UFO enthusiasts on Twitter and Reddit are concerned that a vast conspiracy manipulates Wikipedia articles to make UFO enthusiasts look ridiculous. Across three episodes of The Good Trouble Show, host Matt Ford and independent researcher Rob Heatherly laid out the alleged cabal and supposed evidence.…
There are still things that are not right. I supposed that's true of life, but I'm speaking specifically about this site. I've been gradually setting everything up to run a lean, static, document-first website that can be a central hub for my work in general. When I make errors, and here I mean just in life in general although it's also true of this specific project, I like to think of them as opportunities to learn. I tend to find many learning opportunities, sometimes far more than I want. I will likely continue learning. As of now though, the site is okay, it's in a place where I like it enough to share my work here.
The AlphaSmart dana is technically a Palm OS PDA, in the same way that Hannibal Lecter is technically a famous chef. The dana does run Palm OS 4.0, but it has almost reversed priorities from a normal PDA. For example, I drafted college essays on a dana, but never used the calendar or address book until I began writing this article. In contrast, Palm OS founder Jeff Hawkins distilled the average PDA user’s needs down to, “All I really care about is calendars and address book and trying to coordinate with my secretary.” Palm designed their operating system to organize a social schedule, but AlphaSmart Inc. used that codebase to create a device that focused on expression rather than organization. AlphaSmart was founded by ex-Apple employees who designed simplified computers for classrooms that couldn’t afford high end computers. AlphaSmart achieved these lower costs by hyperfocusing on composition. Those lower costs became irrelevant as laptop prices dropped, but the hyperfocus on composition itself has become more relevant in an era of distraction. If we consider the dana as a device for producing drafts, even its flaws are transformed into strengths.
My unicorn was too anxious to leave the bedroom, and the vacuum cleaner was only making it worse. Every time I pushed the vacuum in his direction he would rear up onto his back hooves. There were less stained glass animals back here than in the rest of the apartment, but the unicorn had shuffled around and knocked his horn against the few owls that still dangled from the ceiling. They were all arcing on their taut chains, and brown bird-shaped stains scurried along the walls. He reared up so high that his horn punched into the ceiling, which was painted in mashed potato swirls that he had peppered with holes, so I gave up cleaning. I clicked the vacuum cleaner off and caught an owl as it swung near my head. Veins of metal branched through the beer-colored glass. I pulled my hands back slowly to let the owl sway gently in the air. I asked the unicorn, “You happy now?”
No one remembers the worst game ever made. We don't remember the games that are purely awful; we remember the games that fail spectacularly. Amidst a grey sea of interactive flash ads and licensed LCD key chains, occasionally something truly terrible rises ominous from the waves of normalcy…