- 10 Mar 2010 » The Karate Kid ruined the modern world ∅
We have a vague idea in our head of the “price” of certain accomplishments, how difficult it should be to get a degree, or succeed at their job, or stay in shape, or raise a kid, or build a house. And that vague idea is almost always catastrophically wrong.
Accomplishing worthwhile things isn’t just a little harder than people think; it’s ten or twenty times harder.
Nice essay on ‘effort shock’, from the Editor of cracked.com. It’s very true - the idea that it can take 10+ years to become an ‘expert’ at something doesn’t really fit with the ‘training montage’ images we’re surrounded with of instant progress. The (perhaps dated) trend in programming books titled “X in 24 hours/21 days” is another symptom of this condition.
- 10 Mar 2010 » Super Mario Bros on an 8x8 LED matrix ∅
Neat Arduino project building a Mario-ish game using the 8x8 matrix display. I wonder if there would a nice way to architect the scrolling levels & static player character using occam.
- 09 Mar 2010 » The Big Red Word vs. the Little Green Man ∅
Interesting piece about Fire Exit signs here and in the US. Of course, there’s no drive to unify or change the US signage because it’s as ingrained as ours… Also, a bigger problem:
Solomon points out that when the NFPA investigates fires, it never encounters circumstances “where someone says I didn’t know where the exit was because I didn’t know… what the exit sign was. When they don’t know where the exit is, it’s because there was no signage there whatsoever.”
- 08 Mar 2010 » Logorama ∅
I’d seen the trailer for Logorama last week before the Oscars, but this is the whole thing. Definitely worth a watch, and deserving of its Best Animated Short Film award. Scary how many of the brands and logotypes you recognize as you watch.
- 07 Mar 2010 » Official Gmail Blog: Fast new windows ∅
Unfortunately, we weren’t able to make this work in Internet Explorer, so to see the speed-up, you’ll need to be using Mozilla Firefox, Apple’s Safari, or Google Chrome.
The Gmail ‘Loading…’ progress bar when popping out a window had been quite annoying, so it’s nice to see it gone. Interesting to see Google providing a better experience for non-IE users, I wonder if this is aimed at putting pressure on Microsoft to add support for the underlying implementation features in IE.
- 03 Mar 2010 » iPhone's Missing Feed Reader ∅
Interesting look at the current crop of iPhone App and Web-based feed readers for the iPhone. Given that I’m using Fever for RSS, I have used its mobile interface once or twice and been reasonably happy. The piece starts with:
I spend a prodigious amount of time reading on my iPhone.
… and I think this is my core issue with RSS reading on the iPhone - I just don’t want to read articles or news with a screen of that size. Maybe the iPad will be more compelling, but I’d imagine the desktop versions of Fever and Google Reader will be more than adequate there.
The one exception to reading on the iPhone is probably Instapaper - the effort that’s expended on formatting things as legibly as possible makes it just about bearable.
- 03 Mar 2010 » The A4 and the A8: secrets of the iPad's brain ∅
Piece from Ars Technica about the Apple A4 chip in the iPad, with speculation/informed guesswork.
the A4 is a 1GHz custom SoC with a single Cortex A8 core and a PowerVR SGX GPU
The author seems to attribute the quiet on Apple’s part about the architecture to the fact that its a relatively mundane part - I think it’s more in line with their general strategy of worrying about what things do, not how they are achieved.
- 28 Feb 2010 » Like, Python ∅
I think hello world in Like, Python says it all:
#!usr/bin/python # My first Like, Python script! yo just print like "hello world" broThis could be fairly neat to show students that syntax really is just syntax. Or extremely dangerous to the legibility of future assignment submissions.
- 28 Feb 2010 » One day at the car dealer: Toyota with no heat; Mercedes with no GPS ∅
If people remember their $25,000 Toyota with no heat or $35,000 Mercedes with no GPS they might be a lot more willing to try a new brand.
Technology in cars is at a strange place. There’s no good reason for it to be a £2,000 option to have the computer in your car talk properly to the computer in your pocket full of MP3’s - just that the market allows it. I’d love the current status quo to be under fire on this front, I think some brands working hard to put cutting edge tech in their entire range (Korean automakers perhaps?) could put the hurt on Mercedes, BMW & co. to stop charging astronomical sums for such functionality.
- 28 Feb 2010 » Mud Rooms, Red Letters, and Real Priorities ∅
Merlin Mann on priorities:
Once you know a tree is falling on you, you don’t take a meeting to drill down on strategies viz. arboreal exit strategies. You just run.
Great piece of writing by Merlin that I’d somehow missed, luckily fresh again by its inclusion as ‘greeked’ text in the icon for the latest version of Instapaper.
Also my first exposure to the term ‘mud room’.