awesome. i want to learn all of this
On Back to Work this week, they bring up the the ubiquitous “parked domain girl”, as seen on many misspelled, or similar, domain names of popular site… for instance projectvotesmart.org
She’s ready for college…
As with most everything, this has already been talked about… and the answer to “who is she?” is here. Specifically, she’s this guy’s sister:
I am the photographer who took the photo you all are talking about. I shot the series in the Kansas City area, so it is definitely not a real college campus. Here is the link to see some more from the series…
http://www.istockphoto.com/dsteller/
As a side note, yes, it is my little sister.
And you can even see where the shot was taken on Street View.
There are no mysteries anymore.
This guy posted an article about how he hates bloated code and frameworks, and that ‘lean’ is like punk rock. Then another guy posted a thing that sort of disagreed with it. Then people argue about it. Yawn.
The thing is, BOTH articles basically agree - use the best tool for the job. It’s just that the titles and summaries seem to be 1)Micro PHP is the ONLY way or 2)Micro PHP is NEVER the way. But neither article says anything like that.
From the first:
It doesn’t mean that stuff is bad, in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t mean it has no value or is the wrong approach for many.
or the second:
There are plenty of applications where choosing a full-blown framework like Zend or Symphony is not only overkill, but literally a bad decision.
Plus the first guy is just saying that’s what HE wants to do, not what EVERYONE should do. He wants to be a punk rock PHPer. Nothing wrong with that. Some people want to master 50 different frameworks and create a few of their own. Nothing wrong with that either.
So there’s this guy named John Gruber who writes the blog Daring Fireball. It’s mostly links to stories about Apple, with a sentence or two (if that) of his opinion, and on occasion a more fleshed-out post. He was on this web show called On The Verge and asked about being an Apple fanboy, and of course doesn’t like the term… because no fanboy likes being called a fanboy.
Anyway, there were a few reviews of the new Android phone, and they were coming from an Apple fanboy perspective, and the guy who started the Verge blog called BS (technically, HS). Then this other guy John Siracusa went on this other podcast called Hypercritical and defended Gruber by laying out a definition of “fanboy” and stating that Gruber didn’t fit that definition. However, he and his definition were/are wrong…
He tries to layout the idea that being a fanboy/partisan boils down to being stuck in your ideas and never considering any other viewpoint. So an Apple fanboy believes that Apple always releases great products, and will never criticize them. And yes, that is a fanboy… but I think there is a much deeper level to fanboy-ism that Siracusa is ignoring, and it’s a level where Gruber fits perfectly.
It’s all about approach. Being that Daring Fireball is a blog, John Gruber’s fanboy-ism shows through by the way he approaches each story he links to, or the full posts he writes. That approach seems to be “Apple is going to be good, Google is going to be bad… now let me see if there’s anything that might change that opinion”. Yes, he has posted critical things about Apple… and he has posted positive things about Google. But those come only after he’s had his preconceived notions altered.
Case in point, his recent post about the Amazon Kindles. He states:
I got a Kindle about a year ago, and I use it much more than I expected to.
His expectation is that he won’t use the Kindle, and he probably thought the iPad would just be better in every way. He approached the Kindle in a partisan/fanboy way.
With the whole Carrier IQ story, he criticizes another site for a somewhat misleading story title by saying:
But I worry here that I’m trying to reason with the unreasonable.
Of course, the site admitted that the title was not totally accurate (though the story itself was) and changed it. But Gruber again approached the story as though they were “unreasonable”.
And with the new Galaxy Nexus Android phone, it is quite obvious that he is coming from a fanboy/partisan stance. He assumes that it can’t be as good an iPhone and posts stories that confirm his view. One of his more idiotic metrics seems to be how many people “line up” for an Android phone… and even when people do line up, he has to make a snarky comment.
Siracusa tries to make the “partisan” analogy with someone like Rush Limbaugh, who is an obvious partisan. But he misses the idea that there are people like George Will who readily criticize their own political party and say nice things about the other party… but he IS still a partisan.
Being a partisan/fanboy is not about what you end up writing or saying, it’s about what you’re thinking at the beginning.
It’s humourous how deluded all these people are. He tries to make the case that the iPhone is the “99%” phone because it’s $100 cheaper… of course, spec-wise, he’s talking about an inferior phone. The 32GB iphone is actually the same price…. but whatever.
Wow. Josh Topolsky is mad. And that by itself is fine — he’s clearly passionate about technology, which is great. What’s not fine is the fact that he’s way off-base in his rant. So far off-base that I need to respond.
First and foremost, Topolsky has decided to turn my thoughts on the Galaxy Nexus into full on class warfare between Android and iOS. That is, he twists my comparison of attention to detail into an argument about rich vs. poor people.
I mean, he actually tries to do this.
One little problem.
Looking at the Impossible Cool tumblr, it reminds of this photo of my uncle and his friend
…endless hero.
Recreation: Most of my high school notebooks.
Also, KISS and the occasional Def Leppard.
It’s funny to read people being defensive. The original article wasn’t talking about blogs saying good things about Apple… it was about those same blogs and their kneejerk anti-anything-non-Apple posts. Much like this exact post.
And defending Daring Fireball against the “fanboi” label? Really?
Congratulations to CNET’s Brooke Crothers for writing one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read in a while — and successfully getting myself (and undoubtedly many others) to link. Even more impressive: he didn’t have to break 400 words to do it. My guess is that he wrote this in 10 minutes. If not, that’s just sad.
You used to see a lot more of these types of posts a few years ago. But once those writing them started getting exposed as fools, they slowed down. You see, the argument used to be that those constantly writing positively about Apple were both morons and brainwashed — Apple was insignificant in the all-important PC market at the time, so those who liked the products were obviously whack jobs on the fringe of humanity.
Then a funny thing happened.
Apple became one of the most successful companies and the most valuable company in the world. They transformed the entertainment landscape, the retail landscape, the mobile landscape, and did something all the naysayers said was impossible: created an actual market for tablets. Now most companies around the world are trying to copy at least part of Apple’s business.
I just don’t like “fanboys” of any kind, and this guy is for sure an Apple fanboy.
And the worst kind are the ones who will have some minor criticism of the company/product they are fanboys of, and then say “See? I’m NOT a fanboy! I said something CRITICAL!”
Bleh. Apple is great… but so is Google… and Microsoft.
Questions, questions
43 Folders - “Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now)”
Today’s Back to Work (mp3) was maybe kind of important. We’ll see. Feels important to me.
So, anyhow, here’s a 37-minute video I made two years ago that still feels pretty important to me, too.
And, let’s just stipulate: thirty-seven minutes (on top of the implied 76 minutes) is absolutely a lot to ask of people skimming tumbamalogs. But, such is the nature of the things we feel are important.
All’s I know is now, more than ever—at least to me—easy answers seem a lot less interesting than awesome questions. And, that feels important.
So, yeah.
Questions, questions. Work in progress, and so forth.
We try to suss out the important things. But, more often than not—on their own schedule and wholly subject to their own caprices—they choose us.
Best I can tell, this is how it works.
