Extra Future

Hi, I’m Phil Nelson, a writer, developer, and audio-visual maker of stuff. I have been making stuff online for over 25 years. I run RetroStrange and Set Side B. Good to see you.

Blog Archives

Month: July 2011

  • Annotations to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 1969

    [Jess Nevins’ annotations add so much to every book he does them for that I consider feel sorry for every book without any of his annotations available][link]. I first came across his work with [Neil Gaiman’s limited series 1602][1602] and I’m glad I did.

    [1602]: http://www.enjolrasworld.com/Jess%20Nevins/1602/16021.html “Jess Nevin’s 1602 annotations”

    If you haven’t bought any of the books yet, now is as good a time as any to buy them on AmazonImage, and give me a small kickback in the process.

    [link]: http://jessnevins.com/annotations/1969annotations.html “Annotations to League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume III Chapter Two”

  • Contrast Rebellion

    [Let’s put an end to this low-contrast, light gray nonsense and use typography for its purpose: Making text readable.][link]

    That’s a rallying cry I can echo without hesitation.

    [link]: http://contrastrebellion.com/ “Contrast Rebellion – to hell with low-contrast fonts!”

  • New Toronto Initiative Supports First-Time Female Game Developers

    [This is a really cool idea][link]. Toronto is my favorite city, and it’s because of things like this.

    [link]: http://torontoist.com/2011/07/new_toronto_initiative_supports_first-time_female_game_developers.php “New Toronto Initiative Supports First-Time Female Game Developers – Torontoist”

  • Steven Frank: Programming for Mere Mortals

    [Part 1 in a series, available for $2.99 on the Kindle.][link]

    Steven is the co-founder of Panic, the legendary Mac development house that brought you Transmit, Coda, and Unison. You need this book.

    [link]: http://stevenf.com/pages/book.html “Steven Frank: Programming for Mere Mortals”

  • John Siracusa’s Mac OS X 10.7 Lion Review

    [The newest in a series that goes back to the first Mac OS X public beta.][link] Nobody does it better.

    [link]: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-os-x-10-7.ars “Mac OS X 10.7 Lion: the Ars Technica review”

  • Mac OS X Lion will ship Wednesday on the Mac App Store

    [Serenity Caldwell for Macworld][link]:

    >The cat’s out of the bag: During Apple’s third-quarter financial earnings call Tuesday, chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer announced that Lion would debut Wednesday on the Mac App Store. The OS update will cost $30.

    Really looking forward to this. [See what is coming on Apple’s Lion info page][lion].

    [link]: http://www.macworld.com/article/161215/2011/07/lion_ships_wednesday.html “Lion will ship Wednesday on the Mac App Store | Operating Systems | Macworld”
    [lion]: http://www.apple.com/macosx/ “Apple | Mac OS X”

  • Who I Am, Where I Am And What I Do: July 2011

    Hi. I’m Phil Nelson. I make websites from my orbital platform which is currently hovering above the city of San Francisco. I use [Twitter][twitter] a lot, and have [a Facebook account][face], as well as being on [LinkedIn][linked] and [Foursquare][4sq]. I sometimes post bits and pieces of my design work to [Dribbble][dribbble]. I’ve also made some stuff:

    [twitter]: http://twitter.com/philnelson “Phil Nelson on Twitter”
    [face]: http://facebook.com/philnelson “Phil Nelson on Facebook”
    [linked]: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cpnelson “Phil Nelson on LinkedIn”
    [dribbble]: http://dribbble.com/philnelson “Phil Nelson on Dribbble”
    [4sq]: https://foursquare.com/philnelson “Phil Nelson Foursquare”

    * [PNGPress][png]: an application for Mac OS X which makes PNG images smaller, which makes your web pages load faster. [It costs 99 cents on the Mac App Store][png].

    [png]: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pngpress/id416848846?mt=12 “PNGPress on the Mac App Store”

    * [Liblr][liblr]: A little word replacement toy for Twitter. It lets you replace any word or phrase in the pubic Twitter stream with any other word or phrase. The results can be quite amusing, and overall it is good silly fun. Personal favorite: [Replace the word “mad” with the word “fat”][fat]

    [liblr]: http://liblr.com “Liblr”
    [fat]: http://liblr.com/w?replace=mad&replacement=fat “Fat is the new Mad”

    * [Kreskin][kreskin]: Kreskin takes the title of random Wikipedia page, the last three words from a random quote, and a random Flickr image to create the cover of an album by a fictional band.

    [kreskin]: http://kreskin.extrafuture.com “Kreskin”

    * [Kove][kove]: Kove is collaboratively created/edited adventure book, similar to but legally distinct from the books published under the Choose Your Own Adventure umbrella. It is named after 1980s actor Martin Kove.

    [kove]: http://kove.extrafuture.com “Kove”

    * [la petite url][la]: la petite url is a WordPress plugin which provides a self-hosted, customizable, URL shortener, for use on Twitter and stuff. Having your own short URLs gives people important context as to where the links you’re posting lead to. [John August][john] uses it. How rad is that?

    [la]: http://extrafuture.com/la-petite-url/ “la petite url”
    [john]: http://johnaugust.com/ “John August”

    * [Tybor][ty]: A chatterbot you can have a conversation with.

    [ty]: http://extrafuture.com/code/tybor “Tybor”

    * [T-Shirts & Stickers][red]: I’ve also created a couple t-shirt and sticker designs which are for sale on RedBubble.com. They’re pretty great. You should buy some. Toys and oatmeal don’t buy themselves.

    [red]: http://www.redbubble.com/people/extrafuture/shop/ “The Extra Future Shop”

    That’s about it for now. Let’s be friends all over everything everywhere. K? Good.

  • Happy Jack Mulraney, the Joker of the 19th century.

    [From the indispensable blog of Jess Nevins][link]:

    >Still another Gopher of distinction was Happy Jack Mulraney, so called because he always appeared to be laughing. However, his smile was caused by a partial paralysis of the muscles of his face. In reality Happy Jack was a verjuiced person and very sensitive about his deformity; when his chieftains wished to enrage him against an enemy they told him that slighting remarks had been made about his permanent grin. Happy Jack was finally sent to prison for the murder of Paddy the Priest, who owned a saloon in Tenth avenue and was a staunch friend of Happy Jack’s until he asked the gangster why he did not laugh on the other side of his face. Happy Jack then shot him and for good measure robbed the till.

    [link]: http://jessnevins.tumblr.com/post/7540287964/happy-jack-mulraney-the-joker-of-the-19th-century “Not by the Direct Method., Happy Jack Mulraney, the Joker of the 19th century.”

  • Extra Future T-Shirt 2011

    [I made a new Extra Future logo t-shirt, which is available now for $25 of your earth dollars.][link] Retweet, reblog, share, like, buy. I love you.

    [link]: http://www.redbubble.com/people/extrafuture/t-shirts/7428818-extra-future-2011-logo-t-shirt “Extra Future 2011 Logo T-Shirt” T-Shirt Design by Phil Nelson | RedBubble”

  • The Twenty-Year Web Cache

    [Using the metaphor of web comments forms and the annoyance of “your comment may take awhile to appear” messages to describe the inanity of the US Patent system][link]:

    >So imagine that your ideas weren’t improvable by others for twenty years, and also, that you couldn’t build on the ideas of others for the same period of twenty years.
    >
    >Welcome to the patent system.

    Pretty much, yeah. (via [Jesper][jesp])

    [link]: http://falkvinge.net/2011/07/07/the-twenty-year-web-cache/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Falkvinge-on-Infopolicy+%28Falkvinge+on+Infopolicy%29 “The Twenty-Year Web Cache – Falkvinge on Infopolicy”
    [jesp]: http://waffle.wootest.net/ “Waffle”