A transmission from the deep south.
noun
ORIGIN from fan + boy. (via Marco Arment)
(Source: marco)
The screen mimics the sky, not the earth. It bombards the eye with light instead of waiting to repay the gift of vision. It is not simultaneously restful and lively, like a field full of flowers, or the face of a thinking human being, or a well-made typographic page. And we read the screen the way we read the sky: in quick sweeps, guessing at the weather from the changing shapes of clouds, of like astronomers, in magnified small bits, examining details.
— Robert Bringhurst, writing in The Elements of Typographic Style, which you’ve all read, right? (via Frank Chimero)
The Strongbad demo will make you a believer. This thing reads the actual SWF binary and creates native, browser based executions.
Explanation from Simon Willison:
Chris Smoak’s Smokescreen, “a Flash player written in JavaScript”, is an incredible piece of work. It runs entirely in the browser, reads in SWF binaries, unzips them (in native JS), extracts images and embedded audio and turns them in to base64-encoded data:uris, then stitches the vector graphics back together as animated SVG.
Incredible.
Nearly forgot: the 33rd America’s Cup starts tonight in Valencia and will be decided by next weekend. No New Zealand boats are competing due to the change in race format, but there are at least half a dozen kiwis competing across both the US and Swiss crews. Might well be a yawnfest, but have a read of Alinghi’s tech specs:
Its canting mast is the equivalent height of a 17-storey building and withstands compression comparable to 50 SUVs balanced on a foundation the size of a tennis ball.
Not to be outdone, BMW Oracle’s trimaran has an optional wing sail that is more than twice the area of a Boeing 747’s wing, the largest of its type ever fitted to a racing yacht.
Actually, what I really want is a modeless UI that lets me set any two of the three (shutter, aperture, ISO) and institute my own graceful degradation.
— Justin Ouellette makes a good case for better auto-ISO handling on Canon’s new 5D Mark II. And Marco Arment is pretty positive about his after upgrading from the XTi.
The overhauled Leica M8.2 digital rangefinder camera, where “important attributes such as discretion, intuitive work and robustness have been further improved”. (via Uncrate)
The National Identity Register will retain 49 pieces of information about every individual in the UK, all to be kept on one large central database and tied with a national ID card scheme to be rolled out in 2009.
— Tom Chapman is justifiably uneasy about the UK’s continued erosion of civil liberties. The irony of not even having kept track of how many CCTV cameras have been installed is hilarious.
MacBook x-rayed. (via Aja West)
A free resource dedicated to RAW-based camera image quality. Includes a useful comparison tool that ranks 50 current model digital cameras using metrics for colour depth, dynamic range and low-light ISO. (via Dan Benjamin)
You really feel the difference when typing on the on-screen keyboard. A firm press creates a sensation uncannily like pressing physical buttons.
— RIM’s Blackberry Storm doesn’t have the OS finesse of an iPhone, but its tactile feedback screen sounds like a winner, according to BusinessWeek’s Stephen H. Wildstrom. (via John Gruber)
Written and designed by Matthew Buchanan. Colophon. Please give credit. Email
