@RianVDM // overflow

Moving to Tumblr

Sun, 01 May 2011 11:46:00 -0700

I've only been playing with Tumblr for a few hours now, but it appears to be vastly superior to Posterous in almost every way. So I'm going to put this overflow blog on hiatus, and move it to Tumblr.

Elezea // B-sides can be found at http://b.elezea.com/

The End.

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I have no idea what this sign is trying to tell me. Help, please?

Wed, 27 Apr 2011 01:03:35 -0700

via Tweetbot for iPhone

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How writing (and any creative activity, for that matter) is similar to a marathon.

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 03:47:00 -0700

Frank Chimero in a new post (Running Towards) where he likens writing to running a marathon:

In the effort of trying to make something good, we will not look good. Making is messy business, and from the outside, it frequently looks like toiling. So, like our business, we will be a mess, both inside and out. Unkept hair, sloppy apartment, and a general knot in our guts because there is a big thing not yet done. We will wear our pain on our faces, and mop the sweat from our brow. The thud of our feet hitting the pavement will jolt up through our legs and shake our shoulders. Our cheeks will tremble with each step.

We will hurt, but, oddly, to run well, we must relax. So we should relax. We will not care how we look. Running long distances has an aesthetic ugliness, and yet, also simultaneously has a beauty to the endeavor. There is a grace of appearances and a grace of effort, but the two may never meet. The runners that worry if they look good are the ones that usually lose. We choose to run, hurt, and look ugly. We celebrate this.

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My 1.5-year old's first IM conversation, gossiping away with @clamhead.

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 23:25:22 -0700

via TweetDeck

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It feels like the @KISSmetrics blog isn't giving me a lot of choice here.

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 23:51:49 -0700

via TweetDeck

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These are my tools. I use them to create magic. #coffee

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 22:46:18 -0700

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Hey @lootcoza, love the redesign of your newsletters. We at @kalaharinet are always happy to help.

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:31:00 -0700

It looks like loot.co.za just updated the design of their newsletters. And we couldn't help but notice that it looks strangely familiar to our own kalahari.net newsletters.

Here is one of Loot's old newsletters:

And here is a side-by-side comparison of one of their redesigned newsletters, next to our own:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery?

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Never compromise on investing in software quality improvement (Facebook Engineering blog)

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:31:00 -0700

A reminder from the Facebook Engineering blog that we cannot compromise on quality improvements in software development:

The conclusion of all this is that I think we need to divorce our impressions of the current state of affairs from our evaluation of the productivity of investing time and energy into improvements. Our impressions are likely to always be negative (seriously, forever), and we will probably almost always feel things are getting worse (when in fact they are probably not, or are heavily offset by simultaneous improvements).

We certainly do make bad decisions from time to time, and those are fixable. But where we really do lose the whole game is if we compromise on investing in improvement because it feels too futile or difficult or we'd rather blame everyone else, and that is a greater psychological challenge than a technical one.

via facebook.com

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My daughter is too young for the movies, but we can start her Star Wars education in other ways:

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:38:04 -0700

via TweetDeck

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Don't judge me because we bought our daughter Crocs. She loves them, ok?

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 22:29:44 -0700

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Africa may become the first post-PC continent

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 11:16:00 -0700

IDC estimates that in South Africa, 800,000 PCs were shipped in 2010 and the number is expected to decline by about four percent annually to reach 650,000 by 2015. Meanwhile, 1.3 million handsets were shipped in 2010 and that rate is expected to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nine percent to reach 2 million annually by 2015.

via news.idg.no

Seems like a no-brainer in terms of where the focus should be.

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Ah, the little things. Love how Firefox 4 shows you when there are updates to your pinned tabs.

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 11:52:48 -0700

via TweetDeck

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#CWC2011 sign spelling #fail. It's true though. I do feel bad for the Aussies.

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 05:14:19 -0700

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Complete Home Affairs #fail. Calling it a recon mission & getting coffee instead. I'll leave you with their vision:

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 00:12:49 -0700

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Excel error, or instructions for a heart transplant?

Thu, 17 Mar 2011 03:00:10 -0700

via TweetDeck

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The Guardian with some harsh words about blogging and selling our souls.

Sun, 13 Mar 2011 01:43:00 -0800

From Blogging: The fine art of the confessional:

Many people today enter the vast online marketplace for attention with goals similar to Magnanti's: they want to support their "real work", whatever it is. We say: I will start blogging or tweeting or Facebooking to help publicise my business, or jumpstart my writing career, or supplement my income with some advertising money. Once we begin, we discover that this new work we've taken on – the "not-real" labour of online self-promotion – has its own relentless dynamic. We gauge our progress by page views and follower counts, Google rank and incoming links. If we're not careful, we start to peg our sense of self-worth to these numbers.

Some of us enjoy the independence and opportunities this kind of social entrepreneurialism affords; others resent it as a crass slog. Either way, we ought to be as clear-eyed as Belle de Jour about what we are doing. Like her, we are taking social interactions that we normally pursue out of courtesy or affection or enjoyment and treating them as transactions. I'm not going to argue that this is always harmful or wrong. But whenever we do it, we ought to be honest about it with ourselves.

Too often, today, we meet people online who are frantically promoting themselves and their businesses – all the time pretending that what they are doing is not advertising or marketing but rather "being sociable". Long before the internet's advent, the academic world concocted a phrase that describes what's happening when we do this: we are commodifying our own authenticity. In plainer language, we are selling our souls.

Commodifying our own authenticity. Those are some harsh words. But I'm guessing that doesn't necessarily make it untrue.

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Twitter using "consistent user experience" as an excuse to crack down on developers.

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 02:58:00 -0800

From a Twitter employee's post on new developer guidelines:

Still, our user research shows that consumers continue to be confused by the different ways that a fractured landscape of third-party Twitter clients display tweets and let users interact with core Twitter functions. For example, people get confused by websites or clients that display tweets in a way that doesn't follow our design guidelines, or when services put their own verbs on tweets instead of the ones used on Twitter.

*A Consistent User Experience*
Twitter is a network, and its network effects are driven by users seeing and contributing to the network's conversations. We need to ensure users can interact with Twitter the same way everywhere.

via groups.google.com

I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. I think Twitter is making a move to control their entire ecosystem, which is fine, except they're doing this in the name of "a consistent user experience." Do it in the name of privacy or a valid business model, but don't blame UX for this.

I'm a huge proponent of good user experience, as most of you know. But it's worth pointing out that a consistent user experience is extremely important within an application. It is less important (still important, but less so) between applications.

Twitter apps, like all apps that use an API, should be a democracy. I applaud Twitter for doing user research on this stuff. But if users are confused, or if an app is crap, users can decide not to use it any more. Twitter shouldn't make that decision for their users.

Making developers use the same nomenclature (like Retweet and Mention) is fine. But enforcing the design and display of tweets to look a certain way will stifle innovation in Twitter apps, and pretty soon everything will look the same -- and be boring.

Also note that their API terms state that you may not "replicate, frame, or mirror the Twitter website or its design."

So which is it? Does it all have to look the same, or are developers not allowed to make tweets look like they do on the Twitter website?

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Finally ABSA gets something right. It does feel like you're doing business with a trash can.

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 00:55:25 -0800

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On the Macbook Pro as an office. I can definitely relate to this.

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 22:53:00 -0800

Yes, I'm in love with the look and feel of my Apple MacBook Pro (it's a piece of design beauty), but more than that, I often look at the closed computer and think to myself that if I were a painter, this computer would be like having a small portable studio with every type of canvas, paint, brush and color available at the touch of a finger. That's a powerful thought... and it's true. We used to find a physical space to get our work done, but even that is changing.

via twistimage.com

That's the thing about the Macbook Pro design. Even when it's closed, that sleep light makes it feel like a living, breathing organism that's just waiting patiently for you to come back and create something. It reminds me of this _why quote:

When you don’t create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. Your tastes only narrow and exclude people. So create.

The Macbook Pro is a piece of hardware created for creating.

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Producer Brian Eno on working with U2 and Coldplay at the same time.

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 07:36:00 -0800

It was fine. A few jokes. I felt like a philanderer who was with another woman and might make a slip and call her by the wrong name in bed. I had one computer that had all of the Coldplay stuff and all the U2 stuff. I had to very carefully label each folder because I was paranoid that I might end up with the same basic track for each group and I wouldn't notice until it was too late. There was a chance the same track might have appeared on both albums.

via guardian.co.uk

So it's not your imagination - they sound alike for a reason.

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@RianVDM // overflow

Moving to Tumblr

I have no idea what this sign is trying to tell me. Help, please?

How writing (and any creative activity, for that matter) is similar to a marathon.

My 1.5-year old's first IM conversation, gossiping away with @clamhead.

It feels like the @KISSmetrics blog isn't giving me a lot of choice here.

These are my tools. I use them to create magic. #coffee

Hey @lootcoza, love the redesign of your newsletters. We at @kalaharinet are always happy to help.

Never compromise on investing in software quality improvement (Facebook Engineering blog)

My daughter is too young for the movies, but we can start her Star Wars education in other ways:

Don't judge me because we bought our daughter Crocs. She loves them, ok?

Africa may become the first post-PC continent

Ah, the little things. Love how Firefox 4 shows you when there are updates to your pinned tabs.

#CWC2011 sign spelling #fail. It's true though. I do feel bad for the Aussies.

Complete Home Affairs #fail. Calling it a recon mission & getting coffee instead. I'll leave you with their vision:

Excel error, or instructions for a heart transplant?

The Guardian with some harsh words about blogging and selling our souls.

Twitter using "consistent user experience" as an excuse to crack down on developers.

Finally ABSA gets something right. It *does* feel like you're doing business with a trash can.

On the Macbook Pro as an office. I can definitely relate to this.

Producer Brian Eno on working with U2 and Coldplay at the same time.

Finally ABSA gets something right. It does feel like you're doing business with a trash can.