I know it may not look like much, but I just put the finishing touches on a new Tumblr theme for “single serving sites” called One Shot. About two years ago I came across the site amiawesome.com and immediately knew what to do with a domain I had been holding onto for a while: eliotsucks.com. Am I Awesome? was hosted on Tumblr so I decided to do the same thing. I just cut and pasted the static page source into the “custom html” section of Tumblr and used their simple domain mapping. Eliot Sucks had the word “FALSE” in big black letters. Read the rest of this entry »
One Shot, a Tumblr theme
April 11th, 2009April Fools
March 31st, 2009I’m fairly bah humbug about April Fools day. It’s a day where everyone trips over themselves in a rush to attempt humor while failing to understand how it works. My favorite example is when TechCrunch posted their April 1st joke on March 31st and then wondered a month later why people still believe it.
There have only been two occasions where Hack a Day ran an April Fools post. They’re both tongue-in-cheek and intended to entertain instead of confuse with absurdity: Hack a Day goes autonomous, Introducing Craft a Day.
I do like YouTube’s &flip=1 option.
28
March 9th, 2009
I turned 28 today and recorded a short podcast. I thought I had been doing it every year, but apparently skipped last year.
@SanMo, a Twitter service for locals
March 2nd, 2009
UPDATE: @SanMo is now using Chris Finke’s implementation in Python.
@SanMo is a Twitter based service I launched in late January. It’s designed specifically for Twitter users in the Santa Monica area. Anyone can send a message starting with @SanMo and the bot will retweet it. The idea is that locals who want to participate will follow @SanMo and then respond to the inquiries. Read the rest of this entry »
Sweetums degrees
February 10th, 2009
Sometimes people ask me about my twitter handle @sweetums. It’s not from the muppet, but I did make this connection today: Sweetums was performed by Richard Hunt, who performed Statler, who was named after the Statler Hotel, which was renamed Hotel Pennsylvania, which was where HOPE was held, which was covered by Sweetums for Hack a Day. Woo 5 degrees!
The name actually comes from a one-liner I used once: “I was thinking of calling my motorcycle ‘Sweetums’… or is that too butch?”
It’s just a silly contrast joke, but I throughly enjoy people calling me sweetums. When you introduce yourself as ’sweetums’, it’s disarming and when people address you as ’sweetums’, it’s endearing.
UPDATE: Added image based on Frosty’s comment.
Drink the water
December 23rd, 2008I’m in Vienna for the next few days over Christmas. Boarding the train leaving the airport, I was reminded of one of my favorite Vienna facts by the info screens. In the late 1800s, the city constructed two aqueducts to bring in water from the alps. That’s right, in Vienna unadulterated mountain spring water comes straight out of the tap and it’s delicious.
Invert-Z
December 22nd, 2008
First person shooter video games often have the option to “invert Z axis” as part of the controller scheme. Normally when you press down, the character’s gun points down. When inverted, the camera will look up when you press down. Inverted Z movement was actually the traditional behavior in games. Players using joysticks with flight simulators would naturally pull back on the stick to bring the nose of the plane up. It was when gamepads became more abundant that regular Z movement became standard. The stick/pad is much shorter and you just point where you want to shoot. That doesn’t mean inverted Z is “wrong” in newer games. The game is showing you the perspective of the player. If you think of the view being generated by a camera on a tripod you would push down on the tripod’s handle to make the camera look up. I used to play with Z inverted, but I’ve learned to play normally with recent console generations.
Right now I’m typing this on a MacBook. I use two fingers on the trackpad to scroll. As I sweep down, the text on the page goes up. Sweep up, and the page text moves down. When I switch to the iPhone or the ADP1, my fingers and the text move in the same direction. On these devices, the direct interaction with the text “makes sense”, but going back to standard scrolling on a computer just seems odd.
I wonder if we’ll start inverting Z again.
Berlin 2007
December 21st, 2008
I looked back to see if I had done any blogging last year over the course of my six week trip. Much to my delight: I had (I also found IM IN UR MANGER KILLING UR SAVIOR). Never avoid blogging because it feels narcissistic; you will write things that you’d otherwise forget and you’ll appreciate seeing it again. Reposting it, like I’m about to do, definitely is narcissism. Most of the trip was brought to you by my missing N95-3.
Things I found: I made a video while procrastinating packing which talks about my elaborate GrandCentral forwarding. I wrote about learning German by context and my love of a 24hr city. The trip actually started in Vienna where we made cocktails in cement mixers, hunted for vegetarian food, and Flo gave me the only haircut I’ve had all year. I provided a rather concise review of Prague. It doesn’t come up in my closing post, but I remember being ready to come home by the end of the trip.
B-b-b-back in Berlin
December 20th, 2008
(Yes, that’s LAX)
I arrived in Berlin three days ago. I’m here for the Chaos Communication Congress just like last year. When I booked my roundtrip, I chose dates that were three weeks apart (I return on January 6th) under the auspices of saving money by avoiding the holiday. Prices have since dropped, but I’m glad I’m here for the extended period. I’m not really in a position to take a vacation, so any change of locale is beneficial.
Open letter
December 19th, 2008Dear Charles de Gaulle,
You suck at designing airports. Upon landing, you taxi forever, presumably getting closer to the airport, just to be dumped onto the tarmac in the freezing cold. You’re then loaded onto buses and driven to the terminal. The exposure to the elements is actually teaching you to wear your jacket, since you’ll need the warmth no matter where you are in the terminal. You then navigate a maze and are rewarded with passport control. Play close attention to all announcements, “The deaf dumb women in the terminal is a scam”; you’ll find them above the TGV station. Cross the terminal, clear the helpful security, and you’re ready to wait for your flight. The quantity of seats in the terminal is based on the average number of travelers at any time, not the capacity of a plane at a particular gate, meaning everyone is under-served most of the time. I felt that I had won the battle and charge triumphantly down the jet-way… only to find another bus. It drove us off into the middle of nowhere to board. I certainly hope you’re better at aircraft carrier design. France cannot be France without an awful airport.
Cheers,
Eliot
