Last year, I stayed with a friend in north Austin during SXSW. A bike was the best way to make the three-mile journey downtown. I had a few options: Renting I called Bicycle Sport Shop and a couple other stores. The problem is that people rent bicycles as entertainment, not transportation, and they’re priced accordingly. …
Author Archives: paulschreiber
America’s best defense against suitcase nukes
Think your airline joining Star Alliance helps you?
Last fall, Continental Airlines joined Star Alliance. Since I have most of my points/miles with Air Canada’s Aeroplan—also a member of Star Alliance—I thought that would be good news. It’s not. There’s no way to combine points from both programs to get an award, and no way to move points from from one Star Alliance …
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When to buy a refurbished Mac
No, I’m not going to tell you when during the year to buy a Mac (“not the week before WWDC”), but I am going to share a neat trick. Tragedy of the commons, here we go. Apple’s online store has refurbished Macs for sale. These are often a very good deal — today’s selections range from …
Photos make it all better
“She would only have sex with me when her ex-boyfriend was taking pictures.” “It wasn’t cheating as long as someone was taking pictures.” From Porchlight‘s La Petite Mort, February 19, 2010.
Adobe doesn’t think LGBT exists
Handling Rails errors: custom error pages, logging, notification
I wanted to improve error handling In my Rails applications. Specifically, I wanted three things: a custom error page that matched the site's design the errors to appear in the error log (production.log) email notification of server errors Note: these steps are for Rails 2.3.2–2.3.8. Other versions may require different instructions. Custom error page Normally, …
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Bikes on a plane
When I went to New Zealand last year, I decided to take my bike with me. I’d have a van the whole time, so moving it around with me would be easy. And Air New Zealand allowed me two free bags, one of which could be a bicycle. If you’re interested in travelling with your …
What Mark Fiore is doing with his Pulitzer Prize money
Newly minted Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Fiore — whose app is now in the iTunes Store — had this to say: Since winning the prize brought attention to Apple’s policy of rejecting iPhone apps that “ridicule public figures” I figure the least I can do is devote more resources to ridiculing public figures.”
More app store hypocrisy
Earlier this year, the nuns on Cupertino’s app store approval team removed 5000 applications for having sexual content. Fine. Be a prude. But what makes this funny is that Apple’s left hand doesn’t know what its right hand is doing: the music store will sell you D12’s Nasty Mind, which contains lyrical gems such as …