Neven Mrgan's tumbl

Product placement

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 20:42:42 -0500

lonelysandwich has some examples of product placement in TV shows. Let’s not forget The Wire:

The many sliders of Photoshop CS4

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:09:00 -0500

Preferences > Memory Usage

Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast

Filters

Blur (note the rendering of the thumb arrow)

Layer Blending

Layer Style

Threshold

Color Balance

Things to keep in mind:

These can be found in just Photoshop; I can’t imagine what I’d find elsewhere in the suite. Actually, fine, here’s the first one I found in Illustrator CS5:
The most common out of all these seems to be second one, Brightness Adjustment.
They’re all ugly. The only near-acceptable one is the Layer Style slider.
None of these looks like the standard OS X slider:

How to use an SSD drive with your Mac

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:27:00 -0500

How to use an SSD drive with your Mac:

jimray:

Use the super fast solid state drive as your boot/OS/application drive, move your home folder for all your pictures and mp3s and whatnot somewhere else. Nicely done.

I’m not sure I agree that moving your iTunes and iPhoto libraries to a second drive is so “fiddly”; that’s been my setup for years and I’ve never had problems. Moving the home folder seems way more brittle to me.

That said, SSD drives are the single greatest upgrade you can buy for your computer today. Seeing Photoshop launch on an SSD laptop will blow your mind.

Google Dashboard

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 13:50:15 -0500

Google Dashboard:

Google’s new feature, launched today, gives you an overview of your Google Account - what all services you use, with a bit of data on each. It’s a good way to remember that oh wait, I have a Google Voice account. Let’s hope this grows.

Japanese iPhone commercial. In which a dog plays piano. (via...

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:48:00 -0500

Japanese iPhone commercial. In which a dog plays piano. (via rands)

Your new vacuum

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:14:00 -0500

Your new vacuum:

Because a friend purchased a different vacuum last week, I feel a responsibility to inform you of the only brand of vacuum you should buy in the US:

Miele S4212 Polaris Canister Vacuum Cleaner (Amazon affiliate link - hope that’s cool.)

It’s a beautiful, quiet, powerful, reliable workhorse of an appliance. Your department-store Kenmore, Hoover, Eureka and whatnot aren’t even in the same category. Dyson won’t save you either - theoe are all built to be loud and fast, demo-friendly, beefy impressive. But motor speed and power does not make a good vacuum cleaner and more than a fast CPU makes an eMachines PC a good computer.

I have never heard of a dissatisfied Miele customer.

P.S. The Polaris is the basic, one-pet model. Add a dog and kids, and you’ll want something beefier.

Celebrate America’s dream family, aiming high and landing...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:52:00 -0500

Celebrate America’s dream family, aiming high and landing among the stars. Relive the televised tragedy of the missing child, the mystery of the empty helium balloon, one small boy’s inability to tell a lie, two very redhanded adults, the outrage over wasted resources, wasted time, and wasted emotions. Salute those who did it for the reasons that matter (on TV): those who did it for the show.

To put this design on a shirt, download the PDF I made.

Update: By popular demand, click-to-buy shirt coming soon, I hope. Check back shortly.

They Dared Return

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:10:12 -0500

They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies behind the Lines in Nazi Germany">They Dared Return:

Forget for a moment Tarantino’s joyful, extravagant, supremely confident direction; if you liked the story of Inglourious Basterds, you owe it to yourself to read Patrick K. O’Donnell’s They Dared Return: The True Story of Jewish Spies behind the Lines in Nazi Germany.

After training to become spy commandos, Jewish refugees go on a suicidal mission behind enemy lines, recruiting former German soldiers. What more do you need.

Mac Rumors has an overview of Apple’s new iPod Touch-based...

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:36:00 -0500

Mac Rumors has an overview of Apple’s new iPod Touch-based EasyPay system. It’s great that Apple will now be able to control the software, but I sure wish they’d gone with a nicer shell for the hardware.

I mean, who wants a stylus?

In defense of NaNoWriMo

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:55:47 -0500

It’s not that cleversimon is the biggest NaNoWriMo hater, it’s that he’s the first I have an easy way to reply to:

The first fifty thousand words to fall out of your head do not constitute a novel any more than dumping the contents of every jar in your cupboard onto the kitchen floor would constitute a meal.

…but a challenge where you cook at home every day for a whole month would be a very valuable learning experience!

But if “the ONLY thing that matters… is output,” when the focus is “quantity, not quality,” you’re not writing a novel. You’re masturbating. It’s fun, it doesn’t hurt anyone, and a lot of people could stand to do more of it—but it’s not exactly something to brag about, and in the end the only thing you’ve made is a mess.

…but I don’t see any NaNoWriMo participants bragging about it. Sure, you can google around and find some, but there are blowhards and poseurs everywhere, and lumping my NaNoWriting-friends in with them bugs me.

And beware that word “only” in “only thing you’ve made is a mess.” Great things come out of creative messes.

“Write 50,000 words this month, and it’s okay if they suck” is a great idea. Calling the result a novel is asinine.

…but “novel” is a handy, catchy, comprehensible term to slap onto this. Look, no one in their right mind will print out what they have on November 30 and sell it in bookstores. It’s just that working on a “novel” focuses you on generating a lot of output which is still bounded; this aims to prevent nonsense which arises from other quantity-centric exercises, such as stream-of-consciousness writing. Those may produce interesting insights and connections, but they also result in a lot of filler garbage: “Here I am writing again blah blah this is so silly.” Aiming for a novel is something most people will never do otherwise. Let them fight this ridiculous overreach! Where’s the adventure in taking on the feasible? Where the challenge in drawing only when you feel like it? (i.e. very infrequently, if you’re a busy adult.)

There’s no need to get negative about the efforts of many smart, nice people on the very first day they roll up their sleeves. They’re taking on something demanding, new, fun, and entirely victimless. They’re the 9-year-old with a skateboard and visions of Tony Hawk, the high-school sophomore with a programming book and a sketching app all worked out in his head, the girl with a guitar from Target and tabs to ‘Sweet Jane’ she downloaded online. There’s neither victory nor samaritanism in telling them they’ll fail.

Taking it easy my first day of NaNoDrawMo.

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 02:22:15 -0500

Taking it easy my first day of NaNoDrawMo.

Mama Lil’s - the best pickled peppers I’ve had, and...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:38:37 -0500

Mama Lil’s - the best pickled peppers I’ve had, and the only peppers I’ll put on pizza. Soft, sweet, spicy, smoky, superb.

The Hunchback of AT&T and the Verizon Pony

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:19:43 -0500

marco gets realistic about AT&T and Verizon networks:

So it comes down to your needs. For me, my phone is a personal computer most of the time, and it’s occasionally used to make or receive phone calls. Most data is downloaded over WiFi, with occasional small transfers over the cellular network. Network flakiness hurts me less than device flakiness. For me, therefore, the device is much more important than the network, because I’m using the device much more than I’m using the network.

If you make a lot of phone calls, use a ton of cellular data, or frequently travel to Vermont, and will accept more shortcomings and limitations in your device to ensure the use of a better data network, you should consider Verizon. But if your phone is more of a pocket computer than a mobile telephone, the iPhone is the only way to go.

Most non-techie iPhone users I know complain about the network; they have, however, complained about their cell network since pre-iPhone, and they’ve never liked their cellphone very much.

But when it comes to techie iPhone users, many of them agree on these two points:

AT&T’s voice network sucks
They’d prefer not to have a voice plan at all.

Ok now that’s just lazy.

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:33:28 -0500

Ok now that’s just lazy.

This is my second-favorite email ever. The story gets better,...

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:05:54 -0400

This is my second-favorite email ever. The story gets better, btw.

How Slate.com helped invade Poland in 1939

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:59:00 -0400

How Slate.com helped invade Poland in 1939:

Slate.com has the worst headline writers of any media outlet. Here’s an example.

Save the Planet: Drive a Porsche: How a classic car can be greener than your Prius.

Controversial stuff, huh? Except the article proceeds to describe how the author’s living car-free altogether, dreaming of some day owning his dream car, a Porsche 928. See, never even attempting to address the “how” in the headline is par for the course with this linkbaiting nonsense. For shame.

Standard of Living

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 19:33:00 -0400

HOVET mirror at IKEA
Big mirror for your bedroom or hallway.
$99

Metal floor mirror at West Elm
Big mirror for your bedroom or hallway.
$299

Infinity floor mirror at CB2
Big mirror for your bedroom or hallway.
$399

Mondrian mirror at Design Within Reach
Big mirror for your bedroom or hallway.
$1,250

How a sewing machine works.(via Bits & Pieces)

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 15:46:15 -0400

How a sewing machine works.
(via Bits & Pieces)

Not Martha’s awesome food project - the meatloaf hand....

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 14:20:22 -0400

Not Martha’s awesome food project - the meatloaf hand. Blog marked, way the hell marked.

Randy Cohen on discussing religion

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:59:00 -0400

Randy Cohen on discussing religion:

Randy Cohen of the excellent NYT column The Ethicist (also available as an excellent podcast) writes this week about the ridiculous “respect” of religion which prevents the media and public figures from openly criticizing, for instance, the Vatican for inviting homophobic Anglicans to join their gay-free church. It is depressing that this bit isn’t surprising:

When I write about religion, I cause a tidal wave. The week I rebuked an Orthodox Jewish real estate agent whose beliefs forbade his shaking the hand of a female client, I stopped counting after receiving 4,000 ferocious messages, lambasting not only my argument but my character, my appearance and my parentage: it was speculated that dogs played a part.