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theootz

56 karma · joined September 5, 2010

http://www.theootz.com/about/
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theootz··on Google I/O 2013
If by some chance they decide to add more later, can find them with:

for (var a in ww.mode.modes) { var b = ww.mode.modes[a].pattern; var c = b != null ? b.toString(2) : ''; console.log(a, b, c.length > 0 ? Array(9 - c.length).join('0') + c : ''); }

theootz··on Why Every Office Should Switch To Walking Desks
But maybe it's better in terms of posture for your body, over all? You may burn the same number of calories, but you're up straight, and your joints and muscles are doing something. I'm sure that must be beneficial on its own
theootz··on As of today, App.net is a freemium service
If anyone has an extra invite, would love to have one please: ootz0rz+hn@gmail.com
theootz··on The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C
Eclipse+CDT provides some of the same features as well. Very useful :)

http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/

theootz··on The Unreasonable Effectiveness of C
C is (more specifically) a 3rd generation language, and when I was going through high school I remember it always being on the list of high level languages. It's more recently now I think, that we consider it otherwise...
theootz··on An amazing parallax effect
Some of the middle is clickable, if you can find it :/
theootz··on Do you want Instagram to sell your photos? Let them know: 1 (888) 966-9371
You have to delete your content, and then delete your account, BEFORE the policy comes into affect. With the way things are worded apparently, if done afterwards, they can still keep data on their servers even if your account is gone.
theootz··on Disney to Acquire Lucasfilm Ltd.
My thoughts exactly when hearing of the news, but I doubt it'd actually happen :( They'd probably have to get rights from Zahns publisher or Dark Horse or whomever owns it, I'd think. I don't think this purchase counts as an umbrella IP grab for all offshoots too?
theootz··on Mozilla UX: Save For Later (why bookmarks are broken and how to fix it)
Related to bookmarks...

I no longer use Firefox and have long since switched to Chrome, but in doing so my bookmarks have become effectively useless. What I mean by this is, in Firefox, one of the greatest (and probably underused) features was the ability to tag individual bookmarks instead of simply pushing them into a single folder.

This meant that, when I wanted to revisit a bookmark later on, I simply had to start typing in the tags (which I always made broad and diverse). By typing in more and more tags that I thought would likely relate to the article I wanted to reach, it would narrow it down. I never had to remember what the article was called, or where it was, or anything like that.

Now if this automatically happened while bookmarking? Some intelligent manner in which the page could be skimmed for keywords or something. Bookmarking and retrieval becomes much simpler...

Just wanted to throw that out as something to consider :)

(Now, one Chrome, I usually just leave tabs open or try to organize into folders and fail miserably :/ )

theootz··on How to Crack the Toughest Coding Interviews
Sorry, but what's CLR?
theootz··on Lessons for uncultured web developers
I personally love using the ISO format as well.

As for the iPhone vs Android thing, the graph used by OP is a bit misleading (it's restricted to AUS only). I'd take a look at these ones instead: http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-201108-... or http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_os-ww-monthly-201108-20120... for worldwide.

I guess he's trying to highlight how it's different in different places around the world though.

theootz··on Microsoft.com New Design Preview
Not true: http://www.mono-project.com
theootz··on QBasic's Gorillas in coffescript
Very cool to see that this awesome game was this first foray into programming for others, as it was for me :)
theootz··on Git a Fork in My Syllabus, It’s Done
Why not just make it a wiki instead? Most wiki's have version control, but also offer a lot more formatting options and the like. Plus better linking, easier to edit (imo), less up-front technical knowledge, etc...
theootz··on Light Table funding successful, including Python support (over $300k raised)
I always loved the amount of power in java IDEs (Eclipse, for me) for refactoring code...made things so much easier.
theootz··on Light Table funding successful, including Python support (over $300k raised)
And what's wrong with Python?
theootz··on 20 lines of code that beat A/B testing every time
There's no point in continuing to run A/B testing indefinitely once a winner has been chosen, and like-wise there is no point in running this indefinitely either.

Sure the OP advocates "set and forget", but it seems simply silly to do this indefinitely. Obviously, after a while, you're going to want to check in on the results and prune out low performers.

Is that not the entire point of all these different testing methodologies to begin with?

Also, if you were to follow the same "set and forget" strategy with A/B, you'd have a 50% chance of showing the 0% CR design, where-as it's only 10% with this method.

Seems like it wins out in both cases to me.

theootz··on Front End Performance Case Study: GitHub
Would have been interesting to see if the quotes made an impact or not, as well. I can't see it making that much of a difference...
theootz··on CSS Sprites Revisited
That's glorious :o I've only recently begun messing around with SVGs, but it seems the more I use them, the more amazing they become.

That said, I really do wish there was better browser support for them. Having to embed them as objects instead of images, for example, is a tad bit lame :/ And then you're still left with anything before IE9 (I think?) unable to see them. On the mobile-end, the same goes with anything before Android 3... Or weird buggy behaviour when you're applying things like hover effects to parts of the image, etc...

It's definitely promising though

theootz··on GMail: designer arrogance and the cult of minimalism
Pretty horrible list IMO...

1) Try a different theme, it may help if it really affects you that much. But this is the only one I somewhat agree with as being possibly an issue; but nothing I really thought of when first looking at the new UI

2) The marker is more than far enough away to make it easy to scan through IMO. This feels far too subjective to just throw out and be like "yea this is definitely a bad change" without doing some testing first. Either way, you can disable this from settings. (Disable snippets iirc?)

3) This too can be disabled: go to settings and change it to text labels instead of graphical labels?

As much as I used to hate the new look too, I think it's improved enough since its first iteration to get out of the way and let me do my thing. Though, I still REALLY hate the fact that you can't click on the "Google" logo at the top left to go back to the main page for whatever application you happen to be at. I have no idea why they would remove that...

theootz··on Mathematics of Eternity Prove The Universe Must Have Had A Beginning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclic_model edit and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_quantum_cosmology
theootz··on Mac OS X 10.8 restricted to App Store, signed apps by default
Because Apple is the "Gatekeeper" of all software on the platform. They have full control over what goes in the app store, and what doesn't. No longer will you be able to go to a website and download some no-name-joe's software. It HAS to be on the app store. That's the direction it's going in. It has nothing to do with the cloud, being able to redownload your software, view source code, etc... It's about having the choice of what software you can and can't use being controlled by them.
theootz··on We need more native code
You are, by far, in the minority of users. It doesn't make sense for dev's to extend that "cross platform" capability to use cases such as yours in most instances.
theootz··on Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb
Freaking semicolons... messing about with everything, everywhere, these days.

I think the first quote is meant to deter from developing an over-inflated ego, and the 2nd is just from a great paragraph :)

That said, I always love seeing this post pop up around the internet.

theootz··on Facebook uses bgsound to see if you have opened an email
This is pretty standard practice really... many e-mails will have a "tracking pixel" or similar. Facebook has this in their e-mails too: <img src="https://www.facebook.com/email_open_log_pic.php?mid= =blah" style="border:0;width:1px;height:1px;" />
theootz··on Don't Store Passwords, Generate Them When Needed
I think the idea is that you remember a pass phrase, and the encryption type...at which point the program spits out a large hash string. The hash string gets used as your password wherever you need it, but all you need to remember is the pass phrase.
theootz··on The PlayStation Phone
Sony decided a while back to drop memory sticks and use only SD cards moving forward. Even the X10 had an SD card slot. It might have been around the time they announced the X10 now that I think about it, not sure...
theootz··on Ask HN: Teaching programming to a 10 year old, and I'm kind of lost
I personally started by learning basic when I was about 9 or 10 years old...thing that got me interested was an open source game I used to play a lot. I accidentally stumbled onto the knowledge that changing the voodoo magic text at the beginning before launching the game (it was written in QBasic i think) managed to change things around in the game itself. If they like games, that could be a good way to start? It gives early rewards, as they're modifying something that already exists. From there I started getting ideas of things I wanted to make myself...and just experimenting here and there.