smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

There is something I have been listening to of late that is entirely reminiscent of the early days of podcasting, before it became the “new voice of radio” complete with corny jingles, endlessly long intros, fast talkers with wares to sell and the production values of a top-notch recording studio.

The Talk Show, featuring roughly thirty […]

Michael over at Binary Bonsai notes that
Ridley Scott has been quoted as saying ‘Sci-Fi is Dead’:

Strong words, sure. But wrong? I can’t quite disprove his accusations as such. Consider after all Hollywood’s output of sci-fi over the last decade, and the words ‘questionable quality’ comes to mind. Summer blockbusters like Transformers, sure, but not […]

As many of you may be aware, at least those who have read this somewhat poor attempt at writing for some time, would know that I pull the links list
via del.icio.us using some (heavily) re-purposed RSS import code. It’s a pretty ugly hack and has been tweaked some to ensure it plays nice with […]

I’ve read a great deal of
advice related content lately. To be honest I’ve started to really
dislike the first scan of topics in Google Reader each morning. Because a great many seem to be telling me how to talk, how not to talk, how to write, how not to write and how I should […]

One of the greatest joys in disabling comments, is an immediate and somewhat blunt end to spam.
I no longer have to concern myself with cleaning up the mess left by others, scrubbing away textual graffiti that wastes time and money, in the form of wanton bandwidth waste.
It’s bad enough the would-be viagra and porn […]

I believe I finally understand why John Gruber took what seems such excruciating pains, in picking his colour and font scheme for
daring fireball.

“It took me six weeks to choose the exact shade of Daring Fireball’s background color, #4a525a.”
∞
If you spend enough time working on a concept or theory, you will eventually find the […]

Is
this calculator, an Apple branded BrAun (model ET33/ ET88, circa 1986/87) the ultimate cause of all the supposed
design theft claims surrounding the iPhone calculator app?
Take a
closer look — the iphone calc is at most, a stylised representation of the BrAun.
This finely designed Braun calculator has an eight-digit display and four-key memory […]

Lately I’ve noticed a disturbing blogging trend towards writing about endless
how-to-blog methodologies, that are full of self-taught ideology (not to mention bad textual formatting and grammatical abuse) rather than based on long-term experience and proven knowledge. I’m reminded of two well written primers on the
concept of better writing and
understanding your audience, that […]

You’re sitting there thinking “What will I write today?” only to realise you are
entirely devoid of inspiration.
Isn’t it a trivial process when there is something to be angry about, or sad, or overjoyed? Someone pisses you off, or you read an article that cripples with total joy, you discover a new resource, or some […]

Shawn’s recent update on comments has a
simple yet powerful message:
“.. on a site with comments disabled there is no pressure. Once you’ve read the article that’s all. The author requires nothing of the reader but to enjoy the content. There are no awkward expectations. The article is a gift.”
A thought that is, ultimately, reflected […]

If you are a
text-link-ads publisher and provide a canvas for the display of fine hypertext wares via the tla wordpress plugin, might I point out a small, but somewhat pivotal part of the process. Within the wp-options table is the row tla_last_update.
This little beasty stores the surprisingly boring yet none-the-less critical-for-functionality last update time […]