Ben Cohen — Briefly (2)

Optimization

I just spent several hours on a Friday night decluttering my computer. And not fun decluttering like moving pictures around and deleting old downloads. No, this was fixing permissions, removing MacPorts, installing Homebrew, tidying my dotfiles. Hard core nerding. And I feel great. After the hundredth permissions issue in the middle of mundane tasks, it’s tempting to flatten a machine just to end the pain. But now it is fun to install things! When things break, it’s because I wrote crummy code, not because the binary I’m trying to run is in a directory that is too high up my search path.

Point is, simple is good. Working is good.

MacPorts, I’m looking at you. RVM couldn’t do its thing because of /opt/bin getting up in my business. We’re through.

Posted Saturday, March 20th, at 12:17 AM (∞).

March Desktop (via heliostatic)

Posted Wednesday, March 10th, at 12:27 AM (∞). Available in higher resolution.

Imagine this: a developer who not only makes it hard to do the wrong thing, but easy to do the right one.

Shaun Inman loves his users (and does his own tech support).

In his excellent rss reader, Fever°, he offers users the ability to bulk unsubscribe from all of their feeds. I needed to do this tonight because I decided that the 800+ feeds I’ve subscribed to over the years are not all as important as they used to be (and that was too many feeds). However, in addition to requiring users to check the “Yes, I’m sure I want to do this” box, he offers a quick export link, and suggests that the user might want to take advantage of it.

Posted Tuesday, March 9th, at 9:52 PM (∞).

I’m doing this because I like accountability and transparency, and I believe in public service. And it is the complete opposite of everything else I do. Maybe I’ll learn something. The practical consequence is that I will probably go to Washington several days each month, in addition to whatever homework and phone meetings are necessary.

Expect sparklines.

Edward Tufte, who has been appointed by President Obama to “help track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds” as part of the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel.

Tufe is being nonchalant, but this is great news. Not only for design-nerds but the general public too.

(via iA)

(via caseyagollan)

(via roomthily)

Found via roomthily. Posted Monday, March 8th, at 12:47 AM (∞).

Purple Rug on the Grass (via heliostatic)

Posted Monday, March 1st, at 7:46 PM (∞).

Jekyll

Jekyll, the static site generator written in ruby, is awesome. I just converted a site from plain html to generated html in about 30 minutes (ok, small site), and look forward to a lot less hassle when making updates.

Posted Sunday, February 28th, at 10:39 PM (∞).

Looking for a basketball

Katherine’s making a basketball bag for a friend, and it turns out we have no ball. Does anybody out there have one they’d be willing to share?

In fact, does anyone want to shoot some hoops this weekend, period?

Posted Friday, February 26th, at 6:24 PM (∞).

Katherine made delicious marshmallows (via heliostatic)

Posted Friday, February 26th, at 6:04 PM (∞).

Katherine finished her sheets and I took some pictures. I liked this one — the bridal pattern looks really nice, I think.

Posted Sunday, February 21st, at 12:30 PM (∞). Available in higher resolution.

We bought a fifty pound bag of flour. These are the consequences.

Posted Thursday, February 18th, at 7:09 PM (∞). Available in higher resolution.