Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 85
September 21, 2012
IFTTT will no longer archive tweets
From an email I received from IFTTT:
In recent weeks, Twitter announced policy changes* that will affect how applications and users like yourself can interact with Twitter's data. As a result of these changes, on September 27th we will be removing all Twitter Triggers, disabling your ability to push tweets to places like email, Evernote and Facebook. All Personal and Shared Recipes using a Twitter Trigger will also be removed. Recipes using Twitter Actions and your ability to post new tweets via IFTTT will continue to work just fine.
I can't think of a decision Twitter has made this year that's benefitted anyone. You might think "well, these things benefit their bottom line, because you have to go to Twitter.com to do things now and they feed you ads and they make money," but if you look at all the crap Twitter's pulled and go "screw this, I'll just go back to Facebook or Google+ or just text people like I used to" then no, they're not better off from making these decisions.
The people Twitter are pissing off are loyal, dedicated nerds who championed the platform in its early days. The people who Twitter seems to want are those who don't care. The problem with this is that the people who don't care will leave the second Twitter does something that they don't like. If Twitter keeps pulling plugs with other services, it's only a matter of time before they kick out a cord from a huge network of regular users.
September 20, 2012
September 18, 2012
Camera
Something quick and fun. Nothing but stroke brushes.
More Things, September 18, 2012
I WANT ONE BECAUSE IT’S COOL, OKAY? SHUT UP DON’T JUDGE ME
The art of designing by hand—a painful craft of precision and consistency—was no longer the only option. Designers were liberated; the screen and their imagination were the only constraints.
The problem with Apple's competitors is most of them seem to have no interest in developing their own vision and that is unfortunate because we could have a much more diverse and creative spectrum of technology products on the market right now.
The neat thing about this kind of embarrassment is that, if you lean into it and act as silly as possible, you end up having a better time than if you were never embarrassed at all. I didn’t do that.
Not a very original idea, but one that seemed more or less reasonable before something happened that showed us how perversely powerful stories can be when told into the ears of desperate and evil men, and showed as well how sadly challenged stories are in providing comfort now.
I can’t see what fun such great, big men can find in hitting a little ball with a big stick and run away like mad, and kick at a sand bag.
I ended up spending the next four days in a Benzo trance; drinking, eating, talking and soaking up the real lives of the people I encountered. It’s always been this way.
The net is an unending NOW of moments and distractions and wonderments and puzzlements and rages. Asking someone riding its currents to undertake some kind of complex dance before she can hand you her money is a losing proposition.
September 16, 2012
Apple kills another iPod
I have the worst iPod ever.
Though apple doesn't report sales of individual iPods, it's been clear for years what their least favourite version was. It's the 3rd-gen iPod shuffle, and Apple just killed it.
[image error]The 3rd gen iPod shuffle was too simple. It had no buttons on its body. It was almost as small as a vitamin. Its only switch turned it on, and allowed music to play in order or shuffled. That's it.
How it controlled was via the toggle available on iPod headphones. There, you could change volume, pause, play, and change tracks. It was the strangest user interface Apple ever produced, since it was entirely based on muscle memory. Here's how crazy it was:
Tap once to play or pause.
Tap twice to skip to the next song.
Tap twice and hold to fast forward.
Tap three times to go back.
Tap three times and hold to rewind.
Tap once and hold to hear voiceover tell you the song that's playing.
Keep holding to get a menu with playlists and podcasts.
Tap once to select any playlist or podcast after that.
Absolutely none of this was obvious from the headphone, and only the volume buttons had any indicative quality. But I loved this little thing. It took me about an hour to get the choices down, and then the 3rd-gen iPod became my favourite cycling, public transit, and working accessory. I've used it almost daily for the last few years. In my opinion, itt's the purest, simplest, and toughest thing Apple has ever made.
I've never really liked the iPod headphones, and I hate the iPod in-ear headphones. So, when Apple announced the brand new earphones, I was really excited. Finally, after all these years: an upgrade. I was quickly disappointed.
[image error]The new earphones are compatable with every single iPod from 2003, except the 3rd-gen iPod shuffle. For now, they're still selling the old headphones, and likely will for a long time. They're still selling the Mighty Mouse, after all.
I'm not bemoaning Apple for this. My favourite iPod was a failure for them, and they replaced it with an apology. I'm probably due for a new shuffle, and the new colours are neat. But the new one is clearly a study in concision. It has 6 buttons that do the same job that 3 did on mine. It's larger than mine, because it needs a face full of buttons. It exists in a way that mine doesn't, but it has half the storage (I splurged for the only 4gig shuffle Apple ever offered). You can't totally ignore it. Mine was essentially invisible, and I'll miss it when it's really gone.
[image error]
September 9, 2012
Big Quote
Every page was once a blank page, just as every word that appears on it now was not always there, but instead reflects the final result of countless large and small deliberations. All the elements of good writing depend on the writer’s skill in choosing one word instead of another. And what grabs and keeps our interest has everything to do with those choices.
September 7, 2012
More things, September 7, 2012
Sasaki Makoto, Tokyo Layers
More Work Things
Getting a job is really dumb because then you’ll only get paid when you’re working.
There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.
Can’t you just get a f*king ruler and measure the inches on your monitor? That is what I am doing now! I can do it, why can’t you? And you call yourself a web designer!?
More sex things
I was lounging in a crumpled t-shirt, zit medicine caked on my face. "Why does it bother you so much?
But what if we did have one randomly-assigned perfect soul mate, and we couldn’t be happy with anyone else? Would we find each other?
There is probably no way to use this in seriousness or discreetly, but there you have it.
September 6, 2012
Multiplying ebook readers
There are at least three times as many ebook readers as there were three years ago, and that's just from three of the top suppliers. Here's what I mean. There was one Kindle in 2009, and now there are four, and I'm honestly not sure what the difference is between any of them. The 'paperwhite' screen sounds like the killer new feature this year.
[image error]Barnes and Noble's Nook line has tripled, though at least with the Nook, the differences between the three are pretty obvious. One's normal. One has something that looks like Timex Indiglo, and one that probably plays Angry Birds:
[image error]Even the Kobo lineup has ballooned, today adding 'mini' and 'glo' models, which are better, I guess? Glo sounds like something that'll stick to your fingers that you'd rather not have stick to your fingers.
[image error]The only major ebook reader out there that hasn't multiplied is the Sony Reader, which has gone in exactly the opposite direction. It's like the one place in the tech industry where Sony has some actual focus. It's missing this year's snazzy new feature ('glo!'), even though they had it in 2010 and got rid of it because it made for terrible reflection issues. Their killer feature is Evernote integration, which places Clearly as a viable alternative to Instapaper's use on the Kindle.
[image error]In conclusion, it's now more confusing than ever, and it gives people a very, very good reason to give the whole thing up and return to paper.
September 5, 2012
More things, September 5, 2012
More Final Fantasy VII things
[A] heck of a lot of the time, you're going to have to pore over some noisy, glowy, fancy, labyrinthine mish-mash abandoned construction site and wonder where the exit even is before you can decide if you're supposed to get there by climbing over the ball of yarn or the stack of broken cinder blocks or the fallen girder or what.
It made some players cry. Some became angry; others were simply left confused and bewildered, and still others plumbed the Internet for years afterward looking for some way to reverse or avoid Sephiroth's misdeed.
Time has been cruel to Final Fantasy 7 because it has polarised us, turning discussion of a game into a much broader argument about what video games should be or what they should aspire to - interactive stories hoping to sweep players up in their predetermined drama, or something more organic and open-ended.
More lit things
Shot at Smith-Settle Printers, Leeds, England. The book being printed is Suzanne St Albans’ 'Mango and Mimosa' published as part of the Slightly Foxed series.
Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. If it seems to you that I move in a world of certitudes, you, par contre, must benefit from the great privilege of youth, which is that you move in a world of mysteries. But both must be ruled by faith.
Writers are really good at creating that quiet space, in a room with the door shut. Writing’s too hard, and most of the time you feel dumb. It’s so difficult, you don’t have time to worry about being famous. That just seems like shit that happens outside.
The movie is just uncurious about its books or their writers; it wants to be some inspiring through-the-generations tale, but each tale is dull and would never make it past rough-draft form in any page-turner bestseller, let alone anything "literary."
