What is Egg Freckles?
Egg Freckles is the punchline from the infamous Garry Trudeau Doonesbury comic strip lampooning the original hand-held Newton computer’s difficulty in deciphering handwriting.
After several years of working the IT racket I have found that like the cartoon, human expectations and technological capabilities rarely coincide. I started Egg Freckles as a means to share some of my experiences with technology.
Who are You?
My name is Thomas Brand, and I am technology enthusiast from Boston, Massachusetts who spent time behind the Genius Bar before starting a career at Children’s Hospital Boston. You can follow me on Twitter.
Why an Apple Newton?
Apple’s dud from the last decade may not be the most exciting theme for a technology website, but the Newton still has a lot of good things going for it.
- The Newton presents a document centric computing model which puts the user’s content above the tools that created it. When you start a Newton you are presented with the last document you were working on, not a screen of applications or icons the way most computers work.
- The Newton’s handwriting recognition wasn’t that bad, and in later revisions it was actually quite good, if not better than similar offerings made available by Microsoft more than a decade later.
- Despite being a device developed before its time the Newton is still beloved and supported by a community of dedicated individuals. It has seen advancements such as internet browsing, and wireless networking it was never intended to have.
The Newton’s usefulness may have run thin for most, but what better way to remind me of the potential of technology than to base my website around the little green MessagePad that continues to show its strength.
What Blogging System is Powering Egg Freckles?
Egg Freckles is baked using PieCrust, “a static website generator and lightweight CMS that’s all managed with text files. No complex setup, databases, or administrative panels. Simple, beautiful, and yummy.”
Where’s the RSS Feed?
Egg Freckles’ RSS feed gives you the opportunity to read everything I write on my MessagePad.
How do you Dither Your Images?
Since moving to an Adobe free workflow Pixelmator is responsible for most of the image preparation on Egg Freckles, but Egg Freckles’ signature Atkinson dithering effect comes from a little known freeware application called HyperDither.
Where Did You Get That Swell MessagePad background?
Egg Freckles current MessagePad background was designed entirely in CSS3 saving me over 176kbs of bandwidth per unique vistor over the previous bitmap version. You will need a modern browser to view it. As browser capability improves so will my MessagePad.
What Tools do You Use to Create Egg Freckles?
Egg Freckles design was inspired by screenshots first captured from a real Newton MessagePad, and later from Einstein, a Newton emulator. All of the bitmap images were created in Pixelmator, while Egg Freckles’ logo was designed in OmniGraffle Pro. All of the code was written in BBEdit, while all of the content was either scribbled into my MessagePad or typed out in WriteRoom on my Mac, iPhone, or iPad. Everything I publish is sent to the web using Transmit.
Why Does Your MessagePad’s Colors Change at Night?
What better way to show off a MessagePad’s beautiful backlight display than to have Egg Freckles’ backlight come on automatically at night. The process is dependent upon a Javascript, alternative stylesheets and alternating image maps. If you can think of a more efficient alternative I am open to suggestions.
Can I Use Your MessagePad Theme on My Own Website?
Many people have asked my permission to use Egg Freckles’ theme on their own website and my answer is always the same. The look and feel of an Apple Newton MessagePad is not my property, and you are welcome to parody it as much as anyone else. However, I am not in the business of packaging Egg Freckles’ MessagePad theme for distribution, or supporting its installation on various content management systems.
Can I Repost Your Content on My Own Website?
Egg Freckles by Thomas Brand is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
That means you can republish, and remix my work for noncommercial purposes just as long as you link back to EggFreckles.net and share your revisions in a similar manner. If you do decide to republish my content I would love to hear from you.
Who Hosts Egg Freckles?
ICDSoft has hosted my projects for almost ten years now, and I couldn’t be happier. Based in Boston their email customer service is excellent. I usually get a reply in mere minutes after making a request, and have never experienced a noticable downtime during the entire time I have hosted with them.
How can I contact you?
EggFreckles[at]me.com is a good start, but don’t forget to check out Egg Freckles’ Twitter stream. I look forward to hearing from you.