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For Christmas my wife got me a record player. It was on my list. I had been wanting to get away from Spotify for a few months and after doing the math, found it to be a better financial choice to leave Spotify and start buying my music again. With an iTunes library of nearly 2000 songs, I didn’t exactly have to start fresh.
As a Mac guy, I have my Apple TV, iPhones, iPads, and Mac all speaking the same language of AirPlay. I can quickly toss a video up to my television or stream music from my phone. Going analog is delightful, I’ll be honest. Many nights this year we have played Settlers of Catan while having some vinyl spinning. The speakers on my player are good. Not great, but good. Hooked to the television is a set of JBL speakers that I’ve had for some time. They’re better than nothing. So last night I decided to look into a way to make my record player wireless.
Following a lead from GeekDad, I took an audio cable (male-to-male) and plugged my record player into my Mac Mini. Using free software from Rogue Amoeba called LineIn, I can take that line-in audio coming from the player and send it to the Mini’s speakers or to any audio output, including AirPlay devices.
A simple setup that cost me nothing since I had an audio cable sitting around. Now I can play my vinyl through my JBL speakers wirelessly.
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Finley.im and Finley Home are powered by Ghost. Finley Home launched soon after the initial beta came out and, while it has been rough at times using beta software, I have loved the platform. The features that have been added over the last year have been fantastic, but I’m still waiting on some (for me) major features to really enhance my use of the platform.
1. Post Scheduling
With Finley.im, I save links as drafts all the time. Sometimes I jot down commentary in the moment, sometimes I wait. Once the post is ready to publish, I hold for specific times. I have nearly a dozen in the queue right now. Through analytics, I’m working to determine the high traffic times and work around them. Scheduling posts is a no brainer and really sets Ghost behind most platforms because of the lacking of this feature.
2. Access to Posts
Currently the posts array is only available in the home.hbs, index.hbs, and custom tag pages. This is paginated by the platform and the number per page are determined by a dropdown in the admin panel. Last week I tried to create a custom Featured page for featured posts and found that the posts array is not available to make it happen.
The Ghost team is working towards a query helper that will allow the theme to query posts, pages, and tags with filters. This would allow for many things, including a list of frequent tags, of featured posts, and even creating a custom archive page that lists all posts for easy access.
3. Real Custom Homepages
Ghost currently has the ability to create a custom home.hbs, but the page is treated like the first page of the blog. I’m doing this on Finley Home. It cannot be a standalone separate from the blog. So if you have 10 posts per page, the first 10 would be available on the home page and then page two would be starting with 11. Ghost defends this choice by saying that Ghost is purely a blogging platform, but that isn’t wholely true since they support custom pages.
My want would be to use the upcoming query helper (see #2) to display the first three posts on the homepage and then a link to view the blog in the navigation, which would start on page one.
For Finley.im, I’d love to have a Featured feed and a Links feed. I could see a simple interface for creating new feeds with custom filters or automatically creating tag-based feeds.
5. API
Both an OAuth API for full CRUD functions and a non-OAuth API for easy access to authors, posts, and tags would be wonderful. I would love to build a Ghost iOS app. Easily save a link to a new post with an iOS 8 share sheet, save as draft, publish, or schedule (see #1). This would be awesome for my flow.
These are my top 5, I want to hear yours. Share in the comments below!
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The beauty of the backgrounds, running the course of the day, lighting the landscape is absolutely incredible. This game shows what the iPhone is capable of without focusing on it. Snow and rain fall, lightening and shooting stars flash across your screen, as you become one with the mountain. Fiery embers and smoke rise into the air as you blaze by. The animation is truly stunning.
It is the simplicity of games like these that hook mobile gamers. Alto’s Adventure reminds me of Tiny Wings a few years ago. Beautiful graphics is what sells these games, not game play. But even with very simple gameplay, the game has a lot of great elements. Capture the llamas— which are points; the llamas are points—, collect coins, and chain tricks to get a higher and higher score. But watch out for the elders. They don’t like your youthful antics.
As you complete 180 goals, you will unlock 6 characters. Maya is the flipper. Paz is slow to start, but builds up big speed. Izel is the gadget junkie, trailing fire behind her board. Felipe is a llama. On a snowboard. Go with it. And then the elder, Tupa, channels the energy of the mountain.
Use your points to expand the magnet and hover gadgets and buy the wing suit. Yes, the wing suit. Not only do you snowboard with llamas, but you can fly too.
To say that I have played this game for hours is an understatement. Last week my daughter, a six month old that sleeps soundly through the night, woke up screaming at 3 am. My wife and I were up for 2 hours trying to get her back down. For the second half of that time, I was playing Alto. At 4 in the morning.
Beautiful games are few and far between. This is something special and unique. The team behind Alto’s Adventure has been working on it for two years. You can see the earliest experimentations on Harry Nesbitt’s blog as he tooled around with the Unity engine and on his Dribbble account as he worked through llama animations. The passion of the design and development team just bleeds through every pixel. Their two years are worth it, in my book.
Alto’s Adventure is available today for $1.99 on the App Store. Two bucks. No In-App Purchases. Just two bucks. Go. Play for hours now and make sure you tweet your high scores!
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Maybe you’ll see me on the evening news
Maybe you’ll see me with a bag over my head
If that’s the case, then I’ve met my doom
If that’s the case, then my comrades are dead
And I don’t hate my enemy
I hate the cloud he’s brought over my land
There’s no virtue in killing a man
Neither is there virtue in being afraid to stand
But I saw the black coats forming lines
They hit our beaches running
We’re on our knees but not to pray
You’re the only reason I stayed
In this coward’s melee
I’d rather die than live without mercy and love
Sing while the city decays
We’d rather go up in flames
Lest we betray thy names of dignity and love
Last month I pre-ordered the vinyl of one of my favorite albums, The End Is Not the End from House of Heroes. This album has consistently been in my playlist for nearly seven years. It is kind of crazy to think it’s been that long and it still ranks as one of my favorites. Last year they crowdfunded another album and one of the stretch goals was to do a vinyl runoff this album. Kind of a brainless choice for me.
This album contains a lot of songs set in World War II and the Cold War era, including Code Name: Raven, By Your Side, Journey Into Space, and Baby’s a Red.
Sitting here this morning, I cannot help but think of my Christian brothers that were just beheaded in Libya by ISIS. “I don’t hate my enemy, I hate the cloud he’s brought over my land. There’s no virtue in killing a man, neither is there virtue in being afraid to stand.” These men stood by their faith until they could kneel before His eternal throne. So many in the American leadership and media are afraid to stand for those that died in the Paris shooting last month or the Denmark shooting this month. Too afraid to stand for the freedom of speech. Heck, while Jesus was on trial, Peter denied any association with Christ.
Sometimes our wish to appease those that hate us— so as to not be hated, or to just survive— prevents us from standing for something good and true. When the nation of the crescent comes for our heads, will you stand for something or take knee before them to keep your head?
Song Ratings
★★★★☆ If
★★☆☆☆ Lose Control
★★★☆☆ Leave You Now
★★★★☆ Dangerous
★★★★☆ In the Valley of the Dying Sun
★★★★★ Code Name: Raven
★★★★★ By Your Side
★★★★★ Journey Into Space, Pt. 1
★★★☆☆ Sooner or Later
★★★★★ Baby’s a Red
★★★☆☆ Drown
★★★☆☆ Faces
★★★★★ Voices
★★★★☆ Field of Daggers
★★★★☆ The Young and the Brutal
★★★★☆ New Moon
★★★★★ Ghost
★★★★☆ If (Acoustic)
★★☆☆☆ Serial Sleepers (Acoustic)
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As previously alluded to, due to a very low point in my career, I got hammered with writer’s block. I couldn’t write anything the way I wanted to. Everything that came out was wrong. It wasn’t long before I stopped writing. So often I have looked to solve my writer’s block, but couldn’t. But I missed something in searching for the answer.
Over the years, I transitioned my writing to social media. Little, short blips of commentary here and there. A bit of sarcasm. Twitter prevented me from ranting. From time to time on Facebook I’d post something more long and bloggy, but mostly kept to a link and something simple.
My expectation, I guess, was that I’d get back to writing full articles more quickly. Like a marathon runner that broke his foot, I didn’t want downtime. So I kept searching for answers to my writer’s block without realizing that I could write myself out of my writer’s block with consistency.
It is said that it takes two weeks of consistency to develop a habit.
So Finley.im, on it’s fourth week, has seen over 70 posts. Six of those have been “feature” articles, the rest have been links. A habit of writing is forming once more. As I said two weeks ago, for once in my experience blogging, I have a backlog of entries.
As I try to keep my writing consistent, I am keeping my finger off the publish button. Between three and five posts a day is what I want here. So as I find links, they get saved and scheduled out to be posted over days. When something hot comes in, I push colder links back. Holding off on publishing allows things to stew a bit. I can take time to edit my thoughts. I don’t have to be reactive all the time, as my editing is worse when I am.
Writer’s block comes when you give up. The cure to writer’s block is to write. Write something. Write anything. Momentum is only built by objects in motion.
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When you build a website with traditional standard DOM techniques, you get accessibility “for free” more or less, and this is without question a good thing. I’ve been a proponent of accessibility for as long as I can remember. It does not follow, however, that what Flipboard chose to do is wrong.
It is true that Flipboard’s engineering decisions prioritize animation and scrolling performance above accessibility. That’s no secret — the title of their how-we-build-this post was “60 FPS on the Mobile Web”. It does not mean they don’t care about accessibility. My understanding is that accessibility is coming — they’re working on it, but it isn’t ready yet.
When titans clash. I love that we are, as a web community, getting back to writing instead of quick messages on Twitter. The thought that both Faruk Ateş and John Gruber have put down in words is great and the conversation is what makes the web such a great platform.
Last week, I shared a blog post from Flipboard’s engineering team about their new, mind-blowing website. Not only did they create a great desktop version of their service, but they built a stunning, Canvas-driven mobile version. Their whole reason for not using the DOM (HTML and CSS) was for the sake of visual performance and user experience. 60 frames per second. In iOS, we call this butter. It isn’t something iOS developers sacrifice. It’s the expected norm. In fact, it is by and large why HTML5-driven, app-wrapped apps are so bad. With the web stack, smooth animation doesn’t happen. When a scroll view doesn’t scroll like butter, it looks jumpy. Jumpy looks cheap. Facebook suffered from this. So they went native. Basecamp suffered from this, so they are slowly going native. My bank suffers from this but they continue using Phone Gap and it is the worst app that I am forced to use.
As Gruber points out:
Blinded by ideology, oblivious to the practical concerns of 60-FPS-or-bust-minded developers and designers, the W3C has allowed standard DOM development to fall into seemingly permanent second-class status.
The DOM was never built for what we are doing with the web today. But Faruk is right about the DOM:
[The DOM makes] content easily accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime, using any device
This is what is difficult. If you want to build a great product, some sacrifices must be made. Gruber says so perfectly that “shipping is a feature.” Ship early, ship frequently is oft the motto of web companies, and one I agree with. Flipboard chose to use new technology that fits their product and by doing so increased the amount of effort needed to pull it off. If Gruber is right, that Flipboard is working hard on accessibility for their new web service, then I don’t see much of a problem here. Before last week, Flipboard was only available as an app. Last week that changed. Those that need accessibility will have to wait a bit longer.
But like Gruber and Faruk, I care highly for accessibility. This is why I took the opportunity with Ashes a couple years ago to involve a blind man in testing the app. With his help, most of the app is fully accessible through VoiceOver. Subsequently, Ashes was featured on a number of podcasts because of it’s accessibility. Making it accessible was an afterthought. Design and, as Faruk says, flashiness were crucial to making the app what it was. The design sold it. But accessibility came soon too.
I think in a year we’ll look back at the amazing, open-source library that Flipboard will have released for making Canvas accessible and forget that for a few months we had a beautiful, cool app that was inaccessible. But in the meantime, the conversation will continue.
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As America shifts into a multi-plural, post-modern society, many are finding it hard to deal with and understand those that aren’t shifting. There is a push for everyone to be more “tolerant,” but the definition of that term has shifted to mean something else. What’s worse is that the new definition doesn’t work with the biggest two religions of the world.
Tolerance
“showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with”
This is the definition of “tolerance” according to The Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English. There is a key difference between it and what the media and many Americans believe it to mean. The definition espoused by them is:
“showing willingness to accept opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with”
You see the difference? We have gone from the expectation that people will allow the existence of differing opinions to the expectation that people will accept differing opinions. And not just opinions: philosophies, “truths,” religions, and more. This is post-modernism in a nutshell, actually. That each person defines their own truth, their own right and wrong.
So how does this new definition not work with the biggest religions of the world? The two biggest religions are Christianity and Islam. These two represent half of the world’s population. Christianity believes in the Ten Commandments, the first of which is “you shall have no other gods before Me.” Christianity adds, beyond that, that salvation is through Jesus Christ alone. Islam says this in the Shahada creed, “There is no god but Allah, Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
The expectation is that we not just allow the existence of, but accept other religions as equal — and equally true — to our own. But that doesn’t work with Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Jesus says that if you’re not with me, you’re against me. This is not inclusive, but divisive and exclusionary. Christianity is very clear: we are all sinners, the wages of sin is death and after death comes Hell. If we embrace Christ, take up our cross and follow Him, we will be saved by the sacrifice He alone provided. The only way to Heaven is Jesus.
The new definition of “tolerance” stands in the face of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam and calls them bigots, a term that is tied directly to “tolerance” meaning “a person who is intolerant toward those holding different opinions.” You change the definition of “tolerance” and the definition of “bigot” changes too.
According to Patheos, the Crow people are taught to “respect all religions,” which is why it might be strange to some outsiders that Crow Nation have chosen to identify Jesus as the sole messiah. — The Inquisitr
Ignorance is why “it might be strange” that a people that claim to “respect all religions” chose to “identify Jesus as the sole messiah.” One cannot be a Christian without believing Jesus to be their only salvation from the death that is due them by their sin. But one can also respect and tolerate all religions while embracing Jesus, because of the acceptance that we are all sinners, that even we were once without Christ. Disrespecting those that don’t know Jesus isn’t what Christ taught. But He did teach us to go and make disciples of the nations, to spread the Gospel, to rebuke those that spread false Gospels, and to fight the philosophies of our day.
If you believe that all religions are equally true, you must believe that Christianity is equally true to your own belief. And Christianity says that all other gods are false gods and that Jesus is the only way to salvation. A Muslim cannot believe this and their own faith. The two cannot be equal. Because 1 does not equal 0. 2 + 2 does not equal 5. Unless you are tolerant of all views. But if you were, you wouldn’t have a problem with Christians believing their own view to be the only true truth.
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If you haven’t heard of Red before, they are a great band to check out. Great rock with amazing strings. Great lyrics. Since getting my record player for Christmas, I’ve been really getting back into music. Most of my recent favorites have been Americana— one of the last refuges of sex-free, violence-free, and clean-language music— but I still pull out some Demon Hunter and Red a few times a week. It’s good axe-to-the-grindstone music for me.
Well, Red has a new album coming out on February 24th called of Beauty and Rage and did something cool last night with a new service called Show.co. For one hour, they streamed the whole album for free through Show.co. Great, simple interface and a great way to advertise an upcoming release. Get you hooked.
The biggest complaint about their last album, Release the Panic, was the lack of orchestrated strings, leaning more to just rock. To fix that, Red released a mini-album called Release the Panic: Recalibrated last year with more strings. I, personally, love Release the Panic in itself, but also love the old strings. With of Beauty and Rage, the strings are back. Descent and Ascent are pure string gold, and weaved throughout the album are powerful string compositions harking back to their first album, End of Silence.
Red holds a special place in my heart. On February 12th, 2009 my girlfriend and I went to their concert at the Subterranean in Chicago and afterwards, as we walked back to my car, I got down on one knee and proposed. Two years later we got married, an anniversary we’ll be celebrating next month. We’ve seen them twice now in concert, the night we got engaged and a couple years ago at Winter Jam, and are trying to figure out how to see them on tour this year. I’ll likely do a full album review in a few weeks when it comes out.
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I am not big on resolutions, but like many of you, I’d sure like to write more this year. Writing was the single biggest factor in helping my career, and it’s led me to start new projects, find new interests, helped solved problems, etc. I’m a horrible note-taker, and far too many thoughts and ideas permanantly live in my mind. Which doesn’t scale—especially for someone at my age.
One of the earliest blogs I followed is making a comeback. Completely agree with the sentiment here: “Writing was the single biggest factor in helping my career, and it’s led me to start new projects, find new interests, helped solved problems, etc.” My first blog was called Cochon d’Vol and lasted from high school through my early years of college. Then I launched a more fiery blog called From the Gates of Hell, covering theology, culture and life. That went on for a few years until I graduated college and then I launched the original Finley.im with much the same subject matter. That and a development blog called Pixel Faith lived through the end of my job at Community Christian Church in Naperville.
It was the end of that job that snuffed out my voice. From around 2002 to 2011 I blogged a few times a week. It ended abruptly. Part of that was a purposeful choice on my behalf. I was in a bad place leaving Community. After a tumultuous December, coming back in January (the first day back after Christmas) I was one of some 20 employees let go. The way that I was treated that morning scorned me. Relationships I had formed there were burned quickly and I felt at a complete loss. Throw in that I had three months before I was supposed to be getting married and needed a job A.S.A.P., I feel I was just in feeling cynical. Because I couldn’t write my thoughts in a way without rant, I didn’t.
The weeks passed into months without writing, allowing that cynicism to brew. Initially justified by the events that went down, it just became something more. I don’t like what it did to me inside. So much was lost by letting that happen.
When we got married, having luckily gotten a job and sticking to the date we had, I said over and over that we should launch a blog. But I couldn’t write. All designers know what I’m talking about. Redesign the blog a few times a year and not put the effort into the writing. I designed the blog more times than I would like to admit. But finally, in 2013, we launched it. I kept away from the topics that I used to write about, knowing that theology curtailed into that cynicism still, I changed the tone of my writing style to be more family-oriented. Within a couple months we found out we were expecting our first child, providing me more to write about. With the birth of my daughter in August, I was writing more in Day One than I was posting on Finley Home.
Sometimes you just need to write. As an introvert, I do. It’s my way of getting what is in my head out. So I have changed my way of sharing to allow me to write more. Instead of sharing every interesting link I find throughout my day on Twitter and Facebook, I save it as a draft in Ghost. When I have the time (usually in the evening or early morning) I write a small blurb or decide that the link isn’t worth sharing. I’m keeping myself to three to four links a day. I’m also posting less to social media and just journaling my thoughts to see if anything can be developed further.
So far, it’s working. For once in my experience blogging, I have a backlog of entries, keeping to about two days out. It is said that it takes two weeks of consistency to develop a habit. One week in and I’m learning a lot.
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In late 2013, my wife and myself launched Finley Home to give us a place to share our adventures, our thoughts, and — come Spring of last year — pregnancy and parenthood things. This came after I took a few years away from blogging. Finley Home allowed me to find my voice again, to get back into the swing of blogging.
As I’ve gotten back into that swing, many of the things I would have loved to write haven’t fit the more family-friendly mold of that site. Between politics, culture, and technology, I have struggled to find a place to voice my thoughts.
So in 2015, I’m launching a new blog for myself. It’s a work in progress. Not sure what all will be posted here. Likely a mix of the above: politics, culture, and technology. So welcome. Subscribe to the RSS and follow me on Twitter.
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