And now for another beer.
Apr. 25th, 2009 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
roadrunnertwiceItem the first: God damn did I miss these assholes.
I can't really read or write tonight, on accounta' being all exhausted from canvassing all week, so I popped s2 of The Wire back in. (I watched the first two eps months ago, and then got distracted.) I'd forgotten how much I love the characters in that show. Especially Lester, Bunk, Stringer Bell, and Prez. (Prez! Man, I still can't get over how one of the most despicable and useless characters from the first few episodes ended up as one of my faves.)
Item the second: I can has chips and salsa.
Item the third: Tweetie for Mac is my new Twitter client of choice. I'd been using Twitterrific ever since I joined Twitter, and expected to stick with it, but I downloaded Tweetie on a whim after Gruber linked it, just to see what the fuss was about. I can't go back. I WON'T go back:
Which isn't to say that Tweetie's perfect, because it has a few weird design decisions and a wee bit of 1.0 nonsense. The spacebar behavior is straight-up insane, the icon is kind of lame, there's no easy way to scroll up or down by a whole page, and it has a non-optional menu extra, which is a thing I kind of loathe. (Menu bar space is precious! Don't bogard it! And it's the crappy kind of fake menu extra where if you click it once and then don't click anything else, your other menu extras will throw menus down if you mouse over them. The old iTunesRating app I used to use did this, and it's a totally amateur hour behavior. Also, for more fun, try right-clicking it with an external mouse. Hmm, I should probably be submitting this as a bug report, shouldn't I?)
But it's good enough that its imperfections don't bother me too much. It's got all the strengths of Twitterrific plus all the strengths of the Twitter web app minus all their weaknesses.
Hmm, item the third went on kind of long, didn't it.
Item the fourth: I am still maintaining my furious grudge against Faisal for introducing me to "Hey Schultz." The story went that one time when he was at Powell's, a dude was sitting outside with a huge keyboard and singing the same two lines over and over again: "Heeyyyyyy SCHULTZ! Gimme another / CRACK-hit, CRACK-hit!" And was still repeating them when Faisal left. The devil of it is that the tune has this intense syncopation (with the upbeats on "CRACK-hit") that causes it to burrow into your skull and NEVER LEAVE, and it's been on repeat in my brain all week. KILL. DESTROY.
Item the fifth: Dep't of Milestones: I used up my first jar of yeast at the beginning of this week.
I can't really read or write tonight, on accounta' being all exhausted from canvassing all week, so I popped s2 of The Wire back in. (I watched the first two eps months ago, and then got distracted.) I'd forgotten how much I love the characters in that show. Especially Lester, Bunk, Stringer Bell, and Prez. (Prez! Man, I still can't get over how one of the most despicable and useless characters from the first few episodes ended up as one of my faves.)
Item the second: I can has chips and salsa.
Item the third: Tweetie for Mac is my new Twitter client of choice. I'd been using Twitterrific ever since I joined Twitter, and expected to stick with it, but I downloaded Tweetie on a whim after Gruber linked it, just to see what the fuss was about. I can't go back. I WON'T go back:
First and foremost, and this is the real killer, it doesn't friggin' guilt you out about unread tweets. I've built up a large enough follow list that it's really difficult to keep completely up if I'm working an outdoor job, and since Twitterrific tracks which tweets are "unread," it adds a totally unnecessary element of stress to what's meant to be a silly diversion. Tweetie, on the other hand, has an on-or-off indicator that there are tweets you haven't scrolled past yet.
I get home from work, and Twitterrific says, "You have 289 unread messages! Better get crackin'!" Tweetie says, "Yup, there's stuff! Go ahead and scroll around, see if anything catches your eye. Y'know, whatevs." This sounds dumb, but it makes a really huge difference. Yes, a dedicated user can bend any software to their will, but life is just better if your tools are already built to accommodate your psyche.
- Built-in context! Double-clicking a tweet that replies to something will find the rest of the conversation and bring it up. Double-clicking on a user icon brings up the rest of the user's timeline. Clicking a picture link brings up the picture in an imitation Quick Look window. It is SO much easier to tell what's going on.
- It's easier to draft a tweet, because you can type more than 140 characters and then edit until you get under the limit. This just makes the way Twitterrific does it look deranged. (Also, it lets you paste long URLs in and then auto-shorten them. Cool beans.)
- Saner click-thru behavior. You can actually click links when you see them, instead of having to highlight the tweet first. (Again, this makes Twitterrific look deranged.)
- It can open links IN THE FRIGGIN' BACKGROUND. Finally.
- Uh, I guess you can use more than one account at a time. This doesn't matter right now, but if I ever want to use Twitter for experimental fiction or something, this'll make it a lot easier.
Which isn't to say that Tweetie's perfect, because it has a few weird design decisions and a wee bit of 1.0 nonsense. The spacebar behavior is straight-up insane, the icon is kind of lame, there's no easy way to scroll up or down by a whole page, and it has a non-optional menu extra, which is a thing I kind of loathe. (Menu bar space is precious! Don't bogard it! And it's the crappy kind of fake menu extra where if you click it once and then don't click anything else, your other menu extras will throw menus down if you mouse over them. The old iTunesRating app I used to use did this, and it's a totally amateur hour behavior. Also, for more fun, try right-clicking it with an external mouse. Hmm, I should probably be submitting this as a bug report, shouldn't I?)
But it's good enough that its imperfections don't bother me too much. It's got all the strengths of Twitterrific plus all the strengths of the Twitter web app minus all their weaknesses.
Hmm, item the third went on kind of long, didn't it.
Item the fourth: I am still maintaining my furious grudge against Faisal for introducing me to "Hey Schultz." The story went that one time when he was at Powell's, a dude was sitting outside with a huge keyboard and singing the same two lines over and over again: "Heeyyyyyy SCHULTZ! Gimme another / CRACK-hit, CRACK-hit!" And was still repeating them when Faisal left. The devil of it is that the tune has this intense syncopation (with the upbeats on "CRACK-hit") that causes it to burrow into your skull and NEVER LEAVE, and it's been on repeat in my brain all week. KILL. DESTROY.
Item the fifth: Dep't of Milestones: I used up my first jar of yeast at the beginning of this week.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-26 08:47 am (UTC)