Tag: Wish List

Categories
Apple iOS

Resource Overload

Now that the iPhone 5 has shipped we have, in some cases, at least five image sizes in each binary.

  • iPhone 3G and older iPod Touch
  • iPad
  • iPhone 4
  • iPad Retina
  • iPhone 5 and new iPod Touch

Here’s a table of sizes for various images.

I have a 16GB iPhone 4. Why should I have to download four additional sets of images that take up space on my phone? With the latest upgrade to iOS 6 I had to delete a bunch of stuff so I could perform the upgrade. I’m curious how much space I’d save if I had only iPhone 4 resources? I’d image it’s quite a bit.

To fix this issue I’d like to see is a mechanism in the store that would download a resource package for your particular device. That way we’re not penalized with a gob of resources we won’t use.

With my iPhone 4 I’d get the iPhone 4 resource pack. If I install the app to my older iPod Touch I’d get the standard definition resource pack.

I know Apple won’t see this, but I had to get the thought off my mind. I’m sure there are others who have had the same wish.

Categories
Tumblr Weblogging

My Tumblr Wish List

If you don’t wish to read the ravings of a mad, static weblog publishing, fool, just leave now. If you are curious to hear what I’d like to have from Tumblr, stick around. It’s not actually that much.

Hosting

I know I can host my domain at Tumblr, but that’s not what I’d like. I’d like to have Tumblr push content to my domain. Blogger did this for years, and I’m not sure any other, centrally managed, publishing system does this today? Blogger stopped publishing via FTP a couple years back. That’s what prompted me to move to WordPress, I wanted to have the content published at my site. The big downside to WordPress? It’s all dynamic, but we’ll get to that later.

How?

What if I could install a bit of software on my server that Tumblr could use to publish to by box? I’m not sure what the downsides are to FTP publishing, but obviously it’s not such a great thing or Blogger wouldn’t have shut it down, right? What if I could install a REST service, created by Tumblr, that had one simple endpoint, publish. Basically that publish method would accept a payload of an RSS feed, main page, and the archive page. Pretty simple. What’s the downside? I’m not sure, but, I’d imagine, there are some.

Static Publishing (A.K.A. Baked Weblog)

The other thing I’d really love to have is a static publisher, or as Brent Simmons calls it, a Baked Weblog. Why should content always be rendered from the database every time the site is hit, or cached by Tumblr’s hardware? It makes no sense. Why not publish a static HTML file to a location and load that? GASP! The nerve! Static HTML? Yes, static HTML. There’s nothing wrong with it and it would be just fine for my uses.

Upside?

Tumblr gets an enormous number of pageviews per day. Of those how many are actual pageviews for a weblog and not the user’s Dashboard? I’d imagine most of those are for the Dashboard, which could be offloaded by using an RSS reader and creating your own “Dashboard”, but I digress. I’d imagine having weblog content published to another domain could be good for Tumblr’s overall reliability. No more creating a page each time the weblog is hit, no need to update and maintain a cache of the weblog when it’s been updated. I’m not sure how many people would opt for static publishing, but I could imagine quite a few might enjoy it.

You’re Crazy

AHHHHHH!Yeah, I know. This is one of those things I harp on all the time. It’s not something Tumblr would ever be interested in doing because it could potentially decrease their pageviews per day. Why? Because the weblog would no longer be hosted on their hardware. You avoid the middle man, and go right to the source.

But, but, but…

I like Tumblr, I really do, but I’m not sure I’d like to put all my content on their servers. I don’t mind composing and storing it there, as long as I can get it out, but I’d really like to have the final published text on my box. Then again, who knows, I may take that plunge and go whole hog with a Tumblr weblog. Our oldest daughter, Haileigh, has a great Tumblr based weblog, and it’s served her quite well.

There. Nothing will come of it, but at least I got it off my chest.

Categories
Weblogging

Dear Posterous

A wonderful boquet of flowers.I’ve been using Posterous for a while now, as an alternative stream. I post pictures to Posterous indirectly through Instagram and text through ping.fm, on occasion. I have a couple other weblogs that use Posterous exclusively, but I can’t quite move this weblog to Posterous, yet.

I have a couple requests. I believe these would get me a long way toward having the weblogging solution I’m after.

Request #1

I’d like to have the option to publish static HTML to an FTP site. A fully baked weblog. Why? A better question is, why not? I want a weblog minus a lot of dynamic content, it’s all about the content, the text, the post. I don’t need my pages rendered every time my site is hit. I’d like to generate static HTML when the “Publish” button is clicked. I was a Blogger user for years because of that feature, until it was removed. I’d love to see this feature.

Request #2

Give me different archive options. This request goes hand-in-hand with my prior request. If I move my weblog from WordPress to Posterous I need to make sure I don’t break links to my old posts. My posts are archived by YYYY/MM/DD/post, which, according to Posterous support, is not possible today. I asked support to pass that request to the development team. I hope it makes it out of the backlog.

That’s it. I believe, with these two changes, I could move my weblog to
Posterous.

Fingers crossed.

Categories
Life

Ruins of Detroit

Etsy Blog: “So decrees the mission statement of photographers Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, authors of The Ruins of Detroit. These intrepid two have approached the waning city of Detroit as a fallen American colossus, navigating buckling floors, curlicued shards of lead paint and dust covered relics they document the industrial capital’s last gasp.”

Add it to the wish list.