fedward, tumbling

goes on, and the heat goes on
~ Monday, February 8 ~
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architectureblog:

(via maluna)

Oh, that’s just mean.

architectureblog:

(via maluna)

Oh, that’s just mean.

Tags: heh that's just mean do not taunt Happy Fun Ball reblog beach bar
457 notes
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~ Sunday, February 7 ~
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The authorities do not know exactly how many people have been killed warbling “My Way” in karaoke bars over the years in the Philippines, or how many fatal fights it has fueled. But the news media have recorded at least half a dozen victims in the past decade and includes them in a subcategory of crime dubbed the “My Way Killings.

Sinatra Song Often Strikes Deadly Chord - NYTimes.com

I’d just like it to be known that I have never been to the Philippines and don’t carry a gun. It wasn’t me.

Tags: karaoke Philippines Sinatra Frank Sinatra My Way
~ Saturday, February 6 ~
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Closed system. This is the very opposite of what your customers care about. The percentage of your customer base who make a buying decision based on the openness of a system (in terms of system-level customisation options, use of open source software or otherwise) is vanishingly tiny. They’re very vocal, certainly, but commercially they’re irrelevant. Pandering to this segment will most certainly damage your penetration into the market. Be extremely wary about sacrificing large-scale appeal for the sake of a tiny but noisy technical minority. The tablet space is in no way designed for or aimed at such users.

How to compete with iPad » Matt Legend Gemmell (via Neven Mrgan’s tumbl)

This nails one particular thing I hate about all the yammering on the internet, and not just about the iPad. “It doesn’t do X [which is important to me out of proportion to all other things] and therefore it sucks.” One: your opinion doesn’t matter to anybody but you (neither, for that matter, does mine, which is why I tend not to write things like this). Two: your opinion isn’t universal, and while you may think you speak for legions of potential customers, you really only speak for yourself. Three: get a sense of proportion (and maybe a life). Four: just shut up already.

The rest of the piece is quite good too. It’s all about developing a product as the best version of itself, not merely as the cobbled-together facsimile you can make from the parts you have lying around. Other companies can make hardware that would rival the iPad as an electronic device, but no other companies go to the extent Apple does in allowing form and function to shape each other. For a while there Nokia was pretty good at developing new phone products this way, but I think they’ve gotten off in the weeds of late.

I don’t know that there are any companies besides Apple that would both allow such a project to get anywhere internally and subsequently take it to market. Lots of skunkworks projects never see the light of day, and many companies are so invested in the culture of their own product lines that they’d never consider releasing a product that doesn’t look and function just like all their other products. Apple takes risks, and those risks pay off almost every time.

Tags: iPad Apple tablets computers
~ Thursday, February 4 ~
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Microsoft’s huge profits — $6.7 billion for the past quarter — come almost entirely from Windows and Office programs first developed decades ago. Like G.M. with its trucks and S.U.V.’s, Microsoft can’t count on these venerable products to sustain it forever. Perhaps worst of all, Microsoft is no longer considered the cool or cutting-edge place to work. There has been a steady exit of its best and brightest.

Op-Ed Contributor - Microsoft’s Creative Destruction - NYTimes.com

I don’t have a problem with Microsoft the company, but I’m not particularly fond of Windows or Office - because neither one shows much evidence of anybody ever being willing to take anything out, much less leave something out to begin with. Got an idea? Throw it in! Got another idea that makes the first idea seem ill-considered? Throw that one in too, but don’t take the first one out!

That said, though, the op-ed is worth reading because the long, slow failure of Microsoft (as it can’t come up with anything new the way Apple or Google can) is sad more than anything else. A company that mighty ought to be able to innovate, and that they can’t is very telling.

Tags: microsoft windows office software failure
~ Wednesday, February 3 ~
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mrgan:

Bricky is Sebastiaan de With’s shirt design which celebrates the happy-brick fun of surfing without Flash. Claim yours quickly as this will be a limited run. Seb has high standards so you can expect a high-quality product, as with his Exploded Settings shirt.

OK, I want this.

mrgan:

Bricky is Sebastiaan de With’s shirt design which celebrates the happy-brick fun of surfing without Flash. Claim yours quickly as this will be a limited run. Seb has high standards so you can expect a high-quality product, as with his Exploded Settings shirt.

OK, I want this.

Tags: flash plugin missing freak flag reblog
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reblogged via mrgan
~ Tuesday, February 2 ~
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How to Spot Super Rare 12AX7 Vacuum Tubes part I (via audiotubes)

Want to drive yourself crazy? Get an audio component that uses these tubes and try to figure out which ones to buy. I especially love the ones that are manufactured by one company in one country but labeled as if they were manufactured by another company, in another country.

The video does an excellent job of showing the variety of compatible tubes, though.

Tags: vacuum tubes tubes new old stock vintage
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Boobs. Thousands of Them. Get In Here Now!

tbridge:

fedward:

tbridge:

I somehow got on Playboy’s email list awhile back, and their emails are worth it just for the subject lines, like the one above.  That’s an actual Playboy.com tagline right there.  And really, some salesmanship jobs are just easy…

“Somehow.”

I would try to explain, except it’s probably not worth it.

You could try to explain, but I know what I’d believe anyway.

Tags: reblog somehow Occam's Razor
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Boobs. Thousands of Them. Get In Here Now!

tbridge:

I somehow got on Playboy’s email list awhile back, and their emails are worth it just for the subject lines, like the one above.  That’s an actual Playboy.com tagline right there.  And really, some salesmanship jobs are just easy…

“Somehow.”

Tags: reblog somehow
5 notes
reblogged via tbridge
~ Monday, February 1 ~
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In Which I Don't Get Hired By Apple

Not long after the Clarendon Apple Store opened, I applied for a job there.  At the time I was in there every couple months, either with a display problem in my PowerBook G4 or an overheating problem in my G4 Cube.  The process with the Cube had me convinced that I was somehow playing an unplanned game of Stump the Genius.  I could get the computer to crash at home, but in several days of them leaving it on in a stress test they couldn’t duplicate the problem (in the end I determined that it was bad RAM that only failed when very hot).  At the time I had a decent (but not spectactular) job and the idea of going to work for Apple was intriguing.  I never heard anything.

Time passed, and like nearly everyone at my old company I got laid off.  I found out through a contact that it was generally better to apply in person at an Apple Store, so I dropped by and spoke to the store manager — who took my resume and a paper application, but who said I should apply online as well.  So I did.  I still never heard anything.

A couple years later, after yet another layoff at yet another company, I revised my resume and submitted it again.  Still nothing.

Keep in mind that all this time I’ve continued to buy and use Apple products, and still had the occasional game of Stump the Genius:

  1. Why does my iPod sometimes skip the first song on an album?
  2. Why does the FireWire port on my Mac mini randomly stop working?
  3. Do I need to worry about how hot my MacBook Pro is running?


The resolutions to those problems are illuminating:

Read More

Tags: Apple Apple Store interview Clarendon
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tbridge:

Yep. That about sums it up.

Dude. Everybody knows that Velicoff is where it’s at.

tbridge:

Yep. That about sums it up.

Dude. Everybody knows that Velicoff is where it’s at.

Tags: vodka rotgut aristocrat velicoff
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