Odds and Ends for Jan 29

A long-overdue episode of Odds and Ends. Fractal flames, hippos and crocodiles, octopus stealth techniques, Starcraft around the world, easter eggs in Amazon Kindle, and more.

0. Fractal flame generation is some of the most fun you can possibly have with randomization. I just found Oxidizer, which is an open source fractal flame editor built specifically for Mac OS X. Here's something I put together in just a few minutes, although a did a small amount of post-production in Photoshop:

Oxidizer


Rampant Mac has a tutorial on using Oxidizer.

1. It turns out that the Amazon Kindle has a number of easter eggs, including a location-aware Google Maps app. I know it sounds like a hoax but it seems legit.

2. Todd Ditchendorf's Fluid app allows you to create site-specific browser instances. The result is that Basecamp, Gmail, and so on act a bit more like Mac apps. They can have dock icons and (new in 0.5) "Unread" count badges, and so on.

Fluid


Todd has also been open-sourcing his code like crazy. XMLMate, SOAP Client, AquaPath, XML Nanny, and much more. A treasure trove of working examples.

3. Sean Tierney has come up with what I consider a brilliant way to outline/review a book (in this case, the subject is Made to Stick):

Rather than try to hash through everything in a long post as I did with Buzzmarketing, I figured I’d try a different approach. I captured the notable stories on a single page via doodles that trigger a memory of each story and its meaning. I’ve scanned that page and created an image-mapped graphic with a text snippet summarizing each insight.


Awesome!

4. I might be the last person to know about Teleport, but it seems pretty interesting:

Teleport lets you use a single mouse and keyboard to control several Macs. Simply reach an edge of your screen, and your mouse teleports to your nearby Mac, which also becomes controlled by your keyboard. The pasteboard can be synchronized, and you can even drag & drop files between your Macs.


Found via Karelia Software's (makers of Sandvox) mailer, in the "Good Karma" section.

5. Again, I may be the last one to know, but Remote Buddy allows you to control iTunes, Keynote, and a lot of other apps with your iPhone.

6. When I heard about Starcraft II, I thought "Interesting, a new version of an well-known RTS title." It turns out this is actually a really big deal. In Korea, fans fill stadiums to watch people play Starcraft professionally. No, wait, there's more. There are entire TV channels just for broadcasting Starcraft competitions. When I watched this video, I felt like I was peering into a parallel universe. Not only is amazing to me that a strategy game is so big, but it's amazing that there's an entire industry devoted to a 10-year-old PC game.

7. Singular finds duplicates files on your Mac (found here). Neat.

8. Nintendo has sold nearly 21 million Nintendo DS units — more than PS2's lifetime sales. I don't know the words.

9. In case you missed the TUAW announcement, TextMate Themes has, um, themes for TextMate.

10. LEGO Digital Designer now works on the Mac! Design a model and order it online.

11. There are a lot of great CSS designs at CSS Zen Garden, but this Retro Theater Design must be in the top 1% in terms of creativity. You have to see it in motion.

12. The official technote for startup key combinations.

13. I thought crocodiles were the baddest dudes in town, but there's more to the story. Hippos actually lick crocs, and the crocs just sit there and take it. The baby hippo actually gnaws on the crocs.

14. Finally, this TED Talk from David Gallo has some of the most stunning glimpses into the natural world that you've probably ever seen. The whole clip is interesting, but it gets really amazing around 1:48, and mind-blowing at 4:15. I guarantee you'll never see these creatures the same:


Design Element
Odds and Ends for Jan 29
Posted Jan 29, 2008 — 8 comments below




 

cacaosteve — Jan 30, 08 5413

Someone beat me to the punch on a useful site-specific browser app. I was wondering how exactly to make such a thing useful... I see how now. I'm using Fluid now!

Warren — Jan 30, 08 5415

Wow, great post! Yes, please keep more of these coming. I missed most of this stuff the first time around. Teleport ALONE was worth the time to make this post. Heh.

lone — Jan 30, 08 5416

And yet, nobody told me JavaScriptCore is no longer a private framework from 10.5 on. Yikes!

Jim — Jan 30, 08 5417

Great stuff, Scott. Thanks.

corbin dunn — Jan 30, 08 5418

Yeah! I had not heard of teleport. It is leaps ahead of other mouse/keyboard sharing utilities. thanks for the tip!

Willie — Jan 30, 08 5419

I switched from Synergy to Teleport last week and will never look back. You can actually arrange your machines as they sit on your desk; mousing between screens is completely intuitive. And the pasteboard sharing feature is ridiculously useful.

Todd Ditchendorf — Jan 31, 08 5421

Thanks for the shoutout Scott! Teleport looks extremely cool... and keep the hippo-licking digivids coming!

Sean Tierney — Jan 31, 08 5422

Scott,
thanks for the link- glad you liked the image-mapped notes approach. i wish there was a browser-based GUI tool or Wordpress plugin to generate notes like that quickly- it was a tedious process of using dreamweaver's image mapping tool and swap-image behavior. But it's a hugely valuable artifact now though and I still refer back to it.

great post btw- the teleporter app looks way better than synergy. i think that makes me officially the last person to find out about it ;-)

sean




 

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