Through The Brier

I know some folks who need need these badly.

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:31:18 -0400

I know some folks who need need these badly.

"We take everything with us. "

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 10:54:00 -0400

“We take everything with us. ”

- Jeffrey Zeldman, looking back and looking forward in What happened here.

The Awesome Bar sure learns fast.

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:13:38 -0400

The Awesome Bar sure learns fast.

Any top-level domain you like

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:38:00 -0400

Any top-level domain you like:

…so long as you’ve got the cash. It’s going to be interesting to see how this turns out. It could be really beneficial to modern and future personal online identity and homesteading. It could also lead to general and sheer insanity. I bet marketing and legal departments the world over don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Now, who’s got a hundred grand to loan me so I can get o.O.

Well, shit.

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:18:40 -0400

Well, shit.

"Yet there runs throughout the opinions of my Brothers Powell and Stevens another vein I find equally..."

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:31:00 -0400

“Yet there runs throughout the opinions of my Brothers Powell and Stevens another vein I find equally disturbing: a depressing inability to appreciate that in our land of cultural pluralism, there are many who think, act, and talk differently from the Members of this Court, and who do not share their fragile sensibilities. It is only an acute ethnocentric myopia that enables the Court to approve the censorship of communications solely because of the words they contain.”

- Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. in his dissenting opinion of the Supreme Court’s decision in the F.C.C. v. Pacifica Foundation (the “Seven Dirty Words”) case.
Good luck in whatever’s next, Mr. Carlin.

"When all a programmer has is a hammer, all screws appear to be stupid."

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:16:23 -0400

“When all a programmer has is a hammer, all screws appear to be stupid.”

- W. Jason Gilmore

According to topherchris:The world learned of ice on Mars via...

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 08:24:00 -0400

According to topherchris:

The world learned of ice on Mars via Twitter.

I’m not sure what’s more emblematic of our times, that the announcement was made on Twitter, or that NASA says “w00t!!!”

Reblogging suggestions

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 16:05:00 -0400

I think reblogging is a great feature at Tumblr. I’ve beenarguing for years that commments, trackbacks, etc. are largelyunnecessary on a web where anyone can easily have their ownsite. The genesis of weblogging is in the reblog; the firstweblogs were curated compendiums of links to other, interestingfinds on the web.

The features at Tumblr surrounding reblogs add a lot of value tothe concept. I’ve got a few ideas that I think would add more.

As it stands, when reblogging a text post, you can change it to alink or a quote. I’m not sure I understand the restriction. I’dlike to be able to reblog any type of post and change it to anyother. Often someone will quote an article and I want to reblogtheir post, but I’d rather it be a link to the article on mysite. Or perhaps they’ve linked to something where I find a photothat I’d love to post as a reblog of their initial link.

I like the idea of reblogging because it preserves the chain ofdiscovery and provides that chain in the dashboard, but I’d liketo be free to reblog as any type of post I find appropriate.

I’d also like to see the ability to look at the reblog history ofany post. I can see it in my dashboard, but I’d like to be ableto see it even in the entries of people I don’t follow, and I’dlike to show it to people visiting my site who may not be Tumblrsubscribers.

There are some hacks around to make this happen, and peoplehave noticed that David and Marco have it baked intotheir tumblelogs. I’m hoping that means there are template tagscoming down the pipe that we can all include in our themes. I’dalso like to see a bookmarklet, or a button on the TumblriFrame that would let me view the reblog history of a postwhose author has chosen not to include it in the site (assumingthat feature is coming).

Barring (or maybe even in addition to) the above suggestion, I’dlike a way to follow the reblogs on a post over time in mydashboard. The way things are, to follow the reblogging on apost, you have to continuously search it out and find it in yourdashboard. That becomes pretty difficult if you follow more thaneven a few people because the post you’re interested in isquickly buried in the previous dashboard pages.

It’d be nice to be able to favorite or star a post in yourdashboard and have an easy way of filtering for those postslater. This would make following the reblog discussion of a posta lot easier, and regardless of that desire, I think it would bea convenient way to find your favorite Tumblr pearls later.

The way I deal with this now is to reblog the post into a privategroup of favorites. That way I can easily find it later. That’sserviceable, but better filtering in the dashboard would be aboon.

I’m sure none of this is new or shocking to the big brains. I bet they’ve got some, all, or even better things coming to us soon.

That's why there's chocolate and vanilla

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:51:00 -0400

It’s fascinating to me how changes to something that people usefrequently can be sopolarizing. Marcocriticizes some of the changes in Firefox 3. I won’t comment onthe OS X UI changes, since I’ve become a poor and forlorn lostsoul, but I think his take on the Awesome Bar and bookmarkingchanges are interesting since I have such an opposite opinion. Ithink those are both big improvements.

Marco says:

They want me to input “tags” everywhere (honestly guys, nobody except geeks knows what tags are). The Awesome Bar is a disaster.

I’m going to take them in reverse order because I think theAwesome Bar is…well, awesome, and there seems to be noambivalence about it. People either wholeheartedly love it orfanatically hate it.

I use it a lot like I used to use Quicksilver. When I wantto get to the Tumblr dashboard, I just enter dash, the downerror and Enter. It’s already ingrained in my muscle memory. InSafari I have to enter tum and then arrow down through all theresults to pick out the dashboard from the list. The Awesome Barlearns all the shortcuts I like and gives them preference.

I think it’s awfully useful that it searches through bookmarks,particularly their titles, as well. It’s one stop shopping fornavigating to a site, whether I want to enter the whole URL, orfind the site out of my bookmarks or history with a search termthat makes sense to me.

When it comes to bookmarking, I agree with Marco that most peopleprobably don’t understand nor care for tags, but I think the newinterface takes that squarely into account. They’ve streamlinedthe way you deal with bookmarks.

In the new system, to bookmark a page, you just click the star inthe location bar. If you want…that’s it, you’re done, notagging whatsoever. I think that’s a great simplification fromthe previous system, which brought up a dialog box forcing you todecide, then and there, where to drop the bookmark in yourhierarchy.

I reckon that a whole lot of people (many of the same people whodon’t care about tags) don’t care to organize their bookmarksmuch. This interface is simple for them. Those folks who do wantmore organization, to tag or move the bookmark somewhere in theirhierarchy, just click the star a second time to add thatinformation. It seems to me they’ve struck an excellent balancebetween those two types of bookmarkers.

That’s my take, but regardless, it’s intriguing to see howdifferent people are reacting to these changes. Incidentally,both of these features were borrowed, at least partially, fromFlock, a terrific and, I think, visionary browser.

"The Celtics squeaked past the Lakers to win Game 6. Unfortunately, they also managed to play the..."

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 00:52:36 -0400

“The Celtics squeaked past the Lakers to win Game 6. Unfortunately, they also managed to play the first 20 minutes of Game 7, too.”

- Greg Knauss

A baby’s laugh is infectious enough, but slow it down so...

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:35:59 -0400

A baby’s laugh is infectious enough, but slow it down so it sounds like Jabba the Hutt? I nearly peed myself.

Originally seen at Boing Boing, who are linking to one with a bit cleaner sound, I went and found this version on YouTube so I could embed.

Hope springs eternal for a dog in a house full of bacon.

Sun, 15 Jun 2008 15:17:54 -0400

Hope springs eternal for a dog in a house full of bacon.

Rite of Passage

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 11:36:00 -0400

Rite of Passage:

A thoroughly hysterical and altogether repulsive look into the trials and wonders of the contemporary father.

She’s started telling off-color limericks while slicking her hair back in front of the mirror. When we can’t find a men’s room, she even offers to pee in the bushes like a drunk Japanese salaryman.

Thank you, my terror at the prospect of next having a girl has reached an apex.

Photo

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:25:26 -0400

What is on Keith's tongue?

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 10:09:00 -0400

What is on Keith's tongue?:

In reference to a picture (skeevy enough that I won’t embed it here) of fleshy stalactites hanging off the underside of someone’s tongue, witness possibly the greatest weblog comment of all time:

i have these! i tried to bite one off.

DO NOT TRY TO BITE THEM OFF

Danger! Danger!

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:13:39 -0400

Danger! Danger!

Photo

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:21:00 -0400

"Never confuse movement with action."

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:20:00 -0400

“Never confuse movement with action.”

- Ernest Hemingway

Photo

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:44:00 -0400