Minh’s Notes

Time to slim down my “need to blog about but can’t find the time for” folder. Since there’s currently a whopping 171 bookmarks in it, I’ll start with some of the stuff since October:

• Finally, there’s a solution to the troubling trend of small logos: Make My Logo Bigger Cream.
• Wired Magazine details the pains Apple went through to make the iPhone happen, and the lasting effect it had on the phone industry.
• For the last three years, one man, Alexander Clauss, has pretty much single-handedly competed against Microsoft, Mozilla, and Apple. Although his Web browser, iCab, looked horrendous for the longest time and never gained even the market share that Opera had, it until this month supported decade-old Macs and modern Web standards at the same time. In case you’re wondering: yes, my computer has a copy installed.
• Those fortune cookies you get from any of the hundreds of Chinese buffets in Cincinnati? They’re Japanese.
• My first quarter out here at Stanford, I joined a few hundred freshmen descending on downtown San Francisco for the school’s annual Scavenger Hunt, essentially a denial of service attack on the city’s mass transit infrastructure. Caltrain, the regional commuter railroad, was resilient enough to stuff everyone onboard successfully (albeit unconfortably), but once we got downtown, the Muni bus system was a different story altogether. Apparently Muni’s semi-subway system isn’t any better.
• Today’s big corporations would be ashamed of what their Web presence amounted to back in 1996. My favorite is Nickelodeon’s site, where a pre–Web 2.0 vlogger is stuck in the back seat of the family car “with only her goldfish, Rover.” Yeah.

Thanks to John Gruber and Steve Baldwin.

Entry №1166, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 6:15 PM | Edit | Permalink
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• Fearing Crime, Japanese Wear the Hiding Place. Japan’s (unconvincing) answer to the TARDIS. [1]
• California. Microsoft’s (unconvincing) answer to Apple packaging.
• Videos of people using assistive technology. Unbelievable. [2]
• Reaganomics Finally Trickles Down To Area Man. Believable.
• Administrators Draft Guidelines For Responsible, Safe Hacking. It was inevitable, but I find it amazing that such a cool MIT tradition has lasted so long without much in the way of written rules. (Note that hacking means something completely different – and potentially more hazardous – at MIT.)
• Preemptive Memorial Honors Future Victims Of Imminent Dam Disaster. Speaking of the inevitable…
• Is the glass half empty or half full? As always, a Wikipedian took the time to enumerate the ways you can answer the question. The relativist’s take: Depends how you read the meniscus.

Entry №1157, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 4:00 PM | Edit | Permalink
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• Python: Myths about Indentation. Python tends to care how you indent your code, but as most any Python programmer could tell you, that fact doesn’t change squat. (Towards the bottom there’s even a handy tidbit or two for those of us taking CS 143.) [1]
• Explaining the Excel Bug. What looks like a comically random error in Excel is caused by a classic problem with storing floating point (non-integer) numbers in binary. To the Office team’s defense, you could write a book on rounding in JavaScript.
• Google Docs puts Google Users at Risk. Interesting – and, if left unpatched, remarkably powerful – security vulnerability in Google Documents.
• In Memory Of The Original MySpace.com. Back in the heyday of GeoCities, Netscape Communicator, and dialup, MySpace was a free file-sharing service. Their business model didn’t quite pan out, and we have Tom to thank for transforming the site into the ubiquitous wasteland (map) it is today.

Entry №1153, posted by Minh Nguyễn at 11:55 PM | Edit | Permalink
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