Posts for: #Regular

Thoughts around the iPad 2, and touch-based interfaces

I just finished reading “Apple iPad 2 is here and tablet rivals need to hit the drawing board”, Andy Ihnatko’s article on the iPad 2.

One sentence really resonated with me, because I think Apple’s very busy right now getting the world used to the next generation of computer interfaces (lots of OS X Lion’s upcoming interface is borrowed straight from iOS):

I hate editing video, but this app intuitively felt better and easier than even the desktop edition of iMovie.

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Reverting changes in Subversion

Let’s assume you’ve got a file (or a directory full of files, doesn’t matter) that you’ve been working on, and have committed it to the repository. Whoops, you’ve just overwritten something good with something bad. How to get the old one back?

I thought it would be a variation on the svn revert command, but no. It’s svn merge. This makes sense on some level, but not a lot of sense.

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Apple and subscriptions

Apple launches long-awaited subscriptions for App Store (Macworld)

Seems to me that this is a pretty fair model for subscriptions. And yet, I keep seeing articles and blog posts claiming this will be “the death of Pandora” and other crap like that, due to Apple taking 30% of the revenue, and the publishers can’t afford that. As I read it, publishers have two options: in-app subscription purchases with 30% to Apple, and outside-the-app ( e.g., on their website) subscriptions at 0% to Apple. The agreement is that they have to offer the in-app subscription at a price no higher than the outside subscription, but I don’t see anything that says they must provide an in-app subscription option at all.

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Remote server monitoring

Background: BES has an exceedingly flaky T1 router, and I’m getting tired of pinging it all the time to see if it’s alive (it is remotely rebootable). Also, I have Prowl (normally used for Growl notifications, but has a nice API of its own) installed on my phone.
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Self Edge

Self Edge is Denim

And expensive and meticulous denim, at that. Home of the Japanese Buzz Rickson line in the US. William Gibson has written Rickson’s products into some recent novels; I had no idea he’d subsequently collaborated with Rickson on a line bearing his name. Cool stuff.

Found them by way of Roy denim, which they also sell.

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Emacs: set the word-wrap boundary

To set the word-wrap boundary (in emacs-speak, the fill-column) to column 80:

C-u 80 C-x f

To set the fill-column to wherever the cursor is right now:

C-u C-x f

(This is session-only, not permanent.)

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Moved

So, the blog is moved over now. I quite enjoyed Tumblr, but the search has been broken for, well, ever. The search works here. :)

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