16 Sep 2016

Kindle 3 in Sketch

Kindle 3 in Sketch

I have an old Kindle 3. It’s almost exactly six years old, in fact: I reviewed it here in October 2010, a month after I bought it. It’s old and tatty and I don’t use it any more, but I don’t want to throw it away. As well as my usual clinging to hardware that’s not actually dead, […]

19 Jun 2011

Linen Backdrop

Here are some linen-textured backgrounds, with a vignette added, that I think work pretty nicely as a backdrop. The size/aspect ratio here (1920x1080) works well on both my iMac and MacBook Air — let me know if you’d like me to generate a different size. (All created with Pixelmator, mostly because it has an extra random noise […]

11 Apr 2009

Tweetpad

I introduce the tweetpad, a paper-based Twitter interface, for those of us who occasionally take a break from technology, but who still want to record 140-character fragments of their day. Features: Pocket size 140 characters, with emergency overflow line No batteries required Mac‑, Windows- and Linux-compatible Helvetica Neue Soon to be available in a Java version, […]

7 Feb 2009

Why Adobe AIR Apps Suck, Just Like Java Apps

Okay, don’t get me wrong. I use Adobe AIR applications, notably the almost-excellent TweetDeck (more of the “almost” in a second.) I also use Java applications. But I only use them when there’s no native alternative that does what I want. The reason is mostly in the user interface. The minor irritations that come with non-native […]

5 Dec 2007

Screencast: Creating an iTunes Music Visualizer in Quartz Composer

I’ve put together a basic screencast tutorial which introduces you to Apple’s Quartz Composer, the graphical programming environment which ships with OS X. Quartz Composer is a graphics generator, capable of drawing 3D graphics, animations, and all sorts of Good Stuff. And you make it work just by dragging little boxes about and connecting them […]