February 2008
38 posts
del.ishli.st: del.icio.us-powered wishlists →
Nicely done. Here’s mine: http://del.ishli.st/brandtkurowski
National News →
I love National, and Fondo looks intriguing, but Ventura? The “it” and “ip” ligatures are unnatural (who writes like that?) and there are clear problems with the alternate “s” form, e.g. in the sample on this page the “n” skewers it.
It’s certainly an attractive face, but it fails as a font.
ECMAScript 4th edition Reference Implementation M2 →
I must admit that I haven’t been following the story around ECMAScript 4, but now, having seen the feature list for the reference implementation, I can’t help but think that JavaScript is quickly following Java down the path towards becoming the next C++.
“Meta-analyses of antidepressant medications have reported only modest benefits...”
– Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration—Er, wait… you mean drugs don’t make you happy?
The best offense...is a good defense. →
Respect.
In praise of mandatory indentation for novice... →
I’ve only taught novice programmers in Python, so I’ve never had to live without mandatory indentation when teaching. But more importantly, I want mandatory indentation for working with experienced programmers!
Chumby’s Launched! →
Very cool news, though I must admit I found the chumby much more compelling before I got an iPhone. Now that I’ve always got a device with me that’s got a roughly similar feature set, I’m less interested in a tabletop gadget (even if it is infinitely more hackable).
“Botanicalls Twitter answers the question: What’s up with your plant? It...”
– Botanicalls Twitter DIY—Nice.
“A lot of people in business say they have twenty years experience, when in fact...”
– allow your work to age with you—I hadn’t heard that before, but I like it.
Bravit Multiflame Candle →
Quite inspired.
2 tags
1 tag
garfield minus garfield →
It turns out that “Garfield” is better without Garfield!
Full of Ambition →
I haven’t paid much attention to Ambition, because writing SQL queries as Ruby code just doesn’t grab me. But I just noticed Ambition’s “Kickers”. The use of lazy evaluation in the context of Rail’s standard fragment caching leads to some pretty compellingly clear and simple code, and that does grab me.
aerial geometry: 5 circular communities from the... →
Pretty. Be sure to check out the star forts mentioned in the post as well. Hmm, star forts… makes me want to play Empire Earth.
“There is no reason to bookmark this article and read it another day. Its nearly...”
– Zero Sign On - 1 better or Infinitely better than Single Sign On?—That’s all fine and good, but I use both Safari and Firefox on my Mac, plus Internet Explorer on my Boot Camp partition, plus my iPhone, plus Safari on my kitchen PowerBook and another Safari on the living room Mac Mini. PKI...
Isn't ActBlue a PAC? →
It’s depressing that Lessig has to waste time and energy worrying about how voters will perceive his acceptance of funds given through ActBlue.
Clearly this should not be a salient issue in his campaign, but it’s certainly likely to be. Democracy should not be held hostage to the short-sighted thinking that would make an issue out of ActBlue, but how can we avoid such a mess? How does...
“There seems to be no easy fix for these problems. Fundamentally, disk encryption...”
– Cold Boot Attacks on Disk Encryption (nice work)
“I threw up a little bit in my mouth this morning while reading the press release...”
– Republicans Kiss Google’s Ass… (by Jeremy Zawodny)
ZiPhone →
Most impressive. From svn checkout, to building in Xcode, and finally using the one-click GUI, unlocking 1.1.3 on my iPhone took less than five minutes. See iClarified for more info.
Piston 1.4.0: piston diff, at long last →
This is great news! I’ve long been a fan of piston, despite it’s warts, and this improvement brings it one step closer to being The One True Remote Dependency Management Tool.
“If you purchase a single weight (or more) of any typeface we offer, then return...”
– village—Brilliant. I wish more type foundries would do this.
Solveig bought a pack of multi-color Memorex CD-R discs. The pink and yellow discs work in our Mac’s. The green discs do not. Go figure.
Typeface Review: Arnhem →
i must say, i’ve long been a fan of Dutch typography
“The most expensive thing in business is opportunity cost, which is the cost of...”
– Interaction08 Friday Keynote: Alan Cooper (There are many insightful bits in this keynote, if you can get past the naïve and tired “business people” verses “us” rhetoric.)
Enter
I have to admit that I just discovered the Enter key on my MacBook Pro. I’ve been using Fn-Return for the last few months.
This reminds me that at work I need to map a key on my external IBM keyboard to Enter, as I’m often annoyed that the keyboard has neither Enter nor Fn-Return.
“Added ability to set test execution order, defaults to :random.”
– ZenTest 3.9.0: now with more Evil. This is excellent news. I’ve spent too much time tracking down bugs that were long-hidden due to subtle interactions with the ordering of tests.
“The economy around academic journals is crumbling. Libraries are running out of...”
– open-access is the future: boycott locked-down academic journals
“At MyFonts, we like people who take risks; we appreciate the courage of type...”
– MyFonts: Rising Stars, February 2008—Minuscule is impressive. Makes me wish I had some fine print to set.
“Native threads might not end up being so important if MVM can be made...”
– Ruby Concurrency, Actors, and Rubinius (emphasis mine). Ain’t that the truth?
Chip Hop →
a new album from MC Plus+
IGG Software →
I was checking out iBank today and was surprised to discover “Mocha Joes” and “Putney Food Coop” in the screenshots. So I looked around the IGG Software website and discovered that they’re just up the road in Putney, Vermont.
Hello, neighbor!
Hierclust: Simple Hierarchical Clustering →
For a project that I have coming up soon at work, I’m going to need to do hierarchical clustering of spatial data as part of a Ruby on Rails project. I was sure that there would be a pre-existing library to help me out, but as it turns out, there isn’t.
Well, I’d been looking for a chance to do a little recreational programming, and to release an open source project, and to use...
Luna Park Review →
The first issue of Luna Park Review, my brother’s “Quarterly and Occasional Review of Literary Magazines and Various Other Stuff” is now online. Check it out!
TripIt is awesome →
Sounds like a great example of software done right:
You know what I really like? TripIt.com. It’s amazingly simple. You take all those travel confirmation emails that you get from your travel agent, hotels, car rental agencies, etc, and you just forward them to plans@tripit.com. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to sign up for an account. You don’t have to log on....