- Posted in other
Taco Bell recently lobbied the Unicode Consortium to add a taco emoji to its keyboard. The brand circulated a Change.org petition that’s secured 30,000 signatures.
Here’s Why Your Favorite Brands Are Making Their Own Emoticons →
- Posted in Uncategorized
There’s another alternative too. Companies like Automattic (WordPress) require a one month no-obligation trial before any new employee is officially hired. This works for them, but can have its downsides too. The lack of commitment on the company’s behalf may deter potential candidates. This is clearly a cost Automattic is willing to take though, as making the right hiring decisions is so important.
- Posted in interface
I have a side project related to learning Japanese. You can find a demo here. I’m looking for a Javascript developer to improve it so we can launch a version on the app store. We can do a revenue split depending on how well it does.
For me this is a side project to experiment with Apache/Cordova and application design while learning Japanese. I am also scratching a personal itch: I couldn’t any decent looking app to learn hiragana and katakana. I have a deep understanding of CSS and can provide the design/features direction.
I would like most parts to be webviews but if it’s logical to use a native component, let’s do that. For now I am mostly looking to release this as an iOS app. Currently the code is based on Angular using Ionic framework but this is up for discussion. If you are interested, let’s talk: hirakata@johanronsse.be.
- Posted in other - 2 comments
The end of the year traditionally comes with tons of end of year lists. Like many people I have a love/hate relationship with these kinds of lists.
I love them because I like to discover new things. I hate them because they always promote the latest and greatest when it’s not always the latest and greatest that’s the best.
If the hdmyboy project excites me more than the offerings of the latest consoles, maybe I am just getting a bit older. I fully realize how stupid this statement sounds to those reading this well in their forties and older but hey, that’s just how I feel.
I used to make yearly reports with the best films or music I discovered that year. After a while I couldn’t be bothered with keeping these lists. Every year has great new music albums and great movies. I will leave these kinds of recommendations to the relevant publications.
Talking about yearly reports, I admire how Nicholas Felton has been doing his Feltron report since 2005. I wonder how he doesn’t go crazy tracking all these facts about his life. I track the business side of things but tracking my personal life? No thanks.
I like Marco’s qualification that you need to have used a product for at least a year to recommend it.
So these are the things I’ve used for more than a year and I can heartily recommend, starting with hardware:
Then, on the software side:
These are some newcomers that still have to prove their worth – but it looks like these are here to stay:
If you know similar lists like this — preferably from single bloggers and not from big sites like Ars — please let me know.
- Posted in computers
According to an episode of The Newsroom, the Bloomberg terminal is a $24,000 machine used wanted by traders to be able to watch the markets as closely as possible. According to their website it’s a software solution these days.
Whatever may be the case, I thought the UI looked interesting. It seems pretty standard for a financial application but the array of windows and charts makes the whole of it looks impressive.
- Posted in computers
For me, this is the quickest way to convert and optimize a bunch of images. This example converts a bunch of PNGs in JPGs and resizes them to a width of 1100 pixels. It then opens ImageOptim to further optimize the output.
brew install imagemagickmogrify -format jpg *.png && mogrify -resize 1100 *.jpg && open -a ImageOptim .Be aware that mogrify replaces the original file – use convert if you want to keep the original files.
- Posted in interface
When I watch science fiction films – or any film really, I am always fascinated by how computers are displayed. Here are some UI screen grabs from the just-released Jurassic World trailer:
And one from the original film:
A map with color coding seems more useful to me than an all-blue/black one.
- Posted in other
Now I am 79. I’ve written many hundreds of essays, 10 times that number of misbegotten drafts both early and late, and I begin to understand that failure is its own reward. It is in the effort to close the distance between the work imagined and the work achieved wherein it is to be found that the ceaseless labor is the freedom of play, that what’s at stake isn’t a reflection in the mirror of fame but the escape from the prison of the self.
Very inspiring article about older people still doing their thing. NYTimes — Old Masters at the Top of their Game →
- Posted in photography
The Verge about the 3rd iteration of the Sony RX100:
But there’s another equally impressive feature that’s hidden inside the camera when you first pick it up: a retractable electronic viewfinder. Sony seems to have pulled off a masterful feat of engineering here. All it takes is the flick of a button when you want to call upon the high-res, 1.4-million-dot EVF. Then once you’re done, it simply disappears back into the body. A retractable EVF on a camera that fits in your pocket. Color us impressed.