monkeys on typewriters

Or: Piggybacking FTW.

Austin (Taco Widgets design ninja) recently wrote a piece entitled “A Guide to Blogging”, in which he describes 1) why you should blog and 2) how you should blog.

He also mentions me incognito as “software developer”. (At least, I think it’s me.) I dunno if I’m the one of the three who actually blogs — I’m not sure if this counts. But I digress.

It’s a great article and if you don’t blog, you should read it. I agree with everything he has to say. I simply wanted to add one little tip of my own on how to blog. This tip is brought to you by John Gruber of Daring Fireball:

That reader I write for is a second version of me. I’m writing for him. He’s interested in the exact same things I’m interested in; he reads the exact same websites I read. I want him to like this website so much that he reads it from the top to the bottom, and he reads everything. [transcript link]

That is the exact same spirit that you should write your blog in. It will help ensure that you’re writing the right blog and not pretending to be something you’re not. It’ll make your blog feel more authentic and, in the end, will result in better content.

Go.

I don’t want to write much. Here’s the scoop.

Prototype.js doesn’t have a properly working isNumber check. Here’s the correct one.

Object.isNumber = function(object)
{
  return (((typeof object) == 'number') && (!isNaN(object)));
}

Difference should be obvious.

(In retrospect, I guess it depends on what your definition of “number” is. In my opinion, when you’re programming, if you can’t add it to another number, it’s not a useful number.)

Knowledge reminds us that since our society has chosen to increment our year counter shortly after the winter solstice, we place arbitrary value on that date. The people and establishments of our society tend to use the date to reflect on the outgoing year and make plans for the new one. Reflections on the past year tend to focus on the bad stuff and hence we make plans for a better year the next time around. These plans are often expressed as “resolutions”, which usually constitute empty promises we make to ourselves or others to make us and/or them feel better. Over the first few days/weeks/months of the new year these resolutions are gradually forgotten or ignored by us.

Then, ~365.25 days later, we do it all over again.

Hopefully, in that time, we can actually improve ourselves and our society, even if we’re too focused on the negative to notice.

Happy new year. We’re looking forward to it too.

Yes, influenced by The Show with Ze Frank. Who isn’t?

A recent Twitter exchange.

Me: FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING PAPERCLIP!!
Austin: “Microsoft Office 2008 brings new clarity to your Office Assistant Experience”.
Me: “Microsoft Office 2008 brings”… —bloop— “It looks like you’re writing a letter!”

And now for something completely different.

An emergency meeting of the Taco Widgets Ninja Council has revealed that there may or may not be anything interesting that I may or may not be able to talk about

In other news, it’s been a very long time since I’ve written here. There’s a reason for that. See paragraph directly above.

Since I have yet to do the obligatory “What I Think of Leopard Before it Comes Out” post, I figured I’d focus on Apple’s big, giant feature list. (I also figured I’d do it after Leopard comes out because, 1) I’m lazy and 2) I have yet to get my grubby paws on it.) In my opinion, the features that will be most important in the end will be the features listed under these sections:

• Graphics & Media
• Instruments
• Networking
• Security
• System
• Unix
• Xcode 3

You’ll notice that these are categories that, even if an average user cared about them, they probably wouldn’t be able to understand what the new features are, exactly. All these categories focus on developers and enhancing their ability to make great applications.

The bottom line is this: Apple can spend only a finite amount of time working on its OS. If they spend a larger portion of that time working on improving developer tools, it will mean that more developers will commit time to creating more, better Mac applications that will increase the value of the platform well beyond what Apple could ever do on its own.

If you follow this line of thought through to conclusion, you may think that Apple should spend all of its time on developer tools, which would make some people (i.e. me) rather happy. However, the average Joe user wouldn’t understand why he doesn’t get any new features right away. And the reporters would all say that there’s “really nothing new”.

The key for Apple is to look for the hallowed middle ground between end user features and developer goodies.

So, my Taco Widgets partner-in-crime associate, Austin recently wrote a blog post outlining (1) why he doesn’t use WordPress, (2) why he prefers Movable Type, and (3) the proper spelling and usage of his new word, “unglamorous”*.

I use Word Press for this blog.

And I agree with everything Austin said. My experience of Movable Type comes from the Taco Widgets blog. I use Word Press here for two reasons. One: I created this blog before Movable Type went to 4.0. Two: I don’t personally think that Movable Type is so much better than Word Press that I need to take the time and switch over (not to mention lose all my old posts).

* Which surprisingly, is not marked as being spelled incorrectly, but is not in the Mac OS X dictionary either.

It’s always bugged me that you can’t insert objects or remove objects from arrays in Javascript. I’ve always pined for Objective-C’s insertObject:atIndex:. Which is why I wrote the equivalent.

Array.prototype.insertObjectAtIndex(object, index)
{
  return this.splice(index, 0, object);
}

Array.prototype.removeObjectAtIndex(index)
{
  return this.splice(index, 1);
}

(Sometimes, I wish I could just end posts without writing something witty.)

In Rainbows will be released as a digital download available only via [Radiohead]’s web site, Radiohead.com. There’s no label or distribution partner to cut into the band’s profits — but then there may not be any profits. Drop In Rainbows’ 15 songs into the on-line checkout basket and a question mark pops up where the price would normally be. Click it, and the prompt “It’s Up To You” appears. Click again and it refreshes with the words “It’s Really Up To You” — and really, it is. It’s the first major album whose price is determined by what individual consumers want to pay for it. And it’s perfectly acceptable to pay nothing at all.

Via Time.

I have to say, I really like this revenue model. The other think I like is the fact that it’s giving the record labels the finger. I hope they’ll tell us how it works out for them.

E is a just-out-of-beta text editor for Windows. (Also, it’s worth noting that a Linux version will be forthcoming.) Now, the astute reader would at this point be wondering why I would like it, since I am most decidedly a Mac user. Well, E is admittedly a Windows clone port version of the popular (and award winning) TextMate. A good one. And why is that a good thing for developers? I’m glad you asked.

Platform Independence. Now that E exists it means that a developer writing a platform independent piece of software (i.e. web app) can be platform independent when writing it. All of those little things you use to get the job done (syntax highlighting, hotkeys, TM bundles, etc.) will be exactly the same when you move from operating system to operating system. The mental adjustments you will have to make will be far smaller with E and TextMate.

Stronger Community. TextMate and E use the same formats for their “bundles”, which specify everything from the syntax highlighting to the tab triggers. These bundles are open source, and many have been contributed to TextMate since it was first created in 2004. With a Windows and soon a Linux version, there will be even more people contributing to make and improve bundles. Since the bundles are platform independent, a developer’s work on one platform will benefit those on all of them.

I actually like the approach of the E/TextMate pair better than the idea of porting apps from one platform to another. Since the resources of these smaller developers are limited, the end result will be that one of both versions are significantly deficient. (If you have hundreds of engineers to throw at the problem and your company’s name happens to be Apple, Adobe, or Microsoft, feel free to ignore this paragraph.) Plus, since you have two teams working on the collective project, you have twice the number of bright people working independently to better it.