You know, it’s good to overhype something before people see it. So that they can understand that when it’s not as good as their expectations it is a failure.
I have nothing to say, really.
Fuck off.
Draw Something
Draw Something takes away all my time. All of it.
The Community you’re looking for doesn’t exist.
Another example why it’s important to have sensitive copywriters.
Horse_elostfocus
Thanks, Horse_ebookmarklet
Updated Podcast list
I’ve blogged about it before, but Teymur asked me to update the list. So, I checked my Instacast and here is the old list:
- WTF with Marc Maron
- Totally Laime
- The Nerdist
- Geek Friday
- Let’s Make Mistakes
- Build & Analyze
- Back to Work
- The Talk Show
- After Dark
And since then, these were added on:
- neunetz.com Podcast 1
- Hypercritical
- Pop Culture Happy Hour
- Comedy Bang Bang
- Roderick on the Line
- Mac Power Users 2
- Here’s The Thing
Alec Baldwin. Seriously. - Doug Loves Movies
- 5by5 at the Movies
- You Made It Weird
Holy fuck. And I was thinking the last time that I am obviously listening to too many podcasts. But these days I am quite ruthless about marking single episodes as heard, especially with the interview podcasts – if the guest or the topic doesn’t win me over in the first couple of minutes, I’m gone.
Betreutes Bloggen mit Marc
Komplett versagt.
Trend, meiner.
Grumpy auf allen Kanälen.
Fever Dream of a Guilt-Ridden Gadget Reporter
I try to remember all the products I’ve talked about that I won’t even bother to cover—and that nobody’s going to buy. There were some Bluetooth speakers. Or maybe they were WiFi. But there was definitely a helmet cam. And a waterproof phone. And a tablet and an ultrabook and an OLED TV. There was ennui upon ennui upon ennui set in this amazing temple to technology.
This is bullshit.
Or: how I learned to merge folders under OS X Lion
If you’ve come from Windows to OS X1 you’ll probably learned the hard way that OS X prefers to overwrite stuff when copying one folder into another. If you think hard about it, it is more logical, but once in a while, merging folders is still the way to go. There are a bunch of tools out there that allow users to merge folders under OS X, but more often than not, these tools stopped working around Leopard and nobody cared to update them.
And sad as it may be, this is how I now managed to merge two folders:
I started the integrated SSH server:
and connected to localhost with Transmit. And then everything just works.
I don’t even know why I don’t just stop with all this computer stuff and learn how to be a lumberjack or something. I can’t be the only person who thinks this is utterly stupid?
- And most of us did. ↩
Positivity
Just because a friend of mine is busy bitching about negative people in his life I decided to put this frankly perfect rant by Marc Maron here, from the opening remarks of episode 277:
I’m so fucking sick of people that preach positivity. It’s making me nauseous.
All you people that, you think you’re positive. Let me tell you something, negativity and positivity are almost exactly the same in most cases, they’re coping mechanisms. Neither one imply that you’re a better person, or a more decent person. The people that actually preach this idea of positivity, “Hey man I’m positive, I’m not negative”. They’re doing the exact same thing.
Positivity implies intolerance 90% of the time. That means you’re just like, “Hey get the fuck out of my space, man. You’re negative.” I know negativity can be draining, I know negativity can be bottomless, and there’s not a lot you can do. And I know that positivity can be bullying and intolerant and arrogant in its way, because you think you’re a better person. Because, “I’m just doing everything I can to be positive, which means excluding negativity from my life”.
Where’s the empathy there? Where’s the caring? There’s no caring, you’re not putting better things out into the world, you’re just coping in a different way. And being a little bit more easy to be around. But you’re no better.
It doesn’t make you a decent person to be positive. It’s just a different type of denial.
Transcript from here, thanks dude.
Estimations
When estimating the time how long a software project might take, is there ever any other answer to “Worst Case” than this?
Until darkness falls upon the earth and the lost soul of the software developer wanders through the bleak desert of nothingness, haunted by unfixable bugs and weird exceptions, a weak, feeble shadow of his once formidable self.
Despair
The etymology of the English word despair is pretty interesting:
From Latin desperare “to despair, to lose all hope,” from de- “without” + sperare “to hope,” from spes “hope”
while the German word “Verzweiflung” has another root – it’s from “ver-”
eine Vorsilbe, die bestimmt, dass eine starke, schwer rückgängig zu machende Änderung auf den körperlichen oder seelischen Zustand von jemandem oder etwas einen starken Einfluss ausübt. (Inseparable verbal prefix that denotes a transition of the object into a state, which is indicated by the stem.)
and “Zweifel” (doubt):
inneres Schwanken; Unsicherheit in Bezug auf Vertrauen, Taten, Entscheidungen, Glauben oder Behauptungen beziehungsweise Vermutung von Tatsachen (To lack confidence in; to disbelieve, question, or suspect.)
So while people in the English-speaking world are without hope, we Germans transition into a state of doubt, uncertainty and lack of confidence, which is hard to get out of.
I find that stuff terribly fascinating.
Sidenote
When you google “etymology despair” you get a page with the etymology of the word “despair.” When you google “Etymologie Verzweiflung” you get articles about the despair of etymology.
Essential Blogging
This morning I had an awesome idea: An art performance, reading the 2002 book “Essential Blogging” on stage, in a dramatic fashion.
The book has been flying around the office since forever, long before I even started here and by chance is has been sitting next to me for a while now, an artifact from a time long gone, back in the days when blogging was something exciting and new; dinosaurs like blogger, Movable Type and Blosxom ruled the world.
I think it would be possible to make a reading really good. There are ten chapters, with some editing this could become a one-week circle of performances. One person with a nice voice would be reading, maybe seated on some comfortable old chair. Soft piano music, if possible played on stage with the pianist in the background. A single spot on the reading person; no unnecessary theatrics.
I am sure this would not have mass appeal but I’d go and watch it. Or maybe sit there in the darkness of the auditorium, close my eyes and let the words of a bygone area soothe my spirits.