DIVID Technology Riffraff & Whatnot

by Kevin Bassham, Web Interface Developer

Hot App Roundup

Image credit taragana Everyone does this, but I’m not seeing MY favorites out there, so here goes. You’ll have to fetch the details yourself, I’m lazy today. Oh ok, if you insist.

Isolator, Nocturne, Quicksilver, Pathfinder, Transmit, Coda, Adium, Fluid, Motion, iStat, Blitz, Times, Bodega, Writeroom, VMware, and I absolutely love Automator, but that’s a given. I also would mention the Webkit backend and all of unix, but that wouldn’t really be considered an app, but I digress. I’m sure I left several out, but these are the suprisingly enjoyable examples to remember.

Scrum is no silver bullet, but it works

Danube posted this on their blog, it’s got a bit of insight to clarify how scrum works for planning software projects.

http://blogs.danube.com/scrum-is-not-something-“it-does”

Live blogging from qik

Friend got an evo and showed me live 4g streaming on Qik, so I had to try it. This is from an original iPhone on wifi: http://qik.com/video/6959319

Browser CSS History vulnerability userscript

For some time now, script kiddies have been able to read history from browsers by reading visited links. http://wtikay.com/docs/details.html This is where I found the best background information. http://startpanic.com/ Can tell you if you are affected. So I whipped up a userscript for that, should work in Firefox, Safari, and Chrome.

Download the userscript here: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/77120

Updated Photoshop tips for CS5

Posted here.

Macbook Pro GPU Menubar Indicator Monitoring

Macbook Pros now have two graphics chips. One is used to conserve battery life, while the other is used automatically on demand. OS X detects this need per application, and monitoring if an app has triggered GPU access can be found in System Profiler, but there’s another way. Bjango’s iStat menus can monitor power on each GPU so you can tell when the discreet graphics are active at all times, Allowing you to quit whatever app (looking at you Tweetie) is keeping it active while you’re out and about.

http://bjango.com/apps/istatmenus/

Update: This is even better => gfxcardstatus menubar

Feedburner is Back

Feedburner is now (again) handling our subscriptions.

Chirp Conference in SF underway

Screen shot 2010-04-15 at 1.17.07 PM.png Hack day is in full swing after some interesting API announcements yesterday including “user streams” that allow location related twitter information to be run in realtime. Looks like fun.

Vintage Keyboards

Meet Peerless

photo 4.jpg This model is the FKB-4725 in an AT layout with no super keys, with the usual leds embedded in certain keys. Recently I gave it a DIN5 to USB conversion internally, because there’s no n-key rollover on this series. Mine was made sometime between 88 and 94 according to some clues inside the case. I didn’t take to the warm grey look so it’s got a few coats of drab and black. Not bad for $12. See below what’s replaced this.


Svelte AEKII

photo.jpg A friend gave me a 20 year old Apple Extended II in the box. This is a really nice keyboard. Much faster to type on, quieter but more satisfying mechanism and looks much better. Also, I don’t have to do any key remapping like I do with the AT keyboards. This is a keeper.


Latest: Datadesk

201003231644.jpg This one is an ergo model, probably the first of it’s kind, called the SmartBoard. Uses clicky white Alps switches, which are more expressive as my son’s similar Littlefingers keyboard. Seems to be a good layout with the exception of the += key.

Youtube popout

Found a nice site today called quietube.com that inspired me to write a short userscript for skipping all the content on youtube except for the main video. Uploaded to userscripts.org here.