Bug Ugly

A DIY Turing Machine - Turing machine - Gizmodo

Sat, 27 Mar 2010 09:48:58 -0400

A DIY Turing Machine - Turing machine - Gizmodo:

just wonderful

guillee: Safari 4, built entirely in HTML & CSS, by Joshua...

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 10:25:42 -0400

guillee:

Safari 4, built entirely in HTML & CSS, by Joshua Jones. (Via inky.)

mrgan: The Panic Status Board - one of the things I’ve been...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:50:55 -0500

mrgan:

The Panic Status Board - one of the things I’ve been working on lately. Read Cabel’s writeup!

Words cannot express my love for this. Am I the only one that wants them to put this on the web?

think design - Graphic Design Freebies - 120+ Handdrawn Vector Arrows | Think Design

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:41:06 -0500

think design - Graphic Design Freebies - 120+ Handdrawn Vector Arrows | Think Design:

Some free hand drawn vector icon images. Nice.

Fancy Math Allows For Near-Perfect Enhancement of Poor-Quality Images - Image Enhancement - Gizmodo

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:40:57 -0500

Fancy Math Allows For Near-Perfect Enhancement of Poor-Quality Images - Image Enhancement - Gizmodo:

I love it when science fiction starts to look like it may become science fact

Instapaper Blog: Scrollback

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:25:56 -0500

Instapaper Blog: Scrollback:

Before Instapaper Pro 2.2, I got frequent emails from customers who were upset that they had inadvertently tapped the status bar, which scrolls to the top of the article and loses their position. I understood completely, since losing your read position is a form of minor data loss.

Most of them…

Stepcase » Blog Archive » Format String for the iPhone NSDateFormatter

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 15:41:00 -0500

Stepcase » Blog Archive » Format String for the iPhone NSDateFormatter:

Found this information stunningly hard to come by in the Apple developer doc area. Very useful.

Hum, link dead. Try here

Microsoft’s Challenge With Windows Phone 7 Is Wooing Developers | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:51:52 -0500

Microsoft’s Challenge With Windows Phone 7 Is Wooing Developers | Gadget Lab | Wired.com:

Still not ready to better against MS, but you do need the developers. And the numbers. Apart from that, it’s going well.

The Nexus One's Dirty Display Secret - Nexus one screen - Gizmodo

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:49:49 -0500

The Nexus One's Dirty Display Secret - Nexus one screen - Gizmodo:

Eurgh.

Corona iPhone using Lua

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 06:37:51 -0500

With the recent Adobe Photoshop 20th anniversary buzz ringing in my ears, I decided to take a quick look at the platform used to develop the Photoshop One on iPhone app. I have to say it’s very tidy. The system uses a “middle” language that can be built into an iPhone application. That middle language is Lua (yes, that’s right, it’s the same thing that World of Warcraft uses for its plugins). Lua will be an “instant learn” for anyone who has coded in a small number of languages, having OO and scripty heritage.

I will post a more complete review later but it really is an amazing rapid prototyping tool at the very least. More suited for games and media than productivity apps, but quick and powerful it is.

http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/

The Mariana Trench To Scale [Pic] | I Am Bored

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:08:27 -0500

The Mariana Trench To Scale [Pic] | I Am Bored:

Wow.

Is Flash really a CPU hog playing video?

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:47:51 -0500

With all the recent noise about the iPad and its absence of Flash, I decide to run a test using the Vimeo HTML5 player against the Flash version of their player. I would like to make it clear these tests were performed on a modern MacBook Pro, and were not replicated in Windows. It is well understood Flash is better optimised for Windows, and no-doubt for various mobile platforms. Furthermore, the iPad will not have the video hardware in it, and these tests should not be considered an indicator for potential Flash performance on the device. However, it does make it clear that if you do look at Flash on the Mac as at least an indicator of potential problems, it does indicate potential problems with video playback performance. I played the following video in HD and non-HD in both the HTML 5 player, and the Flash player and sampled CPU activity every 20 seconds, and then averaged it out over the whole period (it’s a long clip). I did disable the dedicated graphics card in the Mac, I don’t expect the iPad will have a monster GFX card in it :-)

http://vimeo.com/1908224

Vimeo with Flash: 60% CPU

Vimeo with HTML5: 22% CPU

HD Vimeo with Flash: 92% CPU

HD Vimeo with HTML5: 40% CPU

As you can see, Flash introduces almost double the CPU load that the HTML5 component does. In fact, running these tests and seeing Flash running has made me install a flash blocker. Yes, my battery life is noticeably longer now. Fewer crashes? Not that I’ve noticed.

The WebKit monopoly

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:19:28 -0500

mrgan:

Jim Ray calls out Gruber for being pleased with how WebKit is dominating the mobile-browser market:

(…) with something like browser rendering engines, I’m philosophically opposed to a monoculture. A few years ago, Gecko was the best rendering engine available, then WebKit came out of nowhere to beat Gecko at its own game, and faster, to boot. Now Gecko and WebKit, on the desktop, anyway, are pushing each other to only get better. I’d love to see that kind of competition in the mobile space as well.

Two observations, both subjective:

Mozilla has been dragging its feet when it comes to adding next-gen rendering features (the sort that may some day make Flash unnecessary), focusing instead on everything above the Gecko engine. They are also woefully unprepared to match, let alone exceed, WebKit’s embedded performance.

You could argue that Firefox is a better browser (if you love its extensions and location bar) but the engine is falling behind badly. Both users and developers stand to gain more by focusing on the engine that works great now and looks to have a bright future than by arguing hypotheticals.

I am reasonably sure that development of WebKit is fueled by the desire to do amazing things using web technologies, and not by an urge to compete with anyone; as far as I can tell, the WebKit team isn’t paying too much attention to what Mozilla is up to.

Put another way, even if Firefox, IE, and Opera halted development today and added no new features, Apple and others on the WebKit team would be working their butts off to make the web richer - because they want it for themselves.

TidBITS iPod & iPhone: Does the iPhone OS Need Multitasking?

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:15:00 -0500

TidBITS iPod & iPhone: Does the iPhone OS Need Multitasking?:

Good (as in better than mine) description of multi-tasking and the iPhone/Pad’s requirement for it.

Portrait

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:22:25 -0500

Portrait

guillee: I got so engrossed by the works of art at SFMOMA, that...

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:13:14 -0500

guillee:

I got so engrossed by the works of art at SFMOMA, that I completely forgot to take note of most of their names and authors when I photographed them. Damn.

Anyway, this is Les valeurs personnelles, by René Magritte.

My favourite artist.

A List Apart: Articles: Using SVG For Flexible, Scalable, and Fun Backgrounds, Part I

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:05:19 -0500

A List Apart: Articles: Using SVG For Flexible, Scalable, and Fun Backgrounds, Part I:

SVG is another key part of the mix of technologies modern browsers have in their armoury, and its stronger graphic hierarchy will prove useful when needed.

"Developers who supplement Flash with HTML5 may soon tire of Flash—but Adobe has a brief but golden..."

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:58:11 -0500

“Developers who supplement Flash with HTML5 may soon tire of Flash—but Adobe has a brief but golden opportunity to create the tools with which rich HTML5 content is created. Let’s see if they figure that out.”

- Flash, iPad, Standards – Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

Absolutely spot on. The whole piece hits the nail on the head. Adobe, please do what you do best, build great tools for the creatives, leave the delivery platform to others to solve.

Daring Fireball Linked List: SublimeVideo — HTML5 Video Player

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:49:14 -0500

Daring Fireball Linked List: SublimeVideo — HTML5 Video Player:

When I first read this I assumed Gruber was a little OTT. He’s not, this player is literally breathtakingly gorgeous and well written (see earlier post).

They do need Firefox, and to degrade to Flash in IE.

Jilion - SublimeVideo, HTML5 & JavaScript Video Player Joy

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:43:42 -0500

Jilion - SublimeVideo, HTML5 & JavaScript Video Player Joy :

Fantastic work using HTML5 video tag and Javascript, Firefox and IE support (graceful degrade into ~~Flush~~ Flash), full screen if you have latest Webkit dev builds (read next version of Chrome and Safari). I love the “Full Browser” mode, slick and gorgeous. I’m not saying it can’t be done in Flash, I’m saying it isn’t done in Flash.

Safari (v4.0.4+)
Google Chrome (v4.0+)
Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame installed

As for the supposed hassle of encoding in multiple formats? Seriously, Adobe have this great tool for batch converting and I have a great work-flow with Hazel and AppleScript for uploading. Non-issue.

I’ve seen the future, and it’s sublime.