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Independent Businesses

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 20:57:09 -0600

Independent Businesses

Setting Up Mac OS X

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 23:00:00 -0600

Setting Up Mac OS X:

It was time for a periodic update to my setting up a Mac post.

"There are only two ways to write AppleScript code: 1. Copy someone else’s and adapt it. 2. Keep..."

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 18:31:05 -0600

“There are only two ways to write AppleScript code: 1. Copy someone else’s and adapt it. 2. Keep trying different syntax until something works.”

- Dr. Drang

"Text is an amazingly versatile medium. Relative to other media, text has very low production costs,..."

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:31:06 -0600

“Text is an amazingly versatile medium. Relative to other media, text has very low production costs, both in authorship and distribution. One person can produce a great essay or even a complete book. It’s much harder to be a one-person filmmaker. And since text as a medium does not have a fixed timescale like audio and video, it can be easily skimmed or read at any desired speed. In the digital world, text becomes even more useful. It takes up almost no space by today’s standards, it can be easily indexed and analyzed, and tools like mine can edit, restructure, and reflow it to do all sorts of different things. The ease of producing, distributing, and messing around with text has resulted in an effectively infinite supply of great expression, information, and entertainment being written and read in this wonderful medium. Whatever you want to read, there’s already more of it than you could read in a lifetime, and there’s probably more being produced right now.”

- Marco Arment in an interview at 512 Pixels

It Gets Better, Corporate Edition

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:31:06 -0600

It Gets Better, Corporate Edition:

Frank Bruni on corporate America’s sensitivity to public opinion on gay rights:

In addition to Starbucks, Microsoft and Amazon spoke up for same-sex marriage. All have surely taken note of several polls over the last year suggesting - for the first time - that a slight majority of Americans supports it. All have no doubt taken even greater note of a generational divide. In a Gallup poll, 70 percent of people in the 18-to-34 age range favored same-sex marriage, while only 39 percent of people 55 and older did.

More so than politicians, corporations play the long game, trying to engender loyalty for decades to come, and they’re famously fixated on consumers in their 20s and 30s.

"I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year..."

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:04:16 -0600

“I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012.”

- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Pop and Circumstance

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:42:29 -0600

Pop and Circumstance:

James C. Mckinley Jr., for the New York Times:

Let’s say you’re a Republican running for president.

You’re looking for a rousing pop anthem to pump up your troops and underscore your message. There’s plenty of music out there, but you have a problem: most of the pop stars, it seems, prefer Democrats.

Perhaps a market failure?

Paying Customers

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 18:31:05 -0600

Paying Customers:

Marco Arment (developer of the much beloved iOS app Instapaper and co-host of the 5by5 podcast Build and Analyze) discussed his business model on NPR’s Planet Money:

Apple already had everyone’s billing information from iTunes … you could buy things just by typing in your password … That, for the first time, brought very, very easy payment to the modern software world. That, more than anything, is why there is a business for paid apps… you charge a small amount of money … and that’s it, you’re done. You don’t need to go seek venture capital money, you don’t need to sell out your users’ privacy. They’re not even your users, they’re your customers — for the first time in a decade. It’s great.

Good interview, but it would have been nice if the Planet Money guys had thrown Marco a bone and used Phish covering Funky Bitch as the intro/outro music.

Vacations, Morons, and Encased Meats

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:08:00 -0600

Vacations, Morons, and Encased Meats:

On the Hot Doug’s website (at least on 2012-02-01):

William Robertson Davies, one of Canada’s best-known and most popular authors, wrote, “I do not really like vacations. I much prefer an occasional day off when I do not feel like working. When I am confronted with a whole week in which I have nothing to do but enjoy myself I do not know where to begin. To me, enjoyment comes fleetingly and unheralded; I cannot determinedly enjoy myself for a whole week at a time.”

William Robertson Davies was a moron.

THEREFORE …

HOT DOUG’S WILL BE CLOSED FOR VACATION

I love me some Hot Doug’s.

"The thing is, after college I moved to New York City and became a writer and met some people who..."

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 18:34:05 -0600

“The thing is, after college I moved to New York City and became a writer and met some people who shared my obsessions, and I ditched the Forsterian narrator thing, and then I wasn’t that awkward or isolated anymore. According to the diagnostic manual, Asperger syndrome is ‘a continuous and lifelong disorder,’ but my symptoms had vanished.”

- Benjamin Nugent on the DSM-5

Net Negative (Is Sort of an Understatement) But so what? Graph...

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:44:00 -0600

Net Negative (Is Sort of an Understatement)

But so what?

Graph via Andrew Rudalevige and the Monkey Cage (and Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group).

UPDATE See also John Sides:

At this point, I would say there is suggestive evidence that Mr. Romney’s advantages in advertising helped him win in Florida – but it qualifies as circumstantial. The longer the campaign goes on, and the longer Mr. Romney’s advertising advantage persists, the more data we will accumulate to test these effects.

"In Florida, as you go north, you go south."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:30:06 -0600

“In Florida, as you go north, you go south.”

- Walter Mebane quoted in a 2004 Washington Post article on Bush’s reelection

"Yes, Hollywood does spend a lot of money on politics. But so does tech. The Motion Picture..."

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 10:59:00 -0600

“Yes, Hollywood does spend a lot of money on politics. But so does tech. The Motion Picture Association of American reported $1.3 million in lobbying expenditures through the first three quarters of 2011, and is now run by former Senator Chris Dodd. But Google spent $7.1 million over the same period, and has hired former House Democratic Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, among the 112 lobbyists registered to lobby for the company. Google’s PACs and employees have given three times the money as the MPAA.”

- Lee Drutman on SOPA and PIPA

"I’ve always thought this was the real story behind the software that John Gruber highlights in..."

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 18:32:05 -0600

“I’ve always thought this was the real story behind the software that John Gruber highlights in his occasional User Interface of the Week posts. It’s not so much that the designers of these applications have no taste, it’s that their users have no taste. There’s something about an ugly, cluttered user interface that says ‘computer’ to the great majority of users out there.”

- Dr. Drang on browser chrome

"Piracy is when people use violence, or the threat of it, to transfer your possessions to..."

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:34:05 -0600

“Piracy is when people use violence, or the threat of it, to transfer your possessions to themselves (after which you no longer have them), place you in captivity in pursuit of a ransom, and in many cases inflict death on you as a side-effect of their business model…. [A]nyone who claims that unauthorized transmission of bits is analogous to piracy is at least a liar and is deeply disrespectful of the people who are suffering the effects of theft, kidnapping, and murder right now today in the Indian Ocean. They deserve your contempt, and they have mine.”

- Tim Bray writing about SOPA

"I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:33:06 -0600

“I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel special. Packaging can be theater, it can create a story.”

- Jonathan Ive

"‘Don’t be evil’ has been over for a long time."

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 18:36:05 -0600

“‘Don’t be evil’ has been over for a long time.”

- John Gruber on Google’s new privacy policy

"What has been said about Newt is pretty much true. He had to step down because Republicans,..."

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:00:11 -0600

“What has been said about Newt is pretty much true. He had to step down because Republicans, conservative Republicans, wouldn’t vote for him again as Speaker. Because he’s not really a conservative. I mean, he’ll tell you what you want to hear. He has an uncanny ability, sort of like Clinton, to feel your pain and know his audience and speak to his audience and fire them up. But when he was speaker, he was erratic, undisciplined.”

- Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (so this could be true)

iBooks Assessments

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:23:36 -0600

The two most reasonable assessments of iBooks, iBooks Author, and the near future of ebooks more generally come from Andy Ihnatko on 5by5’s podcast The Ihnatko Almanac: Some Assembly Required (episode #16) and Duke Sociologist Kieran Healy’s blog post Apple for the Teacher.

Both are recommended.

UW–Syllabus

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:14:00 -0600

UW–Syllabus:

I was under the impression we were required to make our syllabi publicly available. However in response to an open records request from an allegedly conservative political group, the University of Wisconsin System says not so much:

UW officials contend that university course syllabi are not public records because they are subject to copyright, and therefore exempt from production under Wisconsin’s open records law.

“We’ve long held that those syllabi are not subject to open records requests,” said David Giroux, spokesman for the UW System. He confirmed that the schools the NCTQ queried did indeed deny the group’s requests for information.

Perhaps we are only required to make them available to the university community?

I always post the syllabi for my courses on my website.

log | tofias dot net

Independent Businesses

Setting Up Mac OS X

"There are only two ways to write AppleScript code: 1. Copy someone else’s and adapt it. 2. Keep..."

"Text is an amazingly versatile medium. Relative to other media, text has very low production costs,..."

It Gets Better, Corporate Edition

"I would not look to the United States Constitution if I were drafting a constitution in the year..."

Pop and Circumstance

Paying Customers

Vacations, Morons, and Encased Meats

"The thing is, after college I moved to New York City and became a writer and met some people who..."

Net Negative (Is Sort of an Understatement) But so what? Graph...

"In Florida, as you go north, you go south."

"Yes, Hollywood does spend a lot of money on politics. But so does tech. The Motion Picture..."

"I’ve always thought this was the real story behind the software that John Gruber highlights in..."

"Piracy is when peo­ple use vi­o­lence, or the threat of it, to trans­fer your pos­ses­sions to..."

"I love the process of unpacking something. You design a ritual of unpacking to make the product feel..."

"‘Don’t be evil’ has been over for a long time."

"What has been said about Newt is pretty much true. He had to step down because Republicans,..."

iBooks Assessments

UW–Syllabus

"Piracy is when people use violence, or the threat of it, to transfer your possessions to..."