3/28/2008
repetition
Tonight's dose of thinking: possibly alternating "rock o'clock" with my current response, "ain't got no job o'clock" would save a little sanity for anyone who has ever asked me the time twice. (If you ask three times, I guess there's nothing I can do for you.)
Noting the above, it would be an extremely bad idea for me to own this tshirt.
3/27/2008
skiing to the North Pole
North Pole Speed Record. This blows me away. This guy is trying to set a speed record for the trip to the North Pole, which he is doing unsupported (carrying all his own food and gear), on skis, and hopefully in 30 days. The standing record is 37 days, set in 2005 by a team using dog sleds and resupplying multiple times. (via kottke I think.)
3/26/2008
microblogging
Asaph - a very light 'microblogging' tool with a neat posting interface: apparently all posts are made via a javascript bookmarklet that interacts with the current page (post currently selected text, interactively select a picture, or just post the url).
via.
3/24/2008
tea
Eads gave me two teabags of this tea, it is delicious:
Smoky Tarry Lapsang Souchong.
3/21/2008
shoes
I am pretty sure that I am going to get these
canvas shoe-boot things (um... "booties"?) but I can't decide whether to get them in black or grey.
3/20/2008
a little alliteration
[My suggestion was] not concocted with enough consideration of the context.
listen to
eads recommends
the Infinite Mind programs, a series of radio shows on sciencey and social sciency things.
3/19/2008
AppleScript 'dialects'
a commenter on this AppleScript history piece says:
... I do think it's a pity they didn't ship AS with both English and Programmer dialects. The English syntax is ideal for inferring the intent of a script, even without knowing the language, while the Programmer syntax's explicit, unambiguous semantics would have been better for understanding the actual mechanics. Users could then switch between the two on the fly to provide whichever view they find most appropriate at the time. ...
Applescript's 'English' makes me crazy every time I use it, I don't even necessarily agree that it is good for 'inferring the intent of a script', but the idea of having 'dialects' that you could just toggle between... that's pretty interesting/funny. (via)
p.s. applescript's 'programmer' dialect was developed but never part of shipped versions of applescript.
3/18/2008
"anything but country" and rural environmentalism
One Nation Under Elvis - article at Orion Magazine on how class divisions have hurt the environmental movement.
via megan (if you follow
my google reader shared items you've seen this before.)
talk like a physicist day
apparently someone named last friday as
Talk Like a Physicist Day ("because we're at least as cool as pirates"), which is awesome, except that friday was Pi Day and I have to insist that talk like a physicist day have its own date.
myspace music hate
I hate it when new little bands only have a myspace page with a couple non-downloadable tracks. I want them to have a real web page from which I can download their two or three tracks as mp3s, so that I can put the tracks in playlists and remember who they are five months from now when they may eventually be releasing an album.
p.s. dear bands: take a night off from beering and spend $30 to set up a real site. have someone go grab an account for you at nearlyfreespeech.net, where you can get domain names and feature-complete pay-as-you-go hosting. have them throw Wordpress or Chyrp on your new site, or even use a Blogger account. Post your songs, and the occasional narcissistic photo of yourself looking impossibly hip. If you bother to do it yourself, this can even turn into your post-music-dreams career (see: 25% of the web designer-developers who think they're hot shit).
3/14/2008
family movie
for future reference: My grandfather's dog Chico (a great dane) was in the movie "Breakfast for Two", which was made sometime in the 1930s.
Equation Service
I'm surprised that I didn't mention
Equation Service here years ago; it's a sweet little service for Mac OS X that lets you write LaTeX equations just about anywhere (TextEdit, Keynote, etc.) and render them to images in place with a keyboard shortcut (or item in the Application->Services menu). This was one of my favorite utilities when I was in school, but I haven't set it back up on Leopard yet.
waxed canvas
pants made out of old army tents (
via). also, a
waxed canvas parka. waxed canvas is one of my favorite materials, though I really don't have any in my life. yet.
thing I am trying to fix in my brain
Doxygen formatting conventions (specifically for any drupal coding I'm doing.)
3/12/2008
postal code resolution
interesting note on geographic resolution of postal codes--in the US, the five-digit postal code covers a largish land area, whereas in some places (like Canada and the UK) postal codes resolve to a block, sometimes even indicating the side of the street or the building.
3/11/2008
browser compatibility testing
Litmus "day passes" -- Litmus is a web app for testing browser compatibility. $18/24 hours.
via.
depth of field hate
check out some photos that use depth of field in an acceptable manner (from this post on photography)
VS.
any food blog ever (see Simply Recipes or 101 Cookbooks; almost any photo on any food blog will illustrate depth of field abuse, but A-list food blogs are extremely consistent about it).
aside: this cookie recipe at 101 Cookbooks looks delicious.
3/04/2008
google maps api demos
for later:
Google Maps API Demo Gallery.
talk last night
was talking with Ben about the grand topic of capitalism and he brought up this bit about
Capitalism and Morality (Thai Beer and Monks).
3/02/2008
