Joel Housman

Front-end Web Developer, iOS Developer, Man About Internet

Archive for August, 2010

The Making Of How To Use An Escalator In DC

Posted on August 31st, 2010

Several weeks ago, just after this launched, I had an idea for a site of my own. The idea brewed for a few days, and then one night after getting home from work, I spent a few hours coding and $10 to register a domain. I made http://howtouseanescalatorindc.com. It was a Thursday or a Friday, and any web designer/developer worth his/her salt knows that you launch websites on a Monday or Tuesday, for those are the highest traffic days of the week. The next week came. I was busy, or not in the mood – I forget why exactly. The next week I was on vacation in San Francisco. The next week I was back at work, but similarly busy. But today…around 12 noon…

Arcade Fire: The Wilderness Downtown

Posted on August 30th, 2010

For their song, “We Used To Wait,” Arcade Fire decided to forgo the traditional video and create an interactive, data-driven Chrome Experiment using HTML5 video, audio, and canvas. Learn more about the techniques used in the experiment.

Facetime Adoption

Posted on August 30th, 2010

Marco Arment wrote an interesting post about the adoption of FaceTime by iOS users over time: We, the long-time iPhone owners, won’t be the first ones to use FaceTime regularly. But the next generation of iPhone owners will. FaceTime is the sort of technology that we “old” people will promptly forget that we can do, and then be shocked when we learn that young people are doing it en masse.

WoW Cataclysm Beta Spam Scam

Posted on August 26th, 2010

I periodically skim my Gmail spam folder for false positives. Once every 90 days or so, Google decides to start flagging the wrong type of automated message as spam (Twitter follower emails was the latest one). While doing this, I noticed the following type of email had started showing up recently. It appears spammers are now preying on the desire of WoW players who want to get an invite to the new World of Warcraft closed beta. Looking through my box there were 5 or 6 of them from just the past 24 hours, from multiple sources, each of them different. This particular one looked the most legitimate, despite that Google flagged it as malicious and its origin came from a Yahoo spoofed account.…

Craig Ferguson’s Many Musical Intro Covers

Posted on August 23rd, 2010

I’ve been a fan of Craig Ferguson for several years, ever since this aired several years ago (also this and this. I think he is one of the most genuine people on TV. What I love about him is his utter disregard for making a complete fool of himself every night without shame. Occasionally he will replace his before-the-credits intro to his show with a music-video-cover which usually include costumes. I’ve been lucky enough to watch a few of these shows, but I stumbled across one of these on Youtube over the weekend and noticed that he’s actually done quite a few of these. I felt compelled to make you aware of them all, because they’re all great. They Might Be Giants – “Istanbul”…

What I Carry

Posted on August 23rd, 2010

A blog post from Patrick Rhone is soliciting others to submit pictures of what they carry in their pockets on a daily basis. The idea started from Dave Caolo which was prompted by a tweet from Patrick. Patrick responded to Dave’s post and solicited others to do so as well. These types of things interest me as well, so here’s mine: Before I got my iPhone I would have my Blackberry (work), iPod Classic, wallet & keys. That was 2008 & prior. Over the years my keychain has shrunk as well. Our most recent move in June allowed me to shed a security fob which was needed at my old apartment. My new apartment key has a fob included in it (that weird circular…

Merlin Mann speaks to ASAE members

Posted on August 20th, 2010

I had the pleasure of accompanying my wife on a recent business trip to San Francisco where her organization, ASAE, had hired Merlin Mann to speak for one of their events. ZeFrank was to keynote the event, but at the last minute, we found out that he was ill and unable to attend. Merlin graciously stepped up and keynoted in his place doing an excellent job. I’ve been a huge fan of Merlin for a long time. He is the reason my first DSLR lens was a 50mm, that I know what Thayers™ Original Witch Hazel is, and my yacht wax of choice is Monocle Pete’s Magic Yacht Wax. If none of that makes sense to you, well….you’re missing out. Fortunately, I remembered to…

Who Says You Can’t Dual Screen iPads?

Posted on August 14th, 2010

Working while waiting on my flight at Dulles. I’m using my iPad with a Bluetooth Apple keyboard and Steff’s iPad as my second screen as I write documentation for our new website.