Year: 2012
-
2012 November 15
-
My experience in becoming a FirefoxOS contributor
Back in September, I wrote that I wasn’t leaving MDN. And, I’m not, really. But, it turns out that FirefoxOS needs some help to reach its first release milestones. So, some of us webdevs from around Mozilla are temporarily switching our daily efforts over to slay bugs on Gaia. That’s the layer of FirefoxOS which provides the overall system UI and core apps. [ ... 1651 words ... ]
-
2012 October 01
-
2012 September 27
-
Freedom to Change Your Mind
I posted a few days ago about freedom of and from choice, but I think there’s something orthogonal to that spectrum: The freedom to change your mind, both figuratively and literally. [ ... 978 words ... ]
-
2012 September 25
-
Things I learned from my High School science teacher
That’s not actually me in this picture: It’s something I found in an archive of a defunct GeoCities page, from who knows when. (Though, apparently, it was forged in the era of the Counting Crows.) But, anyway, that’s Mr. Sabo there in the middle. He was my High School science teacher, and nearly every day I remember something that he taught me. Let’s see if I can come up with a few off the top of my head… [ ... 345 words ... ]
-
2012 September 24
-
Freedom {of,from} Choice
Freedom of choice and freedom from choice lay on a spectrum. And, in technology, it’s no coincidence that more choice tends to be messier and complex, less choice tends to be cleaner and simple. It’s a trade-off between what you choose and what you leave up to an expert. [ ... 1216 words ... ]
-
2012 September 18
-
Developing Open Web Apps: First, get it onto the web
I’ve been interested in developing open web apps (aka the single-page app) for years. But, it feels like the space is really on fire now, since the advent of HTML5 tech and the recent moves by Mozilla and Google toward truly “appifying” these things to compete with offerings from iOS and Android. Lots of pieces have come into alignment, and great things are coming together—never mind what the folks at Facebook say. So, I think I’m going to build a simple app and blog about it. And, these days, the first thing I think about when starting a web app is: How do I get it onto the web? [ ... 1502 words ... ]
-
2012 September 17
-
On the other end of a self-imposed death march project
So, I’m a couple of weeks back from a well-deserved vacation taken after the launch of a project well over 18 months in the making. I kind of overworked myself, voluntarily, and that needs to change. [ ... 527 words ... ]
-
2012 July 30
-
Did you look under the couch?
Earth had been a great home to us. But, the Sun was revving up to devour the inner planets, so we figured it was about time we pack the whole place up and archive it. No danger to the human species: We’d scattered ourselves across the galactic plane. There was no getting rid of us now, short of obliterating the whole Milky Way. [ ... 173 words ... ]
-
2012 July 25
-
Aerostats, Base Stations, and the Cloud
In my thinking about things IndieWeb and user-supported cloud infrastructure, I’ve had a couple of notions bouncing around in my head that might help clarify some “products” I’d like to build if and when I have time. I guess this would be good to blog about, so maybe someone else can steal my ideas (if they’re any good). Because, after all, much of this is sourced from material I’ve stolen from guys like Dave Winer. [ ... 870 words ... ]
-
2012 July 19
-
In praise of dumb pipes – or, ISPs: please don’t get smart with me!
Something I’m having trouble finding these days is a dumb pipe. I just want a dumb pipe to the internet going to my house, and to the computer in my pocket. Let me give you money for bandwidth, and then butt out. [ ... 711 words ... ]
-
2012 July 12
-
2012 July 11
-
Mercury must be in retrograde
It’s shaping up to be this kind of day. [ ... 185 words ... ]
-
2012 July 10
-
Note to self File a bug to get…
[ ... 19 words ... ]
-
How webdev is like space exploration
[ ... 452 words ... ]
-
How webdev has been getting better
[ ... 384 words ... ]
-
2012 July 03
-
Biospheric Xenophobia
“Have you ever seen one of them?” [ ... 193 words ... ]
-
2012 June 16
-
2012 June 15
-
303 See Other
[ ... 259 words ... ]
-
2012 June 12
-
Today is Rush Day
[ ... 215 words ... ]
-
2012 June 09
-
Happy anniversary to me! (oh and for us too)
[ ... 1 words ... ]
-
Homebrew Biotech Club
The homebrew club got real interesting last night. Jerry started dating this girl Maddy, and she was something else: purple hair, piercings, and a load of tattoos. And then there’s Jerry: bearded, balding, and been carrying a spare tire for years now. I can see the appeal for him, but she’s out of his league. [ ... 181 words ... ]
-
On the Market
It had been a busy week: she’d had her teeth whitened, removed four tattoos, dyed her hair back to its natural color, and gotten her optical implants updated. She’d also lost 4 pounds, working furiously over the past month in the fitness center on the ground floor of her apartment building. Her body had never looked more toned. She almost didn’t want to leave it. [ ... 183 words ... ]
-
THIS IS COFFEE.
[ ... 1 words ... ]
-
2012 June 04
-
Lonely Timeless Flight
He kicks back, alone at a corner table in low-g. He nurses a high gravity beer for the alcoholic irony. It’s his fourth, and the faces around him are blurred. Funny thing, though: with his glasses on, the faces would have been blurred even if he’d been sober. [ ... 184 words ... ]
-
Moravec’s Cats
Every ship-morning, I woke up covered in a half-dozen cats. Sometime in the ship-night, they’d wander in from the ducts and find spots to curl up around my sleeping body, virtually pinning me under the sheet and all purring from speaker grilles when I stirred. [ ... 175 words ... ]
-
Stuxnet was awesome, right?
The toaster wouldn’t toast, and the microwave wouldn’t—umm—make tiny heat waves, or whatever it does. The fridge, though, the fridge had slow-cooked everything inside overnight and the apartment stank like delicious death. [ ... 177 words ... ]
-
Bookshelves
The day they moved in together, he remarked upon how heavy and numerous were all her boxes of books. [ ... 182 words ... ]
-
2012 May 16
-
Please Do Learn To Code
[ ... 1077 words ... ]
