Through The Brier

Where is Bob? Tales of an absentee manager

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 19:43:00 -0400

Where is Bob? Tales of an absentee manager:

No doubt you know this already, but in case you don’t, this is the ongoing story of the Small IT Group at the Big Private University and their, well, lack of management.

It’s well-written and very funny so far.

I can’t stop playing Lovely Allen over and over.

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:49:00 -0400

I can’t stop playing Lovely Allen over and over.

A Cartoon—By Mr. Fish (Harper’s Magazine) I just spat...

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:44:13 -0400

A Cartoon—By Mr. Fish (Harper’s Magazine)

I just spat coffee all over my desk.

Hey! I think I used to work for this guy! (via trey)

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:00:36 -0400

Hey! I think I used to work for this guy! (via trey)

Reblogging improvements

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:57:57 -0400

Reblogging improvements:

Tumblr now allows you to reblog any post as Text, Link, or Quote. I’m happy about that and had hoped improvements in that area might be coming. I still wonder why there are any reblog restrictions at all.

Why not allow reblogging of any type of post as any other type? Maybe it doesn’t seem to make sense to reblog a Photo as a Chat, but who knows? You can’t predict how creativity will blossom.

I’d also like full control of a reblogged post. For example, I recently wished I could reblog a Photo but display a different image. You can’t change the image on a reblogged post.

I don’t mean to be negative, good development takes time, and these are great improvements. I’m sure there are excellent reasons, I’m just curious if they are technical or philosophical.

The portraits of Phillip Toledano. I would have liked to have...

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:41:00 -0400

The portraits of Phillip Toledano.

I would have liked to have reblogged Matthew Buchanan, but I wanted to display a different photo.

What Was Putin Thinking?

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:14:00 -0400

What Was Putin Thinking?:

Writes a Harper’s reader:

Where on earth did Putin get the idea that he could just manufacture a non-existent crisis, invade a sovereign nation and overthrow its government just because he personally detests that nation’s leader?

Oh. Never mind.

"Simple is hard. Easy is harder. Invisible is hardest."

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:10:30 -0400

“Simple is hard. Easy is harder. Invisible is hardest.”

- Jean-Louis Gassée, by way of lkm

What an amazing race! I was off the couch and jumping around...

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 23:20:00 -0400

What an amazing race!

I was off the couch and jumping around the room like a chimpanzee.

“When he set a compass upon the face of the...

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:57:00 -0400

“When he set a compass upon the face of the deep.” William Blake’s Ancient of Days

livejamie: This is lightning being filmed in slow-motion using...

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 14:16:57 -0400

livejamie:

This is lightning being filmed in slow-motion using the Casio EX-F1. Watch the lightning search for a ground.

“Search for a ground”?! That sonofabitch is coming after me!

Poor man's Quicksilver

Fri, 08 Aug 2008 12:02:00 -0400

Poor man's Quicksilver:

Squee! Danny O’Brien is my hero.

Since the Great PowerBook Disaster of 2007, I’ve been casting about for a way to approximate Quicksilver’s combined application launching/window switching in Linux. About 3 seconds after I discovered Quicksilver, having one key combination to always focus an application (whether it had been previously started or not) became so ingrained in my muscle memory that I’m still, 9 months later, disoriented without it.

Well, no more! Danny O’Brien points to wmctrl which, with a little GNOME glue as demonstrated by Danny, does what I need, at least for the 5 or 10 applications I used constantly. A few adjustments to the way I title gnome-terminal and emacs windows, and I’m golden.

I still miss Quicksilver, but this little hack makes my fingers feel like they are home again.

Urban legend: don't end sentence with preposition

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:03:00 -0400

Urban legend: don't end sentence with preposition:

What began as a guideline to promote clarity in certain contexts was misconstrued as a blanket rule which has engendered an onslaught of awkward sentences, contorted to avoid breaking the “rule”.

The Stumblng Tumblr, who provided the linkage, enjoyed the post primarily for it’s first two comments, which are funny enough to offset a lot of the previously mentioned awkward sentences.

Re: Cephalopod by Matthew Baldwin

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 15:56:00 -0400

Re: Cephalopod by Matthew Baldwin:

Now that Congress has approved domestic wire-tapping, no one can prevent the U.S. from becoming a surveillance state. No one, that is, except for cathym17@zipmail.com.

Impact events

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 08:40:35 -0400

Impact events:

It turns out that asteroid impact events like Tunguska aren’t so rare:

The late Eugene Shoemaker of the U.S. Geological Survey came up with an estimate of the rate of Earth impacts, and suggested that an event about the size of the nuclear weapon that destroyed Hiroshima occurs about once a year. Such events would seem to be spectacularly obvious, but they generally go unnoticed for a number of reasons: the majority of the Earth’s surface is covered by water; a good portion of the land surface is uninhabited; and the explosions generally occur at relatively high altitude, resulting in a huge flash and thunderclap but no real damage.

I think I’ll be looking up quite a bit more often from now on.

From The Big Picture: Jupiter’s moon Io floats above the...

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 15:57:57 -0400

From The Big Picture: Jupiter’s moon Io floats above the cloudtops of Jupiter in this image captured January 1, 2001. The image is deceiving: there are 350,000 kilometers - roughly 2.5 Jupiters - between Io and Jupiter’s clouds. Io is about the size of our own moon (NASA/JPL/University of Arizona)

Ode To Beaker The redoubtable shadowfirebird finds what I think...

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:56:00 -0400

Ode To Beaker

The redoubtable shadowfirebird finds what I think is a pretty good metaphor for most of my Fridays: they start out joyful but end with me getting electrocuted.

A certain robot sure has his eye out for the awesome.

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:15:27 -0400

A certain robot sure has his eye out for the awesome.

I love The Big Picture

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 18:20:08 -0400

I love The Big Picture

Lost in Space

Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:10:04 -0400

Lost in Space:

Two Italian brothers, incredibly, monitored the radio transmissions of the US and Soviet space race in the sixties. It’s a fascinating story of their ingenuity, the intrigue of the Cold War, and the possibility of a secret, behind-the-scenes Soviet space program.

They recorded a number of chilling transmissions which they claim are of lost cosmonauts from the black space program, hushed up and hidden by the USSR.

“It was a signal we recognised immediately as Morse code – SOS,” said Gian. But something about this signal was strange. It was moving slowly, as if the craft was not orbiting but was at a single point and slowly moving away from the Earth. The SOS faded into distant space.

Thanks, Guy, for the intriguing pointer.