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- August 3, 2005
WSJ Portraits
August 3, 2005Read more
I never realized that those stippled portraits in the Wall Street Journal where actually made by someone; I thought they were made through some kind of photographic halftoning process. My apologies to Noli Novak, the real-live human artist that creates them through meticulous pen and ink work. She literally rocks.
There’s a brief interview with her on NPR’s All Things Considered. It takes about 3 hours to her to do one 3 x 5 portrait. She trains new artists at the WSJ to keep the style uniform in addition to daily visual problem solving, For example, drawing George W. Bush is a challenge:
Everyone hates to draw Bush, including me, because he has a slight, very slight cross-eyedness and so, sometimes, moving eyes are just required because it would look like you made a mistake. With Bush you can’t do that…you have to stay as close as possible. Like, if you like at this drawing here, you can see that…something is just a little off…
Hee hee. Via BoingBoing.
- August 2, 2005
Apple’s Two-Button MightyMouse
August 2, 2005Read more
I just was reading about the new Apple 2-button mouse: The MightyMouse. I didn’t imagine that even Apple could possibly reinvent the mouse in a substantive manner–witness the very stylish but functionally-ordinary Apple Mouse we’ve become used to with the current generation of Macs.
Apple’s mouse sounds very promising…the idea of squeezing the mouse to active Expose sounds neat. And I’m hopeful that the roller ball has a great tactile feel. I give this a 50-50 chance of being true, given that Apple seems to have destroyed their keyboard feel in recent years, unless you like mush.
[rant]
I hate hate hate the multiple buttons that litter the current offerings from Logitech and Microsoft. The latest mouse I have, a Logitech MX510, has a lame back button on the left side of the mouse that I inadvertently hit whenever I touch the mouse the wrong way. Back goes the browser, nuking all the blogging I’ve done for the last 5 minutes! I would disable the feature, but then I’d have to install the even more useless and superfluous and bloated Logitech control panel software. I just want a mouse that gives me a place for my pinky, a faaast optical sensor, and good tactile response: crisp, solid, and consistent, with two buttons and a mouse wheel. And it shouldn’t feel like a piece of plastic crap from the dollar store. Thank you very much.
[/rant]
Yes, I am very picky about my mice.
- August 2, 2005
Ribs 5.0 Alpha 1
August 2, 2005Read more
About 10 years ago, I figured that everyone should have a signature dish. As a young bachelor making his way through the world, I chose a dish that’s both comfort food and crowd pleaser: Pork Spareribs. I’ve worked this dish over and over, trying to get it a little closer to that ideal flavor, in memory of my Mom and the good ole’ days back in college.
This past month, I’ve been asked several times about The Recipe, so I’m finally documenting the current build for all of youse. Enjoy!
- August 1, 2005
Mark Russinovich’s Blog
August 1, 2005Read moreSysinternals is the freeware side of software company Winternals that specializes in the dark mysteries of Windows computing. This is the place I go when I want to understand how the Windows Operating system does something at its most fundamental level. The writing is clear, and they provide a lot of interesting utilities for exploring the nooks and crannies of a world that most users are barely aware of.
I recently discovered that Mark Russinovich, one of the founders of the company, has a blog. It’s awesome…something will bug him, like popups that make it through his popup blocker or a mysterious slowdown of his computer, and then he goes into sleuth mode and hunts it down. It’s incredibly cool to read how an expert gets the job done. Every hard core nerd will appreciate this blog.
- July 29, 2005
Feed Tracking
July 29, 2005Read moreI set up a Feedburner account to try to track this site’s syndication activity. Feedburner repackages your syndication feeds so that’s possible, since a feed is not an actual web page viewed in a browser. If they were, you could track them through your web logs or a service like StatCounter. Up to now, I had no idea how many people were visiting this site through RSS readers (such as Firefox’s Live Bookmarks) or through an agregator like Bloglines.
Geeky notes follow on how I implemented this, so I don’t forget.
