Say what you will about the aesthetic (I think it's nifty, by the way) or the scroll-jacking (I'm less sympathetic here), the storytelling through light boxes that include video, still images and animated GIFs are very effective.
Tools like Workflow, or even Apple's Live Photos feature, there are cheap ways to add a depth to the stories we're all trying to tell. Perhaps, I ought to experiment a little more. There's a thought.
Oh, my. It appears my childhood is calling… be still my beating heart.
BuzzFeed is a fascinating company, whose dedication to the mobile landscape has most laughing it away. However, the truth appears to be that those listicles the press have been lampooning are as close to magic as any media company will likely find.
As I am reconfiguring my online properties, encryption has come high on my list of priorities. If you're considering flipping the same switch and running Nginx on a Digital Ocean VPS (although, this will work on other servers), follow on for the guide.
Jordan Merrick put together a static website generator, like Jekyll, using Workflow.app for the heavy lifting and Coda for iOS for the HTML and styling: an impressive feat. I am excited to play around with this.
Super hawt... If you're into that sort of thing. You know, I'm, like for a friend, from Canada. Oh you know, like Hank or Mitch. From Canada...
Through university, my encounters with Wittgenstein had only come from the angle he advised against: theoretical and abstract. I can only imagine what little I understood from reading the Philosophical Investigations might have stood on firmer ground if explained to me as a child. (Perhaps, that's not a revelation and could should be generalized more broadly.)
This site was horribly broken only moments ago and, by all accounts, had been for some time. How long? I'm not entirely sure to be honest. When you selected a permanent link, or request a page directly, you were shown the homepage. That's pretty major. I figured it out, so no big deal.
I began by looking through my javascript libraries, then Typekit, next my CDN. Cloudflare seemed like the place to start, with all of the minification and other magic that takes place in the background. After a few minutes perusing, I had a thought.
I don't keep stats on this website (I can't imagine what I'd do with that information) but I am using CloudFlare, which does log some of your information. Turns out that this site serves an infinitesimally small number of people, while machines (“robuts” in ’50s parlance) eat the lion's share of my bandwidth. No real surprise there.
What got me thinking was the growing number of visits by bots. I began to wonder: what possible value does this little website provide for my most voracious visitors? Those hot, number-crunching CPU's that enjoy my website so much that they turn up hundreds of times a day. I'd like to think that beyond the search queries their little algorithms handle, they enjoy their visits to my door. Perhaps, in aggregate, the metadata (or was that meta-metadata?) surrounding my website is coalescing into something more tangible and solid, like the rings of Saturn forming out of bits of dust and debris.
Maybe… just maybe, we could talk about it sometime. You know, catch up after a hard day's slog. Me, from meatspace, and you (can I refer to you in the singular?) from the space between the ones and zeros and coils of fiber optic cabling.
Either that, or you could just let me know when you notice that something is broken—a notification or an email would do.
Just think about it, okay?
This is going to be huge. Check out the shopping demo and think about how awkward it is to buy pants with other people around... really think about it.
Excuse me while I update everything and back up my back-ups...
This little tidbit just saved me a load of aggravation this evening. Archiving for posterity.
I've had an iPad Pro for a hot minute and I have been worried that I might fall into what I call the Ryan Lee Taylor Trap, neé buyer's remorse. So far, I've been lucky. My time with the device has been nothing but positive. That said, discerning what exactly has made this a positive experience hasn't been clear.
Earlier today, I was at a local coffee joint with my partner. We were discussing a future hobby-project, when I pulled out the iPad Pro to make a quick note. While I was filling out our mood board (using an app called Curate), I switched over to Apple's Notes app to sketch an idea that we were having trouble putting into words. Then, it hit me.
Sharing this dinner-tray sized device between us, while seamlessly sketching and taking notes, was a fundamental change from how I previously used my iPad Air, let alone a 'regular' computer. Yes, I could have done those same things passing the smaller iPad back and forth between us, but we couldn't have done it together. Now, we can.
Personally, I'm not sure I would call it a paradigm shift, but this moment has opened my eyes a little wider. I naturally pulled out this tool and got my work done without having to think about whether it fit my existing workflow. Seems like a win to me.
I'll continue to document these little wins as they catch up with me.