Month: May 2017

👓 Is Richard Simmons missing? Or is he just dearly missed? | Washington Post

Read Is Richard Simmons missing? Or is he just dearly missed? by Dan Zak (Washington Post)

LOS ANGELES — Richard Simmons is gone.

His fitness studio in Beverly Hills is shuttered. On its stoop is a sun-bleached edition of the Beverly Hills Courier from January. Inside is the wreckage of a livelihood: piles of debris, tongues of pink insulation, a dusting of pulverized drywall on the ballet barres. In the middle of it all, a forlorn scale where his students measured pounds sacrificed to the oldies.

“I knew him very well, but I don’t know what happened to him,” says Germen Helleon, the proprietor of a hair salon next door, on Civic Center Drive.

👓 As ‘Missing Richard Simmons’ podcast wraps, its creator has a theory about what happened to the fitness guru | LA Times

Read As 'Missing Richard Simmons' podcast wraps, its creator has a theory about what happened to the fitness guru (latimes.com)
With the "Missing Richard Simmons" podcast coming to an end, his brother and longtime manager have stepped up to join the chorus of those saying the fitness guru, who hasn't been seen in public for three years, is fine, fine, fine.

👓 “MP3 is dead” missed the real, much better story | Marco.org

Read “MP3 is dead” missed the real, much better story by Marco Arment (marco.org)

If you read the news, you may think the MP3 file format was recently officially “killed” somehow, and any remaining MP3 holdouts should all move to AAC now. These are all simple rewrites of Fraunhofer IIS’ announcement that they’re terminating the MP3 patent-licensing program.

Very few people got it right. The others missed what happened last month:

If the longest-running patent mentioned in the aforementioned references is taken as a measure, then the MP3 technology became patent-free in the United States on 16 April 2017 when U.S. Patent 6,009,399, held by and administered by Technicolor, expired.

MP3 is no less alive now than it was last month or will be next year — the last known MP3 patents have simply expired.

👓 Introducing Mavo: Create web apps entirely by writing HTML! | Lea Verou

Read Introducing Mavo: Create web apps entirely by writing HTML! by Lea Verou (lea.verou.me)
Today I finally released the project I’ve been working on for the last two years at MIT CSAIL: An HTML-based language for creating (many kinds of) web applications without programming or a server backend. It’s named Mavo after my late mother (Maria Verou), and is Open Source of course (yes, getting paid to work on open source is exactly as fun as it sounds).

📺 Watched Broadchurch (2015) Season 2 Episodes 5-8

Watched Broadchurch (Season 2, episodes 5-8) from ITV/BBC America
Joe Miller's trial continues as Miller and Hardy try to close the Sandbrook case.
Things continue to amp up in a can’t-stop-watching-this fashion. I’d have continued on last night and finished it off, but it would have taken half the night and ruined my day, so I stopped after episode 4 and showed a bit of restraint.

Broadchurch

I will say that the unravelling of the Sandbrook case was a bit too quick and convenient for what could have played out through the episodes and an investigation. Instead we’ve seen small snippets of the past throughout the eight episodes before the murder plays out in about 10 minutes of recap at the end. I won’t say it wasn’t entertaining and very satisfying, just that it could have been done with less of a narrative “cheat.”

Otherwise, I’d say that Season 2 was even better than Season 1. Friends in the UK who’ve already seen Season 3 is well worth the wait–I’m just not sure that I can.

Now to spoof my IP address to see if I can get season 3 on ITV in Britain since I know it aired beginning at the end of February… If it follows prior release schedules, it may not be on BBC America until late 2017 and definitely wouldn’t be on Netflix until December this year, if we’re lucky.

I watched this on the 40″ Samsung in high def with Netflix routed through my Google Chromecast.

👓 Watch the WordPress TV Ads | WordPress Marketing | Daniel McClure

Read Watch the WordPress TV Ads | WordPress Marketing by Daniel McClure (Daniel McClure)
Watch the first WordPress TV Ads here. They have just launched after Matt Mullenweg committed last year to really start investing in marketing WordPress.

👓 Must-have apps 2016 | blog.bellebcooper.com

Read Must-have apps 2016 by Belle B. CooperBelle B. Cooper (blog.bellebcooper.com)
At the end of each year (or three months into the following one) I like to reflect on my favourite apps from the past twelve months. I recently switched from an iPhone to a Google Pixel, so the mobile section of this post will be about Android apps instead of iOS for a change.