Robert De Niro’s 11 best and 10 worst performances →
Look over De Niro’s best work in that 70s to 80s period; staggering output. But my how the mighty have fallen in recent years.
Look over De Niro’s best work in that 70s to 80s period; staggering output. But my how the mighty have fallen in recent years.
I’ve traditionally been a big fan of the Meslo web fonts for coding, a variant of Apple’s ultra-popular Menlo. But that all changed when I discovered Input, a new set of fonts optimized for programming by Font Bureau. The glyphs and overall layout is gorgeous.
They offer a sans, serif, and monospaced version (I run with the default Input Mono set) and best of all, it’s free for private use.
In light of today’s annual big Apple media event, Quartz’s Dan Frommer crunched the numbers of how these events historically play out. Frommer examines average presentation time, video style, Steve Jobs’ stage time versus Tim Cook’s and other material. Very interesting.
Sam Adams, writing for Indiewire:
In [Verge writer] Pierce’s rationale — or, more to the point, rationalization — downloading the movie in advance is like peeking at a band’s setlist before the concert…”The Expendables 3,” you see, “is meant not to be watched but to be experienced. As art becomes commoditized experience becomes the only thing worth paying for, and there’s evidence everywhere that we’ll pay for it when it’s worth it. We don’t want to pay for access, but we’ll gladly pay for experience.”
Of course, commodities are things you pay for. What Pierce really means by “commoditized” is “devalued,” and what he means by that is that since ‘The Expendables 3’ isn’t worth anything in the first place, there’s nothing wrong with taking a copy for yourself.
Working as a web developer/designer myself, I tend to support policies that push technology forward. But there’s no justification behind David Pierce flat out stealing a movie with the justification that it’s “access” over “experience”. Technology has limits; it’s worrisome to see Pierce, a senior writer at what’s normally a pretty solid tech news site, adopt this sort of blind “techno libertarianism” bent.
In light of an inevitable design iteration on the iPhone next week, it’s relevant to remember others that move slowly. As Michael Bierut describes in The Design Observer, much more slowly:
And from a design point of view? Unbelievably boring. Or, I should say, unbelievably, wonderfully, perfectly, exquisitely boring. To a field that today seems to prize innovation above all else, The New Yorker makes a case for slow design: the patient, cautious, deliberate evolution of a nearly unchanging editoral format over decades. And the case they make is — let’s admit it — pretty hard to argue with.
Matt Birchler on the 100% curated Sony PSN store:
I can see how this model would appeal to a developer. Without the popularity contests that fuel the top charts, the content gets more of a chance to speak for itself. I game earns a purchase by having a good trailer, screenshots, and maybe a demo instead of “I’m #1 in the store, so you should buy me like everyone else.”
Basically Matt argues the over reliance on top download lists are a main problem on other app stores like iOS. In their absence on places like PSN, you’re forced to browse the store and buy apps that appeal to you more on a personal level versus “falling in line behind the million people who have already gotten the same thing.”
That’s a strong thesis, but even with 100% curation, the PSN store has some serious shortcomings, both in its puzzling range of information density and constant pushes for you to upgrade to a PS Plus subscription when you’re already a paid subscriber.
Design Sagi Shrieber reviews why Sketch is his new “go to” choice for design work: plugins, fast version releases, background blurs and much more. I learned a useful keyboard shortcut too; Ctrl/Cmd+C brings up a color picker.
An informative video by Tony Zhou that outlines the techniques director Michael Bay resorts to again and again throughout his filmography. As Zhou illustrates, it’s distinctive, at times visually impressive, but overblown and overused to the point of exhaustion for the audience.
The Filament Group carries serious weight in the responsive web design community, not just on some of their projects, but their open-source code contributions: Picturefill and Grunticon alone are very significant. That’s what makes this post worth paying attention to. Scott Jehl outlines strategies for using webpagetest.org along with inline and asynchronous JavaScript requests to speed up a site’s load time.
Grantland’s Wesley Morris on the 1994 summer movie season:
A couple of weeks after the release of Gump, James Cameron would deliver a more alarming battery of effects with True Lies, as well as a woman who’s treated almost as badly as Jenny. But Zemeckis’s movie was speaking to a generation of people out of both sides of its mouth. Baby Boomers needed their history and nostalgia served to them like baby food. Gump’s centrism could please everybody.