0’s and 1’s

A collection of posts about technology and how it affects us. Beware: many of these articles don’t age well.

  • Use a Random Wikipedia Article as Your Start Page

    February 10, 2021

    I’ve been doing some research into randomness lately, and I came across the following excerpts in my reading, which praise the merits of introducing some randomness into our life and our work: In a design process, designers and design researchers often find something that they were not looking for initially. For serendipity to occur, the... Read More

  • Clubhouse App: Tips and First-Impressions

    February 5, 2021

    I just wrapped my first live event on Clubhouse: a discussion around Using Content To Grow Our Businesses with Steve Portigal, Martina Hodges-Schell, Becky Buck, Thomas Richardson, and David Holl. If you’re not familiar with the Clubhouse app, it’s like Snapchat for podcasts. People on the platform can spin up no-video, audio-only rooms and invite... Read More

  • Using a DSLR as a Webcam

    March 13, 2020

    With everyone working from home lately, I thought it might be helpful if I shared a bit about my audio/video setup. Video Before I dive into how I got everything working together, here’s a bullet list of my video setup today: Sony A6000 Dummy battery Elgato Cam Link Amazon Basics tripod Micro-HDMI to HDMI cable... Read More

  • Bookmarklet: Archive Page to Wayback Machine

    February 24, 2019

    Jeffrey Zeldman shared this helpful tip for saving web pages to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine: Typing https://t.co/R5w2bQZKWz in front of any URL saves that content in the Wayback Machine forever. Nasty tweet? Type https://t.co/R5w2bQZKWz in front of the URL, and archive it forever. Hat tip: @t. — zeldman (@zeldman) February 23, 2019 I reference... Read More

  • A Simple Explanation of Meltdown and Spectre

    January 5, 2018

    Ars Technica put together a good breakdown of the complexities behind the recent Meltdown and Spectre vulnerabilities plaguing Intel chips (and possibly others). Here’s an overly-simplistic explanation of what’s happening: When code sends an operation to your computer’s processor, the processor will run that operation at the same time that it’s figuring out if the... Read More

  • Was the Planned Parenthood hack a PR stunt?

    July 30, 2015

    I came across an article earlier today that said the Planned Parenthood hack looked an awful lot like a PR stunt, and pointed to some screenshots and code as evidence.  I was curious, so I dug around to see if I could find anything that indicated it was a PR stunt.  See, I have no love for... Read More

  • Southwestern Macbook

    December 31, 2007

    I didn’t take pictures, so you’ll have to use your imagination. My wife and I were just sitting down to quesadillas and an episode of West Wing. We had just failed our first attempt to make cheese (who knew that too much heat during the curdling process would turn mozzarella into ricotta?) and we needed... Read More

  • Anyone Want My Box Lunch?

    December 15, 2007

    Cardboard White was a good idea. I wanted it to be a central place where people could get together and start up their own conversations on anything and everything. But a few things happened that I hadn’t thought about: Forums stopped being trendy. I attribute this in part to the boom in large social networks... Read More

  • My Life, in ASCII

    November 27, 2007

    A self-portrait done ASCII-style...

  • What’s on Your Desktop?

    June 6, 2007

    Maybe it’s just me, but I’m crazy OCD about my desktop wallpaper. It can’t be so loud that it distracts from my icons, and yet I can’t seem to settle for black. For a few years there, I had a subscription to Digital Blasphemy, and got some truly fantastic wallpaper, but it was so pretty... Read More

  • 10 Ways Movable Type 4 Will Rock Your Blog

    June 5, 2007

    It was 5 am, and I was headed off to bed after pulling an all-nighter on a client’s project; and who of all people writes me, but Arvind sending over the news that MT 4 beta has just gone public. I couldn’t let this one go without saying something. While it’s by no means the... Read More

  • Shutdown Day

    March 23, 2007

    Tomorrow (Sat, Mar 24) is the official Shutdown Day, when everyone turns all their computers off and goes outside, gets away from it all. How appropriate, since I’m about to turn my computer off for the last time at the old apartment. I’ll catch ya’ll on the other side! (Sun, Mar 26)

  • Hello

    February 26, 2007

    Hello, and welcome to the iPhone’s coming out video. This is Apple’s first ad for the iPhone, and was about the only excitement I experienced during the 2007 Oscars. A hundred points (redeemable at all participating Waffle Houses) if you can name each actor/actress. A hundred thousand points if you buy me one. PS: The... Read More

  • The Voodoo-Magic of Google Ranking

    February 3, 2007

    Last century, it was the bunny ears; this century, Google ranking is today’s voodoo-magic. Nobody knows exactly how it works, but everybody’s got their hunches. What we do know (or think we know) is that Google factors in things like word placement and frequency along with inbound links to weigh relevancy. For example, in 2003,... Read More

  • I’m A Crossover Artist

    January 27, 2007

    My dad has been a PC guy as long as I can remember. And because he used to write security software for banks, he’d always have the cutting edge computer, and I’d get last year’s model. I was the only kid on the block who had a IBM PC Jr. Come to think of it,... Read More