http://www.phantomgorilla.com Andy Allcorn's place of residence on the intarweb Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:57:53 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I can has teaser screenshots? http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2008/06/20/latest-project/ How do you check Google Reader? Maybe you just load the page in your browser, or have a separate application, or an item in your menubar? Say hello to gRead, a Google Reader widget for Dashboard which automatically checks your account for new items and links you straight to them from ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2008/06/06/introducing-gread/ It's been a while since I last looked into cameras - about 4 years to be exact - and my word, have things changed. I'm the slightly ashamed owner of a 4MP Casio model from, well, about 4 years ago; it was a lovely compact little camera at the time ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2007/09/06/cameras-cameras-everywhere-and-not-a-drop-to-drink/ So, there's supposed to be a fat new nano coming out, and this is supposedly confirmed by the release of a new case "for new iPod" by some little-known company called Uniea. Riiiiiight. So, what's wrong with this picture? Well: There's no mention of this case on Uniea's site. Google doesn't throw up ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2007/09/01/new-fat-nano-eh/ This goes out to all the people I associate with regularly who have sloppy habits. You're my friends, but please - it's important. Ok? First up: WEIRD, not wierd, people. This should not be difficult! Oh, and while we're at it: pronunciation. There's no extra "o" in there. So please, never say ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2007/08/28/english-lesson/ So, HandBrake. It's great, and the devs are very committed and do a great job. But... A couple of possible features have been cast aside recently, because they wouldn't be cross-platform - in both cases, they'd be Mac-specific. You see, it turns out OS X is pretty good (!). Through Core ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2007/08/28/should-principles-trump-progress/ This started life as a comment but it's a bit long, so here we are. Over the last couple of months - particularly after the release of Safari 3 beta for Windows - there have been a few good articles about the differences between Apple's and Microsoft's approaches to font smoothing. ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2007/08/21/on-font-rendering/ So, HandBrake 0.9.0 is out, and it's pretty hot - so many new features it's not even worth trying to list them. I'm particularly thrilled by this release as it was announced on a website I had a small hand in, contains my first couple of lines of Objective-C code ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2007/08/20/handbrake-090/ So, as a persistent dabbler in web design, and a dude who generally has an opinion on everything, this piece on Wired got me thinking about new sites (or accessible versions of existing sites) designed specifically for the iPhone. It's not a great article - it doesn't attempt to justify ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2007/08/18/some-thoughts-on-iphone-centric-web-design/ Says it all really. See here if you want to read JK Rowling's smug, unnecessary explanation of the weak, overly neat, sickly and predictable ending/epilogue/ramble. Sorry, sounds harsh, but it's a disappointing ending to an over-hyped, averagely-written series. I don't begrudge her some success, but it's got ridiculous; there are so ... http://www.phantomgorilla.com/blog/2007/08/01/spoiler-deathly-hallows-is-crap/