January 2010
40 posts
I’m sure it’s a great honor, but admit it: you’d be kind of embarrassed to be nominated for a Grammy with today’s slate of nominees.
AMIRITE?
“I also like to hire people into one position below where they ought to be…...”
– Mark Pincus - Every Worker Should Be C.E.O. of Something
WTF?
The man who invented the cash machine →
officiallyrad:
“It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash.”
Plastic cards had not been invented, so Mr Shepherd-Barron’s machine used cheques that were impregnated with carbon 14, a mildly radioactive substance.
The machine detected it, then matched the cheque...
Beta Testers Wanted
I’m looking for some beta testers to test some stuff I’ve been working on. If you are interested and qualify in either (or both) of the two categories below, please let me know via email or twitter or something.
Do you have a website that gets some traffic? I’d love to install a bit of JavaScript code on it to test out something for the book. (Your site doesn’t need to get...
I am unwilling to take your passwords OR why I...
enjoysthings:
A good deal of users on enjoysthin.gs use a feature that enables 1-click posting to their tumblr account. If you see something that you like and want to share it on tumblr, click a button and it end up on your tumblr site (example). Many of these users use this feature several times a day. They will be the last users allowed to do this.
As of today, I’ve disabled anyone from...
Underwhelmed, overwhelmed or just plain whelmed?
I received an email regarding my last post.
How is the polling so fast? curling /updates isn’t necessarily blazing, at least for me… what’s the trick?
All of my secrets are revealed in the book. This particular secret involves using long polling and Tornado. This secret is available for PDF download in the current version of the book.
“The engineers and I handle customer support. When I tell people that, they look...”
– The Way I Work: Paul English of Kayak (via soxiam) (via superamit) (via joshmohrer)
I’ve been on the developer side of this fence and I’m going to politely disagree. Sure, I’ve had a string of really good bosses and I’m not talking about anybody reading this, but this is...
“Jay-Z announced Monday that, upon closer reflection, he actually prefers the...”
– Jay-Z: ‘On Second Thought, I Like Orlando More’
TeamLeno.com →
Auto-tweeting. Again.
Dear Tumblr Staff,
Never, ever, ever send a tweet on my behalf. I can handle posting to twitter on my own. We’ve been over this.
I cleared out my Twitter credentials long ago (see here). And you should be using OAuth anyways, it wouldn’t have ever required me to enter my password on your site and I’d be able to disable this on the twitter side.
As it stands now, I have to...
WatchMy little girl is quite a dancer.
Parenting tip: when you’re unable to get your baby to have a proper nap all day long, the best thing to do is put her on the dance floor for a few hours. She loves it!
Hip-Hop Recommendations
I’ve been sleeping on hip-hop a bit recently. I enjoyed the last Lil’ Wayne album (and mixtape). I’m listening to Gucci Mane as I type. Knowing those facts, can you recommend me any recent hip-hop albums that I may not know?
I have a funny feeling that today will break records for unfollowing on tumblr.
WatchI know what you’re thinking, “Ted, a bird is kinda lame, how do I know your book isn’t going to be just as lame as some dumb bird.”
But you’re wrong, the bird on the cover of the book is called a Myna bird and was featured prominently in some show called Twin Peaks.
Watch and enjoy.
What have I been working on?
Every year, towards the end of the year, everyone makes lists of the best and worst things that happened that year. Other lists are compiled detailing the tragic losses felt that year and fascinating people are fascinated over. But despite the creating these hundreds of lists with their thousands of bullet points, the year always ends up getting boiled down to one or two key things.
I’m not...
Handsome Johnny
Richie Havens has a great war protest song that he’s played for years. It’s called Handsome Johnny. It talks about Johnny, a soldier in all the wars throughout American history. Marching in the civil war all the way to Vietnam… and then as we continued to fight in more wars Havens kept adding verses to it.
Now, when he plays it live, he says, “I sure hope I don’t...