blog.mignault.net

BBEmacs Watch Part 1000

Daring Fireball Linked List: BBEdit 9.2:

My favorite new feature is the Sleep command, which lets you quit the app while saving state. When next you launch BBEdit after sleeping, all open windows and documents are restored, including untitled documents.

I wish every app had this feature.

You’ll never guess which prominent multiplatform editor has had this feature for some time, and didn’t even need to give it the throughly stupid (as well as completely inaccurate) name “sleep.” Which editor is left as an exercise for the reader. Is BareBones just working their way through the *info* screens?

Update: desktop-mode can also be set to auto-save the desktop while you’re working. What happens if God forbid BBEmacs crashes?

Work the samovar

Adventure Advice | Outside Online:

If the samovar won’t draw, some old guys know to take an old boot with flexible uppers and fit the top over the samovar chimney and work the boot up and down like a bellows to encourage the fire. They believe, correctly, that you can’t have too much hot tea or coffee when the place you’re in is really cold. Needing their wits about them, they drink alcohol only in moderation, and never on an empty stomach (rules often more honored, as they say, in the breach). They know it’s generally a good idea to bring presents, slather on the sunblock, set the parking brake, swallow three witty remarks unspoken for every one they say, keep a life jacket handy, check for ticks, make sure a squirrel is dead before picking it up, and never let a blister go all the way to the bone, because then it can take months to heal. Old guys recall that left makes loose and right makes tight. They phone home. They understand that if they don’t, and then they return, and they find their spouse out of sorts, and they ask what’s going on, and their spouse says, “All right, if you really want to know—” they won’t really want to know.”

Nice. Carry a knife, too.

Compare and contrast, dude.

The Royal Tenenbaums and Infinite Jest:

Rather than provide a close reading of all 1,079 pages of Infinite Jest, I will look here only at those sections pertaining to the mirror-image of the Tenenbaum family, mostly the Incandenza family.

Is this the only term paper you have for sale? Admittedly, not by Kottke, but the writing is stilted and awkward.

Some deal, Amazon

From an Amazon “deal” in my inbox this morning:

So the Mac version of PShop Elms costs more? The version that’s a full point behind the Windows release? How can I resist. Not. Almost makes me want to buy the PC version and run it in VMWare Fusion. But then you have to deal with Windows “UI.”

Head smack interfaces

WARNING: A long, rambly exploration of the state of computing with no real conclusion…:

It takes two seconds to learn pinch-to-zoom, but if you handed an iPhone to someone who had never seen one and said “zoom in on this web page”, they’d have no clue how to do it. They would likely not even know it was possible to zoom unless you had told them.

However, once you showed them, it would immediately seem natural, and it’s hard to conceive of a more efficient way to perform zooming with human hands. Like the Newton’s “new note” separator, it provides functionality with no screen space required for controls, and provides a tactility that is extremely gratifying at what must be a very low level of the brain.

The benefit of pinch-to-zoom over previous zooming methods is so immediately apparent that it justifies the learning curve. That the learning curve is extremely small also helps. I find it fascinating that a huge portion of iPhone usability training is done via the TV ads, pre-sale. They’re both marketing and instruction.

Very interesting article and a good riposte to the idea that interfaces always need to be immediately and completely obvious-sometimes also called the “naive user” interface. Interfaces need to be consistent, progressively rewarding, and easy to discover. Doesn’t need to be completely called out from first glance, but does want to be apparent rather than obscured.

We have been trying to strike a balance at work between the need to describe and desire to not make a brochureware site. We offer a great number of resources and are working on presenting them clearly while not overwhelming the user. I’m going to send the article around. Read it.

(Via ~stevenf.)

Herbin Green Ink Review

I have a very belated St Patricks Day review of J. Herbin Vert Empire and Vert Olive inks up at FPN.

Womens’ VeloNews

About WCM:

Womens Cycling Magazine… its about time! Coming this spring taking subscriptions now.

The header on the subscription page includes “Lifestyle + Commuting + Repair + City Spotlight”, but so far the blog at least has been nothing but all racer girl all the time. Admittedly, they only launched the blog on March 22, and I figured eventually they’d start talking about something other than asking women racers dumb questions and pasting in race results from spreadsheets. Nope. It’s Bicycling 10 years ago. I showed it to L, my bike commuting wife, who said “Yuck.” Disappointing.

Update: for contrast, see That’s How I Roll, from the BUST blog:

Best of all, there are more female riders than ever. If you’re like me, though, you’re not a spandex-wearing type of lady. Luckily, the cycle chic movement has finally hit the United States…The Europeans have known what’s up for a long time, but here in the U.S., cycling is finally developing a following– and some fashion sense– outside the realm of athletics. Cycle chic even has its own Wikipedia page, defining it as ‘the culture of cycling in fashionable clothes…cycling is an everyday transport choice and many cyclists choose to wear their regular clothes, as opposed to outfits generally associated with cycle sport, such as bicycle shorts, gloves and shoes.’

“But you can’t seriously believe that. Can you?”

The Gay Fixation – Damon Linker:

OK, Rod — good for you and your socially conservative friends. But then what explains your fixation on the threat posed by the normalization of homosexuality? Why, given the myriad ways that our society and culture diverge from the long list of archaic norms, practices, and beliefs upheld in the Bible, does homosexuality inspire such anxiety, even panic? What are you afraid of? Is it that you fear that if orthodox religious communities stop denouncing gay marriage (to the faces of married gays, which seems to be what you’d like them to do) the human race will stop reproducing itself? Or is it that you worry that if your children aren’t taught in church that homosexuality is an abomination they’ll shack up with same-sex partners when they grow up? But isn’t the decision to do something like that far more a product of nature than culture? I don’t know about you, but no amount of pro-gay propaganda could tempt me to sleep with a man — because I’m by nature sexually attracted to women. Some of what you write about homosexuality leads me to believe you worry that naturally straight men and women will be seduced into being gay by watching too many episodes of Project Runway. But you can’t seriously believe that. Can you?

I’ve never seen a good answer to this question. Who the hell would go through half the crap that gay men and women routinely suffer unless they really were gay? You cannot make the gay straight nor the straight gay, at least not without causing either serious psychological damage.Read the whole article, it’s quite good.

YABR (Yet Another BBEdit Rant)

TidBITS Home Macs: Ten Surprising Uses of BBEdit:

There are undoubtedly other ways to do any or all of these things; all I’m reporting here is that I’ve noticed myself reaching for BBEdit to do them, even though, as I say, BBEdit isn’t my choice for editing text. At $125, BBEdit is pricey for just these tasks, and I’m not recommending a purchase for these reasons alone.

It’s damn pricey for any tasks, seeing as how pretty much all its “features” have been in Emacs for probably at least the last 5 years. Yet year after year, the BBEdit lists are full of ‘OMG the keywords are GREEN! BareBones iz Teh Brilliantest!’ As far as I’m concerned, Aquamacs makes BBEdit even less attractive. Given the ridiculous prices for even minor upgrades and its Dark Ages level of programmability (good luck waiting for that Processing Codeless Language Mode, I mean syntax coloring) BBEdit more and more looks mainly like the clueless Mac fanboy’s choice.

Molecular mixology

Shaken and Stirred – Creating an Irish Whiskey Cocktail, With a Twist – NYTimes.com:

Remind me not to take the Times seriously anymore. After this quite sensible advice:

YOU will be tempted, on Tuesday, to drink something green. Resist it.
I’m not referring, by the way, to the green-dyed light beer that will be flowing on St. Patrick’s Day like water from a broken fire hydrant. If you’re tempted by that, I won’t stop you: Erin go Bro, and godspeed.

No, what I’m talking about is the cocktail equivalents of green beer, all the “obligatory Midori and crème de menthe drinks,” as Anthony Malone, the Dublin-born general manager and bartender at Puck Fair, an Irish bar on Lafayette Street near Houston, put it. “All those awful green things,” he said, such as the Everybody’s Irish, a drink that calls for Irish whiskey, crème de menthe, Chartreuse and a green olive. Everybody’s Irish? Everybody’s gagging.

We get this utterly sickening bilge:

Earlier this year, he issued a curious challenge to a select group of bartenders in New York, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco. He asked them to create cocktails based upon the traditional Irish breakfast — eggs, bacon, black and white pudding, and toast. And Bushmills, of course, though Mr. Egan hesitated to cite his product as a breakfast staple. “More like brunch,” he demurred.

Here in New York, Jim Meehan of PDT responded with a drink in which bacon-infused Bushmills is combined with maple syrup, orange and lemon juice and a whole egg.

The entry from Eben Freeman, at Tailor, was more baroque: bacon-infused Bushmills, again, adorned with roasted tomato gelée squares, a slow-poached quail egg yolk, an Irish breakfast-tea foam and crispy black-pudding bits.

Shite and onions, as John Joyce would say. If you’re going to have whiskey for breakfast, leave off the garnishes.