July 2010
39 posts
The Grid System →
I just love everything about this site. Also, check the Templates section for useful grid-based material.
THE lETTER l →
bobulate:
A rather serious site dedicated to lowercase L sightings and the psychology thereof:
The purpose of this blog is to to provide a forum for people to submit their photos of lowercase L sightings, and to discuss the psychology of the lowercase L offender. And if you are one of those people guilty of writing all-caps signs with lowercase L’s, we welcome and look forward to understanding...
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Albert-Jan Pool Tells the Story of his new FF DIN... →
Ivo Gabrowitsch:
In his book ‘Digital Formats of Typefaces’ from 1987 Karow revealed one of the last secrets of perfect roundings in letters digitized with Ikarus: the transitions from curves, named clothoids in the technical terminology. Besides that, Ikarus made it easy to construct letters as it allowed to define modules. And just these two approaches — precision and modularity — enabled...
Il Mac Minimalista: Autoritratto con mele, The... →
Diego Petrucci, de Il Mac Minimalista, mi ha intervistato brevemente. Lo ringrazio di cuore per l’interesse, i complimenti e la pubblicità. Consiglio di seguire il suo blog, che è ben scritto nella forma, e tutt’altro che banale nei contenuti.
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A brief interview (in Italian) with yours truly at Il Mac Minimalista. My thanks to Diego Petrucci, curator of the blog, for his...
“Mad Men” Furniture: Don Draper’s Office →
Cameron Moll:
A very detailed review of the show’s mid-century style from none other than The Mid-Century Modernist.
I’ve not seen a single episode of “Mad Men”, but I’ve read/seen/digested enough tweets or posts to have seen at least two seasons worth. At least.
I have seen every episode of Mad Men (it’s my second favourite series after Lost), and if you’re a fan of the series,...
The Magic ADB Trackpad →
I think that the new Apple Magic Trackpad is really nice. Multi-touch aside, the idea is, of course, not new. Long-time Mac users who still spend some time in the Old World will probably remember…
Clay Shirky: 'Paywall will underperform – the... →
I don’t know how I could miss this wonderful piece by The Guardian that was published on July 5. I’m a fan of Clay Shirky. As the author of the article Decca Aitkenhead writes, his conversation is warm and discursive, intently engaged yet relaxed – but it’s his rhetorical fluency which bowls you over. The architecture of his argument is a Malcolm Gladwell-esque structure of...
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Introducing Wolfram|Alpha Widgets →
The Wolfram|Alpha blog:
The beta version of Wolfram|Alpha Widgets is here! What are Wolfram|Alpha Widgets? They’re free, Wolfram|Alpha-powered mini apps that are easy to make, customize, and share on your blog, website, and social networks. And they’re the next step toward our goal of making the vast knowledge and computational power of Wolfram|Alpha available to everyone, everywhere.
In the...
Customer Care (and lack thereof)
Garrett Murray:
[…] On a related note, while I was at the AT&T store today the salesperson casually said, “Bad coverage in your apartment, eh? That’s a shame.” To which I replied, “Yes, AT&T sucks. If I didn’t have an iPhone, I wouldn’t use you guys.” He thought on this for a moment and then said, simply, “Yeah.”
Minutes later, I walked into the Apple Store to pick up a Magic...
A long list of modifier key tricks - Mac OS X... →
Old hint, handy list. Since it’s from april 2007 (Mac OS X Tiger era) perhaps something has changed or works differently, but a great list anyway.
Q&A: American McGee Returns to Alice’s Nightmare... →
An interview with game designer American McGee and story collaborator R. J. Berg about the upcoming Alice: Madness Returns, the long-awaited Alice sequel.
McGee: For the first game, the idea was to make a solid platformer. The other tenets were the art, which at the time was really out there in terms of its ability to present art as a core of the experience. R.J. wrote the first game’s story,...
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FontFonter: Try WebFontFonts on Any Website →
Cameron Moll:
“Bear with me as I continue to catch up on old news. This is probably the coolest thing I missed last week.”
I’m catching up on old news as well. This is really cool. Great job, FontShop!
The Newton Year 2010 bug: we have another patch! →
In May 2009 I was reporting Eckhart Köppen’s great achievement in successfully creating a system patch to solve a nasty bug affecting Newton MessagePads and eMates with NewtonOS 2.x, preventing them…
Antennagate, let's wrap it up.
The whole iPhone 4 antenna debate seems in a sort of deflating stage now, thankfully. And I won’t say anything more about it. Four pieces are worth linking and remembering, though, and you should read them if you missed them.
John Gruber’s Antennagate Bottom Line.
John Gruber’s Antennagate Addendum.
Andy Ihnatko’s iPhone 4 Press Conference, The Post-Game Wrapup.
John C....
“And anyone who thinks now that Apple is a big company that they should start...”
– John Gruber
“Every picture owes more to other pictures painted before than it owes to nature.”
– E. H. Gombrich
MacPaint and QuickDraw source code →
Source: Computer History Museum | MacPaint and QuickDraw source code: The Apple Macintosh combined brilliant design in hardware and in software. The drawing program MacPaint, which was released with…
The curious case of iPhone 4 antenna reception
I completely agree with John Gruber when he writes:
I don’t think there’s even a question that the iPhone 4, because of its external antenna, is susceptible to a different type of signal attenuation than all phones with internal antennas. To drop the signal with other phones, including the iPhone 3GS, you have to grip them such that your palm is interfering with the antenna. The iPhone 4 is...
Digital Donne →
From the About page:
“Constructed by the editors and staff of The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, the Center for the Study of Digital Libraries, and the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives at Texas A&M University, this web site is dedicated to the presentation of high-quality digital images of the early printed editions and selected manuscripts of John Donne’s...
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Edward Gorey Book Covers - a set on Flickr →
All are exquisite. This one is probably the most Goreyan of the group, and my favourite.
“We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail,...”
– Sherlock Holmes
In Defense of Audiophilia
Source: In Defense of Audiophilia.
Bill Leebens writes:
How is it that Hi-Fi—or High End Audio—once the domain of doctors and attorneys, celebrated in magazines like Playboy and Esquire, essential element of bachelor-pads and dorm rooms alike, has come to be viewed as the realm of obsessives, a perverse diversion that requires defensiveness on the part of the “victim” of this illness?...
Jorno - folding keyboard →
Introducing Jorno, the folding Bluetooth keyboard that fits in your pocket. Write email in a cafe. Take notes in a meeting or class. Blog wherever you are. Go mobile and get productive with Jorno.
Here’s the list of supported devices, taken from their Support page:
Apple iPod Touch 2nd Gen or higher (running iOS 4.0 or greater)
Apple iPhone 3GS / iPhone 4 (running iOS 4.0 or greater)
...
St Marie: free OpenType typeface →
Cameron Moll:
St Marie is a lovely typeface by Stereotypes, available under the terms of a Creative Commons License. The download package includes the .otf file for offline designing, as well as the .eot, .svg, and .woff formats for font embedding (demo).
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iPad and Kindle Reading Speeds →
Jakob Nielsen, in his latest Alertbox:
Summary: A study of people reading long-form text on tablets finds higher reading speeds than in the past, but they’re still slower than reading print.
I’ll summarise some interesting bits taken from the article:
We ran a within-subjects study, testing each user on all 4 reading conditions — printed book, PC, iPad, and Kindle — rotating the...
New layout and minor glitches
After some internal debate, I decided to switch to this new Tumblr theme, which seems more in line with the looks of my new weblog, The Quillink Observer. As you may have noticed, some photos in old posts appear too stretched and pixelated. It seems to be a small issue with this theme — another user brought the matter up and the developers replied that they’ll look into it. Apologies,...
