Last night I had to say goodbye to Yoseph, the 16 year old cross-eyed cat that lived with me. He certainly used up all of his nine lives (with at least two to heart failure). The house feels a little empty today without him around, but I know he’s not going to be in pain, and that makes it feel a little better.

Here’s a picture my friend Cortney took of him a while back.

See you on the other side buddy.

Trent Reznor has a new project out: How To Destroy Angels. Visit and you can get a DRM-free and no cost digital EP of their work.  The genius of this is:

 We’ve released our debut 6-track EP as a FREE download, delivered as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Sign up below for immediate access. For $2, you can upgrade to the HD package, which adds options for lossless audio (24-bit 44.1kHz WAV and 16-bit FLAC and Apple Lossless) and the music video for “The Space in Between” in 1080p and 480p. An immediate download of the HD package is included FREE with any merchandise purchase.

That is absolutely brilliant. Give a bit for free. For a small fee give a hell of a lot more.

Or How I Jettisoned At The Right Time

Well, this last week has been a very interesting one. A couple of weeks ago I was offered and accepted a job with ngmoco:). I informed my bosses at ImageMovers Digital and then started the two week count down to my exit. I was still working full steam on some stuff, handing off other things, and then jumping back on to stuff I had worked on previously to make sure loose ends were all tied up.

Two weeks pass. I have an awesome going-away lunch with my crew.

All seems right with the world, especially after three margaritas and a shot of tequila for my “birthday.”

After lunch I get back to the office and it’s almost time for my exit interview. It was all very professional and ended nicely. I then proceed home and plan on two days of rest¹

That Sinking Feeling

Friday I get a few text messages. It appears ImageMovers Digital is going to be closed down by Disney. I’m gobsmacked. There were no words that would make anything feel better. Former coworkers and good friends are now going to be out of a job. 

I still don’t know what to say. If anything I thought IMD would be around a little bit longer, possibly to finish up Yellow Submarine, possibly longer.

Marching On

I know that my friends will end up okay, I just worry that with 450 people entering the market it will be harder. I’ll write recommendation letters and provide references until the end of days for any of the people I worked with, they’re that great of a crew.

I am grateful for social networking in that it will keep us all in touch a bit better than just email. For anyone that is going to be around IMD as it winds down you have my greatest compassion. Blue Sky didn’t get shut down, but I was there to see it nearly dismantled and it’s not a fun place to be.

1. Those two days felt like Saturdays. I couldn’t have asked for more.↩

Via Daring Fireball

Roger Ebert on His Profile in Esquire:

Ebert:

I was a little surprised at the detail the article went into about the nature and extent of my wounds and the realities of my appearance, but what the hell. It was true. I didn’t need polite fictions.

Chris Jones’s profile captured what I’ve been thinking for the last year or so: that Ebert has become a far better writer now than he was before. And that’s saying something, because he’s always been a terrific writer.

I have to agree with John Gruber here. I read Roger Ebert’s blog post yesterday and went out and bought Esquire for the first time ever just to read the story on him. It was touching, enlightening, and it gives me an even deeper respect for Mr. Ebert. I’ve really been enjoying his writing for the last couple of years. I look forward to reading more from him and I will be greatly saddened the day he slips from this mortal coil.

Clang Successfully Self-Hosts!:

Today, Clang completed its first complete self-host! We built all of LLVM and Clang with Clang (over 550k lines of C++ code). The resulting binaries passed all of Clang and LLVM’s regression test suites, and the Clang-built Clang could then build all of LLVM and Clang again. The third-stage Clang was also fully-functional, completing the bootstrap.

Congratulations to all of the Clang developers on this amazing achievement!

Huzzah! I’m so buying LLVM/Clang devs a drink if I ever meet them.

stevenf.com – shutup.css :

shutup.css is a custom user stylesheet you can install in your web browser which will automatically hide the comments section of many popular web sites. My gift of a quieter, saner web to you.

Brilliant.

While quite a lot has been said about the iPad, I feel this succinct list from my friend Daniel Pasco sums it up:

iPad: from the company and the man that brought you: The Apple ][ Macintosh iMac OS X iPod iPhone

/via Soft Arts/Daniel Pasco

Eugene Lin wanted to be rich. Steve Jobs promised it. App after app, the Apple gods got angry with him. Until finally, with nothing but an accelerometer, two dozen naked women, and the nation of Japan, Eugene had a story to tell.

Tomorrow, 20 January 2010, a lot of indie Mac and iPhone developers are getting together to sell their software. What makes the 20th so special? The sales for the entire day are being donated to Haitian relief charities. That’s over 135 companies selling their products and then giving the money to those in need. If you’re looking for some Mac or iPhone software check out Indie+Relief.

More can be learned at Carpeauqa where Justin Williams details more about it.

Vincent Driessen’s model is described with Git in mind, but can easily be converted to Mercurial or other similar version control systems.

Nice. I like the graphical representations and the detailed explanations.

/via Justin Williams