The Missing "O"

Wiillow wiip for me

2008-01-10T17:04:00.000-05:00

Gather ye, and hear this sorry tale of the Wii I had and then lost.

I've been looking for a Wii for a few weeks now; I already have games, controllers, and a real desire to get into the first gaming system I've paid attention to since the NES. I've been sitting here, money in hand, calling every store I can think of to see when they might have some and who I need to bribe and how. No dice - all I hear is "we get them sporadically, and they sell out within minutes."

So imagine my shock when yesterday, a friend of a friend mentioned casually that he had two Wiis (due to a mixup both his wife and he bought one for their kid). He was more than willing to part with the unopened system at MSRP; I was writing the check like I was buying life-saving allergy meds.

Then today came and with it, tragic news: his wife, unaware of out transaction, returned the Wii to the store this morning.

Life sucks, and then you die, my friends.

Dude's iPhone ringtone

2007-12-05T02:12:00.000-05:00

Now that we can create custom iPhone rings again, here's my contribution:

Phone's ringing, dude

Download, drag to iTunes, sync to iPhone. It's a good ringtone, and thorough.

P.S. Here's a flat MP3 as well.

Sears' checkout script

2007-12-01T12:32:00.000-05:00

Complaining about the checkout line is a cliched rant, so instead of using a lot of adjectives to describe my experience buying underwear at Sears yesterday, I'll just give you the script. Use it as you see fit. Note that I had seen people in front of me go through this, so I was trying to get through it quickly by giving clear, direct answers without saying something obnoxious like "just ring it up and don't bother me with pointless questions".

- Hi, welcome to Sears. How are you doing?
- I'm well.
- Would you like to put this purchase on a Sears Credit Card?
- No, I don't have one.
- Do you have one?
- No.
- Do you know you can save on today's purchase if you get a Sears Credit Card?
- No, thank you.
- Would you like to get one today? [Note that they intentionally failed to interpreted my answer as as "no, and I don't want one."]
- No, thank you.
- That'll be $7. Are you familiar with the Heroes at Home program?
- No.
- Heroes at Home is a Sears program that helps rebuild veterans' homes. [Pause]
- Ok.
- Would you like to donate to Heroes at Home today?
- No.
- OK. Thank you for your purchase.

If you're going to have a script like this, do a favor to yourself and myself and the guy in front of me who can't speak English so he's confused and frightened about all these questions you're asking: put in a self-checkout line.

On Google Android

2007-11-05T13:59:00.000-05:00

Google announced today that they are developing a free software package available to cell phone manufacturers and providers. We don't know much, but based on what we know, I made these comments:

I hate to be the "less space than a Nomad, lame" guy, but this just doesn't sound that interesting [yet].

Google has written a software platform for mobile phones. Ok, cool.

We have no idea what it is, what it does, hot it looks, how it works, what phones it will work on, and how much Google there will be in a typical phone running Android (versus how much, say, T-Mobile). That's not cool at all.

It's a partnership announcement, like what MS keeps having us yawn about. We don't get to see a product for another year, and when we do, we have no idea what it will be like.

Best case scenario: it's excellent software, customizable (by the provider) in a tasteful way, guaranteeing a consistent, google-class experience.

Worst case scenario: it's good software, customizable to virtual unrecognazibility by the same people who have been delivering crappy phones all these years, guaranteeing pretty much the same kind of confusing, ugly, all-over-the-place, T-Mobile-class mobile phone experience we've had so far. Only it'll be more webby and it'll have ads.

The reason I'm leaning more toward the second option is that Google didn't say anything today that prevents or opposes it.

Later, in a reply to the claim that this is great because we'll get "useful and powerful free services":

What in this announcement gave you the idea that useful and powerful phone services will be free of charge to YOU? Your provider will still charge as much as they ever have. Good luck having them pass the software development savings on to you.

This is primarily a business partnership announcement, from Google to providers. Customers will be affected by this somewhere in the margins. Hence no demo, no product to show, no cool YouTube video to ooh and aaah over.

P.S. Oh wait, there is a YouTube video. And no, it's not cool or ooh or aah.

Do iPhoto developers know what saturation is?

2007-10-21T20:00:00.000-05:00

I use iPhoto for most of my day-to-day photo organizing and tweaking. Its image adjustment features keep getting better - now that it does three-point levels tweaking and shadow/highlight adjustment, it has kicked Photoshop off my "keep running at all times" list.

Except when I need to tweak saturation, which in iPhoto people's dictionary obviously means something other than "intensity of hue". Here are some examples. Let's say I have a "weak" photo which could benefit from having its colors kicked up a notch. Here's what happens when I do this in Photoshop (left) and iPhoto '08 (right, and '07 does the same) with the original provided in the middle for comparison. In both apps, I'm pushing the saturation slider about a quarter of the way to the right.

(Click for full size)

Photoshop does exactly what I wanted. iPhoto boosts the color some, but what it does more than anything else is darken the photo. I never asked for this. Sure, hue and saturation changes will change the perceived lightness and darkness of an image, but not like this.

To illustrate this better, let's push saturation all the way. Again, Photoshop on the left, original in the middle, iPhoto on the right.

(Click for full size)

Oversaturated, normal, DARK. What's going on?

P.S. Sorry about the ImageShacking.

Apple.com revisited

2007-10-15T12:11:00.000-05:00

About a year ago I took a look at Apple.com on this blog, pointing out the areas that underwhelmed in both their marketing and design. Since then, the website has been redesigned to welcome iPhone and Leopard, and also to follow web standards (what inspired that is anyone's guess - that mythical Apple excellence?)

Did they address the complaints I had? Or, rather, did I diagnose the weak spots well? In a phrase, by God, what archery! Here's my original list of needed improvements with notes on what's been fixed: (you can see a (slow) archive of the old website at archive.org)

make your Hardware and Software pages lickable.

The new Mac section certainly does that. Pretty pictures, a simple overview of all their products, an invitation to spend, spend, spend.

Compress that scattered footer found on most of your pages; I appreciate the white space, but I cringe at the lack of grid, balance, and composition in it. Also, those default blue links have to go. The .Mac page is on the right track.

The new footer is small and beautiful. Two lines, neatly organized, with a pleasant Newport blue. Ahhh.

Widen the Store page; it's still in 640 x 480 land, while most of your site has expanded way beyond it.

Yes sir!

Lose the menu pinstripe. I know, I know. They grow up so fast.

We'll do one better - we'll make it match Leopard.

RSS is orange - that's been decided. Drop the blue and ride with it. This applies to Safari and the rest of the desktop as well.

This probably isn't happening. The "Tiger blue" is Apple's current "this is new" marker.

Spice up the Retail pages; they're not bad, but they just don't make me want to visit and shop as much as pretty much everything else on the website does.

There have been some improvements here, but individual stores' pages still serve as reference material, not drool inducers. Oh well.

Google invents email, it seems

2007-10-11T13:35:00.000-05:00

Goodness gracious. If you're going to write a technology article for a fairly large publication, it's good to be familiar with some basic 21st century technology. This is from Michael Agger's piece on privacy issues some Google users are concerned about:

A few months ago, a friend told me that he had stopped using Gmail. This seemed crazy. Gmail is free, it looks good, and you never have to delete anything. He thought it was a bad idea to entrust your personal communication to one company: "You don't know what they do with your e-mail. Even if you delete it, it still exists on their servers." Another friend, a lawyer, told me how Gmail exists in a murky privacy area. Because the Google servers "read" your e-mail to place the ads that appear next to it, a note sent via Gmail may not be a protected communication in the same way that a letter sent through the postal service is.

That's absolutely true. Firing off an email through Google's email servers is not the same as mailing a letter. But it's exactly like sending an email using any other company's email server - AOL, Yahoo!, your ISP, or the hosting you bought for your domain. Your message makes its way through somebody else's computer and a copy of it also finds a permanent home there (unless your email provider doesn't do regular backups, in which case you're probably using your nephew's gaming computer as your email server).

Yes, Gmail also "reads" your email to provide targeted ads. They, and every other provider, also "read" it in order to send it to the recipient. None of this is done by humans and all of it encompasses ALL the information you emailed. Of course, your local ISP may not run that extra content scan to decide which ads to show you. But again, how is this automated, brainless extra step a privacy problem?

Email servers don't "read" "just" the recipient's address. If "to read" means "to parse", they "read" all of it; if it means "to understand and possibly misuse", they don't "read" it at all. We humans tend to see any attempt at targeted parsing as a Skynet-like AI that understands.

For instance, many email clients (programs or websites you use, not email providers) will warn you if you're sending a message without a subject line. Is this problematic? Should the application be going through my communication instead of just sending it? Here's a more interesting example: there are plug-ins for email programs that will flag you if your message contains the word "attachment" (or something similar) but you haven't attached anything to the email. This solves a common problem - typing "I'm attaching a picture of my dog" and sending the email without attaching the file. Is this invasive?

Of course, one can (and will) argue that this is different. These are limited features, and we don't have to use them. And there are certainly ways that Google could misuse the contents of your email; I'm not arguing that privacy isn't a problem on the Internet. But one thing it's definitely not is a Google problem. Every ISP transmits, stores, and "reads" your email. They all have similar access to it, should they wish to misuse it.

P.S. Worrying about Gmail's targeted ads is like saying that the USPS is threatening your privacy because they offer Media Mail rates, which apply to packages containing books, music, computer media, and such. That's the sort of vague idea that Google (or rather, Google's computer programs) have about the contents of your email.

Name your price - no, really, any price

2007-10-02T13:31:00.000-05:00

By now you may have already heard that Radiohead decided to sell their new album, In Rainbows, in a pretty novel way: you can pre-order a downloadable version from their website. Cost? Whatever. The price field is a simple text box where you're free to enter any amount between 0 and... well, $100,000, if you feel like it. (There's also a special "discbox" which includes vinyl and other goodies; a collector's item through and through.)

Quite shocking, isn't it? Today, the BBC ran this rather ironic comment from the band's spokesperson:

Most people are deciding on a normal retail price with very few trying to buy it for a penny.

Why do I call it ironic? Because if most people agree on the price, the choice of naming your own price becomes less important.

This sales experiment may turn out to be an example of the sort of illusion of choice that similar honor systems have long embodied. When given the option to pay nothing (or next to nothing) or "whatever they feel it's worth", people tend to estimate the worth of the item pretty close to its retail price. Paying $3 for the album would seem wrong somehow, even if you did it in the privacy and secrecy of your computer room. And you wouldn't want those nice Radiohead people to look at the orders and go, "hey, who's the tosser in Ohio who paid so little? Screw this - next album's going straight to Walmart." That's a caricature, of course, but the point is that most of us probably aren't "deciding" this too close to the conscious part of our brain. The social pressures at work do what they do.

Still, this does give the option of paying only $1 to the person who can't afford to pay more, or who expects to like only one or two songs on the album. This option wasn't available before... unless they downloaded the album illegally from a file-sharing network. That, of course, would have been against the band's wishes, but I'm betting that Radiohead wouldn't be thrilled if it turned out that most people were paying $1 either.

I'm not saying it's six of one, a half dozen of the other whether you pay $1 or download In Rainbows from, say, Soulseek. But it's pretty darn close, especially if everyone else did it. The reason they don't is that they see how five and a half is rather close to a half a dozen.

I'm, of course, assuming that the quote is correct and that most people indeed paid the retail price. For my part, I threw in $10 before hearing what others were paying.

2007-10-02T12:13:00.000-05:00

This is from AppleInsider's look at Preview 4.0, coming in Leopard:

As is commonly the case with Apple products, as it gets closer to perfection it becomes easier to criticize for not fulfilling every imaginable desire.

Tru dat.

Let it rain

2007-10-01T11:39:00.000-05:00

Problem: finding waterproof shoes for Portland's increasingly rainy weather.
Complication: I do a lot of walking, and dressy shoes or boots hurt my feet after a while.
Target: waterproof, durable shoes with the comfort and agility of sneakers.
Bonus: a reasonable price and simple styling. Also, a shoelace-free lacing system comes in handy (footy?) in the rain.

Solution:

Dear Benton

2007-10-01T00:37:00.000-05:00

Christa has been training a dictation app tonight (I won't name it.) She's been patiently talking to it for quite a while and finally used it to dictate this email to me:

dear Benton,

I'm trying this patient software for the first time. And when sending the result in without any corrections it's when you very funny and the. I hope that you will be paintings they also will then surely a master this "occasion" they. I had a failing barely notice to say.
Soon,
Chris tough

I know, right?

It's the little things

2007-09-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

If you've ever shopped for a snack in a grocery store - and I'm sure you have - I'm willing to bet you've missed an unsung treasure. I'm talking about those random, individually wrapped, two-ounce pieces of cheese you can find in the deli fridge. They're usually in a basket of some sort; miniature wedges and blocks looking like culinary rejects, but far from it.

Think of them as samples, only better than anything the nice old lady on aisle 5 will hand you on the end of a toothpick. I see these morsels of curd at my local store which is a notch above the Safeways of the world; I'm sure you have something similar in your neck of the concrete. Here are my reasons for worshipping at the temple of miniature cheese:

It's cheap. You probably won't find a chunk priced at more than $2.50, and I've seen them as low as 40c. It's getting impossible to find any food this cheap at the store, and the price-to-deliciousness ratio is off the charts here.

They'll feed you more than you think. Sure, one or two ounces doesn't seem like a lot, but eat slowly and let it fill your mouth like good wine, especially because...

These are typically not your orange cheddar, baby swiss, and monterey jack. Instead, because they end up on the side of the cheesemonger's block more often (because of their price and non-blocky nature), the varieties you'll find in the basket normally include French gruyere, goat milk gouda, fontina, leyden with cumin, and other flavor-packed beauties, at least some of which will be new to you, I'm sure.

Delicious handheld cheese for $1.50. Grab a piece of fruit (say, anything but a citrus) and you're eating like a Frenchman. That's a good thing.

Negative Nancy

2007-09-28T18:21:00.000-05:00

Some brief observations on two recent works of art:

The Beastie Boys' The Mix-Up lives up to its name: something got misplaced somewhere alright. Weak, uninteresting, and sadly funkless, it makes The In Sound From Way Out, their mid-1990s effort in the same vein, seem like an underrated jazz jewel in comparison.

I never liked Wes Anderson. I feel slightly better when I remember that I at least didn't have to pay to watch the 13-minute prequel to his new movie. It's called Hotel Chevalier and it's available on iTunes free or charge. It's also lame as hell; its mock gravitas and fake mockery (I don't even know what he's shooting for, to be honest) fill me with all sorts of questions, like why is this man directing movies instead of shooting classy nudes for Vogue?

All albums by Regina Spektor are interesting the first one-third of the time you hear them. Then they get quite viscerally annoying. She can write a good hook; too bad she proceeds to drive it into your earhole over and over.

Turn that iPhone upside downphone

2007-09-28T14:01:00.000-05:00

I take a lot of walks and I listen to a lot of podcasts. I'm also forgetful so I often find myself half a mile from my house, ready to enjoy some KERA Think or The Ethicist, but without any headphones to stick in my ears.

Back in the days of iPods, that would have been it. But iPhone has a speaker, right? Believe it or not, I've listened to entire podcasts by holding up the iPhone to my ear.

Now, podcasts aren't phone calls, so they won't come out of the smaller, ear speaker. The sound will come out the bottom, bigger speaker, so for optimal performance, flip your iPhone upside down. Really - the sound will be very loud and more "direct".

It's still a little goofy, but it beats listening to cars.

The iWFMS and more

2007-09-27T18:48:00.000-05:00

Today's iPhone update added two and a half big features, in my opinion.

The double-click preference is huge. I went for a walk after updating my iPhone and I used it constantly.

The double-spacebar trick is simple and cute.

The iTunes WiFI Music Store Store on iPhone (say 3x fast) is pretty neat - it loads quickly, searching is very simple (but informative) and it does what it should, and no more. I have one question, though. The following happened when I docked my iPhone after purchasing a track on it

1. The purchased song was copied to the computer
2. iPhone synced its usual dataset (bookmarks, contacts, etc).
3. The same song got copied back to the iPhone

Why the copy-back? Did the track change in some way? Was more info about it downloaded by iTunes after it was copied from the iPhone?

I can't say I care too much. The whole process was speedy, elegant, and enjoyable.

Salt to taste

2007-09-26T00:53:00.000-05:00

I'm one of those people who say that they never measure ingredients when they cook. Of course, when pressed, I'd say it's not ALL ingredients that I eyeball; in baking especially, that method doesn't work. But measuring black pepper, flour for roux, or olive oil? No way.

Except when I follow recipes closely, busting out the measuring cups and spoons, two things happen. If the recipe is good, it turns out really good. And, more importantly, as I measure out the pinches and smidgens, I think about how much I would have used had I been estimating. The measured amount is almost always much different.

The conclusion? My culinary instincts aren't all that great.

I wonder if there's a bigger lesson to be learned here - something about how, when you think you've got something all figured out and you don't need to double-check or refer to the manual, maybe you ought to do it anyway every now and then and calibrate your instincts.

You like?

2007-09-24T12:46:00.000-05:00

Here's the thing: A History of Violence really wasn't all that. It had some interesting scenes but overall it felt like the comic book it was. This is why I went to see Eastern Promises cautiously optimistic.

And hey, it was pretty damn good. It's not a very deep "analysis" of the Russian crime web, and it's not terribly insightful. But it has a solid story, it's economic with its characters and sets, and it lets Viggo shine. It's surprising how "small" the whole thing feels, actually. MY memory of it places all the happenings in two or three rainy days, a few brief encounters, and a mild dose of Godfatherish paternizing by calmly threatening father-figures. No biggie. Fun.

P.S. I still don't get the title "Eastern Promises". I'll feel really stupid when someone explains it to me, I know.

You crazy diamond

2007-08-31T10:13:00.000-05:00

Christ, have you seen a British action film lately? Or horror, or sci-fi, or that mix of those three that's been engulfing the latter two lately? It really makes you sigh as you realize you're bound for one of those anti-Hollywood rants in which ideas are few, cliches are many, and star power and cash are the evil high fructose corn syrup of the movie industry.

Look, it's not a pretty rant, and it's as tedious as some of the movies it attacks. But seeing Danny Boyle's Sunshine will surely make you revisit it. Sunshine isn't perfect, it's not a classic, it's fairly formulaic, and it probably won't do too well in theaters - but compare it to the more American alternatives. It will stand out as fresh, ambitious, energetic, and convincing.

The story: as our Sun shuts down and condemns the Earth to a hell frozen over, a manned space mission is approaching our beloved star with the intent of dropping a purely theoretical "Big Bang bomb" on it to restart its fiery core. The ship is a tiny tail trailing behind a giant solar shield whose exposed surface is rendered in an epic way, making it seem like for a moment, the cinema screen is burning brighter than it actually can.

This is the second "Icarus" mission, and as they lose communication with Earth, our crew run into the remains of the first, unsuccessful mission. The decision to go slightly off course and check it out is a risky one, and things go predictably haywire.

This sub-genre of people trapped in a ship on their way to some grand purpose is nothing new, and Boyle doesn't mess with its hallmarks: the crew interacts in a Lord Of The Flies fashion soon enough, the universe turns out to be a harsh mistress full of surprises, and there's plenty of techno-talk throughout.

But it works, mate. The characters are real, thanks in large to the only vaguely familiar cast. When he's faced with a cliche - say, an onboard computer that disobeys orders - Boyle builds up mounds of suspense around it so your poor reptilian brain, too busy with rollercoaster emotions, doesn't mind it. And this is far from popcorn entertainment - think 2001 without the obliqueness or Dark Star without the goofiness. It's spiritual and artsy, but it has one heck of a Sun God to be spiritual and artsy about.

In the end, the missteps come courtesy of Hollywood writing. There's an element late in the movie that's not quite lousy, but Sunshine would've done just fine without it. It feels a little too much like suspense filler, and Doyle does a very good job of directing it, but it's still... oh well, you'll either notice or you won't. In either case, that little distraction shouldn't ruin the movie.

Remember Aronofsky's Fountain, the staggeringly pretentious, three-era epic about love and immortality which played out like a stretched-out student film? How disappointing was that? Sunshine is more fun, more thrilling, and, heck, it's "deeper".

Tips for installing RAM in an aluminum iMac

2007-08-22T16:36:00.000-05:00

I upgraded the RAM on my brand-new, 24" iMac today; I got the chip from Crucial, who are a great deal compared to Apple's prices (though prices of upgrades on the new iMacs dropped significantly compared to previous models - they're almost competitive!)

The user manual will tell you to carefully place the iMac screen side down on a towel, then unscrew the door on the bottom of the screen, pull out the tab, click the chip in, replace the tab, and screw the door back in. Here's what I wish they had also said:

- The 24" iMac is big, so there's a lot of inertia when you're swinging it around. Think about how carefully you were going to do this, then be twice as careful.
- The RAM door is somewhat blocked by the stand.
- The bottom of the stand has graphic instructions for installing RAM. Useful.
- The screw they chose is a little odd. Don't use a very pointy, sharp screwdriver. Get a fairly dull one, otherwise it will just spin in place.
- The manual says that the chip will "click" in place. This has never been my experience with any slot, really - it's more like, it goes in 80% of the way, then you have to push it a little further, but it never "clicks".

All in all, it took about a minute once I found the right screwdriver to use. Whatever you do, don't strip the screw head - I'm an expert with stripped screws, and I would NOT want to be rescuing this particular one. It is, after all, attached to an important part of an expensive and beautiful computer.

New toy

2007-08-07T15:56:00.000-05:00

I just ordered myself one of these beauties:

New 24" iMac.

I'm upgrading from a three-year old PowerBook. After I sell it, my total cost for moving to a gorgeous new computer (and an all-in-one printer/scanner/whatever) will be around $400. Love it.

Can he swing from a web?

2007-07-28T10:49:00.000-05:00

Here's the good news: The Simpsons Movie feels just like a very long episode. A good one. To those who may note that it doesn't have that "classic" ring to it (like the Monorail episode or the Worst. Episode. Ever) I suggest that no Simpsons episode seemed destined for fame and quoting, and no gag was ripe for endless recreation until some time had passed and the audiences had decided for themselves what to idolize. So, be patient.

But ok, one thing in the movie is surely a great new meme: the spider pig. Show me the person who didn't think that was the funniest bit in the (pretty bland) trailers. The writers knew they'd struck gold, and it shows, especially during the credits. Sit through them.

By the way, the whole experience of the movie was almost ruined for me by the awful, awful trailers for assuredly horrible comedies that will be defecated upon us later this year. Daddy Day Care. Alvin and the Chipmunks. The horror! The horror!

It's the little things

2007-07-14T18:53:00.000-05:00

I never thought I'd find myself praising the Macy's website (of all things!) for their software design, but let's give credit where credit is due. Have a look at their store locator.

Notice anything interesting about the way they display their store hours? By default, you're shown today's hours (and tomorrow's). If you'd like their weekly hours, they're a click away.

I'm sure that over 90% of people who look for their stores want to know about today's hours. Whoever put together Macy's website thought of that, and I salute them for this unique (in my experience, anyway) feature. Kudos.

P.S. It's a really nice website overall. Beautiful typography in the main menu.

Cloverfield, Slusho, 1-18-08

2007-07-13T11:39:00.000-05:00

If you're not familiar with this "whoa, bro", soon-to-be-endlessly-satirized, untitled movie from J.J. Abrams of Lost fame, go devote three minutes to the teasy, teasy trailer.

Intrigued? There's a quick summary of what we know and don't know at MontyFood.

(The following is adapted from my comments on that page)

The number one fan-tease from J.J. Abrams is still Lost, and while the show has managed to stay intriguing and original (for the most part) some fans are still cautious about just how awesome and unpredictable the finale will be. Can it ever live up to the hype? If not, can it at least be great?

That remains to be seen. With Cloverslush (tm) J.J. has about ninety minutes to take us from comfort to discomfort to intrigue to mind-blowing. I wonder if the resolution of the movie (just what exactly is throwing the Statue of Liberty around?) will be shocking.

Most people I've talked to so far are fairly confident that it's either an alien invasion or a mega-monster. Those seem obvious enough, and I guess this is where we get to see what J.J.'s sensibility really is regarding these things: will it, indeed, be a giant monster, one completely unique in some way? Or will it be something completely unpredictable (a magical-realistic materialization of New Yorkers' fears and anxieties or some such thing)?

Or will it turn out that the trailer has little to do with the actual premise of the movie (the events in the trailer could be tangential, imagined, or otherwise irrelevant)?

Whatever the case, I'm looking forward to seeing what he thinks constitutes a good payoff on such titillating hype.

Fourth of July

2007-07-05T12:14:00.000-05:00

My sole commentary on the nature of this holiday - since it's almost impossible to experience any holiday today without analyzing what it means - will be to say that I did not, in fact, celebrate 18th-century United States' independence from Great Britain by blowing shit up in the middle of a nearby intersection.

Instead I worked until about noon - Christa had something to wrap up at her graphic design job in the morning - and we looked for a swimming hole to get lost in for the rest of the beautifully toasty day. We settled on Dabney, a small picnic spot thirty miles east of Portland. It was crowded like any other outdoor spot on the Fourth, but we found parking and some towel-space easily.

I love rivers, though it's a very academic type of appreciation; once I step in the cold, cold water, my tingling toes and shivering thighs interfere somewhat with my eyes feasting on the gorgeous landscape.

It was an excellent outing overall, despite my kvetching. We managed to get out of a parking ticket (or worse, a towing) on the way back. Now that we finally have my car fully registered and titled in Oregon - thank you, DMV - we were able to enjoy the simple pleasure of cruising around, listening to whatever the iPod shuffles next.

We picked up a tuna steak for dinner; grilled rare, with a bit of pineapple glazing, served with garlic mashed potatoes, and zucchini and mushrooms steamed with wine. Then, the 1986 cheeseball Labyrinth and some MST3K.

Happy independence!

Hot rat

2007-07-04T10:17:00.000-05:00

The Incredibles was pretty darn incredible, Finding Nemo was my favorite, and say what you will, but I loved Cars. Brad Bird's Ratatouille, however, is Pixar's best movie by far.

I'm dropping Bird's name because it needs to be known as well as that of, say, Howard Hawks. The man has made the three best American animated features in the last two decades, and it's not fair that he should be ignored just because he directs pixels a lot of the time.

And oh how grandly those pixels are directed here. From the icky sewer to the shiny restaurant, every part of this country-to-city, family-to-independence, nobody-to-star story is fantastically imagined and rendered.

But you'll hear all this from every critic in the world. This is essentially a film impossible not to love. Bon apetit.

(Hey, I blogged this from my iPhone.)

iDay impressions

2007-06-30T11:17:00.000-05:00

The week before June 29, my planned time of arrival at downtown Portland's Apple Store kept changing to earlier and earlier hours. Last week I figured showing up at 5 pm would be fine; yesterday morning, I woke up at 6 am and readied a backpack filled with entertainment, food, and seating accessories. The line meet-up buzz was psyching me out, and I had visions of arriving at Pioneer Place at 9 am to find an endless line snaking around several corners.

That didn't happen until, oh, noon or so.

I was the 15th person in line at 9, standing next to an initially cool, but eventually pre-hypertensic sixteen-year old; a 6'4" nightclub bouncer; two developer dudes who in another life could've passed for yours truly; and Cabel Sasser of Panic. And you thought we line-standers would all be crusty-panted losers.

A lot of things happened. I can't believe I brought a book, expecting long periods of dullness. In reality, I could hardly keep up with all the interesting conversations going around. I think I networked (oooh, big word) more than ever. Met some great people. Shared fresh cherries with the crowd. Counted down from ten before the doors opened. Went in in a psychedelic haze of black, white, wood, steel, and glass, being cheered on by the incredibly friendly staff (who had been distributing free coffee and bottled water earlier). I think I stepped in at 7:01 and stepped out at 7:03.

I drove home on a cloud, thinking to myself, now, be careful, don't get into an accident; you can't afford that with your iPhone in the passenger seat.

Crazy.

(I'll post a video of my unboxing later. It needs some quick editing, and I suck at video and I suck at YouTube.) I played myself a previously-prepared iPhone unboxing playlist at full blast:

1. Richard Strauss - Also Sprach Zarathustra
2. Richard Wagner - Flight of the Valkyrie
3. Carl Orff - O Fortuna
4. Godspeed You Black Emperor - Storm

Update: Here's the unboxing video. Be kind and understanding.

I feel bad for people who had activation issues. I timed the following steps during my setup process:

- Filled out the new customer form (30 seconds)
- Waited for approval and new phone number (15 seconds)
- Waited for activation (15 seconds - honest!)
- Synced (12 minutes)

It was easier than setting up my iPod or AppleTV. It was the best early product experience I've ever had. It was art.

We'll see how I really like it six weeks from now. I won't attempt an in-depth review of the device today; I'm still high on multi-touch candy. You'll get enough poorly written reviews this week, and whatever you hear, it won't be accurate in any real sense until you hold the little bugger in your hand. Which you will, sooner or later. And then you'll buy one. Yes, you.

What happens when you thicken the stew too soon?

2007-06-22T13:39:00.000-05:00

I'm not very knowledgeable about food preparation but I do love the art (and science) of it. I can put together a good dinner, though I may not always know exactly what my cooking methods do and how. I'd like to know, though. This is an account of an accidental experiment I performed yesterday.

I was making gumbo, and I prefer to thicken mine with filé rather than okra. It's an herbal thickener - a green, flavorful cornstarch, if you will. Traditionally, it's added at the table or once the stew is off the heat. However, in my rush to add the spices to the time-sensitive mix of brown roux and vegetables, I threw in the filé about forty minutes before its time.

So I wondered: what happens when you add thickener too early?

I had made gumbo a week before using the same exact ingredients, so I figured it would have turned out pretty much the same if it weren't for this slip of the measuring spoon. Any difference in taste or behavior could be reasonably attributed to the filé.

Here are my notes:

- After a few minutes, a light, white foam topped the stew (excess starch?) It was easily stirred back into the mix.
- Oddly enough, the stew seemed to thicken more slowly this time; I'm talking about the forty-minute-simmer thickening.
- I added a little more filé at the end and let it rest for ten minutes - It seemed to have no effect on the stew!
- ... so I added a little more at the table - still no additional thickening.

In fact, by the end of the night, I had added about three times the amount of filé called for, and the stew had rested for several hours. It was still soupier than the properly filé-ed one.

The gumbo still tasted delicious, though; I tried to compensate by making slightly starchier, harder rice to serve it over. It soaked up the excess water and the finished meal was very well received.

Conclusion? Add the thickener when you're supposed to, but if you don't, not all is lost. If anyone out there has a more academic explanation of what happened, let me know.

Find Address Book contacts without pictures

2007-06-06T10:51:00.000-05:00

My post about cleaning up and prettying up your OS X Address Book in preparation for iPhone sparked the following question: is there a way to create a Smart Group of contacts who don't have pictures?

Not a Smart Group, no - but here's a quick bit of AppleScript to do the same:

tell application "Address Book"

 set theGroup to make new group with properties {name:"No Pictures"}

 repeat with x from 1 to the count of people
  set thePerson to person x
  if not (the image of thePerson exists) then
   add thePerson to theGroup
  end if
 end repeat

 save addressbook

end tell

P.S. Of course, since this is not a Smart Group, you'll have to remove people from it as you add their pictures. Actually, just delete the whole group and start over whenever you run this - otherwise you'll have multiple "No Pictures" groups.

Prepare your computer for iPhone

2007-06-04T17:01:00.000-05:00

Before I got my first iPod, I made sure I was familiar with iTunes. I imported all my music and organized it to some extent. I knew I didn't want "Track 01" on my iPod.

Before I got my current PowerBook, I first bought a case for it. I didn't want to risk any damage to it, so I got a (sturdy but ugly) Samsonite case.

Before I bought my last car, I first bought a detailing kit. No, seriously.

Little steps like that make you feel like you already own the product, and the utility is sometimes important as well (my friend Larry just got a MacBook Pro and dropped it in the first few days of ownership.) With that in mind, here are some steps you might want to take to make sure your iPhone comes to a welcoming home on June 29th (or whenever mortals can get their hands on one).

Clean up that Address Book. Remove old and bogus contacts. Add those you have on your phone (or in your organizer) but not in Address Book. Don't be afraid to add info beyond just people's digits - birthdays and mailing addresses come in handy. Dig through your photos and find some nice 256 x 256 px pictures to use (actually, use any large image - you can scale and crop in Address Book). If you don't have any, that's ok - you'll be able to take them with iPhone.

Create some Address Book groups if you have a lot of contacts. My groups include: Work, Family, Biz (local businesses - I call the pizza place a lot), Mac users (in case I'm sending something Mac-specific), Croatians (I'm from Croatia and sometimes I want to notify everyone of something in Croatian).

Use iCal. Maybe you already do - even so, clean it up and think about what all events and appointments it would be helpful to have on your phone. Don't be afraid to add events far off in the future to your calendar - I've added events for 2010. When I read about a movie I might be interested in, I add its release date to my iCal.

Make an iPhoto Smart Album for iPhone. Even with 8 GB of storage, chances are you won't want to carry all your digital pics on your iPhone. Do what you might be doing with your iPod or AppleTV already - make a Smart Album (in the File menu) of your photos from the last 30 days (or less, or more, depending on how much of a shutterbug you are).

Which brings us to...

Make some good iTunes Smart Playlists. Smart Playlists are absolutely beautiful. If you have one of them fancy 80 GB iPods, you may thumb your nose at them, but... you shouldn't. Here, for instance, is what I sync to my 4 GB Nano:

- 2 GB of songs not rated 1 or 2 stars, last played more than 5 days ago, not skipped in the last 7 days, selected randomly
- 500 MB of songs rated 4 or 5 stars, not played in the last 30 days, selected randomly ("Old friends")
- 200 MB of songs not rated 1 star, added in the last 30 days, selected by date added ("Recents")
- 100 MB of songs, selected by rating ("All-time faves")
- All unheard podcasts

There are some other factors there (I don't include certain genres, like Experimental, and I filter out videos and podcasts) but overall, it's a nice mix of random, kick-ass, good-but-not-overplayed, and recent songs. This same thing will go on my iPhone, leaving room (hopefully) for all the other iPhone stuff.

Clean up your Safari bookmarks. Make some bookmark groups. Mine are Business, Local, News, Research, Mac, Nerd. Remove things you once bookmarked only temporarily, add things you visit often, but always type in. Shorten gigantic bookmark names. Order bookmarks within groups.

Nothing new, right? These are all good habits to get into on any computer, but I think you'll find that when you combine iPhone's miniature form factor and sweet features, you'll want to include things you've probably ignored so far (Address Book pictures, I bet) and de-clutter things you've thrown all over your desktop because you have ample storage and screen space (bookmarks, iTunes).

Your iPhone will thank you.

The excellent Perfect Thing

2007-05-28T12:10:00.000-05:00

Nesweek technology writer Stephen Levy's The Perfect Thing is a compact but thorough tour of the history of Apple iPod, blended with an analysis of the cultural impact of the device and some guessing about the magic ingredients that made it the Walkman, Nike sneakers, and hula hoop of a generation.

Levy's written on the history of Apple before (Insanely Great), and he's a knowledgeable and well organized pop-historian, armed with numerous anecdotes and memorable quotes. The titles of his books should clue you in to his attitude toward Apple. While he adds a very brief disclaimer about iPod not being really "perfect", that's just semantics. He's impressed by the company and he truly loves his little white bundle of musical joy.

Which is fine with me, since I share his excitement about this new digital entertainment era the Babel-like construction of which we've been watching for the past few years. Dreams of this new technology are becoming mainstream market realities - it's a new world of content that's overwhelming, but channeled simply and with authority; ubiquitous, but special; personal, but shared. Those conflicting qualities always appear to have been best married by people in Cupertino. Whether that's just perception or the true state of affairs in 2007 becomes clearer when each new sub-field Apple involves iPod and iTunes in - audiobooks, podcasts, portable video, jewelry-like electronics - gets quickly associated with Apple in terms of both market share and meme share.

Levy's history of events leading up to the popularization of "MP3" and digital music is clear, and at times, surprising to those of us who haven't seen it on a timeline before (who would've thought that iPod and Windows XP were launched at virtually the same time, weeks after 9/11?) His attempts to explain the cultural and market phenomenon that is iPod are admittedly modest - at some point, the sheer quality and appeal of the darn thing have to be worked into the equation in a major way.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter is "Personal", wherein Levy rolls his eyes at the curmudgeonly cultural critics who bemoan the "iPod culture" with its de-socializing white headphones and darn kids who dare listen to their Wilcos and Bjorks and Fergies instead of suffering quietly the urban white noise of the subway, the bus station, or the walk to the grocery store. Levy almost comes across as a rebellious fighter for his right to party alone if he damn well feels like it. It's not the only point at which he sounds younger than he must be (how about informing the reader of an insane 1966 Batman-branded album by Sun Ra and The Blues Project?) but it's a good one to learn to like the guy's style. Right on, dude. Right on.

I did not find "The Areas of My Expertise" funny

2007-05-24T21:20:00.000-05:00

Possible hate bait: I did not find John Hodgman's book The Areas of My Expertise funny in the slightest. Trying too hard, gratingly quirky, lazy. Sorry.

How not to bite your nails

2007-05-23T13:06:00.000-05:00

If I've ever ridiculed or scolded you for smoking or succumbing to another such nasty habit, it's time for me to apologize; not for the ridicule and scorn - those were probably well deserved - but for the hypocrisy. My name is Neven Mrgan and I've been an avid nail-biter all my life.

I've heard many explanations for it, and even more cures, and nothing made sense or worked. Or, it all made some sense and worked somewhat; not enough to stop me from cracking and chewing off my nails into a rather unattractive display. I've tried making myself aware of when I do it and forcing myself not to give in, but it can be really hard. If you don't bite your nails and you never have, I understand why you don't understand. In my case, it has nothing to do with the oral fixation of it (I hate the taste and the feeling). It's related more to the upsetting, obsession-fueling sensation of feeling the unevenness, the sharpness, the pointy, out-standing quality of my fingernails. It drives me crazy, like a thousand tags sticking out of the back of my T-shirt.

It's not rational, at least not entirely - while the biting has made my nails rough, they're not horrendous or medically worrying, I hope. For whatever crazy reason, my brain is irritatingly irritated by these imperfections. Perhaps that's a cop-out; that "crazy reason" could be something deeper - something from my childhood, a deep personality flaw, yada yada yada. I don't know and I don't know how to find out.

What matters is that I've currently adopted a fairly simple and effective way of dealing with the symptom. I carry a small nail file, and when frustration with my nails rears its ugly head, I pull it out and file away whatever tiny hill or valley upset me so.

So far it's worked beautifully. If I catch myself idly gnawing on my fingers, I remember the nail file immediately because it does something I could never do before - it makes my nails smooth and unnoticeable in a matter of seconds. See, part of my problem before was that biting a nail to fix its flaws is... well, pick your analogy. ("Like going at a bike with a chain saw to fix a loose seat post"? "Saving an oversalted stew by putting an army boot in it"?)

So why on earth hadn't I thought of this before? I mean, most people file their nails regularly. The trouble with that is, I would never reach that point since by the time I was near a nail file, my nails would be stubby little things, immune to further filing. So the key to the Neven Method™ is to have your trusty nail file on you at all times. You know the desire to bite comes when it wants to. Now that I have reasonably presentable nails, perhaps I can figure out how to rid myself of that desire altogether.

Classic album: Betty Davis (self-titled)

2007-05-18T23:52:00.000-05:00

You may have heard that Miles Davis, the king of cool, the daddy of kickass, was married to this aggressive, punky funk testicle-crusher during his most badass period (late 60s/early 70s). You may have also heard that she turned him on to the hard and acid rock of Hendrix and Santana. That's enough to make her an interesting character, but you may have also heard that she released albums of her own. Her self-titled debut is an energetic jam featuring a jaw-droppingly tight band (Sly & The Family Stone's drummer and bassist - need I say more?) and madly screaming soul vocals. If it sounds too grating and violently feminist to you, that's ok. She wouldn't have wanted it any other way. You can just shake and snap to the magnetic beats and riffs. It's dirty, mean funk, and it snaps and pops like Sly Stone's most drug-drenched tracks.

Book review: Kings of Infinite Space

2007-05-18T16:05:00.000-05:00

There I was in the library, unable to think of a single book to waste a few sunny afternoons with. I remembered that NPR had just done a piece on books that flew under the radar, and the one closest to me was James Hynes' Kings of Infinite Space, described as "Stephen King doing satire" or some such thing. It's a wonderfully entertaining book, written so smoothly and with such an ear for suspense, you won't even notice that by its end, not much has been "revealed" beyond what you've already learned from, say, Office Space. No matter - it's great fun, and the comparison to King makes absolute sense in that Kings of Infinite Space almost demands to be made into a movie; too bad it would be a little redundant for Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright to take on it.

Killer of Sheep is, alas, no classic

2007-05-05T10:53:00.000-05:00

I really don't want to be mean to Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep. I don't hold a grudge against the movie; it didn't upset or offend me. But even if the hype hadn't been so hyped, and even if the expectations hadn't been so high, the movie would've done the same to me: bored me to death.

It's a detached, semi-documentary depiction of life in the Watts in the late 70s. That's about all that's clear about it. It proceeds as a mix of student-film footage, complete with entire scenes set to soul and jazz standards, and very clumsily scripted, acted, and directed vignettes which aim to capture the lives of honest folk in an unfair world. The aim is sincere, but it misses the mark of realism - and most of the time, it misses the targeted emotional impact as well. The student-filminess brings that charming naiveté to many of the setups, and the grainy, muddy photography is often touching; however, it's just as often dull and needlessly opaque.

What all this reminded me of the most is Scorsese's Who's That Knocking At My Door, another amateurish film bursting with developing talent and riddled with cringing mistakes. Killer of Sheep is an important document, in many ways. But it's a sheep in a feature length's movie skin, and as such, it's barely competent, let alone impressive.

Mini-review of "Fracture"

2007-04-21T17:03:00.000-05:00

Fracture had a really cheesy script and poor Anthony Hokpins gets to play, like, Hannibal Lecter Lite(tm), but there's a lot to like about it too. Some of the smaller scenes are really well done, and Ryan Gosling rolls in with his Half-Nelson hangover and steals the heck out of the movie.

By the way, Gosling's vulnerable confidence (or what do you call it? Casual weltschmertz?) may get old very soon, but right now it's a very enjoyable new piece of acting.

On Hofstadter's "I Am A Strange Loop"

2007-04-21T16:56:00.000-05:00

I wrote this in an email to my friend Bill:

Speaking of books, I just finished Hofstadter's new work, I Am A Strange Loop. It's a strange book, indeed, though I guess that's just par for Hofstadter's course. His wife's death seems to have affected him quite a bit (most obvious sentence ever written?) His books following it are noticeably lacking in humor and wit. That's understandable, but also unfortunate.

It has many intriguing and entertaining parts, and he advances a novel idea or two, but it feels a little slapdash. It's puzzling to read a book of his that doesn't feel all that well... "organized", shall we say. Or perhaps that's the most Hofstadter thing about it. GEB certainly suffers from a similar lack of focus and outline, but it works in its charming, funhouse way.

Long-time followers will find much to appreciate but if it's your first book by him, you might go, Who is this guy and what's the big deal?

Business ethics

2007-04-09T13:29:00.000-05:00

It's awful to read a philosophy paper and walk away from it with nought but a joke, but I assure you that I got more than the following from Daniel Dennett's "Cognitive Science as Reverse Engineering: Several Meanings of "Top-Down" and "Bottom-Up". And even if I hadn't, one horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms, right?

The philosopher Samuel Alexander was hard of hearing in his old age and used an ear trumptet. One day a colleague came up to him in the common room at Manchester University and attempted to introduce a visiting American philosopher to him. "THIS IS PROFESSOR JONES, FROM AMERICA!" he bellowed into the ear trumpet. "Yes, Yes, Jones, from America," echoed Alexander, smiling. "HE'S A PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS ETHICS!" continued the colleague. "What?" replied Alexander. "BUSINESS ETHICS!" "What? Professor of what?" "PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS ETHICS!" Alexander shook his head and gave up: "Sorry. I can't get it. Sounds just like 'business ethics'!"

Twitter is a harsh mistress

2007-04-04T13:36:00.000-05:00

Oh, Twitter. How easy you are to both love and hate.

Has there been a more polarizing application/service/webthingy lately? You love its simplicity or you hate its pointlessness. You appreciate its brevity or you laugh at its minuteness. I tend to swing between the two, or sometimes - honestly, sometimes - I find myself just sitting there, contemplating how I feel about Twitter.

It's like those memorable ads which some say are insanely viral and entertaining, and others put down because they don't sell the freakin' product. Or do they, in some roundabout way? Who knows! That's how Twitter feels inside my head: it's a cute, bouncy ball of goodness which I sit across and ask, why? What are you for? And even when the answer is the zen cliche nothing, the fact is still that I sit there and ask the question. Twitter wins virally, but is that virally like ebola or virally like Dick In A Box?

I really like using Twitter and its sidekick, Twitterrific. It's fast and it feels fun for that half a second of typing, but then what? Here's the one thing I know I dislike about Twitter right now: there's no payoff. No satisfaction, no gratification. No comments, views, or any type of feedback. I send off short little bits of wit and rant as they come to me during the day, and they just disappear into the bureaucratic-like file that is my Twitter. I don't read them, but neither does anyone else, it seems. I have no friends on Twitter. If I did, perhaps the idea of Twitter as "social IM" would make more sense. But no one I've shown it to has wanted to use it. They ask that question again - why? Why would I want to use it?

So with no one to read and then tweet back (tweetback? is that a word yet?) what do I do? Send links to my tweets to friends? But then I might as well IM or email the tweet sentence itself - they're so short. It's not at all like blogging where I might put together a longer piece which it's useful to just link to for my friends. Sometimes those even get found by googling strangers. No such luck with tweets.

For me, though, the question is not why should I use Twitter? Too late for that - now its, why DO I use it?

I just don't know.

Dear John Gruber,

2007-04-03T11:30:00.000-05:00

Dear John,

I really like Daring Fireball. So much that when you ran your 2007 membership drive, I felt a pang of guilt about reading without supporting and decided to chip in. You've entertained and informed me - that's worth more than the $19 membership donation, but that's all I could throw in. When you announced that we cheapskates could also upgrade to one of your snazzy new t-shirts, I opened the wallet that tiny bit more.

But here's the thing, dude - I haven't received my membership key or any confirmation from DF. PayPal sent me receipts, sure - but nothing from you. I emailed you (using your support and comment addresses) and no word yet. I used your "lost membership key" thingy on DF and nada. But hey, I understand you're busy. I saw the thing on your Twitter about drowning in email. And maybe someone got blacklisted somehow - you did for me or I did for you - so emails are ending up in the land of hiccups and lost socks. I've emailed you before with little comments about DF and you've replied.

It's no biggie. I'd like my cool DF feed and with the summer approaching, the shirt would be pretty sweet, but it's not an emergency. Sorry to blog this. Keep typing up mini-storms.

Neven

UPDATE: Got an email from Mr. Gruber saying that some users' emails have, indeed, not been reaching him. All is well!

Got my AppleTV today

2007-03-22T19:54:00.000-05:00

I picked mine up at the Pioneer Place Apple Store - as soon as the folks who had pre-ordered it, it seems.

It's still syncing, and it's gonna take a while since I'm still on wireless-g, but it doesn't seem to matter anyway - I can stream stuff immediately, and it runs smoothly after 2-3 seconds of pre-buffering. I love it so far. There was less setup than with an iPod.

Here's the Appleporn:

Unboxing gallery

The Lives of Others is captivating

2007-03-15T15:50:00.000-05:00

Ever since Dana Stevens called the excellent German movie The Lives of Others "the best surveillance movie since The Conversation" my cognitive muscle has been itching to see it. Coppola's The Conversation, its inspiration, Antonioni's Blow-Up, and another homage, De Palma's Blow Out are a fascinating trio of films about Hitchcockian characters who find themselves entangled in something more than their obsessive, nerdy natures are prepared for. Watch them back to back, starting with Coppola, who puts together a minimalist character study; move on to De Palma's entertaining bit of film-student/slasher/audio geek nerdvana, and end with Antonioni's post-everything meta-trip. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's - don't you just love that name? - The Lives of Others would make a decent addition, but it's a different movie: political and psychological to a degree none of the above three gets into.

I can't add much to Dana Stevens' excellent summary and notes, so go read it. The film is quite expertly done, with that effortless European gravitas. It's not afraid to go big when the themes warrant it - you just know a shot of crying over a piano piece would seem cheap in a Hollywood flick. Not here - Germans are known for holding back their emotions when they probably shouldn't, so showing them works better than expected. Even the last scene's triple pun is endlessly likable.

3.14.2007

2007-03-14T12:49:00.000-05:00

Happy Pi Day, everyone.

Neven at Work: happy Pi day
Will Crowe: u too
Will Crowe: forgot about it until u mentioned it
(10:20:53) Neven at Work: well, i hope you made reservations. restaurants will be packed tonight.
Will Crowe: 4 sure

Anchovy Penne recipe

2007-03-13T20:55:00.000-05:00

This is not just for anchovy lovers - you'll be using the fish mostly for its saltiness, so those who always object to this delicious food may not even notice.

1 lb Penne rigate
4 ounces anchovy fillets in oil, removed form oil, reserving some oil
¼ cup olive oil
2 tbs. parsley, chopped, to taste
3 cloves garlic, chopped
black pepper, to taste
Parmiggiano, grated, to taste
Boil the pasta per packaging instructions. Drain.

Add about 3 tbsp of olive oil to the same pot and lower heat to medium-low. Add the anchovy fillets and stir, breaking them up some until they get very soft (about 1 minute). Add the garlic and stir.

Add the penne and stir to coat. Remove from heat, add more olive oil (to taste), add the parsley and black pepper, and stir some.

Serve immediately with grated cheese.

MacGourmet recipe file

A hand vac that totally sucks

2007-03-13T18:57:00.000-05:00

We've just recently moved into an old house with wood flooring, which is quite nice... except for all the dust bunnies and hair balls that magically assemble in corners all day. Sure, a carpet would be just as dirty, but at least it would hide the nasty stuff. The room I spend most of my day in also happens to be small and packed with furniture - two desks, a bed, two tables, and a large bookshelf - so there are lots of nooks and crannies to get clogged up with nastiness, and they're not easily accessible with standard vacuum cleaners. Enter the hand vac.

A good, small, handheld vacuum cleaner will make you clean more efficiently and more often, because it's so little trouble. Grab it from its charging base, hit the button, and watch the dirt disappear. It's instant gratification. Today I bought a new one after some research. Here's what I've learned.

Stay away from Black & Decker vacuums. I would extend that recommendation to all their small household appliances, though some would disagree. Stay way from Sunbeam and other totally cheapo brands. Go for something in the 10-15 V range if you expect to do any real cleaning. Look for brush and precision attachments. Here's what I came home with today:

Shark Cordless Hand Vac

This thing sucks. Literally. When I first used it, I thought it was going to warp the floor boards. It bucked and twisted in my hand like an energetic bronco stallion. It roared and purred and got its job done very, very quickly and effectively. I can't speak for its battery life or longevity as I've only had it for a day, but the thing definitely cleans.

A interface makeover for Twitterific

2007-03-13T12:09:00.000-05:00

A lot of people are really impressed by Iconfactory's Twitterrific, a Twitter client. I like it myself, but I think it's small and cute UI could be even smaller and cuter.

Here's the original Twitterrific:

And here's my idea:

The changes aren't huge, but I have reasons for them. First I wanted to drop the embedded rounded boxes which just added to the window size. I also didn't like the unnecessary rounded horizontal rule that would show up in "short" mode. The entry box needed to be bigger and stand out more.

The "characters left" counter is surprisingly literal in Twitterrific. I replaced it with a Safari-style text box/progress bar which fills up with blue from the right as you type.

Things Windows users don't say

2007-03-13T12:07:00.000-05:00

And you know what? He was right back.

Spicing up iPhone's black background

2007-03-08T20:28:00.000-05:00

I was wondering why the Home view on the iPhone features a flat black background. It saves battery, I suppose, but it's also a little boring. Here are some quick mock-ups of what it would look like with background images.

Click for full-size.

Nice, but feels like bastardized Mac OS X.

Colorful, but too busy.

Way too busy.

I actually prefer the black. Can you do better?

All images here are Apple's. No hard feelings?

Dumpster art in Dunedin

2007-02-28T12:44:00.000-05:00

In June 2004, my brother Daniel heard from a former design professor who was an art council member of some sort for the nearby city of Dunedin, FL. The city had an eyesore problem: the cozy downtown area, usually filled with on-foot tourists, featured three giant waste receptacles (i.e. dumpsters) right by a popular bike trail. They had to have them there for the myriad local restaurants to use, so they thought, hey, instead of fencing these ugly things off, let's decorate them with "art." The city posted a call for submissions and Daniel and I thought we'd give it a shot.

Two other artists were considered and we were all invited to present our ideas to the council. In all modesty, I think we did a good job of it. Daniel's designs were jovial, colorful, and interesting, and we did something I advise every designer to do when working on a piece that will be displayed in some large, public manner: we put together mock-ups of what the illustrations would look like on the actual dumpsters. It took five minutes to take some pictures and ten minutes of layer work in Photoshop, and it seemed to make all the difference - the council people kept praising the idea of showing the finished work. Apparently another artist had just brought in a bunch of photorealistic paintings without much consideration for how this would look on the side of a big, green, irregularly-shaped hunk of stinky metal.

We got the contract and were given keys to a giant city-owned garage downtown. They delivered the dumpsters and gave us a month to make them pretty. It was a fun month - we'd drive over before and after work, slap some paint on, and sweat to my iPod in a non-airconditioned tin box in June. We were done well before schedule and everyone seemed very pleased. You can see the process documented in photos in the set below. Good times.

Photoset at Flickr.

A perfect example of what happens when you don't have a designer

2007-02-26T18:07:00.000-05:00

Adriano here, hijacking Neven's blog for a bit of a design-rant-cum-identity-review.

Recently, Cedae, the state-owned company that provides Rio de Janeiro with water and sewage services, introduced a new logo as part of a "major brand restructuring". Even though their previous logo was instantly recognised by anyone in the entire state and performed well on settings as diverse as cast iron manhole covers and sponsor placards at football stadiums, the company felt the need to get with the times and present a new, fresher image. Their process for doing this, however, is a perfect example of how not to do it. I've seen my fair share of botched redesigns (refer to Neven's July '06 post for perfect examples), but this takes the cake. Instead of taking the usual path of hiring a design firm and doing a full identity package, Cedae decided to completely do away with the overpaid turtleneck-clad, buzzword-preaching types and go straight to their own employees. That's right. For a while, Cedae employees could submit their own ideas for the company's new logo, the best of which would be selected by a group of managers (still no designers involved) to replace the 30-year-old workhorse.

Cedae's now defunct logo.

The result, as one would expect, was a complete trainwreck. The new logo, if it can even be considered as such, is a masterclass in conceptual frailty and complete disregard for real-world applications. It looks like something a 10-year-old would do for a school project. No, scratch that, I think my cat makes better-looking stuff in her litterbox.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Any manager with half a brain and an iota of aesthetic sense would stop this idea dead in its tracks, but that would be too good. This logo made its début in Rio last week and Cedae is now working with an advertising agency to create a style guide outlining the usage of the new brandmark.

It's interesting to point out, however, that the end result is merely the tip of the iceberg here. The people who submitted their ideas in the contest aren't to blame for the disaster that followed. It's all in the process. Why would the managers trust their employees, who are not designers, with redesigning the company's logo?

Rio's energy utilities company also went through a recent rebrand, but luckily they did it the right way. Instead of drastic change, they opted to keep the recognisable values of their old logo, while making it look fresher and more in line with the times. And they hired a design studio to take care of the whole process.

Light's old logo, introduced in 1966.

The new brand keeps the overall shape of the old logo, but with a fresher feel.

This post was inspired by Dr. Mauro Pinheiro's article in Portuguese on Feira Moderna. If you speak Portuguese, I strongly recommend you read his article for a far better and broader look at this whole imbroglio.

(Neven: It's quite an instructive disaster, actually. If your only guideline for creating a logo is not to do anything Cedae did - managerially - or anything their logo does - graphically - you're off to a good start. My favorite part of the, uh, design, is the attempt at conveying ripples of water. Now when I look at it, I envision turds swirling down a toilet bowl in Rio.)

B-movie icons for my external hard drives

2007-02-25T18:01:00.000-05:00

I'm not particularly creative when naming my computers, iPods, vehicles, and other cute objects. My external hard drives - one for media, one for backup - have so far been named "Seagate" and "Backula" (har har). Last night I decided to adopt a new naming strategy: B-movie monsters. So I present Gamera and Mothra, with shiny new icons.

Pan's Labyrinth is a ridiculously dumb movie

2007-02-15T22:48:00.000-05:00

I love a good fairy tale, and I love FX fests even if the visual candy comes at the expense of storyline, acting, and plain old sense-making (I'm looking at you, Argento, you goofball). Gritty, realistic dramas often purposefully dumb down the visuals to play up the story, so visually-centered films should be able to mirror that and grungify the narrative. I mean, look at Antonioni.

But wait, none of this has anything to do with Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth. The previews sure made it seem like a fantastic extravaganza of fauns, fairies, labyrinths, and, umm, ok miscellaneous other magical entities and settings. Not only is it not that; it's dumb, bewildering, frustrating, and entirely devoid of wonder.

It features two story lines: in the real world - Spain, 1944 - a remarkably unremarkable girl called Ofelia moves with her pregnant mother to a military outpost in the woods, run by The Captain (of general Franco's Generic Sadistic Assholes forces). Ofelia attempts to escape the harsh realities of World War II by fantasizing away into a labyrinth - I mean a book - I mean a door in her wall - oh what the hell, just arbitrary fairy tale locations. We are treated to a few brief (and disjointed) excursions to this underworld, which make up some sort of series of tasks for Ofelia, though the rules and motivations behind it all are, shall we say, hazy.

That's it for the magic - really. She gets a key from a toad, a knife from behind a lock, and eats grapes she was clearly instructed not to touch, a pointless rebellion for which she gets chased by a cool-looking but ultimately harmless geriatric monster. Lesson learned?

A good eighty percent of the movie, however, consists of The Captain dealing with resistance fighters in the nearby woods while announcing menacingly at every occasion his intent to merely harvest Ofelia's mother for a proud male offspring. As muddy a villain as he is, The Captain is played with gusto, and del Toro's background in horror film comes out quite clearly here. Scenes of physical and psychological violence are imagined masterfully and rendered in exquisite detail. Scenes of normal human interaction and all attempts at levity - eh, not so much.

It breaks down like this: most of the movie is a depressing, emotionally and historically childish war story full of plot holes. The little bits of fantasy are more confusing than enchanting; too short to have an effect, too arbitrary and too removed from the rest of the movie's world to even register emotionally. Remember how in Wizard of Oz the fantasy mirrored the real world? That was a tad cheesy, but it worked like gangbusters. There's not even an attempt at connecting anything in Pan's Labyrinth - really, if you can find some analogy, metaphor, or message here, do let me know.

Also, I'm not trying to spoil anything, but don't bring kids to this one - the ending is just awful, and not because this is an "adult fairy tale." (shame on you, Ebert). Oh no, adults should hate it too, for much deeper reasons.

What a failure. It's a very oddly executed movie, ranging in badness from lame to dumb to offensive, but mostly it's just silly, and not likeably so. For god's sake, there's very little Pan and NO labyrinth in Pan's Labyrinth. Yeesh.

P.S. Christa pointed out that perhaps there was an attempt at a parallel between The Captain's "just following orders", as described by The Doctor, and Ofelia's refusal to do so. If so, it's an appropriately clownish link. The Captain does not seem to be following any orders. He's a free-spirited villain, "with no one above him." And if you've seen the movie, remember Ofelia's prize for not obeying the evil - I mean good - I mean evil - faun? Yeesh again.

Cool is as cool does

2007-01-26T12:08:00.000-05:00

Oh, Christian McBride. You're a cool dude, really. You're a bespectacled, turtleneck-wearing jazz bassist - who am I to argue over coolness with thee? But, hey, dude, I just thought we'd jive about your piece for NPR. You know, 'Be Cool', about how the cool is gone.

I'll have to disagree in a very broad way, first of all - I don't think "people" are getting meaner. Some are mean, some aren't, but I think the global trend is toward greater tolerance and coolness. Anyway, we can argue over that next time we jam.

But look here, about your article - people used to get much worse than the third degree for the color of their shoes, shirts, caps, and - yeah, skin. Remember?

And cell phones - they're better than land lines. Honest. You can call your kids while you're taking a stroll to the local pizza shop. You can get invited to a friend's hastily put-together party while enjoying soup at the restaurant. And oh, yeah, you can also use it at home - many do. Cell phones also have these cool "silent" and "off" buttons. Man, I wish my landline had that!

Oh, I don't mean to be a smartass, but have you ever actually been to a coffee shop? I'm sitting at one right now, as a matter of fact. And I'm working. On my laptop. The place is super-chill - lots of high school kids trading gossip, old dudes reading the newspaper, several moms with their kids. No stress, honest. About a third of us are on our laptops. I don't know what's on other people's screens, but the work-related gobbledy-gook on mine isn't stressing me out at all. Hey, if you have a stressful job, that's your problem, not whether you do it while having coffee or not.

Technology is cool. Coffee shops are cool. So, hey, I'm with you 100%. Let's all cool it up and cool it down to max. You know, some would say that includes not kvetching over the realities of modern urban life. Just sayin'. Peace.

The Twelve Steps

2007-01-12T10:49:00.000-05:00

Hey, you know what I like? House. You know what else I like? Spiritualized. And Sly Stone's tortured, self-conscious-druggie days. I'm thinking maybe I was an addict of some sort in a past life.

Last night's "rehab episode" of House reminded me of Spiritualized's "rehab song". I'm a fool and a knave for trying to convey the kickassedness of a driving rock tune on a blog, but go listen to it on iTunes or something. Or just read the lyrics and imagine them delivered by a punky, energetic British dude over a pumping beat and bassline covered with a mess of feedback, roaring guitars, blues harmonica, cinematic strings, and EMT sirens. Ready?

The Twelve Steps

If you’ve got the money for a rehab cure
You ain’t got a problem you can’t afford
I was very nearly clean y’know
Cos I only had twelve steps to go

The only time I’m drink and drug free
Is when I don’t have to pay for what I need
That’s rare indeed

If your willpower’s weak, temptation’s strong
Lord knows how you’re gonna get along
And the worst thing about your kind of disease
Is you know who can charge whatever she pleases?

It's 28 days for 13 grand
Better go get myself an insurance plan
Cos she’s my man

I ain’t got to where I’m going to
By hanging ‘round with people like you
But then again I ain’t never got
Anywhere I wanted to get to

I ain’t got to where I’m going to
By hanging ‘round with people ain’t my friends
But then again I ain’t never got
Anywhere I wanted in the end

If you got the money for me how come
You ain't got a problem you can't afford
I was very nearly clean y’know
Cos I only had twelve steps to go

The only time I’m drink and drug free
Is when I get my drugs and drink for free
That’s for me

If your willpower’s weak, temptation’s strong
Lord knows how you’re gonna get along
And I don’t think I’m gonna find Jesus Christ
So I’d rather spend my cash on vice

28 days for 13 grand
Better go get myself an insurance plan
Cos she’s my man

Do some knitting, get some rest
Group therapy gets me depressed
You might get banned if you relapse
They’ll take you back when you got some cash

You're just as likely to find inner peace
By buying your stuff from off the street,
C’mon, C’mon

1 – Kill the fun
2 – Ain’t got a clue
3 – Get in your tree
4 – Get out the door
5 – Get a life
6 – Aha Y’know?
7 – Remember 6
8 – Fuck being straight
9 – Get in your bed
10 – In bed again
11 – In bed again
12 – Go back to 1 and start, start all over again

iPhone iPhone omg iPhone

2007-01-09T20:46:00.000-05:00

Dude.

iPhone. Its name is iPhone. Its name is iPhone.

There are so many things I want to giggle like a little girl about, but here's just one: we have just been given 6 months to save up some dough and dump our lame-o wireless providers. And we'll take it, and we'll love it.

Kashi GoLean Crunch! is the greatest cereal in the world

2007-01-06T20:28:00.000-05:00

It's rare that I proclaim a single product THE best in its category. When I do it, I probably change my mind in a matter of days, so that kind of strong opinion doesn't count. But this one does; I've held it for a long time, and I'll bet money on it (if there is a market for bets on these things).

Kashi GoLean Crunch! is the greatest breakfast cereal in the world.

I know, I know. You're probably thinking one of two things: what the heck does that mean, "greatest", or, you're not talking about that hippie organic crap, are you? I am, but let's get to the first point first.

You may prefer a different kind of cereal, or you may like another brand for personal reasons, but I think that my evaluation of Crunch! (and it's the only product that deserves its exclamation point through and through) is as rational and reliable as that of a wine connoisseur who tells you that hey, no matter what you "prefer", White Zin is totally balls. I'm not going to pursue the analogy any further because I lack the expertise both as a wine reviewer and a cereal reviewer, so, in short, assume that I'm right and hear me out.

My ideal cereal should satisfy the following conditions (these were arrived at before Crunch! entered and subsequently rocked my world):

1. It should be crunchy, as in "not soggy." It should start out this way and get just juicy enough to eat, but never mushy or fall-aparty.
2. The flavor should be free or weird, overpowering, de-cerealizing tones such as bubblegum-like fruit and sweet chocolate.
3. It should have a varied texture, falling within and covering fully a strict range from medium-small to medium-large: no dusty powder on the bottom of the bag, no eerily uniform tiny pieces (I'm looking at you, Cheerios), no giant ones (sorry, Chex). It should feature twigs, squares, clusters, mega-clusters, and each spoonful should be perfect.
4. It should be sweetened, but not dessert-sweet. Grain-friendly flavors like honey and almond are welcome.
5. It should be packed with nutritional desirables (protein, fiber) and low on sugar, sodium, and fat.

There we go. Now, if after seeing (and devouring) Crunch! you go, heeeey, that list sounds like a post-hoc description of this Kashi stuff, well, what can I say. I can say, "no, that's always been my golden standard."

And as for the hippie factor, look, it's advertised as a health food. Duh, it's cereal. But it costs $2.50-$3.00 for a 15 oz box in most places. It doesn't claim to contain ginseng, witch hazel, dragon's breath, and it's not Level-five vegan. It doesn't even have a bearded prospector on the label. You can buy it, it's ok. Tell them I said so.

Dear Prudence on dealing with religious friends

2006-12-29T16:45:00.000-05:00

Well, this one just begs for me to comment. I won't repost the whole thing; read it here:

Dear Prudence: I'm tired of my friend attributing a successful surgery to God

Where I agree with Prudie:

No, don't let your friend know that you're annoyed by their religious displays. There's a bigger issue at hand right now and you should instead exercise your patience and polite, noncommittal generalities when the god-talk comes up, just as you do when your friends ask if their child's frightening drawing wasn't the most beautiful thing you've ever seen: "yes, honey, that's very nice."

Where I disagree:

...But let's not sing unnecessary praises either. Prudie does NOT know that the newly religious friend dealt with the matter better because they became more religious. Prudie does NOT know that the the medical staff was thanked beyond complimenting them on being such nice tools for J.C. to use; Prudie should understand the difference between that and thanking someone for their hard work. And no, you should not commit the ethical blunders of lying and encouraging behavior you don't endorse as advised by Prudie in the last sentence.

Simply focus on the wholly human medical miracle that took place and gently ignore the prayer-talk without getting into arguments about it. "I knew your daughter would be fine - she's a strong little thing!" instead of "Yeah, well explain why Jesus didn't heal hundreds of millions of other people in the world, HUH?" Not because the latter isn't a valid point, but because you're trying to preserve a friendship.

P.S. To clarify that last paragraph: lying by omission is still lying, but given the limitations of the human condition, all you can hope for is to keep your friends on the best possible terms. This will include either complete avoidance of a topic (omission of your true feelings by selectiveness) or outright falsehood (pretense of agreement with your friend's feelings). Omission is, in my humble opinion, the wiser option.

Some people actually like the Adobe CS3 icons

2006-12-22T08:34:00.000-05:00

Like this guy.

Look, I don't care that the icons are "recognizable" now. A series of flat squares of different colors would sure as heck stand out in the Dock and be distinguishable as well. How's that - just remove the two-letter abbreviations. No one calls Adobe Bridge "Br" anyway. And what's "Jr"? Junior what?

Also, notice all the non-letterized icons. They make the key point in this miserable failure: if Acrobat Reader's funky triangle is so well known that it should stay its own symbol, how about focusing on creating equally impressive icons for the rest of the suite? I thought that's what icon designers did.

The most frequently repeated cliche in marketing is that any exposure, even exposure that provokes negative reactions, is good for the business. It's baloney. Regardless of that, though, and regardless of the recognizability of these icons touted by some people who need to go easy on the crack, can we agree that this is ugly? Even if it magically increases your productivity by .8%, please admit that it's basically non-design.

Inquisitor - search box enhancer for Safari

2006-12-20T20:56:00.000-05:00

You know how Firefox's search box completes as you type, gives you the option of picking the search engine to use on the fly, and shows suggested search terms? That's a cool feature. If only Safari had something like that.

Well, if you were willing to fork over $5, it did; David Watanabe, a developer of fancy-schmancy Mac apps, created a Safari plug-in called Inquisitor. It replicated the above functionality in a more graphic way than Firefox. This worked well, though not always perfectly, and not everyone wanted to part with $5 (the very nerve of the developer...!)

Ok, no more excuses. If you use Safari, head on over to the Inquisitor website and get a FREE copy of the new version. It has all kinds of sweetness all over it. Here's what it looks like when you search for things with its help. It's completely and fully rad.

Apple should just buy Inquisitor, CoverFlow-style. David deserves more than donations and Safari users deserve Inquisitor.

Microsoft.com - new design, Vista-like

2006-12-15T10:39:00.000-05:00

What an odd combination of strange elements. Click below for a screenshot of the Microsoft.com design launched today, and for the same image with comments on the design added by yours truly.

P.S. The screenshot was taken in IE 6 on a Windows box. When I first saw the page in Firefox, I thought it was broken because of all the disjointedness.

Tangerine 1.0 review

2006-12-09T15:48:00.000-05:00

I tried the beta version of Potion Factory's Tangerine, a generator of mood-based playlists, and found the application beautiful but essentially useless.

Version 1.0, out now, is slightly enhanced, equally pretty, and still producing the same (non)results. My top twenty "fastest" and "most intensive" tracks (out of a library of 6,000) include a scratchy Django Reinhardt ballad, Neu!'s "Neuschnee" and Tricky's "Ghetto Youth" - tracks I'd describe as fairly slow and mellow. It bears repeating: no matter how I twiddle Tangerine's (precious few) knobs, I get good-as-random playlists.

Also, your iTunes-purchased songs will not be included in the analysis; I understand that Potion can't legally break Apple's DRM in order to analyze these songs, but it does cripple the whole enterprise significantly.

Keep the UI and rethink the algorithm.

On sad news

2006-12-06T16:36:00.000-05:00

The body of James Kim, a senior CNET editor, has been found following a long search which had previously recovered his family alive and reasonably well. James had left their car, stranded in Oregon mountains, to look for help. This was a brave, if ultimately ill-advised and tragic, decision. It's not possible for me to relate in any meaningful way to the feelings of his loved ones, so here's merely hoping that they proceed strongly and that our memory of him is a good and long one.

Having said that I must comment at least briefly on the lamentably predictable response from many, many observers. To quote the above-linked CNET article:

Upon hearing the news, CNET readers immediately began to post their condolences on message boards and via e-mails.

"My family and I will continue to pray for James' family...When I try to put myself in his shoes, I think James did what every parent would do for his family. James, God bless," one reader wrote.

Wrote another: "Please realize that there were so many people praying for his safe return...I'm sorry!"

Let's be honest so as not to make mockery of Mr. Kim's unfortunate death: prayers for his safe return did nothing, since prayers do nothing for those prayed for. Prayers for his family will have the same result.

The limited (and, let's face it, dishonest) ways in which prayer "works" are: it mobilizes people to contemplation and action, and it lets victims know that they have our support. It is unnecessary, fruitless, and mildly contemptible to hide that kind of basic human compassion behind a mask of falsely hopeful and ludicrously ineffective chanting that is Christian prayer.

I understand that it may have consoled the Kims to know that others were praying for them, and it may console them now to know that prayers continue. This, however, is merely a baffling product of our tradition of praying for prayer's sake. We could have consoled them in countless other ways free of the pretentiousness and pointlessness of prayer.

In times of uncertainty and grief, let's express our sympathy honestly. Saying "I pray for you" usually means no more than "I think of you" anyway. Let's leave fictitious divine beings (who, were they to exist, don't seem to care either way) out of it.

Hello from Seattle, a roll of eyes from Cupertino

2006-11-27T15:42:00.000-05:00

I won't make fun of Microsoft for the way its Zune tries to out-iPod the iPod.

(Oh, Microsoft makes the Zune? - Aha. I know the packaging doesn't say it, but yeah, totally.)

There are three reasons: 1. Everyone's doing it, 2. If you have to copy a music player, copy the iPod, and 3. A lot of iPod's features are rather obvious and don't need to be reinvented.

But I will offer a pitying chuckle at the way Microsoft just can't come up with anything new or interesting (let alone sweet) even when they're trying to be nonchalantly friendly.

Here's the back of the Zune. And if you thought that was only similar to Apple's "Designed by Apple in California" in spirit, here's something of Apple's it's more similar to in a more literal way: the Apple Mail icon.

Another obvious symptom

2006-11-14T15:10:00.000-05:00

Upon arriving at work yesterday, I realized I had forgotten my cellphone at home. This was inconvenient since I was supposed to call my dentist. My first instinct was to ask a co-worker for her cell phone to place the call. It took several seconds of staring at the puzzled look on her face for me to realize that my office had a corded, land-lined, garden-variety telephone.

Enabling the "Edit in external editor" menu option in iPhoto

2006-11-10T20:29:00.000-05:00

While iPhoto is neat for basic photo editing, I primarily use Photoshop for serious adjustments (love that Shadow/Highlight tool). I was surprised to find that when I Ctrl-clicked my photos, the "Edit in external editor" option was grayed out. Here's how to set it up.

In iPhoto Preferences, under General, set "Edit photo:" to "External editor" (this controls what happens when you double-click thumbnails). Pick Photoshop (or whichever application you plan to use). Close Preferences.

Now, I normally set this option to "Using full screen" because it's a very smooth, distraction-free environment for basic tweaking. We set the above option just so it would show up in the context menu when Ctrl-clicking a photo. Try it now - "Edit in external editor" will be available.

You can now go back to Preferences and change the "Edit photo" option to anything else - the external editor has been set and the option will always be available.

What do iTunes star ratings mean to you?

2006-11-10T14:45:00.000-05:00

Rating things on a five-point scale is never easy, yet it's a system convenient enough that film critics, wine connoisseurs, and Rolling Stones all over the world use it. Here's what I mean when I rate songs in iTunes (this also applies to rating photos in iPhoto and similar systems):

[no rating] I never got around to rating this song, or I haven't made up my mind yet. This should be looked into.

There is something wrong with this song. It's terrible, or the file is broken, or the tags are wrong, or it's some 45-minute experimental piece. In any case, I don't want it to shuffle on or show up in my playlists and I should look into why it's in my library at all.

This is a bearable song. I don't hate it; if it comes on, I'll likely skip it, but it's basically earned its stay in my music library.

This is a good song. I want to hear it here and there even if it's not exactly a favorite.

This song is sweet. I want to hear it frequently and it's very unlikely that I'll skip it or remove it. (Note: songs often flip between three and four stars)

This is a classic. It's either a masterpiece or a track very dear to me. I want to hear it, but careful with it - it may play too often. This should be used sparingly.

Why there won't be a red Mac

2006-11-09T07:57:00.000-05:00

Almost as soon as the new red iPod was announced, rumors started spreading of other possible product(red) products (in red). Here's why I'm willing to bet my hat that a red iMac, Mac mini, or MacBook will never happen:

AppleInsider MacBook RED poll, with a mock-up

And another one, found via Google.

That thing looks absolutely scary. Both the MacBook's plastic and the MacBook Pro's aluminum would just look very off in red. They're also simply far too big for all that saturated color; a 15" object won't look candybar no matter how you paint it.

Different sections of Apple's website

2006-11-08T14:04:00.000-05:00

Describing how and why Apple Computer's design (and design philosophy) is fantastic would be a waste of keystrokes. Just take my word for it: they can put things together with elegance, originality, and consistency rarely seen elsewhere. This extends to Apple.com, which, while always a work in progress (like every website), has been particularly stunning lately.

Page after page, it's perhaps the best adaptation of glossy print design to the web; when I say best, I again mean the prettiest, most useful, and most skillfully coordinated. There are more impressive designs out there; there are technically more involved ones; there are much, much bigger computer companies. But compare, for instance, Apple's notebook portal page to Dell's. It's a fair comparison; both Apple and Dell would agree with that. Maybe I'm just too lazy to spell out what all makes the MacBook page incomparably better, but I really don't think it needs to be spelled out at all.

That said, some key sections of Apple.com are surprisingly unimpressive. I understand why Hot News is stuck in 1996; nobody cares about it anyway. But what about the seemingly very, very important Hardware section? No product images, no flowing, magazine-like layout? The partner section, Software, follows the same underachiever formula. These are key portals to Apple's goodies, and pretty much all other sections look better - including the store locator and Developer announcements (Lord knows most devs don't care what this looks like... but kudos to Apple for not bowing to that stereotype.)

It might be that few people browse the site in this way. The big (and usually excellent) front-page ad and its tiny children below point to what almost all visitors are looking for: the new iPod, the MacBook upgrade, the latest ad or Stevenote. Those looking for something else will go to the Store or the Support page.

So here are my suggestions to Apple (and I'm very aware of the pompousness of that statement):

make your Hardware and Software pages lickable.

Compress that scattered footer found on most of your pages; I appreciate the white space, but I cringe at the lack of grid, balance, and composition in it. Also, those default blue links have to go. The .Mac page is on the right track.

Widen the Store page; it's still in 640 x 480 land, while most of your site has expanded way beyond it.

Lose the menu pinstripe. I know, I know. They grow up so fast.

RSS is orange - that's been decided. Drop the blue and ride with it. This applies to Safari and the rest of the desktop as well.

Spice up the Retail pages; they're not bad, but they just don't make me want to visit and shop as much as pretty much everything else on the website does.

Google/Blogger labels vs. Flickr tags

2006-11-07T13:22:00.000-05:00

I was very pleased to see the new Blogger Beta, integrated with Google Accounts and adding some new capabilities. The features aren't killer and they won't convert anyone from Wordpress or Movable Type, but I was happy because it showed that Google wasn't burying Blogger (an impression I'd gotten from its complete stagnation for more than a year).

One feature any self-respecting web service of 2006 should have is tags, and Blogger now has them in the form of "labels", previously seen in Gmail, Google Reader, Google Bookmarks, and others - well, kind of. There are differences between Flickr's approach and Google's. Here's a quick overview. Keep in mind that Google's labels are still implemented inconsistently and spottily.

Flickr tags are completely ad hoc; they can be added to existing items with the fewest clicks possible.

Google's labels are, for the most part, defined ahead of time, then applied to items. The new Blogger labels can be created on the fly, however.

Flickr tags can be created by other users, not just the author. There is no such functionality with Google labels for now.

When entering more than one tag on Flickr, you can space-separate them; for instance, type in cat animal pet to add those three tags. Multi-word tags are quote-enclosed; for instance, cat "mister paws" pet, though it appears that the better way to do it is to just runthewordstogether since this happens to quoted multi-word tags anyway.

In Blogger, you comma-separate tags. This allows you to enter mac, apple ipod, but it confused me at first so I ended up with giant single tags like apple mac ipod tech nerd software. Personally, i prefer the ease of entering of Flickr tags.

Overall, Flickr has a better, simpler, more thoroughly implemented tagging system. Google's just getting started, though; once their labels - and, personally, I also prefer the term "tag" - are used across their services in some interchangeable way, I foresee good things.

Handmade iPod Nano sock

2006-11-04T10:08:00.000-05:00

I like iPod socks.

There, I've said it, come whatever hell may. Hard plastic and rubber cases will protect your pod-dude well, but they're a pain to remove. Why remove them at all? Because I want to use my iPod the way it was meant to be used, without some condom in the way.

Still, when I'm carrying my iPod in my bag I'd like to protect it against completely unnecessary scratches. Another option would be getting one of those gaudy leather cases; uck.

Enter the iPod sock. Soft to the touch of your hands and to your iPod's screen. Now, I'm not saying you should go out and buy Apple's iPod socks. I'm saying you should go out and make your own.

Here's mine - for it, I recycled an old sweater I'd outshrank (yay weight loss). The inside is lined with protective pleather, also reused from the elbow pads of a terrifying denim jacket. The iPod slides in and out easily, but the sock is snug enough not to drop it on its own.

Also, when I say "I" made it, that means that "I" sewed it under Christa's supervision.

iPod Shuffle sync speed problem (2G version)

2006-11-03T21:29:00.000-05:00

My friend Dino wanted a small, no-nonsense music player for jogging and such and I recommended the new Shuffle, out today. It's tiny, it's simple, it's beautiful.

Dino also asked me to show him how to work this in iTunes (he's got a PC and listens to CDs). We hooked it up, picked a playlist of about 20 songs, and hit Autofill...

...and spent the next 10 minutes staring at the "Updating..." screen. It took about 20 seconds to transfer a single song! This definitely smelled fishy, so I resynced the Shuffle with my PowerBook (thinking it was an issue with Dino's USB port), but the slowness persisted.

I found the answer on Apple's support forums, and here it is in case you don't find it there yourself:

When you connect the iPod and click on it under Devices, under the Settings tab, there's a checkbox to "Convert songs to 128 ACC", meaning, to reduce the quality and filesize to fit more songs on the cute li'l thing. Nifty, but also quite unexpectedly slow. Unless you absolutely need loads of songs for your gym run, you'll probably prefer better transfer speeds.

Redundant product descriptions on RadioShack's website

2006-11-03T13:25:00.000-05:00

Where do you look when you need a 12" shielded stereo audio cable, and you can't wait to order online? RadioShack, of course, that street-corner Library of Alexandria of dorktronics. For the most part, the site is usable and its search returns relevant results, nicely presented (unlike, for instance, Best Buy's goofy search). One thing that stands out, though, is the way product descriptions are put together for small, simple objects. For instance:

1/4" mono Panel-Mount Audio Jack (2-Pack)
$2.99
Model: 1/4" Open-frame open-circuit panel mount
Catalog #: 274-252

A pair of jacks.

This open-frame, open-circuit accepts 1/4" mono phone plugs. Package of two.

* Panel-mount
* Open circuit
* Package of 2

What's in the box

* 1/4" Open-frame open-circuit panel mount (2)

Or:

12-Inch Shielded Stereo Audio Cable
$4.99
Model: 42-2497
Catalog #: 42-2497

Put it on the card.

This 12-inch, shielded stereo audio cable will connect audio components to your computer's sound card. It has an 1/8" stereo phone plug on each end. Use it to hook up a speaker system, mini stereo or other components.

* 12-inch stereo audio cable has an 1/8" stereo phone plug on each end
* Connect a speaker system, mini stereo or other components to your computer's sound card

What's in the box

* 12" Shielded Stereo Audio Cable (1/8" stereo phone plug to 1/8" stereo phone plug)

I'm not really complaining - more info is better than less, but it's a little goofy to read.

New Pizzle

2006-11-01T13:01:00.000-05:00

I treated myself to a new iPod Nano (PRODUCT) RED (which is a red iPod Nano product) and I'm loving it - the thing is hilariously small, light, and thin, the battery lasts forever, and the screen is sharper and brighter than Mark Twain.

I'm also liking the new iTunes, version 7. I haven't experienced any problems reported by many others, so I can only recommend it. The new iPod options interface is a very welcome change - the gray dialog box of v.6 was getting very, very cramped. I hope they play with the looks of it a little more to make it less webpage-like (I suggest making it more like the beautiful Apple product pages), but it's a nice little iPod Central.

Another welcome addition is a nice, big picture of my iPod. However, I was ever so slightly disappointed to find that it was a generic gray instead of red like my actual iPod. Couldn't this be figured out from its serial number? C'mon, Apple....

...And sure enough, with yesterday's iTunes 7.0.2 update, this feature was added. Here's what my wine-red little toy looks like in iTunes now:

Tangerine awakening

2006-10-26T12:43:00.000-05:00

Tangerine is a trendy new Mac app with a simple and useful premise: generate "mood-based" iTunes playlists. This is done by analyzing the iTunes library and picking songs in the user-selected BPM and intensity ranges. If I want a rock-out or exercise playlist, I pick high BPMs and intense beats; for chill-out time, I would pick the opposite.

Most non-Mac users will mock our appreciation of nice application icons, but I honestly don't care - let me profess my love for the Tangerine icon here and now. It's superb. The app itself looks pretty swanky too, though for my taste, it mimics too many iTunes features I might as well use in iTunes (if Tangerine were, say, a plug-in instead of a standalone app). But that's not really a complaint, just a side note.

Analysis of my 3,800-song library took about an hour and a half on a PowerBook G4. That's not stellar, but it's also not like I needed that punk playlist immediately. After this I went to create my first playlist - something fast and intense, my weapon of choice for dishwashing, dusting, and other household chores. I went for a BPM range of 130-200bpm and above-average intensity. I was surprised to find only these two settings (including a distribution curve).

The results were sorely disappointing. Included were a number of scratchy 1930s jazz cuts, and some of the mellowest tracks by Tricky, Can, and Beck (trust me, they were pretty darn mellow). I pushed both the BPM and the intensity up and got similar results - while some of the tracks were what I would put in the "fast and intense" category using my cerebral analyzer, they made up 10-20% of the generated mix.

Just about the only way I was able to create playlists that matched my expectations of fast/slow and mellow/intense was by picking from one of my carefully assembled iTunes Smart playlists. Which had me wondering why I was using Tangerine at all - a quick comparison of purely random iTunes lists using a somewhat selective playlist and Tangerine playlists seeded from the same pool with the added BPM and intensity revealed no appreciable difference between the two.

Maybe I was doing something wrong. Or maybe my music library is wacky somehow. In any case I found that Tangerine, while pleasant to use, did next to nothing for me - and not because I'm not in its target market. I have dozens of Smart playlists I regularly use. They were one of the things that impressed me the most about iTunes.

Sorry, you sexy citrus - maybe next time.

Answer THIS!

2006-10-25T15:40:00.000-05:00

The people behind BoingBoing, that directory of wonderful and kvetchy and dumb things, often let their hatred of intellectual property rights blur their vision of what makes for an interesting post. One such rant posted today complains (not without justification) about the MPAA's push-polling, but then proceeds to quote a ridiculous list of counter-questions. Check it out for yourself.

Now, I feel that IP is a legally, ethically, and even mentally very complex issue, so I don't side with either the MPAA or the free-freakin'-everything crowd. But the following "gotchas" by MattyMatt are simply dumb by any standard:

If creative ideas are owned like physical objects, just like furniture, can I buy them at Ikea?

You can buy them directly from the makers (thinkers), or packaged in another way - from iTunes, Target, Barnes & Noble... And yes, when you buy furniture from IKEA, part of your payment goes to whoever came up with the creative ideas for their furniture, as compensation for their mental work.

And is it expensive for me to think of new ideas, because I have to pay for thought-materials and thought-warehouses and thought-customer-service?

Of course! Just try thinking creatively without making an investment of research, experience, and storage devices (they could be just pen and paper, or even simply your brain, which requires tangible and costly substances to function - namely, food).

If people should be compensated for their creative works, and creative works are the same as ideas, why isn't anyone paying me for all the ideas that I have every day?

Because you usually have non-marketable ideas, or you don't market them. Nobody pays all furniture-makers for all the furniture they make either.

I wouldn't have blogged about this if it didn't scream half-assed half-wit so loudly.

Ugliest DVD menu ever?

2006-10-05T21:56:00.000-05:00

The Navigator is a genuinely original and entertaining movie coming to us from New Zealand. It's a time travel fantasy that wastes no time on paradoxes, philosophy, or cautionary messages - it uses its premise much like Stephen King did in his best days, as a springboard ex machina (King's worst moments are those in which he attempts to "tie it all together". The man is (was?) good at conveying and terrible at synthesis.)

So, given the choice between Netflixing this and making turtle soup, I recommend The Navigator wholeheartedly. Netflixing is probably the only way you'll ever get it, and when you do, do yourself a favor of clicking hastily through the menu. Or perhaps invite some friends over and have a good, bonding laugh.

Here it is:

Keep in mind, this is not some indie film student or Warhammer fan production. The DVD transfer is atrocious overall, but to create that menu took a lack of taste unmatched since the Commodore 64 couldn't do any better (if you were really lazy and could live with yourself after creating such a monstrosity).

Kodak CX7430 pictures crash iPhoto...

2006-09-22T16:57:00.000-05:00

I've never had this problem in iPhoto, and I've been using it for years with dozens of different cameras: when I tried importing pictures from my friend's Kodak CX7430 today, it silently crashed every time. It didn't matter if I imported one picture at a time or many, and each picture did it. Moving the pictures from the camera to the Mac and then importing didn't fix it either.

I tried re-saving these in Photoshop. No dice - if the problem was with EXIF or other metadata in the files, a simple re-save wouldn't have changed it anyway.

My solution was to create an action that saves an image in the TIFF format, then run it as a batch action on all the images. The TIFFs were imported fine (same thing if I now converted them back to JPEG).

The funny thing is, I've imported pictures from this camera before. The only thing that's different now is that I ran the fifth 2006 Security Update just last night.

Memento mori to self

2006-09-18T17:33:00.000-05:00

Google Calendar just made me aware of my mortality.

Usually I take full advantage of the calendar's no-sweat event creation - click a date box, type in something like "7pm dinner with Elizabeth Hurley at Consciousness Blossoms, Palm Harbor, FL" and it's automagically created at the right time and place. Today I went to add an annually-repeating event, so I clicked edit event details, opened the When section, noted that it repeats every year, and was given the usual option of ending the cycle at some point in the future.

Only this is an event I'd like to keep on my calendar forever... which, when you think about it, is really the next 50 years, maybe.

Thanks, you morbid freakin' software!

iSquint help

2006-09-17T22:57:00.000-05:00

iSquint is a cute (and free) little OS X app that will convert your home videos, ripped movies, and footage of dancing cats to various iPod-friendly formats. Drag in the files, adjust settings if you don't trust iSquint to do its thing, and you're all set. Not the kind of thing one would need help with. But just in case you do, check out iSquint's Help menu...

(Click for full-size screenshot)

Kitsch of the '00s

2006-07-06T09:26:00.000-05:00

We are seeing the development of a new kitsch - just like the 70s gave us the disco eye-fucks and the 80s grossed us out with Miami Vice pinks and lipstick strokes over idiotic geometry, the '00s have started producing soon-to-be-regrettable kitsch. I present to you, in the form of logo redesign comparisons, a quick breakdown of this gradient-and-transparency-happy, idea-free visual haggis lacking concept, communicative power, and expressivity:

These are ugly, overtrendy, instantly passé designs; what's more pathetic is how lost they seem. Why is the AT&T logo keeping Saul Bass' beautiful shadelines if they are going to just render the sphere? Where did the chevrons in Chevron's logo go? Is UPS a football team? Did Sears really need a swoosh so badly?

AT&T and UPS are "remixes" of the originals... Why? They just do away with the very concepts of the originals. What was the Fiat redesign brief like - "Don't convey anything. Nothing. Stay away from communicating any thought. Blank out your mind and be one with nothingness."

If these were entirely new logos, the drunk-on-Illustrator-CS shininess would be distracting, but at least we could see what, if anything, the designer was trying to communicate. With these, however, the creative process seems to have gone something like,

"Ok, we need to keep the basic shape of the logo. But we can't just move things a little, MoMA-style, or the client will think we're slacking. So, let's see - take out all these bits that mean something, and add generic new ones to represent... uh... change, right... a "modern attitude," we'll call it. And add a gradient. And make something transparent, ferchrissake. Pick a new typeface - nah, I don't care, just something new."

You can tell kitsch by the defense that's always presented for it: "most people will like it better." Sure, sure. And Kinkade is the true voice of our times.

The Big Sleep

2006-06-21T23:24:00.000-05:00

Holy carp.

(This is not a typo; I meant to say "carp." It's an understated joke, see. Carp are funny, like ducks and monkeys. It's not like I said "holy crpa" - that wouldn't have been funny at all.)

Upon returning from work, I took a nice li'l nap. Until 10pm. Now I suppose I won't really go to bed tonight; I certainly don't feel like it.

Bodies are so weird.

A sucky masque

2006-06-12T15:17:00.000-05:00

Users of Biore's pore strips derive a curious pleasure from slowly peeling off the stiff, dried paper and sticking their now-clean noses into the otherwordly stalagmites of oils and impurities these strips pull from god-knows-where in their skin. I like them myself, but they always seemed a little inefficient and overadvertised - they're small, pricey, and packaged like surgical equipment.

My friend Amy suggested I try this today: Queen Helene's Mint Julep Masque. It's available in most pharmacy stores for a ridiculously low price of $3.29 (8oz). It smells of creamy mint and looks like plasticized avocado butter; it's thick, dry, and almost acrylic-like.

As soon as you'll apply it, the minty, cleansing, sucking burn begins; it's no worse than weak mouthwash, so no worries. The masque dries in under ten minutes, and you can wash it off after fifteen. It doesn't exactly peel off, but it's not hard to rinse away either. I wasn't expecting much from the product since it looked too creamy to properly pull, but pull it did. My nose appeared cleaner than after using strips, and for once, the rest of my face got the same treatment. A little dry, but that's normal. The clean feeling is so strong, in fact, I felt like my feet had become smoother.

According to Amy, you can also use small amounts of the masque overnight, in particularly problematic spots. Queen Helene's says it helps with zits; drop some masque on one and let it dry overnight.

C'mon dad, gimme the Cars

2006-06-10T17:52:00.000-05:00

If Pixar's Cars becomes the highest-grossing movie of all time, it will be well deserved. There - I'll set the tone for this review with a hyperbole, because I've just walked in from a lazy Saturday matinee screening, and it feels like the most awesomest movie I've seen. They may not make actual cars (ones that don't talk or go "tractor-tipping" for fun) like they used to, but I'll be damned if they ever made entertainment this amazing when I was a kid.

I know Cars is a piece of schmaltz, full of valuable lessons, harmless stereotypes, and puns (from verbal to visual to plotwise). But Pixar isn't trying to break new ground in children's writing or writing in general; they're just perfecting their American-born dream tales until they're so deliciously formulaic, you wonder why it's so hard for others to do it even reasonably well. Most formula movies suck; Cars is a volcano of fun, action, emotion, and pure love for the world. All that in a CGI world populated by sentient automobiles. Silly? Predictable? Childish? None of those labels matter.

It's getting so that every frame of their movies is freeze-frame-worthy; from the ridiculous - a "bomb shell" hot rod has a tribal "tattoo" above her, um, rear end - to the fantastically philosophical elements (I'm not kidding) such as mountains that vaguely resemble car parts. Our world wasn't shaped to look like it has our human forms in it, of course, but the only way we humans can relate to an auto-centric universe is by seeing it through their own eyes: in the sky, they see tire tracks. You want popcultural references that are far more Simpsons than - eck - Shrek? How about race cars sponsored by HTB, Hostile Takeover Bank. Throwaways jokes, all of them, and barely noticeable among the plot elements filling the screen for almost two hours.

You'll probably see every major twist and turn coming, but you'll stop trying to do so just five minutes into Pixar's best movie yet. They have not failed for as long as they've existed; all hail Pixar.

Jeremy's Iron

2006-05-18T18:01:00.000-05:00

Hey, guess what - The Da Vinci Code (the movie) seems to be a dud. Who knew? Slate's review has a fantastic line about it:

...there's no reason a goofy pulp novel can't be turned into a scary, sexy film. The Da Vinci Code is neither—unless, of course, every line of dialogue in the film is an anagram for another, better one.

Pwned.

Tom's of Maine dental care products

2006-05-18T12:29:00.000-05:00

This is an independent plug borne of love for these products:

Tom's of Maine Natural Anticavity Fluoride Mouthwash for a Dry Mouth
This lemon-lime mouthwash tastes better than many brands of lemonade. Forget the alcoholic burn and generic minty tones of Listerine; it may mean "it works", but Tom's is almost a gastronomic experience. No long-lasting itchy mouth, no numbing of the tongue - just a citrusy clean feeling.

Upon first trying it, Christa exclaimed, "I almost wanted to drink this." (Don't drink it, though, ok?) The directions say to rinse for sixty seconds (rather than thirty as with most brands) but you'll want to do it longer.

Ounce for ounce, it costs more than most "blue" brands, but it's worth it. Totally.

Tom's Antiplaque Flat Floss
My dentist says I have very narrow spacing between my teeth (or whatever the dental term is), so flossing is often annoying for me. Most thin brands of floss break sooner in my mouth; one time, I went through several different brands just to remove a piece of floss that had gotten stuck, except each subsequent flossing would result in mroe breakage and a thicker pile of nylon between my teeth. Yikes!

Though it sounds counterintuitive, thicker floss actually works better; it's harder to get it in, but once in, it won't break. Dental tape is the good stuff. Tom's flat floss is thick, strong, and waxed so that it glides smoothly despite its girth. It also has a pleasane herbal taste without the faux mint or plasticky wax.

Hand sanitizer at a gas station

2006-05-16T14:57:00.000-05:00

Now this is a good idea - placing a hand sanitizer dispenser at the pump, so your hands don't have to smell of gas fumes. Thanks!

Nature (a story)

2006-05-11T10:07:00.000-05:00

Nature

If you live in Florida, you may want to read this. On winter nights, snakes come in your home and seek warm places to hide. They come through open doors, glide through pipes, crawl through holes in your screen doors and windows and corners where wasps nest. Small, black snakes; not all of them, just a particular type good at hiding and with an instinct to enter houses. They’re pencil-thin and have a strange awareness of their surroundings. You could be looking at a clothes hamper or cables behind your desk and never realize that snakes were there, odorless and still. They seem to understand what places we’ll never look, and where they will blend in. A typical garbage bag: a pack of four-inch snakes will be buried in the shapeless mass of paper, food, and plastic, and you will never know. Or in the pantry, behind spices and bags of flour you reach for only on occasion. The snakes hear you coming, too, and they move along the walls, under light bags and behind boxes. It’s of no use to clean out the shelves – the snakes are gone already by the time you’ve taken out the first few cans. They’re always moving when you’re moving, but when they know they’ve found a safe hiding spot they can be motionless for months. Most of the time they stay that way all through the winter, except when even the rooms in your house get too cold for them and they can no longer feed on scraps and bits of unpackaged food unnoticed. Then they rest and hope that you will cook dinner in your kitchen one night. The snakes slide out of your bathroom, behind the bookshelves, out of your clothes, and wait for their chance to hide in the warm food you’re preparing. You don’t always watch your cooking without a break, and even if you did, the snakes would somehow find their way into simmering pots of thick soup and casseroles in the oven. They do this out of desperation, and it kills them. As the heat breaks down their brittle bodies into thin mush and flakes like dandruff, the snakes can’t resist the bubbling mountain of food that now warms them after such a long, cold famine. They eat and they cook themselves and they become food. You may have eaten hundreds of snakes unknowingly - tasteless black strips of animals who killed themselves through drowning and burning. And you can never chase them all out before they do this.

My design portfolio

2006-05-05T22:17:00.000-05:00

This needs no setup:

Neven's portfolio

That is all!

Risotto ai funghi recipe

2006-05-05T22:03:00.000-05:00

Adriano's recipe:

Saute mushrooms with garlic, basil, scallions, and black pepper. Set aside.

Saute rice in olive oil with chopped onion and garlic. Add vegetable stock, evaporate, add white wine, evaporate again until rice is al dente. Add saffron, mushrooms, butter, and lots of parmesan.

In the summer, my parents would serve fresh, washed green onions with a bit of salt. It's a simple, refreshing salad replacement.

Apple finally puts Mac ads on TV

2006-05-01T22:05:00.000-05:00

After a failed Erol Morris campaign that never launched (apparently the ads just weren't cutting it) Apple has finally released TV ads for something other than iPods. Behold the Mac ads:

Get a Mac
(I posted some YouTube links earlier; now they're on Apple's website)

Both feature a nerdy aging guy in a cheap suit who says he's a PC, and a hip young guy who says he's a Mac. In the first ad, the PC reads a quote from Walt Mossberg's article in The Wall Street Journal calling the new iMac "the best desktop PC at any price." In the second ad, the PC complains about having a virus, while the Mac points out that he's doing peachy. Both ads are brief and done with a great sense of comic timing, I think. No word on who directed them yet - they certainly seem Morris-ish.
(Edit: there are six ads; I had only seen two when I wrote this.)

The ad about viruses might seem like a taunt; it's often been said that Macs are no safer, they're just less popular. Personally, I disagree, but we won't know until Macs really grab more of the market share (they are now in the perfect position to do so). I think that the confidence Apple displays in the ad is actually a positive thing: they wouldn't so boldly make security an issue if they weren't sure about just how safe OS X is. It's an intriguing thought that either their internal tests show that Macs are safe enough to brag about unconditionally, or they're preparing something that will boost security - who knows. Those who say the iPod became famous solely through marketing should think twice before dismissing this ad campaign; Apple's most likely smarter than you.

Two more Mac bits: after a long and uncertain battle, Steve Jobs has managed to convince media companies to stick with Apple's one-price idea for iTunes. Songs will continue to be sold at 99c each (record companies wanted to sell popular music at higher prices and discount poor sellers.)

A wild but allegedly well-confirmed rumor claims that Leopard (OS X 10.5, scheduled to come out by the end of this year or Q1 2007) may include BitTorrent-like software that would make participating Mac users into servers of data for Apple's growing digital media sales. What this means is that, like with BitTorrent, users would be uploading chunks of data they had downloaded from Apple to other users wanting to download the same. This would reduce Apple's server upkeep costs and, according to the system's developers, save the company hundreds of millions of dollars annually. What would be in it for the user? A reward system is described which would give users iTunes credits for data they served to others. (Keep in mind that the iTunes store will most likely start selling movies and other content.) It's also possible that this system would serve other data-sharing purposes. According to the rumor, the development team has full confidence in the system's profitability, security, and convenience to the user, but you can imagine the Legal department having doubts about it.

An interesting idea, sure to generate a lot of negative buzz (I say that because the above ads will do the same). But, if your idea of marketing is reading a bullet list of system specs and your idea of innovation is chronic featuritis, I can't help you.

Sorry about the crummy language

2006-05-01T13:51:00.000-05:00

Adriano Santi: I didnt have breakfast today
Adriano Santi: so I'm so fucking hungry
Adriano Santi: (just saw the salmon pic again lol)
nevenatwork: i often don't eat till 4:30, lol
nevenatwork: hahaha
Adriano Santi: ah
Adriano Santi: I'm going home for lunch in a few mins
Adriano Santi: got leftover mushu pork from last night
Adriano Santi: (we got lazy and ordered in)
nevenatwork: (i get hungry, too, but after about 3:00 i cross the threshold of hunger and can't really eat much)
nevenatwork: do you ever get that?
Adriano Santi: I usually eat before that
nevenatwork: there's a word in croatian for it
Adriano Santi: cos I can't function when I'm too hungry
nevenatwork: we use the same words for hand and arm, for foot and leg, for fingers and toes, for time and weather, but we have a word for getting so hungry you can't eat
nevenatwork: tells you a lot about the country's history, doesn't it

Recipe: Salmon Kinda Dukish

2006-04-30T23:29:00.000-05:00

Salmon Wellington with lobster mushroom duxelles and Saga cheese sauce + baked chips

Duxelles:

- ~1/4 cup dried lobster or oyster mushrooms
- 1/2 cup each red and white wine
- 1/2 cup vegetable broth
- 1/4 cup shallots
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 bay leaf
- thyme
- salt and black pepper

Bring white wine and broth with the bay leaf in it to a boil in a small pot, remove from heat and pour into a cup. Place the dried mushrooms in it for 15-20 minutes. Strain and finely chop the mushrooms and reserve the broth. Remove the bay leaf.

In the same pot, heat olive oil and add shallots. Saute for 1 minute over medium heat and add red wine. Heat until about half the wine evaporates (a few minutes) and add the mushrooms. Heat for another minute, then add the broth. Reduce over medium-low heat for 10-15 minutes or until the water is gone and you're left with a stuffing-consistency mixture.

Saga sauce:

- 2 oz Saga cheese (a soft, blue-veined chese; substitute gorgonzola or bleu cheese)
- 1-2 tbsp milk
- 1 tsp cream cheese (optional)

Blend the three ingredients with a fork. Add enough milk to give it a yogurt consistency.

Chips:

- 1 large potato, washed and brushed, not peeled
- Cajun spice mix (cayenne, paprika, onion powder, black pepper, salt...)
- olive oil

Slice the potato thinly on a mandolin slicer. Brush a large, shallow baking pan with olive oil and arrange the slices in it on one layer. Sprinkle with spice. Bake at 425 F for 15-20 minutes. Watch them - they will burn easily.

Putting it all together:

- 1 salmon fillet or steak
- 1 sheet frozen puff pastry
- 1 egg white

There are lots of steps to this recipe; you should be multi-tasking. First start defrosting the puff pastry as you make the duxelle. Make the sauce whenever, throw the Wellington in the oven with the chips.

Pre-heat the oven to 425 F. Place the salmon on a shallow pan and put in the oven for no more than 5 minutes, just to stiffen it a little. Remove and set aside to cool.

Spread the puff pastry sheet on a pastry cloth and roll it with a rolling pin into a square large enough to fold around the fillet (the pastry might be too big; just trim off the excess). Spoon the duxelles in a shallow, even layer in the shape of the fillet in the middle of the pastry square. Place the salmon on it and top with about half the Saga sauce. Fold the sides of the pastry sheet over the fillet and close it; make sure there are no holes for the sauce to leak out of. Also, work on a well-floured surface so the pastry doesn't stick.

Place the Wellington on a greased, shallow baking pan and brush with the egg white. Bake at 425 F for ~20 minutes or until golden.

Serve with the chips and the rest of the Saga sauce. Yay!

P.S. Duke Ellington = Kinda like Wellington => 'Kinda Dukish', which is an Ellington (not Wellington) song. Got it?

Like calamari with chocolate

2006-04-30T21:15:00.000-05:00

The Squid and The Whale is a good movie. Very well acted, confidently shot, pleasantly paced. That said, I still can't get into the Wes Anderson/Noah Baumbach milieu; there's a limit to my intake of self-involved, therapy-needing, poorly communicating characters, of weakly epiphanic scenes set to crescendoing emo, of miniatures that are supposedly funny because we all hate remembering that they happened to us at some embarrassing point. I don't passionately dislike these devices, but I always feel this need to explain my dissatisfaction with them for two reasons: one, these movies are very popular among my friends, and two, I think that they're flawed on a subtle level.

A digresison: Frances McDormand was reportedly unsure about the Coens' attitude toward the simple folk of Minnesota in Fargo - were they ridiculing them? No, the Coens said; they are jealous of the common people's effortless ease. It's possible that Anderson and Baumach feel the same way. But then why do they portray painfully unhappy heroes? It's not bad art, but it gets to be unwatchable. Maybe it's the fact that the characters' "urbannui" seems to be their own damn fault, not an inescapable condition of humanity? (A common theme in other self-destructive, ponderous characters back to Merchant of Venice's Antonio and later.)

At times it appears that the attitude in, say, The Squid and The Whale is what McDormand was afraid of: ridicule of human imperfection. Why doesn't anyone succeed, triumph, enjoy? The sole purpose (in the narrative) of Joan's literary success seems to be a mocking of Bernard's failure in the same field. For all of Ivan-the-tennis-instructor's unaffected smoothness, he's a joke character, isn't he? All the comic moments are based on shame and discomfort - why so cynical, Noah? Why so caustic, Wes?

The movie is apparently at least partly autobiographical. This is its theoretical strength, but in reality my own emotional conclusion is that mild family upsets may not translate into great art the way poverty, war, and clinical mental problems do; they translate into something close to the eye-rollable kvetchiness of Woody Allen at his most annoying.

Added later: Ok, I'm being quite kvetchy myself. There are some genuinely amusing and meaningful scenes in The Squid: when Walt is busted for plagiarizing a Pink Floyd song, his faux-confident response to his shrink is priceless: "I felt like I could have written it, so the fact that I didn't was really just a technicality." The shrink's "I see..." attitude is a moment of normalcy Baumbach and Anderson could really milk more instead of insisiting on what Kevin Murhpy called "aggressive quirkiness."

Columno - a simple tool for reading e-texts

2006-04-24T14:38:00.000-05:00

Here's a lesson all good designers are familiar with: wide columns of text suck. Just try reading that top paragraph on W3C's homepage - it induces headache. Your eyes just weren't built for copy formatted that way. But once you narrow down your columns, you're left with the problem of scrolling; another straining activity. It subjects your eyes to choppy animation, and you have to find your place in the text after you scroll.

So, what's the solution when you have to read lots of text on the computer? E-book readers employ all sorts of fancy paging techniques to present text in book-like form (the form that has, over centuries, evolved a number of well calibrated features which make it "optimal"). But they have problems of their own (cost, having to buy e-books, often messy interfaces).

I made an attempt at solving at least some of these problems; I present to you Columno, a book-like web text reader. I've only just put together a stable release, so it comes with a few caveats:

It only works on Gecko 1.8 browsers (Firefox 1.5, Camino 1.0).
What do I read with it? Free e-texts from Project Gutenberg, for one.
Errors are possible, but most things should work.

It's a very limited application and probably not of much interest to the general public, but if you've been dying to read that e-text, knock yourself out. Columno will let you read it, leave a bookmark, come back, and continue where you stopped.

I'm looking forward to feedback!

Don't go too far, honey

2006-04-20T08:31:00.000-05:00

I'm not exactly a fan of Mickey Klaus' Kausfiles over at Slate. While he can be refreshingly succinct, too often he gets stuck in "neener neener" mode ("No, really, Brokeback Mountain isn't all that popular or all that good! Really!"). Yesterday he quoted an Ann Coulter piece on Natalee Holloway which, according to him, makes a point not often made. It's actually not too bad, but it's not all that insightful either. It's worth quoting in full; I'll comment as I go.

However the Duke lacrosse rape case turns out, one lesson that absolutely will not be learned is this: You can severely reduce your chances of having a false accusation of rape leveled against you if you don't hire strange women to come to your house and take their clothes off for money.

1. I'm not convinced that no one will learn the lesson. It seems likely to me that at least some frat boys will, at least temporarily, go easy on the strippers.
2. How many rape accusations from hired strippers is she aware of? I'm not saying I have the answer; it just doesn't seem so casually obvious to me.

Also, you can severely reduce your chances of being raped if you do not go to strange men's houses and take your clothes off for money. ...

Granted.

And if you are a girl in Aruba or New York City, among the best ways to avoid being the victim of a horrible crime is to not get drunk in public or go off in a car with men you just met. ...

Thanks, mom. I'll be sure never to get drunk in public again. - Women of America

Everyone makes mistakes, especially young people, but the outpouring of support for the victims and their families is obscuring what ought to be a flashing neon warning for potential future victims. ...

Now, this seems to be her main message here. So, does support for the victims really "obscure" basic warnings about potentially dangerous situations? Are women really thinking, "well, next time I strip for strangers, I know I'll have the public on my side, at least" rather than "uh-oh, I should be careful?"

Few people in the world are unaware of the dangers of placing themselves in these situations. But they do it anyway - out of need, out of stupidity, sometimes precisely because it's dangerous. The obvious lesson Coulter wants the media to preach more often is quite implicit in the story itself. What should the coverage look like, then? "Now, guys, remember: this happened because you hired a stripper. No more strippers!" If nothing else, it's not very effective.

Yes, of course no one "deserves" to die for a mistake. Or to be raped or falsely accused of rape for a mistake. ... But these statements would roll off the tongue more easily in a world that so much as tacitly acknowledged that all these messy turns of fate followed behavior that your mother could have told you was tacky.

Again, I'm not convinced that the acknowledgment isn't made. If Coulter wants it to be made louder, we'd end up with a different bag of problems: would it suffice to simply say "of course the woman didn't deserve it" if the imagined warning implied that she had caused the trouble for herself? It took us as a society a while to figure out that women aren't "asking for it" and men aren't all violent, sex-obsessed dicks. It's a balancing act, and I'm not sure that the scales have tipped to the side of empathy (as opposed to warning) so much that everyone's implying it's fine to engage in any behavior because it's not your fault (and it's all about whose fault it is). That's a straw man.

Not very long ago, all the precursor behavior in these cases would have been recognized as vulgar--whether or not anyone ended up dead, raped or falsely accused of rape.

That's a charmingly naive and motherly view of our past and our present; more to the point, it reveals that Coulter's main concern here might be the ickiness of stripping, not the criminal aspects of the Natalee Holloway case.

Sure, it was the Vikings

2006-04-19T20:06:00.000-05:00

I read this in the latest issue of Premiere magazine, in a blurb about the (crummy) upcoming movie Pathfinder:

(Karl Urban, lead): "For the longest time, everyone's gone with the notion that Columbus effectively discovered America, and they forget about the Vikings, who were there [centuries] before."

Followed later by:

"In this way, [his Viking character] Ghost is kind of like the first American."

"Kind of," indeed. The story, according to Premiere, concerns a Norse baby reared by Native Americans... who would then be zeroth Americans, I suppose?

English 2.0 Lite

2006-04-18T08:35:00.000-05:00

Joshua Bolten, the president's new chief of staff, is ready to shake things up at the White House. According to Scott "I know you are, but what am I?" McClellan,

Josh talked about how this is a time to refresh and re-energize the team and for all of us to renew our commitment as we go forward

Man, can that cat facilitate connectivity while pushing the envelope or what?

You can't disprove lack of faith!

2006-04-03T20:31:00.000-05:00

So, I'm sitting at Miami International Airport, watching CNN Airport Network, and a report on a medical study comes on. This is how the New York Times reported on the same:

Prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found.

In fact, those aware of prayers being said for them did somewhat worse. The CNN report said much the same, but immediately added that "science can't prove or disprove the existence of god." We the viewers were then invited to comment on "whether science can ever prove faith."

What absolute baloney. Are we going to hear this boring question every time some religious claim is properly looked into? Many people think (and many churches maintain) that praying for someone's recovery is desirable and effective. This study concludes that, at least in the pretty general and wide format they went with, this is not true. Medical science 1, religion 0.

"But science can't disprove faith!" Who ever mentioned this? What sort of question is it anyway? No one doubts that Christians have faith - what we're skeptical of is that this faith does diddly for those in need of healthcare. Science can't "disprove" faith any more than it can disprove jealousy or tragedy. Let's get a bit more specific, or to put it more bluntly, more sincere. Daniel Dennett has recently been asking both camps to be more open and honest about their pros and cons. Ok, so it's possible that faith may provide psychological benefits to believers; let's look into it in a proper, organized way (that this way is the scientific way is rather obvious, sorry).

Look, had this study said that those prayed for recovered quicker, no Christian would be shrugging their shoulders, going "oh well, who cares. Science can't prove or disprove faith." They'd be proudly waving it around. So let's play fair; don't be a sore loser.

26th birthday

2006-03-21T12:44:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone who wrote, called, or myspaced on my birthday, and thanks to those who came over. Here are two short videos Billy took. Sorry about the small size, you can also see them directly on YouTube.

There are also pics on Flickr...

Pre-Birthday Tension

2006-03-15T13:55:00.000-05:00

*cough*My wish list*cough*

The Missing "O"

Wiillow wiip for me

Dude's iPhone ringtone

Sears' checkout script

On Google Android

Do iPhoto developers know what saturation is?

Apple.com revisited

Google invents email, it seems

Name your price - no, really, any price

Let it rain

Dear Benton

It's the little things

Negative Nancy

Turn that iPhone upside downphone

The iWFMS and more

Salt to taste

You like?

You crazy diamond

Tips for installing RAM in an aluminum iMac

New toy

Can he swing from a web?

It's the little things

Cloverfield, Slusho, 1-18-08

Fourth of July

Hot rat

iDay impressions

What happens when you thicken the stew too soon?

Find Address Book contacts without pictures

Prepare your computer for iPhone

The excellent Perfect Thing

I did not find "The Areas of My Expertise" funny

How not to bite your nails

Classic album: Betty Davis (self-titled)

Book review: Kings of Infinite Space

Killer of Sheep is, alas, no classic

Mini-review of "Fracture"

On Hofstadter's "I Am A Strange Loop"

Business ethics

Twitter is a harsh mistress

Dear John Gruber,

Got my AppleTV today

The Lives of Others is captivating

3.14.2007

Anchovy Penne recipe

A hand vac that totally sucks

A interface makeover for Twitterific

Things Windows users don't say

Spicing up iPhone's black background

Dumpster art in Dunedin

A perfect example of what happens when you don't have a designer

B-movie icons for my external hard drives

Pan's Labyrinth is a ridiculously dumb movie

Cool is as cool does

The Twelve Steps

iPhone iPhone omg iPhone

Kashi GoLean Crunch! is the greatest cereal in the world

Dear Prudence on dealing with religious friends

Some people actually *like* the Adobe CS3 icons

Inquisitor - search box enhancer for Safari

Microsoft.com - new design, Vista-like

Tangerine 1.0 review

On sad news

Hello from Seattle, a roll of eyes from Cupertino

Another obvious symptom

Enabling the "Edit in external editor" menu option in iPhoto

What do iTunes star ratings mean to you?

Why there won't be a red Mac

Different sections of Apple's website

Google/Blogger labels vs. Flickr tags

Handmade iPod Nano sock

iPod Shuffle sync speed problem (2G version)

Redundant product descriptions on RadioShack's website

New Pizzle

Tangerine awakening

Answer THIS!

Ugliest DVD menu ever?

Kodak CX7430 pictures crash iPhoto...

Memento mori to self

iSquint help

Kitsch of the '00s

Some people actually like the Adobe CS3 icons