Instagram, for the uninitiated, is an application for your smart phone that allows you to take pictures, apply an optional filter to stylized the photo, and then share said photo with other people via Instagram’s own social network or sharing to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

There are a few curmudgeon who think that Instagram is useless or in some extreme cases ruining the art and profession of photography.

Anyone who’s ever tried to take a photograph with even a minuscule hint of creativity are artists. Framing a shot, choosing certain lenses, lens filters and post production all modify the reality of the thing being photographed.

Another thing about this progression of art (and by association, photography) is how prior works influence new works. I can take a picture of Yosemite just like Ansel Adams, but that’s only because his work came before mine. I could even use my much more technically sophisticated tools to duplicate the style of Adams – to evoke the same feelings. Does it make my photo art?

All art builds on prior art. Even if your purposefully attempting to be contrary to existing art or a particular style. Opposing that which came before it means you’re cognitively aware of its influence and history! No art exists in a vacuum and therefore the work of people using Instagram is just as valid as someone earning income, a professional, using his high-end Nikon D800 to capture a certain look or emotion with lens, lighting and Photoshop.

Instagram is art and the people using it are artists – with, or without, the filters.

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So what if I’m wrong? What if this entire essay is inaccurate in claiming that users of Instagram are artists and the resulting images, modified or not, are art?

If Instagram isnt art, then it’s just silly fun – a game. Relax. If you’re going to get upset over fun, then I’d love to hear you talk about how Scrabble is not writing, and is deserving of equal flack.

See Also:

• Why Instagram is Art
• Instagram is the best, Instagram is the worst

In no particular order, my favorite and most useful WordPress plugins.

Advanced Blogroll- For links to other sites or other online presence (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.) you create links in what’s called a blogroll (The name is a holdover from the early days of WordPress.)y The default WordPress configuration displays them in alphabetical order. This plugin allows you to arrange them as you see fit. You can see how “Latest” comes before “Elsewhere” on the navigation to the right. ->

Jetpack – What once was a gathering of separate plugins is now a super kung-fu collection of some great features. Two of my favorite features are the Wordpress stats and After the Deadline. The stats gives you near real-time feedback on traffic to and from your site. Popular pages, keywords and links displayed automatically in your dashboard. After the Deadline is a super grammar, style and spell checker that uses artificial intelligence to make you sound more-than artificially intelligent. That’ just two of the many features of Jetpack.

Akismet - Comment spam blocking magic. Spammers target popular content management systems like WordPress in an attempt to trick site owners into allowing spammy comments. Akismet sits in the background and filters these fake comments without any interaction. According to my stats it’s blocked over 17,000 spam comments with a 99.87% accuracy over 6 years. Not too bad.

Google Analytics – Google Analytics is the most powerful web tracking tool out there. Coupled with WordPress and a good email campaign tool (like MailChimp) you can track your readership with great detail. I could hours just going over how useful good web metrics are!

WP Super Cache – This is just incase you suddenly get hit with a million visitors. Normally, WordPress dynamically generates each page and post which causes a lot of requests for information in the database and all the pictures and styles in  your theme. This plugin uses a complex set of rules to create a static version of your page, making the load on the server much less. There by allowing for many more visitors at the same time.

One last recommendation is not a WordPress plugin but a web service called if this then that. ifttt allows me to glue things I do online together. For example, when I post a photo to Instagram ifttt automatically creates a new post on my site and posts the picture. It can greatly help in automating posting to a lot of other web services, which allows you to spend more time writing content and growing your business than messing with tech stuff.

I hope this helps you firm up your WordPress site and please leave a comment if you have a suggestion of your own.

The secrecy part, in large, is described as a strategic way to have an advantage over other companies. Companies who would love to beat Apple to market with their knock offs interpretations. Secrecy prevents Acme Company skipping the months or years of development and research, in which Acme saves a ton of money and beats Apple to market with an, admittedly, mediocre product.

Apple is often heralded (and mocked) for its claims of delight and surprise. Upon its initial unveiling, Apple described the  iPad as being “magical”. Apple products continuously rank high on Consumer Reports and other customer satisfaction charts.

There’s another part to secrecy that I think ties into the idea of delighting someone. In our hyper connected age where sharing information is approaching diarrhetic levels, the idea of being surprised about anything is becoming rare. Running robots? Boring. Traveling to the depths of the ocean? Yawn.¹ Apple uses their secrecy to actually deliver the delight and surprise, not just predict and pontificate on what might happen. Most product launches are quickly followed by the product being available. Not a watered-down version of a prototype, but the actual device down to the silicon.

There’s something to be said for the emotional impact a surprise party has over one that has been known about for months. Don’t get me wrong, a good party is still a good party, but a good party is overshadowed by a good surprise party.

Part of the secrecy that Apple holds helps to heighten the delight. For many people, getting an Apple device at launch is an experience. Ordering as soon as humanly possible or standing in line on launch day, you know that your new Apple device literally came straight to your home mere hours after being minted. You didn’t have weeks to prepare for its arrival. Half your fiends didn’t even know a new device was being released. That’s how new it is. Only Apple can deliver on that delight and experience and largely because of their secrecy.

Nintendo, Sony, Intel, Microsoft and many other consumer tech companies share their product roadmaps months, if not years ahead of time. There’s still delight, but it’s similar to reading the Plot to a movie on Wikipedia before watching it. You might still enjoy the film, but you kinda know what to expect. Apple could do the same, but if they were to do so I think it’s no secret that we’re so jaded that no one would be delighted or surprised.

¹I’m being a little tounge-in-cheek-in-cheek here. I, in fact, find these examples to be quite awe-inspiring.

From Apple,

“When you use earphones or a headset, Siri reads back text messages and email messages that you’ve dictated before you send them, and it reads back the subjects of reminders before you create them. This is especially helpful when you’re driving and can’t see the iPhone 4S screen.”

I wish this option was the default behavior. There have been numerous times when I’m walking between buildings or to the car and want to send a note without looking at the screen and I’m not wearing headphones.

¹In my case my phone was plugged into the aux jack in my car.

As someone who’s played the earlier games, the controls take some getting use to. Even the option to use ‘classic’ controls isn’t an exact 1 to 1 to the layout of Tricky or SSX 3.³ The true classic controls would let you use the digital d-pad to pre-wind your flips and spins ahead of a jump. Holding right on the d-pad would lock your character in as you approached a jump. In order to maximize the effect, you’d also hold down on the jump button (X on the PS2/3) as you approach.

In SSX, the default controls heavily leverage the analog sticks, which I’m sure seemed like a good idea on paper. Left for spin/flips when in the air, left and right movement on the ground. In practice, it becomes rather frustrating. For movement you’d want to have the gradient of control analog gives you, but for precise input, such as tricks, it seems a little too loose and muted.

Another small change that is related is the pre-wind for jumps, spins and flips. In the previous games you’d have to line-up ahead of a approaching jump many seconds before you actually reached the apex of the ramp. In SSX the pre wind is not as necessary and if you try to pre-wind too soon your character will veer off course 9 times out of 10.

For an old-timer to the series I would love to just have my digital d-pad, face and shoulder buttons for tricks, spins, boost and jumps. Let me use the left analog for steering and leave the right analog out of it.

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My second biggest beef beyond the controls (which I hope I can adapt to over time) would be the addition of the Deadly Descents.

From what I understand, during development the title was “SSX: Deadly Descents” and the element of ‘deadly’ was to be a prime focus for the game. There were to be these super harsh tracks with all sorts of obstacles. They changed the title during development and the ‘deadly descents’ became 8 boss peaks, each with a kind of hokey and unnecessary gimmick along with taxing and honestly un-fun tracks. These 8 peeks, all required to enjoy the single-player ‘story’⁴ detract what the game is about. Undoubtably EA spend lots of money on these tracks and as they progressed away from “Deadly Descents” to just SSX they couldn’t just cut them. I wish they would have.

One deadly descent has you press an additional button every few seconds in order to keep oxygen flowing to your player. Doing this on some of the more tame tracks would prove an additional challenge. Doing it on the unforgiving and frustrating “Deadly Descents” proves to be maddening. These tracks are not SSX tracks. It’s not easy to create a solid line downhill during a race, or to create a series of never-ending tricks in trick events. It’s sadistic when you add in the super dark tracks that need headlamps or wingsuits to glide like a flying squirrel.

To compound things, instead of having a reset button to reorient your character in the occurrence of falling off the track (which you will do often as these tracks have more blind spots than an 18 wheeler) you have the ability to rewind time. This time rewind feature has multiple penalties rendering it totally useless and just as frustrating as crashing. First you rewind time, but your opponents continue on unabated. Second, you can rewind, but will break whatever combo you had going. Third, the severity of the slope in most tracks will have you rewinding numerous times, compounding the existing two penalties. In most cases it’s better/easier to just restart the race from the beginning.

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Another design decision is the absence of synchronous or traditional multiplayer. No jumping on Xbox Live to play head-to-head against your friends – much less any form of local multiplayer.⁵ All multiplayer features amount to racing ghosts and best times of other people. It’s not all doom and gloom with the multiplier. There’s a very primal competitiveness to besting your friends times and scores, but in 2012 I would think generic old multiplayer would be a given. Like windshield wipers.

The other hokey aspect of multi-player (and single player as well, the line is blurred as far as levels and unlocks are concerned) is the progression mechanism for unlocking new equipment. New boards and suits appear randomly in the store upon each visit, and even with minor loading times, it becomes tedious to determine if what you’re buying is any better than what you have. To add the illusion of customization, outfits for your characters offer nothing more than palette swaps. None of which appear that appealing and none that impact gameplay.

The unlocks are a little Zyngafied as well. You unlock stuff by earning gold and the crap you unlock is random, so you can’t save up to buy cool gear, you just have to get lucky in the store with random stock.

—

That said, I do like it. It’s not as good as 3, most of the tracks are either too frustrating to be enjoyable or to bland to be memorable as in Tricky and SSX 3. As a long-time fan it’s a solid game and so close to it’s predecessors that I can taste it.

It’s apparent that there’s an influence from the Call of Duty generation to make games more gritty, dark or realistic, but SSX is the last game where this makes any sense. This is a series that has been all about being over the top with crazy characters, crazy tricks and crazy tracks. None of which exist in this game. Well maybe the tricks. Barely.⁶

It’s SSX in HD, it could be better, and I hope they make another with some lessons learned.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/xbox-360/ssx

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¹Which is the second in the series and to some the best of the series.

²My personal favorite was, and still is, SSX 3. Tight controls, logical level progression and some of my favorite tracks.

³Which is weird. Why call something classic when it’s not. Psudo-classic would be more appropriate.

⁴The story is less believable than the idea of people jumping out of helicopters to snowboard down the side of Mt. Everest rocking out to Foster the People.

⁵An unfortunate trend that continues. Sigh.

⁶I love grinding on rails as much as the next guy, but in SSX there is no need to balance while grinding and there are rails freaking everywhere.

In an attempt to make more things and become a better <whatever I’m trying at the moment>, I look to inspiration from other smart people. Mike Monteiro’s words this morning struck me as sound advice. Particularly this passage:

“We have more processing power, affordable tools, and combined intelligence right this very minute than at any point in the history of design. We are using it to build shit. It’s time to aim higher. Let’s find problems to solve that actually improve people’s lives. Whether it’s figuring out a better way to access medical records, figuring out how 14 year olds can stop carrying forty pounds of textbooks back and forth to school every day, or a reservation system for the communal rooftop farm in your building, there has got to be something more beneficial to society than the next Facebook clone.”

While it may be a new year, ripe with new opportunities, it’s still the same job. Keep working, better yourself and better your community.

I was curious to find out where it appears and discovered this thread on reddit.

I discovered at least 4 different shades.

Dock.app – backgroundTile.png

Dock.app – defaultdesktop.png

AppKit.framework – NSLinenBackgroundPattern.png

Safari.framework – ReadingList-BGLinen.png

It’s interesting that the Reading List variant isn’t 256px by 256px, but rather 300px by 300px – a non base-two size. It’s also worth noting that the iPad uses the darkest texture for the canvas in Safari, while Lion uses the second lightest version.

Update: George mentions in the comments, as of 10.7.3 backgroundTile.png from the Dock.app bundle was renamed to ecsb_background_tile.png. The files appear to be exactly the same.

Update 2: The new beta of Messages for Mountain Lion includes a new addition to the linen family.

/Applications/iChat.app/Contents/Resources/linen.tiff

From a poster idea I had back in October. Never went anywhere with it.

I work on the web every day. My job title is “Web Project Coordinator” and while this implies that I’m focused on the web I find myself both professionally and personally doing so much more.

On some days I shoot and edit video, others have me designing a layout for a site or coding some JavaScript. I even manage a few servers and help edit objective-c for an iPhone app! Not to mention my past IT support role has perpetuated my title as ‘computer guy’ around the office and at home.

I freely admit this is a 1st world problem and there are far greater difficulties facing the universe, but on an individual level I find the feeling of not being proficient in one particular area to be a serious mental drain. Why do I feel like a jack of all trades and a master of none?

Some days I feel like a fraud, that everyone I work with (and for) have been duped by smoke and mirrors. That if they ever found out how little I actually know I’d be branded as a fluke, a huckster. Part of me knows this isn’t true. That I’m smart and well received by those I work with, but man because of the Internet I feel like such a moron. Why is this?

It’s because I read. I read a lot.

I pursue Twitter and Google Reader to find out what’s going on all over the world. I read about Adam Lisagor and his awesome video work or Neven Mrgan and his splendid design chops. Boing Boing fills me with oddities to delight the senses and bizarre people I would love to meet.

Guys like Merlin Mann and Jeffery Zeldman make me feel like a sloth with their intelligent and witty writing. Don’t even get me started on Mike Matas‘ photography or Brent Simmons‘ helpful articles on coding. How about Michael Lopp’s awesome guide to being a better geek?

I digress, but you can see how after daily observances of a plethora of cool things one can start comparing themselves and asking, “Why am I not that successful? Why are these people so awesome?”

But I think I’ve figured it out.

I was having a discussion bitching to my wife on the ride home from work. I was withering in fake pain about how I don’t feel like I’m strong in any particular area and how I worry about my future. My wife, as smart as always, pointed out an obvious fact.

I’m comparing myself to 5 different people – of course I’m not going to be as good in each profession as these folks have chosen. I’ve been trying to stretch myself in so many different ways because I’m excited! I want to do everything I read about because it all sounds so interesting.

I realize now that I can’t try to do what 5 separate people have accomplished. I can dabble here, and try something over here, but at the end of the day I need to relax.

My wife reminded me that what is important is that the people I work with enjoy what I can do for them and that I continue to develop as an individual without the pressure to be as good as everyone on the Internet. I often forget that these folks are great at what they do and that what each one of them does is diverse and specific. People rarely blog about their shortcomings – about topics that they’re not proficient in. They talk about their successes, their passions and what cool things they’re doing.

So anytime I’m down in a funk, that I feel like no one would hire me and that I’m some sort of goober, I just need to remember that even thought the Internet can bring so much information to my fingertips that it does nothing to filter – to remind me that I need to take things in one at a time. Admire these things I see and hear, enjoy them, but ultimately be at peace with who I am and where I’m going.

At work we just wrapped up a 12 week walking program called “Walk to Madrid“. The goal of the program was to encourage employees to take a more active role in their physical health. Departments and individuals formed teams of 5 to 10 people and kept track of how many steps they took each week using the provided pedometers.

Teams would select a captain to keep track of their steps and submit them to HQ every week. The program had both a competitive and collaborative set of goals. The first was each team competing to see who could walk the farthest toward our Madrid Campus and the second was to see how far we as a university could walk toward Madrid.

We also setup bi-weekly awards and milestones along the way to encourage teams to go just a little further.

We set out with the idea of maybe getting 200 people involved with about 20 teams total. We purchased water bottles and pedometers and prepared for people to sign up.

After a few weeks (with only really one simple article in our university-wide newsletter) we had over 900 people say they were interested. It total we had around 95 teams – 75 of which actually completed the entire 3 month program.

Entire departments signed up – causing us to split 30-40 member teams in to more manageable chunks. We even had 3 teams from our Madrid campus sign up!*

My role was helping to manage the data from each team and to update the website weekly with the most current results. I created a Google form for each team that was shared with the team captain. Since teams could be between 5 and 10 members we averaged the progress for each team to even things out.**

Each week I calculated the average into miles and updated a chart that used a Google Spreadsheet as a database. It was quite the undertaking and while I could have automated the entire process I felt that it was necessary to at least glance over the incoming steps.

Let me share some stats with you.

• 95 teams and over 900 people
• ~75 of which finished
• Average weekly miles per team - 28.9 miles
• Total Miles walked to (and past) Madrid –  28,287.13 miles
• Total in Steps –  56,574,275.3
• As an entire organization we traveled between St. Louis and Madrid 6 times.
• The total distance traveled is greater than the circumference of the Earth at the equator.

During the weekly updates I would also check to see which teams were the first to past a given milestone. Each week I would unveil a new milestone ‘badge’ I created. We had planned out over more than 20 milestones between St. Louis and Madrid, but only had the chance to use about half.

The 1st place team got as far as the Atlantic Ocean (off the tip of Delaware). I made more graphics that never got used for milestones out past the coast.  Here’s a few of them:

At the end of this crazy experiment we hosted a simple celebration in the recreation center. Around 75 people stopped by and the Vice President of Human Resources spoke a few words.*** We gave out medals to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th place teams. First place got snazzy little runner-topped trophies and took the “Stanley Cup” trophy back to their office to proudly display – until we crown a new 1st place team!

I made a little slide show that ran in the background of the festivities highlighting some of the awards and milestones reached. You can view a Quicktime version here.

It was quite the success and I got to take part in something that helped people become more aware of their physical health and the reflective nature of walking. I’m looking forward to doing it again next year – bigger and better.

Addendum: As I was writing this I discovered that our student newspaper covered the program. Sweet.

*Three of which made it into the top 5 teams. Those Europeans walk A LOT!
**Which means, potentially, that we walked further than the publicized distance.
***And publicly committed us to doing this again next summer!