Ben Cohen — Briefly

"To those who might wish to “torrent” this video: look, I don’t really get the..."

Sat, 10 Dec 2011 12:22:03 -0800

“

To those who might wish to “torrent” this video: look, I don’t really get the whole “torrent” thing. I don’t know enough about it to judge either way. But I’d just like you to consider this: I made this video extremely easy to use against well-informed advice. I was told that it would be easier to torrent the way I made it, but I chose to do it this way anyway, because I want it to be easy for people to watch and enjoy this video in any way they want without “corporate” restrictions.

Please bear in mind that I am not a company or a corporation. I’m just some guy. I paid for the production and posting of this video with my own money. I would like to be able to post more material to the fans in this way, which makes it cheaper for the buyer and more pleasant for me. So, please help me keep this being a good idea. I can’t stop you from torrenting; all I can do is politely ask you to pay your five little dollars, enjoy the video, and let other people find it in the same way.

Sincerely, Louis C.K.

”

- Louis CK

On visualizations

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:23:58 -0700

Ignore the font. This is a great presentation. For other excellent writing on visualizations (besides Tufte) I highly recommend Stephen Few’s Information Dashboard Design.

PSA: MacFuse → OSXFUSE

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:04:51 -0700

If you, like me, sometimes need to mount a non-standard file system on a Mac, you’ve probably used MacFuse. If you’ve tried to do so in the past three years, you’ve probably been disappointed that MacFuse is no longer maintained. Well struggle no more! Make the switch to OSXFUSE, the MacFuse successor.

OSXFUSE has a compatibility layer with MacFuse, so you can use your existing MacFuse extensions, but it also provides a better system for future file system extensions.

Anyway, use OSXFUSE and be happy.

Innovation is Not Just Putting Things Wherever

Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:38:13 -0700

The Mini Cooper is a fun car to drive: it has a tight turning radius, decent acceleration, and responsive handling.

It is not, however, a fun car to operate.

Take the turn signals. If you were the driver behind me on the freeway, you might be forgiven for thinking that the primary function of these blinking lights was to alternate incessantly between left and right, indicating nothing so much as the reduced mental capacity of the driver.

Unlike most vehicles in its class, the turn signals on the Mini Cooper do not remain depressed after signaling a turn. Instead, the stem returns to the ready position, leaving the vehicle operator with an interesting conundrum: how the fuck does one turn off the signal? If you guessed a 50% depression of the stem in the original direction of signaling, you did better than I.

This careful attention to the flouting of automotive interface conventions continues in nearly every aspect of the instrument cluster, from the iconic, oversized speedometer mounted in the center of the console to the volume knob conveniently isolated from every other stereo control, to the center mounted window controls (admittedly I’ve encountered this poor decision before).

Katherine’s garden is starting to bloom, and she’s...

Sat, 14 May 2011 11:21:06 -0700

Katherine’s garden is starting to bloom, and she’s asked me to document it.

Next she wants bees.

Bees.

08kjl:

Strawberries.

Great News for the FTC

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 12:12:04 -0700

Ed Felten has been named the Chief Technologist for the FTC. This is great news for the FTC and the U.S. Felten has done amazing work with electronic voting, DMCA exceptions, and blogs at http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/

Congratulations to Dr. Felten and the FTC.

Dropbox Referral

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 11:22:45 -0700

Dropbox Referral:

I’ve hit the limit on my free dropbox account. If anyone is looking for really slick file syncing across Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS, and soon Blackberry, consider signing up with my referral code. We’ll both get an extra 250 MB on top of the free 2 GB. Not bad. Here’s the link: http://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTE4NjE5OQ

Shouting hippo pillow shams from http://katherinejlee.com

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:55:53 -0700

Shouting hippo pillow shams from http://katherinejlee.com

"I don’t like to work. I only like working when I’m working."

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:14:20 -0700

“I don’t like to work. I only like working when I’m working.”

- Bill Murray on Ghostbusters 3, Get Low, Ron Howard, Kung Fu Hustle: Celebrities: GQ

One day, those letters will be on the marquee.

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 09:51:56 -0700

One day, those letters will be on the marquee.

Walkway framed by tombstones.

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:09:00 -0700

Walkway framed by tombstones.

It took a long time, and I’m still working on it, but...

Sun, 09 May 2010 23:52:45 -0700

It took a long time, and I’m still working on it, but I’ve got a draft of my thesis up. Also, this is the draft that I will be graded on. Katherine made the police graphic for my poster, and I think it looks quite handsome here, as well.

The truly distressing part is how upsetting the wrong pattern...

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 15:49:00 -0700

The truly distressing part is how upsetting the wrong pattern can be. —xkcd: Computer Problems

Court Says Bush Illegally Wiretapped Two Americans | Threat Level | Wired.com

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 18:41:57 -0700

Court Says Bush Illegally Wiretapped Two Americans | Threat Level | Wired.com:

Boom. Judge Walker calls it like it is. Illegal wiretapping of at least two Americans in 2004.

Dropbox for ease of mind

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:18:56 -0700

I use a lot of sync service (SugarSync, Backblaze, Dropbox, MobileMe, Spanning Sync, and a few others). Of these, Dropbox requires the least mental maintenance. It’s closest neighbors in my pantheon of sync services are SugarSync and Mobile Me’s I Drive are the closest equivalents. All three allow you to keep files synchronized across multiple computers, as well as access them on the web.

While they all have strengths, Dropbox’s approach, keeping a single directory in sync, with some simple sharing and photo album options on top, is dead simple. The client runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux, which is a boon for any cross-platform users, and if you run multiple clients (say, a desktop and a laptop) on the same local network, files sync directly from machine to machine, which is much faster than one syncing up to the cloud and the other pulling down from there.

Anyway. Just a few thoughts on file syncing. And Dropbox increased their referral bonuses recently, so if you sign up using this link, Get Dropbox, we’ll both get an extra 250 MB of storage.

Just finished Katherine’s new site:...

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 00:35:51 -0700

Just finished Katherine’s new site: http://www.katherinejlee.com

Tools:

Bonsai - for the site generation
Nivo Slider - for the slideshows
Textmate - for…text
Acorn + Lightroom + Nikon D80 - for images (all photos mine, found on flickr)
Wufoo - for dynamic content (order form, contact form)
Google Analytics - for site analytics
jQuery - for all js effects and making life easier
And of course, Katherine and her etsy store

52 Weeks of UX: Why UX is really Marketing

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 10:25:11 -0700

52 Weeks of UX: Why UX is really Marketing:

If you ask any User Experience Professional what the principles of their profession are, one of the first principles you’ll hear is “Know Your Users”. This makes sense: if we are to create great experiences for users then we must know something about them. You’ll also find this phrase if you…

The phrase “know your users” certainly does apply equally to marketers and UX professionals. However, what you do with that knowledge distinguishes the two professions. Note to marketers: “know your users” isn’t the same as “know your enemy”. Good UX means designing a product to meet user needs. Good marketing means describing a product as meeting user needs.

Note: Good marketing is really hard. I couldn’t do it.

Optimization

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 00:17:00 -0700

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.

March Desktop (via heliostatic)

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:27:00 -0800

March Desktop (via heliostatic)

Imagine this: a developer who not only makes it hard to do...

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:52:43 -0800

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.