Soft Arts

n7spectre: Gorgeous Portal 2 fanart. Cave Johnson and...

Sat, 28 May 2011 22:49:01 -0700

n7spectre:

Gorgeous Portal 2 fanart. Cave Johnson and Caroline.

Fabulous imitation of Paul Harvey touting a product you’ll...

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 11:19:00 -0800

Fabulous imitation of Paul Harvey touting a product you’ll want to buy for the people in *your* life.

Details

Wed, 29 Sep 2010 09:44:00 -0700

HR Awesomeness!

The company I work for, Black Pixel, has been looking for a few new iOS developers, and the responses I’ve been getting to our ads have pretty much been uniformly subpar.

Finally, after reading yet another resume of someone claiming to have deep iOS development experience, I tweeted the following:

Protip: Comments like

”* Very familiar with X-Code”

in your resume automatically result in deletion.

The problem is, that the product in question is called “Xcode.”

I got a lot of comments from people, some of whom wanted to know if “XCode” was an acceptable mistake or not. Unfortunately, I couldn’t fit a reasonable, informative response in 140 characters this time.

No it is not. Hell, no, it is not.

Xcode is the main tool you use to make your apps. It is the fundamental place in which you do your work. If you’ve truly worked with it enough to claim solid familiarity with the tool, you will know how Apple spells its name.

Messing up the camel casing is definitely more forgivable, but not if you want to work for us. We push ourselves mercilessly to make the best software possible. If you are representing yourself as having solid iOS industry experience and being a good fit for our team, you wouldn’t mess this up.

Reality Check

None of this is a reliable indicator of good programming expertise. Knowing how to spell Xcode, iPhone, or knowing that iPod Touches are not referred to as ‘iTouches” doesn’t mean you are a great programmer.

But NOT knowing these things telegraphs a profound lack of attention to detail about things that are fundamental to how we work. Nothing screams “I will be a massive liability for your company” like an inability get these things right on something as important to their career as a resume.

Obviously the overall strength of the person’s resume and their previous successes will temper this response: if I saw “XCode” from an Apple employee that would clearly know better, I’d assume it was simply a shift key accident. On the other hand, if it was on their *resume*, well, I’d be shocked.

Efficient transfer of huge files between machines

Wed, 15 Sep 2010 10:10:00 -0700

I need to transfer 250gb of data between two machines over the lan.

Ladies and gentlemen, the tar trick. I only need this every two to five years, but when I need it, I really need it.

This tars up the contents of a directory and streams it as compressed data to a remote host. This is super efficient as:

1. The data is compressed before it is transferred, so overall throughput is greatly reduced.

2. Compression and decompression are distributed and run in parallel. Instead of zipping everything up, transferring it, and then unzipping it, both processes run simultaneously, the the compress/decompress time is cut in half.

How to tar something to a remote host.

tar cvf - source_dir | gzip | ( ssh target_host “cd target_dir; gunzip -d | tar xvf - ” )

How to tar something from a remote host.

ssh target_host “tar cvf - source_dir | gzip” | gunzip -d | tar xvf -

UPDATE:

Several people have mentioned more updated refinements, I haven’t tried all of these but I agree that they sound like smart approaches:

Jerry Chen: you can use ssh’s -C compression flag which accomplishes the same thing as gzip, i believe

Nate True: I like to use Netcat instead of SSH to transfer the data - cuts out the overhead of encryption but takes more effort to set up.

Zachery Bir: can’t you just use cvfz/xvfz and bypass piping to gzip/gunzip altogether?

RIM BlackPad: Checkmate II

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:01:07 -0700

RIM has announced the BlackPad: their acknowledging nod to the iPad’s success. Welcome to Checkmate 2.0: the only thing I need to do here is replace ‘iPhone’ with ‘iPad.’

End game

Because of that effort, since the iPhone was released, everyone else has been struggling to play catch up, and no one has really come close. Apple raised the bar higher than anyone else had before, and by the time the competition realized how much of an effort would be required to seriously compete, the public had already turned to them to see how they would meet Apple’s threat.

Being in the public eye, and forced to react, no competitor is really going to be able to put in the years of time required to offer Apple any serious competition. Everyone is reacting and trying to get something out the door as quickly as possible. I think that this is very well illustrated by the BlackBerry Storm, probably one of the most notorious handsets ever released by RIM. Perhaps it was the need for a fast response, or perhaps it was arrogance on the part of RIM, but there was no way that the Storm could ever be considered serious competition for the iPhone.

Can’t wait to hear the reviews.

redcloud: crookedindifference: LIKE A BOSS.

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:51:51 -0700

redcloud:

crookedindifference:

LIKE A BOSS.

redcloud: ilovecharts: pastymuncher: How to ROFL ¿Esto es...

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 10:57:53 -0700

redcloud:

ilovecharts:

pastymuncher:

How to ROFL

¿Esto es ROFL?

Hyrax! I love these guys! redcloud: Hyrax stack

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:05:52 -0700

Hyrax! I love these guys!

redcloud:

Hyrax stack

incorrigiblerobot: GPOYS1EFWYMJSYFYORW - Gratuitous Picture Of...

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:04:10 -0700

incorrigiblerobot:

GPOYS1EFWYMJSYFYORW - Gratuitous Picture Of Your Space: 1999 Eagle Freighter Which Your Mom Just Sent You From Your Old Room Wednesday

redcloud: pufflepie: poobah:-greendaypunk:(via...

Wed, 18 Aug 2010 16:03:42 -0700

redcloud:

pufflepie:

poobah:-greendaypunk:(via graphiceverywhere)

Sharing is caring.

Pass de hedge upon de left hand side.

Dice Made of Bones (LOST)

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 20:18:00 -0700

I decided to re-watch the original pilot of LOST now that the series has finally come to an end.

I love how clearly the entire backstory is covered, in the first episode, while Locke tells Walt about backgammon:

Locke: Backgammon is the oldest game in the world. Archaeologists found sets when they excavated the ruins of ancient Mesopotamia. Five thousand years old. That’s older than Jesus Christ.
Walt: Did they have dice and stuff?
Locke: [nods] But their dice weren’t made of plastic. Their dice were made of bones.
Walt: Cool.
Locke: Two players. Two sides. One is light. One is dark.

A game going back over 5,000 years with two players, one light and one dark, playing a game with the death and bones of mortals governing the outcome instead of plastic dice.

What I love about this show is how much the producers knew they wanted to have in it, and how masterfully they let the story unfold over its lifespan. I don’t know if there’s ever been any successful show that was this challenging, on this scale, on network television before.

The Gentleman's Guide To Selecting an Arch-Nemesis

Sat, 14 Aug 2010 12:10:00 -0700

“WHERE IS HE!? WHERE IS VENTURE!?”

I’ve spent some time thinking about the whole Apple vs Google, Microsoft vs Apple, and Microsoft vs Google thing, and have a few thoughts on the enemies and one’s relationship to them to share.

Enemies

1. You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.

2. In order to have an enemy, one must be somebody. One must be a force before he can be resisted by another force.

3. Choose your friends carefully. Your enemies will choose you.

4. If you want to make enemies, try to change something.

Very few healthy people go through life looking to make enemies, but there are times that enemies happen anyway. As the quotes above indicate, once you start to get good at something, enemies will start to crawl out of the woodwork. People will start to compete with you, and will eventually begin to focus a lot of attention on bringing you down, or defeating you. This can often be caused by simply trying to be as good at what you do as possible, and it has very, very little to do with whether or not you want to be friends with them.

Archenemies

Beyond casual enemies, there is the Archenemy. This goes beyond simple competition and starts to delve into full blown hatred and obsession. Famous Archenemies include Darth Vader/Obi Wan Kenobi, Holmes/Moriarty, Rene Belloq/Indiana Jones, and quite possibly Lennon/McCartney.

Arch nemeses are friends from a long time ago that have more or less equivalent powers, but also have opposing ideologies. They are therefore always fighting with each other.

Professor Xavier and Magneto are each other’s arch-nemesis. They play chess together and have been friends for a long time, but they completely disagree about the relationship that mutants should have with humans, so they are always fighting.

Wikipedia notes six possible reasons that parties can become Arch-Nemeses, and claims that at least three of them must be met to truly qualify as an Archenemy:

“There are many reasons one particular antagonist would stand out from the rest of the hero’s rogues gallery as the archenemy. Some of them include:

1. Posing the greatest threat, such as seeking global domination or terrorism rather than simple larceny (e.g. Doctor Doom and the Fantastic Four/Professor Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes).

2. Competitive combative contests, where both vie for similar goals, such as the love or approval of an individual or group (e.g. Rene Belloq and Indiana Jones).

3. Most often recurring enemy (e.g. Bowser and Mario).

4. Caused, or at least connected to, traumatic events and tragedies in the hero’s life (e.g. the Joker and Batman, the Green Goblin and Spider Man).

5. Serves as an “evil twin” to the hero (e.g. Flexo and Bender).

6. Once had a good relationship, such as an amicable or romantic relationship, with the hero (e.g. the Master and the Doctor).”

Proper selection of a suitable arch-nemesis requires discriminating taste and patience.

One implication of #5 that is important to note is peerage: the person you accept as the Moriarty to your Holmes is a reflection on YOU, so you must choose them carefully. When the august personages that someone of your stature naturally attracts meet your foe, they should awestruck by the charisma, intelligence, and diabolical style of your Enemy, not left wondering why such obvious trash seemed worth your time.

If you have to explain to a Prince that the fellow guest you dispatched in a saber duel during their masquerade ball was your sworn enemy, make certain that it won’t be an embarrassment to you. Someone has to really be on the same level as you to be taken seriously as an arch-enemy, otherwise they are merely a turd that refuses to flush.

Google is Apple’s Archenemy. Microsoft is…not

I find it highly unlikely that Apple wanted to be enemies with Microsoft or Google: at one time Microsoft was given very privileged information about the upcoming Macintosh computers so that they could develop applications for it. One can make similar observations about Google: Eric Schmidt at one time sat on Apple’s Board of Directors, and the iPhone still ships with tight integration of Google’s mapping and search services.

Between Google and Microsoft, only Google is really impressive enough to warrant potential Arch-Nemesis status. Taking a company like Google to task and besting them makes Apple look good.

On the other hand, if Apple really showed any hint of being the slightest bit threatened by Microsoft, a company run by a blustering fat douchebag spouting empty platitudes while producing inferior crap, Apple would ultimately end up diminishing themselves just by engaging with them. The best way to deal with them is to ignore them, or at least enjoy their humorous antics.

Practice: the short form

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 10:03:33 -0700

Trying a very short (15 to 20 minute) daily practice consisted of the Omei Qi Gong, what I know of the dragon palm, what i know of the 8 directions/7 stars, and the dragon sword, one time each.

Will try to stick to this and save the longer version (12-15 reps each of the dragon palm and 8 directions/7 stars instead of just 1) for days that I get up early enough or can linger over practice longer.

Seems better than doing nothing, I guess.

From the Shadow of Mordor: iPad vs Slate

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:22:00 -0700

In which our hero gives up and embarks on a total rant

2002-2008

Microsoft tries to get traction with the tablet PC, and never really scores a solid hit.

Apple works quietly on a tablet of their own, releasing a spinoff product called ‘iPhone’ in 2007.

2009

Buzz about Apple’s upcoming tablet computer comes to a head. Research targets “iSlate” as a likely product name. Hand-made mock ups showing what the tablet might look like begin cropping up all over the internet. People familiar with Apple’s track record predict yet another amazing game changer. Finally, the excitement rises to a fever pitch on December 23rd when Apple announces a special media event scheduled for late January. Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray’s Senior Analyst, predicts a 75% chance that the long-awaited Apple tablet will be announced at the event.

2010

January 6th: Ballmer Tries to Shit in the Punch Bowl

Like a leering fratboy announcing that he has just returned from roofie-ing and anally violating your significant other, Steve Ballmer appears at the CES keynote to announce an Microsoft/HP tablet collaborative effort known as the Slate.

It’s very hard to interpret this as anything other than an unbelievably boorish dick move: the timing and choice of name were almost certainly chosen to steal Apple’s thunder. Even before it happened, the New York Times expressed concern over the announcement, saying “It could be one of Steve Ballmer’s riskiest trade-show moves in years…the last thing Mr. Ballmer wants to hold up is a me-too device.”

Life goes on

All the Slate announcement does is give Ballmer a chance to show his idiocy: the iPad ships, blasting past all predicted sales records, HP acquires Palm, announcing that the Slate will run a variant of WebOS instead of Windows, and Microsoft’s Kin is pulled after only 48 days on the market due to abysmal sales.

The present: Ballmer responds with more idiocy

Ballmer, finally, has acknowledged that Apple has handed Microsoft their collective asses on a decorative platter, but is blindly pushing forward with his only strategy: Windows is their answer to everything.

Apple has done an interesting job. They’ve sold more than I’d like them to sell. We think about that. So it’s our job to say, we have got to make things happen. Just like we made things happen with netbooks, we have to do that with Slates.

This means that the new plan is to keep making substandard shit and throw more money at hardware vendors and marketing companies. Unfortunately, Ballmer’s plan does not actually involve settling down for the long haul and making something good:

We’re coming full guns. The operating system is called Windows.

This is the kind of brash flag waving that ruined the Kin (management insisted that it had to run a Windows operating system and ended up saddling it with Windows CE).

They shoot horses, don’t they?

After almost 10 years of dicking around with tablet PCs on their own, Microsoft has been cut down by the iPad in a single, swift, practiced stroke. Microsoft’s mobile efforts are fucked. They do not understand Apple, they are only just beginning to really understand how fucked they are, and they are not changing their strategy for dealing with them.

Charitable individuals might consider this to be madness, but historical evidence points to stupidity as the real culprit. My advice to Microsoft’s board of directors: do not let Ballmer speak publicly on behalf of the company any further and, ideally, force him to step down as CEO as soon as possible.

Sword

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 12:10:00 -0700

My dancing blade soars
with my heart in this green place.
Free in this moment

bradandthebrain: Flynn Abides

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:16:48 -0700

bradandthebrain:

Flynn Abides

Dwarves and Hobbits

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:39:00 -0700

As an iOS developer living in Seattle, any sort of dealings with the local, heavily Microsoft-biased tech community reminds me jarringly of the “Squabbling Hobbits” scene in Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon:

In the Tolkien, not the endocrinological or Snow White sense, Randy is a Dwarf. Tolkien’s Dwarves were stout, taciturn, vaguely magical creatures who spent a lot of time in the dark hammering out beautiful things, e.g., Rings of Power. Thinking of himself as a Dwarf who had hung up his war-ax for a while to go sojourning in the Shire, where he was surrounded by squabbling Hobbits…had actually done a lot for Randy’s peace of mind over the years…

…A Dwarf on sojourn in the Shire would probably go to a lot of dinner parties where pompous boring Hobbits would hold forth like this. This Dwarf would view the whole thing as entertaining. He would know that he could always go back out into the real world, so much vaster and more complex than these Hobbits imagine, and slay a few Trolls and remind himself of what really mattered.

I’ve spent years having Windows developers sneer at my Mac, and then my iPhone, and now my iPad. Every year I’ve gone to WWDC and C4, and met people like myself, and it’s probably about the only thing that kept me sane.

Man, these hobbits don’t know shit.

WWDC 2010

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:38:22 -0700

I’m writing this in a cab on the way to SFO, the Saturday after this year’s WWDC.

I am stunned at the energy of this event. Apple has introduced the biggest advance since the original iPhone while gracefully deflating Gizmodo’s “exposé” at the same time, Apple employees have been working their asses off preparing for this event, striving to bring the development community up to speed on how to use their tools to make amazing apps. They’ve also made it clear that the development community really matters to them: spending time with us socially, fielding questions about things that might not have been covered in the sessions, and generally being amazing.

Likewise, the attendees play a major role in this as well, because it is a Apple-specific monoculture. Everyone, whether they are competing with you or not, even the jailbreakers, are there because they are all excited about the platform and looking for ways to do amazing things with it.

This year had an app to bring to the UI labs, and we got some great feedback on how to make Bistromath even better. Bil and I got some time, despite a heavy workload, to get exposed to a lot new technologies. Both of us have seen how things like Grand Central Dispatch can not only improve the performance of some of the applications we’ve developed, while also significantly decreasing the size and complexity of the codebase as well.

Yesterday afternoon I went back to the hotel and thought. I spent from about 3:30 to 9 just trying to wrap my head around everything I had seen, playing with the new Xcode 4 preview (which is fucking amazing, btw), and just trying to get a sense of what it meant to us, and how we could incorporate and leverage everything that we’d been given.

I felt a little bemused, in the way that Douglas Adams felt after listening to new Beatles albums for the first time: I know that I’m witnessing something huge, but still struggling to get my head around all of what I am experiencing.

A big thanks to Michael Jurewitz, Matt Drance, Bill Bumgarner, Mike Lee, Marcus Zarra, David Barnard, John Gruber, Michael Lopp, Tim Woods, Joel Page, Dave Wiskus, Kris Markel, Paul Goracke, Jeremy Foo, Joseph Agreda, and everyone else that made this week so amazing.

-Daniel

P.S. If you’re feeling a little lost in Xcode 4, make sure that you read the “Xcode 4 Transition Guide” under the Help menu.

WWDC Tips

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:53:00 -0700

0. Learn from the Masters

Read Brent Simmons’ WWDC Tips Practical WWDC tips

1. Get out of your comfort zone

Paul Goracke said Eat the Lunch, and I agree. Try to strike up a strong balance between hanging out with people that you know and getting out with people that you don’t. This is a once-a-year pilgrimage: don’t spend your time hanging out with the guys you see every week.

2. Spread out

If you are attending as part of a group of people, do not descend en masse on the same session, even if you all like that one best. Set up an informal knife fight or something and pick one person to go to that session. Get the rest of your people into some of the other sessions. You can all watch the videos later, anyway. This gets the most knowledge in your team’s heads in the shortest amount of time.

3. Bring a power squid

Power sockets are in heartbreakingly short supply at Moscone. Nothing brings smiles to your fellow attendee’s faces like the sudden introduction of several more available outlets.

4. Go out every single night

The person whose head you end up holding over the toilet this week may be your VP of engineering two years from now.

5. Don’t be too worried if people don’t warm up to you right away

For the indie crowd, some times there’s a reason these people work alone, and it may take a few years of repeated exposure before things really click with some people.

6. Make sure that you break out of your own shell

No matter how new you are to the scene, there’s someone out there that’s probably even newer. Be nice to the new guys: they’ll appreciate the hell out of it. Depending on how successful they end up, you might end up trying to get on the guest list at one of their private parties some day.

7. Try to wear clothing that will in some way identify you to complete strangers

If your face isn’t as recognizable as Steve Jobs and you don’t have an Apple badge to where you might want to bring some clothing to help people recognize you or at least get a conversation started. Got a product? Wear something that references it or your company. You can always spot the folks from The Omni Group, even if it isn’t Tim, Ken, or Joel.

Even if no one knows what your product is, a good shirt can be a great icebreaker in between sessions:

“Wow, what’s Wicked Cryo Donkey Puff?”
“What, this? It’s a new game we’re working on: you play a recently unfrozen donkey anti-hero that uses blasts of baking flour to disable your opponents.”

I think that’s really about all that I have to suggest, at least off the top of my head: go, learn, have fun.

bijan sabet: A guest post about joining a startup

Mon, 17 May 2010 08:23:34 -0700

bijan sabet: A guest post about joining a startup :

I’ve never had a guest post on my blog before. But I’m thrilled to start with this one. It’s a great story about determination & passion and it’s by Nick Crocker who starts at Boxee today.

* * *

In a recent post about how to join a startup Bijan Sabet said:

“There are a number of…