Author Archives: skierpage

About skierpage

As you might guess, my site is mine. My Schema.org info is at .

cars: Fisker Karma, Hot Wheels brought to life

Posted on 2012-07-14 by skierpage

I saw a Fisker Karma on the street for the first time. The car is huge, and insanely distinctive. It swells and bulges all over the place, making a BMW 6-series look like a bland Hyundai. It’s a Hot Wheels … Continue reading →

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music: piracy is wrong, copyright matters

Posted on 2012-07-14 by skierpage

The Trichordist tore into an NPR columnist who admitted to having 11,000 songs but hardly paying for any of them. Now Free Software guru Richard M. Stallman wades in, and gets it wrong. I criticize him thusly (originally on Slashdot … Continue reading →

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software: misplaced Linux desktop angst, just make HTML5 great

Posted on 2012-06-29 by skierpage

Linux users and developers bemoan the few apps available for their desktop. Where are the app developers? is a typical lament. But every commercial next-gen platform going up against Apple/Android — BlackBerry X, Tizen, even Windows — has figured out … Continue reading →

Posted in open source, software, web | 1 Comment

cars: BMW i8 climbs down from greatness

Posted on 2012-06-15 by skierpage

The good news is some version of the BMW i8 will probably enter production. It’s still a looker, but the EfficientDynamics Vision concept was beyond belief, easily the greatest concept car so far this millennium. (Watch the designers talk about … Continue reading →

Posted in cars, design | 1 Comment

software: accelerating the development of EVERYTHING

Posted on 2012-06-13 by skierpage

Draft incomplete thoughts and missing links but I just had to get something out… Marc Andreessen said software is eating entire industries, and from my own personal experience he’s really onto something. Most heard about Facebook buying Instagram for one … Continue reading →

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design: Downton Abbey’s sartorial nirvana

Posted on 2012-06-06 by skierpage

Downton Abbey is high-class underwritten clichéd claptrap (I thought the smug writer-producer mahvelling over his work in the BBC parody really was Julian Fellowes), but season 1 episode 5 achieves sartorial nirvana.  Lady Mary’s charcoal cutaway riding outfit, the men’s cream … Continue reading →

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web: Wikipedia editing ideas

Posted on 2012-06-05 by skierpage

Wikipedia wants to attract and retain editors. “Ideas are cheap, implementation costs,” but here are my thoughts anyway as a long-time but sporadic contributor. For all I know these have been discussed at length and rejected or deferred… New pages … Continue reading →

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web: automating bits of Sprint Picture Mail

Posted on 2012-05-19 by skierpage

(The good programmer is lazy; instead of typing something over and over, she writes a script to automate the steps. The wizard programmer writes a set of object classes that model the problem at hand, and tells those objects to … Continue reading →

Posted in software, web | 2 Comments

web: getting your pictures off Sprint Picture Mail

Posted on 2012-05-16 by skierpage

Sprint Picture Mail was an easy way to upload pictures on a feature phone to a web site where you could organize them into albums. But Sprint was never a serious player in the “online photo site” business. I criticized … Continue reading →

Posted in web | 7 Comments

Anthony Lane, funniest writer at The New Yorker (more!)

Posted on 2012-05-01 by skierpage

Irrepressibly droll. On 20-kilometer walk competitors at the Beijing Olympics: They will continue to propel themselves, year in, year out, as if learning to moonwalk too soon after a hip replacement. On Yoda  (Space Case, “Star Wars: Episode III”): Also, … Continue reading →

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