Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

Why Do Startups Do This?
July 26, 2012

I read Hacker News pretty regularly, and there is no shortage of interesting startup announcements there. There is one thing that really rubs me wrong about many of these announcements.

It is appropriate for your startup to have a blog. And when you make the public announcement about your product, whether it’s your initial launch, or you’re coming out of beta, or you just got your first round of funding, or you sold yourself to Oracle… You have a perfect venue for writing about how your company is moving into the future. The blog is the correct place for this. But.

Monitor Power Save
July 24, 2012

A few months ago, I installed a power strip that watches the power usage on one outlet and deactivates the other outlets on the strip when that outlet drops below a certain amount of draw. The result is that one monitor’s power usage can control the on/off state of all four monitors.

This power strip is pretty handy, since two of the four monitors do not seem to respect the PC’s commands to enter power-save mode. Instead, they display a stupid message “No signal” that bounces around the screen until the PC is reconnected. After having looked through the settings for a way to cause the monitor to actually power down and not found anything, this power strip is the only thing that does the trick.

Things Kickstarter Should Change
July 20, 2012

Recently Kickstarter posted a blog entry about some cosmetic changes they made to their project page layout. The change looks nice, but just reading the comments reveals some issues with the new design. Moreover, they’ve made revisions that don’t improve the current usability problems on the whole site.

One of the big complaints about the change is that the “backer badge”, a large icon that used to be located prominently at the top of the page, is no longer present. This icon is has been replaced with a small “You Selected” (in small white text on a green background) in one of the pledge boxes. When I first saw this, I had difficulty determining which pledge level I had selected - the one above the notice, or the one below.

Stuff I Should Do
July 17, 2012

This is a list of stuff I should do. Please feel free to bother me about any of these items and why I haven't don't them yet/lately. I may eventually add a button to this page that lets you automatically pester me about one or more of these things. Yet another thing I should do.

So far, they're in no particular order, but this may change. Starting simple and vague.

Custom Bottle Caps
July 13, 2012

At the Brewfest, one of the brewers, File Mile Brewing Company, had really cool custom bottle caps for their beer bottles. I was really impressed with the quality of their logo and the application to the cap. They told me that they used Bottlemark to have their caps printed.

Sometime after the fest, I remembered the link and looked up the Bottlemark site to check out their prices. They were about 12 cents per cap, which is pretty good for custom-printed caps. Usually, 60 unprinted caps (they’re usually measured by weight, not by count) is about $1.60. For $7, Bottlemark will ship 60 caps printed in full color. This was worth looking into, since the kids have been using my blank caps for summer art projects.