Clock Cleaners

Google pulling plug on FTP blogger. goodbye blog

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 03:52:00 +0000

Google sent me a notice that FTP publishing support for blogger is discontinued. I understand their reasoning, and it may mean I have to abandon this blog.

That may work out, though, as I've been considering two shifts in digital society:

1. Facebook is the new blogger

It's confusing to decide if an idea or link should be "blogged" publicly or shared with local community via facebook. Community seems to trump the public for most posts lately.

2. Most hits come from new video game posts

Why not focus on games, then, and invest in new titles, subsidized by google ads? We'll see. It'd mean a switch to wordpress or some other tool.

Sikuli: automating GUI interaces

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:50:00 +0000

Wow! This demo video is impressive. You can write code to interface to anything you can see.

I wonder if I could use this to write a facebook-bejeweled-cheat-app in a matter of minutes...

Ars misses vital point: flash on the iPad

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 23:20:00 +0000

Everyone is talking about ~~Macromedia~~ Adobe Flash missing from the iPad. It's been missing from the iPhone for years. Today Ars Technica takes a poll, asking people if they care.

Ars says "Flash is necessary for a larger percentage of the Web to work properly". Those Flash-based sites, however, were built at a time when web users primarily used devices that either had Flash or could quickly install Flash for free. Apple is creating a new segment - a portion of web users that neither have Flash, nor can install Flash if they want to.

If that market existed over the last 10 years, we may not have a web where Flash is necessary for a large percentage of the web to work properly - and I would be OK with that.

If Apple holds steady on avoiding Flash on their gadgets, and Apple sells a lot of iPhones and iPads, the Flash-based web is going to change. That's a good thing.

Charlie Brooker - How To Report The News

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:46:00 +0000

Nexus Envy

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:58:00 +0000

Jon Hannibal Stokes twitters today about his Nexus One:

I accidentally pressed the voice input on my Nexus One right before a huge sneeze, and it Googled "sneeze." I am not making this up.

http://twitter.com/hannibalrex/statuses/7923029604

I want one.

Dear Internet: stop posting about not posting

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 13:57:00 +0000

Have you noticed that bloggers are always making excuses for not posting enough? I'd like to fill in all you bloggers on a secret: Nobody Cares.

I tried to read an article about Nexus One today, and the writer stops the story to talk about not posting enough, and then promises to post more. Promising to "get better" is even worse; it just leads to more apologies when the writer fails.

Here's why you all need to stop masturbating about post frequency:

1. Your reader has never heard of you. He has no idea how often you post and doesn't care. It's a world-wide-web of linked hypertext, and traffic comes from all over the place.

2. Your reader came here for a reason (in this case, for your thoughts about Nexus One). When you start talking about your blogging practices instead, you've failed to deliver on topic and they will leave.

Nexus One versus iphone: technical specs chart

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:50:00 +0000

I know, everybody is doing it: but here's a side-by-side comparison of new Nexus One tech specs versus the iphone. Green bold text highlights a superior feature. The summary is that Nexus if cheaper, smaller, lighter (if only marginally on all three), with better camera, bigger display, faster CPU, bigger battery, and more RAM.

We have to hand it to Apple for re-defining the worlds expectations for cell phones. Good job Apple, you blazed the trail again, just like you did with mp3 players, USB support, and the GUI. Apple is a leading innovator.

Google's advantage is that the iPhone's specs are public so Google knows exactly what they need to beat, and they do so in every category but base storage.

Also the wishlists for iphone are well-published, so Google can one-up Apple in categories that users actively complain about: removable storage, camera flash, battery life. Smart.

Chiseling my shoes free

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 01:49:00 +0000

The mud/clay near my home is so bad that I almost lost two pairs of shoes to it when doing some landscaping recently. The first pair I just threw away, the second pair I couldn't imagine a way to salvage until I grabbed a hammer and a chisel and started chiseling away these immense chunks of dried clay. The result was visually interesting - clayforms of my shoe treads below.

What I'm Reading Now: The Picture of Dorian Gray

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:50:00 +0000

I think I'm going to be reading very old books for awhile, as most titles published before 1914 are in the public domain so I can legally download them for free.

Wikipedia says that the Picture of Dorian Gray was very different in it's 1890 publication and 1891 forms; I wonder which copy I have.

Peanuts is cooler than cool: Hey Ya

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 04:32:00 +0000

This peanuts rendition of Hey Ya is great. I like Linus & Charlie Brown covering "ice cold!" at 02:20, and the attention to detail with the clapping/snapping along at all the right moments.

What I'm Playing Now: The Majesty of Colors

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:46:00 +0000

There are just a lot of great flash games out there right now. Some of them are rather artsy, like Passage, and the game I found tonight, I fell in Love with the Majesty of Colors. You can play it in a couple of minutes, or spend more finding all the different story lines.

What I'm Reading Now: Mother Night

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:21:00 +0000

More Kurt Vonnegut. Hooray! I already enjoyed A Man Without a Country, Breakfast of Champions, and The Sirens of Titan. I might try to get his entire collection eventually.

What I'm Reading Now: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

I didn't realize how much of a Cory Doctorow fan I was until my friends & I were discussing a Larry King interview question "Who are your heroes?". My friends had a hard time thinking of heroes for themselves, but they all quickly told me that, for me, it's Cory Doctorow. I didn't realize :)

I won't argue, though - a former EFF staffer, tireless defender of our digital rights, and just a nice guy (he signed my book at this SF reading), Cory is certainly a better hero than the average professional athlete.

Why I like real, physical books, and resist Kindle, Nook

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:48:00 +0000

I like technology, and would probably be a regular early-adopter if my budget wasn't already focused on my family. ...but I resist e-book readers, including Kindle, Nook, and smartphones, even while my wife reads books on her iphone weekly.

Tycho explains why in his post today. In most cases, new technology is presented to the public as beneficial to us, but the peddlers of said tech are focused on using it to restrict our liberties in an attempt* to increase their profits.

Here's the whole (long) quote:

I mentioned to Gabe that the LendMe feature didn't extend to all books, and he was surprised to learn this, as "lending" a book digitally removes it from your device. It is, in many ways, like lending a person a real book. I suggested to him that this was precisely what they didn't like - you have to warp your mind to perceive it, to understand why a publisher of books would hate the book as a concept, but there you have it. They don't like that books are immutable, transferable objects whose payload never degrades. A digital "book" - caged on a device, licensed, not purchased - is the sort of thing that greases their mandibles with digestive enzymes.

There are other reasons too: I like how real books look on the shelf - I'll re-read my favorites just because I saw them on the shelf and was reminded of a great story. I like how how favorite volumes wear their stains, creases, and worn bindings like medals for the hours of wonder they provided to readers. The Nook allows limited lending, and only to people with similar hardware, but I can lend a real book to any one at all.

Long-term, I hope ebook readers only supplement printed literature, not replace it.

*while correlations between DRM & profit aren't necessarily supported by research, anyway.

What I'm Reading Now: The Hacker Crackdown

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 19:58:00 +0000

Non fiction about AT&T, the secret service, Steve Jackson, the BBS community, and the creation of the EFF. Audiobook ready by Cory Doctorow, downloadable for free, no less!

What I'm Playing Now: Guardian Rock

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:26:00 +0000

In Guardian Rock, you protect an ancient shrine from pesky archaeologists by crushing them to death.

http://armorgames.com/play/4802/guardian-rock

Patriots dominating receiver statistics

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:02:00 +0000

Wow, the top two NFL receivers are both on the same team! I wonder if that's ever happened. ...and Wes Welker is doing it while having missed two games.

I remember when the Patriots used to spread the ball around. What happened? Did Brady lose a few good targets, or are Welker & Moss such better athletes that he doesn't have to spread it around any more?

Google maps rules - fun things to do with kids

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:43:00 +0000

After seeing Google Maps at work in a lot of great applications, I knew that a friends "list of things to do with kids around SF bay area" should be a google-map.

link: things to do with kids

Tetris Humor

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 23:17:00 +0000

Line piece!

Go Saints/Colts

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 03:09:00 +0000

The Saints & colts are both 9-0 now. I hope they both go undefeated, just to tie the Patriots 16 game regular season win record and hurt their pride a little. It'd be even better if one of them could even manage to win the Superbowl and beat the Patriots single-season win record by winning all 19 games.

Maker's Schedule, Manager's schedule: a Paul Graham essay

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:48:00 +0000

This essay by Paul Graham (Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule) puts into words a problem I've had for a long time: the struggle to complete projects that require multiple hours of dedicated attention when I know about upcoming interruptions.

When you're operating on the maker's schedule, meetings are a disaster. A single meeting can blow a whole afternoon, by breaking it into two pieces each too small to do anything hard in. Plus you have to remember to go to the meeting. That's no problem for someone on the manager's schedule. There's always something coming on the next hour; the only question is what. But when someone on the maker's schedule has a meeting, they have to think about it.

On a side note, I think it's interesting that I regularly read essays on the web, and would even like to contribute my own, time & talent permitting. When in high school/college, I thought the regular essay assignments wouldn't translate into real life. After all, I didn't know any adults that ever sat down to compose an essay.

Moving is done

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:28:00 +0000

In celebration of a successful move, I'm linking the Onion's moving day tips.

I think the last tip captures the surprising difficulty of moving every one of your belongings safely and quickly: For the love of God, don't ever move.

What I'm Playing Now: Spelunky

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:02:00 +0000

Boingboing's offworld kept posting about Spelunky, a 2D low-res platform/exploration dungeon crawler, and I just didn't care - it didn't look fun.

But it's free, so I finally gave it a shot, and got hooked. It is surprisingly engaging. Here's why:

Every level is dynamically generated every time, so every game is completely new.

You are given a set of basic actions that can apply to many objects (whip, pick up, throw, drop), an array of interesting tools (rope, bomb at start; cape, teleport are more advanced) as well as some interesting acrobatics that can be augmented by items.

Some hilarious situations can result from experimenting with actions and objects.

Try it out - download for free.

Periodic Table

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:17:00 +0000

What a great periodic table installation! I wonder if making one of these for my kids will give them an edge in chemistry class, 10 years from now.

From Make magazine:

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/10/periodic_table.html

If video games were realistic

noreply@blogger.com (mattbots) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:35:00 +0000

I especially liked these Pacman and Zelda graphics from If Video Games Were Realistic. Most of the 27 entries are good, though - click through for yourself.