Too Epic

I am all smiles right now

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 04:09:21 -0400

Chris Granger has decided to spearhead the effort of making Bret Victor’s dream a reality. Clojure and JavaScript will be flying first class, but all other languages are welcome aboard.

The Robot and the Baby

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:00:20 -0400

The Robot and the Baby:

John McCarthy (inventor of Lisp, one of the fathers of AI) wrote a science fiction short story back in 2001. It’s a fun read, and it even features an excerpt from the robot’s thoughts (written in Lisp, naturally).

Please watch this. I’ve spent a solid chunk of my life...

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 18:59:36 -0500

Please watch this.

I’ve spent a solid chunk of my life floundering against creative tools to breathe life into ideas. Bret Victor had the perspective to step back and reevaluate the very foundations of those tools. And start building better ones.

He reminds us how young and brutish the art of software design is. And circuit design. And animation.

Now I have a better idea of what it must have felt like to visit Xerox PARC in the 70s.

Now that I’m a little less blind, I feel obliged to help.

More thoughts forthcoming.

While you wait, why not explore his Kill Math series?

Soup & Bread off of Prashanth’s, ahem, Day Job’s...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:24:00 -0500

Soup & Bread off of Prashanth’s, ahem, Day Job’s new EP. Best music video of 2012. Best way to spend half a winter break.

DAY JOB - TEXTS FROM THE FUTURE EP

Sun, 25 Dec 2011 03:13:14 -0500

DAY JOB - TEXTS FROM THE FUTURE EP:

prshnth:

Listen to this instead of Christmas music.

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Tweetbot adds "Last Photo Taken" feature

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:19:40 -0500

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: Tweetbot adds "Last Photo Taken" feature:

mrgan:

A week ago I tweeted a quick idea for iOS apps that let the user select a photo from the device:

Today, a new version of Tapbots’ popular twitter client Tweetbot added this very option. You have to hand it to them for just going with a good idea. And yes, they let me know before they…

I hope Tumblr adds this to their app next. Wonderful, simple idea.

I love my dormitory and all of the writing on its walls.

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:16:10 -0500

I love my dormitory and all of the writing on its walls.

staff: Introducing the new and very improved way to customize...

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 19:03:00 -0400

staff:

Introducing the new and very improved way to customize your blog.

With themes organized by category, realtime previews, and an advanced code editor, it’s never been faster or easier to make your blog yours.

Internet Explorer users will still see the old Customize interface while we wrap up IE testing.

Nice. Big nod to iOS. Goes above and beyond sixteen-year-old Ethan’s suggestions. Looks like they’re using Ace editor behind the scenes to power the new syntax-aware code highlighting. Seems to be the definitive choice for HTML editing in the browser.

One thing: I never quite understood why Tumblr pulls content from demo to preview themes instead of my actual blog. I guess the premise is you get to quickly see an assortment of post types?

tuneage: Saturday treat: Mumford & Sons Almost two years...

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 07:19:52 -0400

tuneage:

Saturday treat: Mumford & Sons

Almost two years ago, I wrote my first guest post for tuneage. It was on Mumford & Sons. The band has since exploded - being nominated for a grammy, featured on major movie soundtracks and playing shows across the world.

A new (fairly high quality) Mumford & Sons track is making the rounds online. It comes from a live session the band did for a Colorado radio station.

The song is currently Untitled but I couldn’t help my excitement in sharing this beautiful track - Marcus Mumford’s crooning voice, heartbreaking lyrics and those fantastic harmonies have me hooked.

Big fan of Mumford & Sons.

prshnth: Track I made over the course of this weekend on a Cool...

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 06:29:00 -0400

prshnth:

Track I made over the course of this weekend on a Cool Kids beat. Free downloads for anyone who clicks this link (!!!!)

First reblog in the history of Listenr. One small tap for man. One of the many new features to come. Expect 1.4 within the next two weeks.

Listenr 1.3 Available now. And it's FREE.

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:02:06 -0400

Listenr 1.3 Available now. And it's FREE.:

listenrapp:

That’s right. I’ve decided to make the app free for the time being. The plan is to add some super awesome paid features in upcoming releases, but the core functionality of Listenr will remain available pro bono. Much thanks to everyone who supported me by purchasing the app over the last few months. Now on to the new features:

The two big ones this time are Last.fm Scrobbling and Search. Also, all avatars and post metadata is stored locally on your phone, so this should result in a snappier experience.

To enable Last.fm scrobbling, just head on over to the Settings App, and under Listenr, flip the switch to ON. The next time you open the app, you’ll be asked once for your credentials. Rest assured, Listenr never stores your Last.fm password.

Enjoy! Leave a nice review if you dig the app. And if not, pop me an email or a Tumblr message. I’m always open to suggestions.

Huzzah! And I’m working on reblog support, among other things, as I type this.

Bow down to our new telepresence robot overlords. Today, Bump...

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 22:18:00 -0400

Bow down to our new telepresence robot overlords.

Today, Bump received a special delivery. It’s an Anybot. Above is a photo of our robot in collapsed mode, taunting the office dog. Pretty incredible and a bit absurd. You pilot the robots via the AnyBots website. They have head-mounted displays and speakers, so you can actually talk face-to-face with coworkers around the office while you’re controlling the robot. I recommend checking out their website during the work week to test-pilot an Anybot around the company’s office in Mountain View. The experience is very reminiscent of a video game. WASD to drive, click to shoot… your laser… pointer.

This is just the beginning. Imagine all the possibilities once these guys are dextrous.

I think we’re going to have a ton of fun hacking Bump capabilities into this guy.

Listenr 1.2 available now!

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:23:11 -0400

Listenr 1.2 available now!:

listenrapp:

Grab it. Tell your friends. Give me your feedback.

And if you think 1.2 is nice, just wait a week or two. Did somebody say last.fm scrobbling?

Edit: Almost forgot, promotional codes to celebrate the release:

9RKW496KMRLE

JAN6XTX7RAWE

WJT76JRFNY34

7RMAN7HNEHJ9

EWX7A4LX4NF4

X9MJ3TT74K33

XTYKFF9Y6A63

FXKN7T9MJT7F

63J9J6PMPLXF

TN79PKKN7FNR

What are your favorite music tumblrs?

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 17:15:42 -0400

I’m a big fan of Tuneage, Jukebox, and yvynyl.

And I always love when my buddy Prashanth posts new tracks.

If you have your own set of favorites, I’d love to hear what they are.

Listenr App: Listenr version 1.2 is in the pipeline

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 04:06:18 -0400

Listenr App: Listenr version 1.2 is in the pipeline:

listenrapp:

Now that summer’s upon us, I’m trying to increment the app more rapidly. I didn’t announce the arrival of Listenr 1.1 because, frankly, it was a bit of an embarrassment. Soon after its approval, I discovered a nasty bug that caused the application to crash consistently on specific blog pages….

This is what I’ve been spending a fair chunk of my evening time on this past week.

On the note of catching bugs, I’d like to extend an invitation to you, dear reader, to beta test upcoming versions of Listenr. Sign up here. Testflight is pretty magical. I’m looking for thoughtful, specific feedback and reproducible bug reports.

Changing Contexts

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 02:00:56 -0400

Last week I moved to Mountain View (well, technically Sunnyvale) for the summer and started interning at Bump Technologies. Since then, I’ve been a bit immersed in the world of Bump. Over the past eight days, I’ve worked on half a dozen distinct projects. Hopefully I’ll be able to share some of them with you. I’m just beginning to get my bearings. Expect more substantial updates soon. For now, a photographic depiction of our (@tedlee, @brillian) residential adventures:

Life is Flux.

On set-top box remotes

Mon, 30 May 2011 01:49:00 -0400

On set-top box remotes:

Revisiting some “work” I did during the school year. Henry Holtzman offered to pay me around minimum wage to fiddle with set-top boxes and write about them. I bit.

It was a fun distraction from problem sets. And I enjoyed donning my tech columnist hat. I think middle school Ethan would have been proud. But frankly, most of the writing was banal. And I can only go through so many Netflix registration interfaces. Maybe I’ll revisit these guys some day. I hear Google might be ramping up their game. Doing a genuine usability study with some people off the street would be a hoot.

Either way, I think this particular piece is salvageable and at least moderately interesting. And dragging the images around on the page is just too fun.

Reinventing the TV remote is a tricky design problem. If you can’t tell from the writeup, I’m pretty heavily biased toward the Boxee remote. But I think they made a fundamental mistake in making the front face vertically symmetric. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally held that bad boy upside down.

Oh well. Baby steps. Americans and their TVs.

Spotify is brilliantly architected

Sun, 29 May 2011 22:25:00 -0400

Spotify is brilliantly architected:

A few members of the Spotify team wrote a paper describing their architecture. It’s very readable if you’re remotely aware of how TCP works. I had no idea the service was using a Peer-to-peer network to do its heavy lifting. It makes a ton of sense, and I hope Apple’s impending streaming service is equally well-engineered. I have my doubts given the legacy of Mobile Me, but hey, companies are capable of change.

Either way, I hope Spotify makes its way to the United States very soon. It’d be a shame for such a wonderful service to miss the boat to the Goliath of Cupertino (or Google… or Amazon). The more competition we have in this space, the better consumers fare. I’ve been using Rdio for the past few months, and I’m generally very pleased with its offerings. But I’d love to see how much innovation we could squeeze out with another large contender on our shores.

Addendum: The very fact that the Spotify team was willing to publish this paper demonstrates how confident they are in their offering. Spotify is (albeit at a high level of abstraction) telling competitors exactly how its service works! They’re begging Amazon and Google and Apple and the likes to copy their model. Those are some cojones.

Tumblr Notifier for Google Chrome

Sat, 28 May 2011 21:28:07 -0400

Tumblr Notifier for Google Chrome:

I started using Chrome. So I finally got around to porting Notifier over.

As always, the source is on Github.

The Botany of Desire

Sat, 28 May 2011 17:41:06 -0400

Exquisite PBS special on the mutualism between mankind and the plants we consume. And I’m sure the book is equally good. I became a fan of Michael Pollan a few years back after reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma. He’s an excellent journalist. And he speaks to such a fundamental question: human sustenance. I recommend everyone watch it. Here, I’ll make it easy:

If you don’t have two hours to spare, that’s ok. Just watch thirty minutes. Pick your favorite plant: apples, cannabis, tulips, potatoes. Don’t be shy. The film is information-rich and approachable, and some of the shots are just spectacular (especially in the tulip segment).

I just have one large nit to pick:

The takeaway message here seems to be: embrace biodiversity.

And yet, in the final section, the film casts genetically modified crops (read: potatoes) in a very critical light. I agree, the Monsanto corporation has done some questionable things over the past few decades. We’ve all seen Food, Inc. right? Soybeans anyone? And I’m sure that genetically modifying the food we consume willy-nilly could bring about some devastating consequences.

But the whole premise of genetic engineering is to increase diversity. You’re taking DNA from another creature altogether and seeing what good it could do in a new context. Sure, this goes beyond the natural scope of the plant’s evolution, but so what? Evolution is rooted in experimentation. In mutation. Trod carefully, sure. But by all means, trod. Bring on the diversity.