Author Archive for Echo



A Culture of Compromises

If there’s one thing that gets on my nerves when politicians start yapping, it’s the culture of compromising.

There’s a saying along the lines of “a good compromise is when both parties leave without satisfaction.” The problem with that is that you can just over-exaggerate your suggestion and then negotiate a compromise that is what you [...]

Argument

Churchill once wrote: “If your argument is weak, shout. ” Remember that when you watch the politicians & the preachers on tv. Just sayin’. Ben Templesmith

Google Reader

For my feed reading needs I used Gregarius hosted on my site for nearly three years. But the downside is that I can only update feeds manually. I guess I could do a crontab that does a request for the update page, but I spent three years being too lazy to get that done.

I’ve been [...]

Dictionary

The Dictionary application in OS X is just plain gorgeous with its typography.

Proper Unsubscription

This is how you make a proper unsubscribe feature for your newsletters. I click the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email, I get a page with this, and it’s done. No further action needed. First I thought it was a bit unsecure without a confirmation button, but then I spotted the resubscribe link [...]

Minus

To their credit, if that’s the right word, you can now purchase some music from the iTunes store that is unencrypted and plays anywhere. Apple calls these songs “iTunes Plus”, because it sounds so much better than calling everything else “iTunes Minus.” Mark Pilgrim

Spread Thin Across the Internet

Jeffrey Zeldman wrote about content outsourcing and the vanishing personal site, which is exactly the direction I was heading with Reconsidering Blogging. I would have written more there, but it felt tough enough to just accomplish that much.

While I love all these wonderful social sites like Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter and various other clever services that [...]

Today in Emails

Some email about making custom smileys arrives from MSN Live. I don’t even use the “official” MSN client since I refuse to use anything that shoves ads in my face in an intrusive manner.

I do use the MSN Messenger service though, so it might be prudent to just unsubscribe to their marketing spam rather than [...]

World of Goo

This World of Goo trailer kind of makes me want a Wii. The combination of cutesy looks (somewhat Tim Burton-ish) and ominous, melancholy epic music tickles my brain in all the right spots.

Lost Philosophers

The fact that the first response to “John Locke” was Lost and not Second Treatise on Civil Government or An Essay Concerning Human Understanding really shouldn’t surprise me nearly as much as it does. Minwee