Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

iPhone "Free to Play" Nonsense
August 25, 2012

In-App PurchasesThe latest craze in iPhone app development, specifically for games, is to create "Free to Play" games.  Unlike an earlier trend for selling $0.99 games in large quantities, this one gives away the games for free, but offers purchases of consumable things within the app.

Trey Smith explains the trend by showing how much more money companies can make by giving away their app, and then sucking cash out of addicted gamers who just have to have that $5 powerup.

How I Learned to Write Code
July 31, 2012

Ok, I’m probably older than you. Let’s just start there. If in the tradition of being young you want to toss out any stories I provide as lacking practical advice, then just stop reading now. That said, we’ll move on…

TimexSinclair1000When I was eight, my fourth grade teacher offered a computer club to his students as an after-school program. He had two computers in the back, both Timex Sinclair 1000’s. These were the kind of computers that had built-in BASIC and loaded saved programs (when this worked at all) from a cassette tape. That Christmas, my parents bought me a TS1000 of my own, and I’ve been hooked on coding ever since.

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.