Have I posted to this before? This CalPoly (the local world-class university) professor got some yeast out of some amber, and is making beer with it. I haven’t had the opportunity to try it yet, but I will. Oh, I will.
I write for my school’s paper, which is a good one. It’s printed on excellent paper, the color always looks good, and the quality of the writing is something to be proud of.
The website, though, is pretty crap.
So in our organization, we have a newspaper editor and a website editor, Sarah. Sarah and I sat down Monday and spent about three hours working on the site. Below is a before and after. You can click it to see it bigger. I’m extremely proud.
And, being proud, I’m linking to the paper in my Other Sites page.
Ha! Gruber got Toyota wrong, but I got every last one right! HAHAHAHAHAHahahahahahahahaaaa!!!!
“Cautiously optimistic,” seems to be the word for the day, but still very very cool information. Unlike swine flu, I believe that AIDS exists, but that it’d be better if it didn’t.
James Pucket posts a comment to an Arial vs Helvetica discussion but misses a vastly bigger picture:
No, really, they’re just being elitist and pretentious. Knowing a little of the type industrys dirty laundry doesn’t make anybody special, and people with nothing better to do than get snotty about designers who use Arial really need to find something better to do.
How many times have I heard this argument applied to anything that the arguer simply doesn’t care about? According to people like James, I spend way too much time thinking about pencils, notebooks, bicycles, and the selection of seriffed fonts on the iPhone. I’m also a Mac zealot, not a discriminating computer user.
The problem with James’ stance has nothing to do with type, and even less to do with the specific typefaces of Arial and Helvetica, and everything to do with priorities. That is, type is a low priority for him, and he knows little about it. But for some reason, posting a comment about type was a high priority for him. The result is the standard argument of, “I don’t care about it, and people who do are losers,” which is less an argument and more a jackass statement that serves no productive purpose that I can detect.
Or, put maybe a little plainer (and cruder), “I don’t like what you like, your a stupid person. Play WOW LOL.”
It’s an argument indicative of a very narrow world view. A world view with no room in it for things the viewer doesn’t already have in his head. I don’t believe a person has to be an artist to appreciate art (or a mechanic to appreciate cars, or a politician to appreciate MSNBC, or physicist to appreciate gravity). I also don’t believe you have to like something to appreciate it for what is is: you don’t have to like art to acknowledge that it is art, and that’s the big distinction that James hasn’t made.
Because James doesn’t like the topic under discussion, the topic is not worth discussing. (Though I’d be willing to bet that James thinks of himself as open minded.)
I can’t and wont do anything to change James’ mind, but I can learn the lesson he’s teaching me, and do everything I can to ensure my daughter grows up able to appreciate things she may not like.
The closest I’ve found to an actual argument against Arial other than, “dude, it sucks.” Which it does, but that’s not much of an argument. This excerpt (full article here) really explains the cheapness of Arial.
If zombies actually existed, an attack by them would lead to the collapse of civilisation unless dealt with quickly and aggressively.
…
In their study, the researchers from the University of Ottawa and Carleton University (also in Ottawa) posed a question: If there was to be a battle between zombies and the living, who would win?
It says if there was to be a battle, not when. (Thanks to Blaine.)
The second one would make a splendid Christmas present. Absolutely fantastic.
Last known photograph of Debra Sherburne
Longtime Atascadero resident Debby Sherburne, 55, died Sunday morning, local police said. Her death was the result of too much stress, said the San Luis Obispo coroner, the last straw being a messy kitchen.
Family members report that most of Sherburne’s stressors were brought on Tina Wisberg, who was a constant nuisance during the wedding planning of Sherburne’s youngest son Chris Sherburne, too much wine and dancing at the wedding, and her car falling apart the day after the wedding.
“I called her about the swine flu,” Wisberg said.
Debbie’s husband, Creig C. Sherburne was shocked by the news. “No wonder my dinner has been pickled eggs for the last four days,” he said. “And who’s gonna do the laundry, that’s what I want to know. I guess I should get some Franco American Spaghetti for tonight. Or Subway.”
No arrests have been made, but in an email, Chief of Police Jim Mulhall said the department is investigating the possibility of both homicide and manslaughter charges.
Update: Rather than post my PDF, I printed my version on pink paper and photographed it, same as the School’s version. I didn’t have the same shade of pink, but it’s fairer, now.
The following note came from my daughter’s school, and it bummed me out. Because I think that it’s pretty easy to make a nice looking document, I decided to re-create this note using only different styles of Helvetica. Observe the differences. And yes, I know that mine looks nicer because it’s all digital and gorgeous and the one from the school is a photo, so it’s a slightly unfair comparison. However, if I could get the Microsoft Word file from the school, I’d post that instead.
Lastly, the clipart in my version is all borrowed from a Google Image search, using royalty-free art. Which means there’s no reason the school couldn’t have done it my way, too.
Earlier this week I complained about how Apple’s word processor Pages handles DOC files. I found a really decent solution. It’s certainly not perfect, but it is better than using Word. A lot better.
If you follow this guy’s advice, though, you’ll need a free program called PlistEdit Pro.
I am a full time student. That is, going to school is my only job, not counting being a father and husband. The computers at school are, by and large, PCs, running Windows XP and running Microsoft Office 2007. Even the dozen Mac Minis in the open computer lab have Office 2008 installed.
At home, on my iMac, I have Office 2008 and iWork ’09 installed. I like the way Pages works far better than Word, and would use it to write all my papers in, but for one major problem: Pages saves documents as Pages files. To get Pages to save in other formats like RTF or DOC or even plain text, you have to export it. Each time. I can’t export it once, hit command-s, and expect it to save my progress. Every time I want to save, I either have to save it as a Pages document (which gives me command-s freedom) or export it and save over the previous file every time I fix a comma error.
So the workflow for a paper goes a lot like this, when using Pages:
The point is that while I could use Pages as my default at home, it requires too many steps and irritates the piss out of me. It seems very un-Apple to require so many clicks for such a simple and necessary thing as saving.
I suppose one could argue that Apple is making it inconvienant to use DOC files because they want you to use Pages files instead. My problem is school uses DOC and there’s no way for me to change that. I have to work within these confines, and Apple, bless them, has made it extremely difficult to use their programs within these confines.
I am the customer, and they are not giving me what I want. I can’t imagine that I’m very unique in my requirements. Who doesn’t work or go to school someplace that Word isn’t the standard?
So I use the block-headed moron that is Word because Word makes it easy to both save my files in DOC format, and do so easily and frequently. In this case, Microsoft helps me keep my work safer than Apple does.
Assume for a moment that you believe in some sort of afterlife, wherein you “live” forever after your death.
If we can assume this, we can assume that if you die today, you’ll have the whole of eternity to, if you’ll pardon the expression, live out your life.
Infinity, in other words.
But last week a guy died, and he also has all of infinity ahead of him. Plus a week.
Infinity plus one.
I still say there’s no such thing as swine flue. It’s a ruse to cover up zombie outbreaks.
On a largely party-line vote, the House voted 240 to 179 to ratify a “resolution of disapproval” against Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) for interrupting Obama’s speech last week before a joint session of Congress.
And:
“It is clear to the American people that there are far more important issues than what we are dealing with now. . . . [Obama] graciously accepted my apology, and this issue is over,” Wilson said in brief remarks.
What a weenie.
·“Good Night, and Good Luck,” the 2005 film directed by George Clooney, is a terrifying reminder that political power does not always end up in the hands of the just, and its abuse can be devastating.
Clooney’s docudrama chronicles the battle between network news TV station CBS and Senator Joseph McCarthy.
This movie is an unmitigated success. Great story? Check. Excellent cinematography? Check. Fantastic acting? Check. Splendid sets? Check. Unique use of archival footage of McCarthy engaging in his over the top shenanigans? Check again. The film achieves every last bit of what it set out to do. As a commentary on modern American politics, McCarthy is an excellent vehicle: simply replace, “communism,” with, “terrorism,” and replace a well-spoken if dead-wrong senator with a certain Texan president, and you’re left with a really distressing sense that truth is stranger than fiction, and maybe we should have learned something.
“Good Night, and Good Luck,” transports the audience to a horrible time in the 1950s when people lost jobs and lives were ruined by nothing more substantial than a rumor.
Shot in beautiful black and white, and with a gorgeous soundtrack, the film is stylish without being distracting, and it’s got a message that too many of us have misinterpreted over the past few years: never forget.
★★★★★ – Five stars because it was great, and I can think of nothing that might have made it better.
· · • · ·
Good Night and Good Luck on NetFlix (DVD, Blue-Ray, and Streaming) and Amazon.
Three parts simple syrup (equal parts water and sugar, heated so the sugar disolves), two parts fresh lime juice, two parts fresh lemon juice.
Excelent for a whiskey or armeretto sour or margarita. Fresh fruit! No high fructose corn syrup! Cheaper! No artificial coloring! Unlimited earning potential! Color TV!
The plastic, zipper-top baggies were $2.17 after tax. I had the colored paper and the rubber bands I use to hold the cords all together. There are better methods, certainly, but not for the cost, and I needed something right now if I wanted to stay married, which I did.
Also, the font is Futura, which has been on my mind a lot since Ikea abandoned it after 60 years.
In all versions of Mac OS X previous to 10.6, when you plugged a camera or iPhone in, it would launch iPhoto or Aperture or whatever program you’d set up as your default. Pretty inconvenient if your brother in law plugs his iPhone into your iMac to charge, thus launching iPhoto about four times a day.
Image Capture 6.0, in 10.6 takes care of this with a little preference portion in the lower left corner of the app. For each camera or iPhone (or, presumably, other camera phones, but why would you buy one of those?), you can set a preference as to which program, if any, will launch when that device is plugged in.
A South African information technology company on Wednesday proved that it was faster for them to transmit data with a carrier pigeon than to send it using Telkom, the country’s leading Internet service provider.
And I thought having my iPhone on AT&T was bad.
The above are original artwork made by me using free fonts found on my computer and the Internet. Please enjoy, but don’t rip me off. Thank you.
Inspired by the Services overview on the Mac OS X Automation website (via John Gruber)
Awesome, wonderfully handy thing for those of us who both write and use Macs. I followed the instructions this morning, and it took maybe two minutes with 100% success.
There is a monstrous big difference between work tired and exercise tired. The biggest problem with work tired is that it’s legitimate.
Humans were made to run and hide, to run and hunt, to hunt and gather. We were not made to sit in front of computers and blog or work on spreadsheets. Tragically, that’s exactly what we do, and it requires a huge emotional and mental investment from us. It leaves us exhausted at the end of our work day, even though our bodies haven’t done any hunting at all.
Some people who sit at desks design things like TVs and TV shows. Still other people create things like NetFlix. Along the way, fast food was invented. So was beer.
And now, after an exhausting day of doing nothing, it’s sickeningly easy to sit down on the couch with some terrible food and a couple beers, intent on zoning out in front of the TV.
It’s no wonder the collective American butt is so wide.
First, life is all about prioritizing. There are a zillion things vying for my attention and time. It’s up to me to decide which items get the high priority, and which just might not get done. In other words, where there’s a will, there’s a way. I’ve decided that for a wide spectrum of reasons, keeping my body physically fit is a huge priority. At the same time, I have to acknowledge that work tired is a very real and very legitimate affliction.
I put the two together: Exercise plus zoning out equals running at the local high school’s track. I take my iPod Shuffle with me, but I rarely listen to it. You’ve heard about runners getting into the zone or achieving runner’s meditation or any number of other phrases to describe this. The point is that I rarely run less than three miles, less than three times a week, which is pretty undeniably excellent exercise. The point is that while running, I zone out, just as if I were in front of a TV. My body gets what it needs, and my brain gets to shut off.
A cherry on top: no commercials.
Another cherry on top: on nights I run, I drink water, not beer. It saves money and calories and empty carbs which all turn to sugars which, on my body, turns into a flabby belly.
Another cherry on top: I sleep better. After running, my body is tired, and happy to shut down to sleep.
Another cherry on top: My wife often joins me in my post-run shower.
There are a million reasons this wont work for you, and only one reason it will. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Get a bike, some running shoes, a racquetball racket, a bathing suit or trunks, the list goes on and on and on. If you want to do it, you’ll make it a priority in your life, and you’ll do it.
If you do, I promise your entire life will get better.
I’ve had nearly every style of website there is through the years. I had a couple GeoCities sites, hand-written sites, and an iWeb site. I suspect I had a LiveJournal page in there, too.
At the moment, my site is powered by WordPress, and I’m extremely happy with it. The primary reason for my satisfaction is that the look and feel of the site is seperate from the content. That means I can change the site from brown to green without having to change each post. I can adjust margins, graphics, layout… In fact, everything can be changed all at once without ever touching the actual content.
It’s why after adding the Other Sites page, I’m still happy with the site and the program even though the page doesn’t look how I want it to yet.
WordPress allows me to spend my time writing, not messing around with colors and fonts.
There may well be something better out there (Movable Type?), but I had to choose something, and WordPress was free, and I have a smart friend with some experience with it.
I am not disappointed. Yet.
ClickToFlash is a really great Mac plugin that prevents Flash apps from running in your browser automatically. They show up as blank gradient blocks until you click on them, at which point they run like normal.
Besides the prevention of Flash ads which can be annoying and crashy, there’s also this benefit:
Since Flash isn’t loaded until you specifically ask for it, your CPU usage will stay at normal levels when browsing the web.
It’s open source and free.
If you are going to pee in a public toilet rather than a urinal, please take a moment to push the seat into an upright position. This does not have to be unsanitary; simply nudge it up out of harm’s way with your shoe.
Or (seen on a women’s room door when the men’s room was broken): if you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat.
A 48-foot refrigerated trailer driven by Marcos Martinez of Bakersfield crashed into the Union Pacific railroad bridge located at Highland Drive and California Blvd on Cal Poly’s campus at about 9:20 A.M. Wednesday.
The truck, owned by SJT Trucking of Imperial, Calif., was loaded with carrots and was moving at only 2 to 3 M.P.H., said Martinez. He has been driving trucks for ten years, and for SJT for 7 months. This was his first time on Cal Poly campus. “Probably my last time,” Martinez said.
Butch White, a Johnnyboy’s Towing employee, was in charge of cleanup efforts. “The last thing we need is to damage the bridge or fiber optic cable,” he said.
A Sprint technician inspected the fiber-optic cable pipe, which runs along the bridge. It was undamaged. The bridge was also undamaged, and no trains were delayed. “Nothing’s been stopped; he crashed at the right time,” said Union Pacific Track Inspector Rick Carrasco. Cliff Bansickle, a Union Pacific bridge inspector, agreed, and declared the bridge fit for normal traffic and speeds.
The carrots were unloaded into a truck owned by Moises Nova, of Santa Maria, who took the load to its final destination in Salinas. With Martinez’s trailer lighter, the truck and trailer were backed up until it was safe to disengage the trailer from the truck.
The trailer was taken by Johnnyboy’s Towing to be salvaged. Martinez and his undamaged truck were dispatched to pick up a new trailer nearby and drive it to Salinas.
Pictures, all taken by me. Don’t steal.
It’s a link to an animated .gif that shows how obese the states of the U.S. are over time. It’s work safe, and stresses me out.
Can we please all compete in a triathlon, now, after seeing this? Please? (Via Christopher, my brother in law.)