You Have Every Right to Photograph That Cop

You Have Every Right to Photograph That Cop: “Taking photographs and video of things that are plainly visible in public spaces is a constitutional right — and that includes the outside of federal buildings, as well as transportation facilities, and police and other government officials carrying out their duties.

However, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs or video in public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply. The ACLU, photographer’s groups, and others have been complaining about such incidents for years — and consistently winning in court. Yet, a continuing stream of incidents of illegal harassment of photographers and videographers makes it clear that the problem is not going away.”

[It’s a huge mess. From my perspective this problem has grown greatly over the years…]

Zerply

Zerply:

I had fallen out of love with LinkedIn a long time ago, but last week’s sneaky move (read about it here) pushed me over the edge. What a lost opportunity. LinkedIn was built on such a fantastic core idea. And then they tried to be twitter-and-facebook-and-everything-else at once. Bummer.

But don’t worry, here’s a new service that seems to be getting it right: Zerply is a beautifully designed service that let’s you find like minded people by tags, skills, location and let’s you set up a public profile themed by world class designers.

You’re dreading entering all your information again? No worries, you can import all of your information directly from LinkedIn during the setup. Easy peasy.

I hope that Behance will strike a deal with them and let us display our portfolios on Zerply as well.

Hat tip to the team behind Zerply. They site is beautifully designed and well considered. Here’s my public Zerply my profile.

[Seems like a good idea… but I haven’t tried it yet…]
Source: swissmiss

ConvertMyFlash

ConvertMyFlash: Flash sites don’t show up well on the 5 BILLION smartphones and don’t show up at all on 200 Million iPads + iPhones out there. By magically setting you up with an HTML5 version of your site (powered by WordPress), the web wizards over at ConvertMyFlash make your site accessible on the mini screen and infectiously shareable on all social media sites. PLUS: the process can turn your site into a rankings queen on Google. With CMF, your site hits soar (learn more). [Slowly the wheels grind…]
Source: swissmiss

Sitting and Standing at Work

Sitting and Standing at Work:

Ergonomic experts at Cornell don’t recommend standing desks, instead:

Sit to do computer work. Sit using a height-adjustable, downward
titling keyboard tray for the best work posture, then every 20
minutes stand for 2 minutes AND MOVE. The absolute time isn’t
critical but about every 20-30 minutes take a posture break and
move for a couple of minutes. Simply standing is insufficient.

[A big problem at work, we talk and work on these skills quite a bit. We’ve sat on exercise balls, we’ve changed positions, we stand. We’ll keep trying to make this healthier for ourselves.]
Source: Daring Fireball

upgrading pie from rails 3.0 to 3.1

upgrading pie from rails 3.0 to 3.1: Whenever I upgrade Rails, I always start with “rails new” so that I get all the new config file goodness — I want to start fresh with whatever the new defaults are and then only make the modifications that I really want in my app. Here’s the process I went through upgrading the pie “bakery” (a relative simple Rails 3.0 app) to Rails 3.1. [ok]
Source: the evolving ultrasaurus

A Pattern Language

"When I was a child, I thought
God was disappointed
whenever some distraction interrupted...
Now I know that God expects such interruptions,
for He knows our frailty.
It is completion that surprises Him."

--From the God Whispers of Han Qing-jao

Noah loves playing with patterns. Colors, shapes, letters, lego pieces, alternation, similarity… the whole gamut.

But he also gets upset when for one reason or another he can’t complete a pattern the way he’d like. Lack of resources, lack of concentration. What have you. He likes a nice tidy world from that perspective (although not from many others…)

There’s much yet to teach.

On Pacifism (Part of what I wrote on 9/14/2001)

A moment form my personal Wayback Machine: On Pacifism: “I hate war. I hate destruction. I cry my way through the reports of those who cannot yet release the hope that their loved ones will return despite what they have seen. You can feel the disturbance in the City. Not just in the quiet, or the change in rhythm, but in the disruption of lives. Those “lost” are present, infused with the anguish of those they left behind.”

There’s some more with emergency information and quotes and pictures lost in the transition from one bit of software to another. The release of anxiety I felt when all the first responder folks I know had checked in with their families. But I can still feel the changes from back then if I care to.

We avoided the coverage this weekend as the 10th anniversary passed. I didn’t want to relive those moments. But I did the love the story of Camp America, which now closed it doors, its goal accomplished, and of the flag that has been mended and patched by folks all over… and then part of me wondered what I wrote…

Anyway…

I pray for peace.

The New BostonGlobe.com

The New BostonGlobe.com:

I’m beyond impressed with the new Boston Globe web site. It’s the best I’ve ever seen. Congrats to @beep and the rest of the designer/developer team. As +Craig Hockenberry said on Twitter, other newspapers are going to look at it and either realize they need to imitate it, or they’ll keep dying.

If you have a big monitor, resize your browser window from very narrow through to full screen. Go very slowly, and watch as the layout adapts to the new size, every step of the way. The images resize, the number of columns will change from 1 to 2 to 3, each column’s width changes… it’s brilliant.

(What I’ve mentioned here is just the first-glance stuff. Look around, the attention to usability and detail is intense.)

[Impressive work.]
Source: Truer Words – A Journal

Interview: Fast Boy Cycles

Interview: Fast Boy Cycles: I danced professionally for a few years, and then taught for almost ten. For a lot of that time I had a company and was making work. I went to art school (university of the arts in Philadelphia). I thought I was going to study industrial design. I was pretty disenchanted when I realized that the industrial designers weren’t that involved in the engineering side of making stuff (or really the MAKING side of making stuff). Mostly just how it looked. How it felt. So there was a lot of CAD work, and some molding of models out of plastic. Someone dared me to take a dance class one night. I did. It seemed like much more fun than the visual arts core classes I was taking, so I switched majors the next day (“you want to switch majors!?” “Yes, if that’s possible.” “have you ever danced before!!?” “Yeah… I took a class last night.”). I stopped to catch my breath almost 15 years later and realized that I sort of hated dance. When I finally ran away screaming, building bikes seemed like a safe harbor. Can’t remember how I connected THOSE dots. [Go read the whole thing. Ezra Caldwell takes great photos, builds beautiful bikes, and continues to beat cancer. In a world where “awesome” is overused…]
Source: Cycle EXIF Update

Patagonia and Ebay

Patagonia and Ebay:

Good ol’ Yvon Chouinard. A couple of days ago, Patagonia announced a partnership with Ebay, urging consumers to buy and sell their used Patagonia garments and refrain from purchasing the new stuff. The whole thing is part of the longstanding Common Threads Initiative, and in order to be part of the buying and selling bonanza, you have to make a pledge to Reduce, Repair, Reuse, Recycle and Reimagine. No argument here.

Sorta makes any “We made this garment with the most eco-friendly this and that” greenwashing statements a little less powerful, eh? Because really, what’s more eco-friendly than telling people to buy used gear?

[Yvon & Co. Really push the limits huh? Awesome.]
Source: Cold Splinters