08.16.13 |
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Andy Greenwald nails the big confrontation that ended Breaking Bad’s latest episode (Spoilers ahead):
Forget the delicate dance of cat and mouse a generation of TV built on coy delay had prepped us to expect. Here, the cat punched the mouse in the nose and called him a monster. The mouse then stood up, casually brushed himself off, and transformed into Satan. It’s awfully rare to see television so unafraid of delivering on what it has promised. And it’s quite possible that no show has ever promised more than Breaking Bad.
08.16.13 |
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The A.V. Club’s Todd VanDerWerff, writing a great companion piece to the Grantland article I linked to earlier this week:
In a way, this is the show simply taking the greatest weakness of clockwork plotting—a tendency to make everything all about one thing and the emptiness of character and theme that can provoke—and turning it into a strength through sheer relentlessness. With rare exceptions…every element of this story is about what happens after Walter makes his choice in the pilot. This isn’t a new thing to say about the show, by any means, but it’s often hard to appreciate just how thoroughly this kept the series from the kinds of goofiness that other clockwork-serialized shows have collapsed into.
08.14.13 |
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The combination of PhantomJS and CasperJS make for a fairly straightforward yet vigorous form of unit testing. The only problem I’ve had from before is just knowing exactly where to start; Google searches and YouTube tutorials can pull you in many directions. That’s why developer Danny Croft’s little mini tutorial (far from comprehensive, it just starts you off) was helpful – as long as you can install from Homebrew you should be in good shape.
08.14.13 |
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Yes, this technique written by web developer Stephen Shaw has gotten linked by almost every tech source online: Smashing Magazine, Sidebar, Hacker News, it’s all here. But it’s worth the hype. Comes down to this: as long as you set the height of an element, you can easily center it vertically with just a few simple CSS rules. Heavily cross browser compatible too.
08.13.13 |
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Andy Greenwald, writing for Grantland, explains why Breaking Bad’s finale has the chance to end the show on a better note than some previous critically acclaimed shows (e.g. The Sopranos, Lost):
Breaking Bad, to its enormous credit, isn’t about everything. It’s about one thing and always has been: Walter White’s calamitous path not from Mr. Chips to Scarface but from homeroom to the gates of hell. This framework has provided creator Vince Gilligan with a relentless, furious focus usually only possible after a few hits of the blue…every step he [Walter] has taken — from half-measures to full-on slaughter — we’ve taken right alongside him. We know exactly where we’re going because we’ve never lost sight of where we’ve been.
08.13.13 |
∞
Andy Greenwald, writing for Grantland, explains why Breaking Bad’s finale has the chance to end the show on a better note than some previous critically acclaimed shows (e.g. The Sopranos, Lost):
Breaking Bad, to its enormous credit, isn’t about everything. It’s about one thing and always has been: Walter White’s calamitous path not from Mr. Chips to Scarface but from homeroom to the gates of hell. This framework has provided creator Vince Gilligan with a relentless, furious focus usually only possible after a few hits of the blue…every step he [Walter] has taken — from half-measures to full-on slaughter — we’ve taken right alongside him. We know exactly where we’re going because we’ve never lost sight of where we’ve been.
08.12.13 |
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Web agency Barrel suggests some good ideas for taming image heavy sites. As a small caveat, I’m not crazy about some of the author’s example CSS (selectors that combine two classes in one level like ‘img_wrapper.loaded’ should be avoided) and I disagree that writing inline onloads are the way to go – there are cleaner, JS solutions to detect a reliable image load. That said, it’s an excellent primer, especially for newer front end web developers.
08.09.13 |
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David Auerbach writing for Slate on Microsoft’s obsession with making Windows an essential part of the internet:
There was no room for a Stringer Bell–style dove to strike out and make a deal with an ambitious youngster like Marlo Stanfield (Google) or a wily long-standing rival like Proposition Joe (Apple) for a share of profits and a shot of innovation. (“It’s not even a thought, man,” Avon chided Stringer.) Why should they cut deals with the riff-raff? They had crushed Lotus, Novell, and Netscape. Office and Windows were stable, profitable behemoths. Sure, Linus Tovalds—aka Omar Little—was a perennial annoyance, robbing Microsoft of server profits by giving away Linux for free, but he didn’t threaten the main business.
Admittedly almost any piece that mixes in The Wire has my attention, but my mind’s a bit blown with this one.
08.08.13 |
Technology |
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The now shuttered Google Reader and many alternative feed readers (e.g. Feedly, Digg Reader, Feedbin) still have a lot of fans in the tech community: they make web browsing more efficient by aggregating content from a bunch of web sites under a single interface. But many argue feed readers are dated, that Twitter and other social media forms have “killed” the need for a dedicated feed reader.
I disagree. While the tech isn’t for everyone, I think much of the dismissiveness comes from those that setup a feed reader poorly. They add a bunch of high traffic, big name sites (e.g. The New York Times, The Verge, The Awl), get overwhelmed and quit in frustration.
Some can handle, even prefer this very high velocity setup, but I think it’s rare. There’s a better way to set up your feed reader. Start small, start wide, move through articles rapidly, and have an effective way to save the articles that are of interest.
Start small
When you set up a feed reader for the first time, keep the velocity – the rate of which new articles get aggregated to your reader – low. I like to start with a “10 by 10” rule: pick up to ten feeds that each post no more than ten times a day. Remember this is only a starting point; as you get use to your feed reader of choice you can always increase the velocity later.
Start wide
One of the strengths of a feed reader is its ability to pull content from sites you don’t pass through during your daily web browsing. To put it another way, effective feed readers widen the net. Keep that in mind when you’re picking your first set of feeds. A good rule I like to use is actively include content that’s different than what you normally are exposed to in your day job. Alternatively, focus on sources that give a unique spin on content you normally read elsewhere. For example, if you like politics, instead of adding feeds from big sites like Politico and Wonkette, subscribe to individual columnists you enjoy from smaller markets.
Move through articles rapidly
You can move slowly through articles one at a time in a feed reader, but I think this can be a flawed approach for several reasons. First, remember many sites truncate their feed content, which prevents a full article display within the reader. Second, feed readers are rarely optimized for reading; you often get a big list of unread items taking up significant screen real estate. Also, the article itself is cramped and there’s often a bunch of feed reader UI on screen that distracts from the content. Third, a slow approach means there’s a much better chance you’ll leave your feed reader with a lot of items unread.
I’d recommend configuring your feed reader into a “summary only” view where the focus is on scanning headlines, not full articles. Move quickly, and if any article sparks your interest, open it up in a new background tab or otherwise save for reading later (keyboard shortcuts can come in handy here.)
Have an effective way to save for later
After you process unread items in your feed reader, you’ll want a way to go back and read the titles that caught your attention. Generally there’s three ways to do this: flag the article with the feed reader’s built-in system (e.g. stars, flags, highlights, etc.), keep the article open in an external tab or save it in a dedicated “read it later” service like Pocket. I highly recommend relying on the latter two options only: new external tabs for quick items you’ll read immediately and a dedicated “read it later” service for everything else.
Overall, don’t shy away from feed readers due to their “power user” reputation. By following a few simple rules, almost anyone can benefit from adding a feed reader to their workflow.
08.08.13 |
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Tested’s Norman Chan:
At the point where your goal is to have a review out as soon as possible, you are absolutely compromising the quality of the review and your editorial credibility–those things are absolutely mutually exclusive. Those reviewers may as well camp out in a Best Buy and use a product on the shelf for a few hours and call it a review. The sad thing is, I don’t think we’re too far away from that.
Reviews serve to give purchasing advice to readers who want to know if something is worth their money. Tests, benchmarks, and the sharing of a reviewers’ personal use experience are the means to that end–but they are not the review. A review is a conclusive statement: buy this product or don’t, and why.
Completely agree with Norm here. As much as I enjoy The Verge overall for tech coverage, this notion that after only a day or 48 hours with a device you’re able to form a comprehensive, definitive review is ridiculous. I really felt this come through in the Verge recent reviews for the Nexus 7 and Chromecast. Both felt underdeveloped; I would have happily waited at least a few more days to get a more comprehensive take on the device.