512 Pixels

That video is still so shocking, even after 25 years.

Senator Bill Nelson, in the same NPR story:

It was a huge shock to the American people because the space shuttle had come to represent our entire technological prowess. And when people suddenly saw on their television screens, that was played over and over, the close-up shot of those solid rocket boosters going off in different directions about 10 miles high in the Florida sky — this was a trauma to the nation’s psyche.

Jon Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan, to NPR on the space shuttle Challenger:

It was such a shock, because most people thought it would never ever happen. But once you get the idea that spacecraft sometimes have catastrophic events, then it becomes less of a shock.

Twenty-five years ago today, the space shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after lift-off, due to an O-ring failure on one of its right-side solid booster engines. This caused a plume of fire that burned through the large external fuel tank, which disintegrated moments later, breaking up the space shuttle in the process. There was no large-scale explosion, just structural failures that were made far worse due to the velocity of the vehicle through the atmosphere.

It is still unclear what killed the seven astronauts. There is some evidence they survived the initial breakup, and were killed on impact with the ocean. Robert Overmyer, NASA Lead Investigator for the accident, said:

[Commander Dick Scobee] fought for any and every edge to survive. He flew that ship without wings all the way down … they were alive.

Tragic.

That night, Ronald Reagan spoke to the nation, quoting a line from John Magee, Jr’s poem, “High Flight.” He said:

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’ to ’touch the face of God.’

I’ve always been fascinated with the events of that morning. I wrote several papers on it in school, and it really is a shockingly simple failure that could have been avoided if the NASA suits had headed warnings about the low temperatures on the launchpad that morning. The cold is what led the O-ring to fail, starting the chain reaction that killed all seven on board.

Marco Arment, talking about Instapaper development with Rands:

Generally, I know I’m done because as I’m testing the migration from the current in-store version to the new version, I cringe at how bad the in-store version is relative to my shiny new development copy. I think, “I can’t believe *that* is what customers are using right now, when they could be using *this*.”

That’s when I freeze new features, fix any known bugs, polish any rough edges, begin final testing, and prepare to issue the release.

That, right there, is why Instapaper continues to be so damn good.

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson seems confident AT&T won’t suffer too badly at the hands of the Verizon iPhone:

[The coming months] may be rocky, volatile and hard to predict, but as the market stabilizes, we will work through it.

Good luck, dude.

Cabel, writing about a bugfix release for Transmit:

We wrapped up Transmit 4.1.5 on January 6th, fixing some important bugs and addressing two major (and unexpected) Mac App Store issues with Transmit Disk and Amazon S3, part of the pain of the bleeding edge.

Our plan was simple: submit 4.1.5 to the Mac App Store, but don’t post it to our direct customers until it’s approved by Apple, so all customers are treated equally and get the update at the same time.

Unfortunately, as of today, the Mac App Store’s 4.1.5 remains in review. And while it’s a far more critical update for Mac App Store customers than direct customers, we no longer thought it was reasonable to make our direct customers keep waiting due to circumstances beyond their control. (Put another way, our support guys were preparing a full-scale riot.)

While the guys at Panic are “confident” they can work out such issues better in the future, the fact is that Apple insists on approving every version of every app.

And that is slow.

And it probably always will be.

Several days ago, I asked Patrick Rhone (on Tumblr) his thoughts on minimal computing with iOS. Quite surprisingly, Episode 3 of his new “Enough” podcast answers my question.

If you aren’t listening to this show, you really are missing out.

I’m super jealous of that 11.6" Air, but not of those headphones.

The NYT:

Yahoo disclosed plans on Tuesday to layoff around 140 employees in the latest in a series of job cuts.

The reduction comes a month after the Web portal let around 600 workers go as part of a strategy by Carol A. Bartz, the chief executive, to pare costs and reinvigorate a stagnant business. Previous rounds of layoffs took place in 2009 and 2008.

Tuesday’s cuts were focused on Yahoo’s marketing team, according to a person briefed on the matter who was not authorized to speak on the record.

Bartz seems to be unable to stop the bleeding.

From the Pixelmator blog:

I am ecstatic to announce that Pixelmator grossed a gigantic $1 million on the Mac App Store. And that happened in only 20 short days.

What is even better is that the app is getting rave reviews on the Mac App Store (4.5 stars with over 275 ratings on the US store, 5 stars with over 128 ratings in the UK, and 4.5 stars with over 129 ratings in Germany). And, thanks to the Mac App Store, more people than ever are choosing to download Pixelmator.

Hot damn.

Be sure to check out episode 37 of the DadCast. I was a guest again, talking about the Mac App Store, the Verizon iPhone and my new, big-ass desk.

As a programming note, the mic I’ve been using sucks, so I ordered a Snowball this morning.