Disqus - Latest Comments for willia4

Re: So much iOS 7 frenzy, so little time

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 12:38:43 -0000

"I will never get over seeing non-geeks get really excited for a new release of an operating system. It wasn’t long ago when similar enthusiasm would draw blank stares and the friend zone."

Nothing will ever beat the Windows 95 launch.

Re: To Remember: Sublime Text 2, Pandoc, and SmartMarkdown

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 29 Aug 2013 11:42:56 -0000

where

is a Unix command. I've never found an equivalent on Windows.

The where command is just a Unix command that shows you the exact path of the pandoc executable so you can use that path in the Python code in ST. You can use any method you can think of to get that path.

Re: Trying to Develop New Habits

James "willia4" Williams — Tue, 28 May 2013 09:01:25 -0000

I recently moved into a position where I've been wanting to take notes on my iPad at meetings more and more: the on-screen keyboard really wasn't getting the job done.

I tried an Apple BT Keyboard for a day and found it to be *really* inconvenient. It was just another thing to lug around (and there are too many things that the "power button" is responsible for so I had a hard time making sure it was turned off in my bag).

So after a day of that nonsense, I bought a keyboard case (I got the Logitech "thin keyboard case" but there are lots of different kinds available from multiple manufacturers) and I just love it.

It changed the way I used my iPad: I'm writing a lot more on it and even propping it up in "laptop mode" on a table can be a nice hands-free way to read and watch stuff on it. I still carry my smart cover around because the keyboard case doesn't work very well when using it in "tablet mode"; but the keyboard case has exponentially increased my iPad's usefulness as a productivity device as opposed to "just" a consumption device.

(The downside? I *had* been setting my iPad up as a makeshift video conference solution at meetings. But now I want to actually use it for notes at those meetings so our remote employees no longer feel as involved. Oops.)

Re: It’s Almost Like They’re Speaking English

James "willia4" Williams — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 16:17:40 -0000

There are also Japanese variants which can be found (with subtitles) on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Re: HTML5 is for the web, and the mobile web

James "willia4" Williams — Fri, 04 Jan 2013 14:45:51 -0000

WebDevs should be aware that the uncanny valley lurks behind every corner (if I can mix what I believe are at least three metaphors into this sentence). When tailoring websites for mobile browsers, I think there's a temptation to try to mimic a native experience for that platform. And that can make websites seem really weird.

My favorite way to read Hacker News on my phone is via a mobie site at http://cheeaun.github.com/h... . This is a lot better than pinching and zooming on the real Hacker News, but the developer went "the extra mile" and included special styling on iOS devices to try to make it look like a UITableView.

But it is *not* a UITableView. It doesn't work right. It doesn't scroll right. Sometimes selecting a "cell" will take you to an article from an adjacent cell. All sorts of stuff like that are just broken.

The "mobile web" is still the web and should be treated as such. Make your website be a website and don't try to mimic things that aren't websites. Your users will thank you!

Re: TLC: From Public Channel to Honey Boo Boo

James "willia4" Williams — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 14:01:59 -0000

I still miss Junkyard Wars.

Re: Review: Towers of Midnight

James "willia4" Williams — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:03:13 -0000

Not yet. But I've bought them (and his The Way of Kings). I'm looking forward to reading them! Maybe this year if I don't turn back towards Sci-Fi. I'm catching up on N.K. Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy at the moment.

Re: Spoiler Test

James "willia4" Williams — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:04:57 -0000

I'm not a miracle worker.

Re: Some People Just Can’t Let Go

James "willia4" Williams — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 09:14:57 -0000

Wow. I forgot how much Javascript we spewed everywhere back in 1999. Good times.

Re: Review: The Hound of the Baskervilles

James "willia4" Williams — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 15:03:08 -0000

I seem to have referred to Dr. Watson as "James" instead of his actual name, "John". I will not correct this as my shame in this matter deserves to be public record.

Re: Need Birthday Ideas for Me?

James "willia4" Williams — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 17:34:37 -0000

How about some Shark Bites?

Re: It Takes All Types

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 07:11:28 -0000

A couple of drive-by points:

I'm okay with the difference in "philosophy" between Apple and Microsoft. While I certainly have my preference, I think they're both reasonable ways to make something readable on the screen. I'm not sure that just leaving great bit holes in my letterforms is really part of Microsoft's philosophy, though. If that can't be considered a bug, then what the heck is going on over there?!

I'm surprised that print needs or uses hinting at all, since its "pixel grid" is so small. I'm even more surprised that this font file wouldn't be hinted for the screen because it has the word "Web" in its name. If that's really the case, it should be a hangable offense to market something that's completely unsuitable for the web as if it were designed for it instead.

At any rate, thanks for the input. I suspect that you deal with this stuff far more often in your day job than I ever hope to have to. I'll try to make some time to read your hinting link.

Re: Storage

James "willia4" Williams — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 09:59:21 -0000

It's mostly DVD rips and such for easy streaming to the PS3. We like our telly.

I also keep random disk images and such (it's like a much more hardcore version of the old days when I'd have a boot disk for every game I played so I could easily customize the autoexec.bat and config.sys as appropriate). Another backup of my photo library.

Really, mostly big files that we don't want to keep on our personal drives.

I'd store my iTunes library there too, but I like having it available on the rare occasions I take my MBP somewhere. If I ever upgrade to a MacPro, I'll probably consider it.

As for backup considerations: it has to happen automatically and invisibly, or we'll probably forget to bother. That's why the scheduled SuperDuper! backup to the Drobo is nice. It just happens.

Re: Review: Meditations on Middle-Earth: New Writing on the Worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien by Orson Scott Card, Ursula K. Le Guin, Raymond E. Fei

James "willia4" Williams — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 11:07:43 -0000

I'm starting to think I may not have read this book in the right frame of mind. It's probably much better than I think it is: good for what it is, but not for what I want it to be. So, the fault is really more with me than the authors.

That doesn't excuse the spell-check fiascos, though!

Re: WordPress 3.1 – Moved Discussion/Comment Options

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 16:53:48 -0000

When you're on the post edit page, there's now a small little button at the top called "Screen Options". Clicking that produces a drop-down that lets you put the Discussion section back on the page.

I *still* don't know why they'd do that, though.

Re: One Giant Creep for Mankind - Politics - The Atlantic

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:23:50 -0000

Since 1972 (the last moon landing), NASA launched the Voyagers. NASA launched the Viking probes. NASA sent Pathfinder and Sojourner to Mars. NASA sent Spirit and Opportunity to Mars. NASA sent the Mars Global Surveyor yto Mars. NASA launched the Hubble Space Telescope. NASA launched the Spitzer Space Telescope. NASA launched the STEREO solar observatory. NASA's launched the Galileo probe. NASA's launched the New Horizons probe. NASA's discovered water on Mars. NASA's discovered water on the moon. NASA measured the cosmic backround radiation to an astounding exactness providing a great deal of evidence for our current cosmoloigical theories. NASA's learned what Mars was like in the distant past. NASA's learned how Jupiter's rings were formed. NASA has verified the theory of general relativity to an impressive accuracy. And that just scratches the surface. I think it's fair to say that we've learned more about the universe since the last moon landing than we'd known about it before. Is it expensive? Yeah. NASA spent $17.2 billion in 2009. In 2005, a panel determined that the Apollo program cost $170 billion of 2005 money (that's about $10.6 billion per year). Frankly, I think NASA is still generating quite a lot of value for its budget.

If you're arguing that we're spending too much money on the manned program, I agree. We're wasting fantastic sums to send people on a joyride in low earth orbit and getting very little in return. I'd much rather spend that money on more robotic programs or create a new ambitious target for manned missions (so that we're actually spending the money on advancing the state of the art for manned exploration). I don't think the political will is there to spend another $170 billion to send someone to Mars though.

So I'm happy with robots for now. But don't tell me that NASA is "doing next to nothing". They're sending a probe to Pluto for crying out loud. That's a big, giant something.

Re: One Giant Creep for Mankind - Politics - The Atlantic

James "willia4" Williams — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:43:36 -0000

Calling Hubble "the last example of NASA actually broadening human understanding" is a bit of an exaggeration and does a grave disservice to all of the science that NASA's been doing since the Hubble's launch.

Let us not forget the Mars rovers (http://marsrover.nasa.gov/h..., or New Horizons (http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/) or Cassini (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/) or the Spitzer Space Telescope (http://www.spitzer.caltech..... And these are just the missions I was able to think of after about fifteen seconds of thought.

We can be doing more in space. We *should* be doing more in space. But that doesn't mean that we aren't discovering some fantastic things about our universe today.

Re: http://tumblr.jameswilliams.me/post/491468166

James "willia4" Williams — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 14:08:55 -0000

He went off the reservation ages ago. I'm not sure if he was ever on it. Indeed, I don't think his position has actually changed. But I think the world shifted more towards his point of view so that his extremism no longer seems useful. I think he's already won in the important ways.

Re: http://tumblr.jameswilliams.me/post/370581616

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:38:52 -0000

Evernote is just so very, very slow on both Windows and OS X. Its web interface is okay in Chrome, but then you lose all the fancy desktop integration.

Re: http://tumblr.jameswilliams.me/post/369086753

James "willia4" Williams — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:45:46 -0000

This, by the way, was written on my iPod as part of a small experiment I'm doing to make it more central for any content I generate (which, honestly, is pretty rare...).

Any typos you find will remain unfixed as monuments to this fact.

Re: DISQUS | Service Status - Disqus Comments: Notifications are almost caught up

James "willia4" Williams — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:35:57 -0000

Is this why I'm getting (seemingly) hundreds of spam comment emails all of a sudden? They're not available to be moderated away so I'm not really sure what to do about them.

Re: HTTP POST via the CFNetwork stack

James "willia4" Williams — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:36:03 -0000

No. Of course not. For a variety of reasons.

One: your question was asked in a somewhat incoherent fashion. I had to read it several times before I understood it. As you troll the Internet trying to find people to do your work for you, try something like this instead: "I have a video stored on an IIS server (which uses NTLM authentication) which I would like to play on an iPhone. As I am far too stupid and lazy to do the work myself, would you please give the code to me? I've been searching Google for the last two weeks, but so far, I have not found anyone willing to do my work for free!"

Ordinarily, I would give someone a pass for not speaking English as a first language. However, based on other data, I believe that you actually CAN speak English, but are just too lazy to do it.

Two: You're asking me to do work for you. This work is either for a job (so you're basically asking me to give you money) or for homework (so you're basically asking me to help you cheat). That's unethical. Your mother would be ashamed, assuming she's smart enough to know what any of those words means. Based on the child she raised, I suspect she's not.

Three: This blog post is about OS X development. You're asking about iPhone development. These are very similar, but also very different. Your arrogance in assuming that I would gleefully spend time learning new skills just so I could work for you for free has reached new heights. I can't even think of a good insult for this. I guess it's a freebie.

In conclusion, I kindly ask that you throw your computer into the nearest river. You are polluting my Internet with prideful ignorance and I want you to go away.

Re: HTTP POST via the CFNetwork stack

James "willia4" Williams — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 16:00:09 -0000

Thanks for the tip!

Re: SOAP on Apple Platforms: Still Painful

James "willia4" Williams — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 10:32:56 -0000

You're right. I overstated my case a bit.

The point I should have made, and didn't, would have been "It's too hard to consume web services on OS X, whatever their form. And since the Internet isn't going away any time soon, the problem is going to continue getting worse and worse for Apple developers. Contrast this to Microsoft's tools which make both creating and consuming web services downright trivial. Please deal with this, Apple!"

But I had just spent a few months writing and then rewriting my own Carbon-based SOAP handler so my mind was a bit cloudy.

Re: Still Not King

James "willia4" Williams — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 19:59:21 -0000

Dude. You're awesome. Especially since you're me. (Also? This comment worked perfectly.)