Think Inside the Box

I saw this video today demo­ing a very inter­est­ing user man­u­al con­cept. Essen­tial­ly, the man­u­al wraps around a device with queues to manip­u­late the actu­al device, rather than some screen­shots or pho­tos. Basi­cal­ly the man­u­al is more of a phys­i­cal tem­plate (or jig, since I’m using tem­plate in the crafts­man sense). Out of the box from… Con­tin­ue read­ing Think Inside the Box

A DITA & DITA Open Toolkit Reading List

I was in the process of reor­ga­niz­ing my com­put­er sci­ence and tech­ni­cal writ­ing shelf today dur­ing lunch when I began to notice a pat­tern: I have quite a few books relat­ed to DITA and the under­ly­ing tech­nolo­gies of the DITA Open Toolk­it. Well, this isn’t by coin­ci­dence. It’s a big part of my job and… Con­tin­ue read­ing A DITA & DITA Open Toolk­it Read­ing List

Looking Ahead into 2012

I tend to write this sort of post every year. It’s not real­ly a set of res­o­lu­tions, just goals. That is, I rarely say to myself “I will do this from now on.” but rather “This is what I’d like to try to accom­plish this year.” Small dif­fer­ence, but prob­a­bly worth not­ing. So, in no… Con­tin­ue read­ing Look­ing Ahead into 2012

Published
Categorized as Life

Regular Expressions versus XSLT

Last week I came across an epic rant with­in a forum thread1 about why using reg­u­lar expres­sions for pars­ing XML is a bad idea. The <cen­ter> can­not hold it is too late. The force of regex and HTML togeth­er in the same con­cep­tu­al space will destroy your mind like so much watery put­ty. At first, I… Con­tin­ue read­ing Reg­u­lar Expres­sions ver­sus XSLT

As some­thing of a fol­low-up to Fri­day’s piece on com­pa­nies like Net­flix mov­ing towards con­tent cre­ation and apps on new­er, third-par­ty devices, I not­ed my employ­er’s CEO being quot­ed in a Engi­neer­ing News Record piece on Bent­ley’s recent announce­ments (empha­sis added):

[Greg] Bent­ley cred­it­ed the rapid pro­lif­er­a­tion and repur­pos­ing of con­sumer prod­ucts, such as the iPad, into wire­less­ly con­nect­ed field tools for con­struc­tion as accel­er­ants to the devel­op­ment of new process­es for the col­lec­tion and exchange of project and asset infor­ma­tion. He says it is a “tremen­dous” moment for soft­ware devel­op­ers, who no longer have to strug­gle to find hard­ware capa­ble of sup­port­ing inno­va­tions. “Thank good­ness we don’t have to invent it, just take advan­tage of it,” he said.

Bent­ley does­n’t make any hard­ware and their acqui­si­tions that once did (such as Inter­graph) now exclu­sive­ly sup­port third-par­ty hard­ware. Tak­ing advan­tage of hard­ware on third-par­ty devices to move them into new and cre­ative mar­kets ben­e­fits every­one in that three-par­ty arrange­ment. (via Rick Sta­van­ja)

Burning at Both Ends

Any­one who has read this blog in the past (thanks, Mom!) knows that I’m a fan of Net­flix as well as the Fox Net­work show Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment. Today, Net­flix announced that it is going to be bring­ing back Arrest­ed Devel­op­ment in 2012 exclu­sive­ly to their stream­ing video ser­vice; firm­ly plac­ing them in the cat­e­go­ry of… Con­tin­ue read­ing Burn­ing at Both Ends

Getting iPhoto to recognize your updated iOS 5 device

It’s almost embar­rass­ing that I had­n’t tried trans­fer­ring my pho­tos off of my iPhone 4—running iOS 5— in near­ly a month since upgrad­ing. I sup­pose with the iCloud ser­vice, many users won’t ever have an issue with this. How­ev­er, Angela and I share a iTunes account and don’t real­ly care to have our pho­tos dou­bled… Con­tin­ue read­ing Get­ting iPho­to to rec­og­nize your updat­ed iOS 5 device

Published
Categorized as Apple

I have read numer­ous times how Gene Roddenberry—the cre­ator of Star Trek—pre­ferred the eyes and mouth of an actor play­ing some alien not be obscured by make­up. The the­o­ry goes that this allows the actor to actu­al­ly, well, act and the audi­ence bet­ter empathize with the char­ac­ter. This makes good sense on a series like Star Trek, where the inter­ac­tion with aliens is often less shoot ’em up and more diplo­ma­cy and moral dra­ma. How­ev­er, I had nev­er con­sid­ered this point extend­ing to dogs.

Netflix Splitting the Business

I have to admit, I was a bit sur­prised to read Neflix split­ting off their DVD mail busi­ness into a new com­pa­ny. Not sur­prised, though, to see that Net­flix has essen­tial­ly gone com­plete­ly to stream­ing, as I men­tioned that ear­li­er this year. I’m pret­ty sure that’s been obvi­ous for years now. I was con­fused about the… Con­tin­ue read­ing Net­flix Split­ting the Business

Great post, video, and com­ment dis­cus­sion regard­ing Ed Cat­mul­l’s grad­u­ate research film which involves one of the ear­li­est (if not the first) 3D ren­dered com­put­er ani­ma­tion. Cat­mull would go on to form Pixar in the fol­low­ing decade. Many of the con­cepts and tech­nolo­gies used in this short film are used today in infra­struc­ture to dig­i­tize road­ways, build­ings, bridges, etc. into point clouds. (via Kot­tke)