Stupidfool.org

Safari

The new Safari beta is, indeed, quite speedy:

Using the new Nitro Engine, for example, Safari executes JavaScript up to 30 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and more than 3 times faster than Firefox 3 based on performance in leading industry benchmark tests: iBench and SunSpider.

That said, my Top Sites are far less interesting than Apple's examples (this very blog, Google, and our internal FogBugz are in my top sites, for instance), and I'm not sure that I share Apple's fascination with Cover Flow-style interfaces, but I can ignore that--I've been a devoted blank-page-in-new-window browser user for years, now. And the new tabs, well--I'm still adjusting, to say the least. I keep feeling as though I've lost all of my open tabs, because they're not where I expect them to be.

But: new stuff!

Poor Little MacBook

My MacBook is already sad enough, thinking about its numerous scars & blemishes, like the colorful red/blue/brown/green stains on the white plastic from rubbing against a New Yorker in my bag, or the chip (well, the hole) in the plastic at the pressure point where I open the screen.

But now--now!--to add insult to injury, my MacBook has to see this?

It's just too much.

Back in time

Google Search (2001), a search interface against a Google index from January, 2001 (FAQ)--and in honor of Google's 10th birthday--is really fascinating.

Doing a search against it for things that are common now--Movable Type, for instance; or, even, blog, which returns only 76,000 results!--yield such different results that it's truly like traveling in time, almost, which, I guess, says something for Google's ubiquity and the expectation--or, at least, my expectation--that search results presented in Google's interface actually reflect the current reality. It's disturbing, slightly.

Microsoft's Seinfeld campaign

On the shuttering of Microsoft's Gates-Seinfeld ad campaign: for my part, I actually liked the ads (one and two).

Well, okay--"liked" is a strong word, and it doesn't really describe how I felt about them. "Appreciated" might be more accurate, because it was a complicated feeling.

Or, maybe: they didn't feel like your typical Microsoft ads, which, at least, was something.

John Gruber sort of nails it in "There's Nothing There", when he writes:

But they "worked" only insofar as they said nothing and dropped the pretense of saying something. The spots said nothing and reveled in the nothingness.

And I suppose that, in the end, what the ads made me feel most was sad. Sad that Bill Gates, who, after all these years, and despite being (once again) the richest man in the world, apparently doesn't feel like he understands "regular people" or why they use his company's products; and sad that Microsoft who, despite their being (still!) so dominant, still feel like they're losing--and by what they seem to be measuring, they're right.

That just seems like the worst kind of torture.

Not Boring

A gigantic tunnel boring machine, as featured in "The Long Dig" (abstract only, sorry) in last week's New Yorker:

Hadrons

I had a tough time tonight trying to describe what makes the Large Hadron Collider (also known by its inevitable malapropism) so very, very neat.

There are the beautiful photos, of course, and for me, that's enough:

But also of potential interest:

• The top 10 ways the LHC will blow your mind
• Has the LHC destroyed the world yet? Spoiler: nope, not yet.

Nike+ and iPhone

The leaked screenshots for the upcoming iPhone Nike+ interface almost make me excited enough to start running again:

We've known that Nike+ has long been in development for the iPhone. Now we're finally getting a peek at the first shots of the interface. From what we can skim, Nike+ users will get all of the nifty performance graphs right on the phone (before this stuff was available on the web only).

And! Google Maps integration for running routes, which may be my favorite part of all.

iPhone Home

My favorite iPhone trick, which I only just discovered yesterday, is the ability to control the iPod functions (volume, play/pause, &c.) without having to unlock the phone:

If you double click the "Home" button from "Slide to unlock" screen or when the iPhone is in sleep mode, a set of iPod controls will appear below the clock which give you access to play/pause, skip, and volume controls.