Archive for the ‘Computers’ Category
738
I think I am spending a bit too much time in my GReader. Why ? Well, I noticed it takes about an hour a day to get through everything. And that is a lot. The result of 738 feeds at the moment. So you can imagine how much work that is if I skip it a few days. Or say it’s summer holiday and I neglect the thing for a week or more… All hell brakes loose !
OK, around 400 of them are Flickr feeds, so that goes pretty fast, it’s just an image I will look at. But still… And most of the feeds that present articles I will not read anyway. And I don’t think it will be the end of the world if I miss those few that I do read.
Semper Phi…..Oops, no simplify I mean.
Instapaper
I do a lot of reading. I used to read a lot of books and magazines. I would just read about anything. And I still enjoy it. I can still read almost anything. But with a family, I don’t spend all my money on magazines and books any more. And throw in the internet in the equation, there is too much to read as well.
These days it’s getting even worse with loads of blogs and magazines that are publishing more and more on-line. So much to read and so little time. Then…. the word spread around about something called “Instapaper“. Curious as I usually am, I googled, clicked and created an account (the modern version of “veni, vidi, vici”). Not a lot too it, I thought. You can install a little button in your browser to “save an article for later”. No big deal since I was already doing that. I use a delicious account to tag interesting reading material, and would print it for later reading. So I kind of deleted the account again after a few days.
Fast forward a few months, and there is more and more noise coming from “Instapaper” (release of the iPad has to do with it). Lo-and-behold, I missed the iPhone app that comes with it!!!! So I created an account again, installed the free app on my iPhone and started reading.Perfect for me, I realised. Since now I don’t have to print articles anymore. Now my green conscious can sleep better. And after a week or so, I even upgraded to the full iPhone app so I make changes to font style and size, background color, …. All worth it.
It’s just getting worse. I found a site where you can find the latest and more popular articles on longform. Or look for #longreads on Twitter. Actually, that was a bad idea, because now you will not have time enough to live a normal live. You’ll just want to read. But I hope it was a good article.
Reading
A lot of talk about the iPad these days. If you haven’t noticed, then what planet are you living on ? And for some reason, the iPad is some kind of eBook reader. Or whatever you want to call it. The Kindle Killer. Or something like that. I dunno.
I have been giving it a lot of thought lately. And now I have even more time since they delayed the launch in Europe with 1 month. But when it comes to reading I actually like to have a book or magazine in my hands. I want to feel the paper, I want to smell it.
But if I look at this clip….. it makes me doubt. Cause that is a very interesting way of reading. And it is never going to be possible on paper…..
Computers
I was clicking around on Flickr the other day and came to something called mousePath. It’s a little app that you have running on your computer and it basically just tracks your mouse movements. So after a day at work it looked like this for me:
The big black dot in the middle is when the mouse didn’t move. Or you could call it a lunch-break as well. If you want to play with it, go and download them both for pc, and another one for Mac.
After having played around with it a few days, I realised it looked a bit like the stuff I was playing around with a year or 2 ago in Processing. For some reason I don’t remember I’ve put it aside. But now it’s been nagging the edges of my brain. So I downloaded it again and started playing:
Something like this is done quite fast. But the biggest problem usually when playing with shapes is to find some decent colors to work with !!! In comes this wonderful site: In the mod. Perfect. Now we are all set to play with it a bit more. Hopefully I have something better to show in the next couple of days.