I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!

This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Entries for November 2009

November 30, 2009

Flickit - Fun and easy Flickr uploading for your iPhone and iPod Touch

This is now my go-to Flickr photo uploader for the iPhone. Great UI, lets you queue up photos and upload in batches, free. Everything you could want, and nothing more. Ace!

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Happy Cuppa

Happy Cuppa

Smiley face drawn by the good folks at Cento to signify that i wanted a caffeinated latté.

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November 29, 2009

Waze

Free car routing app for iPhone, which is using game mechanics (points & leaderboards) to crowd-source maps and traffic info. Initial prodding suggests it’s not ready for prime-time — you’re better off waiting for protonerds to fill up their data banks — but it might be worth watching in the future.

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HAPPY MEAT DAY!

HAPPY MEAT DAY!

Where does the time go? It seems like just yesterday I was sending out my "Tofu Day" cards.

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Bands of color in four directions & all combinations, 1971

Bands of color in four directions & all combinations, 1971

After the disappointment of the King Tut exhibit, it was fab to find a piece of art which made me smile, and erupted every geek OCD cortex in my brain!

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November 28, 2009

Coit Tower, from Columbus Ave

Coit Tower, from Columbus Ave

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Sad Bear offers a Sad Flower

Sad Bear offers a Sad Flower

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“SCOTLAND”

“SCOTLAND”

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Arches

Arches

Mum: "I keep expecting Kermit & Miss Piggy to pop up and introduce us to the Muppet Show"

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Financial District

Financial District

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Photography

Photography

My photo of Mum, using her new iPhone to take a photo of San Francisco.

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IMG_2353

IMG_2353

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Parking lot

Parking lot

The too-small-for-its-own-good parking lot at Coit Tower.

“Artists work in harmony”

“Artists work in harmony”

From the murals at Coit Tower.

Alcatraz, from Coit Tower

Alcatraz, from Coit Tower

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Green

Green

My detailed botanical skills make me certain that this is some sort of fucking cabbage, or something.

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“No Examiner, No Gazette”

“No Examiner, No Gazette”

The annoyance of SF's free sheets is shared among many.

IMG_2304

IMG_2304

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“HOME DELIVERY SUBCRIBER”

“HOME DELIVERY SUBCRIBER”

Details on the crime of littering, sadly not available.

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Hey buddy! English is our national language!

Hey buddy! English is our national language!

None of this French bullshit flies here!

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ObTouristShot

ObTouristShot

from the top of Coit Tower

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Begbie, the trainspotter

Begbie, the trainspotter

November 26, 2009

Portable Rotary Phone - Red

I want one of these for on my desk at work, since I don’t have a real phone.

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November 25, 2009

Love the new Kindle boot screen

Love the new Kindle boot screen

The "relaxing with a book against a tree" motif is such a perfectly romanticized vision of reading. Far better than the regular reality of where I read: crammed on the piss-smell-filled Muni.

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Smart-assed skeptic…

Smart-assed skeptic…

I'm not entirely sure I understand the point of Amazon's new "PayPhrase" system (How is this phrase and a PIN easier than entering my email + password, exactly?) But I am quite pleased with the phrase they let me use (after filtering out all my profane first attempts)

Ommwriter

Oh my, this is rather lovely. A distraction-removing full-screen text editor (similar to WriteRoom), with a lovely background and jangly music!

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November 24, 2009

Mum in her classy plastic bib

Mum in her classy plastic bib

Joy has a shellfish allergy, so dining at Thanh Long, a SF restaurant famous for its roast crab, never seemed like a good idea.

But once my pesky pescetarian mother is in town? The perfect spot for some garlicky goodness. (Holy shit, it was good!)

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The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

This just makes me so, so happy!

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November 20, 2009

Last night’s sleep

Last night’s sleep

Data! Lovely lovely data! Gathered by my trial Zeo.

(Zeo is made by the company that hosted the first Boston StartupWeekend, which is where Mike took a shot of this lovely machine!)

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November 19, 2009

“Tips Are a Good Karm”

“Tips Are a Good Karm”

November 18, 2009

November 17, 2009

Designing Obama Douchebaggery | How to Ruin a Good Thing and Your Good Name

I’m somewhat dismayed by this too. Supporters of a Kickstarter project are being forced, without warning, to pay $12 extra for shipping to receive their promised $50+ book *after* their cash has been taken. Such a dick move seems completely antithetical to the Kickstarter ethos.

dynaTrace AJAX Edition

Really in-depth front-end web performance tool. Like the “Net” tab of Firebug, but more so. Windows and IE (!) only.

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November 15, 2009

Learning Advanced JavaScript

Top notch JS ninjary from John Resig. All examples are runnable.

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November 13, 2009

ARGH — Augmented Reality Ghost Hunter

Nifty augmented-reality iPhone game. The 3GS’s compass app might have seemed pointless, but opening up these kinds of possibilities makes it worthwhile!

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Choose Your Own Adventure with Hard Left: The Beginning

Wicked funny video series by “Hard Left Productions”, using YouTube’s annotations to branch.

November 12, 2009

Choose Your Own Adventure books for Kindle

I can barely think of a less-perfect match than “Kindle” and “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. The “Back” button will be priceless!

November 9, 2009

Limited colour pallet

Limited colour pallet

A combination of this week's task on noticings and a weak pun. Hurrah!

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November 8, 2009

A choice quote

A choice quote

I was re-reading Robin Sloan's short story Mr Penumbra's Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store on my iPhone last night, and came across this quote again, which I just love.

Since the iPhone Kindle app doesn't allow copy-and-paste (for who knows what sort of dastardly bootlegging would occur should that be permitted), I instead screen-captured the page, then trimmed it in Photoshop Mobile. Suck it, intellectual property overlords!

(Of course, since Robin's story is CC licensed, this is perfectly legal!)

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November 7, 2009

Lost

Lost

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Grim meathook future

Grim meathook future

I love the Wells Fargo ATMs which can successfully OCR checks from my father-in-law and credit the right amount. Genuinely impressive stuff!

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November 6, 2009

Tina Fey's 10 Favorite 30 Rock Moments

30 Rock isn’t the most consistent show, but by god, every episode includes at least one amazing moment that catches me off guard so I need to pause the DVR to laugh and enjoy it.

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November 5, 2009

Photo

Photo

Uploaded from Tweetie 2 via GDZLLA

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November 4, 2009

Mocking^2 Bird

Mockingbird, a new wireframe webapp, boasts:

Powered by Cappuccino: no Flash needed.

John Gruber writes:

It’s a true web app (no Flash), written in Cappuccino

Gentlemen, your excitement over skipping Flash is hugely misplaced.

If you load the app, you can see custom scrollbars and navigation, a complete lack of accessibility, non-native controls, and all those other things that cause geeks to hate Flash. What, to the end user, is the benefit of this being done with JavaScript instead of Flash? You can get the patronage of the 0.000001% of web users who don’t have Flash installed? (Sadly, I don’t think Richard Stallman needs many wireframes drawn)

Gruber’s definition of “true web app” and mine greatly differ. Clue: If it’s completely unusable on the iPhone Safari browser, it doesn’t matter if it’s built in JavaScript, Flash or Microsoft Visual Fortran 2012. It’s not a “true web app”

The Art of Community

Really interesting-looking O’Reilly book on building and managing communities, available for free download as a CC-licensed PDF.

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November 3, 2009

Four Eyes!

Four Eyes!

New glasses.

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DO NQT ENTER

DO NQT ENTER

Remember kids, always buy sufficient "O"s for your signs before making them.

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Mandatory

Mandatory

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November 2, 2009

Machinarium

Gorgeous and fun point-n-click adventure. I played one screen and then paid for the full version.

Hacking with Style: TrueType VT220 Font

I can think of no better use for my new 30” monitor at work than to use this font based on original VT220 terminals at a large size.

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About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.