Ben Darnell

Dvorak isn't really the right model for touchscreens anyway, since it was designed for a physical two-handed keyboard (maximize use of the home row and alternation between hands, etc). I used the Fitaly keyboard layout on PalmOS (http://www.fitaly.com/fitaly...) and would like to see something like it on the iPhone, but Pete has a good point that this may defeat the iPhone's invisible key resizing. - Ben Darnell

That's interesting. I guess the optimal layout for preventing jammed keys probably is close to the optimal layout for making accurate predictions based on where you actually pressed... - Laurence Gonsalves

Not exactly. For jammed keys you want to avoid having letters that may appear consecutively adjacent on the keyboard. For predictive key resizing you want to avoid having adjacent letters that are likely to follow the same prefix. Having ING next to each other would be prone to jammed keys, but wouldn't pose a problem for predictive input. - Ben Darnell

Hey Ben, congratulations on all your success, long way from the old OM days of cars driving in circles and popping balloons to say the least. - Travis Corriher

Please shoot me an email when you get a chance, I want to run an idea by you... [email protected] - Travis Corriher

wasn't someone asking about recipes in a functional programming style? ding! ding! ding! http://onehungrychef.freewebhostx.com/blt... - Karl Rosaen

The visual representation is nice. The images on the blog post have exceeded their photobucket serving quota, btw. - Tracy

The entire "Things I Won't Work With" category of this blog is awesome. To subscribe to just this category in Reader, use this link: http://pipeline.corante.com/archive... - Ben Darnell

"By the time Gerald Ford died in December 2006, his obituary writer had been dead for 11 months. " - Ben Darnell

The interesting part of the article is determining who is at risk, especially younger examples. Should Kurt Cobain's have been pre-written? What about obese comedians or those who drink heavily? - Louis Gray

Long but good article on the challenges facing newspapers (via piaw) - Ben Darnell

"But why would the placebo effect seem to be getting stronger worldwide? Part of the answer may be found in the drug industry's own success in marketing its products." How ironic. - Ruchira S. Datta

For Jenna :) - Ben Darnell

OMG. gross. (but love fried chicken) torn. - Jenna Bilotta

I wonder if they deliver to Mountain View.... may have to send the Reader team a care package. - Louis Gray

Looks like metafilter has removed the video. It's available with a less-offensive title (sorry mom!) at http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture... - Ben Darnell

Amazing talent! - Anne Bouey

just incredible!! - Rachel Lea Fox

It's even more impressive if you have the cultural context. - Misha Dynin

I can't believe it took so long for someone to do this. I mean, all you have to do is run the image sensor in reverse to let all the captured photons out through the lens, right? ;) - Ben Darnell

I wonder if they point in the same direction and can operate at the same time, that would make for small and light multitouch projects. - Casey Muller

Cool!!! - p3p3

What is happening with progress to make a videophone a reality? - Michael Muller

Congrats! - Brandon Titus

We're slowly getting the band back together! :-) - Kevin Fox

This may be old news, but I didn't realize that (at least some) books on the Kindle are subsidized by Amazon. I expected it to be the other way around, since it's so hard for people to look past the $300+ purchase price. I wonder what fraction of Kindle sales are for bestsellers versus the long tail (for which Amazon probably pays less and makes a profit)? Also, in light of the fact at the beginning of the article that Kindle sales are more profitable than print, it sounds like there's a lot of room to squeeze publishers before this analyst's predicted price increase. - Ben Darnell

(spoiler warning!) I loved the WALL-E end credits too, although rather than being "fantastically optimistic" I thought they were a more realistic counterpoint to the optimism of the ending of the main body of the film. The credits showed that while humanity would survive and recover, it wouldn't be as simple as using the technology that had sustained them on the spaceship or reactivating dormant technology on earth. The returning humans must rebuild civilization the hard way, starting from scratch and retracing the original humans' steps. - Ben Darnell

You mean I wasn't getting my recommended intake of fruit as a kid by eating Crunch Berries? At least snozzberries are still real, right? - Ben Darnell

Finally got around to uploading photos from my last several trips - Ben Darnell

It's interesting how hard it is to make apparently-straightforward graphical improvements to a 16-year-old game running on more modern hardware. Also, even without the graphical improvements, "it is Doom as you remember it, which is quite a bit better than it actually was". - Ben Darnell

I was just complaining to Gary today that I remember playing Doom on my 33Mhz 486, but these days you "need" a 400Mhz ARM to get the same performance. Thank you performance sucking abstraction layers! - Private Sanjeev

Just installed http://koti.mbnet.fi/mertama... on my Nokia. Ahh it takes me back. Interesting to see some of the choices that they made for the original game still hold true with a modern PDA/Phone. - John Cooper

My brain hurts. - Ben Darnell

An interesting discussion of game AI and how to ensure that the player tends to stay neck-and-neck with computer-controlled opponents without making it obvious that the race is rigged. - Ben Darnell

Wow, Toribash is coming to WiiWare. As an intimidating physicsy turn-based fighting game, it couldn't be much further from the Wii's more mainstream audience. - Ben Darnell

IMHO, the best naming convention for hosts was used by XCF: scam, cheat, graft, dupe, etc. We got into trouble when a clueless guy from [a large software company] tried to download GIMP via active FTP from ftp.gimp.org, and his firewall warned that graft.xcf.berkeley.edu wanted to open a connection (it was the same machine.) He thought that he was being hacked, and went complaining all the way up to department chair. - Misha Dynin

Steve's secret is out ;) - Ben Darnell

denny's! he does LOVE denny's! :) (ben, we miss you) - Jenna Bilotta