February 2010
42 posts
4%
Wikipedia on converting 24p to PAL:
The most popular method [of converting] is to speed up the material by 25/24 (4%). […] As for audio, the ~4% increase in speed raises the pitch by 0.7 of a semitone.
That speed increase doesn’t happen with Blu-ray or DVD, but I get it on television where I live (Australia is a PAL region). I’ve noticed that pitch variance very...
3 tags
http://www.fontsquirrel.com/fontface/generator →
Converts font files (.ttf, .otf) into EOT and SVG fonts.
Context: the only monospaced programmer-y font on the iPhone is Courier New. How could I let a site involving Mac and iPhone software development be rendered in Courier New?
Point is, SVG font + @font-face = Monaco on the iPhone. Boom.
1 tag
[[NSPodcast alloc] init];
If I was going to host a podcast about Mac OS X and iPhone software development, y’know what I’d call it?
NSPodcast.
I explain a little bit more on the site, but I’m considering making a show for and about Mac/iPhone software development. Not a big thing — just some interviews with developers that I think make neat software. I think...
http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/ →
Hex Color Picker from waffle software (the same group that did Google+Growl, a nifty little program I use every day) adds another tab to the Mac OS X Color Picker for dealing with colors in terms of hex values, a system more familiar to programmers and web designers than a box of crayons.
It works really well and it’s free. Try it.
WatchThe State — Sideways House Family
My boy is dead and this house killed him AS IT WILL KILL EVERY LAST ONE OF US!
Too funny. For the record, Thomas Lennon has quite a few funny things to say on Twitter.
4 tags
15,000? In a row?
So I had an idea. It was tentatively named “Wasn’t She In?” and it was going to be a web app with two text fields and a do-button. In each text field, you’d type the name of a movie or TV show. When you hit Return or clicked the do-button, the web app would tell you what cast members those two films/shows shared.
The idea is that you’re watching a TV show (say, oh,...
If the number of cannons fired or the number of 50-foot-high inflatable women there are riding a life-size steam train with fireballs shooting out of it are criteria for how good a rock show is, then AC/DC were pretty good last night.
There you are at the airport. You want to read Hacker News, but you’re about to get on a flight. Why not catch up with HN while you’re on the plane?
instahn is a Python script that adds every story on the front page of Hacker News to your Instapaper.
Get it here.
Ideally I’d like to get it to add the stories to an Instapaper folder called “Hacker News” or...
2 tags
All The Books Are About Old Apple
I own a couple of books about Apple. I have Apple Confidential 2.0 and Steve Wozniak’s autobiography, iWoz. I’ve also read Andy Hertzfeld’s folklore.org series of essays that got turned into Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How The Mac Was Made. I think I have another one floating around somewhere, but the ones I mentioned are the good ones.
As a computer...
“It’s been seven years without a byte… and he’s hungry. Kate...”
– The blurb on the back of Hackers (1995). I hope that the guy that wrote this copy was sent to the punitentiary.
3 tags
Let me tell you about my high school rock band.
...
1 tag
“The Exif standard has no provision for video files.”
– Wiki. Bummer. I was hoping that, like photos, videos had some meta-data built-in that could tell you what kind of camera a video was captured with.
2 tags
Good video shot on a Flip?
Help me internet, you’re my only hope.
I’m looking for an example of a real video (not a “this is just a test” video or a “here is my baby” video) shot on a Flip MinoHD. I get that you wouldn’t want to go make a feature-length movie or anything with it, but has anyone ever made a good-looking short film on a Flip? Maybe a music video? Anything other than...
1 tag
Idea
Just need to capture this real quick.
Idea: a Tumblr theme called P ānā V that makes your Tumblr look like a poker-and-viagra-ad-covered robo-blog.
http://www.bestsoftware4download.com/download/t-fre... →
This is possibly the spammiest-spam-spamspam webpage in the world.
Apart from the hideous, link-filled poker-and-viagra look, the cherry on the top is the file that your computer automatically starts downloading when you visit the page — iPad.zip.
I’m sure there is nothing malicious at all about that.
Just My iPhone
My MacBook’s been in the hands of Geniuses for the past few days, so I’ve had to do all of my general computing on my iPhone. Sure, it was a little like going on a camping trip — instead of a fan-forced oven, I had a camping stove — but it actually went pretty well. The only two issues I came across while using the iPhone for my everyday computing were:
The screen started...
Treknobabble
I want you to install a bypass between the main phaser array and the secondary generators. I also want to run the main deflector pathway through the warp power grid, and the auxiliary conduits through the lateral relays. Now, you may have to reconfigure the transfer interface.
This is a real line of dialogue from an episode of ST:TNG that I just watched.
It means nothing. Null. The empty...
1970 Interview With Tony Williams →
Interviewer: What makes you feel good beside your music?
Tony Williams: Music.
I: Besides that?
TW: Besides music, watching two women make it together. That really turns me on.
I: Really?
TW: Oh, man.
I: You’re serious?
TW: Yes. That’s a gas when you see it.
I: What are your other interests? (Laughter) Do you have any hobbles?
TW: I like to cheat at pool...
List of films in which New York City is destroyed →
Which Letters' Names Can Be Spelled Without...
An example — you spell the name of the letter ‘b’ as “bee.” “Bee” contains the letter ‘b,’ so it cannot be spelled without itself. On the other hand, you could spell the name of the letter ‘c’ as “see,” so it can be spelled without itself.
Here are my results:
A - x
B - x
C - ā (see)
D - x
E - x
F - x
G - ā...
http://github.com/scottjacksonx/hn-api →
I took the guts of my hnsh project and made it a simple Python API for Hacker News.
2 tags
A YLNT Idea
I’ve had this sitting on my hard drive for a while, but the Sleepy Adams’ mascot stirring from his slumber reminded me of it.
Joel and Jeff of the StackOverflow podcast get the community to transcribe episodes of their show. Apart from allowing those who can’t hear to also consume the show, this means that the show’s content is indexable and searchable.
I was thinking...
Patti Scialfa Syndrome
Just to clear up something I mentioned in my last post, Patti Scialfa Syndrome is when a member of the band is up on stage mostly for show. They’ll usually provide backup vocals or play tambourine. Sometimes, they’re the girlfriend or whatever of one of the “real” band members. Other times, they’re just members of the band who
The most famous case of Patti Scialfa...
“Somehow, “Satisfaction” got faster and faster as we went along. As...”
– Anthony Griffis in Air Guitar — The True Life and Daggy Times of a Lounge-Room Rock Star, perfectly describing the “now it’s time to end the song” facial expression.
Writings: IBM vs. Mac →
I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the ratio studiorum of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory; it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach — if not the kingdom of Heaven — the moment in which their document is printed. It is...
@lonelysandwich:
Twitter is the comments without all the stuff.
Maybe. On the whole, they look pretty similar. Thing is, Twitter has so much more value to me than comments on websites because of how I use Twitter.
Twitter is nuanced, comments are binary.
On Twitter, you control whose stuff you see. If you don’t like what someone has to say, you can stop following them. With...
January 2010
62 posts
4 tags
Movies
I’m back.
OK, so I didn’t get as much time to myself this weekend as I hoped I would. I did manage to make something, though.
Movies is a little iPhone web app for making a list of movies you want to see. You can add movies to your list and tick a checkbox next to a movie’s title to remove it from your list. It’s not much, but in making it, I got to learn about dealing...