Ryan Tomayko: The Thing About Git

The thing about Git is that it’s oddly liberal with how and when you use it. Version control systems have traditionally required a lot of up-front planning followed by constant interaction to get changes to the right place at the right time and in the right order. And woe unto thee if a rule is broken somewhere along the way, or you change your mind about something, or you just want to fix this one thing real quick before having to commit all the other crap in your working copy.

Git is quite different in this regard. You can work on five separate logical changes in your working copy – without interacting with the VCS at all – and then build up a series of commits in one fell swoop. Or, you can take the opposite extreme and commit really frequently and mindlessly, returning later to rearrange commits, annotate log messages, squash commits together, tease them apart, or rip stuff out completely. It’s up to you, really. Git doesn’t”

Absolut Vodka ad released in Mexico has me feeling all defensive, for honestly no good reason.

(Via strange maps.)

This is just terrific, The Mike Wallace Interview from the late 50s are online.

There are 65 interviews in the Ransom Center’s collection. Five are on audio tape, and the others are kinescopes, 16mm recordings of the television programs made by filming the picture from a video monitor. These 16mm films were transferred to video and, along with the audio tapes, were digitized. The interviews were then transcribed and were both embedded in the video files in the form of subtitles and included on the website as text files.

Gotta agree with Mr. Gruber about Firefox 3 vs. Safari 3. Safari 3 just feels better than even the latest Firefox 3 beta. And it’s really damn fast.

The whole idea that a movie should be seen only once is an extension of our traditional conception of the film as an ephemeral entertainment rather than as a visual work of art. We don’t believe that we should hear a great piece of music only once, or see a great painting once, or even read a great book just once.

Movie City Indie: Throwing bones in the air as 2001 turns 40:

Gmail is just so damn good that I haven’t used a desktop email client in years. Desktop apps are always better than their web-based counterparts. Gmail is the exception. I can think of no other case where a web-based version of an app is better than a good desktop app. Google Docs and Spreadsheets vs Pages and Numbers? Nope. Mindomo, Mindmeister, etc. vs MindManager. Not even close. Photoshop Express vs Photoshop Elements? Nuh uh. The convenience of having stuff in the cloud is not enough to compensate for the user experience sacrifices I have to make.

The recent release of Outspring Mail made me want to try a desktop mail client again. Unfortunately, Outspring wasn’t enough to convince me. It’s a neat idea, but seemed buggy and was missing some pretty basic things I use regularly, like selecting all messages and marking them as read. Outspring made me do it one message at a time, then crashed.

Of course by looking at Outspring I was reminded of Mail.app. I stopped using Mail.app primarily because of Gmail’s search speed and conversation view. Just for fun, I fired it up again to see how things were going with the new (Leopard) version. I tend to go all-in when trying stuff, so I set it up to POP mail from my Gmail account and archive Gmail’s version. IMAP is great, but I honestly only check mail from my laptop so IMAP isn’t that important in real life for me.

The next thing I did was install MailTags and Mail Act-On. Both are terrifically useful for cranking through and organizing lots of email. I have actions and tags and smart folders all set up to help with my workflow. It’s nice. Mail has a lot of things going for it. Integration with iCal and Address Book. Drag-n-drop attachments, etc.

So after a week, where are we? As of right now, I’m sticking with Mail. Search using Leopard’s Spotlight is very fast, so my biggest complaint about the last version is moot. MailTags makes organizing really nice, without having to spend much time messing with folders and moving stuff around. I also get the benefit of having a local, offline copy of all my messages, just in case Evil Happens.

I still miss Gmail’s conversations view, but that I can live with.

Sean Reid offers up my favorite argument so far in the does-your-camera-matter debate.

Its true that the tail shouldn’t wag the dog. It’s true that photographers and pictures are more important than cameras and lenses. It’s true that hours spent studying photographs and paintings themselves will often be far more valuable to a photographer than hours spent worrying over what equipment to buy next.  Its true that many have been conned by decades of advertising into believing that becoming a good photographer is mostly a matter of buying the ‘best’ cameras and lenses. It’s true that there is no such thing as a ‘best’ camera or a ‘best’ lens for all photographers. Its true that we generally do not need the newest and most expensive cameras and lenses to make strong pictures. That’s all true.

But its not true that cameras and lenses do not matter. There is no best camera and no best lens, globally, but there may well be a combination of camera and lens that best suits a specific photographer for a specific set of work. It might be a combination that costs forty dollars or forty-thousand but whatever it is, it can play an important role in the creation and look of a given photographers’ work.”

FriendFeed has all the social network aggregation momentum right now, and it’s a pretty sweet service. Here’s my quick and dirty opinion on FriendFeed vs Socialthing!

Like about FriendFeed: Tons of services are available to connect to. Has an API available.

Don’t like about FriendFeed: I have to add each “friend” individually, most of them imaginary. And just look at it…

Socialthing! is still in private beta, but works much more to my liking.

Like about Socialthing! I add services instead of people, and everyone shows up automatically. And just look at it…

Don’t like about Socialthing!: Fewer available services (but all the ones that matter to me.) Beta is too private. They’ve reduced the number of invites due to (I assume) traffic pains and so I can’t share the love as much as I’d like.

My vote: Socialthing! Now they just need to pull in more services and go public beta on us so everyone can compare the two services themselves.

Subversion for Designers.

Nice article, but will need to be rewritten soon to take into account the Git onslaught.

I recently upgraded from the original 2 GHz Core Duo MacBook Pro with 2 GB of RAM and a 100GB 5200 RPM hard drive to a new 2.5 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4 GB RAM and a 200GB 7200 RPM drive.

The machine looks nearly identical, but it’s not identical. It’s faster. Much faster. The screen is bright and beautiful and just “snaps” to life. Did I mention that it’s faster? I know it’s wrong to love hardware but dammit I love this machine!

I just wanted to tell someone about it.