mixed, not shuffled

A proposal for a readable web

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:58:00 -0500

A lot’s being said around the Daring-Fireball region of the Web about the failure of most sites these days (with a few notable exceptions like the Boston Globe redesign) to make content reader- rather than advertiser-friendly.

I have a proposal:

A consortium of pro-reader organizations should get together to distribute and promote a customized adblocking plugin that works exactly like Adblock / Adblock Plus, but with one simple criteria: if the ration in size in bytes of content downloaded by your page vs. amount of text content exceeds a certain threshold, your ads are blocked by Adblock. If not, ads are shown.

Obviously it’d need some tweaking for exact thresholds, and you’d need a big install base to make an impact, but just imagine how hard now-hideous sites like Business Insider would work to fix their errant ways if 50% of their visitors had a setup like this.

(I can also think of later algorithm improvements as publishers try to sneak around things — for example, measure how many pixels above the first 400px+ wide text paragraph are made up of ads/nav/etc. and reward sites that give you the content as close to the top as possible. This starts to basically be a score like a PageRank — ReadabilityRank, let’s call it).

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether: Tom Wolfe and Kurt...

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:50:39 -0400

awesomepeoplehangingouttogether:

Tom Wolfe and Kurt Vonnegut

(submitted by Robin)

You can order some strange things on Foodler. (I actually got...

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:46:37 -0500

You can order some strange things on Foodler. (I actually got some tofu and a Diet Coke in the end, but I found this pretty funny).

cmdrriker: St. Valentine’s Day Card by Joe List of The...

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 11:43:56 -0500

cmdrriker:

St. Valentine’s Day Card by Joe List of The Annotated Weekender and Freak Leap fame.

Download A4 size

Download US Letter Size

From CNN’s homepage. Ha!

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 11:05:51 -0500

From CNN’s homepage. Ha!

hipsterpuppies: there was an npr story about that, let me find...

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 12:58:30 -0500

hipsterpuppies:

there was an npr story about that, let me find it

[via michelle h]

I keep listening to the Sleigh Bells album over and over, and...

Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:46:39 -0500

I keep listening to the Sleigh Bells album over and over, and I’m not sure why. Probably my favorite two-person noise rock duo since Death From Above 1979. Also I think it’s always a good fallback music video to just have your band walk down the street in Ray-Bans while stuff explodes behind you.

Google Maps 5 for Android is here, and it stands out as one of...

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 14:14:00 -0500

Google Maps 5 for Android is here, and it stands out as one of those rare but awesome “sci-fi meets real life” sort of experiences (more so than first-use-of-an-iPad). 0:15-0:30 in the video is what matters; other features are nice but not “wow”-level.

What using the vectors+3D-buildings features in Maps 5 kind of reminds me of: Action movies where some guy is chasing the bad guy and headset calls Central (AKA an attractive woman in glasses, so you know she’s smart) and says “PULL UP THE GRID! I need the layout for the Hancock Tower NOW!” Then she uses some totally unrealistic tablet computer (hah! a thin tablet device under 2 pounds with fast internet and hours of battery life?) and zooms and tilts in on a 3D map of the city and nerds roll their eyes a little.

Only now after playing around with this on the Samsung Tab, it’s just one or two zoom levels short of exactly that.

"Tycho replies that he would order additional moose, and he would have sent his tame one, had it not..."

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 11:15:18 -0400

“Tycho replies that he would order additional moose, and he would have sent his tame one, had it not died shortly before. It had been transported to the castle of Landskrona, a city close to Hven, to entertain a nobleman there. But it had happened that during the dinner, the moose had ascended the castle stairs and drunk of the beer in such amounts, that it had fallen down the stairs, and broken a leg. Despite the best care, the moose had died shortly thereafter.”

- Exciting incidents in the life of Tycho Brahe, including getting his nose cut off in a rapier duel and replacing it with a gold one, and his pet moose that drank too much. Wikipedia seems to back most of this up, too, although written less awesomely. Also see Hirsute History’s t-shirt:

Blog post: Three Common iPhone to Android Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 15:13:33 -0400

Blog post: Three Common iPhone to Android Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them:

A blog post I wrote for Localytics on what you need to know before you port an iPhone app to Android, particularly when it comes to design, UI/UX, and QA/testing.

(video - link) School of Seven Bells - Wired for Light (acoustic...

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 15:15:01 -0400

(video - link) School of Seven Bells - Wired for Light (acoustic version). Going to see them in Sept. at the Middle East in Cambridge.

Cadiz to Tel Aviv by kayak

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:09:54 -0400

Cadiz to Tel Aviv by kayak:

My old (elementary-school-in-rhode-island 1990-1996 old) friend Dov is going to kayak from Spain to Israel via France, Italy, Albania, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus. He leaves August 5th. Here’s wishing him the best of luck (especially with that Turkey part, given recent politics). Wow. Just wow.

The Anosognosic's Dilemma and Passover flashbacks

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 17:37:18 -0400

The Anosognosic's Dilemma and Passover flashbacks:

Summary from BoingBoing; the full read at the NY Times is a good one.

The Jews in the room will recognize the discussion of the nature of our meta-knowledge has several parallels with differences between the Four Sons (ארבעה בנים) of the Passover seder: the Wise Son (חכם - known questions, known answers), the Simple Son (תם - known questions, unknown answers) and most importantly, the Son Who Doesn’t Know How To Ask (שאינו יודע לשאול - unknown unknowns). The Evil Son (רשע) is either the knowledgeable but deliberately malicious version of the Wise Son, or, depending on your interpretation, the so-misguided-he-thinks-he’s-right bank robber with lemon juice on his face, a simple son who thinks he’s a wise son, the everyday anosognosic of the article’s title.

I was also pleased to see the article reference Stefan Fatsis’s “Word Freaks,” which was a really fascinating book I highly recommend about competitive Scrabble players (think King of Kong in book form).

I’m looking forward to the next 4 articles in the series.

"finders keepers, losers weepers"

Tue, 04 May 2010 14:35:48 -0400

"finders keepers, losers weepers":

“Jason Chen did not “find himself in possession” of a prototype iPhone. Jason Chen and Gizmodo bought a prototype iPhone from someone whom they knew had stolen it.”

I really love Gizmodo, but I seemed to be the only tech geek I knew who was really troubled by the whole iPhone 4G teardown/photo shoot… it’s nice to know Gruber feels the same way.

That’s not to say the police should have busted in Chen’s door, or that it was at all a smart move on Apple’s part from a PR standpoint, but really… there’s been a lot of “slippery slope” talk. The issues isn’t, “should Chen get the same protection as any other journalist” (he should), but “should journalists who’ve openly admitted to themselves committing (not just reporting on) a prosecutable larceny, be immune to normal criminal investigative proceedings just because they wrote an article about the end results?”

I think it’d be one thing if Gizmodo bought photos of the new iPhone from an informant, even knowing the phone had been stolen/”found” — but it’s another story when they actually buy the stolen goods themselves with the corporate checkbook.

And for anyone arguing it wasn’t *really* stealing, as Gruber says, CA law seems pretty clear on it, legally. And ethically… If I left my phone (top-secret prototype or otherwise) at a bar, and some dude picked it up off the stool, walked out of the bar, halfheartedly called my corporate office the next day after the device was remotely wiped, and then sold it to the highest bidder (rather than handing it to the bartender and saying, “Someone left this here, he’ll probably be back for it”) I’d certainly be rather upset, wouldn’t you?

Apple’s still very silly for pursuing this rather than just letting it drop… but really, I have surprisingly little sympathy for Gizmodo on this one, legally or morally.

"We were at the bar, and Bruce was talking to Paul, and he turned to me and said, “I..."

Sun, 02 May 2010 20:49:36 -0400

“We were at the bar, and Bruce was talking to Paul, and he turned to me and said, “I can’t believe I’m talking to Paul McCartney!” I thought, “I can’t believe I’m talking to Bruce Springsteen, who’s talking to Paul McCartney!””

- Melissa Etheridge, to Rolling Stone about a night at a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony a few years back

(video) a little old-school TV On The Radio, from around the...

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:29:11 -0400

(video) a little old-school TV On The Radio, from around the first time I saw them at Siren Fest in 2004. The album version of this song may be one of the few acceptable a capella recordings ever, though it’s missing the (somewhat unnecessary) beatboxing from David Andrew Sitek in this version. I get goosebumps every time I see them live.

I still say Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes is a great record, even if it’s not quite as easy to get into as Return to Cookie Mountain or Dear Science.

The Many Faces of Null

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:50:59 -0400

“It is sometimes more convenient and less ambiguous to have a NULL object than to use Java’s null value. JSONObject.NULL.equals(null) returns true. JSONObject.NULL.toString() returns “null”.”

from the JSONObject Java documentation.

This doesn’t make much sense to me, though; JSONObject.NULL is an Object, and therefore logically can’t be equal to null, particularly because that equality check lacks transitivity (that is, JsonObject.NULL.equals(null) is true, but null.equals(JsonObject.NULL) is a compiler error or null pointer exception).

Also, it just feels really gross to me.

(screenshot) The OS X Dashboard weather widget is a bleak and...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 16:27:28 -0500

(screenshot) The OS X Dashboard weather widget is a bleak and sad looking thing right now. Not even a little sun in there. Heck, I’d settle for some non-precipitationary cloudiness. (Also, “precipitationary” should totally be a word).

(video: Laura Barret - Robot Ponies) Laura Barrett plays a...

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 10:58:46 -0500

(video: Laura Barret - Robot Ponies) Laura Barrett plays a pretty mean kalimba. Saw her open for the Magnetic Fields last week.

(photo) Got me a new camera. Trying it out around the office.

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:30:30 -0500

(photo) Got me a new camera. Trying it out around the office.