Monthly Archive for July, 2008

Blur in Video

Parlophone Records recently put all 22 Blur videos up on YouTube, which is pretty cool. It’s interesting to compare the Popscene video from 1992, with the iconic Song 2 video from five years later – there are a lot of similarities, (though I wish music video directors would refrain from putting sing-a-long lyrics on the screen).

Blur was my favorite band back in the 90s, and I’ve seen them perform live a handful of times, the best of which was a raucous small show downstairs at the Middle East in Cambridge, MA in 1997. [MOKB]

July 31, 2008 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

HD Trailer for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince”

HD Trailer for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” – I would argue that the books get better in order, and if this trailer is any indication, perhaps the same is true for the movies.

July 30, 2008 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

“The Fold”

Chris Fahey on “the fold”:

In fact, we should start thinking of “the fold” as something other than a hard line with an “above” and “below” portion, and we should stop thinking of the vertical positioning on a page as equivalent to priority. Scrolling up and down through a web page is a fundamental aspect of the web user experience, and there is much more to it than simply seeing what’s on top and then gradually seeing everything else (emphasis added).

I have no doubt that this is increasingly true, but wonder why ads are consistently placed “above the fold”. Is this just a remnant of this older thinking, or do they perform significantly better there?

July 30, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Lucy

Lucy at Happy Hour (with a bone)

Lucy chomping on a bone at Abilene, during Happy Hour.

We’re dogsitting for Liz this weekend, and it’s been a blast.

While I definitely prefer the independence of cats in general, I’ve really enjoyed spending time with Lucy – she’s a really good dog.

July 27, 2008 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

Font Conference

What if fonts were people? A funny video from the gang at CollegeHumor.com.

July 24, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

wordpress.app

I’m writing this from the new WordPress iPhone app. It’s a pretty light, straight-forward interface. It allows saving posts locally on the iPhone before publishing or saving drafts to the server, enabling offline drafting.

There is even rudimentary photo support – but you can’t really control the placement or sizing of the image – it is merely appended to the end of the message. You don’t even see the image markup until it is published or saved as a draft on the server.

But even then, the limitations of the iPhone become clear – there is no copy/paste, and the classes that determine how WordPress displays uploaded images is unneccessarily complicated. (They should simplify that.)

So, though this is a pretty nice app, I’m not sure how useful it will be without more formatting options and copy/paste. For instance, I can’t even provide a link to it’s app store page. Also, why doesn’t the iPhone have characters luke curly quotes and em/en dashes?

UPDATE (from my Mac): Here is the link to the app.

July 22, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 2 Comments

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog is a fantastic three-part web-only musical, starring Neil Patrick Harris. I can’t underline enough how good this is. Available online for free until July 20th, and then available in iTunes for $3.99.

July 19, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Carroll Will Never Be The Same

Carroll will never be the same

Barriers erected outside the Carroll Street MTA entrance at 2nd Place and Smith Street, in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn.

Looks like the 360 Smith luxury condo development is going to shut down my subway entrance, and severely mess up the nice plaza in front:

Because the safety of our customers is of utmost concern, this closure will be in effect on a 24-hour, 7 days per week basis for 6-8 months (subject to the progress of the construction project)…

See outside.in for more history of this controversial development.

July 17, 2008 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 3 Comments

Apple apologizes for MobileMe’s mediocre launch

Apple apologizes for MobileMe’s mediocre launch, by offering all users a 30-day extension for free:

The transition from .Mac to MobileMe was a lot rockier than we had hoped. We will be extending subscriptions by 30 days to customers free of charge to express our appreciation for their patience during the transition period.

July 16, 2008 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

Speed up syncing from your Mac to MobileMe

Speed up syncing from your Mac to MobileMe » MobileMe isn’t exactly “pushing” so much as “syncing every 15 minutes” – Ars Technica points to a way of speeding this up.

July 15, 2008 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

MTA Service Changes Posters

The MTA’s Service Changes posters are getting more and more indecipherable… This F-train one from this past weekend was a doozy, but we managed to make it back and forth from Manhattan without incident.

July 14, 2008 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

Jessica Lynch Lightening Video

Crazy video of Jessica Lynch getting struck by lightening, while taking a video of a storm. She’s okay, don’t worry. [Flickr Blog]

July 10, 2008 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

A 3rd Climber

Peel

Workmen remove a flyer left behind by David Malone, who climbed the New York Times Building several hours before.

For the third time in five weeks, someone has scaled the outside of The New York Times Headquarters. This time, however, it was over and done before most of us got out of bed:

Unlike the two previous climbers, this one — identified later as David Malone, a 29-year-old activist from West Hartford, Conn., who studies Al Qaeda — did not attempt to make his way to the roof. Instead, he unfurled a banner around the fifth floor of the 52-story building, before climbing a few more stories.

Continue reading ‘A 3rd Climber’

July 9, 2008 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments

Thsrs – The Shorter Thesaurus

Thsrs seems like a good idea: when you’re having trouble expressing yourself on Twitter in less that 140 characters, query the only thesaurus that only gives you synonyms shorter than the word you’re looking up.

omfg, lolz.

July 9, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

Business Week profile of Deborah Kenny

In the current Business Week, there is an interesting profile of Deborah Kenny, the founder Harlem Village Academies:

Kenny has applied a business management style to running her schools, focusing on attracting smart teachers, nurturing talent, using reams of data to improve performance, and putting a huge emphasis on rewarding results.

Kenny also happens to be Lisa’s boss.

July 8, 2008 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments