Jamie creates animated GIFs by selectively animating a portion of a photograph. These are wonderful and a little creepy.

‘Easy scheduling.’ Create a poll, invite participants, and everyone agrees on the times they can meet. Brilliant. Via Merlin Mann in the 'Back to Work' podcast.

“20-plus proposed rules for how to give away music creatively and communally.” This is great!

“The gallowglass were an elite class of mercenary warrior who came from Norse-Gaelic clans in the Hebrides and Highlands of Scotland between the mid 13th century and late 16th century.” “They were the mainstay of Scottish and Irish warfare before the advent of gunpowder, and depended upon seasonal service with Irish chieftains. A military leader would often choose a gallowglass to serve as his personal aide and bodyguard because, as a foreigner, the gallowglass would be less subject to local feuds and influences.”

“This Website was formed to promote the interests of all MacVicars (MacVicar, Macquaker, M'Vicar, M'Yvicare, Makvicar, M'Weckare, M'Wicare, McViccar, Vicarii, McWiccar, Makuecar, Makfikar, Makwicr, McVicker, McVicar, Vicar, M'Ayn Rawych, V'Gewycar and other fine families) who are descended from our progenitor, Mac a' Bhiocair. It is our intent to provide you with a history of our family, its origin, its struggles, and a site that offers you an opportunity to participate with suggestions, additions, and support.”

“Complain about the way other people make software by making software.” … “Worse is when the people doing the complaining also make software or web sites or iPhone applications themselves. As visible leaders of the web, I think there are a lot of folks who could do a favor to younger, less experienced people by setting an example of critiquing to raise up rather than critiquing to tear down.”

“The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness.”

By Gina Trapani, head of ThinkUp. “What's not clear is how people who don't code contribute their skills and expertise to making OSS software. Because it's not clear, they don't, and the software looks and feels like it was designed by engineers, for engineers—because it was.”

Mike Monteiro, the head of Mule design, explains the importance of being confident, getting paid, and having contracts and a lawyer. An excellent presentation.

“Suffice it to say that Whois masking not only doesn't provide any real benefits to the domain holder but actually adds an unacceptable amount of risk.”

"A great Mac image editor built for humans." I would like to buy this at some point. Alternative to Photoshop.

Some actually useful stuff in here.

‘Sustainable, Compassionate, Resilient Communities’ “Kanu Hawaii is a tax-exempt, nonprofit corporation that is overseen by a volunteer board of directors and administered by a small staff. In 2005, the founders of Kanu Hawaii asked each other three questions: 1. What do we love about Hawaii? Our connection to place, the strength of our communities, our diverse traditions, our island values. 2. What concerns us about the future? Shrinking opportunities, environmental degradation, the loss of communities, inequality, apathy, greed, intolerance… in Hawaii and throughout the world. 3. What can we do about it? This question had no easy answer. How do you build a movement when so many of us feel powerless in the face of huge problems? How do you demand change without compromising our island values?”

Good oral history. This quote is a good takeaway: "I think the thing I've really learned from James is a) patience, b) only work with people you love, and c) be very, very, very, very stubborn about everything. Because when you're capable and able to say no to stuff, when you're capable of writing your own story and being very adamant about the way that you're portrayed or the way that your records are made, people respond to it."

“Like a lot of music critics, I feel a special kinship with you, because we are you. Or, rather, you are a better, smarter version of us. The relationship music critics have with you is similar to what film critics have with Quentin Tarantino, who, like you, started out as a know-it-all fan who, unlike most critics, took all the trivial, microscopic specificities he absorbed from every corner of his fan experience and found a way to create something new with it. But even if you guys are big-shot artists now, you’re also still critics at heart; you did it like Godard, critiquing art by making better art. Any time you’d take pains to find just the right detail to make a track really snap—a crisp snare, a squiggly synth, a warmly bouncing bassline—you were both nodding to the records you felt did it correctly, while also making an argument against the relatively chilly, slapdash way music is made in the point-and-click ProTools era. They say writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but your records actually were architecture, built from the spare parts of closely observed sounds you deconstructed and recontextualized from countless songs in your impeccably curated collection.”

Where my ancestor is thought to have come from. “There are two Dalriadas: that of northwest Ireland, and that of western Scotland.”

“Open source anti-theft solution for Mac, PCs & Phones.” I use hiddenapp.com, but this looks good. Another option is http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/mac/.

“Two quick points. Not every idea is going to work. Know that going in. Ideas tend to follow the path of least resistance and more often than not that path is the one where you find yourself talking an idea to death, by getting hung up on the ‘what ifs.’ So you need to actively push ideas out and embrace failure. Fail spectacularly whenever possible. “Secondly, every single person I have ever met or corresponded with about leaving the work-for-hire world and trying to create something of their own, something that they really care about, says exactly the same thing. Win, lose or draw they always express the same thought and most of the time they say it in exactly these words. “What they say is, ‘I should have done this sooner.’”

I finally found out what these things are that look like little flat footballs made of dust laying around my house. Moth larvae cases!

Combine this small, easily customizable AppleScript with a keyboard shortcut utility (like FastScripts) to quickly toggle an application forward and back. I use this for Terminal and TaskPaper.

Honolulu expat Alex Hungtai put up this mix a little while ago. Good collection of gospel, old rock-n-roll, funk, some hip-hop and jazz. Fi is very lo. A great glimpse into the inspiration behind the new Dirty Beaches album.

“Using a database of vacant real estate in a given city and a platform for collecting propositions or pitches, we allow entrepreneurs a marketplace of ideas that is able to match their own predilections and interests with ‘please in my back yard’ [rather than NIMBY] demand. Individuals vote on the future land use and spatial assets that they want to see in their own city and their own backyard. If that voting is done with the wallet, similar to Kickstarter, would it be enough to usefully bootstrap entrepreneurs?”

“Select a group and enter your preferred prefix for the shortcuts assigned to each snippet. The resulting url may be downloaded as a custom .textexpander file, or used with TextExpander’s ‘Install from URL’ feature. Using the latter will provide automatic updates if the group is added to or changed, custom prefixes are preserved.”

Begins with a reading of Paul Ford's WWIC piece.

Tim Quirk tells the story of the Walkman, and how it’s “changed the way we listen, and what we listen to.”

Nitsuh Abebe on Odd Future's energy, and their unfortunately exclusionary lyrics.

My friends' band interviewed by Sabrina Velazquez about their upcoming recording. I am excited to hear that recording.

They featured my cameramail thing from, like, five years ago!

What a beautiful instrument.

“And playing live is a different process to DJing, which is more about getting on a train, arriving, meeting some guy you don't really know and going to a place you don't really know. Actually playing is the best bit because you get to connect with people for the first time in 24 hours. Parts of it are really good, but it's just a lot of time on your own. You can reflect. I write lyrics in those moments when I haven't got anything else to do. Those are probably just the moments when I start being a bit, you know, sad [he smiles].”