Steven Swigart's Blog

Cool minimal promo for On the Verge:

Char-Broil is amazing. I’ve been filming on a series for them, and the awesome part about the job is the food. Really is a great grill, and one I plan to purchase. I’ve been sold. They use infrared technology to grill at higher temperatures, that help capture the moisture in both meat and veggies.

Here is one of the videos from the series, more to come:

IBM transcending mediums, storytelling with atoms. Great video.

And here is the instant classic. IBM’s style is so retro-future, always, I like it.

I created a new blog on Tumblr to focus on more technically detailed and oriented posts, while keeping this blog more general. Objective Tech will document my journey to becoming a web developer in greater detail, where I will discuss the various technologies I’m using and the resources I’m learning to do so.

You can visit the blog at objectivetech.tumblr.com

Quartz has a good overview on how Netflix continues to grow while giving some context to comparing it to HBO, the Netflix of old media.

“The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us,” Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer, put it recently.

Currently I’m reading 10 Print. Well actually the full name of the book is 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10. And it is awesome. The book was written in the form of a private wiki between the ten authors, which makes it an interesting experiment for a book of this nature in the first place. But the book feels unified and is a compelling read for those interested in the aesthetics of code and the history of software in general. The greatest surprise for me is that this book is really a history book that doesn’t feel like a history book, and every chapter is unique and takes a different perspective on the single line of code and relating it to the larger themes of software studies in general.

10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10

The line of code creates the pattern shown on the cover of the book, as seen below. This is a basic breakdown of the single line of the code the book analyzes, although it the book does so much more than talk about syntax, but it still interesting to talk about the simple syntax of this one line program as well.

So following the logic of the basic program and how it operates, the computer will ‘randomly’ (not truly random) assign the CHR$ function either the number 205 or 206 (various computer languages handel decimals, or floating point numbers, in a variety of ways). And depending whether 205 or 206 is selected determines whether the \ or the / characters get chosen. And since the line of code is in an endless loop it creates a pattern animating at printing one of the two characters to the screen at a time as seen in the video below.

You can download the book in PDF format on the book’s website.

Personally I try to read all of my books originally designed for print in PDF format if possible, so kudos for the authors for giving the reader that option as the book has a beautiful layout that would be lost in formats such as the Kindle. Because it is a PDF, you have all of the advantages of it being digital, such as searchable text, with the beauty of the original design.