I’m Pirating the Next Version of Windows

Posted 3 days ago, under annoyances, link, thoughts, user experience

Justin Cunningham writes what I think a lot of people experience:

It takes less time than to buy it, I don't have to deal with the broken Live login system, and the BitTorrent downloads are faster. I only know this because I had to download an ISO after one of my discs became unreadable, and Microsoft refused to replace it. Why can't I just enter my product key and download an updated ISO with slipstreamed service packs? Why do pirates have a better experience than customers? If I want to reinstall my system, or upgrade my hardware, or switch between bootcamp and virtual machines, I will.

That's how I feel. But what's critical is this:

Why do pirates have a better experience than customers?

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When things go dark, people can’t read

Posted , under interesting, link

In protest to SOPA many sites have gone dark for the day. The most well known and resourceful is the even present Wikipedia.

What's most amazing is that the manner in which Wikipedia blacks out pages, or perhaps it's just the people, that has resulted in a mostly sad collection of tweets.

@herpderpedia

To me. It's that simple emotional response. I need some information for . When I can't get it, I get pissed off. Habits for most people are probably tied strongly with Wikipedia. Finding facts are as synonymous with it as searching on the internet is with Google.

Unfortunately a paragraph is too long and the critical information of why and when will services be resumed is the last sentence. I wonder if that line was first, big and bold it would have a reduction in complaints. This is will probably never be known as I'm hoping SOPA gets shutdown and there's no need to protest freedom online again.

Imagine a World
Without Free Knowledge

For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia.

Working with JSON in iOS 5 Tutorial

Posted 5 days ago, under iOS, link, programming

Tutorial by Marin Todorov:

iOS 5 has some new built-in APIs to make it really easy to read and write JSON.

He's right.
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on what to do

Posted 6 days ago, under my life, thoughts

I don't think there's any magical answer as you know. All we have is time. You can never go back once it has passed, so try not to hold on to any regrets. What's done is done you can only change what you do from now on.

There's lots of things about having goals and all that shit. I'm starting to think it's mostly bullshit to make money for people. The most important thing I've learned and have begun to understand where I missed out is not being in the present.
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Energy drinks: health risks and toxicity

Posted , under interesting, link

The Medical Journal of Australia writes

Over the 7-year period that we examined, data for 297 calls related to caffeinated energy drink exposures were recorded. Call numbers increased from 12 in 2004 to 65 in 2010.

Though it's a small number, it's still on the rise. The increased dependency and size of energy drinks will more than likely keep these figures projecting up. I'm keen to understand the long term health risks associated with consumption over decades.

Studies among American college students called attention to the mixing of energy drinks with alcohol. Young people, particularly adolescents, appear to be least concerned with this dangerous phenomenon. This was evident in our results, in that almost one-quarter of calls reporting recreational consumption involved co-ingestion of alcohol.

At some point we stopped listening to our bodies natural cues and kept pushing it beyond its capabilities.

If you feel tired, get more sleep.

The Introduction of an Alpha Channel

Posted 1 week ago, under design, link

Mavenous studios code lab:

HSL and HSLA are absolutely amazing. HSL (Hue Saturation Lightness) is a much more intuitive method for defining colors, in my opinion.

Rather than defining your gradient from one colour stop to another. You can transparency with a simple gradient overlay on the colour of your choice. This makes it much easier to swap around colours as you only need to change your background-color.

CSS Creating Triangles

Posted 2 weeks ago, under design, link, web development

Jon Rohan writes how to create a triangle using CSS:

Few people realize when a browser draws the borders, it draws them at angles. This technique takes advantage of that.

If I wanted to create a down arrow I can use the following

/* : top right bottom left */
border-color: slategray transparent transparent transparent;
border-style: solid;
border-width: 7px;
width: 0;
height: 0;

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