Magic to the Bone is the best Urban Fantasy I’ve read in ages. Buy it now. This as another one of my impulse buys. If it weren’t for the quote on the cover from Patricia Briggs I wouldn’t have bothered, but I really respect Patricia’s writing and, of this book, she said “Loved It. Fiendishly Original.” I couldn’t agree more. The book is set in an alternate world where magic has been discovered, harnessed, and commoditized just like electricity.
Developershare: adj. The percentage or proportion of the total available pool of developers that is coding for a particular product or platform.
Example: Regardless of how good the Palm Pre is, Palm will be hard-pressed to steal any of iPhone’s developershare.
[EDIT] Aspirin was a great idea, but spam has ruined email sending. These days, there are very few situations where an email sent via a home computer will ever reach its destination. It will be considered spam, because of its source.
Aspirin is an embeddable Java SMTP server, that’s been fairly well received. This is just an announcement of its new home and a notable change to the codebase.* There’s been a lingering threading bug with it which resulted in the only way to kill it being to use a System.
Yesterday I was discussing the fact that I need a new laptop and how much I wanted to get an HP Mini 1000 (cheap, ultra light, good manufacturer), but couldn’t because of those damn independent Mac developers. They keep making incredible apps I simply won’t give up. Unsurprisingly, he asked me what my killer apps were for the Mac, and I thought you might be interested too. But, before I start the list, I just have to give a major shout-out to the indie developers for OS X.
With purpose, and a focused mind, I prepare to petition the god. Up from my desk I rise, and walk forth. Down the hall, into the room where his idol waits.
I pull my offering from my pocket: a small piece of paper covered with symbols, and the face of a past leader, all done in green.
Carefully, I prepare it, making sure it is flat, and smooth. The god will accept nothing less.
A while ago I stumbled across the movie Practical Magic, and loved it. It’s this wonderful, playful, tale about finding love and accepting the magic that lives within yourself. And then, a few weeks ago, I discovered that it was based on a book by the same name, which I immediately purchased. What I read though, wasn’t a better version of the movie, as is typically the case. It was something else entirely.
Years ago I thought like many of you do; that the caps lock key is a waste of space. I never really got any benefit from it. It was just as easy, if not easier, to just keep a pinky on shift while I typed. There was even an article in Wired: Death to Caps Lock.
But then my eyes were opened, and I learned that the only reason I didn’t “get” the caps lock key was because I was a shitty typist.
Let’s assume for a minute you have a web site with an API people may actually want to use. Let’s use Flickr as an example. You can do as they did ( document it thoroughly and hope people use it ), or, and this is especially useful if you’re someone competing with an 800 lb. gorilla like Flickr, you can do something like this: First, figure out who’s a developer. If someone’s into your site enough to code for it’s API it’s generally a safe bet that they’ve got an account on it.
I love programming. I really do. It’s one of the few things that really gets my brain buzzing. In my twenties I’d go to work, program my ass off, then come home and repeat. Or, when I worked for myself, I’d just not stop. But, as I make my way through my thirties I’ve found that most days I come home and simply don’t want to look at code anymore.
A month ago I lamented that the excessive use of ads on sites was getting to be too much for me. Well, after a week where it seemed that every other article I went to read had a full page ad (or “welcome page” as Forbes called it) that I had to wait or click through to get to the article, which was still totally overrun with ads, I have given up and installed an ad blocker.
