09.01.10/Thoughts from a First Generation Apple TV Owner
This post is a follow-up to a tweet I had sent this afternoon:
Did you hear? If you hold the Apple TV wrong, Apple loses interest. #gen1owner #bitter
I received enough replies, with varied interpretations of my poorly worded joke, that I wanted to respond on my blog. Sometimes 140 characters is not enough. What I really should have said was this:
I’m a first generation Apple TV owner. I was very excited when I bought it, but after using it for a few months I realized that it was just a shiny rubber nipple that would let me feed off of Apple’s teat and nothing else. Now, it collects dust in my closet. In my opinion, Apple abandoned the product, and as a result I feel like it was the worst consumer purchase that I’ve made in recent history. Yes, I’m excited about the announcement of a smaller, cheaper Apple TV, but I’m too burned by my first experience to head down that road again. So, I write silly, bitter tweets instead…
I do like that Netflix is now an option — as someone who has no cable hookup, it’s where I find most of my entertainment — though there are a lot of other things to consider when buying a media center. Will you want to watch Hulu, Vimeo, Ustream.tv, DivX, etc.? I do. I ended up shelving my Apple TV and hooked up a Mac Mini which runs Boxee. It runs purty good.
All in all, if you don’t already own a device capable of running Netflix on your TV, then I think this is a great, inexpensive option. For everyone else, good luck. I’m skeptical of Apple’s rediscovered “hobby,” but I hope that your purchases are well-made and enjoyed. Just consider these the ramblings of a crotchety, old man…
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08.23.10/SXSW 2011: Interaction Jones and the Template of Doom
Naz and have submitted a talk for SXSW 2011 Interactive called "Interaction Jones and the Template of Doom." In summary, we’re going to discuss design and development ideas by looking at Spielberg and Lucas films, both old and new.
If you’re planning to attend the conference, we’d very much appreciate if you’d cast your vote for us:
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08.14.10/Developing for the Mobile Web
The slides from my presentation at SocialDevCamp Chicago. Thanks, everyone, for the kind words and thoughtful questions. And, many thanks to the guy who bought into my Pee-wee Herman Secret Word bit, and yelled every time I said, “HTML5.”
Feel free to get in touch if you have any follow-up questions.
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07.28.10/jQuery Backstretch 1.1 Released
A new version of jQuery Backstretch has been released. It contains a number of fixes and enhancements:
- Added ‘centeredX’ and ‘centeredY’ options.
- Removed ‘hideUntilReady’ option. It looks pretty bad if you don’t hide the image until it’s fully loaded.
- Fixed IE img onload bug.
- Now supports iPhone/iPad orientation changes.
Many thanks to Peter Baker for providing the code to center the images.
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07.03.10/Happy Birthday, @timer!
Back in the spring of 2007, I was introduced to Twitter and soon thereafter their API. At the time, I had little programming experience with third-party APIs, but was immediately taken by the simplicity and robustness of what Alex was building, and tutored by the growing community of Twitter developers.
For my first project, I decided to play with Twitter’s direct message feature. The idea was simple: send me a direct message that included a time (number of minutes) and a message, and I would reply with a direct message when the specified time had expired. It was a sort of alarm clock…an egg timer…a timer. In May 2007, @timer was born.
Three years later, @timer is still actively used, with over 16,000 followers (you have to follow in order to direct message). Happy belated birthday, lil’ buddy.
On a related note, I’ve updated @timer to use OAuth (as of August 16th, Twitter will be shutting of basic authentication). I suppose this is a the real reason for the post, but the birthday wishes seemed overdue and appropriate. So, enjoy the new and improved @timer…
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06.11.10/W3 Total Cache
If you’re looking to enable WP caching, and website performance optimizations, in one fell swoop, check out W3 Total Cache. It’s a fantastic plugin that will help improve your WordPress site’s performance.
On a related note, I wrote a memo on Weightshift that covers performance tips for client websites. It’s a primer into the type of things we do for our projects, and presented in a way that’s CMS-agnostic.
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06.10.10/Responses to an Informal Survey on Tequila
Last year, I sent out a request for Scotch whisky recommendations, and the results were fantastic. I spent a large part of the Fall and Winter sampling your responses.
Now that it’s getting warmer out, I wanted to switch to a Summer drink. So, I asked for your favorite tequilas. Here are the answers that were submitted. Hope you enjoy them as much as I’m sure I will.
| Distillery | Type | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| * Many thanks to Nick for pointing out an excellent tequila primer written by bbum. | |||
| Oro Azul | Reposado | ||
| Herradura | Añejo | ||
| Cazadores | - | ||
| El Tesoro | Blanco | ||
| Partida | Reposado | ||
| Los Abuelos | Blanco | ||
| Milagro | Silver | ||
| Centenario | - | ||
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06.05.10/Making WordPress Faster: Front-end Performance Tips
The slides from a presentation that I gave today, at WordCamp Chicago. Thank you to everyone who came, asked questions and laughed at my half-assed jokes.
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05.28.10/What Motivates Us?
A thought-provoking, entertaining presentation by author Dan Pink on what really motivates us in the workplace. In summary, it’s not money.
I recommend setting 10 minutes aside to watch this video.
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05.13.10/On Jetpacks
When we were young and imagined the future, we thought we’d be traveling to and fro in our personal jetpacks and flying cars. We envisioned astounding advances in transportation. We dreamed that we’d go places.
What we got instead was the Internet. Astounding advances in communication. Things come to us.
Not a bad consolation prize.
