Chris Spooner, writing for Line25:

In a recent redesign of my own personal blog I decided to use a calendar style icon to display the post date. It’s one of those elements that would once have been created with background images, but now thanks to the wealth of CSS3 features it can be created entirely in CSS3. We’ll be using properties such as linear-gradients, border radius and box shadow to replicate the icon’s original Photoshop design.

There are so many cool things that can be done with CSS3.

The ever-mysterious Kontra:

Counterintuitive as it may seem, rivals may find out that too much hardware “innovation” can actually kill a company. And that is a dilemma.

Kontra details how Apple combines controlled hardware options, limited product offerings, and vertically-integrated software to drive their booming success.

Ross Kimes:

Apple will make no mention of a new resolution at WWDC next week. They will give out iOS 6 for developers to get ready for that. If a new iPhone with a larger screen is released this fall, then us developers will then be giving the opportunity to prepare our apps for the larger screen.

I agree. Assuming the iPhone remains on an annual release cycle, Apple isn’t going to steal the thunder from a fall hardware announcement at a software conference in June.

WWDC will focus on software and the future of iOS. Other than the announcement of a new product line, Apple simply doesn’t pre-release hardware specifications. If you want to know what the next iPhone will look like, read the rumor sites or wait until the fall.

I awoke on June 7th, 2011 for the last time as a single man. One year ago today was my wedding day - a day in which I was so very fortunate to marry my best friend. The photo below is one of my favorite taken that day. As I watched my bride walk down the aisle, a sense of calm engulfed me and I could focus on nothing other than her. I love that photo because it describes how I feel about my wife beyond what any words could hope to convey.

The year following has been remarkable - at least for me. I have eaten more regular meals, done more laundry, washed more dishes, and slept more normally than I did combined in the past decade. I had my bachelor way of life challenged and emerged a better person. Most importantly, I have spent every day anticipating the end of my work day. Coming home to my wife is the best thing in the world.

The year was also very busy. My wife began her first year of Pediatric residency at OU Children’s Hospital. I worked toward my Ph.D. and passed my general exam. To say crazy hours were involved is an understatement. I’m sure I drove her nuts and there were times I was reminded how little I understood about women. Yet, we made it through a hectic year because we had each other.

Even with life’s demands, I sure did have fun. We were able to go on a cruise, train for and complete a marathon, and everything in between. My wife has a passion for life that is contagious. I can only imagine what the future holds.

As much as I cherished this year, it offered a reminder of how fast life passes. It made me want to cherish every subsequent year with that much more vigor. As we celebrate our first trip around the sun together, I am so glad that she married me. To have spent the last year sharing life with the girl I first met in 7th grade is like a dream. I hope I never wake up.

The Economist:

More broadly, the replacement of organisation man with disorganisation man is changing the balance of power. Those square pegs may not have an easy time in school. They may be mocked by jocks and ignored at parties. But these days no serious organisation can prosper without them. As Kiran Malhotra, a Silicon Valley networker, puts it: “It’s actually cool to be a geek.”

There is hope for me yet.

It does seem that in these particular fields, the long-held notion of “normal” is actually an outlier definition that most people won’t ever fully fit.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, writing for ZDNet:

Compromising on what an Ultrabook is supposed to be — especially this early in their lifecycle — does not bode well for the platform. To me, this feels like netbooks all over again, and it won’t be long before a promising platform is driven into the ground in an attempt to cost as many costs as possible.

And so begins the slow but inevitable death of the Ultrabook; death at the hands of a thousand cost cuts.

In case you aren’t familiar with Ultrabooks, they are a thin laptop specification from Intel based on, and meant to challenge, Apple’s MacBook Air line. Perhaps Intel bought the old idea of the “Apple Tax” and thought they could deliver a similar product at a lower price. They are finding out, when comparing equal specifications, that Apple has become almost unbeatably price competitive due to an ever dominating supply chain.

This all means the Ultrabook as originally envisioned is not feasible. In order to still deliver a product in the originally promised price range, Intel has now been forced to allow plastic casing. As Kingsley-Hughes notes, this compromise affects the one part of the product that people most intimately interact with - a part that largely made Apple’s MacBook Air an hit product.

Paul Caridad:

Hop aboard our time machine and join us as we take you out to a ballgame in the 1800′s. A time when outs were called “hands”, batters were called “strikers”, runs were called “aces” or “counts”, gloves had no padding (19th Century Baseball), and Cracker Jacks were just a gleam in their creators’, Fritz & Louie Rueckheim, eyes. As you scroll through this unusual collection, take note of the telekinetic skills of ball levitation, the fashionable uniforms (especially the one with a bow tie) and the art of dead pan facial expressions.

Great historical photos of a time when ball players looked like normal dudes.

Jeremy Tregunna:

Somebody had to say it. Programming is hard. Programming lives at the intersection of art and science. Not only do you get to create wonderful works of art, but they are based in science, yes, SCIENCE!

So why do we write code? I hope your answer is “Because I love it,” if not, you should go be a truck driver.

Tregunna sums up how I approach programming and offers great advice for those wanting to learn. For me, even if in the context of scientific data processing, programming is a creative exercise. I always find that the creative process is hard to begin, all-encompassing once started, mentally exhaustive, and totally worth the end result.

… and Bartholomäus Traubeck slices it up, it certainly makes a noise. Here’s how he did it:

A tree’s year rings are analysed for their strength, thickness and rate of growth. This data serves as basis for a generative process that outputs piano music. It is mapped to a scale which is again defined by the overall appearance of the wood (ranging from dark to light and from strong texture to light texture). The foundation for the music is certainly found in the defined ruleset of programming and hardware setup, but the data acquired from every tree interprets this ruleset very differently.

Pretty awesome video. Check it out.

(via: Rands)

Alan Taylor, The Atlantic:

Sunday marked the 75th anniversary of the opening of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Before 1937, the city’s growth was hampered by a reliance on ferry traffic. The 8,981 ft (2,737 m) suspension bridge changed that, creating a link between San Francisco to Marin County. Its construction was completed under budget, but at the cost of 11 workers’ lives.

Check out the 41 historical photos of the bridge. Very cool.