Uncategorized

Vox:

Some 60 years ago, during the era of McCarthyism, comic books became a threat. The panic culminated in a Senate hearing in 1954. This, of course, isn’t to say that McCarthyism and the comic book panic were comparable in their human toll. But they share the same symptoms of American fear and a harsh, reactive response to it.

What adults thought was best for children ended up censoring and dissolving away years of progress and artistry, as well as comics that challenged American views on gender and race. Consequently, that cemented the idea that this was a medium for kids — something that we’ve only recently started disbelieving.

Fascinating history of what comic books used to be and how we got to where we are now.

The helicopter shot makes it look insane. The GoPro shot had me tighten up every orifice in sympathy.

My thanks to Smile Software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. PDFpen 2 is fully optimized for iOS 8 with an all new look and feel which runs on both iPad and iPhone. The enhanced toolbar and new editing bar make popular writing and highlighting features easy to access, with minimal taps. Import and export documents via iCloud Drive, making it easy to share cloud-based documents not just with the Mac, but with other apps on an iPad or iPhone. Use AirDrop to quickly send documents to other devices. PDFpen 2 supports palm and wrist protection when writing and highlighting. Documents can be secured with a password. Number pages automatically, including Bates numbering. All this and more make PDFpen 2 the perfect solution for all of your mobile PDF editing needs.

Atlas Obscura:

Located in Pittsburgh’s historic St. John the Baptist Church, a deconsecrated but still beautifully ornate building, the Church Brew Works has turned a former holy sanctuary into a hip brewery

When I lived in Pittsburgh, this church was my favorite place of worship.

Great collection of links. Not all of these clicked for me, but lots of them did.

Ann and Nancy Wilson are amazing.

Rick Mueller solicited comments from people on how important the Oxford Comma really is.

A 15 minute tutorial from my favorite video trainer, Kenny Gioia.

It’s amazing how much photos have changed over the years. At one time, they were a specific memory of a specific period in time, but these days we take pictures every second and upload them for everyone to see. You could argue that they are the same thing, but just more of them, but there was something different about pictures years ago.

I think Marcus Mariota has this one wrapped up.

I love compressors, but multibands are a bit more complicated. This is worth reading.

Panic announced on Twitter that Apple is allowing them to keep the feature they previously had to remove.

Differences in what they can do, differences in syntaxes, different technologies involved, the new and the deprecated, and browser support differences.

And sadly there is quite a bit of outdated information out there. Let’s see if we can sort it out.

It’s the outdated information that gets me sometimes.

Financial Times:

This year has seen Apple’s chief step out of the shadows of his predecessor and imprint the company with his own set of values and priorities: bringing in fresh blood, changing how it manages its cash pile, opening Apple up to greater collaboration and focusing more on social issues.

There’s no doubt that this is now “Tim Cook’s Apple”.

Wired:

Pre-game presentations have long been excuses to trot out special effects. Indoor pyrotechnics, giant inflatable helmets, live wild animals running the field, and bone-rattling sound systems have been around for years.Turning a hockey rink into a lake of fire? That’s new.

The tech behind all of this is pretty cool but it seems like pointless eye candy to me.

This is an interesting read. I’ll admit, I expected there to be more of a smoking gun in the story, but I can see why the DAs want Uber to stop saying they have the “safest rides on the road.”

It’s simply beautiful.

United Airlines today announced the carrier will equip its flight attendants with Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus, putting important safety and service information at flight attendants’ fingertips while enhancing their ability to meet customers’ needs.

The airline will begin distribution to its more than 23,000 mainline flight attendants during the second quarter of 2015. Upon introduction, the devices will have the ability to handle most onboard retail transactions and will enable access to company email, united.com and the company’s Intranet as well as policies and procedures manuals.

Future enhancements include replacing the flight attendants’ printed safety manual with an electronic version on their iPhones and providing real-time reporting and improved follow-up on aircraft cabin issues and repairs. Additionally, United plans to develop a number of customer-focused tools for the device.

United also renewed the iPad program it started in 2011 with the iPad Air 2. Great moves from United.

Slate:

You don’t speak Turkish. You don’t speak Finnish. You don’t speak Mandarin or Cantonese. None of these languages is remotely related to English. In fact, none of these languages are even in the same language family. Yet you can recognize, within the two quick syllables of kah-vay, ka-vee, and ka-fay, the word you know as coffee.

I am always fascinated by where words come from and their commonalities. I’d never thought about why “coffee” is so similar around the world and in so many different languages.

Jim and Shawn talk about three months with an iPhone 6 Plus, Apple lawsuits, Apple’s Best of 2014 and connecting instruments to an iPad!

Macworld:

I’m somewhat paranoid about backing up my data files. And by “somewhat paranoid,” I mean “petrified.” If you’re not of a similar mindset, you should be.

Consider what it would mean to lose some irreplaceable photos, for instance. Or the please-let-me-keep-my-job presentation that you’ve been pulling together for months. Or your financial data. Being paranoid in every waking hour isn’t a great way to get through life, but when it comes to backing up your data it’s nearly impossible to go too far.

I’m constantly on people to have, make and verify their backups. As a victim of not having a backup in the past, I know the pain losing important data can cause. I’m doing this for your own good.

MacStories:

I’ve spent weeks comparing features and changing apps to understand the kind of experience they want to promote. But implementation details and design differences aside, I also kept wondering the same question: was the real Twitter different from the third-party clients I used for three years?

I use Tweetbot on iOS but am always interested in reading what others think of the other major iOS Twitter clients.

Interesting visualization tool. You start with a mix of triangles and squares. There are rules that determine whether a shape is happy or not, based on the neighboring shapes being the same type (bias). Hard to explain, but spend a minute stepping through each scenario and you’ll see the point of the exercise.

A very good, common sense article from Kelly Guimont. I know we’ve all seen those ignorant people in the stores—don’t be that person.

Wired:

The car, Bloodhound SSC, marks a bold attempt to set a new Land Speed Record of 1,609 kph (1,000 mph) by 2016. If successful, it will not only mark the biggest jump in land-speed history, but will also be the culmination of a decade-long experiment in education and open engineering.

What a great story about the engineering challenges of trying to push a car, and I use that term loosely, faster than any has ever gone before.

The Verge:

In an age where fans expect direct relationships with the artists they love, Prince has turned himself into a reclusive legend. But 30 years ago, he was still a young artist on the cusp of releasing his greatest record — and former Vibe and Spin editor-in-chief Alan Light’s Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain documents how the record and film came to be.

I’m all kinds of biased as a huge Prince fan but I think the album is still amazing and listen to it at least once a month. The movie doesn’t hold up as well but it’s still a lot of fun to watch every now and then.

File this one under sweating the details.

Many of those seminal steps occurred not in the Silicon Valley garages of lore, but in the stuffier labs and offices of Greater Boston, stretching back at least to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Whirlwind Project.

We always think that many of the great innovations happened in Silicon Valley, but before that, there was Boston.

Artcurial Motorcars:

The Collectors’ Car Department at Artcurial has discovered 60 collectors’ automobiles, all major marques dating from the early days of the motor car through to the 1970s. Found following fifty years of lying dormant, the Baillon collection will be sold by Artcurial Motorcars in the first part of the traditional sale at Retromobile Salon, on 6 February 2015, in Paris. These motor cars have been tucked away in a property in the West of France, under makeshift corrugated iron shelters and in various outbuildings.

One of the cars, a Ferrari 250GT SWB California Spyders, is one of only 60 ever built. Another, a 1956 Maserati A6G Gran Sport Frua, is one of just three ever built.

Next time you drive past a barn, take a peak inside – you never know what you’ll see.

What a great question. I know people that hate Uber, but I’m not convinced they actually know why. I think it’s probably the company’s business practices and the fact they have been creepy, more than anything.