"[…] the only person’s code that sucks is my own, and the reason why it sucks is I just haven’t learned how to make it better yet."
Confession #67: Say Hello to My Little Friend
The realtime web has become a habit. It’s a twitch. I do it without thinking. More importantly, when I succumb to the reflex of checking it every few minutes or seconds, I do so at the expense of thinking.
Solving the Alt-Tab Problem
You’ve been using alt-tab to bounce back-and-forth between your text editor and your web browser—you’ve formed a habit. You now click over to your Twitter client to see your friend’s latest updates, click back to your text editor, type a few sentences and hit alt-tab. What happens? Because of your habit, you expect it to go to your web browser, but because the last used application was your Twitter client, that’s where it switches. That’s most likely not what you wanted. What happens next? You generally pause to think, and then use double alt-tab to switch where you wanted to go, which is your web browser. Then you hit alt-tab to switch back to your editor (habit!) and instead it goes back to Twitter. The troubled cycle repeats until MRU’s ordered once again aligns with your habit.
All. The. Time.
String Calculator Kata In Python
For this kata, I’m slowing down intentionally – typing slower and inserting small, regular pauses so the viewer has time to look around a bit.
Fun With Secret Questions & Answers
My new bank […] configures a security question and answer for customer service calls. In addition to your SSN, date of birth, and mother’s maiden name they also ask you the question you specify and wait for the answer you’ve provided.
Hilarity ensues.
The real reason why Steve Jobs hates Flash
Very interesting theory of where Apple is heading in the next 5 years. While I can buy into this vision of Apple being wholly focused on the cloud, that begs the “privacy in the cloud” question, echoed by the author in the comments:
Trading off privacy management against convenience is going to be a big story over the next decade.
The question really is: are you willing to trade privacy for convenience?
The Anti-Mac User Interface
Written in 1996
"Instead of designing beautiful data-structures and elegant algorithms, we’re looking up the EnterpriseFactoryBeanMaker class in the 3,456-page Bumper Tome Of Horrible Stupid Classes (Special Grimoire Edition), because we can’t remember which of the arguments to the createEnterpriseBeanBuilderFactory() method tells it to make the public static pure virtual destructor be a volatile final abstract interface factory decorator."
The Brett Domino Trio performs a medley of Timberlake
This is awesome. Don’t miss the theramin at 3:15.
via thedailywhat
Metallica’s Death Magnetic - CD vs Guitar Hero
As another example, check out what the CD version of Metallica’s latest album sounds like.
HINT: the answer is shit. It sounds like shit.
As linked previously, modern mastering is homogenizing today’s music. If you don’t believe it, or think you actually prefer it, this video should change your mind.
"here are a few words for the huge community of legal professionals who make their living pursuing patent law: You’re actively damaging society. Look in the mirror and find something better to do."
Tim Bray in Giving Up On Patents
Denial of Expertise
This was the weekend those of us with high standards lost their remaining residue of patience for ideologues who hyperbolize about open systems without actually creating something people want to use.
Why records DO all sound the same
Because record companies are scared, they don’t want to take risks, and they’re doing the best they can to generate mainstream radio hits.
