Inbox Zero for Life »
I’ve been following this routine for a couple of weeks now and, so far, it seems to be working. I process my inbox a couple of times a day and then spend the rest of my time in the ‘starred’ section, clearing out anything that needs some attention. One thing I’ve noticed about this is that I’m much more likely to reply to an email now, even if it’s just a two-word response. I’m usually prone to procrastinating about replying to people, especially if the answer is in the negative. Strange that this email strategy seems to have broken me of this.
Unfortunately, Sparrow seems to be the only desktop Mac mail client to support Gmail keyboard shortcuts. Mail client developers: support Gmail keyboard shortcuts!
# Feb 26, 2013Idea: Peanut Gallery
Peanut Gallery: A script that takes a start time and an end time and generates a subtitle file for your twitter stream (or a given hash tag), so you can watch a show or other live event with (time-shifted) real-time twitter commentary.
I woke up this morning to a twitter stream full of amazing Oscar commentary. For example, from the ever-reliable Zodiac Motherfucker:
@ZODIAC_MF GET MRS POTATO HEAD THE FUCK OUT OF HERE
By itself, this is a hilarious sentence, but who is he talking about? Without context, I’m missing something. Actually, for most of my twitter stream last night, I don’t know what people are referring to. I’d say the same thing happened for anyone who wasn’t watching the Sony PlayStation announcement. For certain shows and events, a snarky running commentary makes that show infinitely more entertaining.
I’ll probably watch the Oscars tonight – time-shifting a live event – and I’d love to be able to time-shift my twitter stream as well. I think a subtitle track for my media file would be the best way of doing this.
Unfortunately, I think this is the kind of thing Anil Dash was referring to in his essay The Web We Lost: I don’t think Twitter’s API allows this kind of usage. Shame.
# Feb 25, 2013Football: The Meal
Remember Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar? The restaurant Pete Wells slated in the New York Times? Its domain name is guysamerican.com. Bryan Mytko bought the domain guysamericankitchenandbar.com and produced this. And it’s glorious. “35 oz of super-saddened, Cheez-gutted wolf meat” is one of the best lines I’ve read since the hey-day of Charlie Brooker’s TV Go Home.
# Feb 20, 2013Kitbashed »
Michael Heilemann’s site is to Star Wars what Lee Unkrich’s The Overlook Hotel is to The Shining. Exhaustive and written by a true obsessive. Beautiful.
# Feb 19, 2013Depression Quest »
Even if you’re not suffering from depression (or if you think you’re not suffering from depression), you should play this. Touching and extremely well-done.
# Feb 19, 2013
How Netflix is turning viewers into puppets »
This is interesting. Netflix analysed its data and concluded that a lot of people liked political thrillers, a lot of people liked Kevin Spacey and a lot of people liked films directed by David Fincher. And so the first show they’ve bankrolled is a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and directed by David Fincher. And rather than some lowest-common-denominator, design-by-committee bullshit, it actually turned out pretty good.
# Feb 14, 2013Gamers are the ultimate trolls »
I am guilty of this myself, of course. When Half Life started and the creators were showing me the living, breathing world outside of the rail car, I was too busy to notice, trying to jump out of the car through the window. In Half Life 2, when Alyx was telling me something important, I couldn’t hear it over the explosions of the grenades I kept throwing at her.
This week’s This American Life has a story about how babies are like scientists, and by doing things like, say, dropping their forks on the ground, they’re actually working out the logic of the world. Because each game is different, with different rules and different logic, players have to do their own experiments. It’s just a bonus that these experiments so often lead to hilarious, ridiculous situations.
# Feb 8, 2013Little Printer: A portrait in the nude »
I think that Berg’s Little Printer is a great idea. It’s right in the middle of the junction between magical technology and tactile physicality (I also think its £199 price-point is insane). This is a really nice insight into the design process behind it.
# Feb 7, 2013