Steve Jobs, in a 1996 interview about NeXT, reprinted in Wired’s homage edition on the iPad:

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

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kickingbear.com

I’ll be using Everyday to remind myself to go outside and take a photograph of the tree behind my place from my balcony. It will ask me to align my nose and mouth and I will laugh at it as I choose to align my photos with the branches of the tree.

And that’s what you’ll be doing too. We are all going to agree to take a photograph every day of our favourite plant or tree as it starts to recover from being depressed about just how stupidly cold the world can be at times.

(Do read the original post all the way up to the final stop if you think that’s too corny an idea.) (Also, no, of course not I’m not actually gonna do it.)

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I had to spend the whole afternoon backing up and syncing my iPad to test the photos on it (seems like the backup process consistently takes hours — literal hours — if you’ve made big in-app purchases, and I gave in and bought the new Wired two days ago), so you better enjoy those wallpapers. And don’t make me regret skipping the whole watermark business (it’s so 2005).

I’m not giving you the obligatory Bratz doll photo, that one’s exclusively mine. High-res wallpapers for iPhone 4 possibly coming later. Ah, and those are busy images, so they’re intended for the Lock Screen rather than as Home Screen wallpapers. I have to look into making some kind of patterns for the Home Screen… someday.

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No Pic No Dial n’est pas Facebook : la suppression du profil n’est pas cachée, elle n’est pas dissuasive (bon, le site commence par proposer de désactiver temporairement le profil au lieu de le supprimer, mais je vois ça comme un service — je pars du principe qu’une des premières motivations pour supprimer son profil est le fait d’avoir trouvé un mec, et c’est plus simple de désactiver son profil que d’avoir à le recréer un mois plus tard, et oups c’est peut-être un peu cynique / désabusé en fait ?), tout ce que vous avez à faire pour quitter le site, c’est cliquer sur le bouton bien visible dans la page de gestion du profil, et taper votre mot de passe pour confirmer.

Pourtant, une fois par semaine, j’en ai un qui vient me poser la question, parce qu’une fois qu’il a décidé de se désinscrire il ne veut plus chercher. Il a réussi à créer son profil tout seul, à le remplir, à mettre ses photos, à discuter, mais, non, maintenant qu’il veut partir, il est hors de question qu’il se serve de son cerveau.

(Ma réponse était plus longue et aimable, les premières fois, parce que je pensais que ça devait être ma faute, mais elle est devenue de plus en plus laconique au fil des itérations, et la conversation d’aujourd’hui prouve qu’il n’y a pas besoin de plus : son profil a disparu du site dans les dix secondes.)

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(I fully intended to post the “1500” mark but it was 4am and I automatically tapped the screen out of habit.)

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Obviously inspired by Panic’s dream setup that’s been making the rounds for two days. I can’t afford a 46-inch industrial screen (slurp), but I have a Mac mini with a web-based screensaver and I know JSON. (Actually, I didn’t, but that way I got to learn.)

It looks all gray on the photo because everything’s working right and there are no warnings. (Except for the chart of online users on No Pic No Chat, I need to fix the script.) And the photo’s not as cool as Panic’s because, hey, 46-inchers are photogenic, but it’s pretty nice in person.

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Ways of consuming RSS feeds change over time; so do my posting habits. On the one hand, I’m not posting as many short links as I once did, and I doubt that’s going to change in the near future (in part thanks to Twitter, in part because my blogging has changed, and that’s the way it is). On the other hand, everybody’s using Google Reader for reading blogs nowadays, and that user experience is somewhat different from old-school aggregators — articles are displayed at a glance instead of having you pick from a list (I know that there’s a list view, but who uses that?), and the result is more conducive to short posts. Plus, Twitter has also changed the way people expect to receive their content.

For all these reasons, I’ve switched around the way my feeds handle small posts and links: the main feed (index.xml, the one everybody’s following) will be updated with every short post right as it is published instead of waiting for a daily digest at midnight. And those who think that’s too much content in the RSS reader can follow a digests feed instead (replace index.xml with digests.xml), that works the old way.

Those changes don’t apply to my Twitter posts, which will still be aggegated once a day. Because it’s pretty obvious that, if you want to get my tweets just as I post them, you should follow me right where I post them.

While I’m at it, the Twitter account that alerts you of new posts on my blog is renamed to @garooRSS (people who already followed it don’t have to do anything, it’s the same account).

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— That said, I loved your new year’s card, I showed it all around me.

— In fact, I’m realizing that it isn’t so much that people didn’t read it entirely, but nobody answers their e-mail now if they don’t imperatively have to; it used to be just me, but it looks like everybody’s been catching up.
And that’s why we need a “like” button on every single communication medium under the sun.

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Okay, so almost nobody bothers to read the post I spent two days on, and almost nobody bothers to look at my new year’s card long enough to see it’s not just a bunch of kittens — go figure why I’m never motivated to do anything anymore. That has to stop and I’ve got two options: I can close the blog, or close the comments.

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Screw that, I knew yesterday I wasn’t happy with what I was putting online. Now that’s marginally better.

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As usual, the motivation is to find the perfect layout that will allow me to post more links (this time, by placing shorter linkage at the same level as tweets, both less prominent than more important articles). As usual, it’ll only last for a week or two before once again I stop posting.

Before:

After:

Yeah, I know, I’ve done better. But that beats closing the site.

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I wanted Web is Pink to get some media coverage, but be careful what you with for: it’s not just the app, but me, and my face, on the website of the biggest French gay magazine — and not just as a throwaway news bit, but featured prominently on the home page. (This post’s draft offered a larger version of my picture, but I just had to replace it with a screenshot of their home page. And I was very happy to do it; I don’t enjoy seeing my face around here.)

If you’ve registered on Web is Pink (which is, since the launch of the iPhone app, very officially and definitely renamed to No Pic No Dial for the French version) and you haven’t logged in for a while, or if you hadn’t bothered registering yet, it’s time to… well… I’d say it’s time to get back over there, but that may not apply: the app was already booming for Paris, and this article ought to help for the rest of France (and maybe Québec? no idea) but it’s not going to get many people from other countries to sign up. Oh, well, it’s a start.

Thanks to Ydikoi for the photo — it wasn’t easy, I hadn’t made self-portraits in a while, and I particularly don’t enjoy being photographed (control freak that I am). Hrm. Damn, hadn’t noticed that the smaller you resize the photo, the less friendly I look.

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Remember Glyphboard? Unicode is the same, but as a native app: tap a symbol, from the several pages offered, and it’s immediately copied to the clipboard — in just one step. Or tap several symbols, then press the “Copy” button, if you want to copy and paste several at once.

A future update will let users paste symbols from outside the app into the favorites pane — mostly as a workaround for the Apple logo that I removed at the last minute because they’re no way the App Store would have accepted it (but then, the Apple logo isn’t a valid Unicode symbol anyway, so you shouldn’t really use it).

The app is very temporarily free, so you should just hurry and download and rate it with five stars.

iTunes download.

More information.

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I’ve waited so long for this moment, I’ve gotten so used to the idea that the app would never be approved for the App Store, that I now have no idea what to do next.

It’s unbelievable, but here it is: Apple has finally approved the Web is Pink app, which gives you direct access to, like, the best gay chat ever, right there on your iPhone.

It’s free, you don’t need an e-mail address to sign up from the app, it uses your phone’s geolocation capabilities to show who’s nearby, it’s connected with the awesome regular version of the site, it lets you upload photos and everything you need, and did I mention it’s the best gay chat in the world?

Click here to download (iTunes link, requires OS 3.0), or here for more information.

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Received yesterday a second copy:

Your application, Web is Pink, is requiring unexpected additional time for review. We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as we are able.

The interesting part is that it was sent out of the regular approval process — I could tell on the site that they reviewed the app about a week ago, not yesterday — but one day after Apple officially announced the long-expected parental controls for iPhone.

So I’m holding out unrealistic hopes again that the app could be approved when iPhone OS 3.0 brings those controls to the mobile App Store. Let’s meet here in ten days to witness my crushed expectations.

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itunes.apple.com

I originally intended for Snap Filters to be released for free for a few weeks, then set a price, but Apple prevented that. Now that I’m allowed to publish free apps, and since I’ve had a hard time getting review sites to be interested in the application (because there are so many photo filter apps already), it’s time to take a step back in my launch plans and make the app free for two weeks — celebrating the nice weather (if you’re in the northern hemisphere).

The point of Snap Filters is that it makes pretty pictures out of the crappy iPhone camera; and it has a rather snappy interface that lets you quickly browse through the filters and select the ones that will make your images pop — I find that it’s more usable and stable than many of its competitors, in a subtle way that is hard to demonstrate until you try it out for yourself.

That’s why you should download it right now from the App Store, because it’s free until the summer solstice. (If it asks you to pay, try again in a few hours.)

And don’t forget to rate it on the App Store.

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Your application, Web is Pink, is requiring unexpected additional time for review. We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as we are able.

Judging from a Google search, it could be a legit notice that the reviewers are backlogged, but it’s more likely to mean that they’ve just gotten fed up with rejecting my application and moved on to veto it — that notice was sent exactly ten minutes after the one that acknowledged reception of my reply to their latest rejection e-mail.

You wouldn’t think that I paid to enter the developer program.

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Thank you for submitting Web is Pink to the App Store. We’ve reviewed Web is Pink and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains objectionable content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."

Attached are screen shots of some examples of objectionable content.

Like I said before, the application barely acknowledges the existence of sex anymore. Well, there is the word “sex” on the third screenshot.

And the fourth screenshot, as you can tell, is taken from Mobile Safari — because profile pages include a link to the web version of the profile, the one that isn’t censored:

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