Jay Robinson

Tag: quote

  • In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn’t cope with, and that terrible listlessness which starts to set in at about 2:55, when you know that you’ve had all the baths you can usefully have that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the papers you will never actually…

  • We have browser specific code for Android 2.2, 2.3, and 4. We have code just for the Kindle Fire and code just for the Blackberry Torch. Our list scroller implementation for Android Gingerbread is based on scroll position animation and our list scroller for Android 4 is based on CSS transforms. This attention to detail,…

  • Extremely close examination of the impulse drive system schematic panel in Main Engineering might reveal that one of the components is labeled “Infinite Improbability Generation,” a tip of the hat to Douglas Adams’s Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Mike Okuda, Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. Apparently when the blu-ray disks come out, we’ll…

  • I wanted a piece of the pie for me and my family so I made it. Big Boi, from my playlist of favorite Big Boi verses entitled, “Big Boi’s Diamonds & Pearls”. (The playlist title references a Big Boi lyric from “Ova Da Wudz”; itself a reference to a Prince song.) (Because people that listen…

  • Commonplacing facilitates reflexive thought. Regarding a “commonplace book”, mentioned in chapter 4 of Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson. In the early 19th century, “gentlemen of letters” often kept a commonplace book, which meant they recorded the interesting ideas and passages of text they encountered in their studies, in order that they could…

  • Just take a shower. What topic do your thoughts keep returning to? If it’s not what you want to be thinking about, you may want to change something. Paul Graham, The Top Idea in Your Mind

  • In a nutshell, we can describe this process as such: technology eventually divorces content from a specific medium. Content becomes not formless but form agnostic, with the ability to live wherever a human might want it. Drewbot, “On Facebook Timeline: Teaching Data to Speak Humanely” Excellent writeup of Facebook’s most recent evolution of social networking.

  • Apple has a free device to generate tons of buzz for itself and its developers. It’s called Screen Capture. Michael Mahemoff, “Apple’s Million-Dollar PR Gift to Developers*” This, and the fact that you’ve always been able to get a big, beautiful iPhone graphic from the iOS Simulator.

  • The background needs more texture. Steve Jobs is personally responsible for all the texture in iOS 5.

  • One of Jobs’s many gifts was that he knew what to give a shit about. “Universe Dented, Grass Underfoot” by John Gruber

  • I’ve been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I’m not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn’t have the right yellow gradient. It’s just wrong and I’m going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you? Steve Jobs Fucking love this guy.

  • The rest of the world regarded Americans as a mob of barbarians who happened to live on top of a mother lode of precious minerals, fertile land, inexhaustible woodlands and waterways galore … but were as uncouth as they were rich … and spoke in barbaric yawps. This improbable yobbo, Mark Twain, had risen up…

  • The river’s algorithm is simple. At each step, flow down. For the essayist this translates to: flow interesting. Of all the places to go next, choose the most interesting. Paul Graham, The Age of the Essay Excellent writing advice by the inimitable Paul Graham. A must read.

  • Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. Kurt Vonnegut tells you How To Write With Style I’ve always loved Vonnegut: short and to the point. So many great tips in here, but most importantly, write about what you think about all the time. Your passion…

  • Most online experiences are made, like fast food, to be cheap, easy, and addictive: appealing to our hunger for connection but rarely serving up nourishment. Shrink-wrapped junk food experiences are handed to us for free by social media companies, and we swallow them up eagerly, like kids given buckets of candy with ads on all…