Loving the Miller High Life rebranding—it’s stripped out all the cruft and left the essence behind. Very nice.
July 2010
Monthly Archive
What’s up with Japanese web design?
Jeffrey Zeldman wonders why the Japanese, masters of minimalism in all other things, seem to prefer a much more cluttered aesthetic when it comes to websites. (via)
Tips and tricks for Mac OS X Terminal
Some of this is immensely useful stuff, though my favorite one isn’t useful for much besides diversion. (via)
The ABC News iPad app
This is pretty cool-looking. Regarding the ad: it seems ABC is throwing its entire weight behind the app. Impressive. (via)
Simply delightful.
Kevin Spacey does impressions. My favorite is the Walken. Also check out this completely random but dead-on impression: Matt Damon as Matthew McConaughey (whew! That was a spelling challenge). Ha! (via)
Personalized advertisements
A consortium of Japanese railway companies is putting digital billboards that are capable of detecting the age and the gender of people who look at them in train stations in Tokyo. Though the billboards do not immediately update, à la Minority Report, to target the detected face, the information collected can be used to modify the billboards based on the prevalent demographic of passersby at certain times of the day.
The rise of the machines
DARPA is developing technology that can use the kinetic energy generated by the human body’s movement or the thermal energy generated by the difference in body and ambient temperatures to power batteries for electronic devices like contact lenses that can serve as HUDs or augmented reality devices. My first reaction is whoa. My second is the same as the Slashdot poster, who said: “If I remember the movie correctly, this didn’t turn out so well for the humans.”
17
Jul
2010
Did I mention that the iPhone arrived Thursday?
It’s gorgeous, of course. And in accordance with the international laws of humor, existentialism and cellular service, the very first call I received on my spanking new iPhone…wait for it…dropped.
The phrase of the day is
“8,500-square-foot Mexican colossus,” one of which will apparently be opening in SOMA (across from the ball park) early next month. They’ll be serving taqueria fare (tacos, burritos, quesadillas) and providing a lot of large-screen TVs for sporting events. Though I’m not too big a fan of MoMo’s (owned by the same people), this place may be a nice place to catch a football game of a Sunday.
14
Jul
2010
Finished off the Percy Jackson books
last weekend, and I gotta say that I really enjoyed the whole series: The Titan’s Curse (book 3), The Battle of the Labyrinth (book 4), and finally The Last Olympian (book 5) were all high 4 stars for me. The later books were better than the earlier books, and the whole series is addictive (I read all 5 books in the span of about a week).
If there’s one thing I have to complain about (this is what kept them out of the 5 star range for me), it’s that sometimes I felt like author Rick Riordan glossed over parts of the story to move between the main plot points faster. I felt like he could have gone into more detail in some not strictly essential scenes to help ratchet up the tension and bring you inside the characters, to bring you deeper into the story. The bottom line is that though I liked Percy a whole lot, I’m not sure if I loved him like I loved Harry.
That said, these books are highly entertaining and I strongly recommend them.