There is a great guy named Merlin Mann whose work I have been appreciating for years. He is pretty much a time and productivity guru, although I am not sure you’d be able to catch him using the word “guru” to describe himself in any way. He invented the Hipster PDA and Inbox Zero. Earlier … Continue reading Money vs. Culture
Author: Brian Enigma
Brian Enigma is a Portlander, manipulator of atoms & bits, minor-league blogger, and all-around great guy. He typically writes about the interesting “maker” projects he's working on, but sometimes veers off into puzzles, software, games, local news, and current events.
My installed iPad apps. Let me show you them.
In the last two days, three people have asked me about iPad apps. I used to occasionally post what apps I was running on the iPhone (the last being in 2008), but have never done this with the iPad. So in the interest of sharing, let me walk you through my apps. My dock apps … Continue reading My installed iPad apps. Let me show you them.
Pioneer Courthouse, 1875
There is a local blog I follow, Vintage Portland, that digs through the city archives and posts vintage photos of Portland every few days. Last month, they posted a photo of Pioneer Courthouse from 1875, with a school in the background that is now PDX’s living room, a.k.a. Pioneer Courthouse Square. I really enjoyed the … Continue reading Pioneer Courthouse, 1875
Radio Shack: “Is this stuff any good?”
My last two posts (skipping over the one regarding comics) mentioned Radio Shack in one form or another, so I thought I would complete the trilogy with this one. As you may recall reading, I worked at Radio Shack in the early 90s. It was minimum wage plus poor commission, so basically ended up being … Continue reading Radio Shack: “Is this stuff any good?”
The Twitterverse answers my comic book question
As a kid, I never got into comic books all that much. I suspect that the only comics I ever read were the free Whiz Kids comics from Radio Shack. Seriously. When the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie was on the horizon, I picked up the graphic novel upon which it was based. I love … Continue reading The Twitterverse answers my comic book question
The six degrees of Amber Alerts
This is Dave. Back in the early 90s I ran into Dave when I was working at Radio Shack. He came in to buy a tone dialer and a crystal of a specific frequency and I immediately knew what sort of shenanigans he was up to because I had downloaded and read the same text files with … Continue reading The six degrees of Amber Alerts
The business card companion cube
A few years ago, I ran across Ned Batchelder’s instructions for making a business card cube. Since then, I have made dozens of them, including a few conjoined cubes that form Tetris pieces. It occurred to me the other day (about a year or two too late to hit the Portal craze and at least … Continue reading The business card companion cube
Internet calendar formats revisited
A few weeks ago, I was complaining about the lack of a good Open Source library for both parsing AND making use of the vcal/ical internet calendar feed format. Quite a few solutions exist for simple parsing but few (okay, zero that I could find) solid, robust solutions exist for doing anything intelligible with the … Continue reading Internet calendar formats revisited
A conversation over weed pulling
Today I got to continue a 4th of July tradition: pulling up the past 6 months of neglected weeds from the back yard. This year, though, it was a little different. Sure, there were still plenty of weeds, but more interestingly, there were worms — lots of them. In previous years, the lawn itself has … Continue reading A conversation over weed pulling
30 Hour Day on the iPhone
A little over a month ago, I had this crazy idea. It wasn’t quite as crazy as no sleep for charity, but it was a little out there. You see, I have played with iPhone development, technically, since before there was an official SDK but for most practical purposes, for a little under a year. … Continue reading 30 Hour Day on the iPhone