Quick Review: Bit Literacy

February 8, 2010 – 4:12 pm

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Bit Literacy is a book about using your computer.

If you’ve ever heard of Bit Literacy you probably don’t need to read Bit Literacy. Did you get here through a feed reader? Then this book is not for you.

Sure, you may benefit from it, but you could skim through pretty quickly if you’re the kind of person who uses keyboard shortcuts. Or knows how to set up search folders in your email software. Or can perform mail merges in Microsoft Word. Or name your documents something other than UntitledFile1.extension.

You’ll probably skip whole chapters, like the one that’s almost completely about the Todo webapp developed by the author. You probably use something else – perhaps a GTD app or plain-old Outlook tasks – that blows it away.

You could buy it, skim it, and give it to people who really need it…maybe tear out the pages you don’t agree with before you do. The point is it’s 2010 and there are people who still don’t understand what you and I probably take for granted everyday.

That’s who this book is for.

By Dan | Posted in software | Comments Off

Link: Buddy, The Singing Dog

February 7, 2010 – 4:32 pm

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There are a lot of dumb, cheap, funny videos on the Internet, but once in a while you see one that resonates with you. The latest one for me is Buddy, The Singing Dog.

I have a soft spot for singing/howling dogs, but what’s more here is it’s clear to me that Buddy is (or was) a big part of this family.

By Dan | Posted in web | Comments Off

Currently Reading: Super Freakonomics

January 31, 2010 – 7:22 pm

On the abuse and neglect of women in India:

Indian women also run an outsize risk of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease, including a high rate of HIV/AIDS. One cause is that Indian men’s condoms malfunction more than 15 percent of the time. Why such a high fail rate? According to the Indian Council of Medical Research, some 60 percent of Indian men have penises too small for the condoms manufactured to fit World Health Organization Specs…”The condom,” declared one of the researchers, “is not optimized for India.”

By Dan | Posted in other | Comments Off

Now Playing: Hold Me (Breakbot Remix)

January 29, 2010 – 5:05 pm

breakbot remix

I could listen to this on repeat forever.

Or 20 minutes.

Whichever comes first.

By Dan | Posted in music | Comments Off

Link: Taking A Fall

January 29, 2010 – 7:28 am

The February 2010 issue of Popular Science has an article by Dan Koeppel about surviving a 35,000 foot freefall.

On choosing where to land:

Contrary to popular belief, water is an awful choice. Like concrete, liquid doesn’t compress. Hitting the ocean is essentially the same as colliding with a sidewalk.

…good to know.

I’d link to this article, but I can’t find it on Popular Science’s website. I read it on dead trees.

By Dan | Posted in other | Comments Off

The Business Club

January 28, 2010 – 7:45 pm

My local newspaper ran an article about the disappearance of Home Economics classes from high school curriculums.

10 years ago it wasn’t cool to take a Home Economics class. I opted for that course instead of Calculus. Most students took Calculus, but surely after high school and going out on their own there must have been a little slice of regret and humble pie for them, especially if they found themselves eating Chef Boyardee and Cream of Mushroom Soup recipes while they worked on their cooking chops.

One explanation for why the demand for Home Economics has declined is because those skills aren’t valued anymore, so they claim. It’s like people have given up. They throw their hands up in the air and go “I don’t have TIME for this!” Meanwhile, there’s as much time today as their was 50 years ago. Perhaps we’re just not using it wisely.

Nonetheless, it also exposes a weakness when school systems set their priorities on math and sciences instead of real-world skills.

If I were a business teacher at a high school you know what I would do? Each year my students would be required to start their own business or other corporation. They’d file whatever papers they have to fill out with the government, learn how to build, sell, and market a product or service. Even better, they could start non-profits to benefit a cause that means something to them. The teacher’s only role is to guide each team to success and teach some core fundamentals.

This can happen with one exception; those kids have to want this.

The idea wouldn’t be to create a bunch of little startups in garages that make the next Apple or Facebook, but if that happened I don’t think it would be a bad thing. And if those businesses never went anywhere at least they could put it on their resume. How many resumes have you seen from candidates who had the courage to start something before they were 18?

Maybe that’s not really possible or realistic, but I think an experience like that would teach kids a lot more about life after high school than a lot of these other classes can. Plus those students would leave high school with something incredibly valuable; knowledge of how to generate their own income.

By Dan | Posted in business | Tagged | Comments (0)

Tetanus Shot fffffffuuuuuuuuuuuu

January 28, 2010 – 7:47 am

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By Dan | Posted in other | Comments Off

Link: Rage Against The Mail Machine; The Genesis of Letters

January 25, 2010 – 10:49 pm

Ars Technica reports the formation of the letters.app team.

After years of frustration and joking about making a $500 commercial e-mail client for Mac OS X, developer Brent Simmons sounded a call late last week to create an alternate to Apple’s Mail as an open source project. That call has been resoundingly answered by a sizable group of independent Mac devs who have also longed for an e-mail client geared more towards the needs of power users. While the project is scarcely a week old, the app already has a name: Letters.

There isn’t a really great email client for Macs, at least for power users who are comfortable with keyboard navigation and plain-text formatting. Letters.app is meant to fix that.

The project currently includes a few Mac developer superstars, including Brent Simmons and Gus Mueller. John Gruber of Daringfireball is the project lead. There’s nothing available besides a list of project goals.

I’d welcome a new email.app, but it’s going to have to be one charming pig to get me to switch back from Gmail.

By Dan | Posted in software | Comments Off

Smart Playlist: Only The Good Stuff

January 25, 2010 – 8:40 pm

This is such an obvious smart playlist that I’m upset I didn’t think of it sooner.

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By Dan | Posted in apple, software | Tagged , | Comments Off

Spoiler Free Walkthrough – Draft 1

January 24, 2010 – 10:07 pm

Alright, you finally picked up Game X! The sequel comes out on Tuesday, so you have two days to beat this thing. Let’s do this!

Okay – first grab your weapon from the desk there. Now prepare for this cut scene. DO NOT SKIP IT. It’s very important that you watch your father die and he tells you what to do with the amulet. I mean, aw shit. Fuck fuck fuck..

Cutscene over? Ok good. Kill all the bad guys in this room coming up. Don’t forget to grab the shotgun by the barrels there. If you forget it you’ll never be able to get the ring of Ashtar and kill the demon. This is the only way to get the good ending where Foster dies and you save the princess from the ninja.

I mean, uh, goddammit. Shit.

Ok – you have the shotgun now. Good. While you’re in your inventory take a look at your other weapons here. See the knife? STOP LOOKING AT THE KNIFE! I – don’t want to explain why. I don’t want to ruin it for you. Let’s just say that something bad will happen. No – not immediately.

Leave the menu. Yes. Hit the B button. That’s the red one. No! You just hit the green button! WHAT DID I TELL YOU?! Stop looking at the knife! If you don’t you’ll get the bad ending where you kill yourself! Oh Christ, not again!

Save here. There’s a flagpole coming up. Get a running start and grab the very top of the flagpole. What? Butterfly nets? Where did you hear about that one? From Jared? There’s no butterfly net if you jump over the flagpole. That guy’s an idiot. Seriously, he didn’t learn how to tie his shoes until he was 17, which is why he has so many self-esteem issues and makes up bullshit about butterfly nets.

Now this boss is the hardest boss in the game, but there’s a simple trick to beating him. Unplug the controller. No – I’m dead serious. He can read your mind through controller port 1. Plug it into port 2 and it’ll keep him from taunting you about how Fox Die was invented by your father, which is why all these people are out to kill you since you have it in your blood because it was injected into your mother during the child birth, and that’s what killed her.

AAHHHH!!

Ok – forget what I said there. Actually, just run under that dinosaur’s feet there. Yeah. He’ll never see it coming. Destroy the bridge with the axe. Do that and you’ll see that the princess is in a different castle.

…I told you not to look at the knife.

By Dan | Posted in videogames | Comments Off