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Predicting Anything on the Internet

How to Flawlessly Predict Anything on the Internet

This is a modern update to a classic confidence game—find a risky scenario with limited possibilities, bet on every single combination, and then hide your failures. The result is that you look like you’re either psychic or a goddamned genius.

Variations of this scam have been used for centuries in finance, magic, and gambling.

Overcast? Not for Me.

App Review: Overcast, a New Podcast Player for iOS | Kirkville

Overcast Review – MacStories

Review: Overcast for iPhone, the newest contender for the iOS podcast app market | 9to5Mac

I'd heard about Overcast for quite a long time, and so instantly got it when I saw that it had been released.

The sync feature never worked to synchronize back to my iPhone, and the fact that I often listen to podcasts on my Mac, where iTunes syncs pretty darn well and offers far better controls than the web version of Overcast, made this a pretty quick "Hold-Wiggle-Wiggle-X" deal for me.

Bye bye Overcast.

Apple has a Blog!

And, not only that, but it's for a new language they've written… Welcome, Swift Blog!

WordPress 4.0 and This Blog

I'm behind, I know. I'll catch up some day.

I think that I've had this theme for a long time. I think that I should probably just choose a default theme, or perhaps buy one, and switch to it when WordPress 4.0 comes out.

This theme doesn't work with dynamic sidebars or, well, much of anything.

The Death of Indie iOS Development?

Read all about it here: Michael Tsai: The Indie Life.

Lightroom Never Fully Expires

Lightroom *never* fully expires | The DAM Book

Buried in the recent Adobe Creative Cloud rollout was a revolutionary change to the way Lightroom licensing functions. When the license expires, the program keeps on working.* This is a radical development. If you've been paying attention to the sturm und drang around the Creative Cloud licensing model (here, here, here, here) , this is a mind-blower.

First, the * part. Not all functions of Lightroom keep working. The sliders in the Develop module become inactive. Develop will still render the photo, but it won't let you run the sliders. (You could still use Quick Develop in Library to make further adjustments if you like.)

But other than Develop and Map, everything else works. You can make new catalogs, add new photos, add keywords, make collections, books, web galleries. prints, slideshows, exports, published copies… Basically, you have Lightroom LE. For free, if you want it.

That's nice.

iPhone 6 Glass?

6/10?

Making an iOS Keyboard in Swift

How to make a custom keyboard in iOS 8 using Swift.

Nifty. Bookmarked for later.

Looking forward to trying some new keyboards in iOS 8.

Yosemite’s Icons

Inspecting Yosemite's Icons

It's hard to talk about the dock icons without first mentioning the dock. The 2D dock is back, so let's take a moment to rejoice.

The shapes and sizes of the icons have been adjusted to provide a better visual rhythm on screen. I have not seen it published anywhere, but there appears to be a grid system that helps achieve this consistency. I'll get back to that, but first let's talk about the shapes.

Really, only Apple people care this much about icons (in general; obviously there are some Windows people who care about iconography).

Apple Maps Still Sucks

A post office was less than three miles away.

Maps Sucks

WTF is this? It's been how long? I tried "post office edinoboro" and "US Post office" and "USPS" and the results were either the same or worse.

Location Based iOS Security

Apple Invents Intelligent Location-Based Security for Home & CarPlay

I used to think I'd want this: a set of preferences that let me define regions in which my phone would, after being unlocked once, remain unlocked for the next hour, two hours, eight hours, until I left, whatever…

Then Apple went and invented TouchID, and I don't care about this anymore.

Not even a little.

After all, someone could easily take my phone while I'm still in that "safe spot" and snoop through or delete things. With TouchID, my phone basically acts as if it's unlocked anywhere without compromising on security.

iOS Permissions: Respecting the User

iOS Permissions: Respecting the User. I've seen more apps doing what this app does: ask you if you want to allow access to something using its OWN UI. If you say Yes, then you're given the "only-one-chance" iOS version.

Smart.

ApertureExporter Public Betas

Free Aperture to Lightroom Migration Tool is in Open Beta links to .Aperture Exporter, which may help if I decide to move to Lightroom eventually.

Unpopular (Social Chrome Plugin)

rentzsch.tumblr.com: Unpopular

Unpopular is my Chrome extension that helps dampen the social approval echo chamber. It hides indicators of social status on GitHub (followers, watchers, stars, forks) and Twitter (followers, retweets, favs).

I find Unpopular useful to focus on what I find interesting and important.

I hope you find it useful as well.

If you're incapable of not caring about these kinds of things, this is here to help you (and, I suppose, if you use Chrome). Neither of those particularly apply to me, though.

Like a Girl

I've been guilty of saying this in the past few years, despite having a daughter who might very well have kicked the shit out of the 10-year-old me at lots of things. And I'm aware of that… but it's just so baked in as "something you say" that I've said it without thinking.

So, this is my commitment to try to do a whole lot better at this. I don't remember the last time I said "Like a Girl," but if it was after the age of 12 or so, it was too recently.