jhn brssndn!

venndiagrams: Even, Odd, and Prime Numbers (1-39)

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:39:06 +0000

Even, Odd, and Prime Numbers (1-39)

Just call me Bob Villa, except that I'm not an asshole...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:38:14 +0000

..and not a man.

Got the screwdrivers, hammer, level-thing, and am almost done putting together something that was much harder than it looked. I wrecked my tights, skirt (snagged on the wood), and somehow scratched the top of my left boob—but I’ll take any carpenter dude on—in a dress and lip gloss.

(Why the misconception that women can’t use tools? Why can’t so many women use tools? ((not you egirl, you’re another carpenter chick)))

I’m only just realising that the title of jmarie3’s Tumblr reflects her obsessive interest in DIY.

lickystickypickyme: (please know I am whispering this to you) My macbookpro suddenly produces a...

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:23:06 +0000

lickystickypickyme:

(please know I am whispering this to you)

My macbookpro suddenly produces a very annoying sound on the left side. Annoying I tell you. I know it is the fan. Needs replacement or cleaning.

I already consulted some Apple experts here on this rock.
They say I should give a call to help.

The only thing that goes trough my mind: I want a new one. This one is noisy.

Kinda like getting a new car when you have a flat tire.

YOU ARE ALLOWED TO SMACK ME ON THE HEAD. AS HARD AS YOU CAN.

We’re all the same, LSPM

Big bag of hurt

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:21:00 +0000

tumblrgear:

redcloud:

covertheearth:

redcloud:

funsizebytes:

Dan Wineman (below), on all of the things that Tumblr got wrong with the iPhone app (Hint: just about everything). More from me after the break:

dwineman:

Yes, reblogging is still as broken as it used to be, if not more so: there now seems to be no way to cancel a reblog without quitting the app. The Cancel button is inexplicably missing, there’s no Back button anywhere in the interface, and clicking on the Tumblr logo opens the desktop Dashboard in a pop-up.

As far as I can tell, all the things that were awful about the 1.0 Tumblr app are still awful in the 1.1 Tumblr app, except that now it doesn’t reload your dashboard at page one every time you breathe on it. So that’s nice, at least.

But by far the worst misfeature is the way it displays photo posts. The iPhone OS provides a perfect solution: the two-finger pinch/stretch gesture, which dynamically zooms in and out of images; plus, you can double-tap to make any image instantly resize to fit the screen. It’s precisely this feature that makes web browsing on an iPhone more comfortable than on any other mobile device.

Yet the iPhone Dashboard intentionally disables this great feature, instead providing just two choices of image size: thumbnail (way way too small) and 100% (way way too big, so you have to pan around to see the whole image). In other words, the OS has a fit-to-screen feature built in, and Tumblr’s developers actually wrote extra code to disable it. What a tragic, boneheaded mistake. The workaround used to be turning off the iPhone Dashboard, but that option’s gone now.

(Tumblr actually isn’t alone in making this mistake. The iPhone version of Flickr Mobile does the same stupid thing, but at least Flickr provides an app that’s actually usable.)

I say this with love: it’s time for Tumblr to grow up. Fix the bugs. Hire usability experts. Build a rich API and test, test, test. Get your stuff working so well—make your user experience so utterly painless—that you can do silly things like Sharks vs. Cats and Dashboard marriage proposals from time to time without looking like college kids drunk on venture capital.

(tj:)

But hey! Video uploads! Because everyone watches those, and few people ever want to look at pictures which are posted on Tumblr.

Yeah, TypePad Micro looks like a knock-off of Tumblr, but you know what? I’m betting that in 6 months, TypePad is doing this stuff better than Tumblr.

Remember, Twitter wasn’t first either.

1. Have you tried Typepad Micro? Usability Zero. Is that a thing? Seems clear to me they don’t “get it”. In fact, my experience with it made me remember just how many things Tumblr gets right.

2. Yes, Tumblr’s iPhone client sucks. Their “API” is virtually non-existant. But most users are on the web. Sure, there are lots of iPhones, but there a helluvalot more PCs and Macs out there.

3. Don’t forget network effects. Someone like Typepad is going to have to not just catch up, but be significantly better. I’m here solely for the people I know here. Ebay may mot be the “best” auction site by many metrics, but it’s where the buyers are. This is where the people I want to read and be read by are. In many ways, Posterous has been doing things better for a while now. I don’t see a massive emigration of Tumblr users.

Also, I wrote all this on my iPhone. But I used Tumblr Gear instead of the official client. It’s free. Check it out if you haven’t already.

For straight viewing, not posting onto tumblr, download the tumblr gear app. I blazed through 286 posts in 30 minutes. It tells me exactly how many posts I’ve seen since I last logged in. I can like and reblog. The reblog is without comment, but usually I’ll reblog and then add my comments later. It makes tumblr like checking tweetie.

And it’s free.

Exactly. For catching up, I like it even better than the web.

You *can* add comments on a reblog if you go into Preference and turn off Fast Like & Reblog. You’ll then have to confirm each Like, but it’s only one more tap. I find it an acceptible trade-off, for now.

(reblogged with comment from Tumblr Gear)

just fyi.. it’s able to toggle the setting of fast post by tapping page number (like “1/100”) in upper main view.

anyway, new official tumblr app really sucks. and i’m disappointed in their ability of iphone development.

I was just having this discussion with @kapi. Tumbling on the iPhone is all about the dashboard. Tumblr Gear is built with this in mind, whereas Tumblr app is too focused on original posts.

The Galbraith Affair and the Business of Think Tanks

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:04:00 +0000

irredenta:

From Stephen Walt’s blog over at FP:

The whole sordid business got me thinking: is there any way to clean up the marketplace of ideas here in the United States? We are drowning in information and opinion, much of it claiming to be objective and authoritative when it may in fact be inspired and funded by moneyed special interests eager to sell the public a story that advances their particular objectives. Most “think tanks” in Washington portray themselves as objective, quasi-scholarly institutions (indeed, they increasingly give researchers endowed chairs and other quasi-academic titles), but unlike most universities, most think tanks remain heavily dependent on “soft money” and are bound to be especially sensitive to what potential donors might be thinking. And some of them aren’t really scholarly at all; they are just public relations operations or “letterhead organizations” seeking to mold public opinion and push the policy process in a particular direction. But unless you know who’s paying for it, it’s hard to decide who’s giving you an honest opinion and who is just shilling for some powerful interest group.

Interesting. for a while, this was going to be my PhD topic. As a start, you could do worse than check out the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy.

I’d forgotten how doggy NYC is. These beauties were in a...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:52:03 +0000

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

I’d forgotten how doggy NYC is. These beauties were in a petshop on 6th Av.

jazzchannel: Chet Baker stencil graffiti (via James Robinson)

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 23:46:41 +0000

jazzchannel:

Chet Baker stencil graffiti (via James Robinson)

Americans will spend $450 billion this Christmas. It would only take $10 billion to give the world clean water

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:49:22 +0000

Americans will spend $450 billion this Christmas. It would only take $10 billion to give the world clean water:

hilker:

davereed:

water4christmas.com

via hannahbanena

$5,552.00

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:37:20 +0000

sistermarymartha:

neurotical:

This is the hospital portion of the bill for the littlest munchkin’s peanut allergy ER visit. It does not include the doctor portion.

I would cry, but for real, I just can’t even.

I wish I could make this all go away. So I am putting this out there universe, Meg deserves a fucking break. Make something happen. Thank you.

Depression as deadly as smoking, study finds (Science Daily)

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:35:56 +0000

Depression as deadly as smoking, study finds (Science Daily):

psychotherapy:

A study by researchers at the University of Bergen, Norway, and the Institute of Psychiatry (IoP) at King’s College London has found that depression is as much of a risk factor for mortality as smoking.

Utilising a unique link between a survey of over 60,000 people and a comprehensive mortality database, the researchers found that over the four years following the survey, the mortality risk was increased to a similar extent in people who were depressed as in people who were smokers.

Dr Robert Stewart, who led the research team at the IoP, explains the possible reasons that may underlie these surprising findings: ‘Unlike smoking, we don’t know how causal the association with depression is but it does suggest that more attention should be paid to this link because the association persisted after adjusting for many other factors.’

The study also shows that patients with depression face an overall increased risk of mortality, while a combination of depression and anxiety in patients lowers mortality compared with depression alone. Dr Stewart explains: ‘One of the main messages from this research is that ‘a little anxiety may be good for you’.

"The stupendous productive power developing under the capitalist mode of production relatively to..."

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:56:31 +0000

“The stupendous productive power developing under the capitalist mode of production relatively to population, and the increase, though not in the same proportion, of capital values (not their material substance), which grow much more rapidly than the population, contradict the basis, which, compared to the expanding wealth, is ever narrowing and for which this immense productive power works, and the conditions, under which capital augments its value. This is the cause of crises.”

- Karl Marx, Capital, volume III, chapter XV.

I hope that someday all these polls asking “who is to blame for the current recession?” will offer multiple choice options that extend beyond simply “Democrats? Republicans? Or both?”.
(via langer)

Addendum

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:53:28 +0000

foureleven:

stryker:

Having spent the last week playing socialite with Nick Douglas, I can confirm that New York’s young elite can be almost as “frothing, inward and inbred” as any rural community I’ve encountered. Everyone reads the same magazines, watches the same TV, reads the same blogs, etc.

I absolutely prefer it to Palinland culture, but there definitely is an insularity here that mirrors the farmer’s contentment to never explore the world further out than the county fair.

I agree with this also. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently as I’ve been spending more time with family and less time in NYC and as long-lost friends from home have recently reconnected with me and been supportive in the whole “life change” (for lack of a better term) thing.

I’m used to assuming that everyone I know watches the same tv shows and reads the same blogs as I do so it was refreshing to get a blank stare when I told one of my high school BFFs that my fave show is Mad Men — which she’s never seen.

moorewr: scitchet: shaneblog: I’ve been seeing this meme all...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:52:39 +0000

moorewr:

scitchet:

shaneblog:

I’ve been seeing this meme all over the web, but I didn’t know why. Holy Taco explains:

Joseph Ducreux was a French painter, who, in 1793, made this pimp-ass self portrait. 216 years later, his internet meme exploded on the scene.

Click here to see more of this meme of genius. (Memeius?)

I’m sad that I’m reblogging this particular meme, but you have to check out the link. Oh My God!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m standing in front of my class trying not to laugh out loud.

(Did you notice that I typed out all of the words? I did it because I know how to type, and I have this convenient keyboard attached to my computer. Amazing!)

feastingonroadkill: For tomorrow, and Happy Birthday To Me. The...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:30:00 +0000

feastingonroadkill:

For tomorrow, and Happy Birthday To Me.

The Fall: ‘Fifty Year Old Man’

“What you gonna do about it?”

17 months behind you, old man. Have a good one.

Octopus? Used as a device on maps, propaganda posters and political cartoons, you say?

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:05:12 +0000

What, like that reblog I made a few minutes ago?

Why of course.

With apologies to Pterodactyls, who led me to that site with a post of hers earlier in the year, but which I can now no longer find.

It's Friday night

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:57:59 +0000

We’re both tired and skint, and there’s nothing on TV. So begins the evening entertainment known and loved the world over: running up and down the house trying to get Apple Bloody TV to work.

mudwerks: PCL LinkDump: Twistin’ the Freilach!

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:42:09 +0000

mudwerks:

PCL LinkDump: Twistin’ the Freilach!

igather: curate:lalilster:mestizarate:SOA protest and vigil...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 20:40:33 +0000

igather:

curate:lalilster:mestizarate:SOA protest and vigil this weekend

jmarie3: cargohoo: Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit One of...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:15:49 +0000

jmarie3:

cargohoo:

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit

One of my favorite Simpsons episodes was the one when they went to Canada for prescription meds, and they played this.

Sydvish's tips for getting dressed:

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:07:24 +0000

sydvish:

#1 - When you’re putting on a turtleneck, don’t forget to remove your glasses.