http://ldopa.net in perpetual beta Tue, 20 May 2008 23:53:45 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en How much of this scathing indictment of the "Millennial Generation" is fair, and how much is just standard Gen X ranting/whining? I myself am quite weary of the lame-ass business features that insist that Facebook applications, Twitter updates and SMS messaging are going to be OMG 100% MANDATORY in order ... http://ldopa.net/2008/05/20/cool-wand/ My truly shitty classroomThere's a deep and excellent essay here by Ivan Krstić, recently displaced of the OLPC project. Man, we all had such high hopes for this P.O.S., but it looks like Negroponte's ego and gung-ho adherence to the flimsy tenets and dogma of Constructionist thought have conspired to ... http://ldopa.net/2008/05/18/failures-of-constructivism/ So I've got a new site up. Right now the database has 75 entries that attempt to describe 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain, but with your help, I bet we can bring it to 78 or 79. Comments and suggestions are, as always, warmly welcomed. ~Jeff http://ldopa.net/2008/05/15/john-mccain-kept-your-wiffle-ball/ I went looking at car stereo "head units" this weekend, and while there are some that have the feature set I'm looking for (CD playback, mp3/aac file playback via CD-R or USB, iPod integration, Bluetooth integration (Alpine in particular seem like they are doing the feature set right, at least)), ... http://ldopa.net/2008/05/11/the-next-market-id-like-to-see-apple-dominate-after-they-are-done-dominating-the-cell-phone-industry/ So I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and since I'm currently ProCrastinating making breakfast (the Crastinating that Pros use™!), let me waste your time for a second: I bought an OLPC laptop off a local 9-year-old kid about three months ago. I found it for sale on ... http://ldopa.net/2008/04/27/the-olpc-is-a-pile-of-crap/ Steve Jobs' Waking Nightmare of Complete and Total Inelegance So I hit up Newegg.com and got my ~$200 worth of parts together -- the nifty Shuttle KPC case, 2 GB RAM, and a 1.8 GHz Intel Core Duo chip (I already had a 250 GB IDE hard drive and Netgear WPN311 ... http://ldopa.net/2008/04/27/building-a-hackintosh/ #5: Top 5 lists #4: Top 50 lists #3: Top 3 lists #2: Top 20 lists #1: Top 10 lists http://ldopa.net/2008/04/14/top-5-ploys-to-get-people-to-your-website/ Can someone explain this to me? When you're on the main page of Google, at the top, there's this navigational menu: ...but when you go into Gmail or any of the other "Google Apps," it's: And don't even get me started about the "More" dropdown -- from the main page, it looks ... http://ldopa.net/2008/03/23/googles-main-nav-bar-is-messed-up/ Does this sound familiar to you? You connect your iPod or iPhone to iTunes in Mac OS X to sync, but because iTunes' built-in podcast update schedule is so oddly sparse, you find you have to hit "Refresh" on the podcast tab to actually check for new podcasts, then after ... http://ldopa.net/2008/03/22/fix-the-podcast-update-schedule-in-itunes/ I know one of the most horrific moments of my childhood was when I was informed that no matter how often I bathed, and no matter how hard I cleaned, there would be dust mites all over myself and everything I held dear. They are, apparently, all over everything. Quite ... http://ldopa.net/2008/03/22/dust-mites/ Thanks to Greg Saulmon, Andrew Shellfo and Caleb Lyons for making last week's presentation at UMass Amherst go smoothly. The discussion afterwards was genuinely a lot of fun. If anyone's interested, a PDF of my part of the presentation is available here, and a t-shirt replete with Internetologist John Gabriel's most ... http://ldopa.net/2008/03/09/how-to-build-a-vast-internet-empire-in-7-easy-steps/ So recently, in a catastrophic meta-failure of Not Getting Things Done, I resigned myself to accept the fact I may never ever actually read through the copy of "Getting Things Done" that have had sitting on my nightstand for almost a year, and instead (at my girlfriend's wise suggestion), just ... http://ldopa.net/2008/02/27/the-three-item-sticky-note/ I always suspected Carl Orff had hid some meaningful English false cognates in that Latin; and now, proof. Make sure you crank up your speakers, especially if you are at work. Side note: it's been a while since two ldopans posted in one day. Hooray! http://ldopa.net/2008/02/20/bring-more-tuna/ Found via Veerle: The Melancholytron Photoshop filter. Pretty cool stuff, like a free lomo camera, all the better to melancholy up (down?) your Facebook photos. ~Jeff http://ldopa.net/2008/02/20/melancholytron/ SCREEN: FADE FROM BLACK MUSIC: dramatic string section V/O: "The Oceanic 6... are off the island." FLASH: Picture of island from "Lost" V/O: "Faced with a challenge... they never expected." FLASH: Downtown Soho loft apartment, exterior shot V/O (wacky voice): "Living together, in a downtown New York apartment!" MUSIC: "I'll Be There For You (Theme from 'Friends')" FLASH: ... http://ldopa.net/2008/02/16/loft/