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Wednesday, November 5, 2008 04:09pm EST /
Last night, President-Elect Barack Obama delivered the final speech of a presidential campaign that promised change in Washington: Now the work begins to deliver on this promise by planning the agenda and priorities for the Obama Administration.
Change has come to America | Change.gov: The Obama-Biden Transition Team.
V O T E !
New rule tomorrow…
Why not “Blog This” from Flickr?
TidBITS Introduces New Subscription Mode For those not in the know, LOLCat is a highly condensed patois, based on text messaging, and imagined to be produced by the grammatically challenged intellect of a cat. Its expressive potential is well demonstrated by the fact that the entire Christian Bible is currently being translated into LOLCat (as of this writing, the project is nearly 50 percent complete). Clearly, any dialect is worthy of serious consideration if it can recast the Second Beatitude from the Sermon on the Mount as, “U r doin good if U iz sad kitteh; U can has petting.”
Apple - Downloads - Dashboard Widgets - hiddenfiles:
Simple widget that toggles visibility of files that are hidden from the Finder.
I am using Time Machine (an experiment) to do backups. I had a perfect opportunity to test it.
Online Poker at Full Tilt Poker - Tips from the Pros
When you become indifferent to winning or losing over the short term, you won’t have to worry about going on tilt because you’re focusing simply on playing good poker. That’s all that matters at the end of the day - playing well. As poker players, we can do nothing more than to play our best game and let the cards fall as they may. When you adopt this attitude, your long-term results will take a turn for the better, no matter what kind of variance you face over the short term.
Ben Roberts
Reversal Of Alzheimer’s Symptoms Within Minutes In Human Study University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (2008, January 9). Reversal Of Alzheimer’s Symptoms Within Minutes In Human Study. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 11, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2008/01/080109091102.htm
List of English words with disputed usage - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Some English words are often used in ways that are contentious among writers on usage and prescriptive commentators. The contentious usages are especially common in spoken English. While in some circles, the usages below may make the speaker sound uneducated or illiterate, in other circles the more standard or more traditional usage may make the speaker sound stilted or pretentious.
Just my kind of picture. Who needs those bright, sunny days on the shores? I mean, what good is a lighthouse in the bright daylight anyway?
Thanks for sharing.
Write Articles, Not Blog Postings (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox) Summary: To demonstrate world-class expertise, avoid quickly written, shallow postings. Instead, invest your time in thorough, value-added content that attracts paying customers.
Hey Earl
What’s around the corner?
Thanks, Geoff. This works.
ZenHabits.net article: “A Beginners Guide to Cycling”
Those are decent tips for starting riders; bike maintenance, technical riding skills, and higher cost bikes are among topics not mentioned, but can come with time and experience. I’ll have to make sure Lauren reads this set of tips since she and I have started riding together today. It was her second time using her new bike in the last 2 years! A few laps around Reid Park went much better than the last trip with her at Saguaro East…. now just to get her up to some of the harder rides without giving up again.
(Via Geoff’s Place.)
Thanks Geoff.
4 Kent State Students Killed by Troops
Kent, Ohio, May 4 — Four students at Kent State University, two of them women, were shot to death this afternoon by a volley of National Guard gunfire. At least 8 other students were wounded.
Remember?
posted today?
or is not - depending on my mood.
I like fine vegetables
I saw a reference to this over at Dave’s Scripting News
Make sure that you scroll down beyond the camera lists to see the charts.
These graphs show the number of Flickr members who have uploaded at least one photo with a particular camera on a given day over the last year.
What a wonderful example of doing something interesting with unintended data. They mine the images and use it to create useful information for consumers, and probably producers as well.
I wonder if they sell custom intelligence to the camera makers?
Simply Recipes: Roasted Garlic Chicken Simply Recipes
Roasted Garlic Chicken
The trick to this tender, succulent roast chicken is the overnight brining. We usually roast chickens breast side down to ensure tender breast meat. But with the overnight brining in a roasted garlic and lemon juice marinade, the breast meat was perfectly moist, even cooked breast up. The garlic flavor is subtle, not strong or overwhelming, due to roasting the garlic first.
1/2 cup roasted garlic cloves 2 cups water 1 Tbsp salt 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 Tbsp olive oil 1/2 lemon, cut into 4 wedges 2 bay leaves 1 (3-4 pound) whole roasting chicken
1 Prepare the brine by combining garlic, water, salt, pepper and olive oil in a blender. Squeeze the juice from the lemons into the brine, blend. Stir in the bay leaves.
2 Place chicken in a large, resealable plastic bag, or in a large non-reactive bowl. Pour the brine all over the chicken in the bag, or in the bowl. Add the lemon wedges. Squeeze out all the air from the bag and seal, or place plastic wrap over the chicken in the bowl. Refrigerate overnight - 12 to 24 hours.
3 Preheat the oven to 375°F. Remove the chicken from the brine. Sprinkle salt and pepper all over the chicken. Place the chicken on a rack, in a roasting pan, breast side up. Roast for about an hour, until the juices run clear from the thigh when pierced with a fork. (Breast meat should have an internal temperature of 165°F, thigh meat should have an internal temperature of 175°F.)
Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes before carving and serving.
Recipe adapted from The Marshall Field’s Cookbook 2006. (Sometimes available on eBay.)
Simply Recipes http://www.simplyrecipes.com
From Dave Winer’s Scripting News
Michael Gartenberg - Note to NY Times Mobile folks, Call Dave Winer right away. Please
The NY Times introduced the mobile “optimized” version of their site today. You can see it here at http://mobile.nytimes.com but I’ll save you some time. It’s awful. Registration wouldn’t work on my smartphone, it’s cluttered with Windows Mobile ads and doesn’t make good use my screen (it’s hard coded to a narrow format that doesn’t make use of the full width of my display). Worse, the stories are hard to navigate and often require multiple clicks to read. No offense to the Times but if you want to know how to do this, just take a look at what Dave Winer did with your content with the NY Times River of News. You can guess which one I keep bookmarked on my devices.
It’s just fine.
Registration worked fine on my “smartphone” - a Treo 650 (PalmOS with Blazer browser)
The Windows Mobile ad steals some space at the top of the screen, about the same as the masthead.
It uses “accesskey” markup, so you can use the number pad to select links. Enter the number of the story (1-5), then enter 4 which redirects to the 1-page version of the article. Press 6 to go to the next article (followed by 4 to get 1 page) Simple and effective
The text fits quite nicely - 7-10 words per line. The rendition is much “lighter” than the printable page version pointed to by the news river.
It’s not a river, but then a river isn’t the only way to deliver.
The Man in Blue > FormTextResizer: Bookmarklet for resizing textareas and text fields
You know when you’re typing an essay into someone else’s blog comment form, or you’re putting all ten of your middle names into a registration form, and you run out of form field space? Yeah, it’s a bitch to go back and edit, because your text has scrolled off the screen. Well, with the FormTextResizer bookmarklet you can resize that little sucker to be as big as you want.
Spiffy!
My review of HoudahSpot as seen on MacZOT.com
Always live? Well, I’ll have to see what the performance feels like.
If I “add” a conditional (OR, AND, NOT) I can’t remove it. It doesn’t affect anything, but looks odd.
Quick!
It waits for me!
Why are there duplicates - oh, yeah, my iPod backs up my /Users account sometimes.
I’m confused. A search for “abstemious” in - Home - finds the one document. The same search in /Users says no files found. Uhhh, my Home directory is in /Users, so what’s up…
NOTE: If you’re seeing this on June 16, 2006 head over to MacZOT, you might be able to get a Free copy of HoudahSpot
Search easily in Tiger, Mac OS X, with HoudahSpot
Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore | Marketing Profs Daily Fix Blog
#2 – Traffic is irrelevant to your blog’s success anyway– Unless you specifically target bloggers like Bruce, are a blogging consultant or blog about your latest book, traffic is irrelevant to you. What matters most is whether you are reaching your target audience (which may be narrow and focused), not necessarily how many people read your posts. Engaging with the audience you want to have a relationship with is a much smarter strategy than posting frequently
Not enough random bytes available | Why the light has gone out on LAMP
I can’t speak for everyone, or for that matter, anyone but myself, but I’m good at doing that so here goes. I’m quite opposed to using MySQL and PHP, and I’m none too fond of Apache. Anyone who knows me or happens into a conversation with me about development quickly learns of my distaste for these particular projects. To be fair, Apache is the least problematic of the three and if there were no alternatives, I’d use it without a lot of complaint.
Metadata as a ‘filing system’ - Lifehacker
I’m not the most organized person around, but when it comes to my computer I’m set in my ways of folders within folders within folders. I’d bet you’re much the same way. But a few months back I abandoned my hierarchical folder tree, and now, all my files are dumped into the Documents folder. It’s ugly, and I don’t really like to look at it. Ever. Yet these days I’m able to locate the files I want faster than ever before. How is this possible? Metadata.
What happened?
to make them more readable for “visitors”
These images came from the Arizona Opera web site. The opera was performed in the 2005-2006 season. Each of the operas had a very nice illustration, which unfortunately are hard to locate anymore.
Most interesting. Most interesting.
Wired News: Tips From Top Taggers
After a few months of storing bookmarks online with tools like del.icio.us, many people find the tags they’ve used to categorize them are a hopeless mess. So what are the best methods for getting your tag taxonomy in order?
Ahh, metadata, the art.
NPR Podcasts include selections from Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other award-winning programs from NPR and partner organizations.
Savage Chickens: Chicken Cartoons on Sticky Notes by Doug Savage:
Savage Chickens Chicken Cartoons by Doug Savage
Box plot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In descriptive statistics, a box plot (also known as a box-and-whisker diagram) is a convenient way of graphically depicting the five-number summary, which consists of the smallest observation, lower quartile, median, upper quartile and largest observation.
Tucson Weekly : Yum : Think Globally, Shop Locally:
If you’re a consummate foodie or an adventurous cook, experimenting with global ingredients can be thrilling–or it can be a total fiasco. Either way, the joy of cooking involves the discovery of new ingredients and gleaning authentic recipes.
Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing by C.J. Cherryh:
A short cut to “who” and “whom.” Nominative: who Possessive: whose Objective: whom The rule: treat the “who-clause” as a mini-sentence. If you could substitute “he” for the who-whom, it’s a “who.” If you could substitute “him” for the who-whom it’s a “whom.” The trick is where ellipsis has occurred … or where parentheticals have been inserted … and the number of people in important and memorable places who get it wrong. “Who … do I see?” Wrong: I see he? No. I see “him.” Whom do I see?
I was in search of just such a rule only last week. Why didn’t I find it then? 43 Folders (I linked their blog in the previous message).
Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing
Writerisms: overused and misused language. In more direct words: find ‘em, root ‘em out, and look at your prose without the underbrush.
Useful set of tips on improving the carpentry of your writing by avoiding cliches and colorless (or too colorful) language.
Man, I’m guilty of so many of these.
(Via 43 Folders.)
DATABASE DEBUNKINGS TO LAUGH OR CRY:
TO LAUGH OR CRY LINKS 07/01/05 4 Developers and a DBA or “Just a couple of tables” 07/01/05 The Church of XML 06/24/05 Prevayling Stupidity
all photos and words on this site © 1995 - 2004 by paul vlachos and peggy jordan
Whose podcasting directory is this?:
And because podcasts are just audio, there are none of the attention-sharing features (like searchability, tags, or even hyperlinks) that might help provide automated ways of discovering and surfacing new voices. Unless I’m missing something? But it seems like we have a level content publishing model but a very un-level content promotional and discovery market.
(Via Jarrett House North.)
iTunes podcast delivery does video blogs as well as audio
Check out the chaptering tools. There’s a short little description here The Unofficial Apple Weblog - iTunes 4.9 Chapters
Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world’s record, three-mile-deep mine shaft.
(Via EarthCore: A Podcast Novel.)
Cool. Chapters at a time means that you can listen in bits.
Just like getting the text of a novel in an RSS feed - read a little bit each day.
I need to recover the links to the diaries online - I think it’s Dracula that I remember that I want.
Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs:
Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs Downloadable and very printable, I find these PDFs extremely useful.
t is only now, in 2005, that many consumers are seriously thinking of buying a big-screen, high-definition TV. And last week, a frustrated Federal Communications Commission that wants to kick the HDTV rollout into high gear sent the issue back to Congress, the place where the battle started years ago.
These two passages list the same ten categories: the differences in the names of the categories illustrate how difficult it can be for translators to find good English equivalents. Part of the problem is that there are very old Latin-derived terms for all of them that also have other uses in English. The following table may help a little
Seems wrong to put it in the General category.
dot_clear.gif
overall_header.tpl for the forum
index.php for news
index.html for the new home page
a single pixel clear image file
and then it all went completely to hell:
Every time I start a new job I completely forget how badly this work thing interferes with my actual life. Every single time I start a new job I think its just a question of better organization, that all I have to do is get my lists and my calendars together, get out of bed on time and stop sitting around before and after work and that somehow it will all end up OK. And yet it never does.
(Via limon :: by Laura Lemay.)
How To Blog For Fun & Profit! :: Create Blog Success - 4 Pillars of Effective Blogs:
How To Blog For Fun & Profit! … The 4 pillars are: 1. Content 2. Communication 3. Credibility 4. Community
For Christine
molly.com » what enemy, this daughter?:
what enemy, this daughter? She stands between them on an uncarpeted landing, sticky 70s linoleum tile beneath bare feet. The mother, at the top of the stairs, yells at the father, who stands at the bottom in a slovenly gray polo and black chinos
updated all of the blogs on the server (11)
Simple procedure. Nothing broken so far.
43 Folders: Mental dialogues, yak-shaving & the triumph of the “mini-review”: At the end of my mini-review, I usually feel a lot better about what I really need to do, and the reason is transparent: in order for my brain to focus on creative, thoughtful work, it needs to stop burning cycles on trudging through recursive, open loops and distracting mental busy work. The only way to shut those processes down is to assure my addled but very responsible mind that someone competent is on top of things and helping to pilot the great, lumbering yacht of my life toward the right port.
I finally moved the original, static version of the faceblog out of existence.
Any references from “theblog” are now headed to the main page of this blog.
I guess if you’re paying any kind of attention you’ll be able to figure out where it all went.
I saved everything from Radio Userland a long time back.
so I have K[hearts]J[hearts] and am up against A[diamonds]x[diamonds] and K[clubs]Q[spades]
what do I do, what do I do?
This should show up in the comments on the prismatic ponderings. Trying again for the log and again for the log and again for OOO test
Online Tutorials: I’m in the process of training someone at work in the ways of all things web. LOL! So I’ve been trying to collect free online tutorials for them to walk through, as well as some good all-around beginner info sites they can look at when they have time. Here’s a few I got: W3Schools sqlcourse.com HTML dog PHP.net HTML Lite I’ll post more in the comments section as I find them. (Feel free to post your fav, if not already listed)
Lot of tutorials (PHP, CSS, ASP, SQL)
Great SQL tutorial
Great HTML and CSS reference
This is pretty much a no-brainer. I must go there several times a day.
Tutorials: HTML, Javascript, PHP, CSS, MySQL tutorials (among others)
(Via scriptygoddess.)
Radio-Locator: Radio-Locator Welcome to Radio-Locator, the most comprehensive radio station search engine on the internet.
(Via X’s Prismatic Ponderings….)
Entry one - notoriety will bring what?
It’s all about the category.
How to give and receive criticism: “Most people suck at giving and receiving feedback: here’s a short guide for doing it well.”
(Via uiweb.com.)
A snippet from the site
It’s much harder to receive criticism than to give it. By the time most people make it through college there have been so many bad experiences with receiving feedback, especially on creative work, that they tend to avoid it or ignore it. Nothing can be worse: feedback is essential to developing ideas, and if the project involves a team in any way, the dialog and communication that falls out of feedback is essential. Anyone that makes anything must find ways to not only obtain feedback, but to master the skills of milking it for all it’s worth.
categorized at whim
EPSON America, Inc. - Product Information: “Please choose from one of our product categories: “
We didn’t need to go here.
RE: The browser as you know it… - Message: “Yeah, from the rumble I hear from Brent and from the look I see in OmniWeb, along with the completely different “set” of news I’m suddenly getting by using RSS instead of my “open in tabs” browser linked to about 8 newspapers…I get a drift and yes you are right. The browser is gonna change again, and we may be 15 minutes ahead of the wave… But yeah. “
Web-logging my mail?
Wow.
Stumbling over SP2 | Perspectives | CNET News.com: “How things change. For the past nine months, Gates has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to have his best programmers build a free update to an operating system that many people still don’t want.”
Interesting - the Via above is an empty link. This is simply an experiment. Oh, my, just when you thought it was safe…hmmm…hmmm…
And moster interesting - this is word press editing in a different application than my usual browser. Oh my - is this confusing or what?
Christine did some research noted at Mac Viruses By The Numbers
Glad she did. Maybe she’ll sleep better.
My dad sends this stuff in the mail - sometimes snail-mail
I post it here for him
Think about them one at a time BEFORE going on to the next one… IT DOES MAKE YOU FEEL GOOD, especially the thought at the end.
If you want more daily news on WordPress, I would recommend subscribing to these sites:
WordLog — A new site with daily updates and thoughts on WordPress from Carthik Sharma. Good links too.
Blogging Pro — “Blog News, Tools and Hacks” Always has the latest plugin info, often before even I see it.
Weblog Tools Collection — Not specifically a WordPress-focused blog but Mark (better known as LaughingLizard) covers a lot of WordPress-related topics.
I know some of these sites are open to additional contributors, so if you don’t want to fill your personal site up with WordPress posts (like mine) you should get in touch with one of these people and ask to be an author.
“(Via WordPress WordBlog.)
X’s Prismatic Ponderings… » More than you wanted to know…ust for your lightning bug blog info… File under: more than you ever wanted to know… I am unreliably (no citation) informed that the male lightning bugs are the ones who fly and hover. The females are the ones who sit rather still in the grass. I’m just posting this again. Trying to see if trackback works here. It works for my blog, but I haven’t seen the trackbacks on X’s blog.
Maybe this time.
Oh, yeah, thanks for sharing 
X’s Prismatic Ponderings… » News - Great Ways to Use Your Cell Phone Your Personal Guide on Your Cell Phone
im writing a book (4 August 2004, Interconnected) I’m writing a book. Here’s what I’ve been doing since May: Co-authoring together with my friend and cognitive neuroscientist-at-large Tom Stafford a book for the O’Reilly Hacks series (with our editor, the mighty Rael Dornfest):
Codenamed, Brain Hacks.
It’s all about, well, let me dig out our original pitch. It’s: 100 practical and understandable probes into the design quirks of the brain, concentrating on the sensory and motor functions and their coordination.
I want a copy when it comes out.
i moved
what?
From the net somewhere…
Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents stated that they only had an 8th grade education? Well, check this out. Could any of us have passed the 8th grade in 1895? (LOOK CLOSELY… THAT’S EIGHTEEN NINETY FIVE!)
This is the eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas, USA. It was taken from the original document on file at the Smokey Valley Genealogical Society and Library in Salina, KS, and reprinted by the Salina Journal.
8th Grade Final Exam: Salina, KS -1895 Read the rest of this entry »
How to survive creative burnout - UIWEB.COM The longer you work at creating things, whether it’s software, websites, essays or paintings, the greater the odds you’ll hit a day of impenetrable dread. Up until then, you may have heard others describe burnout, but you just shrugged it off as superstition, or perhaps believed yourself immune. But the day it hits you, the world seems suddenly grey. What was once fun and challenging feel stupid and annoying. Or perhaps the things that used to motivate or move you don’t resonate at all. You feel nothing for them. It all just seems like so much more crap to deal with. If this sounds familiar, or you fear that this day is in your future, this essay is for you.
How to know when you’re
getting the server back up. Check out the custome fields.
Servers are all back Databases are all back Backup procedures being modified as we speak
Does this one get a link to rdb-w/index.php?p=19 Hmmmm
Borland and Microsoft Team to Deliver Enterprise Database Development Solution for the Microsoft .NET Framework
Borland and Microsoft Team to Deliver Enterprise Database Development Solution for the Microsoft .NET Framework Monday June 2, 8:35 am ET
Borland(R) C#Builder(TM) for the Microsoft(R) .NET Framework to Include Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2000 Developer Edition
Compare … [Rdb Notes]
This was posted by another member of the circle.
Here it it, first.
I just had to fight to get the correct username in the game.
For some reason it doesn’t see the categories yet.
like a rock i fall
out towards my fate
red mars
I just couldn’t grind that rock, okay?
Okay, so, way back in the day, when my far older sibs voyager_at_90au and voyagerprobe started their fantastic journeys, they were able to head out directly for their targets, Jupiter and Saturn. I wasn’t able to do this.
Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report
If Filmmakers Were Web Designers II Dear Mr Antonioni
