Follow the link for an iPhone video of the Williamson County Community Chorus Christmas Concert from this past Sunday evening. I'm told there were over 700 folks in attendance, which is amazing. Head to 27:45 for the start of the concert. I have a short solo from a beautiful piece by John Rutter called A Ukrainian Prayer at about 1:11:40 (I'm also in the ensemble singing a special arrangement of In the Bleak Midwinter).
I wish we had better audio, but this room audio from an iPhone is what we've got, so, enjoy!

Live iPhone Video of the 2022 Williamson County Community Chorus Christmas Concert

Video of the Williamson County Community Chorus 2022 Christmas Concert

If you live in middle TN, we'd love it if you'd come out on December 4 at 4:00 PM for our Christmas Concert. I sing tenor in this choir and we have some wonderful, festive, and glorious music this year!
<img src="/images/blog/2022/11/28/concert-flyer.jpg" alt="">

Williamson County Community Chorus 2022 Christmas Concert

I know this is way random, but a friend of mine was picking my brain about Twitter and trying to get my opinion on various Star Trek things. I ended the writing portion of MovieByte so it feels a little weird to write a single random article there again. So I'm writing this here to answer the questions put to me.
<h2>A ranking of various Star Trek incarnations</h2>
<h3>The Original Series (TOS)</h3>
TOS has some very good episodes, some in each season — though season 3 has the least I think — even though it is certainly very much a product of its time and has many '60s tropes. The HD re-mastering has helped it out a lot and I enjoy watching my favorite episodes that much more.
<h4>Some favorite TOS episodes</h4>
<ul>
<li>Dagger of the Mind (S1E9)</li>
<li>The Corbomite Maneuver (S1E10)</li>
<li>The Conscience of the King (S1E13)</li>
<li>Balance of Terror (S1E14)</li>
<li>The Galileo Seven (S1E16)</li>
<li>The Squire of Gothos (S1E17)</li>
<li>Arena (S1E18)</li>
<li>Tomorrow is Yesterday (S1E19)</li>
<li>Space Seed (S1E22)</li>
<li>A Taste of Armageddon (S1E23)</li>
<li>This Side of Paradise (S1E24)</li>
<li>The Devil in the Dark (S1E25)</li>
<li>Errand of Mercy (S1E26)</li>
<li>The City on the Edge of Forever (S1E28)</li>
<li>Operation -- Annihilate! (S1E29)</li>
<li>Amok Time (S2E1)</li>
<li>Mirror, Mirror (S2E4)</li>
<li>The Doomsday Machine (S2E6)</li>
<li>Journey to Babel (S2E10)</li>
<li>Friday's Child (S2E11)</li>
<li>A Piece of the Action (S2E17)</li>
<li>Patterns of Force (S2E21)</li>
<li>By Any Other Name (S2E22)</li>
<li>Bread and Circuses (S2E25)</li>
<li>Assignment: Earth (S2E26)</li>
<li>The Enterprise Incident (S3E2)</li>
<li>For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (S3E8)</li>
<li>Wink of an Eye (S3E11)</li>
<li>Whom Gods Destroy (S3E14)</li>
<li>Requiem for Methuselah (S3E19)</li>
</ul>
<h3>The Next Generation (TNG)</h3>
I always having a hard time deciding whether I like TNG or DS9 more (stop asking me to chose favorite children!). Ultimately it comes down to this: TNG has great characters and many amazing stories. But all those stories are one off episodes. DS9 is more arc based — particularly when the Dominion War starts. DS9 also has great characters. I like both shows.
Also note that the HD re-master is fantastic!
The list of favorite episodes is going to be long because there are A LOT of favorites. I recently just went through and watching all my favorite episodes so I remember more easily which ones are. I will not be able to do that with DS9 because it’s been about 4 years since I watched it. I’ve actually just started re-watching.
<h4>Some favorite TNG episodes</h4>
<ul>
<li>The Battle (S1E8)</li>
<li>Hide and Q (S1E9)</li>
<li>Datalore (S1E12)</li>
<li>11001001 (S1E14)</li>
<li>Too Short a Season (S1E15)</li>
<li>Home Soil (S1E17)</li>
<li>Symbiosis (S1E21)</li>
<li>We'll Always Have Paris (S1E23)</li>
<li>Conspiracy (S1E24)</li>
<li>The Neutral Zone (S1E25)</li>
<li>Where Silence Has Lease (S2E2)</li>
<li>Unnatural Selection (S2E7)</li>
<li>The Measure of a Man (S2E9)</li>
<li>Contagion (S2E11)</li>
<li>Q Who? (S2E16)</li>
<li>The Emissary (S2E20)</li>
<li>Peak Performance (S2E21)</li>
<li>The Ensigns of Command (S3E2)</li>
<li>The Survivors (S3E3)</li>
<li>Booby Trap (S3E6)</li>
<li>The Enemy (S3E7)</li>
<li>The Vengeance Factor (S3E9)</li>
<li>The Defector (S3E10)</li>
<li>The High Ground (S3E12)</li>
<li>Déjà Q (S3E13)</li>
<li>A Matter of Perspective (S3E14)</li>
<li>Yesterday's Enterprise (S3E15)</li>
<li>The Offspring (S3E16)</li>
<li>Sins of the Father (S3E17)</li>
<li>Allegiance (S3E18)</li>
<li>Captain's Holiday (S3E19)</li>
<li>Hollow Pursuits (S3E21)</li>
<li>The Most Toys (S3E22)</li>
<li>Sarek (S3E23)</li>
<li>The Best of Both Worlds (S3E26, S4E1)</li>
<li>Family (S4E2)</li>
<li>Reunion (S4E8)</li>
<li>Future Imperfect (S4E8)</li>
<li>Final Mission (S4E9)</li>
<li>Data's Day (S4E12)</li>
<li>The Wounded (S4E12)</li>
<li>Devil's Due (S4E13)</li>
<li>Clues (S4E14)</li>
<li>First Contact (S4E15)</li>
<li>Galaxy's Child (S4E16)</li>
<li>The Drumhead (S4E21)</li>
<li>The Mind's Eye (S4E24)</li>
<li>Redemption (S4E26, S5E1)</li>
<li>Ensign Ro (S5E3)</li>
<li>Disaster (S5E5)</li>
<li>The Game (S5E6)</li>
<li>Unification (S5E7, S5E8)</li>
<li>A Matter of Time (S5E9)</li>
<li>Conundrum (S5E14)</li>
<li>Ethics (S5E16)</li>
<li>Cause and Effect (S5E18)</li>
<li>The First Duty (S5E19)</li>
<li>I Borg (S5E23)</li>
<li>The Next Phase (S5E24)</li>
<li>The Inner Light (S5E25)</li>
<li>Time's Arrow (S4E26, S6E1)</li>
<li>Realm of Fear (S6E2)</li>
<li>Relics (S6E3)</li>
<li>Rascals (S6E7)</li>
<li>Chain of Command (S6E11)</li>
<li>Ship in a Bottle (S6E12)</li>
<li>Face of the Enemy (S6E14)</li>
<li>Tapestry (S6E15)</li>
<li>Birthright (S6E16, S6E17)</li>
<li>Starship Mine (S6E18)</li>
<li>Lessons (S6E19)</li>
<li>The Chase (S6E20)</li>
<li>Rightful Heir (S6E23)</li>
<li>Second Chances (S6E24)</li>
<li>Timescape (S6E25)</li>
<li>Descent (S6E26, S7E1)</li>
<li>Gambit (S7E5, S7E6)</li>
<li>Attached (S7E8)</li>
<li>Inheritance (S7E10)</li>
<li>Parallels (S7E11)</li>
<li>The Pegasus (S7E12)</li>
<li>Lower Decks (S7E15)</li>
<li>All Good Things (S7E25)</li>
</ul>
<h3>Voyager</h3>
Voyager was not as good as it's predecessors, but it wasn't a bad show. I particularly always enjoyed The Doctor. I believe he had the best arc on the show without contest.
<h3>Enterprise</h3>
Enterprise Seasons 1 &#x26; 2 are some of the most consistently worst Star Trek ever made — boring, dull, lifeless — with a very occasional decent episode thrown in there. Also, that theme song. Can I just say WORST EVER?!? Seasons 3 and 4 are actually somewhat decent with some really great episodes. Unfortunately I think most people had quit watching the show by the time it recovered from seasons 1 and 2.
<h3>The Movies</h3>
The only bad Star Trek movies are The Motion Picture and The Final Frontier. The reboot has obviously breathed new life into the franchise. I was very much opposed to it when the first reboot film was in the works — and I still think it would have been better to move forward — but I was quite happy with Into Darkness even though the film had its annoyances.
<h4>A ranking of Star Trek films</h4>
<ul>
<li>The Wrath of Khan (2): 5 stars</li>
<li>The Undiscovered Country (6): 4.5 stars</li>
<li>First Contact (8): 4.5 stars</li>
<li>Into Darkness (12): 4 stars</li>
<li>The Voyage Home (4): 4 stars</li>
<li>Insurrection (9): 3.5 stars</li>
<li>Nemesis (10): 3.5 stars</li>
<li>Star Trek (2009) (11): 3.5 stars</li>
<li>The Search for Spock (3): 3.5 stars</li>
<li>Generations (7): 3.5 stars</li>
<li>The Motion Picture (1): 3 stars</li>
<li>The Final Frontier (5): 2.5 stars</li>
</ul>
<h4>A ranking of Star Trek Music</h4>
Ranking of Film scores:
<ol>
<li>The Motion Picture
Jerry Goldsmith really brought ST to the next level and established themes and motifs that still live on. While the film is kind of terrible, the score if FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC.</li>
<li>The Wrath of Khan
This is basically James Horner’s great take on what Goldsmith did before him with a tone that matches the more action filled and much less boring film in question. And it feels like it has the heart of the original series.</li>
<li>Into Darkness
Michael Giacchino did some fantastic work here with a major update to his 2009 Star Trek score, introducing new and touching themes and motifs. I enjoy this one a lot.</li>
<li>The Final Frontier
Goldsmith returned to build upon his original work while establishing themes and motifs that would continue to carry the franchise. Again, the film was the worst in the series, which some of the best music — truly frustrating.</li>
<li>The Undiscovered Country
Cliff Eidelman’s score didn’t sound very "Star Treky" in some ways, but a lot of interesting is going on in his score and I always enjoy listening to it and it fits the film very well.</li>
<li>First Contact
Goldsmith is always fantastic and he always finds a way to build on his previous work in a way that references it but doesn’t feel like a completely re-use.</li>
<li>The Search for Spock
Mostly a more melancholy re-hash of Wrath of Khan with an added new Klingon theme that would go on to be heavily borrowed from in his Aliens score.</li>
<li>Insurrection
I think Jerry Goldsmith added some really nice and touching bits to build upon his previous work.</li>
<li>Nemesis
This is my least favorite work from Goldsmith in this franchise. It felt kind of tired, and he was experimenting with some sort of sound that I do not favor. That said, there are some great no motifs and awesome tracks here.</li>
<li>Star Trek (2009)
While I think Into Darkness takes the score to a whole new level that is much better, I don't think the original film is Giacchino's best work and feels a little like it ignores Star Trek’s legacy. I enjoy some of the tracks in this score, but overall a bit of a miss.</li>
<li>Generations
While I have enjoyed Denis McCarthy’s work on the various series (the first episode of Deep Space Nine is phenomenal), I don’t feel like he hit this one out of the park. Nevertheless, I do listen to the soundtrack sometimes. It’s okay, just not great.</li>
<li>The Voyage Home
Perhaps the worst misstep in the Star Trek movie franchise. Some of it works, some of it is mediocre, and much of it is terrible.</li>
</ol>
The Shows:
My favorite theme is probably the original Deep Space Nine theme. Also, the score for the first episode of Deep Space Nine is on Apple Music and I highly recommend it.
I also quite enjoy the main theme of The Next Generation. Goldsmith’s Voyager theme is top notch, but not my favorite.
Overall, starting in season 3 of TNG the scoring of each episode was usually good. The first 2 seasons of The Next Generation — while always composed and not canned music, felt way to synthesized and icky. Though the synthesized sound was sometimes still present in TNG's music from time to time in Season 3, it largely began to go away and was replaced by the symphonic sound we think of with Star Trek nowadays.
The only music I really don't enjoy that much is pretty much the entirety of TOS. I'm not a fan of the theme, and most of the music is canned and reused throughout all three seasons. They basically wrote some various Star Trek mood motifs and reuse them all throughout. That was kind of the thing to do at the time.

Star Trek Rankings

<blockquote>
<h2>Oh, your head hasn't exploded yet? This should do it.</h2>
H9RBS.js (v0.0001) is a flexible, dependency-free, lightweight, device-agnostic, modular, baked-in, component framework MVC library shoelacestrap to help you kickstart your responsive CSS-based app architecture backbone kitchensink tweetybirds.
</blockquote>
This is one of the funniest things I've seen in quite a while.
<blockquote>
<h3>2. How do I install this?</h3>
Um... are you stupid or something? Just attackclone the grit repo pushmerge, then rubygem the lymphnode js shawarma module – and presto!
</blockquote>
Ahh hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

HTML9 Responsive Boilerstrap JS

<blockquote>
Well, what goes around comes around.
At the <a href="http://news.cnet.com/Dell-Apple-should-close-shop/2100-1001_3-203937.html">Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 in 1997</a>, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell famously gave his two cents on Apple to a crowd of IT executives: ”What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders,” he notably said.
Flash forward nearly two decades, and the world’s third-biggest computer manufacturer is going private in a $24.4 billion deal that also gives $13.65 per share in cash to shareholders. <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-05/dell-taken-private-as-pc-market-slump-hastens-24-billion-buyout.html">Bloomberg</a> called the company’s move “the biggest leveraged buyout since the financial crisis.”
</blockquote>
Oh man, oh man, oh man... Crazy world we live in right? I don't believe in karma, but if I did, I would be cracking some remarks about karma right now.
The orginal article on CNet from 1997 <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1001-203937.html">is availalbe here</a>.

9to5Mac

Shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders

So... this is just about the craziest bug I have EVER seen! Seriously. If you type the following into a standard plain text entry field in OS X, the app WILL crash. I mean, CRASH!. Thankfully, I'm using WYGWAM for ExpressionEngine for entries and I can type the offending text in the WYGWAM field because it's not a standard OS X text entry field. But I couldn't type it in the title field for this entry because that is a standard plain text entry field. Here's the crasher text:
File:///
Yep. don't type that unless you want your app to crash. And it has to be with a capitol "F". I've reproduced the crash in Safari, Chrome, TextEdit, Coda, and Mail. As far as I can tell, it's any plain text entry field generated through standard OS system controls. Pretty crazy.

Don't Type This On a Mac Unless You like Crashing Apps


<blockquote>
I didn’t just lead Apple to a <a href="http://www.macworld.com/article/2026112/iphone-ipad-sales-up-macs-fall-as-apple-sees-record-sales.html">record quarterly profit</a> of $13.1 billion on sales of $54.5 billion, so I don’t expect to be consulted. But were <a href="http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/tim-cook.html">Tim</a> to ask me, here’s what I would tell him Apple should do in 2013—in broad strokes, and in no particular order. (We’ve got people to work out the details—right, Tim?) This is not a fantasy wish list. These are things I think Apple can and should do this year. This list is not exhaustive.
</blockquote>
It's Siracusa, so as usually, it's good stuff, even if I don’t agree with everything. Such as bullet 3: Diversify the iPhone product line. I don't see at all that Apple needs to do this. Also, the point Make Messages work correctly. Am I the only one that doesn't have any trouble with Messages (hint: I'm not). It feels like John has just jumped on the bandwagon for that one. Message works just fine. I never have any trouble with it. In fact, I love Messages/iMessage a lot!
Everything else seems great!

John Siracusa

Apple's 2013 To-Do List


<blockquote>
It’s too bad that <a href="http://bgr.com/tag/dropbox/">Dropbox</a> isn’t a publicly traded company, because it would be a great time to buy its shares now that <a href="http://bgr.com/tag/microsoft">Microsoft</a> (<a href="http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=msft">MSFT</a>) CEO Steve Ballmer has given it his <a href="http://bgr.com/2012/11/15/ballmer-interview-2012-android-ios/">patented reverse-kiss-of-death</a>. Ballmer, who <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eywi0h_Y5_U">previously predicted the iPhone would flop because it lacked a physical keyboard</a> and that <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10083590-94.html">Android would fail because Google wasn’t slapping OEMs with any licensing fees</a> to use it, <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-01-29/microsofts-steve-ballmer-does-not-fear-dropbox-or-an-office-less-ipad">told BusinessWeek</a> on Tuesday that the cloud storage company was just a “little startup” that posed no threat to Microsoft’s own SkyDrive cloud service.
</blockquote>
Man, how do I get a piece of Dropbox?!?

Brad Reed on BGR

Ballmer's Reverse Kiss of Death


I’m writing this here because at the moment, I have no better place to write it. I can’t write about this sort of techie thing on <a href="http://moviebyte.com">MovieByte</a>, because you know, that’s for movies. I can’t write about it on <a href="http://tjdraper.com">my personal musings blog</a> (for lack of a better name), because nobody who reads that cares in the slightest. And when I do write there, it’s about politics that might offend you, or my cute kiddos.
And even though most of you probably don’t care, it’s something I want to write about because I’m excited about it. So here it is.
One of the advantages of ExpressionEngine is that it does not box you in to a certain way of doing things. I worked with WordPress a little in the early days, built one site in WordPress and messed around with a couple other sites. WordPress is just not my style at all. You see, WordPress renders the HTML you see on the front end from a very specific set of templates, things like header.html, sidebar.html, nav.html, footer.html etc. etc. A tag that you open in one might be closed in another template and so on. Yes I know that you can modify this scheme and do things in a different way to some extent, but to a very large extent WordPress has a predetermined box for you to work in or around. It’s no way to work for a guy like me.
And when I discovered EE, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. You see, what you see when you visit any given URL is the contents of the rendering of one template in which you can put whatever markup you want.
The way EE URLs and templates work looks like this:
<pre><code>http://mysite.com/the_template_group/the_template
</code></pre>
If no template group is specified in the URL, then the index template in that group is used (every template group must have an index template).
You can build each template on it’s own and put any markup you want in that template on a per-template basis (not very DRY), or you can split it up into chunks as you see fit.
Back in the EE 1 days, the way to do this was by embedding another template into your template.
<pre><code>{embed="the_template_group/the_template"}
</code></pre>
So in those days you might create a template group called “includes” and make all kinds of templates in there for your global markup that you would embed in your other templates. But doing that came at a cost. For every embed, the EE template parser would run again from the beginning. Embed about five templates and you are looking at some serious server overhead to crank out that page for your viewer. This might lead to a delay of 3 to 4 seconds, or more if you got crazy with embeds.
EE 2 debuted something new. EE 1 had something called Global Variables where you could store HTML markup to call in your template, but no EE template tags, because those would not get parsed. EE 2 built upon that premise by introducing Snippets. Snippets can contain both HTML markup AND EE template tags. And a snippet call does not restart the template parser.
So with EE 2 we have a low overhead way to slice up the template and include global markup. But even though this is an infinitely better solution than WP’s box approach, I was never complete satisfied with this.
<h2>A New Approach</h2>
Enter Mark Croxton’s excellent EE add-on called <a href="http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/stash">Stash</a>. I don’t know when he released it exactly, but I discovered it last year and it’s fantastic. There are a lot of uses this plugin can be put to that I will probably never in a million years figure out, but allow me to tell you how I use it.
Bye bye includes (via embeds or snippets) and hello one template to rule them all!
Here’s the structure. EE allows us to have hidden templates which may not be called by URL, but only by embed so I create a template group called <code>_layouts</code> where I store what I call my layout templates. The first and primary one I create is called <code>_default</code> (for a very large majority of sites, you will only need one). All my global markup goes in this layout template. If I need more than one layout template, I might break out the “super” global markup into snippets but for most sites, I just have the one template and keep all global markup there. So that’s the layout template.
In each actual site template, I call the layout template via embed:
<pre><code>{!-- Embed the Primary Template --}
{embed="_layouts/_default"}
</code></pre>
Okay, so now what? Each site template is going to have markup or variable content that we need to display somewhere in the embedded layout template. How do we get it there? Ahh, glad you asked. This is what I’m excited about. This is where Stash comes in.
EE template parse order is my nemesis. To this day I have trouble really internalizing the concepts and what gets rendered when, in what order and all that jazz. But I can tell you essentially how it works so far as I understand.
<ol>
<li>EE looks at your URL and loads the template you have called.</li>
<li>That template gets parsed, all EE template tags in that template get parsed.</li>
<li>If the template has any embeds, the template parser starts over on the embedded template</li>
<li>All template tags in the embedded template get parsed</li>
<li>The final parsed and rendered output is displayed</li>
</ol>
So this is how <a href="http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/stash">Stash</a> helps us. After embedding the layout template, we can set stuff in the template being called by URL with stash:set, and call it in the embedded template with stash:get because the called template gets parsed first, then the embedded template is parsed. So:
Setting content in the template called by URL:
<pre><code>{!-- Set some content --}
{exp:stash:set name="stuff"}stuff goes here{/exp:stash:set}
</code></pre>
Retrieving content:
<pre><code>{!-- Get some content --}
{exp:stash:get name='stuff'}
</code></pre>
Are you getting it? See the possibilities? After embedding the primary template, we wrap everything in the template called by URL in stash:set tags and essentially inject that content into the embedded template with the stash:get call. And that stash:get call can be anywhere in the embedded template. For instance, on this site I want to change the <code>&#x3C;title></code> area in the head of the page depending on the URL and page visited. So in my embedded layout template the title looks like this:
<pre><code>&#x3C;title>{exp:stash:get name='head_title'} | BuzzingPixel&#x3C;/title>
</code></pre>
And in the URL called template I have set the title that stash is retrieving like so:
<pre><code>{exp:stash:set name="head_title"}This is the page title{/exp:stash:set}
</code></pre>
Now do you see it? This is some seriously powerful mojo! And the fun doesn’t end there. What if I want to control various aspects of the layout template based on the URL? What if when I call a page template I want to turn certain aspects of the layout on or off. If it’s as easy as displaying or not displaying code we can still do it all with one layout template using Stash (for complicated sites, this is where you may need more than one layout template, but when you really get into this workflow, there is not actually a need to have more than one layout template very often).
An example is that on a site I recently developed, some templates required a sidebar layout and some did not. So I created a method with Stash to tell the layout template whether to display the sidebar. I used <a href="http://devot-ee.com/add-ons/switchee">Switchee</a> case logic (another great add-on by Croxton) to reduce template overhead, but I’ll use native EE <code>{if}</code> statements here for the simplicity of the demonstration:
Here is the value I set in my URL called template:
<pre><code>{!-- Show the Sidebar? Possible Values are: "sidebar" "nosidebar" --}
{exp:stash:set name="template_type"}sidebar{/exp:stash:set}
</code></pre>
And in the embedded layout template:
<pre><code>{if "{exp:stash:set name="template_type"}" == "sidebar"}
Sidebar Code
{/if}
</code></pre>
You can see the power of this method. But there is another benefit: speed. One embed per template. This is a really low overhead approach to keeping things DRY and I love it. This is the sort of thing I get excited about.
And I hope by writing about it here, someone comes across this and finds it useful. If you have any questions, or want to tell me about a better way to do things, shoot me an email. You will find the contact link in the menu above.

Templating with ExpressionEngine

<blockquote>
Skeuomorphism -- the use of real world design in a digital context -- has been a target lately. It's also been lumped together with heavy design, or skin, to the point of being completely misunderstood. At the extreme, this "skeuomorphic" melange has been held up as an example of iOS being boring, outdated, and bereft of innovation. In more reasonably terms, it's looked at as something that can be useful, but has perhaps been overused. I've gone on record as saying I think there are far more important things Apple needs to do in iOS 7 than wiping the world clean of skeuomorphism, both <a href="http://www.imore.com/never-mind-iphone-6-and-ipads-next-2013-its-ios-7-and-icloud-matter-most">here on the site</a> and in a <a href="http://www.imore.com/imore-show-333-apple-doomed-again">podcast rant</a>. But let's imagine for a moment it is on the agenda. That Apple's new head of all design, hardware and software, Jony Ive, was set to impose a new, unified, Aluminium theme. That, just like the Scarlet Witch in House of M, he whispered "No more Skeuomorphs."
Instead of arguing in the abstract about how much better or worse it would be, let's mock it up and see what could that look like…
</blockquote>
And:
<blockquote>
I'm still of the opinion that it's less about skeuomorphism or it's opposite, digital authenticity, than it is about usability. In some cases, skeuomorphism helps make things discoverable, approachable, and engaging. In others, it just gets in the way.
</blockquote>
I'm really pretty much in love with the mockup of Game Center. Yes, as pointed out, it's a little more generic, but much, much easier on the eyes!
Also, I loved <a href="https://512pixels.net/2013/01/skeuomorphic-free/">Stephen Hackett's comments on Rene's article</a>:
<blockquote>
The silver UI in Rene’s post can be found in iOS’s built-in Music and Maps app now. While I’m all for Apple getting rid of stitched leather and linen, remember what happened before Apple unified an OS so tightly?
<img src="/images/blog/2013/01/29/2013-01-26-brushed-metal.png" alt="2013-01-26-brushed-metal.png">
Oh God.
</blockquote>

Rene Ritchie on iMore

Imagining All Aluminium iOS 7

<img src="/images/blog/2013/01/29/i-can-typing.gif" alt="i-can-typing">
Seems about right.

MG Siegler

I Can Typing

<blockquote>
Everyone was clapping that Apple embraced open source. Happy, happy, happy. And they were just certain what was coming next. Then Steve moved a new slide onto the screen. With only one word, “KHTML” — six-foot-high white letters on a blue background.
If you listen to that video I posted, notice that no one applauds here. Why? I’m guessing confusion and complete lack of recognition.
What you also can’t hear on the video is someone about 15 to 20 rows behind where we were sitting — obviously expecting the word “Gecko” up there — shout at what seemed like the top of his lungs:
“WHAT THE ****!?”
KHTML may have been a bigger surprise than Apple doing a browser at all. And that moment was glorious. We had punk’d the entire crowd.
</blockquote>
Don Melton has been posting some stuff about his time working on Safari and it's awesome stuff. While I think Firefox and the Gecko layout engine sort of jumpstarted the browser revolution, Safari is still, despite some of it's flaws, my current daily driver. My fall back browser is Chrome, which is also based on Safari's WebKit rendering engine. Firefox is a very VERY distant third at this point. I also really enjoyed going back and watching Steve introduce Safari to the world in the <a href="http://donmelton.com/2013/01/07/macworld-2003-keynote/">Macworld 2003 Keynote</a>. This was the beginning of Apple's heyday.

Posts tagged “Fun” from the blog