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# 08 Dec 2003 20:05:01 Stupidity for Dummies |
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Several people (among them Chris Hanson pointed at The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, written by Carlo M. Cipolla: | Quote: | The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that:
Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.
...I firmly believe that stupidity is an indiscriminate privilege of all human groups and is uniformly distributed according to a constant proportion. This fact is scientifically expressed by the Second Basic Law which states that
The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.
...As the Third Basic Law explicitly clarifies:
A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.
When confronted for the first time with the Third Basic Law, rational people instinctively react with feelings of skepticism and incredulity. The fact is that reasonable people have difficulty in conceiving and understanding unreasonable behaviour... |
There's much more to it, including lots of stuff on the main True Stupidity site. All, sadly, true. |
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| # 08 Dec 2003 14:14:43 Getting linkage... |
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Some nice folks are linking to my recently released Fax Alert Installer. I purposely didn't do my usual routine of following the release with a barrage of press releases to major Mac websites, to see what would happen.
Today there was a mention at Mac OS X Hints. Previously, Daniel Steinberg also referred to it, and niknud in turn linked to Daniel's article. Macintouch also had a brief note, as did MacSurfer.
Meanwhile, even with little publicity, there've been around 1400 downloads - and so far, in December, Fax Alert Installer downloads are running neck-and-neck with XRay downloads. Not bad... |
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| # 07 Dec 2003 17:16:23 Digital Imagery |
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Although Max Lyons has been in the news these days for his Gigapixel image of Bryce Canyon, his image gallery is well worth a longer visit.
I was particularly taken by the photographs of the Canadian Rockies, the Southwest Deserts, and the Sierra Nevada... all places where I've been. I can attest they really look like that, although my own results were far more modest. Highly recommended! |
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| # 06 Dec 2003 15:18:38 Light Cyan |
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This seems to be mostly accurate:
you are lightcyan
#E0FFFF |
Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well.
Your saturation level is very low - you have better things to do than jump headfirst into every little project. You make sure your actions are going to really accomplish something before you start because you hate wasting energy making everyone else think you're working.
Your outlook on life is very bright. You are sunny and optimistic about life and others find it very encouraging, but remember to tone it down if you sense irritation.
| | the spacefem.com html color quiz |
Linked to by the J-Walk Blog, as usual... curiously enough, the first version of these pages used nearly exactly this light cyan tint as a background, but I found it slightly tiring. |
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| # 05 Dec 2003 20:32:12 The Glass Engine |
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If you're a fan of composer Philip Glass, you'll love the Glass Engine, an IBM research project that allows you to select and listen to any track from over sixty Glass works. I spent over an hour there without really noticing.
The engine has a unique user interface which, unfortunately, runs only on Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Java is also required. |
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| # 04 Dec 2003 15:10:52 Solipsism Gradient: The Screenplay |
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The J-Walk Blog, among other goodies, points at a site that turns any website into a screenplay. So guess what I did? | Code: | FADE IN.
INT. TRENDY CAFE
WINONA RYDER is lovelorn and sad. She is complaining to her best friend BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT) about the lovelorn and sad state of her life.
WINONA RYDER
Oh, BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT), do you think that I will ever find my true love? I am so lovelorn and sad. Surely, you, as my best friend, have some wisdom to offer
BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT)
Sorry, but to set everything up properly you must first run XRay once from an Administrator account.
WINONA RYDER
Yes, you said that from the very beginning, didn't you? Oh, if only I'd listened to you,BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT).
...
She shoots angrily again. LEONARDO DI CAPRIO comes running up.
LEONARDO DI CAPRIO
I must talk to you, WINONA RYDER. I can explain.
...
BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT)
This mode builds a smaller, faster program without debugging symbols and other encumbrances.
WEDDING GUESTS
Hear, hear.
BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT)
Well, all of this usually takes several hours and is extremely tiring.
Everybody laughs
LEONARDO DI CAPRIO and WINONA RYDER
Hahahahahaha!!!! Oh BROCKERHOFF.NET (SOLIPSISM GRADIENT). You are one of a kind.
THE END |
Story of my life...  |
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| # 04 Dec 2003 13:12:25 Aurélio 1.05 |
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Acabo de publicar um update para o Aurélio Século XXI para Mac.
A versão 1.05 agora roda sob o Classic do Mac OS X 10.1.5 em diante. Detalhes aqui... |
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| # 04 Dec 2003 13:08:41 NetNewsWire wins Eddy Award |
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| One of my favorite constantly-used applications, NetNewsWire, wins the Eddy Award. Congratulations to Brent Simmons! Well deserved. |
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| # 03 Dec 2003 08:59:55 Craftmanship |
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Joel Spolksy has a new, unfortunately all-too-brief, article out: Craftmanship. As most of Joel's articles, this should be required reading for any shareware developer. | Quote: | | It comes down to an attribute of software that most people think of as craftsmanship. When software is built by a true craftsman, all the screws line up. When you do something rare, the application behaves intelligently. More effort went into getting rare cases exactly right than getting the main code working. Even if it took an extra 500% effort to handle 1% of the cases. |
Reminds me of when I moved away from home and asked my father (a master carpenter) to check out some furniture I was considering for my apartment. He always reached underneath to check if there were any rough edges - and there always were. He said a true craftsman always sandpapers all edges, even the ones nobody can see.
"But no one else would know!"
"He would know." |
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| # 30 Nov 2003 11:14:54 Boom! |
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So last Saturday morning (or was it Friday?) I was chatting with my editor at Macmania magazine about Panther stuff... we were commenting on the strangely missing "Fax received" notification, when I said I'd seen a suggestion to attach a folder action to the Fax folder; there's a "new item" script at /Library/Scripts/Folder Action Scripts/add - new item alert.scpt.
So he said, why don't you change that script a little and write a note how to install it? Hmmm... I said that I knew zilch about AppleScript, but would give it a try.
I thought, perhaps it'll be too boring to write this up... why not write a little installer in Cocoa... and learn some AppleScript while I'm at it? So four hours later (two were used for drawing the icon, of course!), there was born - ta-dah! - the Fax Alert Installer!
Freeware, for Panther only. There've been about 700 downloads already... |
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