2006

371 posts under this date.

Coffee & Tejatli 2
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6
Sep
24

Yesterday I went to the first International Gastronomic Fair in Guadalajara and it was on the whole quite bad, but I did chance on several interesting finds (photoset):

Every Simpsons, Futurama & South Park episode online 2
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6
Sep
24

It’s a beautiful copyright-infringement shooting star. Enjoy it while it lasts. (Via reddit.)
(Homers pic from here, Futurama’s from here, and South Park’s from here.)

Translators as Doctors 2
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6
Sep
23

Is a translator who doesn’t believe linguistic intercommunication problems should or could be remedied as ridiculous as a doctor who doesn’t believe that diseases should or could be remedied? Or put another way, is a translator who believes that linguistic intercommunication problems can or should only be palliated as ridiculous as a doctor who believes diseases can or should only be palliated, not cured?

I frankly don’t know. But those who know me can see on which side I’m leaning. The thought came to me tonight and am still grappling with what it would mean.

Star
KinKey 2
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6
Sep
22



EnglishEnglish | EspañolEspañol



KinKey is a tiny app that makes it easy to type with a US keyboard the special characters of
-Spanish

-French

-German

-Portuguese

-Italian

-Catalan.



It works in Windows XP/2000/Vista.

 Three step installation: 
# Download. (200 KB)
# Run.
# Chuckle… There Is No Step Three1!


KinKey is now running in the background (and will run itself at every startup unless you uninstall it). At any2 text-editing place you want, you can now, say, press E and ^ at the same time (in the same way you press Ctrl and C to copy) to get French’s e circumflex, ê. The order doesn’t matter, you could just as easily have pressed ^ and E to get ê.

Here’s a list of the characters you can type with KinKey:

Example:

Pressing A and / results in á.

Pressing Shift (or with CapsLock on), A and / results in Á.



Acute accent (´)
LetterKey 1Key 2
áA/
éE/
íI/
óO/
úU/


Grave accent (`)
LetterKey 1Key 2
àA\
èE\
ìI\
òO\
ùU\

Circumflex accent (^)
LetterKey 1Key 2
âA^
êE^
îI^
ôO^
ûU^

Dieresis or Umlaut (¨)
LetterKey 1Key 2
äA%
ëE%
ïI%
öO%
üU%

Other Diacritic Characters
LetterKey 1Key 2
çC5
ñN~
ãA~
õO~
 
 
 
 
 

Other Special Characters
SymbolKey 1Key 2
¿Ctrl Shift?
¡Ctrl Shift!
æA3
œO3
ßSZ
«<
»>
E=
£L-


To uninstall KinKey, close first the program by right-clicking its traybar3 icon, , and selecting Exit. Now just delete KinKey.exe itself and Kinkey’s gone. Similarly, if you want to move KinKey.exe close first the program.

Kinkey was inspired by Jef Raskin’s Humane Interface book (particularly pages 185 to 187) and was implemented through AutoHotkey.

That’s it. Enjoy.


fn1. Groupie-ly stolen from Instiki.

fn2. There are two known exceptions where KinKey won’t work: Vim and Adobe Photoshop.

fn3. The traybar is the area on the bottom-right part of your screen, right next to the clock, where many system-state icons are located.


I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by pejesque delusion 2
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6
Sep
21

Adolfo (a best mind) has onsite photo coverage and there’s also a Flickr photopool on Mexican elections (442 pics so far).

(The title’s of course a snowcloneWP from HowlWP, so don’t take the hyperboleWP too personally: all sorts of minds have been destroyed :)

Star
IIBB: Limpiaparabrisas 2
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6
Sep
19

Tiempo de lluvias. Estas en tu camioneta, aburrido, esperando que toque verde, cuando un hombre en un overol rojo brillante con el logo de MerkabastosELZR y una clara leyenda de “servicio de cortesia” se acerca: “Buenas tardes, me permitiria limpiarle su parabrisas? Cortesia de Merkabastos.” Asientes sorprendido y el hombre sonrie, planta enfrente de tu camioneta un tripie que no habias percatado y que sostiene un letrero mediano anunciando que esta noche es la venta nocturna de Merkabastos, con papas y nabos a mitad de precio—y procede a limpiar tu parabrisas religiosamente. El vidrio queda impecable, tu apurado procuras unas monedas y se las ofreces al hombre pero este sonrie: “Gracias, pero este servicio es cortesia de Merkabastos. Que pase usted una buena tarde” te responde—y se marcha.

Esto me vino a la mente esta tarde, en el cruce de Periferico y Tutelar cuando un limpiaparabrisas se me echo encima a pesar de mi clara y categorica renuencia. Cuando termino no le di nada, lo ignore de la misma estudiada forma en la que el me ignoro cuando le gesticulaba que no, que no queria que limpiara mi parabrisas, pero despues me senti algo mas mal que de costumbre al darme cuenta que habia hecho un trabajo inusualmente bueno y mi parabrisas eran unos ojos recien llorados. Me molesto que algo que podia ser un servicio agradable decayera en algo a rehuir y al buscar una forma de evitar ese empobrecimiento se me ocurrio esta excentricidad mercadotecnica. Quien sabe, se antoja raro pero interesante. No seria memorable que por una vez en vez de solo robar tu atencion hicieran algo por ti?

Fruity 2
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6
Sep
19

I guess it’s such an obvious rebusWP scores of people must have had it already, but I’d never seen it before, it just occurred to me this morning, and am quite fancying it right now. (Pretty cherry from Kainoatec)

Good design 2
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6
Sep
16

Good design is much more than just details—it’s details, details, details!
Attributed to Lucy Lockwood in Larry Constantine’s Devilish Details: Best Practices in Web Design

Googleseeding 2
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6
Sep
16

2006’s neologism is finally here: Googleseeding (also googletrapping or futuresearching or reversesearching), a beautiful idea by Jon Aquino: after an unsuccesful search, you post what you wanted to find and couldn’t in the hope of someone later finding the post and contacting you with the answer—or her simpathy.

Go read his introductory post (and its comments) to grokEEM what this is all about (and for an actual example, read Ada’s beautiful Google seed for a lost friend).

Was that a non sequitur? 2
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6
Sep
16

From the surprise interview of Sergey BrinWP, Google’s cofounder, at the 2005 Web 2.0 Conference. The notes ↓ here are just to guide you, you have to hear either the clip or the full interview at ITConversations to get how wittyEEM this is.

John Battelle: There’s been a dialogue throughout the conference, Google’s come up once or twice, and I wanted to sort of pin some of the highlights of that dialogue and ask you to respond to them.

One of the first that comes to mind is a conversation I had with Terry SemelWP, where he—I asked him about Google—and he said, very respectfully, how much he thinks the technology is extraordinary, and of course how Yahoo! build their search technology, and so on. But, then he pulled back and said: “Let’s judge Google as what it is. Google is now a portal and by my estimation,”—and I may quote him not exactly word for word—”Google is number four.” How do you respond to that framing?

Sergey Brin: Yeah, and I just wasn’t here to see him, but I read a couple of news stories on points like that, but based on my reading of that, that also’d make us the underdog.

Battelle: Um-ha-ha! Very wise! You knew my next question…

Brin: And… I think that’s where we are. Further I’d add to that if you’ve… you’ve had the pleasure of being at the Google cafe…

Battelle: Yeah…

Brin: I think our food is pretty good, we continuously try to improve it, but in terms of… [laughs] kind of the volume…

Battelle: Was that a non sequitur?

Brin: Well the volume and the quantity we try to deliver if we were to rank among cafes and restaurant chains, I mean, I don’t know, we’re not in the top 100 or 1000 even, probably.

Silence. Laughing uproar.