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by Mike DeVine  May 27, 2013 8:00 pm
The Wii U is on life support

The Wii U is on life support. Can it be revived?

Let’s face facts here: The Wii U’s life so far has been an unmitigated disaster. Nintendo has struggled to sell the thing to consumers, third-party developers are hesitant to commit, and to top it all off, they seem to have had a time time convincing the public that their new system is even a system at all. More

by Mike DeVine  March 24, 2013 4:42 pm

The events of Donglegate don’t add anything to a very real discussion about gender equality in the IT workforce.

The tweet that kicked off Donglegate.

The tweet that kicked off Donglegate. Photo by https://dailymail.co.uk.

I’m going to be very upfront about my stance on the issue of ‘Donglegate’ and spell it out right here in my opening paragraph, because at the risk of mixing metaphors I fully realize how much of a tightrope I’m walking by even dipping my toes into this issue: Adria Richards is the only person whose firing was justified. Now that you’ve let the hate flow through you, allow me to explain my position, and why I believe that sexism, while certainly a factor, should not be the dominating theme of whatever lesson we as an industry choose to take away from the Donglegate incident. More

by Mike DeVine  March 10, 2013 4:54 pm

SPOILER ALERT: I’ve finished watching House of Cards.

Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood in House of Cards

I’ve been watching House of Cards lately- Netflix’s first ballsy gamble on original content for their streaming video service. Unlike virtually everyone I’ve talked to who’s seen the show, however, I chose not to hammer through the entire series in one weekend. instead I decided to go the traditional route, and watch the episodes one at a time, in roughly week-long intervals, as though it were being broadcast on a traditional cable network like HBO. But today I gave up on that approach, and I’m streaming the rest of the first season all day today, as I write this piece. It’s taking a bit longer than usual…. this show is damn addictive. More

by Mike DeVine  February 9, 2013 3:50 pm

We don’t type “http://” in our browsers anymore, so why use “www”? Let’s make the traditional URL syntax sandwich more noticeable, by turning it open-faced.

Open-faced www sandwich

Source: tasteofhome.com

Once upon a time, if you can believe it, web surfers who wanted to visit a site needed to enter in the entire URL into their browser before hitting Go. Not just the “www” prefix, but the entire line of a standard URL: http://www.sandwich.com/. Back in the nineties, browsers didn’t have autocomplete functionality, they didn’t have search engines built into the Address Bar, they only had barebones Bookmarking and History functions; they were primitive, to say the least.

Most importantly, the functionality known as “commercialization”, “.com”-ification, or “cannonicalization”, which allows browsers to essentially guess the remaining portions of a given URL based on trial-and-error, was in still its infancy. It was also extremely bandwidth-intensive on dialup modems of the day, making incomplete address entry unpalatable to users. More

by Mike DeVine  February 2, 2013 2:30 pm

Last spring, as part of my ridiculously long hunt for a job for after graduation, I decided to make myself a set of business cards to hand out along with my resumes at job fairs. I knew I wanted something that would stand out with recruiters, and reflect my personality.

After researching tons of crazy business cards, and coming across an origami-inspired business card from a local designer, I came up with a crazy new concept: a business card that doubles as a paper airplane. Years of folding paper airplanes as a kid came in handy as I experimented with the best approach to my folding card, as I iterated my initial design. I knew I wanted my business card to be able to fold flat like a traditional 3 1/2″ x 2″, so it wouldn’t be cumbersome for employers to deal with when in ‘business card mode’. That required using thinner card stock with no gloss layer, and coming up with a folding mechanism to hold the wings of the plane in place while folded up. More

What Is?

Hey! I'm Mike, this is my blog. and my dream is to use my middling tech skills to make the world a better place (not in the techno-libertarian, "the world is a better place if I get mine" sense, but in the actual, "I want to help" sense).  

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