I Can't Control My Brain

Phil Schiller is on Ping. More importantly, he likes Rush....

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:32:00 +1000

Phil Schiller is on Ping.

More importantly, he likes Rush. Well, he likes Neil Peart, at least.

Ryan On Today's Apple Event

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:32:00 +1000

New Apple TV

Problem for me (and a lot like me) is that, outside of the US, the content selection is abysmal. Netflix is a nice addition, and with the service coming to Canada this fall, makes the $99 device a bit more enticing. But I already have a PS3 and an Xbox 360 that can stream Netflix, and everything stored on my Mac.

Netflix? Is that like Blockbuster, the place that I get into my car and drive to so I can pay for them let me have a disc for a short amount of time and then charge me extra if I don’t return it when they want me to? Anyway, content selection outside the US is abysmal — the Australian iBookstore is still just Project Gutenberg books. Our iTunes Store doesn’t even have Kindergarten Cop (just kidding — it does, and I totally watch that movie all the time).

Other miscellaneous snark:

I think AirPlay looks really cool. If nothing else, it means the Remote app should finally be getting an update soon. It hasn’t seen an update since July of ‘08. I’d love a version of the Remote app for the iPad.
Couldn’t they have killed Cover Flow and not the iPod Classic?
The iPad gets its task tray on the bottom in landscape mode, but the iPhone doesn’t. Every time I double-click the home button on my iPhone in landscape mode and the task tray appears perpendicular to everything else on the screen, I sigh.
What’s with this trend of “and it’ll be available next month?” I kinda miss “and we’re shipping it today.” I can’t help but wonder whether this shift happened because Apple realised they could, er, milk product launches a bit more by announcing the product a month before they ship it. Give people time to start lining up, etc. (There’s not seriously going to be a line for the new Apple TV, is there?)

I never put the meaning of this picture together until...

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 12:08:31 +1000

I never put the meaning of this picture together until today.

Aww. Sad.

(Speaking of that guest lecture.)

"Secure the shadow, ‘ere the substance fade."

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:28:00 +1000

“Secure the shadow, ‘ere the substance fade.”

- 19th-century post-mortem photography advertising slogan.

(I went to a guest lecture this morning about how CGI lets us re-animate the dead in film. Another great tidbit: “casting by Forest Lawn Casting Agency.”)

From Jurassic Park (1993). In this scene, the gang have a meal and talk about the park while in...

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 20:25:30 +1000

From Jurassic Park (1993).

In this scene, the gang have a meal and talk about the park while in the background, slideshows play of future attractions and future features of the park.

This future feature in particular caught my eye.

Just what exactly is Jurassic Tennis?

secret plans to the Empire’s u l t i m a t e w e a p o n , t h e DEATH STAR, an...

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:41:02 +1000

secret plans to the Empire’s
u l t i m a t e w e a p o n , t h e
DEATH STAR, an armored
…

Australian Driving Lessons for Ryan Heise Volume 1 Crikey,...

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 13:46:13 +1000

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

Australian Driving Lessons for Ryan Heise Volume 1

Crikey, Aussie Drivin’ School For Rawhide Volume 1, STREWTH!

(OR, Canadians Be Driving Like This)

(context)

Way to get me going, Rawhide. (Why “Rawhide?” Ryan...

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:27:00 +1000

Way to get me going, Rawhide.

(Why “Rawhide?” Ryan Heise -> @ryhei -> sounds a bit like Rawhide, duh.)

Wow-uh.

Sat, 21 Aug 2010 01:17:22 +1000

Christopher Walken, in a 2003 Guardian article:

“Sometimes, in a scene, without telling the other actor, I’ll pretend that I’m Elvis. I’ll just pretend I’m Elvis and the other actor will not know. And it’ll make me smile. Or even just smile inside. I’m doing Elvis and this guy doesn’t know I’m doing Elvis. I do it when things are getting stale. I’ll do it to, like, juice things up a little.”

Tell me you can’t imagine Christopher Walken saying that paragraph, word for word. Tell me you can’t imagine exactly how he’d say that. Wow-uh.

From earlier in the Guardian piece:

As a child, he used to cross out punctuation in his textbooks, something he still does, obsessively, with his scripts.

Later, in a 2004 New York Times article:

His bizarro word rhythm and gleeful disregard for punctuation makes even his most banal utterances sound dramatic. At the grocery store, he stared at a plump tomato and then put it back. ”I DON’T. Buy the tomatoes with. The stems. On them. They don’t. Degrade. They go. Down the sink. And into the WATER. Then. They get lodged in the throats of little. OTTERS.”

♫ One of these things is not like the other…...

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +1000

♫ One of these things is not like the other… ♫

Confirmation email for my DF t-shirt¹ showed up in my Spam folder.

More importantly though, I apparently also received a spam email with the subject line “Mighty morphing power wieners.”

I am still laughing as I type this.

¹: No, I’ve never owned a Daring Fireball shirt, which obviously makes me less than a True Fan. Obviously. Because you’re not really a fan of something unless you own the same shirt and DVD box-set and Collector’s Edition Director’s Cut that I do, because I’m really a True Fan. I’m the True Fan. Also, I liked that band before you did, so you’re not allowed to like them, and I can only send links about this indie film director to you, not the other way round, because I introduced you to his movies. Duh.

This is a pile of Australian coins. Specifically, a $2, a $1, a...

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:03:58 +1000

This is a pile of Australian coins. Specifically, a $2, a $1, a 50c, a 20c, another 20c, a 10c, and a 5c. I carry this pile (or a pile like it) with me pretty much everywhere I go.

Why?

This is the smallest set of coins that can make any value from $0 up to $4.05¹.

This is neither a tip nor a trick. This is not a lifehack. This has nothing to do with turbocharging. This has everything to do with the fact that people like getting correct change, and the fact that I like having less change in my pocket after I buy something. The person behind the counter’s happy, I’m happy, everyone’s happy.

¹: In Australia, stuff gets rounded to the nearest 5c

Rush — “YYZ” (Drum Track...

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:05:20 +1000

Rush — “YYZ” (Drum Track Only)

“YYZ” is in Rock Band 2, and in order to let people play along with the song, Harmonix had to isolate the individual tracks of each of the songs in the game (so, the song plays without a guitar track when you play the guitar).

The result is this video — it’s just Neil Peart’s part on “YYZ.” If you listen really closely, you can actually hear the splash cymbal ring just a tiny bit when he really puts a hurtin’ on the bass drum.

(Posted because Merlin’s been all “Rush Rush Rush” on the Twitter lately, and because I take any opportunity I can to try and end the great cultural war between myself and my Canadian Internet Friends.)

On Who To Follow

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 12:17:17 +1000

So, Twitter’s got a new recommendations feature called Who To Follow. The feeling I’m getting from around the place is that it’s not such a great feature. I don’t think recommendations are a bad idea, but I think that Twitter’s going about it the wrong way. Here are two reasons why Who To Follow is Doing It Wrong™.

All it’s doing is trying to get you to fill in the graph. Even then, it’s not being all that smart about how it does that. Who To Follow puts together a big graph of who follows who and tells you where the holes are so you can fill them in. Some of us put a lot of thought into who we follow, and some of us intentionally leave those holes there. I’ve already had Twitter recommend some people to me whose tweets I know I don’t enjoy. I know others have experienced same. It just doesn’t seem like a very subtle or nuanced system — basing recommendations on who follows who gives you a very shallow algorithm. Think about it — Who To Follow bases recommendations on a series of one-bit (“following” or “not-following”) relationships between people, and that’s it. No consideration for anything deeper.
It’s pushing new people on you. Constantly. Whenever you hit the homepage, it’s there. People aren’t always looking for new friends¹. The most common thing I’ve heard so far is that recommendations are a good idea, but that there should be some way to hide it.

If only there was some kind of website thing that did Twitter recommendations that were tailored to each individual user and that also wasn’t always pushing new potential friends on you.

Oh well.

¹: I can only assume that Twitter thought of this at some point, which makes me wonder why they put Who To Follow on the homepage — maybe they noticed a slowdown in users following new people over time and decided to give users a very easy, visible way to follow new people. They’re the only ones that have access to that kind of data at a macro level, so I couldn’t say for sure. Maybe they’re just putting it on the homepage for now, for the launch of the feature.

4. People much smarter than me have reviewed this thing, so...

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:12:00 +1000

People much smarter than me have reviewed this thing, so I’ll just say this: yes, I can do the grip/reception thing a little bit, and no, it’s not a big deal. I can only do it in my room, where I have shitty reception, and even then it only goes down one or two bars. In addition, I’ve always held my phone up to my right ear, which is why the real news to come out of Antennagate for me was that people use their phone with their left hand. I think it’s because the toilets flush the other way in the US.

Update: After a few more hours with this thing, I can report that I’m getting reception in places I wasn’t with my 3GS. So who knows. Maybe the 3G chip in there is better.

I dare you to find me an album cover that’s more...

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 00:56:00 +1000

I dare you to find me an album cover that’s more ’80s than Missing Persons’ Color in Your Life.

(I reckon I could have gotten my hair to Terry Bozzio (bottom-right on the album cover) length if I’d left it for a couple more months.)

I’m not saying there should be some kind of competition to find the most-’80s album cover, but yes I am. Thompson Twins Tuesday? Wham Wednesday? I don’t know.

The Specials — Rat Race Some notes: Elvis Costello...

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:26:40 +1000

The Specials — Rat Race

Some notes:

Elvis Costello produced the first Specials album.
Chrissie Hynde was one of the female vocalists on The Specials’ first two albums.
John Bradbury sold that insane 14” x 10” snare drum to The Cure’s Lol Tolhurst. It’s the same snare that can be heard all through Seventeen Seconds, Faith and Pornography.
I just realised that, in Rat Race (2001), the whole bit with the Barbie Museum is funny because Jon Lovitz’s character is Jewish.

Two thumbs and required to join (and use) Foursquare for a...

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 22:30:38 +1000

Two thumbs and required to join (and use) Foursquare for a Social Computing course he’s taking at university?

This guy.

And, of course, our participation mark for the course is based solely on how often we use each of these social networks.

I’m not looking forward to this.

Osfoora, I want to like you. I want you to fill the Tweetie...

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 22:09:46 +1000

Osfoora, I want to like you. I want you to fill the Tweetie 2-shaped hole on my iPhone. I really do.

However, until you get the little things like the spelling of Instapaper right, it’ll be Twitterrific for me. I mean, come on. You wrote the code to make your app integrate with Instapaper, but you didn’t take the time to see which letters are in its name? The fuck is that about?

What you can see here is that, for this theme, the...

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:32:12 +1000

What you can see here is that, for this theme, the geolocation data has actually been put on a pin on a map …

This part of the WWDC keynote didn’t get enough attention. At first, I thought it was just an iPhone 4 feature. Then I tried it on my 3GS. Sure enough, after I recorded a video the little location indicator appeared up on the right-hand side of the status bar.

In iOS 4, videos have geolocation data.

It’s not Exif metadata, but still. I can see on a map the exact stretch of beach where I took that great video of me and my friends throwing the frisbee around on our weekend trip, and we can find our way back there again some time. Or whatever. Cue Scott Forstall crazy eyes.

Woody Allen — The Vodka Ad, from “Woody Allen:...

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:26:32 +1000

Woody Allen — The Vodka Ad, from “Woody Allen: Standup Comic”

I can only assume it’s related, however tangentially.