February, 2015: 28 posts.
busblog on Andrew Sullivan quitting blogging2015Feb01
but judging from what i read, bro [Andrew Sullivan] was sad that there isn’t a vibrant blogging community out there any more, and it seemed he was sad there wasnt a bunch of money left in it neither.
to quote the great artie lang: whaaaaaaaaa.
omg boo hoo you cant make a bucketload from writing on the web.
i say good.
when the blogosphere was buzzing, those were some good times, but does no one remember all the scum? all the lame ass blogs trying to teach you how to make money from your crappy crap?
all the blogs that were just echos of the others?
ignorance on top of ignorance sprinkled with annoyance?
all of those ppl are gone now.
now is the time the real bloggers are doing their thing.
read it all: andrew sullivan quit blogging today: good
WORD. There’s a reason I’ve been reading Tony for more than a decade.
The eldritch horror of IKEA.2015Feb08
Hold your children tightly tonight, for the night is dark.
But we acquired Produkt.
Programming Tinder2015Feb11
This is some straightforward, and yet entirely brilliant programming. This person took his prior Tinder choices, made an aggregate of “yes” and “no” swipes, then used the official Tinder APIs to automate his selections. This is kind of Artificial Intelligence, though a better term might be “expert system” (distilling what an expert knows into a piece of software, in this case the expertise is “what a person found attractive on Tinder”) and what it does is execute those decisions.
What’s astonishing is that all of this used off-the shelf and open source technology. Only Tinder is proprietary. All the rest of this are libraries anyone could use.
The modern age is not what I expected, but it most certainly contains artificial intelligence, though it’s less hyperintelligent HAL 9000 and more “personal assistant.”
via waxy.org
Moreover, the programmer made the whole thing available on GitHub. https://github.com/crockpotveggies/tinderbo.
Who doesn’t love code?2015Feb13
It is still astonishing to me that I can read and make improvements to code. Code that at first glance is as peculiar as this:
var ar = <?php echo json_encode($mp3) ?>; var BASE_AUDIO_PATH = '' + <?php echo json_encode($mp3directory) ?> + '/'; // sort files to be in alphabetical order by title ar.sort(function (a, b) { return a.toLowerCase().localeCompare(b.toLowerCase()); }); // Add <audio> files and buttons to soundboard // preload set to "none" is optional ar.map(function(url){ $('#soundboard').append(function(){ var thisAudio = $('<audio/>').attr({ src: BASE_AUDIO_PATH + url, preload: "none", onplay:"$(this).siblings('button').css('color', 'yellow');", onended: "$(this).siblings('button').css('color', 'white');" }) var buttonText = url.replace(/-/g, ' ').replace('.mp3', '').replace('[Q]','?'); var thisButton = $('<button />').addClass('myButton').text(buttonText); return $('<span />').addClass('track').append(thisAudio).append(thisButton); }) }); $('#soundboard').on( 'click', 'button', function() { $(this).siblings('audio').get(0).play(); });
And not be driven insane looking at it.
Programming is fun!
14 Years of ArtLung Blog.2015Feb19
In those 14 years I’ve had quite a few different things happen. A divorce. A bankruptcy which I didn’t write about but alluded to the possibility of. A marriage and becoming a stepdad. I lost my Grandfather. Mother. Grandmother. I became a Godfather to Zac. I became an uncle. I became a Godfather to Archer. I became a grandfather myself recently. Stepgrandfather, but the fact remains, I’m grand.
I’ve had innumerable jobs which I’ve been too prudent to gossip about lest I get dooced.
It remains a good life. Sadness and despair and tragedy abound. But there’s also success and happiness and beautiful people and toy robots.
Also drawing, dude. drawing always.
Quote of the Day: coincidence2015Feb20
And funny thing. As the percentage of unionized households has cratered, the middle class’s share of national income has gone down with it:
Weird, huh? I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
Read it all in Falling Wages, Falling Marriage Rates