The Log
A personal tumble focused on design, software, all things Mac, and simple living.

By Chris Bowler

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POWERED by FUSION
Mar 10th 2010, 10:17am 2 notes
The crew at Coudal Partners sure know how to target us northerners as we yearn for signs of spring. The latest version of the Field Notes brand plays to that desire: PACKET of SUNSHINE is a nice way to bring in the new season.

The crew at Coudal Partners sure know how to target us northerners as we yearn for signs of spring. The latest version of the Field Notes brand plays to that desire: PACKET of SUNSHINE is a nice way to bring in the new season.

Mar 10th 2010, 9:38am 5 notes

TextExpander 3

A new version of my favourite text utility is now available.

Built-in Dropbox Synchronization
Now you can use Dropbox or MobileMe to keep your snippets synched between your Macs.

You had me at Dropbox.

Mar 9th 2010, 1:38pm 6 notes

The Case FOR Flash

Sebastiaan de With makes some interesting points in favor of Flash. He includes the logic that if your implementation that does not use Flash equates to poor performance, then perhaps a future without Flash does not necessarily equate with progress.

Take a look at the current Macheist page. At the time of this writing, it is using 65 to 70 percent of the processing power in my early 2008 Mac Pro, equipped with eight Xeon cores.

Sometimes it’s easy to don the standards hat and inelegantly state, “Thou shalt never use Flash.” But if Flash is a better solution than all other options, use it. The same goes for tables — there is a time and place. The Machest sites are a good example of this.

Dan Mall said it well in his latest piece on A List Apart titled Flash and Standards: The Cold War of the Web:

Create something excellent where the technology is transparent, and allow only the curious to look under the hood to actually see what’s going on. JavaScript, Flash, HTML5, tables, Shockwave, Unity—no one cares when people using it can do what they’re supposed to.

Hear, hear.

Mar 9th 2010, 9:31am 16 notes

“I can look past the serial comma (so long as the rule is followed consistently throughout a piece), but a missing comma from a compound sentence downright hurts my feelings.”

Jen Schuetz in a piece titled Your Friend, the Comma. It’s a good refresher for people who are serious about following the dictates of the English language. I was happy to see that I’m usually in adherence with the rules listed there.
Mar 8th 2010, 11:07am 6 notes

OmniFocus Themes

While OmniFocus is definitely too detailed for many folks, I appreciate some of the flexibility it offers. As a long time user of Things, I found that I often wanted to simply nest a few tasks rather than create a new project. This lack finally drove me to switch to the more complex OmniFocus.

One feature that I had no idea was included in OmniFocus is theming. Hidden in the Style Preference pane, you can load custom created themes. Now, this is not full extent theming like you see in Growl or Adium. It’s more akin to theming in Textmate, with a focus on fonts, text color and backgrounds.

Still, if you’re an OmniFocus user who doesn’t like the default look, it’s not hard to make it look fairly different. Maybe a little more like The Hit List.

[ via Justin Blanton ]

Mar 8th 2010, 10:54am 4 notes

The melt.

The melt.

Clear skies.

Clear skies.

Blessed quiet.

Blessed quiet.

Racing the sun home.

Racing the sun home.

A few shots from my early morning run. Sure beats running on a treadmill.

Mar 6th 2010, 2:26pm 4 notes

“The most effective ads are the ones placed within a permission-based content model, because it’s a model built on trust. One friend recommending something to another friend is worth its weight in marketing gold.”

Shawn Blanc gets the virtues of good web based advertising. This is exactly how we want Fusion to operate — we think of ourselves more as a personal recommendation channel, rather than merely an ad network.
Mar 5th 2010, 9:26am 26 notes
The evolution of the hipster.

I especially love the use of the infamous 3 wolf moon shirt in 2009. [ via docdez ]

The evolution of the hipster.

I especially love the use of the infamous 3 wolf moon shirt in 2009. [ via docdez ]

Mar 5th 2010, 9:05am 12 notes
Today’s exhibition Layer Tennis match: Hamid vs, Javanrouh. If the teaser image is this good, the match should be downright inspiring.

Today’s exhibition Layer Tennis match: Hamid vs, Javanrouh. If the teaser image is this good, the match should be downright inspiring.

Mar 4th 2010, 1:56pm 16 notes
Productivity as it relates to coffee (via Meagan Fisher)

Everything Meagan touches is gold.

Productivity as it relates to coffee (via Meagan Fisher)

Everything Meagan touches is gold.