Topographic page layout – great bookmarklet for CSS development

‘Holy crap I didn’t know that was there’ feature of the day:

PBCOPY(1)                                                            PBCOPY(1)
NAME
       pbcopy, pbpaste - provide copying and pasting from command line
SYNOPSIS
       pbcopy [-help] [-pboard {general | ruler | find | font}]
       pbpaste  [-help]  [-pboard  {general  |  ruler | find | font}] [-Prefer
       {ascii | rtf | ps}]
DESCRIPTION
       pbcopy takes the standard input and places it in the  specified  paste-
       board.  If  no  pasteboard is specified, the general pasteboard will be
       used by default.  The input is placed in the pasteboard as  ASCII  data
       unless  it begins with the Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file header or
       the Rich Text Format (RTF) file header, in which case it is  placed  in
       the pasteboard as one of those data types.
       pbpaste removes the data from the pasteboard and writes it to the stan-
       dard output.  It normally looks first for ASCII data in the  pasteboard
       and  writes  that  to  the  standard output; if no ASCII data is in the
       pasteboard it looks for Encapsulated PostScript; if no EPS  if  present
       it  looks  for  Rich  Text.   If  none of those types is present in the
       pasteboard, pbpaste produces no output.

man pbcopy for more info

• LaunchBar 4 – in beta, worth switching back to from Quicksilver? Guess, I’ll try it out
• Omni Disksweeper – from the people that brought you OmniOutliner and OmniGraffle
• Disk Inventory X – OS X version of KDirStat (see WinDirStat for Windows) — now how about an OS X version of Filelight? (See also: Scanner)
• Zero Install: The Future of Linux on the Desktop? – interesting discussion
• SlimBatteryMonitor – Takes up to 70% less space than Apple’s monitor.
• Magic Number Machine – snazzy scientific calculator

• m4p2mp4
• Slurpie – A distributed peer-to-peer downloading protocol
• Open Content Network
• Chord – scalable, robust distributed systems using peer-to-peer ideas
• Infrastructure for Fault-resilient, Decentralized Location and Routing
• PDTP – a method of transferring files using peers to aid in distribution of content, similar to BitTorrent

Politics:

• White House Withholds Clinton-Era Papers From 9/11 Commission
• Rafe posts about missile defens
• All the President’s Suckers
• Prosecutors Are Said to Have Expanded Inquiry Into Leak of C.I.A. Officer’s Name (via)

John Gruber writes a really long piece poking fun at Eric Raymond and then talking about UI design. Now, I’m all for poking fun at ESR. He needs some ego deflation. But Gruber is so off his horse talking about UIs that it’s not even funny. UI design is certainly not “an art” that “requires innate ability.” One can argue about soft factors within UX and HCI, but usability can be tested empirically and distilled into principles. At the end of the day, good GUIs have to do more with adherence to principles and guidelines and a commitment to user testing than some sort of ‘genius’ sensitivity.

Also, while I wholeheartedly agree on having strong direction for successful UIs, the notion that this is somehow casually related (as implied) on ‘closed source’ software ‘produced by full-time professional engineers’ just doesn’t make any sense. Software engineers left alone would produce just as unusable preference panels regardless of whether it’s closed or open source (also, most OSS developers *are* professional engineers). The difference in interface quality lies with the commitment and focus of *usability* engineers and designers. And even with that effort you’re still not guaranteed anything.

Obviously I agree that good HCI is hard work. Along with documentation, it is often short-changed in typical OSS projects. I’d argue that most of these projects realize this, however they typically lack the expertise not only in the areas themselves, but also in even recruiting those w/ the proper skills to contribute.

Basically, good HCI has much more in common with development (standard practices, iteration, refactoring) than with making a movie (or some ridiculous notion of the genetically gifted ‘HCI savant’).

Sandra Hirsh (HP): Application of Usability Findings into Design

Ooh.

• newsmap – meant to post about this earlier; treemap of google news – frickin’ awesome; see also history flow; history tracking of objects, visualization
• memetic wake – recursion

Just blew away the last of my partitions (and my /etc/shadow and other files)and have cancelled my Rackshack server. Awful timing as I’m insanely busy, but the price to be paid for having principles. Here’s the letter I dropped:

I’ve been a loyal customer for the past two and a half years, but regretfully, will be cancelling my account.

My reason for doing so is not due to the level of service — on the contrary, I’ve been quite happy, having practically no network downtime and consistently good bandwidth — but rather, due to your unfortunate licensing deal w/ SCO.

Both for matters of principal and pragmatism (evidence has shown that businesses entering into a legal contracts w/ SCO have increased, not mitigated exposure), I’ve moved hosting providers (definitely inconvenient and something I would have rather not had to do).

Over the years I’ve made numerous recommendations to friends for using Rackshack hosting, but can no longer do so in good conscience.

(I’ve read Marsh’s letter of contrition, but perhaps that could actually be backed up by actions. Say by considering matching your contributions to SCO with a similar or great contribution to open source supporting organizations such as the OSDL, FSF, or EFF)