I don’t trust people, I trust their incentives.
Bridgy browser extension for Instagram
We’ve launched a Bridgy browser extension! If you use Bridgy for Instagram backfeed, you’ll need to install it (Firefox, Chrome). Please try it out and let us know what you think!
Instagram and Facebook have been thorns in Bridgy’s side for many years now, as they both gradually locked down parts of their APIs that Bridgy needed. Facebook also had strong anti-scraping countermeasures, so we were forced to shut it down entirely, but we managed to scrape Instagram enough to keep it limping along. They recently stepped up their countermeasures too, though, and we haven’t been able to keep up.
Fortunately, Bridgy users can log into Instagram legitimately, in their own browsers, so a browser extension lets us piggyback on that legit usage and scrape out the data they want us to have. Shh, don’t tell, it’s our little (open source) secret.
Learned a new word from my kid’s report card today.
pros·o·dy
/ˈpräsədē/
- the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry.
- the patterns of stress and intonation in a language.
Running a successful open source project is just Good Will Hunting in reverse, where you start out as a respected genius and end up being a janitor who gets into fights.
Fond memory of peak late ’90s tech: interned at Webvan, set up a Winamp Shoutcast server on my home desktop so I could listen to its MP3s at work, open sourced a network remote control for it on SourceForge. Tarballs and patches and mailing lists, oh my. Good times.
Last minute turkeys still available. Very fresh, large or extra large, slightly gamey. DM for details.
Any code written before today doesn’t meet today’s best practices.
– Unknown; via Abe Hassan and Brad Fitzpatrick
Corollary: any engineer hired before today wouldn’t meet today’s hiring bar.
Deep piano
Roberto Chignoli
I started playing piano again recently, after a 20 year hiatus. Our 6 year old Brooke started learning, and we suddenly had a keyboard in the house again, so I joined her. It’s been great! I’m playing scales and exercises, diving into Rachmaninoff and Debussy, and working up to tackling Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. (Not easy.)
Practicing is a grind though. I definitely remember it that way, no rose colored glasses here, but now I appreciate what practice actually does: build muscle memory. Entrench a series of notes and fingerings in my brain with the end goal of playing them automatically, no conscious thought needed. At that point, I can devote my attention to musicality and actually interpreting the piece.
I know a bit more about neuroscience now – that it exists, if nothing else – so the relentless tedium and rote repetition grates on me a bit. It feels like such a crude, anachronistic way to learn anything. What’s the state of the art here? Have neuroscientists found any new techniques or deeper understanding of fine motor muscle memory?
One key phrase seems to be deep practice, popularized by Daniel Coyle in The Talent Code as an expansion of Anders Ericsson‘s research on deliberate practice. It’s a bit underwhelming, both the underlying science and the practical techniques. The main physiological mechanism that shows up is building myelin, the insulating sheaths around axons. That makes sense broadly, but is mylenation really so fine grained and specialized that I grow a Clair de lune myelin pattern when I practice that piece? Or is it like exercise or eating right, growing evenly and aiding overall cognitive function?
Similarly, the science-inspired practice techniques are believable, but leave me wanting. Chunking and repetition were table stakes when I played piano in high school. Same with playing slowly and forcefully. The two new ideas I came across were interval training and distraction, eg turning the TV on (with volume low or off) while you practice.
Nice ideas, and I’ll try them, but I guess I was hoping for something more. Hey Dan Chao, am I missing anything? Should I pick up a Halo? Where’s my “I know Kung Fu” device?
Maybe we’re just not there quite yet. Back to the grind, I guess!