9 février 2010

Maybe it's not mysterious at all and I just had a surge of productivity when it started to be less cold. Now it's freezing and lazy again.

 

Ok, after more research, I think I'm chickening out of opening my Mac Mini.

 

I think I want to upgrhack my Mac Mini and retire the iMac. I only wish I had the latest model's two display ports.

 

8 février 2010

Today I absolutely can't stand my computer setup anymore. I need… something. Anything. I don't know.

 

Daybreakers — I think someone could have made a good movie out of this. Well, an okay movie.

 

Il est temps de trouver un remplacement ā feues les pinces de surimi Coraya pour aller dans ma poēle avec les pois chiches. Suggestions ?

 

Je crois que je devrais plagier complētement le nouveau Facebook pour @nopicnodial.

 

“Biscuits Oreo, vous allez en bouffer”

Une grosse marque à gros rendement, pas comme les LU

Un consultant bossant pour Kraft et préférant rester anonyme m’a expliqué récemment que l’agrogéant « se fout complètement de ses petites marques de biscuits », celles rachetées à Danone en 2007, en même temps que les stars de LU, les Prince, les Mikado, les LU Petit Déjeuner…

Si Kraft laisse les marques LU mourir, je fais sēcession ! Toute ma jeunesse…

 

Ah, right, that's the other thing I can't do now without having to pay rent. Have sex, and spend the day belting out "Be Italian."

 

Nine — A spectacularly uninteresting movie relying on boring songs (except possibly for that one number by I Can't Believe It's Fergie).

 

Marion Cotillard has to be the least sensual actress of the decade. And it used to be that France was represented by Brigitte Bardot.

 

My day would be less wasted if I did something. Wouldn't it? I think. Can't be sure. Guess we'll never know.

 

“Grammar Girl : ‘It Is I’ Versus ‘It Is Me’”

I hate it when language is in flux like this because it’s easy to get confused. But a lot of people have asked me these questions, and in the end, I believe it’s best to know the traditional rules and then if you decide to break them you can do so knowingly and with conviction.

Prompted by a Tom Ford Q&A I listened to yesterday (I mean, to which I listened) where he jokingly corrected an audience member: “Is it him who […]? Yes, it is he.”

I knew there was some rule to that effect, but I wondered what the rule was exactly, and I’m surprised by how broad it is. Or… was.

 

I had no idea how easy it was to turn my Mac into a wifi access point. The trouble I went through trying to get that old router to work.

 

 

It's not fair that Twitter starts whaling because of a regional sports event. At least Steve Jobs's keynotes are universal.

 

I hear there's been a macho car commercial during Super Bowl. And everybody's… wait, what? surprised?

 

Well, do something!

 

7 février 2010

“Sneak peek: Future Photoshop masking technology”

In this brief demo, Photoshop PM Bryan O’Neil Hughes shows off some new selection technology that offers better edge detection and masking results in less time–even with tricky images like hair.

Hopefully this helps explain why we put the Extract filter out to pasture in CS4.

Well, maybe if you’d explained it bett—wait, I misread that. Your justification for removing a limited-but-useful filter from the latest $50,000 Photoshop upgrade is that you’re going to release a better tool in the next $50,000 upgrade, or maybe the one after that?

Fuck off, maybe?

 

@phyllisstein sez: “Being around my 17-year-old brother has ruined my chances of ever enjoying Twilight. "Mmm, that Lautner boy is… UGH SOMEBODY'S CHILD GROSS."

 

6 février 2010

“The Macalope Weekly: Pad derangement syndrome”

Back in the 1960s, designers of the lunar lander were having terrible trouble getting the thing to pencil out within the constraints they had. The astronauts needed a clear field of view, but a sitting astronaut requires a large swath of glass in order to gain peripheral vision.

So they took out the seats. Not only did that solve the sight problem, it also solved the weight problem and the problem of mobility within the lander.

That’s a very interesting user-experience story.

 

5 février 2010

“The $9.99 Ebook Is Dead: Third Major Publisher Hachette Dumps on Amazon”

Hachette’s the third major publisher to push for the agency model, following MacMillan and HarperCollins: They’ll set the ebook prices (higher, natch) and the bookseller takes a cut. The $9.99 ebook? Poof.

Amazon tried to pull an iTunes and make the e-book market viable in spite of the publishers, but that kind of trick only works once (and, even then, Steve Jobs knew not to try and get record companies to sell digital albums cheaper than the physical items).

And it’s too late for Amazon to encourage self-publishing on the Kindle; that one is up to Apple now.

 

James Nyman

Mēme si je n’aime pas qu’on joue avec la nourriture.

 

4 février 2010

“Brains of vegetative patients show life - latimes.com”

Researchers report that five patients thought to be in a persistent vegetative state showed brain activity indicating awareness, intent and, in at least one case, a wish to communicate.

I’m not sure what you’re supposed to think about that, but my gut reaction is that it’s horribly sad.

via kottke.org

 

And so it turned out that the Cylons' first attack was taking over Toyota.

 

“Apple Now Lets You Preview iPhone Apps In Your Browser”

To see this for yourself, open any direct link to an iPhone app in your favorite Web browser. You’ll notice that instead of only throwing up a dialog box prompting you to confirm that you wish to launch iTunes on your desktop, you’ll see a nice page with the app logo, price, description, screenshots, rating, reviews and more in a new window or tab.

That would be important news if the page didn’t still launch iTunes without asking if it isn’t running. Fix this.

 

@sween sez: “My favorite part of eating M&Ms is watching their little white gloves twitch... and then fall still.

 

3 février 2010

Lost 6.01–6.02 — Um… okay. So we're going for a double dose of mindfuck. That's a surprise.

 

Ooh, right. Now that I have Echofon Mac and Tweetie iPhone both handling lists, I can stop segregating my follows between two accounts.

 

Et vas-y que j'ai des poils de barbe blancs.

 

Lost 6.01 — After five minutes of previouslies… crap, it's not the episode, it's Lost 6.00! That's why the voiceover was so lame.

 

Dollhouse 2.13 — Whatever, at least it's done. Wonder if the plan was for a few whole seasons of the post-apocalyptic world.

 

Heroes 4.18 — That was a nice idea, but coming too late in a dying show, and lessened by how insufferable Peter has gotten (or always been).

 

Caprica 1.02 — Yup, still sucks. (Actually, even more. And look at those credits.)

 

La torture d'une nuit entiēre sans internet. Heureusement, j'avais du retard sur mes sēries.

 

2 février 2010

I should never watch another comedy show on the same day as How I Met Your Mother. It spoils everything else.

 

Mass Effect 2 : No One Left Behind. (Du premier coup.)

 

“Rumor: Apple Has Another Tablet In The Works. More Like A Mac Than An iPhone.”

I guess I’m impressed that it took all of four days for the wishful thinking to come back full-speed. To be clear: there’s absolutely no doubt that multitouch Macs are in the future (and in Apple’s labs), because everything is going to get multitouch soon enough. But Steve is way too proud of his iPad to let another tablet blur the message gospel anytime soon.

The earliest time a multitouch Mac could be announced is next year’s WWDC.

 

“All The Many Ways Amazon So Very Failed the Weekend”

I honestly can’t figure out how any of this happened. Also interesting, I read yesterday that Amazon’s new offer to publishers, their incentive for lowering the prices on the Kindle, involved the book publishers not just distributing their e-books through the store, but sub-licensing the publishing itself to Amazon, so that the original publisher all but disappeared from the equation, not even controlling the prices at all anymore. (There’s a difference between agreeing, by contract, that the Kindle version of a book will never be more expensive than other versions, and letting Amazon set the day-to-day price.)

I can understand why that would be tempting for Amazon, but in both of those instances they’re very clearly falling into abuse of dominant position, and not the morally defensible kind (if there’s ever been such a thing).

 

“iPad frame leak shows webcam-sized gap”

It seems unlikely that Apple will add a new feature to the first-gen iPad before it has even launched, at least not when it comes to hardware, leaving the possibility that they plan a second-generation version using the same frame assembly. Of course, we’ll have to wait for the inevitable teardown post-release to know what’s inside for sure.

It’s absurd to think that Apple, with their state-of-the-art aluminum-milling factories they’re so proud of, would need or want or have any reason whatsoever to plan ahead some space for the iPad 2’s webcam components.

There’s still a minuscule chance that the video-conferencing reveal would be “one more thing” on the March keynote, but it’s more likely that removing the iSight (from all models, even the wifi ones, so that the more expensive model doesn’t looked gimped) was AT&T’s condition for that advantageous contract-free data plan.