Half a Monkey

Tejas Lens, Blanko Film, No Flash, Taken with Hipstamatic

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 03:21:53 -0700

Tejas Lens, Blanko Film, No Flash, Taken with Hipstamatic

Helga Viking Lens, BlacKeys SuperGrain Film, No Flash, Taken...

Thu, 13 Oct 2011 03:21:26 -0700

Helga Viking Lens, BlacKeys SuperGrain Film, No Flash, Taken with Hipstamatic

Spare pumpkin?

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:05:00 -0800

Spare pumpkin?

It boggles my mind that Democrats are so terrified of the filibuster. Republicans don’t ever have to...

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 00:03:00 -0800

It boggles my mind that Democrats are so terrified of the filibuster. Republicans don’t ever have to use it and Democrats will fall all over themselves to do what Republicans want.

As John Gruber put it, Republicans now hold 41-59 majority in Senate.. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. You’re not supposed to need a super majority to do anything at all.

It’s like Democrats are afraid to be in power.

UPDATE: Aaron Zelinsky puts his finger on it over at HuffPo: the filibuster is inappropriately cheap and thus too easily abused.

Why tell me why can this here tumblr service not import even a single post from another blogging...

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 22:54:22 -0700

Why tell me why can this here tumblr service not import even a single post from another blogging system?

Yeah, that RSS thing doesn’t count. Two days?

President Elect

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:49:12 -0700

This was a triumph
I’m making a note here: huge success
It’s hard to overstate my satisfaction

Gümüşlük

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 09:49:55 -0700

Gümüşlük

The most prominent new feature of Safari 4 Public Beta is...

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 22:35:06 -0800

The most prominent new feature of Safari 4 Public Beta is Apple’s Google Chrome-inspired tabs-on-top combination tab/title bar. It’s not a bad idea, but the design, while clever, is flawed.

Tabs-in-the-middle has always bothered me. It doesn’t make sense conceptually. The tabs control the visible page, sure, but all the controls above the tabs also reflect which tab is frontmost. They belong inside the tabs. That the tabs-in-the-middle is conceptually irregular is evidenced by Apple’s bizarre original decision to turn the tabs upside down. Apple wasn’t comfortable with their position either (though it had already been established as the standard position by Firefox), so they reconnected the tabs with the controls and disconnected them from the page. Same problem upside down.

Tabs-as-title-bar is its own kind of confused. The two competing interests of tabs and title bar overwhelm each other. The title bar is the only way to move the window, so dragging must move the window. That means you need an extra widget to drag the tabs. Clicking a title bar brings the window to the front, same as clicking a tab. But now clicking a tab in the background brings that tab and the window to the front. You can even close tabs while the window is in the background; since Safari still has no undo for closed tabs (without Saft, that is), you have to be extra careful where you click to bring the window forward. It’s no longer a “safe click”, leading to distrust. That’s not good UI.

That said, I’m happy to see Apple experimenting like this and doing so publicly. That’s a dramatic and welcome shift in behavior. They haven’t fundamentally changed any aspect of window controls or behavior in years. So maybe it took Google building a browser out of WebKit to get someone over at Apple to start thinking outside the (window) box. Either way, I’m glad they’re doing it. I just hope they’re not too stubborn to evolve it into something more useful and less anxiety provoking.

Proposition 8

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:26:39 -0800

Slightly more than half of voting Californians have done a bad, bad thing. In voting to amend the constitution to make marriage a discriminatory institution, they have made marriage itself illegal, according to the California constitution, which states:

Free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference are guaranteed. This liberty of conscience does not excuse acts that are licentious or inconsistent with the peace or safety of the State. The Legislature shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.

Since marriage now specifically supports one religious viewpoint, marriage as a legal entity is unlawful.

Way to go, Prop 8 supporters! You saved marriage!