fedward, tumbling

"3. HOW TO ENTER Visit your Twitter account and confirm that you have read and agree to these..."

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:16:58 -0500

“

3. HOW TO ENTER

Visit your Twitter account and confirm that you have read and agree to these official rules. You may enter the sweepstakes by incorporating “#Macallen12” and “#Macallen15” in your Macallan tasting notes twittering, derived from current or previous Macallan tasting experiences. The content of all twittered tasting notes will be featured in a topic cloud hosted on the http://themacallan.com website.

”

- The Macallan Tasting Notes

Um. If it’s your own brand, wouldn’t you know how to spell it properly in the hashtags you’re using for your sweepstakes?

One of the things that annoys the crap out of me is when a...

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 13:08:34 -0500

One of the things that annoys the crap out of me is when a single web page runs away with my CPU. With Camino I would occasionally either kill the whole browser and start over or meticulously start closing likely culprits until I got to the window that actually took all the CPU time and caused the fans to spin up.

Google Chrome, on the other hand, has every window in its own process. So today when the fans spun up I fired up the Activity Monitor and killed the Google Chrome Helper process taking 6% of CPU all by itself.

None of the tabs went away so I couldn’t tell at a glance which window I’d actually killed, but I found it. This was the offending page. Note that I completely removed Flash the other day so all that CPU was just going to the NYT’s heat map generator, dictionary tool (which I find useless), ads, and assorted frippery. None of those things actually provide value to me, so I ask why the Times assumes it can get away with using so much of my CPU for its own purposes (almost all related to click-tracking in one way or another).

Also? Props to Google Chrome. The fact that I could kill merely the offending window and leave everything else going is a game changer for me. The only way it could possibly be better is if the app itself had a display showing how much CPU each window was using, and/or an obvious URL in the “open files” listing in Activity Monitor. Regardless, I am in love with this feature and I want to buy it a cupcake.

Meeting Boy: Cellphone Ringtones in the Office: A Modest Proposal

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:13:11 -0500

Meeting Boy: Cellphone Ringtones in the Office: A Modest Proposal:

I propose the Ringtone Jar. It’s like the swear jar— if we hear your ringtone in the office, you put a dollar in. After $10 or so dollars, I’ll bet they remember to put it on vibrate when they walk in the office.

Wow. Meeting boy is much nicer than I am. At an old job the guy in the next cube had a bad habit of leaving his phone in his cube with the ringer on full volume while he was in meetings, and he was a manager so he was in a lot of meetings. I think I might have told him I was going to break his phone in half. It solved the problem, though.

Marco.org: News flash

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:02:12 -0500

Marco.org: News flash:

A popular blog truncated its RSS feeds to boost site pageviews. It’s like last week, when The Atlantic changed to partial-content RSS feeds. And that was like every other week, when some publisher did something that some readers didn’t like to make a few more cents.

I dislike the intrusive…

Well-reasoned post from Marco that says much of what I think about pagination of longer articles on the web. The one site that really got to me was Slate, since the second page of many articles was a single paragraph, but Slate at least offers a link for a single page view. That one annoyance, which I did complain about, has in fact caused me to read fewer articles on Slate, and it changed my reading habits there. Now when I open an article the first thing I do is scroll down to the bottom of the page to find out if the article has been broken up, and then I scroll back up and click the link for single page view. There’s a link at the bottom of the page too, but that link sends you to the anchor for the top of the second page, which I find just as annoying. The “single page” link at the top of the page, though, is also annoying because it’s always there, whether the article spans multiple pages or not. The NYT has a similar setup, but their UI only displays the “single page” link when the article spans multiple pages, and once you click on it to get the longer view, the link is absent from the resulting page.

I know they’ve probably got some numbers to back their annoyance, but my willingness to deal with it is pretty low in general and depends on how much I value the content and how intrusive the ads are. But I’m with Marco - nobody owes me anything, and I’m willing to vote with my page views.

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: What's next for Google Maps now that they've added Bicycling Directions? (feat. Ian Cely)

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:42:25 -0500

Neven Mrgan's tumbl: What's next for Google Maps now that they've added Bicycling Directions? (feat. Ian Cely):

Segway directions

Shriner go-kart directions

Walking and chewing gum directions

Angry-walking directions

Clowncar directions, with an algorithm that maximizes your ability to unload fourteen clowns at your destination

Heartbroken moping to a sad indie song directions

Just-got-laid…

I think they need skateboarding directions too.

"How good is the new breed of decaffeinated coffee? To find out, The New York Times held a blind..."

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:40:25 -0500

“How good is the new breed of decaffeinated coffee? To find out, The New York Times held a blind tasting of seven decaffeinated coffees. Some were rare, single-origin beans, others were more familiar blends. For reference, there was a pot of Chock Full O Nuts. All coffees were ground fresh and brewed in press pots for four minutes using water that had just come to a boil. Over all, the tasters were disappointed with the coffees, but did find some worth trying.”

- New Breed of Brewers of No Buzz - NYTimes.com

Ha. I should go ask my local roast monkey what sort method his decaf is.

And for the record, while Kate claims she has fooled me with decaf, I don’t think she has, although maybe me pronouncing a cup “weak” or “terrible” and muttering something about decaf under my breath still counts as my being fooled in her book. That said, I’ve been known to order a decaf gelato affogato for dessert, but I think that’s more about the gelato than the espresso anyway.

"There is a dicey — and misguided — aspect of Irish whiskey loyalty that splits along..."

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:30:38 -0500

“

There is a dicey — and misguided — aspect of Irish whiskey loyalty that splits along partisan lines. I’ve known a lot of older Irish Americans who will drink only Jameson because it is considered the “Catholic” whiskey, as opposed to Bushmills, which is perceived as the “Protestant” whiskey. During grad school in Boston, I drank once or twice in a hard-core Irish pub where you might come to physical harm if you ordered a Bushmills. (That bar also passed around a hat once a night, and you were strongly “encouraged” to donate to “the cause”).

This idea of Catholic vs. Protestant whiskey is bunk. For one thing, from 1972 to 2005, coinciding with some the worst of The Troubles, both distilleries were owned by the same company, Irish Distillers, before Bushmills was sold to Diageo. Jameson is now owned by Pernod Ricard, a French conglomerate. Also, John Jameson was a Scotsman, and therefore in all likelihood a Protestant.

”

- Spirits: For St. Paddy’s Day, make my whiskey Irish - washingtonpost.com

The more you know. I have to say, though, that my dad inadvertently ordered the “wrong” one in a bar in Ireland and the bartender gave him a hard time (but served him anyway, with a wink).

“We talked a lot about what the moral taco would look like, or...

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 18:47:13 -0500

“We talked a lot about what the moral taco would look like, or the locavore taco, but this was the cheapest taco you can produce in San Francisco,” said Annalise Aldrich, a CCA student who helped present the group’s findings. Aldrich and another student, Rachael Yu, walked the audience through some highlights of their research. (via Your Taco, Deconstructed - GOOD Blog - GOOD)

How To Beat Up Anything: How To Beat Up Singer Aimee Mann (with a rebuttal from Aimee)

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 11:47:32 -0500

How To Beat Up Anything: How To Beat Up Singer Aimee Mann (with a rebuttal from Aimee):

I love that this web site exists.

Marco.org: How to post photos on the internet

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 09:54:58 -0500

Marco.org: How to post photos on the internet:

Rotate the camera 30 degrees before shooting.

Square-crop.

Yeah. All of that. He left out sloppy HDR though.

I Need a Job Title

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:23:17 -0500

I’m assuming the tens of you who read this already know what it is I do in general, but since 2006 I’ve been doing IT consulting. This has involved a mix of programming, maintenance, and support. Before I became a consultant, my job title was “developer,” before that it was “programmer,” before that it was “internet engineer, lead,” and before that (back in the dark ages) I was a “network administrator,” “system administrator,” or “webmaster,” depending on who was doing the asking (all of those titles at once, interchangeably, though).

Thanks to the recession, consulting is no longer even bringing in the medium-sized bucks, though, and I’ve been looking for full-time (or even serious part-time) IT work. And essentially I’ve been failing at this, because I’m still looking with no end in sight.

So now I think I need to write a new résumé from a clean sheet, and I’m coming at it from the perspective that I’ve been selling myself for the wrong job. I have fifteen years experience in information technology. There are certain specific types of expertise I don’t have, but I have touched a lot of technology in all that time, some of it in quite a bit of depth. I am now effectively “senior” in experience and presumed salary expectation, but I have never managed people. I did this somewhat intentionally, but staying out of the management track now appears to have been career-limiting.

Ideally in my new job I’d be responsible for:

Making decisions about what hardware and software to buy
Doing more software or database design than implementation, although some implementation is fine (and probably to be expected)
Deciding what to develop in-house and what to hire out for
Assigning both people and machines to get the most out of them.

Complicating this is the fact that I’ve never managed people (I’ve been a lead, and I’ve been senior-level, but never managing). So whatever title I’m aiming for has to be attainable given that lack of specific experience.

What’s the job title for all that?

Today is brought to you by Fatboy Slim, Bootsy Collins, Spike...

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:21:27 -0500

Today is brought to you by Fatboy Slim, Bootsy Collins, Spike Jonze, and Christopher Walken. Be careful, it’s loaded.

"Ace Hotel NY is the city’s leading hipster hotel and hotspot. KAYAK members looking to stay in..."

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 12:37:00 -0500

“Ace Hotel NY is the city’s leading hipster hotel and hotspot. KAYAK members looking to stay in New York City will be delighted by the whimsical touches and the out-and-out coolness of this property. Even the unpretentious lobby manages to be one of the coolest places to hang out in the city.”

- (from an email I got from Kayak)

You’re doing it wrong.

legoexpress: legogogo: Mondrian & LEGO (via...

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 18:49:42 -0500

legoexpress:

legogogo:

Mondrian & LEGO (via martongazso)

Yay!

"Heat 10 tablespoons butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes...."

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:14:30 -0500

“Heat 10 tablespoons butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark golden brown and has nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and, using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl. Stir remaining 4 tablespoons butter into hot butter until completely melted.”

- Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies - Cooks Illustrated

tbridge: So, this happened today. Yeah, I actually went...

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:36:09 -0500

tbridge:

So, this happened today.

Yeah, I actually went curling! It was a total blast.

Me too!

So You're Watching the Winter Olympics

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 12:46:00 -0500

Since I was nine years old I’ve been somewhat obsessed with the Winter Olympics. It was 1980, the year the Games were in Lake Placid and thus well-televised. I grew up in Oklahoma, which featured neither mountains nor heavy snow, so all the sports were essentially unavailable to me except for the indoor ones, and as for those I never got to any Tulsa Oilers games (at that age I was barely aware Tulsa even had a hockey team - soccer yes, hockey no) and I didn’t particularly care for figure skating.

But in 1980, two sports in particular appealed to me: hockey and bobsled. Hockey should be obvious here, since that was the Miracle On Ice (and I remember how the euphoria of the victory over Russia was tempered by the fact there was still ANOTHER GAME to play, and what a nail-biter that was). Bobsled, though, appealed to my nine-year-old, Oklahoman heart as only something unattainable could.

We lived at the bottom of a hill, and when it snowed enough I’d tromp up to the neighbors’ house where the street curved, go around to their back yard, then continue up the hill to the point the smooth snow gave way to ground cover. From that point I’d sled down the hill into their yard. (And if you are now asking, “um, didn’t the neighbors mind?” then I’ll point out that my parents always made me ring the doorbell first and make sure it was OK, until the neighbors finally told me I didn’t have to ask anymore.) I used every opportunity to go sledding in my neighborhood, going until my jeans got too wet, or I crashed into a tree (who thought saucer sleds were a good idea?), or the snow compacted enough to expose the grass beneath it, or it got dark, whichever happened first. In that context bobsled was a revelation: one, the sleds just looked cool, all sleek curves and metal flake paint; two, they had a dedicated track; three, those were adults who still got to go sledding, and how cool was that; and four, they were insanely fast. Even at age nine I knew this was something that I’d never be able to do, because it was already pretty clear I was no natural athlete and I lived in a plains state. But still, I could watch.

In the years since 1980 I’ve tried to follow the Winter Games as much as practical. Some years that means I haven’t really seen anything, and some years I’ve seen quite a bit. My one ski trip actually took me to Chamonix (and oh, was I bad at it - I am indeed a natural hacker, not a natural athlete). I picked up a shirt for the Lillehammer games while traveling through Norway, although I didn’t get to any of the venues. While spending a summer near Lake Placid I went on a summer bobsled run - the sled has wheels and starts lower on the course, but it’s still insanely fast. Our sled suffered a bearing failure near the bottom, but they trucked us back to the top and sent us all the way down in another sled, too, so even the breakdown worked out well.

This all reached its apex in 2002, with the games again on U.S. soil, me working from home, and NBC using a multi-channel strategy to air live events during the day (just like it does now). So I set up my two TiVos with one goal:

I would watch ALL the Winter Olympics.

If an event was televised I would watch it. Every minute of it. I gave myself two guiding principles: no human interest fluff, and no figure skating. For multiple reasons I don’t really enjoy watching figure skating, and it also seems to be one sport where the coverage consists almost entirely of human interest fluff with a little bit of skating interspersed, so using it as my out gave me the opportunity to do other things, like maybe get some actual work in or cook dinner.

In the end I succeeded in my goal with a couple minor exceptions: I gave up on one hockey match because I had company arriving and it was a blowout anyway, and I didn’t watch the bronze medal hockey game at all. My guest and I were out while the game was being played and we saw the final score, and there didn’t seem much point in slogging through after the medals had been awarded. Other than that I at least had the TV on for every minute of every (non-figure-skating) event. It took both DVRs and a lot of fast forwarding, but it was actually perversely entertaining. The challenge itself became its own reward.

It also satisfied my Winter Olympics jones somewhat permanently. I barely paid attention to Torino, and while I’ve been watching what little I can get on NBC without cable, I’m just as happy to turn the TV off and do something else. The games will go on with me or without me, and NBC’s decision to delay almost everything has made watching less fun. I know from previous years that the networks prefer to air human interest stories over niche sports, and I remember one Olympics where ABC cut away from a hockey match to show an “Up Close and Personal” feature on an athlete from another sport, only to return with two goals having been scored in the interim. So the coverage is frustrating, and I can’t really isolate myself from results like I could in 2002. By the time NBC gets around to airing something it’s likely I already know who won. Last night the only thing NBC aired live was pairs figure skating, and you can guess how I felt about that.

I can offer some advice to anybody who reads this and thinks the challenge sounds fun, though:

Work from home or be unemployed. Also, be single and have no social obligations. This will take all your time. I did manage to get work done, but I didn’t have anything else to do, and cross-country skiing events are long.
Do not attempt this without at least one DVR, and the more DVRs/tuners you have, the better. I had two dual-tuner TiVos, so when hockey and curling were on cable and the broadcast net had something else, I could get everything and sort through it later.
Avoid the internet. You’re going to be watching events after they happen, and often after they aired, so twitter and facebook are going to be your downfall.
Watch everything on your own DVR delay. Live events trump taped events, but you can be flexible with this: you can watch a period of hockey, watch something else while the buffer fills, then watch another uninterrupted period. Also, starting behind live allows you to skip the dead time between competitors in one-at-a-time events like skiing or (heaven forfend) figure skating. Same goes for commercials.
Fast-forward and 30-second-skip are your best friends during this challenge. Skip all the fluff (with multiple channels, they air some pieces multiple times), skip the recaps, skip most of the medal ceremonies (exceptions: interesting firsts for interesting countries, people who cry, people who actually sing along with their national anthems). Use the pause button for food and bathroom breaks.
Give yourself at least one out. My rule allowed me to skip figure skating; you might want to avoid the biathlon or something else. I can’t endorse skipping curling though - curling makes for riveting TV and is even more fascinating in person.
The late-night stuff is generally going to be recaps and hockey. If you’re not a late-night person, watch this over breakfast the next day and fast-forward through everything that wasn’t live, since you might have seen a lot of it already anyway.

You can apply these principles to the Summer Games as well, but during the summer you might prefer to be outside. I find that winter weather really lends itself to holing up and watching biathlon, curling, and hockey all day in a way that summer just doesn’t do for shot put, rhythmic gymnastics, and beach volleyball. Your mileage may vary.

Family Offers $500 For Return of Filched S.F. Lego Landmarks -...

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:06:49 -0500

Family Offers $500 For Return of Filched S.F. Lego Landmarks - San Francisco News - The Snitch

"And just what does “at least half a dozen victims in the past decade” mean? If it is half a dozen..."

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:51:21 -0500

“And just what does “at least half a dozen victims in the past decade” mean? If it is half a dozen over 10 years, which I doubt, that does not exactly sound like an epidemic to me, particularly since we have no comparison to how many alleged killings take place in karaoke bars when other awful songs are being sung. How many people are killed singing Jefferson Starship’s “We Built This City?” How many during Starland Vocal Band’s “Afternoon Delight” or Lobo’s “Me and You and a Dog Named Boo?””

- Kill Me Before I Sing Again

Heh. “Journalism” exposed! But also: how have there not been more “We Built This City” killings?

“Stairs” (via Don Feduardo)

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:46:11 -0500

“Stairs” (via Don Feduardo)