John Sico

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 14:27:15 -0500

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: In Which I Fix My Girlfriend’s Grandparents’ WiFi and Am Hailed as a Conquering Hero.:

Still, The Google did not load.

Pinboard.in and Chrome with native keyboard shortcuts

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:28:28 -0500

Making a public note of this, since every time I need to do it, it takes me days to remember.

If you use Chrome and Pinboard.in, here is how to replace the default cmd-D shortcut with one that saves the page to pinboard.in instead.

Download and install this extension: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/nfccdohlgojifgadgnbjoejdfaalaehn (note that it’s not the official one, which doesn’t provide easy access to shortcuts, as far as I could tell)
Update the extension’s settings to use cmd-D to bookmark the current page in chrome (from this link: chrome://settings/extensions)
Overwrite the default “Bookmark This Page…” shortcut in your keyboard shortcuts preferences, as shown here:
That’s it! Happy bookmarking.

Yelping with Cormac: Urban Outfitters

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:16:44 -0500

Yelping with Cormac: Urban Outfitters:

yelpingwithcormac:

Union Square - San Francisco, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Three stars.

…and they shuffle through that store near paralytic and finally they take a metal thing with a feather on it and they buy that thing.

Despite all their rage, rats let each other out of a cage.

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 16:12:18 -0500

Despite all their rage, rats let each other out of a cage.:

With a few liberating swipes of their paws, a group of research rats freed trapped labmates and raised anew the possibility that empathy isn’t unique to humans and a few extra-smart animals, but is widespread in the animal world.

Yelping with Cormac: Olive Garden

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 11:14:16 -0500

Yelping with Cormac: Olive Garden:

yelpingwithcormac:

Walnut Creek, CA

Cormac M. | Author | Lost in the chaparral, NM

Four stars.

And so. The day came. The alguacil asked the boy what did he wish for a last meal. The boy asked for a bowl of pasta from Olive Garden. The alguacil considered this and finally agreed saying there was indeed an Olive…

taitems: Dynamic Credit Card Type Selection - UX Lab 003 If you...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:06:16 -0500

taitems:

Dynamic Credit Card Type Selection - UX Lab 003

If you find yourself buying a lot of things online, or perhaps building a lot of eCommerce websites - you will have experienced a range of credit card forms. The good. The bad. The ugly. Some fields are required to pass security checks. Some seemingly exist only to frustrate you. But what seems constant is the lack of innovation over the years in what is a staple in eCommerce design.

One example that does it really well is the purchase page for Coda, by Panic Software. Not only does it auto-select the card type of the credit card, but it also updates the select button with a background image indicating progress. The only downside I can really find to the Coda page is that when the card image changes, it’s not sprited so you see a flash of white as the images load.

Using a list of prefixes published to Wikipedia, it’s possible to identify nearly every card type in the world. This opens a host of possibilities to designers, like this:

“CC Rebound” by Ryan Rumsey

Not shown in this demo is the ability to isolate the first two or three characters, to further narrow the type of card. How would you differentiate between Diner’s Club (36) and American Express (37), both starting with ‘3’? Using substr(). The rest is up to you.

Cool!

"We’re all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America..."

Fri, 18 Nov 2011 09:58:18 -0500

“We’re all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket.”

- How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests | Politics News | Rolling Stone

(via rickwebb, via dpstyles)