The folks at Rogue Amoeba have a nice write-up on the design process for the UI and icon of their latest application, Piezo. I’m bookmarking it because I’m thinking about trying my hand at iPhone application development: I want an app for my iPhone that lets me record in the field. They have apps that let you do this, but wouldn’t it be nice if the app also prompted you for some basic metadata or made metadata like GPS coordinates, easy?
work
15
Feb 12
Thank you, universe, for the unix command line. I had a folder full of documents that I wanted to merge into one, and all I had to do is open a terminal window and cat all of them into a new file:
% cat *.txt > my_new_document
10
Feb 12
Cleaning Pelicans
More e-mail lore:
Down in Lafourche Parish , Louisiana , Boudreaux gets a job with BP helping with the cleanup.
He reports for work and is told to speak to a supervisor about his assignment.
He finds the man and asks, “What it is I suppose to do?”
The supervisor tells him to go to the animal shelter and clean the pelicans.
Two hours later, Boudreaux comes up to the supervisor and says, “Okay. Dey all cleaned. You want me to cook some rice?”
6
Feb 12
Platform Lists
Nothing too new in David Kazzie’s report, which is delightfully detailed, that getting in Amazon’s KDP Program was a boon to sales of his ebook. It echoes pretty clearly comments made recently by Marco Arment in his 5by5 podcast that the one, true, way to insure success was to get on the App Store’s recommended or top lists. Historically, this is not unlike being on the Billboard charts or the NYT Bestseller lists, but in this case the list maker is also the distributor, who also happens to be the store owner. To some degree, this is the much sought after disintermediation that some internet advocates have championed, but are we so sure that getting rid of all the middle men is a good idea?
Did we learn nothing from the scouring out of middle management that happened in the 80s and 90s that left corporations trying to “manage knowledge” — because it turned out that that was what a lot of middle managers did?
4
Feb 12
A good Saturday morning. I’m tucked in my study at home and rain is rattling the skylight above. I have Natural Language Processing with Python propped open and a notebook and pencil out to document my best few steps.
2
Feb 12
A Distributed Film Festival
More information is available at the BLDGBlog — how cool is that? A film festival that focuses on the architecture?
29
Jan 12
Charts and Tables for Presentations
These are two screen captures taken from Ron Johnson’s presentation before J.C. Penney investors:
Screen Shot 2012-01-29 at 11.25.16 AM.png
Screen Shot 2012-01-29 at 11.38.17 AM.png
29
Jan 12
Ron Johnson’s First Investor Presentation as CEO of JC Penney
I don’t think there could be a more difficult audience than several hundred investors. In this case, Ron Johnson, who used to be Apple’s retail store guru, is laying out his plans for a change in strategy. It’s worth watching to see someone work with data.
29
Jan 12
Make Your Own Maps
For my own research, I make my own maps, usually creating them in Adobe Illustrator, where I create hand-drawn lines on top of commercially-available maps that I have downloaded (e.g., Google Maps), created through software applications (e.g., Topos), or scanned from paper. This is the only I have known to create a map that displayed the information I felt my reader needed and not too much more.
Turns out, there is another way to do this, perhaps, and it is to use Open Street Maps. I am not entirely sure what all is involved, but I look forward to checking it out as soon as the revision of the aesthetics paper is done.
28
Jan 12
Zotero Takes Over
My colleagues Clai Rice and Jonathon Goodwin swear by Zotero. I hated it as a Firefox extension, but it is now available as a standalone app. I tried it at 1.0 and it was not ready yet, but at RC 3, it is beginning to get interesting. It even began to sync some data I had synced a very long time ago, which was good, but then it took over my CPU cycles, and that was not so good:
Screen Shot 2012-01-28 at 8.50.27 AM.png
28
Jan 12
Deathmarch on Mars
I don’t know Warren Ellis’ work, but I like his verve. This Mother Board interview is quite good. His assessment of the political pandering to the current space industry strikes me as the product of a long-time observer who deserves a listen.
28
Jan 12
Mathematicians are getting pissed about the journal publishing regime.
Jason Jackson is far more expert here, but I keep track of these issues as best I can. The switch to open access is being led by the sciences — strange to see mathematics so encumbered by the old paradigm — and I hope the humanities can follow soon. It’s hard work, but not only does such an effort align with the overall ethical schemes of many of our disciplines but it is it worth it in terms of making our work more accessible not only to each other but also to a larger potential pool of interested individuals.
That said, the next step is a coordinated infrastructure that allows for easy accessing across the entire landscape. That’s the promise of Project Bamboo.