Category: Default

You know how your computer underlines your misspelled words in red? If you use a word a lot but your dictionary doesn’t know the word, you can stop it from “correcting” you by adding the word to your dictionary by right-clickig it and choosing the “learn” or “add to dictionary” choice.  Your computer will keep a list of these words.

Since no two people will have the same list of words, this strikes me not so much as a fingerprint as it is a bit of personality – part of the computer’s soul; its unique, ongoing  logomachy.

If you have a mac, your list is here:  ~/Library/Spelling   Go check your list out!

I haven’t had my lovely Macbook Pro for very long, so I haven’t added many words to her custom dictionary. My list is short, yet revealing. When I look over my list, every word has meaning to me – some more special than others.

Here are the words I have told my computer to Learn so she stops correcting me:

cunt
douchebag
Drupal
hisnameistimmy
htaccess
kerfluffle
NationBuilder
Ponzi
Shotwell

I’ve been carping on my friends lately that they should dump Bank of America. Their latest scheme to extract money from their customers comes in the form of a $5 monthly fee for debit card use. I’m hoping the $5 monthly fee can be sufficient impetus to finally dump that shitty bank.

I’m a proponent of Arianna Huffington’s Move Your Money Project.  By proponent, I mean a booster: someone who touts the principle as one worth following. Though as much as I’ve touted the project, I still have an account at a national, too-big-to-fail bank: Wells Fargo.  I have my main accounts with Wells Fargo for the simple reason that there is a Wells Fargo ATM across the street and a Wells Fargo branch a block and a half away. This convenience is hard to give up, but I dislike being a hypocrite even more than giving up the convenience (and I do feel like having a Wells Fargo account makes me a bit of a hypocrite).

Since Wells Fargo is also planning on a debit card fee, I’ve decided it’s a great opportunity to open an account at a local credit union and move my money.

I have two to choose from, the San Francisco Federal Credit Union or the San Francisco Fire Credit Union.

The San Francisco Federal Credit Union has three stars on yelp and an ugly website, so they’re out.

The San Francisco Fire Credit Union has five stars on yelp and a pretty website, so I’m going with them. Also, I can sign up online! After fifteen minutes suffering though some seriously annoying user interface issues on their website, I have an account! Yay!

If you’re going to join me in moving to SF Fire Credit Union, I suggest you go into their branch. The new-account stuff on their website is frustrating and may turn you off.

Ken clearly never watched a royal wedding.

Here I am, shortly after waking up from general anesthesia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is such a great idea!

Show Me Non-Stop is a video player that will play a continuous stream of videos based on the user’s search term.

The next time I have a party, I’ll put a monitor in the fireplace and use a search term like this.

On the original, the two photos look terrible when adjacent to each other. This is exacerbated by the fact that the two images are not the same width.

I’ve fixed this by moving the images apart. That was sufficient. A small 3px white stroke around the inside of each made the fix even better.

I moved some stuff around and added a small quote, which I think makes it perfect:

Here’s the original:

Here’s my suggestion:

The plusses are that there is much more space for titles in the streaming list. I can read the whole story without guessing what the story might be. I hate not knowing what the story is when I am building my playlist. This solves it.

I took space away from the “now playing” box. It’s useless, wasted space.

With this layout, there is more space for the sponsorship image.

Something to consider – the box at the bottom can probably be dispensed with, unless NPR has user data that says that area is used by users.

Here’s an experiment:

Imagine you have to go the bathroom really bad. You are walking and see this sign at the end of the all. Glance at it quickly. Do you go right or left?

I went right. Obiously, the arrow is right below Restroom—immediately adjacent, almost touching—so it must be to the right, right? No. It’s to the left. This is the sort of sign you have to read from top to bottom to understand.

If the person doing the letters had put one empty panel between the arrow and the word Restroom, this would not be confusing.

Trey Ratcliff over at StuckinCustoms has an interesting before-HDR/after-HDR pair of photos up. I thought this might be an interesting way to use the slider I figured out back at EFF in January: