Links – alexking.org

Lo, Rowhammer!

Alex — Fri, 07 Aug 2015 18:43:57 +0000

This is nuts. Do not want.

Safari vs. Chrome: Power Consumption

Alex — Mon, 03 Aug 2015 01:43:57 +0000

I’m increasingly using Chrome because Safari can’t get the job done. I don’t know whose fault it is that these sites don’t work with Safari, but to me as a user it doesn’t really matter. Improving power efficiency is great, but it would probably save even more battery life if Safari were compatible enough that I didn’t have to keep Chrome running.

Meet the New Monk: Fintan Ryan

Alex — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:26:53 +0000

Beyond the technical skills, however, Fintan seems to have a knack for asking interesting questions, a trait that can be harder to find than the ability to answer them.

I’m not at all surprised at how RedMonk went about their latest round of hiring. Sounds like they have landed a great fit. Congrats all around.

FastMail Enables IMAP Push for iOS

Alex — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 23:26:18 +0000

What a nice surprise. FastMail¹ is one of the internet services I’ve used the longest; surviving several ownership changes. That’s not easy – great job pulling it off and continuing to offer stellar service.

That’s a referral link. ↩

BBEdit Leaving the Mac App Store

Alex — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 22:58:56 +0000

If you’re running a Mac software distribution and both Panic and Bare Bones sign up then decide to leave due to the limitations… something isn’t working right.

You are not your company

Alex — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 02:02:25 +0000

The idea of an entrepreneur is to ideally build a company that is bigger than the founder. In the early days you are critical, but over time your job is to build systems and hire people (or teams of people) to fill in these critical roles. In many ways the true measure of success is when you’ve managed to make yourself no longer a necessary piece.

I often said that my job at Crowd Favorite was to make myself redundant. And then to build redundancy into the team, processes, etc.

The App Cleanse

Alex — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 02:00:46 +0000

I ended up doing this when I got my iPhone 6 because it was acting possessed. On all of my prior iPhones, I had restored from my previous phone’s backup. Ultimately, starting fresh fixed all sorts of weird little things as well as larger issues like TouchID: it had never worked for me on my iPhone 5S or my iPhone 6 until I did the fresh install on the iPhone 6. It’s more work to do the initial set-up, but I’ll be installing from scratch from now on.

Penn Jillette Had A Rational, Mature Response To Donald Trump Trashing Him On Twitter

Alex — Sun, 19 Jul 2015 01:29:32 +0000

We need more Penn Jillette.

My Two Years as an Anthropologist on the Photoshop Team

Alex — Wed, 15 Jul 2015 00:14:02 +0000

Fascinating read. I’m glad to see this type of introspection and process from Adobe; especially in light of indirect challenges from the likes of apps like Sketch that were built ground-up with these types of workflows in mind.

The Monktoberfest

Alex — Mon, 13 Jul 2015 22:59:05 +0000

I’m super bummed to be missing Monktoberfest this year, but that just means one of you lucky folks can use my ticket. Tickets are on sale now!

Lessons learned moving away from home

Alex — Tue, 30 Jun 2015 03:28:58 +0000

As Devin notes, these may not all be earthshaking revelations. However, the stories that lead him to each conclusion are unique to his experience and that’s the beauty of the personal narrative; an area where the blog format continues to excel.

More micro-blogging workflows

Alex — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 01:53:43 +0000

Manton writes about a few workflows here the follows it up with the post I’ve linked to.

FWIW I’ve posted to my own site first then passed stuff along to Twitter and Facebook since we released the Social plugin for WordPress back in 2011. Each of my posts has a link to its counterpart on Twitter and Facebook, and reactions on those networks are brought back in as comments on this site. Special handling is done to thread comments based on Twitter’s reply_to property, as well as a retweets, etc. More details about how this works can be found in the blog post I wrote back in January on the Crowd Favorite blog.

When I’m mobile, I’ve found that using the WordPress admin web interface is better for my needs than the iOS app. Mainly because of additional post meta that I utilize on this site.

App Camp for Girls

Alex — Mon, 29 Jun 2015 00:32:59 +0000

I put in my contribution. My daughter is still a bit young to be a camper, but like any parent I want her to have every opportunity as she grows up. She’s already pretty solid with Lightbot (also recommended for kids of any gender).

Live with Phil

Alex — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 20:14:03 +0000

I really like Marco’s summary of the event and I really enjoyed listening to the podcast. I liked it enough to go back and watch some of it again once the video was posted. Mr. Schiller was incredibly human and likeable throughout and he didn’t shy away from some tough questions.

Abandoned Soviet Space Shuttles

Alex — Fri, 12 Jun 2015 21:28:23 +0000

These photos are fascinating. (thanks Chris)