July 2011
1 post
Tumblr Engineering: Staircar: Redis-powered... →
Soon after I started at Tumblr all the way back in May, I was tasked with reworking our aging notifications system. A notification is the item that shows up in your dashboard, interleaved with posts, that tells you that another Tumblr blog reblogged or liked one of your posts or started following…
Our team just implemented a backend service in Redis as well (not nearly as large), and our...
November 2010
1 post
"Enhanced" Pat-Downs / Mass Sexual Assault
I usually stay away from soap boxes on here, but this is just too much:
The US Airline Pilots Association, in a letter to members, described an incident where a pilot was disabled emotionally by the pat-down search experience: One U.S. Airways pilot, after being selected for an enhanced pat-down, experienced a frisking that has left him unable to function as a crew member. The words this pilot...
June 2010
3 posts
When intuition and math probably look wrong
Riddle:
A couple has two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday. What is the probability that they have two boys?
The part about Tuesday does matter, and there is an answer.
The Cold War is definitely over
RT @whitehouse Welcome to @twitter President Medvedev! RT @KremlinRussia_E: Hello everyone! I’m on Twitter, and this is my first tweet.
— @BarackObama
May 2010
2 posts
“We are schooled in institutions that train us in the acquisition of facts and...”
– Eugene Peterson
Classic.
From an interview of Adobe Cofounder Chuck Geschke by All Things Digital’s John Paczkowski:
John Paczkowski: Why isn’t Flash an open standard?
Chuck Geschke: It is. What are you talking about?
JP: Flash is proprietary to Adobe. It’s not Open Source. Let me rephrase: Why isn’t Flash an open standard overseen by an open-standards body?
CG: As soon as Adobe acquired Macromedia, we...
April 2010
4 posts
What they don't teach you...
Another thing they don’t teach you in design school is what you get paid for…Mostly, designers get paid to negotiate the difficult terrain of individual egos, expectations, tastes, and aspirations of various individuals in an organization or corporation, against business needs, and constraints of the marketplace…Getting a large, diverse group of people to agree on a single new methodology for all...
It’s that simple.
Who, in his right mind, expects Steve Jobs to let Adobe (and other) cross-platform application development tools control his (I mean the iPhone OS) future? Cross-platform tools dangle the old “write once, run everywhere” promise. But, by being cross-platform, they don’t use, they erase “uncommon” features. To Apple, this is anathema as it wants apps developers to use, to promote its...
Time interview with Steve J.
After he leaves, I am finally left alone with an iPad. Finally I get some finger time. I peep under the slip holder, and there it is. When I switch it on, a little sigh escapes me as the screen lights up. Ten minutes later I am rolling on the floor, snarling and biting, trying to wrestle it from the hands of an Apple press representative.
That is not strictly true, but giving up the iPad felt a...
February 2010
5 posts
IE6 Funeral →
RIP, IE6. Don’t worry, I’ve already moved on…
ie6funeral.com
Hello Chrome...
I can’t believe I’m saying this. I switched to Google Chrome.
Over the past few years, I’ve stuck with the Safari bandwagon through several excellent Firefox releases, the Chrome beta, and a host of other browser options on the Mac. But finally last night, in a moment of shear frustration, I clicked the shiny Chrome logo that had been sitting lonely in my dock for several...
WatchLast night we had a three-way video chat with Joni’s dad in Vancouver, BC, and her brother, Jordan, in Prince George, BC, about 13hrs north of Vancouver. Of course we’re in Chattanooga.
iChat and the technology to do it have been around for awhile, but sometimes moments like that just blow my mind…
Tumblr?
Blogger just got rid of their FTP access feature, so I’m having to move off my server anyway. Guess I decided it was a good excuse to try Tumblr… something I’ve been wanting to do for awhile anyway.
So far so good! I’m loving the simplicity.