

It’s astounding that Stewart can bang out a spot-on, devastating critique like this and CNN can still be on the air, blithely doing the same god damn thing the next day. In a rational world, the network would shrivel up and die from pure shame.

Fantastic, amazing work by the Daily Show. Why is cable news still legal?

“

And so, like the goat sacrificers and snake oil salesmen before them, a new breed of con man was born, the Search Engine Optimizer. These scammers claim that they can dance the magic dance that will please the Google Gods and make eyeballs rain down upon you.

Do. Not. Trust. Them.

”

- Derek, via Mat, via merlin (via mobilhomme)

The Studio as Author: An Introduction to Pixar Week :

For its first five films (save the intriguingly different Bug’s Life, which I’ll examine in more depth in a bit), the studio made films about the relationships between young children and their parents and the way those relationships shifted, changed and warped as children aged. For its next four films, the studio made films about how individuals do or don’t fit within their communities and the ways that communities struggle to encompass the exceptional individuals who pop up within them. And now, with Up and leaked plot details from Toy Story 3 as evidence, the studio is overwhelmingly concerned with mortality.

Kevin Conboy: i'm wary of this mighty mouse though
Kevin Conboy: i don't trust them
Philip Luedtke: why not?
Philip Luedtke: what do you use, a microsoft mouse?
Kevin Conboy: no i bought a mighty mouse
Kevin Conboy: you never listen to me
Kevin Conboy: but i don't trust it
Kevin Conboy: i guess i just need to clean it more
Philip Luedtke: maybe if you washed your hands it wouldn't stop working
Philip Luedtke: the ball that is
Philip Luedtke: cause I'm guessing that's what you don't trust?
Kevin Conboy: yeah
Kevin Conboy: the ball
Kevin Conboy: i don't trust balls.
Philip Luedtke: you have to clean the balls regularly
Philip Luedtke: or they get covered in funk
Philip Luedtke: you won't be able to work them up and down if they're covered in funk
Kevin Conboy: no one likes a funky ball
Philip Luedtke: and don't even think about rolling those balls sideways when they're dirty
Kevin Conboy: that's a mess just waiting to happen
Philip Luedtke: have fun with your balls
Kevin Conboy: i will
Philip Luedtke: or in this case, ball
Kevin Conboy: gingerly

Me too!

mrgan:

I rarely need to calculate anything mathematically complex, but I often reach for the computer to do the sort of calculation you run into when doing layout design: split 760 pixels into 3 columns with even gutters; or, figure out what the left margin of a 215-px-wide element should be to center it inside a 490 px container.

Now, I’ll be the first to agree that you don’t need a calculator to crunch three integers. I know John Allen Paulos would wag his finger if he saw me typing “143/3” instead of quickly dividing it in my head (and if he were here, and if he knew who I was). But my problem is not a lack of mathematical ability; I’m not great at arithmetic, but I’m solid. My problem is that I don’t trust my brain’s math without double-checking it: “Ok so 143/3 is… 47 and 2/3 which is 47.666. Now let’s double-check: 48 * 3 is 40 * 3 + 8 * 3…” and so on. I don’t do this often enough to be sure of my results, so I spend too long reversing everything to see if it fits.

Using a calculator solves this; I trust the calculator. Here’s the part that doesn’t make sense to my brain, however: every calculator I’ve ever used puts my input in a sort of one-dimensional, single-number-at-a-time box. I type “143”, I hit ÷, and the 143 is gone. The insecurity kicks in again: “Wait, did I type 143? Did I really hit ÷, not ×?” I need to see my whole line at once, parentheses and all.

The first calculator that does this for me is not a calculator at all; it’s Mac OS X’s Spotlight. It’s probably not news to you, but there: you can type math into the Spotlight menu-item box (not in the Finder-window box). Programmer-y notation like “sqrt(35)*sin(4^3)” is totally acceptable.

(Brief digression: ok, Spotlight wasn’t the first calculator I used like this; Google was. But Spotlight is far faster and more accessible, so I actually use it daily.)

Somehow this combination of instant availability, guaranteed results, and visible syntax clicks for me. It’s all the calculator I need. Perhaps best of all is that if I decide half way through my typing that I really needed another “(” at the start of the whole thing, I can just jump back and type it in. Maybe this is possible with standard calculators, but I honestly have no idea how.

I’ve used many physical calculators in my school years, and while I can’t say I’ve played with too many scientific-calculator apps, I haven’t seen this kind of representation of input. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong place; maybe no one else needs this. Either way, I’m sure I’ll hear from PCalc fans. (I never bought PCalc, but the screenshots I saw didn’t show what I’m looking for. Paper tape ain’t it.)

But right now, I have my accidental calculator right in the menu bar, a two-key chord away, and I love it.