One at first, but he'll train others.

Off to Europe. BRB. (at International Terminal)

Thu, 16 May 2013 20:58:57 -0700

Off to Europe. BRB. (at International Terminal)

The Great Google Goat Rodeo

Thu, 16 May 2013 16:52:45 -0700

The Great Google Goat Rodeo:

mwunsch:

Google is not “evil”. Google is too big to be evil. At its worst, Google is banal.

Lovely post which echoes a lot of my thoughts about Big G.

Google still has a handful of genius, best-of-breed properties and technologies, but it also has a muddled money-making side that makes me uncomfortable.

With every product announcement, you have to scrape away at the details to try and decipher the reason for its existence.

For example, at a time when they’re killing much loved apps like Reader in the name of simplicity, they’re hiring up couriers and shops to offer you free next-day delivery for purchases in the Bay Area. That can’t be a service they want to be in the business of, so why…? They must be wanting to get better data on offline purchases — to learn what I buy when I need things in a hurry and don’t have time to wait for Amazon Prime. And that kind of conversion data must be useful because they want to better serve offline brick-and-mortar advertisers and make more money. (This is almost certainly why they still battle forth with Google Wallet despite an almost total reluctance by the public at large to pay at Walgreens with their Android phone)

That’s the sort of faustian bargain they’re striking up with their users, albeit without telling them what’s going on. (For all you can say about Facebook, at least they are blatant about asking you for your information and how they’re using it to target advertising at you!)

"So Last Splash is a tight record that’s also alive with happy accidents. Perhaps the most..."

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:33:50 -0700

“So Last Splash is a tight record that’s also alive with happy accidents. Perhaps the most famous example: the bassline’s hesitant entrance on “Cannonball”— and we’re talking about one of the most iconic basslines of the 90s— was actually the product of a fortunate mistake. In a rehearsal, Wiggs played the last note of the riff flat (twice in a row) but everybody thought it sounded cool, so it became a part of the song.”

- Pitchfork’s review of LSXX

Hard to imagine Cannonball without that bass intro.

‘I Just Wanna Get Along’ by The Breeders“If you’re...

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:08:14 -0700

‘I Just Wanna Get Along’ by The Breeders
“If you’re so special, why aren’t you dead?”

"If you love doing something, under no condition should you start a VC-backed company to do more of..."

Tue, 14 May 2013 13:11:16 -0700

“If you love doing something, under no condition should you start a VC-backed company to do more of it. You won’t. You are going to spend all of your time recruiting, fundraising, recruiting, aligning team vision, recruiting, and figuring out which fires you can safely ignore.”

- Aza Raskin: Psychological Pitfalls And Lessons of A Designer-Founder

The Dissection Of A Vintage Mac So many tiny pieces, and so...

Mon, 13 May 2013 22:49:04 -0700

The Dissection Of A Vintage Mac

So many tiny pieces, and so many memories.

The Breeders Perform “Cannonball” on Late Night With Jimmy...

Wed, 08 May 2013 15:26:00 -0700

The Breeders Perform “Cannonball” on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon (via Laughing Squid)

Gawd, I love Kim Deal.

"Ask any of the thousands of women that I’ve been with, before or after being Vice President. They’ll..."

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:24:58 -0700

“Ask any of the thousands of women that I’ve been with, before or after being Vice President. They’ll all vouch for Ol’ Joe. Doesn’t matter which side of the aisle they’re from. If there’s one thing Pelosi and Bachmann agree on, it’s that I can make the Congressional ladies room a lot more fun.”

- Highlighted by Rod Begbie in The President of Vice by The Onion

bombsfall: FEMINAZI STOLE MY ICE CREAM SHIRTS...

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:05:00 -0700

bombsfall:

FEMINAZI STOLE MY ICE CREAM SHIRTS AVAILABLE NOW!

I love when I idly comment “I want this on a t-shirt” and that actually happens. Ordered.

Every Noise at Once, a rather wonderful way to explore musical...

Tue, 07 May 2013 14:03:01 -0700

Every Noise at Once, a rather wonderful way to explore musical genres.

This is an algorithmically-generated non-analytical map of the musical genre-space. Genres and artists are positioned by code and data, adjusted for legibility, but the underlying vectors are less interesting than the juxtapositions and clusters that they produce, so the axes have been deliberately left unlabeled and uncalibrated. You are invited to imagine your own qualities and magnitudes that the geometry might be expressing.

"Flight update: Gremlin on the wing. Not unusual. Gremlin on the wing holding a placard. Slightly..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 11:45:11 -0700

“Flight update: Gremlin on the wing. Not unusual. Gremlin on the wing holding a placard. Slightly more unusual.”

- How I Keep Myself Amused on Long Flights – Whatever

Brilliant series of tweets from John Scalzi

SO many cute pups tied up outside Birite and The Mill today (at...

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:54:16 -0700

SO many cute pups tied up outside Birite and The Mill today (at Divisadero Corridor)

"Vickery told police he got into the home through an unlocked door. He told investigators he went..."

Fri, 03 May 2013 13:21:48 -0700

“Vickery told police he got into the home through an unlocked door. He told investigators he went upstairs to masturbate in the bathroom when he found a remote control helicopter. Vickery said he found some batteries and started playing with the helicopter. He also ate a salad that he brought with him, according to detectives.”

- Burglary suspect admits to performing sex act in couple’s home

via @_FloridaMan. Of course.

"Where I have issues with Facebook is that they’re dishonest about who the customer is...."

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:15:36 -0700

“Where I have issues with Facebook is that they’re dishonest about who the customer is. They’ve built an enticing chair, and they let me sit in it for free, but they’re selling my farts to the highest bidder.”

- Mike Monteiro on Facebook design, How Facebook Designs the ‘Perfect Empty Vessel’ for Your Mind

"We need a malaria epidemic in the blogging community!"

Thu, 02 May 2013 14:49:43 -0700

“We need a malaria epidemic in the blogging community!”

- Bill Gates on Flying Cars, the Malaria Epidemic, and Article-Writing Robots

I less-than-three billg.

gemmacorrell: Me right now.

Thu, 02 May 2013 12:06:00 -0700

gemmacorrell:

Me right now.

If you have a Fitbit or Jawbone UP, it’s well worth...

Thu, 02 May 2013 11:45:17 -0700

If you have a Fitbit or Jawbone UP, it’s well worth playing with notch, which slurps up your data and gives you pretty visualizations of your activity levels

In a lot of ways, the dynamics remind me of early...

Wed, 01 May 2013 17:15:21 -0700

In a lot of ways, the dynamics remind me of early Championship Manager. Sure that was a football management sim, but much of the context, intrigue and humanity of that game took place in the player’s imagination; you had to believe that real lives were being manipulated and arranged by those mouse clicks, button presses and menu systems. The joy was what you bought in as a participant. RedShirts works in the same way and feels all the more compulsive because you have to become a complicit story-teller yourself.

RedShirt – or what happens when Facebook meets Star Trek

"So much ink has been spilled deriding the false concept of a “Facebook friend,” but I..."

Wed, 01 May 2013 14:30:19 -0700

“So much ink has been spilled deriding the false concept of a “Facebook friend,” but I can tell you that a “Facebook friend” is better than nothing.”

- I’m still here: back online after a year without the internet | The Verge

Between Foursquare planning to show post-checkin vodka ads and...

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:45:18 -0700

Between Foursquare planning to show post-checkin vodka ads and Path being their usual bunch of privacy-shredding terminal dickbag selves, I’m in need of a Foursquare client that didn’t make me sad to be a user.

I finally got around to installing a copy of Aaron Straup-Cope’s privatesquare on a server. Should be fun.