Fraser Speirs and the Hype Machine
John Gruber, agreeing with Fraser Speirs on Apple’s future platform:
Fraser Speirs, predicting (rightly, I think) that the iPhone OS will be Apple’s main platform four years from now:
Put this another way: my iPhone app, Exposure, has picked up on average 3,200 new users per day since the App Store opened. Exposure already has twice as many users as FlickrExport for Aperture.
If there were one centralized place to obtain apps for OS X, and there were only about 500 OS X applications, then I would expect that FlickrExport would have numbers that are similar to Exposure’s. The fact that the iPhone application has a higher number of users isn’t surprising, since:
- The iPhone is a new platform, which means there’s a lot of non-developers feeling around in ways they would not on a more established platform;
- The App Store is new and has a comparatively small number of available applications, only some of which are even worth the time they take to download;
- There is only one way to get applications onto the iPhone, meaning that people are being exposed to applications they wouldn’t normally seek out on their own; and
- A Flickr upload tool is a natural application to want on a handheld device that contains a built-in camera, versus a desktop computer or laptop, built-in camera or not.
The numbers are actually more muddied than they appear at first glance. Exposure appeals to everyone who owns an iPhone and uses Flickr; FlickrExport for Aperture, naturally, appeals to everyone who owns Aperture and uses Flickr. I submit to you that these markets almost entirely overlap, with the Aperture users being a subset of the iPhone users.
Zero Dollar Bill
Los Angeles artist Brian Romero designed a zero-dollar bill as an anti-corporate statement:
I designed the font back in 1998. Well, ‘designed’ is maybe too strong a word; I traced the letters that appeared on a $50 bill and guessed (poorly) at the rest. Especially the X, which is just completely wrong, and the G, which is just completely awful.
But if you happen to like it (the font, I mean), you can download it over here. My other fonts are there as well.
Awesome.
I don’t create the memes, I just report them:
AWESOME.
Myst: The Movie
Oh, God:
Keeping with the video game adaptations trend, news has come out regarding a very independent film version of the wildly popular game series, Myst.
Geeks Of Doom
Great, that’s all we need: an hour and a half of watching one guy stumble around a richly-detailed environment, flipping random switches to see what they do and occasionally pounding his fist against the ground uselessly where there appears to be something useful that doesn’t do anything.
If they stayed true to the games he’d just give up after the first half-hour.
Code Like An Asshole #2
In C++:
class Foo {
public:
Foo( void ) { delete this; }
};
Obama Is One Cool Cat
A neat photo, courtesy Reuters:
Of course the internets picked up on this:
Speaking of Obama, Ryan and I had the following conversation a few days ago:
Ryan: Change! Yes we can!
Stephen: Oh, you’re voting for Obama now?
No, daddy. Change my diaper. Yes we can!
Code Like An Asshole #1
In C#:
private string fileName;
public string FileName
{
get { Application.Exit(); return null; }
set { fileName = value; }
}
Playground Ball On Hamburger Mold
Mixed media, 2008
Part of Alyssa’s ongoing Toys & Tools series, currently on display in our kitchen. And the family room, play room, den, stairwell, bathroom, bedroom, and garage.
(And the backyard.)
Pig Farmers and Diamond Miners
Last night I was thinking about how, at my previous job, I’d been pressed to provide a status on problems that were both more complicated than were assumed, and for which I was only tasked with a small portion.
A concrete example would be being asked when the website would be finished, when my assignment was to write the supporting code to communicate with the database and manage state (which is more complicated than one might think), and could not control how long it took the designers and copy editors to contribute their portions.
As I was drifting off to sleep I came up with a few quips that I might use when I encounter those sorts of questions in the future:
You’re asking a diamond miner for a wedding ring.
You’re asking a pig farmer for a BLT.
Dumb Jokes
Q. What do you get when you cross a helicopter, an elephant, and a rhinoceros?
A. Hell if I know.
Q. What do you get when you cross a mosquito with a mountain climber?
A. You can’t cross a vector with a scalar.
Q. What do you get when you cross Tony Soprano?
A. Broken knees.
Q. What do you get when you cross the picket line?
A. A paycheck.
