Minimal Universe

Minimal Universe collect posts from our favorite minimal-related blogs listed on the right.
  • Arc’teryx backpack for traveling review | Environminimal

    Arc’teryx backpack for traveling review | Environminimal:

    I did a ton of research on backpacks before buying it. I spent at least 2 months browsing sites, reading forums, reading comments, and narrowing it down. Yeah… I tend to obsess over gear… or any purchase for that matter. We’re always tempted to buy something cheaper, but in a situation where you’re going to incoporate that item into your life everyday, I think it’s worth spending extra on quality.

  • As I grow older I have more trouble dealing with stupidity

    I recently noticed that as I grow older my tolerance for stupidity is fading. I mean, I used to be able to deal with stupidity by letting it go and being patient.

    Not anymore.

    I find stupidity very, very, very irritating and in the past few months more and more I found myself thinking about really cool ways to make the people behind the stupidity pay for it.

    Let me give you a few examples of stupidity:

    Case number 1: The airport taxi line.

    There are 10 people in line at the airport waiting to grab a taxi. There are 11 cabs in the line waiting for customers. This should be a no brainer, right? Wrong!

    It took almost 30 minutes for the person directing the customers to each car. It wasn’t the fact that people have luggage and it takes time to load it in the cars. No. It was the fact that the person indicating to each customer which car to go was a freaking incompetent stupid.

    Case number 2: Charging for check-in luggage.

    This one is one of my favorites. With the current prices being charged for checking luggage for a flight, people try to avoid that fee and bring everything on board. For domestic flights that mean that there isn’t enough room to put each passenger’s huge carry-on (sometimes two bags) and guess what happens? The airline grabs it at the time of boarding and they check it in, free. And of course it fuck us, the people that actually travel light with small carry one, because now we don’t have room to store our bag. What stupid fuck thought about this? Huh? Yeah for the passengers for figuring the loophole, but damn! Stupidity!

    Case number 3: Having a mouse pointer on a tablet with Windows.

    You don’t use a mouse on a tablet, you use your fingers. You might use a stylus, but even then, you don’t need a mouse pointer. Who was the smartass that decided that you need to leave the mouse pointer there? It’s always in your way, covering something important, like the text being entered on a text field. The stupidity here was to have an OS designed for a large screen with a keyboard and mouse as input devices and make it run on a device with a small screen and fingers as input devices. I’d love to have little chat with whoever thought (or didn’t) about this.

    You see what I’m going with this.

    Please, please, PLEASE! People, help me fight stupidity and eradicate it once and for all from this planet.

    Stupidity will be dealt with accordingly.

  • Guess what just happened?

    Another blue screen of death!

    The 3rd one in 12 days. It happened right after I upgraded a DVD driver with the latest vendor drivers (as suggested by Microsoft in one of its most annoying messages to date).

    My hardware is good. The company payed a lot of money for it. I’m running windoze 7 with the latest patches.

    SO DON’T GIVE ME THAT CRAP ABOUT THIS NOT HAPPENING.

  • Fantastic! Glif is a simple iPhone 4 accessory with two...



    Fantastic!

    Glif is a simple iPhone 4 accessory with two primary functions: mounting your iPhone to a standard tripod, and acting as a kickstand to prop your phone up at an angle.



  • mnmlist: 10 essentials

    mnmlist: 10 essentials:

    Leo Babuta lists his 10 essentials.

    Here are mine:

    1. What I wear: Khaki and button shirt to work. Tshirts and cargo pants on my free time. Soft shell and Capilene when I’m climbing.
    2. What I carry with me everywhere: iPhone, tiny wallet, keys on a small biner and pocket knife.
    3. How I hydrate: Tons of coffee and water. Also a lot of margaritas!
    4. What I love to eat: Grass-fed beef, a lot of it. Lamb, pork, snake meat, rabbits, fish, sea food and pretty much anything that moves.
    5. What entertains me: My daughter, books, climbing, Aikido, skydiving and making fun of Microsoft.
    6. My essential tools (hard): iPad, iPhone, my climbing rack and my ice tools.
    7. My essential tools (soft): Simplenote, Instapaper, a C compiler, A wealth of security tools, Notational Velocity, Stainless Browser and the good old Vi.
    8. Where I go for inspiration: The mountains, the woods, the desert, the dojo.
    9. What calms me down: Aikido, Krav Maga and shooting a 9mm or an M4.
    10. The one thing that I can’t live without (that it’s not a person): I can give away everything and still be happy, however the one thing I can’t give away are my dog tags, I worked very hard for them and it reminds me of the sacrifice people and I made. That’s the one thing I cannot give away.
  • And another pearl, via Daring Fireball

    Microsoft’s Clever Windows Phone Ads Confuse Us.

    One of the comments state:

    These ads reveal Microsoft’s deepest fear: the PC is no longer the center of the software universe. Phones are.

    And Gruber adds:

    In other words, “Stop spending all day looking at your phones and go back to spending all day looking at a Windows PC”.

  • An old screenshot of my Linux box at work



    An old screenshot of my Linux box at work



  • A simple wallpaper. Click the picture to see all the options.



    A simple wallpaper. Click the picture to see all the options.



  • Photo





  • Ah… Winter is almost here… (Via Alpinist)



    Ah… Winter is almost here…

    (Via Alpinist)



  • An email.

    Miguel, a reader of Minimal, sent me the following fantastic and very insightful email in response to my post about Windows 7 Phones.

    Hi. As a backgrounder, I own an iPod Touch 64g and an iPad wifi-only
    64g and am quite happy. I’ve been buying iPods since the first 5g
    model with mechnical wheel came out. I’ve been buying Macintosh since
    the MacPlus came out in 1986. My current arsenal is a MacMini and MBP.

    The Windows phone issue you point out is unique to the LG model and is
    not a characteristic of Windows Phone 7. Windows Phone 7 handles
    landscape on rotation (see here, for example, the video here:
    http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/11/htc-hd7-first-hands-on/).

    Personally I’m glad MS came up with an original mobile OS that might
    keep Apple on their toes. Android, by dint of some serious increasing
    market share, also has put pressure on Apple.

    If you want to compare, it makes sense to look at a superior Windows
    Phone 7, like the HTC I link to above, and an iPhone side by side, to
    see the stregnths and weaknesses of each OS, not picking on a failed
    model. The failed model, like the LG, will not impress consumers; the
    superior model like the HTC will impress consumers.

    I believe at this point in time Apple has superior products right now
    but that does not mean they are immune to failure, especially
    market-based failure. I’ve been there already .Apple failed miserably
    on me and hundreds of thousands of others during the 90s. Even through
    all of that, I’ve remained a consumer but this behavior is not
    typical of the average consumer, who will switch on a dime.

    All it takes is for the market to perceive that Apple’s market share
    is losing out to (Android, fill in the blank, etc.) or even remaining
    the same while Android continues to grow. Then analysts will cease end
    positive outlook for AAPL, the company valuation will cease to grow or
    even decrease, and a somewhat negative cycle will begin for Apple.
    Losing market dominance over the long run could easily impact how
    attractice developers view iPhoneOS as a platform for their apps,
    leading to reduced new apps and updated apps. Apple will face some
    difficult decisions such as keep margins high and be satisfied with a
    smaller consumer population and cease to be viewed as the leader in
    the market. And so on. This is a possibility.

    Whether Windows Phone 7 plays a big role or dies a miserable death is
    yet to be seen. What is certain is that nobody has a reliable crystal
    ball and nobody has a permanent grip on any market, anywhere.

    All the best.

     Miguel

    Thank you Miguel for that email. You made your point very clearly and I stand corrected. However, I speak from my own experience and based on what I see around me with techie and non-techie people buying iPhones, Android phones and blackberries.
    They all bitch about Android. They all wish they had an iPhone because of the easy of use and they all want to use something other than windows but they are stuck with it.

  • "People will show you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to..."

    ““People will show you who they are, but we ignore it because we want them to be who we want them to be.””

    - Don Draper (via whereisthecoool)

  • Via this



    Via this



  • (via idesk)



    (via idesk)



  • MacSparky - Blog - Keyboard Shortcut for "Save as PDF..." in OS X

    MacSparky - Blog - Keyboard Shortcut for “Save as PDF…” in OS X:

    I know I’m late to the party on this one. Everyone and their second cousin twice removed linked to it a few days ago. That said, I just now had the time and reason to set this up and…

    Holy mother of carp and all that is fishy is this the top of Mount Awesome! I mean, seriously, this should be built in.

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