Fake AP Style Guide:

Mustard – A condiment made from seeds from mustard plants. Musturd – A rare delicacy condiment made from muskrat feces.

And now you know.
 

I wrote in a tweet recently that, “If I were to get a tattoo of my wife’s name, I would not get the fancy name-tattoo script. It would be Helvetica ultra lite wide.”

Today, for your viewing pleasure, My wife’s name in tattoo script (called Script Calligraphy 2.TTF) and Helvetica Neue LT Pro: Ultra Light Extended.

I know which I’d prefer on me until I turn forty-eight and get laser tattoo removal surgery.

It’s too strange not to obsess over. Anyway, here’s Dave Barry:

I first thought this was a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee craze. Tragically, it is not. There really is a Luwak coffee. I know because I bought some from a specialty-coffee company in Atlanta. I paid $37.50 for two ounces of beans. I was expecting the beans to look exotic, considering where they’d been, but they looked like regular coffee beans. In fact, for a moment I was afraid that they were just regular beans, and that I was being ripped off.

Then I thought: What kind of world is this when you worry that people might be ripping you off by selling you coffee that was NOT pooped out by a weasel?

(Thanks to Blaine for sending this along.)

The site is called I Love Local Commercials. They travel around, using high technology and advanced methods to make excellently low-quality commercials for local businesses. The site is Flash, so I can’t give direct links, but the best one is for Cullman Liquidation. The other best one is Butt Drugs. The other best one is for a tattoo shop. They’re all work-safe, but if anybody overhears you, plan on losing at least twenty minutes of your day.

Steve Jobs’ post about Flash on iDevices today was unreadable on my iPhone:

I read it on the bus in Instapaper, instead. That app has had so much thought and consideration put into it, I’m humbled. It’s a joy to use, and you should probably download it.

Here’s a screen shot of The Flash Blog as rendered by NetNewsWire on my iPhone.

Trust a site dedicated to making the web ugly and stupid to look ugly and stupid.

Also, is it weird that the site, advocating Flash, is running on WordPress (a genuinly open source platform) and has only a minimal amount of actual Flash interspersed? It’s almost like the author, Lee Brimelow, wants his site to look good and be readable by anyone.

I’ve had a blog since 1995, way back when I was fifteen. Back then, I had to learn HTML, and hand-write every line of code. Each entry was it’s own HTML file, and I had to edit the main page with a link to the new stuff. And I had to upload the revised files manually, too. Changing color schemes was miserable.

Then Apple released iWeb, which wasn’t much of an improvement, but I used it anyway. I’m not one for built in templates, preferring to do it all my own way. Making an iWeb template was beyond me though, so I would choose a template, then modify all the colors and fonts, write an essay, upload, repeat. And if I decided I wanted to change my color scheme, I still had to change each page individually because of the custom colors. If Apple had made it easier to make my own theme, I’d probably still be using iWeb, though.

But they didn’t, and I’m not, and it’s better this way.

Now, I use WordPress. It works a lot like Gmail or Google Docs. All the software lives on the Internet, at my domain. This means I can log in on any computer (or iPhone; more on that in a minute), write an essay and publish right then and there. WordPress uses cascading style sheets (CSS) in such a way that when I write, all I have to worry about is grammer and spelling; WordPress takes care of formatting and colors and fonts for me, using a style I set up once.

Changing color schemes this way is cake: change one CSS file, and all the essays and links update themselves. ¹  What could be better?

Well, a lot of things, actually. As I’ve written before, I spend a lot of time on the bus, which is a great time to catch up on writing things that not even my wife see.

WordPress, by default, does not have a very usable interface when accessed on an iPhone. It’s more frustrating than useful, and I eventually gave up on it. Then WordPress put out a bona fide iPhone app. As of this writing, the app is obviously a work in progress, and undeserving of it’s 2.x version number. In addition to simply being rough around the edges (it’s rough everywhere; who am I kidding?), it doesn’t support a plugin I use and require for most of my blogging needs. This shortcoming makes the app worthless for me.

So along comes Opera Mini for iPhone with all it’s promise and eventual disappointment.

I was so irritated by this point that I seriously considered fundamentally changing the way my website works so I wouldn’t need the plugin and would therefore be able to use the buggy WordPress app until it’s shortcomings spit me back out into a land of irritation and pissyness.

And then I discovered a plugin called WordPress Mobile Admin. It changes the interface I see when I log into my site on my phone. It makes WordPress (the web interface, not the iPhone app) useful and good. I wrote to the author of the plugin and offered him $20 if he’d add support for that other plugin I require, which he did. (Waiting for a payday to make good on my promise.) The end result is it’s now very easy for me to make those little updates I’m so fond of directly from my phone. It makes taking the bus and waiting in line something to look forward to: I’m being productive (working on my site) without neglecting something else (that’s actually important).

My site has two kinds of posts: essays, like this one, and links, like most of the rest of the site. Everything in this essay, up to this point, has been link-centric. Essays tend to be a little different.

Typing an essay on an iPhone isn’t fast, but on the bus, you’ve got nothing but time. But where to write the essay? In the iPhone app? No: there’s an unacceptable liklyhood that it won’t be saved, and believe me when I say losing forty minutes of thumb-typed work is an absolutely maddening.

Write it in the web interface, in MobileSafari? It’s more reliable than the app, but typing in a text-box in Mobile-Safari isn’t great. It never scrolls right, so going back to make edits is tough. Plus, since there are other text areas, part of the already small screen is taken up with with Previous, Next, AutoFill, and Done buttons.

No, I’ve taken to to using Simplenote to type up the big ones. ²  I like Simplenote because it’s simple. The iPhone app has zero extras. It scrolls properly, saves my work on the iPhone, saves my work in the cloud, syncs up easily and well, and gets rid of extra buttons. This makes starting an essay on the iPhone and ending at home on my iMac (or the other way around; or editing on a school computer) a breeze. Once done, I copy the text into WordPress, activate links, and publish.

It’s the combination of having the software that runs my website be online, the cool plugin which makes makes blogging links from my phone easy, and the free app Simplenote all together that make updating my site a joy rather than a horrible chore no matter where I am.

I like WordPress, and would recommend it to nearly everyone who wanted a site, regardless of their tech savvy. ³  It’s been a long time coming, but I suspect that as long as I’m writing, I’ll be publishing with WordPress, and making updates on my iPhone. I couldn’t do it nearly as easily or (more importantly) painlessly without WordPress Mobile Admin or Simplenote.

I wrote this nearly two months ago:

Lastly, there’s iPods. HP can get around this by being the first company to make a world-class awesome Android phone.

Looks like they plan on doing it even better. (Via Daring Fireball.)

Nick Martens:

Of the many complaints an American cyclist can make, a concern over his or her safety is the most serious. It’s also the best reason to stick with a car.

The article is short, sweet, and to the point. He shows us the problem, and offers a solution. I wish I’d written this.

Ridiculous how easy it is, but equally ridiculous is how hard it was to find the instructions.

1. In MobileSafari, log into a Google Service.
2. Once logged in, point your iPhone to: http://www.google.com/callendar/iphoneselect
3. Check the boxes for the calendars you’d like in iCal.
4. Hit save. Don’t quit out of MobileSafari till the page finishes loading and it tells you to go ahead and launch iCal.
5. Enjoy.

UPDATE: Turns out there are instructions after all. I just had to get extremely specific with my searching. I’ve updated this article to be a linked list item rather than an essay.

From Slayer’s website:

Megadeth and Slayer [...] have confirmed that they will each perform, start to finish, their 1990 releases – Slayer’s world-wide, million-selling Seasons In The Abyss and Megadeth’s Platinum Rust In Peace – on the upcoming Canadian and American Carnage Tours.

Bet that won’t suck much.

Thanks to everyone who tried out Facebook Lite. We’re no longer supporting it, but learned a lot from the test of a slimmed-down site. If you used Lite, you’ll now be taken to the main Facebook.com site.

Asshats. Facebook is crap. I can only use it on my phone now the lite version’s gone away.

Maybe I should say not iPhone optimized. But iWeb sites, now those aren’t iPhone friendly. Ironic. (Thanks to Cassandra for pointing this out.)

Stay fresh, stay clean. Get a subscription for your socks, t-shirts, and underwear.

Brilliant idea. Check out the 25-second video. Essentially, you get new underclothes every three months to replace the skid-marked stuff. I wish I’d thought of it first.

SillyPutty.com:

More than 300 million eggs of Silly Putty have been sold since 1950. That’s about 4,500 tons.

By way of comparison, the maximum-allowed weight of a fully-packed semi trailer in the U.S. is 40 tons. So that’s not quite 115 fully packed semi trailers worth of Silly Putty. Think of what you could do with all that Silly Putty in one place. You could build a castle!

Via Twitter:

Me: There’s a gun to your head. You must answer: what’s the best album Mike Patton ever sang on?

@Choood76: 2 solutions: Name any album to keep my brains in my skull. Or truth: there’s no “best album”. They’re all equally amazing.

He followed up a little later on with:

@Chood76: But as not to dissapoint: FNM’s “Angel Dust” or “King for a Day” will suffice for having the widest gamut of vocal stylings.

I love this guy. Straight up love. Not only is he witty and with superb taste in music, but is one of the best drinking buddies ever. And handsome.

The following is making the rounds on Facebook. I wish I knew who originally wrote it so I could give proper credit and shake their hand.

So let me get this straight (hehe) – Larry King is getting his 8th divorce, Elizabeth Taylor is possibly getting married for a 9th time, Jesse James and Tiger Woods are screwing EVERYTHING, yet the idea of same-sex marriage is what is going to destroy the institution of marriage?? REALLY??

On my last visit, I bought a Bodum French press and a cup of coffee. I sat in a chair and read the Internet on my phone for 40 minutes. On my way out the front door, a woman stopped me. In that challenging way adults generally treat 14-year-old boys, and without identifying herself, she asked to see the receipt for my French press. (I did not have the receipt; I asked the cahier to throw it away for me.) The woman eventually identified herself as, “the manager,” and we went back into the store where the cashier confirmed I paid for the press.

I am very big on integrity: I don’t steal, I don’t lie, and I have a clean conscience. I have to, since I am determined to be the man my daughter thinks I am.

I am therefore not accustomed to being accosted after spending that amount of time and money in a shop. I don’t think this manager acted very professionally. I never thought I’d say this, but she ruined the calm and peace I’d cultivated in a squishy chair in a comfortable coffee shop. It was crappy, and crappily done.

Look, I’m not asking for free coffee. If you decide to fix this by sending me something, I’ll give it away, probably to my daughter’s teacher. What I want is an apology. To get me back to this particular store (I acknowledge that all Starbucks are not managed by clones), I’ll need to be satisfied an experience like this wont happen again.

And because I don’t want to be a totally negative kind of guy: the coffee, service, and chair were all fantastic, and the restroom was scrupulously clean.

Creig P. Sherburne

update: 23 april 2010

I got the following letter in reply from Starbucks. How nice of them.

Thank you for contacting Starbucks Coffee Company.

I am deeply concerned after reading your narrative. I will be sharing this with the District Manager of that area, Jessica Donovan. I will apologize for the company and the store manager. While the manager may not have been out there to see you purchase the press and made a judgement call, it could have been handled differently. I apologize for the experience, and hopefully you know that is not indicative of what you can expect coming to Starbucks. We are in the business of making people happy and comfortable, I read in your message that we succeeded in that until you left; however, I am sorry we failed after that. Please accept my apology and I am still sending you some coupons for free drinks via mail. I hope you don’t give them away, but use and enjoy them in the spirit in which they are offered.

If you have any further questions or concerns that I was unable to address, please feel free to let me know. Thank you for your time.

Warm Regards,

[name withheld]

A 2004 University of Arkansas paper I found on the perceived effects of exercise on sexuality. For being in APA format, it’s surprisingly readable.

Research indicates that exercise may increase sexual drive, sexual activity, and sexual satisfaction.  Results of a recent study reported that women were more sexually responsive following 20 minutes of vigorous exercise (Stanten & Yeager, 2003).  Among males, short intense exercise is linked with increased testosterone levels, which may stimulate sexual interest and behavior.

[...]

Furthermore, a Harvard University study of 160 male and female swimmers in their 40s and 60s showed a positive relationship between regular physical activity and the frequency and enjoyment of sexual intercourse.

[...]

In modern society the body is considered to be a representation of oneself, and thus appearance allows for individual social meaning, such as young or old, ugly or beautiful.  The concepts of body image and sexual attractiveness have been shown to be closely linked together.  The literature suggests that looking “good” means mostly the same as looking sexually attractive.

Track 9: I Love You All. How nice.

From the Mozilla Blog regarding a new beta of FireFox:

This version of Firefox will offer uninterrupted browsing for Windows and Linux users when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime, or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.

On one hand, nice of them not to single out Flash. On the other hand:

Maybe they couldn’t get QuickTime or SilverLight to crash?

This dialogue is the story of my life.

A very excited and happy me: I found a script for iTunes that gives proper English title capitalization to all your song and album titles!

Everyone within earshot: …?

Doesn’t matter if it’s news about a band, the discovery of some new old music, iTunes, WordPress, English, a bike innovation, or HTML 5 video. Really, if it’s not related to the drudgery of everyday life, nobody I know is at all interested in the things I find fascinating. I try to comfort myself with that famous quote about violent opposition from mediocre minds, but it doesn’t really help.

Ok, pity party’s over.

Short version: a few very minor complaints, but—

Still, if you’re looking for an ultra-fast, extremely capable smartphone that has the guts and gleam to go the distance, the Incredible just might be the Droid you’re looking for.

Wish my dad (a Verizon user) were interested in a phone like this. Oh well. (Via Daring Fireball.)
 

Google LatLong Blog:

Working closely with GeoEye, we’ve been able to acquire some high resolution post-earthquake imagery, which vividly illustrates the magnitude of this tragic event.

Rubberneckers.

Most of the article is actually about lice. However:

Public hair, he decided, developed as a sexual ornament. It became bushy and prominent after our ancestors split from non-human primates, he says, when we lost most of our other body hair. As it disappeared, human pubic hair acquired a new role as a prominent sexual ornament, a visual signal of sexual maturity and possibly a reservoir for sexual pheromones.

It also cites humans breaking away from our ape-ish ancestors 7 million years ago. Which means creationists won’t buy this at all. Which is no big deal because creationists… Let’s just assume I write something snide and nasty about creationists and let it go at that.

And now you, too, can be a minimum-requirement kinda person.

Looks good, plus has lyrics to the new album. Now, if only the Tour section had American dates.

I did a recycling quiz at today’s Earth Day festival in Atascadero, and earned a recycling bin! One of the questions I failed at was this: “Which of the following takes up the most space in a landfill — metal, plastic, paper, wood, e-waste?” Well, I already gave away the answer in the title, and am mortally offended. It’s so easy to recycle.

From the NY Times:

Costing hundreds of dollars a pound, these beans are found in the droppings of the civet, a nocturnal, furry, long-tailed catlike animal that prowls Southeast Asia’s coffee-growing lands for the tastiest, ripest coffee cherries. The civet eventually excretes the hard, indigestible innards of the fruit — essentially, incipient coffee beans — though only after they have been fermented in the animal’s stomach acids and enzymes to produce a brew described as smooth, chocolaty and devoid of any bitter aftertaste.

This is the strangest thing I’ve heard about in weeks. I guess I’d try  it, though. (Via Mike Monteiro.)

Before reading this, I used the statistic as a joking insult to my brother: “Dude, you still [statistic (I don't want to ruin it for you)].” (Via Daring Fireball.)

An excellent point he brings up.

(Thanks Christopher.)

I’ve never worked with a developer before. Rich Gubby, maker of this WordPress plugin, has made my first time fantastic.

This plugin, when out of beta testing, will be the first mobile interface for WordPress that supports custom fields.

Not sure how much to believe this. From Blabbermouth in 2005:

TYPE O NEGATIVE cancelled their U.S. tour last fall in order to allow Steele to undergo further tests after “undisclosed anomalies” were discovered during a medical exam. A February 11, 2005 update on Peter’s condition from TYPE O NEGATIVE drummer Johnny Kelly stated, “There really isn’t much to report other than he’s doing fine and his health is improving daily.”

Still, all the news seems pretty serious. If we don’t see any new Type O material in the next few years, we’ll know he’s dead, I guess.

Works great.

Critics of the crucifix take issue with what appears to be a large penis covering Jesus’ abdominal area. Seeton said the portion of the crucifix in question is meant to be Jesus’ abdomen “showing distension” — not a penis.

The picture is fantastic, but I don’t see a penis. I see a mistake that looks like a penis. (Via Obscurestore.)

Holy cow. I hope they see it as incentive to make the app better. (Via Opera, actually.)

Fascinating how the least-informed people are the most paranoid. Check out the comments on this one. The concept in the video is a great one, though, and I look forward to a time when I can get this implant for myself.

It’s called Interstate, and I remember reading (in a magazine?) a story about how this font was developed. I remember talk about mocking up huge signs, looking at them in the day and during the night, and making modifications. If anybody’s got that article, I’d love a copy or a link.

Emphasis mine:

Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April.

(Thanks to Christopher)

This band has obviously gotten bored of power metal, because this is a collection of their “greatest” hits (definitely arguable) of mostly power metal songs, redone in completely different songs. With the exception of track 5, the songs are primarily acoustic, often folk-sounding, with some jazz influences, and even flat out pop (track 10). This is obviously not an album aimed at the die hard metalheads (see: close-minded).

I disagree with his final assessment (“it was done poorly at best”), but it’s good writing, and was obviously thoughtful. The rest of the site is quality, too.

a quick note

This review is really oriented toward updating a WordPress website, and so I don’t touch very much on the overall usability of the program. For a review that feels spot-on for normal usage, check out Daring Fireball’s.

the review

In all my time using Mobile Safari, I have only run into one major problem with it: WordPress.

This website is runs on the WordPress platform, and, in general, gets updated through a web browser in an interface not unlike Google Docs. This is fine most of the time, but I want to be able to make updates while I’m on my forty-minute bus ride home. Problem is the site is NOT optimized for use on an iPhone, and is actually a pretty terrible experience. It’s painfully slow, and the text areas are uselessly large. There’s a WordPress iPhone app, but it doesn’t have support for a thing called custom fields, a necessary feature for posting to my site.

So along comes Opera, a browser for a phone that does things a lot different. But will it help me update my site any better?

Sort of.

First the good stuff. Opera Mini works just like any web browser. It’s quite a bit faster than Safari over slow connections because sites get sent to an Opera server where they are compressed before being sent to your phone. So when you click a link, it feels like there’s a slight hesitation, then an unbelievable sprint.

Also, Opera has a mobile view setting which essentially takes a website and reformats is as intelligently as it can to fit the width of the iPhone’s screen. In Opera’s own words:

Mobile view re-renders the page you are browsing making it optimal for handsets. This causes some sites to look unfamiliar, so if you want to see the full site you might want to keep this off, however if you want a fast mobile-friendly experience go ahead and enable mobile view!

It’s this feature that makes Opera work for me in the capacity I require.

I tell Opera to use Mobile View, log into my admin screen, choose the HTML view (WYSIWYG view just doesn’t work), and I’m editing!

In short, Opera makes available all the fields I need in a very timely manner.

What doesn’t work for me, though, is the kind of 1.0-ness of the app. At the moment, it does not support iPhone’s auto-correct feature, which is maddening. Having to insert your own apostrophes, capitalize all your I‘s, and fix your own touch-screen typeos is horrible. It also seems to have a hard time remembering what I typed into the field if I have to quit and re-open the app. It handles switching between tabs just fine, though. But this shortcoming means either having to save drafts a lot, or using the iPhone app to compose and Opera to publish, which kind of interrupts the workflow.

So Opera’s halfway there. It’s like being given a slice of cake, but no plate or fork. I’ve got high hopes for the first maintenance release; the major problem of no auto-complete should be addressed right the eff right now, and that would take most of the headache away.

On the other hand, maybe the WordPress app will be updated to support custom fields.

And if not, I happen to know that the developer of the WordPress Mobile Admin plugin is working on exactly this issue to make updating via Safari much less painful. He’s a good guy, and I heartily recommend his plugin to WordPress users.

Overall, Opera’s a huge step in the right direction, and I’m glad it’s on the App Store. But until it supports auto-correct, it’s just not worthwhile.

We’ve brought the responsive, real-time editing experience you’ve come to expect from our spreadsheets over to documents, which means you can now see character-by-character changes as other collaborators make edits. We also added another popular feature from spreadsheets: sidebar chat, so you can discuss documents as you work on them with colleagues.

I liked Google Docs better than Microsoft Office before this update. And while Apple’s iWork creates gorgeous documents, but doesn’t play well with other systems, making it a terrible choice for a student who uses school computers.

The Docs update feels really good.

Opera today announced its popular mobile browser, Opera Mini has been approved for iPhone and iPod touch on the App Store. Opera Mini will be available as a free download within 24 hours, depending on market.

Kudos to Apple for not denying the app because it “duplicates functionality.” I’m thrilled.

You seriously want to rub unprocessed cotton on my junk for minutes at a time? Get lost, baby; the money is on the dresser.

The video is hilarious, but not safe for work. The text is just text, though, and has plausible deniability. (Via Violet Blue.)

I went camping for the first time in my adult life on a trip to Half Dome, a giant granite rock in Yosemite, California. I learned a lot. Perhaps the most important lesson learned on that trip was to always carry at least one extra chap stick. Why? Because when a person hikes eighteen miles in a single day, it’s not just your lips that can get chapped. In the words of Christopher’s dad Jim, “When my butthole’s happy, I’m happy.”

My family and I camped at Joshua Tree, California, this last week (photos here), and while there was no monster hike on this trip, there was a major lesson to be learned: showers are crazily important.

I think it’s safe to say I will not be going camping again until I have in my possession a camping shower. You may smell as rank and foul as you want when you go camping, but I generally camp with my wife, and I cannot expect her to be nice to me if I am nasty to her. Yeah: go right ahead and tell me real campers don’t shower.

gear

Over the last couple years, I’ve learned a lot about clothes for sports. Regarding camping, I’ve decided a couple things. First, wicking clothes are huge, at least for me, in a camping situation. I can get away with two sets. Wear one set of clothes, wash the other and let it dry all day while I’m hiking and not reading the Internet. What’s rad about this is that you can pack less clothes, and the clothes I do pack take less space than normal cotton clothes.

Also, I cannot overstate the importance of compression shorts. They’re made out of that athletic material, don’t ride up your butt crack, and really help with the whole, “if my butthole’s happy, I’m happy,” thing.

We were unprepared for how bloody cold it was on the night of our arrival. Lesson learned? No matter what time of year, always have long underwear, a beanie, gloves, and wool socks. I think a set of space blanket sleeping bags might have been especially good that first night. It really was that cold.

The other big thing we got for this trip was a five-gallon water cooler. That was enormously helpful in keeping us alive. Oh, and CamelBaks for hiking, that’s key. For some reason, people just don’t bring enough water. We did a six-mile hike up to the old gold mine and saw people hiking back on the unshaded trail with the sun beating down carrying not a drop of water with them. Not having enough water, even if it doesn’t kill you, will make you far more tired than you’d otherwise be on a hike or ride, and takes a ton of fun out of the event. Bring enough water, everyone. A CamelBak is nice. ¹  They hold a lot of water, plus have room for some food and a lightweight jacket (because you will be out longer than you think, and it will get cold) and your camera and a map and a notebook and some pens and your keys and and and…

tents vs campers and rvs

We camp in a tent. We use coolers to store food, and a propane stove to cook food on. And we mock the bejesus out of people who camp in RVs. After all, if you wanted all the niceties of home, you should probably just stay at home. Or hotel it. That said, we were able to come up with at least one really good reason for an RV: active camping trips. That is, you’re headed out to wherever for the purpose of mountain bike riding, for instance. You wake up, eat, get dressed, and spend the rest of the day pounding down trails on your mountain bikes. You get back to camp after dark. Who wants to cook in the dark and do dishes kneeling in the dirt after a day like that? Nobody. Plus, a nice plush bed inside four solid walls would be pretty nice after fourteen hours of hard mountain biking. ² 

Anyone else is a wimp. Or old.

Our campsite neighbors were both. They had both a tent-trailer and a few tents and a corral for their dogs and signs that said, “campers have smore fun,” and more crap strung around their site and inside their tent-trailer than I’ve got in my entire storage shed. Pardon me while I pass judgment. I’m very critical.

good neighbors: how to not be ‘that guy’

The biggest thing people forget when camping is that there are no doors or walls, and sound does not stay inside your campsite. It travels across the whole campground. Which means if you bring your dog, you’d better be prepared for outright hostility when it decides to bark it’s stupid head off at 5:30am.

Also, we didn’t drive eight hours to listen to your radio. Turn it off. If you want war, somebody’s always got worse music (I’ve got Slayer, Motörhead, and Cradle of Filth; wanna fight?), and everybody loses. Use headphones.

Lastly, limit your use of your generator. That’s not camping, anyway.

and so

Camping’s great! My whole family likes it. The expensive part is acquiring all the gear; each trip costs less than the last trip because we have to buy less equipment. You’re invited to go next time. I’ll send you an email, ok?

“The iconic emblem of the LongTail revolution.” Wow. Now this is a cool bike product.

Steve Swasey, VP of Corporate Communications for Netflix: “We’re working on it so stay tuned.”

Huzzah! (Double-huzzah when it actually ships. Tripple-huzzah if it’ll play on a TV through the dock.)

As with documents, spreadsheets, and files, you also share objects you’ve uploaded to Google Docs with anyone in the world. For example, do you ever wish you could CTRL+F your house keys or your TV remote? Store your keys, remotes, rail passes, and other objects you commonly lose with Google Docs, and you’ll never have to worry about finding them again. Having trouble moving your piano from New York to California? Upload it from your home in New York, then download it once you’re in California. Change your mind and want to share it with your friend in England instead? No problem. With one click you can have your piano delivered to anyone you choose, anywhere in the world.

I signed up.

In one usage study, we found one person having more than 600 tabs open at one time.