Big Contrarian is a weblog by a designer and developer in Chicago. There’s an RSS feed and a Twitter page available, if you’re into that those types of things.

Seems this very well done interface by Pentagram for Wells Fargo’s ATMs was done in WPF:

Expression Interactive Designer and its Visual Studio counterpart increase collaboration between design and development so the process is not only faster, but also less expensive.

I’d love to sit down with those developers and get their honest opinion on the WPF/XAML workflow. I know what you say for case studies, and I’m betting Microsoft threw some cash at Wells Fargo to subsidize the project (I hear they do that), but maybe I walked away from WPF with a completely different take on the technology than others.

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My three part (well, one part divided into three part) series on XAML is up on the Kizmo blog. Part I, Part II, Part 3.

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Could Pi be wrong?

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Seems fewer and fewer developers are jumping aboard the Vista development bandwagon:

“You can’t write an enterprise app like a demo. It’d be all soft and weak under the hood,” he said. “We’d never put all that stuff in because it couldn’t support 100 concurrent users.”

The article goes back and forth on the “it’s too soon to tell” and “it’s doomed! Doomed I tells ya!” tip. Personally, I’m sticking to the latter.

WPF/XAML remains less-than great technology. The amount of work needed to make it great is high, and in the mean time more and more developers are migrating business applications (Microsoft’s development bread-and-butter) to web applications. Without serious improvements in the developer tools and the framework itself, it’s doomed to die a slow death.

Now if Apple would just get off their ass and bring back the YellowBox…

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Seems the Sci-Fi Network, whose existence comforts me but whose programming induces seizures, has broadened their definition of science-fiction to attract a larger audience. Here’s the key bit:

“It’s not just aliens, spaceships and the future,” said Dave Howe, who was promoted to president of Sci Fi from general manager in January. “It’s about asking that simple question, ‘What if?’”

I’m sorry, but aside from non-fiction, what types of fiction don’t fall under the broad vision of some one thinking “What if?”. If the question “What if a voice asked you to build a baseball field?” can be considered science-fiction, than why not “What if six friends hung-out at a coffee shop instead of in their apartments like normal people?”

Most folks don’t watch the Sci-Fi channel because the vast majority of content on it was, or is, bad. There is nothing audience limiting about the genre itself. For fuck’s sake some of the most successful films in the last decade were very strictly science-fiction. Replaying Field of Dreams is going to attract a larger audience not just because it appeals to more people, but because it’s a better film than Giant Mantis Fights Marines, Again.

There are few things more ridiculous than creatively-bankrupt networks attempting to “expand their audience” by replaying popular shit outside of their niche. Just change your name to TNT and get the fuck on with it.

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Takeshi Miyakawma has designed a brilliant chest of draws based on fractal ratios.

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Brendan O’Neill tears into the celebrity culture of adopting Africa as a personal glory quest:

There is something creepily colonialist in Madonna’s attitude to Africa. First we had the White Man’s Burden -– now we have the White Madonna’s Burden. More and more celebrities are treating Africa as a wide-eyed child that needs a Hollywood hug -– or as a wicked devil that needs a Hollywood hammering.

I agree that it’s eerie, and often feels more than slightly ego-driven when celebrities go on relations parades to bring attention to Africa’s numerous plights. But I guess I’m OK with douche-baggery if it does some good.

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What I learned in one week with Google’s AppEngine:

Working in AppEngine was great in some ways, and limiting in others. On the upside, uploading an app has never been easier; you type a command on your development machine, a new version is deployed, and an admin console allows you to roll back to previous versions if you broke something.

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A letter by Albert Einstein on God fetched $404,000 at auction. The letter is a shot across the bow to any one who ever claims Einstein believed in God:

Einstein consistently characterized the idea of a personal God who answers prayers as naive, and life after death as wishful thinking. But his continual references to God … has led some wishful thinkers to try to put him in the camp of some kind of believer or even, not long ago, to paint him as an advocate of intelligent design.

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Aimee and Jeff Harris are donating all of their possessions to charity and becoming organic homesteaders in Vermont. The Times frames this as part of the larger movement towards simplicity:

“The idea in the movement was ‘everything you own owns you,’ ” said Dr. Grigsby, who sees roots of the philosophy in the lives of the Puritans.

I’m all for simplicity, but it seems this movement is more egotistical than productive, and that the extremes of it are filled with the same crazies you find in other feel-good movements. The more you read the article, the more red flags about the Harris’ you find:

[Aimee Harris] said they had no tolerance for idleness or drugs. “Any state that can be induced by drugs, the mind and body are already capable of,” she said.

Clearly she needs a better dealer.

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Philippe Sands, Professor of International Law at University College London and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff for Colon Powell have a lively discussion regarding the Bush administration’s torture policy. It’s long, but oh so very good.

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Oh, hell fucking yeah:

GridFox is a Firefox extension that overlays a grid on any website. If you can open it in Firefox, you can put a grid on top of it. It’s easy to customize, allowing you to create the exact grid you designed your layout around.

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Grand Theft Auto, already an addictive and distracting presence in my house, contains not only hours of relentless violence, humor and countless foreign accents, but a novel and lucrative mechanism for selling music:

It’s been well established how TV shows, ads and videogames are growing areas of music discovery and promotion. But until “GTA IV,” there’s been no construct that allows for the immediate identification and purchase of those songs from videogames. “GTA IV” has added that “buy” button, and record labels welcome the innovation.

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Chef Grant Achatz, owner of the remarkable Alinea in Chicago, was diagnosed with tongue cancer last year. He’s in remission and slowly regaining his palette. The exchange of Achatz learning on his sous-chefs is bittersweet:

“How’s it taste?” Achatz asked the three chefs.

“Not there yet, Chef,” one said.

Achatz put his nose deep in the bowl. “More drops,” he said. He stood back again, his concentration intense.

One sous-chef added more lavender, while another took out a spoon and swiped a bit off the top of the mixture.

“Do you taste it yet?” Achatz asked him. He danced around his staff.

“Not really,” one answered.

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BusinessWeek looks inside eBay’s quest for Craigslist:

The following month, Buckmaster sent an e-mail to Whitman, who retired as CEO on Mar. 31, saying that Craigslist was “no longer comfortable having eBay as a shareholder,” and wanted to either repurchase eBay’s shares or have eBay sell them off. That’s when Whitman said eBay wanted to buy the rest of Craigslist, making it clear eBay had no intention of selling its shares.

The game is afoot.

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How to properly cook bacon in a pan. Also, how to properly dice an onion, a topic which has caused many battles between me and my special-lady friend.

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SkinnyCorp used to, or may still have, a welcome mat which read:

You wish you worked here.

One of their lucky-bastard employees Joe built a 12x12 mini-ramp in his office. You’re thinking that the mat was right, aren’t you?

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A VI implementation written entirely in JavaScript. Impressive.

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Megan McArdle has a fantastic bit about the previously mentioned uselessness of Clinton’s “elitist-angering” gas-tax holiday:

Like about a zillion economists and most other people who were not whacked upside the head with a stupid stick, I think it’s worse-than-useless pandering. There’s not so much a debate as a bunch of economists saying “this is bad policy” and two campaigns sticking their fingers in their ears, saying “lalalalalalalalalal I can’t HEAR you!”

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Smashing Magazine celebrates pixel art.

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Everyone knows some douche-monkey who exaggerates the truth, but a new study says perhaps it’s not quite lying. It might be a form of self-improvement:

“Basically, exaggeration here reflects positive goals for the future, and we have found that those goals tend to be realized.”

Ladies and gentleman, I would like to announce that I am a billionaire.

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Author James Kunstler, he of peak oil fame, Y2K fear-mongering and an utterly myopic rant at TED, makes an odd point in this BusinessWeek article that the end of cheap oil will destroy suburbia and Wal-Mart:

Our gigantic metroplex cities will prove to be inconsistent with the energy diet of our future. I think our smaller cities and towns will be reactivated. We are going to be a far less affluent society.

Well hello Ms. Negative Nancy. Ignoring the fact Kunstler has yet to be right about anything at all, and the fact he’s mostly an icon for urban-leftie-re-res who see suburbs as some form of plague, Kunstler might have a point if he didn’t take it too far. First, gas is still relatively cheap in the US. Second, our last big oil scare, back in the 1970s, didn’t seem to have any effect on suburban sprawl. Obviously, high fuel costs are going to cause shifts in the way we live, but there are plenty of more-likely scenarios than Wal-Mart closing down and mankind moving to centralized, small towns.

Like, oh, an increase in telecommuting, better mass transit, and a magic genie that creates oil from the tears of suburban emos.

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Not sure where I stand on this, but it’s obvious that the ethics behind attorney-client privilege occasionally conflicts with general morals:

The obligation to keep a client’s secrets is so important, they say, that it survives death and may not be violated even to cure a grave injustice — for example, the imprisonment for 26 years of another man, in Illinois, who was freed just last month.

Alright. Given. The attorney-client privilege is so fundamental to our legal system that waiving it has to be stigmatized. But there’s a weird logic here:

“I prefer to draw the line at the life-and-death situation,” said Monroe Freedman, who teaches legal ethics at Hofstra. “That situation is sufficiently rare that is doesn’t present a systemic threat. If that is extended to incarceration in general, it would end the sense of security clients have in speaking candidly with their lawyers.”

Incarceration is, in many ways, a life-and-death situation. And I don’t mean the violent nature of prison. When in prison, your entire livelihood and ability to actively pursue life is hindered to such a great extent that it should probably quality as a life-and-death situation. If a lawyer has privileged knowledge that can save a life, including from incarceration, exceptions should be allowed at the lawyer’s discretion.

Read the full article to get a sense of the issue with some perspective from the different sides.

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A clever advert for some type of paper-holding device that’s been done before, but remains pretty great to watch. (via Textism)

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Apparently the best way to seal the deal isn’t through empathy, but by thinking about the deal through the other person’s perspective.

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A nice run-down of the differences between Obama and Clinton’s approach to the economy.

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A list of the 100 best comic series, or multiple issue runs within a series, according to the Comics Should Be Good community. Not a bad list.

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It started with this article in Portfolio, where Jim Giffin of Warner Brother’s advocated for a universal fee attached to all consumer’s internet-service bills that would go directly to the record labels:

Warner’s plan would have consumers pay an additional fee—maybe $5 a month—bundled into their monthly internet-access bill in exchange for the right to freely download, upload, copy, and share music without restrictions.

David Barrett, an engineer for Akamai, criticized the plan:

“It’s too late to charge people for what they’re already getting for free,” says Barrett. “This is just taxation of a basic, universal service that already exists, for the benefit a distant power that actively harasses the people being taxed without offering them any meaningful representation.”

And now it seems Akamai has fired him:

Akamai engineering manager David Barrett, who spoke on the record as being opposed to the Warner Music sponsored music tax (more) last month, was fired on April 25, sources say.

I’m sure one has nothing to do with the other.

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Paul Collier’s summary of the food crisis has both depth and breadth:

The sharp increase in the world price of staple foods is an inconvenience for consumers in the rich world, but for consumers in the poorest countries, especially in Africa, it is a catastrophe…

The remedy to high food prices is to increase food supply, something that is entirely feasible. The most realistic way to raise global supply is to replicate the Brazilian model of large, technologically sophisticated agro-companies supplying for the world market…

Unfortunately, large-scale commercial agriculture is unromantic. We laud the production style of the peasant: environmentally sustainable and human in scale…

Brilliant shit.

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Bad Science digs deep into this whole “Pixie dust regrows finger” story that’s floating about, and figures out it’s almost entirely bullshit:

Simon Kay, professor of hand surgery at the University of Leeds, saw the before-and-after pictures, and says: “It looked to have been an ordinary fingertip injury with quite unremarkable healing. This is junk science.”

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Wondering why gas in the US is so cheap compared to other countries?

Relatively low taxes have kept pump prices far below most other developed nations, which some say is precisely why the current runup is so painful.

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Jason Kester makes a marvelous point about avoiding any programming language feature that hails itself as “magic”:

So you turn that feature on for all your pages and start to trust it. You get used to it. You take it for granted. You forget you’re even using it. Then suddenly something weird starts happening with one of your pages and you can’t figure out why.

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If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists.

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Realizing they were about to create several hundred millionaires, a pre-IPO Google set up a series of talks from a trio of brilliant financial gurus to help guide their employees. Each gave the same advice:

Don’t try to beat the market.

A thoroughly interesting story on index funds, and what your broker would rather you not know.

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How many people can be hired with $100 and what will they do during that hour? Not to ruin it, but you can hire about 25 folks in China.

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Anand Rajaraman makes a convincing case that search advertising is a giffen good. For those wondering:

For most goods, demand decreases as price increases. A Giffen good defies this normal market behavior — the demand for it increases even as its price increases.

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Matt Tyson and Mike Grimes grabbed local bands in Chapel Hill, Austin, Memphis and Kansas City and visited some damn fine barbeque places. On Fiorella’s in Kansas City:

The burnt ends (slightly charred ends of a smoked brisket) and pork ribs were amazing, possibly the best barbecue we ate during the trip.

Damn straight.

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Vanity Fair’s piece on James Frey, the first true interview since the Million Little Pieces saga two years ago, makes for a great read. The narrative of Frey changing from a reluctant participant in the sham into a caricature of himself is particularly provoking:

Under the klieg lights of celebrity, he embraced the badass role he had written for himself. He now began standing by his book as straight nonfiction. He emphasized his honesty, saying on Oprah in October 2005, “If I was going to write a book that was true, and I was going to write a book that was honest, then I was going to have to write about myself in very negative ways.”

And a great quote by Normal Mailer on memiors:

“That’s why a writer writes his memoir, to tell a lie and create an ideal self. Everything I’ve ever written is memoir, you know, is an inflated vision of the ideal Platonic self.”

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