Back.
Phil Nelson I’m back. Expect tumblr-like posts on here for the foreseeable future. I’m tired of not owning my own content.
Has anyone solved the problem of trackbacks being useless shit yet?
No Working C Compiler Found
On Ubuntu 10.04 (HWE upgraded to 14.04):
aptitude install gcc-multilib
Fixed it. Don’t ask.
Override global .gitconfig
If you work for an organization with their own internal Git server and need to override your global .gitconfig info for name or email, this snippet will work if put in the .git/config of each repo you need to override that setting on:
[user]
name = Your Name
email = you@email.com
Who I Am and Where To Find Me (SITREP October 2013)
Hi there. I’m Phil Nelson. I code up hot-shit HTML5, CSS, and Javascript user interfaces for [Occipital][occ]. We just launched the Structure Sensor, the first 3D sensor for mobile devices. I built the website. Real proud of it.
I design cool-looking stuff for fun and sometimes profit, and post it to my Dribbble account. I really like video games and play them on Steam sometimes under the username murderthoughts. Most of the time you can find me on Twitter [@philnelson][twit]. I also lurk on App.net, and post stuff on my Tumblr pretty regularly. If you like being alternately delighted beyond belief and crushingly depressed then you’re in the right place.
I also write far too infrequently here at extrafuture.com. Which you are reading. Right now.
Walking Distance
I was having trouble finding a copy of this online to post to Twitter today, so because I’m the kind of person who has mp3s of this stuff, I present it to you now: Rod Serling’s excellent outro for the 5th aired episode of The Twilight Zone, Walking Distance:
Rod Serling Outro for Walking Distance (Twilight Zone episode 5)
Transcript:
Martin Sloan, age thirty-six, vice-president in charge of media. Successful in most things but not in the one effort that all men try at some time in their lives – trying to go home again. And also like all men perhaps there’ll be an occasion, maybe a summer night sometime, when he’ll look up from what he’s doing and listen to the distant music of a calliope, and hear the voices and the laughter of the people and the places of his past. And perhaps across his mind there’ll flit a little errant wish, that a man might not have to become old, never outgrow the parks and the merry-go-rounds of his youth. And he’ll smile then too because he’ll know it is just an errant wish, some wisp of memory not too important really, some laughing ghosts that cross a man’s mind, that are a part of the Twilight Zone.
No copyright claimed, etc. I just love this bit of writing and I always have. Now that I am old and more prone to the fits of nostalgia that comes with not dying I think of it often.
“Perfect” iTunes EQ Setting Revised
A revised version of of the Merlin Mann / Mac OS X Hints classic:
I’ve changed the layout so that the highest setting sits on 0, instead of boosting frequencies. This leads to a more even sound and less distortion of the high end. Everyone’s ears a little different, so your mileage may vary. Experimentation is encouraged.
Of course, what you’re listening through will make a difference. I heartily recommend these over-the-ear cans from Audio-Technica, or if you’re looking to spend under $50, I don’t think you can do better than the Sennheiser HD-202s. If you buy either of them from that link, I get a small kickback.
On The Verge Of… Something
Hey, Verge: The classy thing to do would be to admit you overreacted and restate that you do not do the things Marco (didn’t really, but kinda) accused you of. The classy thing to do would have been to take it up with him personally, over email, or even a phone call, before you turned this into an internet pissing match. Instead you went apeshit in public, not unlike a child who just met an opposing viewpoint on the relative coolness of Batman .vs. Aragorn.
If you’d have just acted with a bit of editorial restraint, the story would’ve been this: Marco slightly insinuated that what you’re doing isn’t much different than graft, because you failed to mention the most blatantly obvious thing about a new product in a review. A silly, somewhat snarky, little dig by Marco at the pageview-centric Gadget Blogger culture. Nobody really cares, as this isn’t anything new either from Marco or from The Verge.
Instead this is the story: The guy who makes Instapaper insinuated that what you’re doing isn’t much different than graft, and you (and by extension your entire company) flipped the fuck out all day long simultainously playing the victim and attacking one guy. That’s all people are going to remember from this. You freaked, and now we really are wondering about your journalistic integrity.
Facebook Weirdness
Today I made a series of seemingly innocuous, though slightly filthy, joke tweets based on a vaginal rejuvenation cream being sold in India.
The Facebook thread (I have Twitter set to auto-post to Facebook) for the third tweet now has over 118,000 comments and 5,500 likes, and the comment threat is INSANE. This appears to have affected the posts of many, many people. The user who appears to be posting the majority of the comments (mostly replying with the single letter “r”) is identified as “Rahmi Özgündüz”, but that name (and the photo on the profile) belong to a Turkish soccer player. It’s possible he/she/it started this, but without more info it’s hard to say. Could just be a regular ‘ol database ID bug.
This has got to be the problem of the day for some poor Facebook engineer. Sorry, dude. Or lady.
Update: Ben Garvey has the idea that somehow a post ID has been duplicated across several different FB posts, which is making all of the comments be piled into one big thread. Sounds about right to me.
Update Two: The responses, at least the ones in a language I speak, are hilarious. They range from incredulous, to indignant to pleas for sanity to the uncaring universe.
Happy Trails, WWDC2012 Edition
Products and services that are going the way of the dodo in iOS 6, the new Macbook Pro, or likewise, based on today’s WWDC Keynote:
- Firewire (still available via a Thunderbolt adapter – hat tip to Jesper)
- Google Maps
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Optical discs
Am I missing anything? Let me know: @philnelson on Twitter.
5 Principles For Good Code
While replying to a job posting, I started writing this little manifesto of sorts as a mission statement for myself. After kicking it around a little with my good friend Jesper of Waffle Software, I felt I should open it up to the world for criticism, additions, and discussion. The format and content owes much to Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles Of Good Design.
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Good Code is simple. It should be easy to understand for anyone who has to work on it.
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Good Code is instructive. Anyone with a similar level of expertise should be able to understand how to keep building on the code.
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Good Code is clear. Functions and variables should be named simply and descriptively. They should exist in a logical place in the source.
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Good Code is generic. Common functions and elements can be used in future projects, or improved and applied to older ones. Projects are simple and more easily maintainable.
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Good Code is specific. It solves only the problems it needs to.
I’m genuinely interested in feedback on this. Reply on your blog, tumblr or tweet me.
Playing The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim on A Mac via Wine
Has anyone had any success with this yet? The WineHQ AppDB has some promising info but none that I can make work on my Macintosh with the MacPorts version of Wine-devel.
UPDATE: I eventually had success with this Wineskin wrapper.
Stuff I Made: Metroid Title Theme
Some years ago I made this version of the Metroid title theme on my Mac. I think it is sufficiently moody/creepy. Enjoy!
Download: Metroid Intro (M4a, 2.2mb)
Sweatshop Returns This Sunday
SWEATSHOP, the live internet art show I produce, returns this Sunday, September 11th, starting at 2pm PST. Trista Musco will be our special guest artist, and we will be watching the low-budget Vincent Price film THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. Tell your friends, tell your enemies, tell your mom.
Resigned
The resignation of Steve Jobs from his post as CEO of Apple, Inc. today was not surprising, but to me it was still shocking. The writing had been on the wall, but as John Gruber said: “I saw that headline and my nervous system took a jolt.”
Yeah.
There is no one person whose hands have taken to the work of shaping the 21st century in the Western world more than Steven Paul Jobs. The son of a Syrian Muslim, born in San Francisco while his father was in the U.S. on a student visa. The adopted son of an immigrant, a 60s radical, and finally, the king of Silicon Valley. The American Dream in action. He is without question the most successful CEO of his time. Loved for his work, and hated for the devotion it inspired in the people that bought it. There will never be another CEO like Steve Jobs.
He isn’t leaving Apple, he’ll undoubtedly be taken on as the Chairman of the Board, but the landscape has unquestionably changed in a way that is difficult to describe. Many will try. Few will do it well. For my part I will say this: Steve Jobs believed in his work, and had a sense for just what makes a product great that we will likely never see again. There will, inevitably, be men whose accomplishments in this space eclipse his own. But they will not be Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple at the beginning of the 21st Century. I was here, and I know better.
Good luck, Steve.
la petite url has a new home
la petite url, my custom short url plugin for WordPress, has a new homepage at http://lapetite.me. Version 2.6 is forthcoming with long-awaited support for sending short urls to the popular Twitter Tools plugin.
Today’s Experiment: A-Ha Time
I have taken the classic A-Ha 80s jam “Take On Me” and slowed it down 50%. It starts out as an awesome dirge worthy of the Dawn Of The Dead soundtrack, and turns into a monster screaming about love in the most amusing possible manner. It is what I’m calling a Zombie Love Dirge.
I’m sure I’ll get a cease & desist soon, so enjoy while you can.
Who I Am, Where I Am And What I Do: July 2011
Hi. I’m Phil Nelson. I make websites from my orbital platform which is currently hovering above the city of San Francisco. I use Twitter a lot, and have a Facebook account, as well as being on LinkedIn and Foursquare. I sometimes post bits and pieces of my design work to Dribbble. I’ve also made some stuff:
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PNGPress: an application for Mac OS X which makes PNG images smaller, which makes your web pages load faster. It costs 99 cents on the Mac App Store.
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Liblr: A little word replacement toy for Twitter. It lets you replace any word or phrase in the pubic Twitter stream with any other word or phrase. The results can be quite amusing, and overall it is good silly fun. Personal favorite: Replace the word “mad” with the word “fat”
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Kreskin: Kreskin takes the title of random Wikipedia page, the last three words from a random quote, and a random Flickr image to create the cover of an album by a fictional band.
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Kove: Kove is collaboratively created/edited adventure book, similar to but legally distinct from the books published under the Choose Your Own Adventure umbrella. It is named after 1980s actor Martin Kove.
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la petite url: la petite url is a WordPress plugin which provides a self-hosted, customizable, URL shortener, for use on Twitter and stuff. Having your own short URLs gives people important context as to where the links you’re posting lead to. John August uses it. How rad is that?
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Tybor: A chatterbot you can have a conversation with.
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T-Shirts & Stickers: I’ve also created a couple t-shirt and sticker designs which are for sale on RedBubble.com. They’re pretty great. You should buy some. Toys and oatmeal don’t buy themselves.
That’s about it for now. Let’s be friends all over everything everywhere. K? Good.
Ambient Cigarette Tin
My old friend Shawn Russell took his own life a few weeks ago. Back in 2004 we recorded a demo in my bedroom using the newly-released Garageband. This badass 80s-flavored jam is what came out of it. Shawn provided the guitar tracks and I laid down the percussion using the built-in tools. I named the track after an old tin his father had given me to hold my smokes, and a half an Ambien tablet that sat on the corner of my desk.
Art Lyfe
Art Lyfe is staying up until 5am making something you’ll sell for $50. Art Lyfe is taking a part time job as a figure model to pay for art supplies. Art Lyfe is working harder for less money. Art Lyfe is spending your last $20 on a length of chain and snake vertebrae to make a necklace for yourself. Art Lyfe is living in an empty warehouse because it’s the only place you can fit your tools. Art Lyfe is spending 8 hours in a pub with a notebook because this idea needs to breathe.
Art Lyfe is shutting the fuck up and making something because it is simply what you do.
Team Fortress 2 Papercraft Dispenser
This neat TF2 papercraft dispenser used to be hosted on a site called highwaychile.net, which is now defunct and redirects to an ad page. Since I had trouble finding it myself, I’ve uploaded it for safe-keeping.