This is a small, public announcement. Please don't spread this around too much, but I want to announce that HTML5 Fridgemagnets has reached the alpha stage. The client works well-- it detects poems more or less correctly, the shuffle button works, and the music works-- and yes, there's a mute button ( Read more... )

So, I'm in the middle of writing a supposed action/adventure SF lesbian romance mash-up thing with a couple of fairly good love scenes and one really nice "coming out" scene that makes me happy. Since I have real trouble with typos, I side-loaded the current WIP onto my Nooks (yes, I own two of them, a pocket-sized one for my phone and a full- ( Read more... )

I rarely regret not spending money. When I went to finally upgrade my phone, I blanched at the MSRP of an unlocked Galaxy Nexus GSM, which at $659 was a lot of cash. Especially since my provider, AT&T, was basically offering me the Galaxy SII (not the "Note" or "S+", mind you) for basically nothing more than a promise to stay with them for ( Read more... )

Looking through a raft of timers, clocks, stopwatches and the like for the Android, I've come to realize that many of the great Human Interface Design lessons of the early 90s, of the original Blackberries and Palms, have been sacrificed to the "ooh, shiny!" of AMOLED screens and better CPUs. The Android "anything goes" guidelines have resulted in ( Read more... )

All that wittering on about poems and collisions recently makes more sense when you gaze upon my most recent work:

Fridge MagnetsIt's very much a work in progress. I've been working on it on and off for a few weeks. I think it's got about 40 hours of work into it. This is only half the battle (the other half involves red lasers and blue lasers ( Read more... )

A poem is: A collection of words all of which are in collision with each other.When a word is moved:If it belonged to the poem, we must decide if it has left the poem.If it does not belong to the poem, we must decide if it has joined the poem.When a word leaves a poem:We must decide if that which remains is still a poem.When the last two words of a ( Read more... )

Yes, it's true: when you release early, release often, your users tell you what they need.

Here's the saddest thing: I've installed Internet Explorer 8 on my Linux Laptop. It works great, and using only a 1024x768 subdisplay has been really useful. Here's what's new:

• IE8+ Compatibility. Sadly, to acheive this, I had to add 60KB (really... and ( Read more... )

I have much improve Right Now! It has a new helpful startup feature, the hover-overs that lead to actions now have the action indicator cursor for better affordance, and I've given it a new home:

rightnow.elfsternberg.com

Quick, what web page do you look at most often in your day-to-day life? Not the one you spend the most time on-- that's probably Facebook or Twitter or something like that. It's the page you see on a regular basis but pay very little attention to ( Read more... )

As of today, the "create a RESTful API for the human genome with proper hypermedia controls" project took its first baby step:

lynx -dump http://localhost:8000/ensembl/human/symbol/BRCA2Read more... )