Prose I Like: iPad as a hip flask

From Paul Graham's latest essay, "The Acceleration of Addictiveness"

Several people have told me they like the iPad because it lets them bring the Internet into situations where a laptop would be too conspicuous. In other words, it's a hip flask.

The whole essay is worth a read, though that footnote is probably my favorite.
Loading mentions Retweet

My Beef with Razor

(Note, for non-programmers, this is not about shaving)

ASP.NET MVC has shipped the first preview of version 3. This is a good thing, mostly. By default it will be using the brand spanking new Razor view engine... and I'm having a hard time trying to figure out why it's even in there.

The raison d'être for Razor is to allow for less code in the Views. This too, is a good thing. But I just don't think it does enough. Here's one of the samples provided:

@inherits System.Web.Mvc.WebViewPage

<!DOCTYPE HTML>

<html>
<head>
<title>@View.Title</title>
</head>
<body>
@RenderBody()
</body>
</html>

It is nice that you don't need a gigantic header any more, and I like that the masterpage syntax is a little slimmer, but in general all you're saving are a bunch of <%= %> tags. That's nice, but is that really that great of an improvement to warrant an entirely new ViewEngine? Am I missing something important here? Especially once you get into non-trivial pages with hundreds of tags and template syntax.

What I think would have been awesome would be to use the reduced <%= %> footprint but also incorporate something like NHaml, which would really minimize the code footprint.
Loading mentions Retweet

It's pretty much when...

On the latest episode of The Pipeline. (And if you don't listen to the 5by5 podcasts, what's wrong with you?)
 
Adam Lisagor "You see guys all the time doing the, um, un-tucking the shirt gag, and because-"

Dan Benjamin "What is the un-tucking the shirt gag?"

Adam Lisagor "It's pretty much when you un-tuck your shirt."

Perfect.
Loading mentions Retweet

Nice UI: Quora's Rich Text Editor

I just like the simplicity of it. I definitely plan on stealing that design some day.

Taken from here.
Loading mentions Retweet

Pretty Much the Best Headline Possible

Via the AV Club.

Loading mentions Retweet

GMail & JavaScript

At the USENIX annual conference last month, Gmail engineer Adam de Boor surprised the audience by noting that the company's Gmail service was written entirely in JavaScript, and that all of its code, around 443,000 lines worth, was written by hand.

Via PC World and Hacker News (of course).

I'm a little skeptical of that line count on JavaScript though. I really thought that GWT was created specifically for GMail. Regardless, that's a pretty astounding size for JavaScript. I truly want to know what tools they use to write and manage that much, since in my experience, once you hit several thousand lines, it starts to become a pain to manage/debug/maintain.
Loading mentions Retweet

Nice Writing: Big Numbers

On people underestimating the power of exponential growth:

"If a uranium nucleus emits two neutrons, both of which collide with other uranium nuclei, causing them to emit two neutrons, and so forth—well, did I mention nuclear holocaust as a possible end to population growth?"

Scott Aaronson in "Big Numbers". Found via Hacker News.
Loading mentions Retweet

Actually AIM, No

This pops up every time I sign into Meebo now. Hey, AIM, I don't use your crappy IM product for a reason. Harassing me further is only encouraging me to abandon my AIM account altogether.

Loading mentions Retweet

Insanely Useful Photo Reference on the iPhone

I've always enjoyed Thom Hogan's site. He's a great writer and shoots with Nikon cameras :-). I just found this neat little corner of his site, a few basic guides and tables for standard photography needs, and it is designed for the iPhone.

http://www.bythom.com/iphone.html
Loading mentions Retweet

Oh Thank Goodness

At long last someone has finally brought the plight of the Sharktopus to life. Thank you Syfy.
Loading mentions Retweet

About

These are my mostly unfiltered thoughts.