randomwalks/dj

Italy's Interior Ministry announced that there were not enough contested ballots to overturn the thin victory of Romano Prodi.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on April 14, 2006 11:55 PM

Originally posted by anselm from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 11:55 PM

A life lesson.

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 11:52 PM

Originally posted by alainabrowne from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 11:51 PM

Originally posted by alainabrowne from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 11:51 PM

Originally posted by alainabrowne from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 11:51 PM

Bacon cookies--yum.

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 11:51 PM

Originally posted by alainabrowne from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 11:50 PM

Trailer for The Fountain, Darren Aronofsky's (Pi, Requiem for a Dream) new film. Official site, interview with Aronofsky on the film, which was originally supposed to star Brad Pitt.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 6:31 PM

online news consumer behavior: eye tracking study results

Originally posted by sudama from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 5:47 PM

He says it will be a Detroit/San Antonio final, with Tim Duncan's fascitis and the Pistons' balance the crucial factors.

I hate to agree with him, but I have a feeling Barkley might be right. To me the shakiest part of the prediction is the San Antonio part. But I can't name a Western team that's better.

What do you think? Predictions anyone?

Originally from True Hoop, on April 14, 2006 5:47 PM

There is a great series of photos on Flickr that'll explain and show you how to roast your own coffee.

The roaster in this case is an old hot air popcorn popper that I've appropriated for my coffee.

There are specialty small roasting machines available for purchase, and I'm strongly considering going that route. The hot air popper is a cheap and effective introduction to home roasting, but I find it's a little too hot, and therefore done a little too quickly. A slower, more controlled roast would undoubtedly result in better coffee. I might have to take that plunge soon.

Coffee Roasting [Mezzoblue's Flickr Stream]

 
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Originally from Lifehacker, on April 14, 2006 5:46 PM

We're back from our honeymoon in Mexico and it was totally excellent. Though this photo is a bit weird, I kind of like it so it's the first one I've posted from the trip. I took a bunch of long exposure night shots, just for fun. This is a portrait I took of us on the deck of our cabaña. Those specks of white are stars. More details about the picture at Flickr, just click on it to see. Now that I'm back, there's lots to do. Mostly though I just feel like looking through my photos and remembering the great time we had.

Originally from megnut, on April 14, 2006 5:46 PM

Five suggested Flickr tags. Merlin brings the funny. "Rows Of Seated White Men Typing At Conferences".

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 5:32 PM

Blog about the small village of Nata in Botswana that's documenting the spread and impact of HIV/AIDS there.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 4:32 PM

Slideshow of graphics submitted for New York magazine's High Priority feature, the production of which Michael Bierut says "is as close as the graphic design world gets to an Olympic event".

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 4:32 PM

Bruce Perens is to open source what RMS is to GNU. Bruce was the person who gave us the definition of Open Source. He is a remarkable person with deep roots and faith in the community. Recently, LinuxFormat magazine quizzed him on his pet project UserLinux and also his views on the direction taken by Ubuntu and a few other significant topics.

UserLinux is a GNU/Linux distribution project publicly launched by Bruce Perens in November 2003. The mission of UserLinux - as stated on their website - is to provide businesses with freely available, high quality Linux operating systems accompanied by certifications, service, and support options designed to encourage productivity and security while reducing overall costs. It seems he has eventually made time to concentrate on this project and bring it to a fruitful completion. He has written a rather lengthy paper titled - "The Emerging Economic Paradigm of Open Source" - where he delves into analysing how open source works and how one can make it economically sustainable.

The whole interview at LinuxFormat (though a short one) brings to light some of the ideas and opinion of one of the foremost open source community leader on topics of significance.

Originally from All about Linux, on April 14, 2006 3:37 PM

Seven tenths of a percent of America is behind bars. That doesnÂ’t sound like much, right? Well, that is actually more than 2 million people. And get this: prisoners in China are only .118 percent of the total population, while Brazil locks up only .183 percent of its citizens.

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on April 14, 2006 3:37 PM

The language of the Simpsons (beyond embiggens and cromulent). "You pressed YOU, meaning me. This is incorrect. You should have pressed ME, meaning you."

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 3:32 PM

A list of the world's 50 best restaurants for 2006, compiled by Restaurant magazine. Here are the winners from previous years.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 3:32 PM

John Gruber on Apple's Boot Camp, which lets you install Windows XP on your Mac (in beta). "You now get to choose between a computer that can only run Windows or a computer that can run both Windows and Mac OS X."

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 3:32 PM

this is apple homepage

Originally posted by cory_arcangel from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 2:38 PM

A Little Weekend Reading: Working Girls, Broken Society is a terrible title for a really smart article . "While the benefits of career equality are axiomatic, its negative repercussions are wilfully ignored. In a contentious essay that is sparking fierce debate in Britain, a King's College professor argues that we must confront the losses to society when women choose work over family."

Politicians, journalists and businessmen often emphasize the negative economic consequences of any barriers to female participation in the workforce, and of losing half the country's best brains to the kitchen sink. Of course they are right, and I am in no hurry to go back there myself.

But it is striking how little anyone mentions, let alone tries to quantify, the offsetting losses when women choose work over family. This is stupid.

(via dm)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 14, 2006 2:38 PM

Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma is now out. Here's a NY Times piece about Pollan hunting for wild boar that uses material from the book. I loved The Botany of Desire.

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 2:31 PM

by Steven De La O, Google Base Operations

A common request we receive is to improve error messaging so that it's easier to troubleshoot bulk upload formatting issues. We're working to increase the variety of errors we display, and we're also creating additional documentation to help you resolve these issues more quickly. Next week we'll release a couple of updates:

- Error messages for invalid locations found in bulk upload files will be visible.
- The maximum number of errors we display will increase from 25 to 100.

We'll address error reporting for XML files too, by providing more details and improved instructions for resolving common problems with these types of files.

Submitting large amounts of data using well-formatted and error-free bulk upload files makes updating your items an easy process. We're confident the changes coming soon will make submitting data less of a headache.

Originally from Official Google Base Blog, on April 14, 2006 1:38 PM

Greasemonkey script adds reminder links for any hCal formatted page, like all of Upcoming  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on April 14, 2006 1:37 PM

for when I get around to buying a bike

Originally posted by alainabrowne from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 12:58 PM

I think David Heinemeier Hansson’s graphic is worth a link; the title kind of puzzled me, but the comments have a pointer to an explanation.

Originally from ongoing, on April 14, 2006 12:53 PM

If you've ever spent more than five minutes searching for some good freeware, than have I got a site for you. eConsultant has a giant list of more freeware programs than you can shake a stick at, and did I mention they're all free? Freeware? Yep - and they're all "extremely useful free utilities that do specific jobs really well and save time and money." Excellent. — Wendy Boswell

I want a Freeware Utility to ... 300+ common problems solved. [via popurls]

 
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Related: 10 lesser-known Mac apps

Originally from Lifehacker, on April 14, 2006 12:53 PM

Mapping religion in America. Geography of God, by county.

Originally from Social Design Notes, on April 14, 2006 12:53 PM

If that headline means anything to you, then rejoice. It's long been known that Akismet, WordPress's remarkable anti-comment spam technology, was the best out there. Moveable Type users (like me) salivated at the thought of having Akismet-like functionality on our sites. The technology works in an AI like fashion, learning from the edges - bloggers like us - what is spam, and what is not. It's elegant, and it scales.

Well, thanks to the folks at Automattic (and a big assist from Scot Hacker, Searchblog's native web jockey), it's now possible to run Akismet as a Moveable Type plugin. Searchblog was among the first to test the Akismet plugin, and it is working beautifully. Sure, you'll see spam on this site from time to time. But as soon as I label it "junk" in my MT backend, it'll never show up again. Yeeehaw!

PS - Akismet tracks spams blocked on its home page. According to those figures, 84 percent of all comments left in the blogosphere are spam. Holy crap.

Originally from John Battelle's Searchblog, on April 14, 2006 12:52 PM

According to Wikipedia (which in turn references the Oxford English Dictionary on the matter), the etymology of the word honeymoon is unclear. The American Heritage Dictionary (via answers.com) suggests it's "perhaps from a comparison of the moon, which wanes as soon as it is full, to the affections of a newly married couple, which are most tender right after marriage", which doesn't sound all that positive. Returning to the Wikipedia entry, honeymoon may have been used in Babylonian times to describe the bride and groom consuming honey (in the form of mead, a beverage) before the next moon.

At any rate, I've just returned from mine, the most relaxing vacation I've ever had. For two weeks, we did without electricity, running fresh water, newpapers, showers (we substituted ocean swimming + saltwater baths), television, magazines, movies, computers, internet, email, mobile phones (except for two unavoidable calls out and periodic checking of voicemail to see if the cat was ok), and music (for the most part). It was so relaxing that we didn't even know that Daylight Saving Time was in effect until 2 full days after the fact and may not have found out until we got to the airport if Meg hadn't shown up a full hour late to her yoga class and everyone was, somewhat confusingly, just finishing up.

I read three books: one fascinating, one great, and one good. Ate lots of great Mexican food with zero instances of microbial confrontation. Found really good pizza in an odd place.

We made up names for the people we saw repeatedly on the beach at the small place we were staying. There were the Naked Hat People, Naked Yoga Guy -- you may be noticing a trend...the beach was clothing optional -- and Naked Paddleball Players, who we renamed Ketchup and Mustard because of their signature matching red and yellow ball caps (they exercised their option to wear nothing besides). Civilization kept threatening to creep into our media deprivation tank, as when we saw Ketchup and Mustard at dinner near the end of our stay, surfing the web on the wireless connection we had no idea that our hotel/resort had. They checked out the New Yorker site and then caught up on the Huffington Post. Meg turned to me and said, "if he brings up kottke.org, I'm going over there and introducing you."

"The hell you are. Are you trying to kill Vacation Jason?"

So yeah, I'm back and am eager to get back to kottke.org, even though getting my &%#$^#*%& email this morning completely killed Vacation Jason much sooner than I would have liked.

And not least, thanks to Greg Knauss, David Jacobs, and Anil Dash for keeping up with the remaindered links while I was gone. Good stuff, guys.

ps. For the curious, wedding pics here (taken by Eliot). Some pics of Mexico coming (somewhat) soon.

Originally from kottke.org, on April 14, 2006 12:52 PM

I'm off on my honeymoon for a couple weeks, so posting will be limited to a small number of items I've scheduled in advance. Nothing major, though honestly this site hasn't seen major amounts of posting in some time! Hopefully that will change after the honeymoon. In the meantime, enjoy yourselves and I'll see you in a few with some travel tales and pictures. Hopefully.

Originally from megnut, on April 14, 2006 12:52 PM

With the May 8th Assembly polls approaching, politicians in India are hitting up SMS and mobile technology for their latest barrage of new media political canvassing. [Justin Oberman's Personal Democracy Forum, commenting on an article which appeared in The Hindu] "Going beyond the fact that the mobile phone has become such an integral part of Indian society, party functionaries also point out how highly cost effective SMS canvassing can be". "As a party functionary in the city reasons, sending SMS for canvassing votes is "easy, convenient, and cheaper. "Expenditure is very important with the Election Commission keeping a strict watch on how much a candidate is spending to gain votes. The mobile phone has become an integral part of society today. It helps us reach out to a potential voter. With several cellular operators giving free SMS facility, it is cost-effective," the functionary adds."

Originally posted by emily from textually.org, on April 14, 2006 12:52 PM

brian_d_foy writes "For what it's worth, the 2006 OSCON Perl track schedule is available. I think the theme is "Time Travel" because I swear that looks a collection of talks from a conference that could have happened five years ago. :)"

Originally posted by brian_d_foy from use Perl, on April 14, 2006 12:52 PM

YouTube has added a new Director feature that lets users sign up as YouTube Directors, adding the following features to your YouTube:

• Your own logo, company/organization URL, and description on all of your video pages
• Ability to upload videos longer than 10 minutes
• Customizable name & value fields for each of your videos (ex: "Price: $4.25" or "Show Time: 9 pm PST")
• Ability to attach a per-video URL to each of your videos

YouTube decided to place a 10 minute limit on videos in an attempt to prevent copyright infringement, a lot of users were upset; YouTube Director is YouTube's response. YouTube Director is totally free, so if you're an aspiring videographer, there's no reason not to sign up. Thanks CarLBanks!

Introducing YouTube Director [YouTube]

 
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Originally from Lifehacker, on April 14, 2006 12:52 PM

Launch party tonight (4/14) at Eyebeam for Yochai Benkler's new book, The Wealth of Networks. "His book shows why labor done outside the constraints of free markets and giant corporations can still have a huge impact on the economy and social relations. He argues that a 'third mode of production' offers the promise of a more free society, but only if we make the right collective decisions."

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 11:33 AM

Stewart posted a photo:

Originally from Sylloge, on April 14, 2006 10:11 AM

So it’s been noted elsewhere that the latest ajaxy application out of google labs (Google Calendar) lacks support for the hCalendar microformat.

Perhaps it’s an oversight–but with all the high profile exposure microformats have been getting lately it’s kind of hard to imagine. But people have deadlines and some things just can’t make it into the first release–even at Google. The main thing, as Mark Pilgrim says is:

Sniping from the sidelines makes us look petty and insular. Instead
of making assumptions about big bad evil Google ignoring open
standards and locking users in, have we tried opening a dialogue?

I don’t know anyone at google so I feel like I’m doing my part by just blogging about how *awesome* it would be if they marked up their calendar data using hCalendar. As a full featured calendaring application on the web, Google Calendar could really enable downstream applications like the LiveClipboard if they simply added some class attributes and spans to the data they are already displaying.

In the long run I imagine it’s in Google’s best interests to promote microformats since their infrastructure would allow them to take best advantage of a system of distributed metadata. Here’s to hoping that it’ll be layered in sometime soon. In the meantime Scott and Mark have the right idea!

By the way, being able to enter a quick event in free text and have the time/location/description parsed as opposed to tabbing around in a complicated form is very nice.

Originally posted by ed from inkdroid, on April 14, 2006 8:40 AM

Originally posted by finn from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 8:39 AM

correct

Originally posted by maciej from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 8:39 AM

There's a nice review of Flickr Hacks over at MyMac.com: Hack Your Way Into Flickr, and the reviewer mentioned that the code for all of the hacks wasn't available online. O'Reilly has remedied the situation, and you can grab all of the code from the book in one zip file: Flickr Hacks Code. Carpal tunnels everywhere are rejoicing. (And don't forget about the color figures gallery at Flickr—another way to view parts of the book.)

Originally from onfocus.com, on April 14, 2006 8:39 AM

NYU Weed Hookup @ Corner Deli
Originally uploaded by triciawang 王 圣 㨗.

13th and 5th

you would think that nyu students would be smart enough to not make a marajuna pickup deal at the corner deli where a stranger like me can hear the exact details. nope. I already know that this girl has 'contact eyes' and dry mouthm and she needs another eighth tonight to get her through the paper that's due tomorrow.

Originally from Hi Tricia!, on April 14, 2006 8:38 AM

New Yorker: Here's Why. A sociologist offers an anatomy of explanations, Malcolm Gladwell.

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 14, 2006 8:35 AM

Periphrastic regexen.

Originally posted by ezrakilty from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 14, 2006 8:35 AM

Matt MullenwegMatt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, the company that manages the popular WordPress blog software, announced yesterday on his blog that he has taken some funding. This comes just a few months after his December launch, when he announced he wasn't seeking funding for the San Francisco company. Funny how that works. We believed him, and think he was being genuine at the time, because we've followed him for some time now, and he talks rarely about money, always about vision. And nothing drives VCs wilder than a confident 22-year-old who says he doesn't need any cash. So then they go dangle it in front of him, and he realizes that maybe its easier to take a little dough than spend his time "robbing Peter to pay Paul" each month, as he puts it. The amount wasn't announced, but it comes from Polaris Ventures (Mike Hirshland), Blacksmith Capital (Phil Black, now at True Ventures), Radar Partners (Doug Mackenzie), and CNET (Shelby Bonnie)....

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from SiliconBeat, on April 14, 2006 8:30 AM

Over the past two weeks, David Jacobs, Anil Dash and I have attempted to reproduce (in some halting way) Jason Kottke, while the actual Jason Kottke was in rehab on his honeymoon. The attempt, on my part at least, has been an abject failure. Or haven't you noticed all the crappy links with "GK" at the end of them? Go-kart magazines? What the hell?

Like most of the disasters I've had a hand in, I've got a theory that both explains what happened and exonerates me. Ducking responsibility sounds better if you put on academic airs about it.

The theory: There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential. Kottke is one. I, now two weeks too late in realizing this, am another.

The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth -- extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes -- but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.

The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.

There's nothing here to imply that one type of blogger is better than the other. There are literally thousands -- OK, hundreds... OK, at least a dozen -- of both kinds that are valuable additions to the on-going conversation/food-fight/furry-cuddle that is the Internet. My point is that Jason Kottke is a very, very good referential blogger and I am a very, very bad one. And I'm sure I wouldn't have trouble finding a link that expresses this sentiment (many, many times over, with varying degrees of vehemence), but I'd rather say it from my own experience:

Welcome back, Jason. You've been missed. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 2:32 AM

Over the past two weeks, David Jacobs, Anil Dash and I have attempted to reproduce (in some halting way) Jason Kottke, while the actual Jason Kottke was in rehab on his honeymoon. The attempt, on my part at least, has been an abject failure. Or haven't you noticed all the crappy links with "GK" at the end of them?

Like most of the disasters I've had a hand in, I've got a theory that both explains what happened and exonerates me. Ducking responsibility sounds better if you put on academic airs about it.

The theory: There are two kinds of bloggers, referential and experiential. Kottke is one. I, now two weeks too late in realizing this, am another.

The referential blogger uses the link as his fundamental unit of currency, building posts around ideas and experiences spawned elsewhere: Look at this. Referential bloggers are reporters, delivering pointers to and snippets of information, insight or entertainment happening out there, on the Intraweb. They can, and do, add their own information, insight and entertainment to the links they unearth -- extrapolations, juxtapositions, even lengthy and personal anecdotes -- but the outward direction of their focus remains their distinguishing feature.

The experiential blogger is inwardly directed, drawing entries from personal experience and opinion: How about this. They are storytellers (and/or bores), drawing whatever they have to offer from their own perspective. They can, and do, add links to supporting or explanatory information, even unique and undercited external sources. But their motivation, their impetus, comes from a desire to supply narrative, not reference it.

There's nothing here to imply that one type of blogger is better than the other. There are literally thousands -- OK, hundreds... OK, at least a dozen -- of both kinds that are valuable additions to the on-going conversation/food-fight/furry-cuddle that is the Internet. My point is that Jason Kottke is a very, very good referential blogger and I am a very, very bad one. And I'm sure I wouldn't have trouble finding a link that expresses this sentiment (many, many times over, with varying degrees of vehemence), but I'd rather say it from my own experience:

Welcome back, Jason. You've been missed. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 14, 2006 1:32 AM

CMP decided to stop publishing The Perl Journal, which they has recently moved to a completely HTML form. I'll certainly miss TPJ. Jon published my first two Perl articles, and the magazine certainly did a lot for the community.

Originally posted by brian_d_foy (posted by brian_d_foy) from use Perl, on April 13, 2006 10:41 PM

A follow-up on Argentine beef from A Full Belly reader: Besides the free-pampa pasturing of animals in Argentina, the slaughter method is also different. The animals are killed and bled (not kosher, but the bleeding is similar) and the meat...

Originally from A Full Belly, on April 13, 2006 10:40 PM

Today is the 45th anniversary of manned space flight (at least using vehicles that humans built). It's also the 25th anniversary of the first Shuttle launch. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 13, 2006 4:32 PM

What happened to the San Francisco mint during the earthquake of 1906? -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 13, 2006 12:31 PM

National Karting News, American's leading karting magazine since 1986. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 13, 2006 12:31 PM

The experiment I'll be mentioning in this post is called Break In Case Of Boredom. (music-ish happenings)

I like playing with discovery mechanisms. Yesterday I had a nice time watching new calendars emerge in Google Calendar and I'd like to pass along some fun to others who are just getting started and may find this useful.

To search for new public calendars, do the following:

Click on Settings
Click on Calendars
Click on the Add Calendar button
Enter some keywords and click Search

I quickly spotted Brett's Flavorpill Select calendar and added it. Then I added another SF events calendar and alongside my own music calendar this seemed pretty useful.

So now I had a (mostly) musical events calendar. I'm happy with that but I also wanted to share that on my own site. So, I subscribed to the calendars in Google Reader and shared them which meant I could just copy any of the Calendar clips to any page on my site. Ok, I'm satisfied.

Except... I wasn't just yet done with customization so I made a spliced feed of all three calendars.

Fun. Of course, I'm a bit of a Javascript hacker and decided to mess around further by getting the feeds as Javascript (Reader can do this with any feed) and styled the clips differently using CSS which resulted in a personal upcoming events page; a Break In Case Of Boredom portal. A quick cobble - only tested it in Firefox and Safari. Now I can easily point friends to this - I mean if I thought it'd be their cup o' tea.

(I really should remove my own bands from the list even though it's nice for me to see which events conflict with our shows. Besides, I can create another calendar easily enough.)

Ok, definitely done for today. Of course, there are likely to be even better splicing opportunities very soon. As excellent sites like upcoming.org have made clear, there are plenty of people that are better at relevant event suggestions than I will ever be so I'm just going to keep refreshing the search I mentioned earlier as new (and better) editors get their cal on.

Originally from massless, on April 13, 2006 11:27 AM

My favorite Google calendar feature: Daily Agenda, a daily email overview of the days events. Though when you're in there looking at the nofitications tab you'll notice no notifications via IM support. (even for those of us using Jabber/GTalk)

Least favorite: Search public calendars is wrong wrong wrong, not the least because it shows me calendars for 2005.

Feels more done then recent Google releases, but what will make it is the GMail integration. (or break it if we all migrate away from GMail at some point)

Bonus: a new Google syndication namespace with event elements: http://schemas.google.com/g/2005

<gd:transparency value="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event.opaque"/>
<gd:comments>
     <gd:feedLink href="http://www.google.com/calendar/feeds/kellan%40gmail.com/public/full/nqjhksjic4h8nchfdq5i1i3l0o/comments/"/>
 </gd:comments>
 <gd:eventStatus value="http://schemas.google.com/g/2005#event.confirmed"/>
 <gd:when startTime="2006-04-14T15:00:00.000Z" endTime="2006-04-14T16:00:00.000Z"/>
 <gd:where valueString="100 Somestreet St., Jamaica Plain, MA"/>

Documentation?

Originally from Laughing Meme, on April 13, 2006 11:23 AM

Previously I wrote that we didn’t have a good process for deploying boxes to deserving recipients; but we’re really making progress. Item: Last month I noted the server for Nexenta. Item: They’re getting the kinks out of the T2000 try-&-buy; now we ship a serial cable so you can bootstrap the sucker, and I hear they’ve weeded out the silly “Do you have a Solaris application?” qualifier; I mean, it’s exactly the people who don’t that we want to talk to. Item: We sent Ultra 20s to Thomas Enebo (get a blog, Thomas) and Charles Nutter (good blog, Charles), AKA the JRuby Posse. Item: I wanted to do something nice for another well-known PHP-based open-source project, and found out that PHP5 runs slower than PHP4 on the T2000, which makes no damn sense at all, a key advantage of PHP is that it’s shared-nothing, as in horizontal scaling, as in, that chip should eat it for breakfast. So I had a talk with Andi Gutmans over at Zend (PHP world headquarters), and he couldn’t see a good reason either. So we’re shipping a T2000 to the Zendians and the problem may become instantly obvious, or it may require some work, but we’ll crack that nut one way or another. [Update: Thomas Enebo has a blog.]

Originally from ongoing, on April 13, 2006 11:23 AM

Chag sameach

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 13, 2006 8:06 AM

The title was deliberately provocative. :-) Research from Tufts University says that white people are more intelligent when surrounded by a racially diverse group, on juries.

Surprisingly, this difference was primarily due to significant changes in white behavior. Whites on diverse juries cited more case facts, made fewer mistakes in recalling facts and evidence, and pointed out missing evidence more frequently than did those on all-white juries. They were also more amenable to discussing racism when in diverse groups.

(via Kottke.)

Originally from Caterina.net, on April 13, 2006 8:04 AM

Originally posted by miyagawa from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 13, 2006 8:04 AM

Originally from hustler of culture, on April 13, 2006 8:03 AM

We mentioned earlier that Google Calendar was coming. It is here, as of this morning. We tried it out. It has a bunch of things you'd expect. You can create events, open them up to friends to look at, or participate in (by inviting them with an email). You chose whether to make your calendar and events publicly accessible for searching. Check it out. It is all Web-based, of course. You don't need a Gmail account to use it. We find it very useful, but part of us wonders whether it will be vulnerable to the same bugs as Gmail (with occasional server shut downs, etc). And it feels blocky in parts, and the toggle at the top-left hand corner between Gmail, Google's main page and calendar could be slicker, but that is our first impression, and we'll see what it feels like after more tinkering. Google said that in the coming months, it will be able to synchronize with Outlook and mobile devices....

Originally posted by Matt Marshall from SiliconBeat, on April 13, 2006 8:02 AM

I'm glad they didn't keep the "CL2" name [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on April 13, 2006 8:02 AM

Originally posted by miyagawa from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 13, 2006 8:02 AM

Leonard's recent post, More than a Stopgap got me thinking about my original goals for re-launching this site. Similarly I was wanting to experiment with ways to expose, and explore the 4 years and 3319 entries that compose this site.

4 Years

4 years ago Monday, we had just moved out of our apartment in SF having moved to the city at the worst possible time to try to find jobs, Jasmine was back East lining up a design job in Boston, and I had just gotten back from a walk on one of my beloved Santa Cruz beaches, and decided that writing about it would make a good first blog entry.)

Plans

Some of the work on adding tags (and tag combos), and related entries (see middle-right column when viewing an entry) was an initial attempt, as was the Zeitgeist-esque archives page. But I never really was able to take it as far as I wanted. Why?

1. Insufficient time to implement grandiose schemes
2. Changes I made were invisible to aggregators, and therefore most people have never seem them
3. No one else is as interested in my old content as I am

But I still thinks it's an interesting an unsolved problem. Google is not always the best entry point to the world's knowledge, chronologically new-new-new is perhaps not the best way to tell our personal stories.

From the Archives

Just found a post calling for a repository of community patterns from April 2002 similar to Clay's Moderation Strategies.

Originally from Laughing Meme, on April 13, 2006 12:30 AM

interesting avatar arrangement for a Flash chat room [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on April 12, 2006 9:44 PM

Argentina on two steaks a day: Eating steaks in Argentina feels like joining a cult. You find yourself leaning on friends to come visit, and writing YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND in all caps more often than feels comfortable. Argentine beef...

Originally from A Full Belly, on April 12, 2006 8:26 PM

Awesome

Originally posted by kennyMedium from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 8:26 PM

Even Better

Originally posted by kennyMedium from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 8:26 PM

Originally posted by inkdroid from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 8:26 PM

puzzling  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on April 12, 2006 7:33 PM

The arrest of Bernardo Provenzano could shake up the Mafia in the near future after 13 years of relative calm internally.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on April 12, 2006 7:03 PM

Yahoo's been in the mapping business longer than a lot of companies. But the Sunnyvale company has let its competitors leapfrog it in one key area - satellite imagery. That's finally changed. Yahoo's Jeremy Kreitler is announcing at SDForum tonight that Yahoo has finally added that capability to the Yahoo Maps beta, which we last wrote about here. Yahoo says that "users can now view locations at about one meter per pixel resolution from anywhere within the United States -- from rural areas to major cities. This announcement also gives Yahoo! Maps the best medium-resolution global map data of any of the players in this space, and lets users find most cities, towns, and major land features on the planet." What this means is that Yahoo has more roads, towns and other data to overlay on its satellite maps than its competitors. We're ambivalent about satellite imagery. On the one hand, it's real valuable in certain situations. For instance, Yahoo is also announcing the general availability of its FareChase travel search engine, and being able to see real-world images of travel destinations could be valuable. But by and large, we find that a simple image map works great in most circumstances. Regardless, this is an area where Yahoo lagged. So it's good to see they've caught up. Why did it take so long? Yahoo product manager Michael Lawless says the company has been focused on "'the navigation space and the accuracy and usability'' of its current map service....

Originally posted by Michael Bazeley from SiliconBeat, on April 12, 2006 7:03 PM

One of the real benefits of using a framework like Ruby on Rails for development is that there are new, agile features being added all the time. One of the challenges in using a framework with such an accelerated curve of improvement is… well, keeping up. Luckily it's fun to do, and the benefits are real. The next update to the Joyent platform has been on edge Rails for a while and we've been able to simplify + improve our code a lot using '1.1' features like polymorphic associations, with_scope, integration tests and .rjs templates (my personal favorite).

Another big, constantly improving 'feature' of Rails is Sam Stephenson's incredible Prototype JavaScript library (live large with version 1.5.0_rc0!), which has become a vital part of the framework. It almost single-handedly changed my entire mindset about JavaScript. There was a time (4-5 years ago…) when I would have done absolutely anything to avoid using any JavaScript whatsoever. Not exactly one of those people who turned JavaScript off in my browser or anything, but close.

But JavaScript's always been the same, versatile language it is today; it even shares a lot in common with Ruby. They're both object-oriented and interpreted. Both allow objects to be modified extensively at runtime. JavaScript supports closures. And it's the only language that runs client-side within the browser across platforms, so we're kind of stuck with it too.

And that's okay, as the language seems to have finally recovered from the one-two punch of browser incompatibilities and the lack of a standard library. Time has (mostly) solved the former, and prototype.js has done much to take care of the latter. And while the library is small enough to be easily digestible, here are some favorite must-use features and some related must-read articles that can help you modernize your JavaScript skills.

Event Handling

Sometimes you want an event to occur when the document has finished loading. In the past you might have added an onload attribute with the corresponding code to the document's body tag. One problem with this approach was that you (or another library whose internals you are unaware of) could inadvertently overwrite this code elsewhere. So Prototype provides a simple way to register n callbacks whose declarations won't interfere with each other.

Event.observe(window, 'load', function(event){ Calendar.setupEdit(); });

Any event for any element can be observed, too, such as blur, mousemove, or keypress. Useful for cleaning up your code or writing more complex behavior that just doesn't work with inline event handlers. If you're running Safari and aren't using WebKit ('golden Safari') read up on an easy workaround for Event.stop, which is kind of the new-school way of returning false. For a more advanced example see the always excellent Justin Palmer's article about events in Prototype.

The Selector

Much like John Resig's jQuery, Prototype now has a DOM-inspecting selector that queries for elements based on the criteria you specify. This is exciting stuff. You want to toggle all the checkboxes in a fieldset with the class of 'toggleable' inside your form with the id of 'itemList'? No problem.

$$('form#itemList fieldset.toggleable input[type=checkbox]').each(function(input){
  input.checked = !input.checked;
});


The $$() function performs a document query based on the HTML tag types, JavaScript ids, CSS classes, and HTML attribute keys + values and returns the matching DOM elements. It's not always fast on the client-side, but there's no easier way to get a handle on document elements that match arbitrarily complex criteria. You even get =, ~=, |= and != operators for matching HTML attribute values.

Ruby?

You may have noticed in that last example the use of the very Ruby-like, and very un-Javascript-like each method. Well, Prototype adds the ability to treat arrays and 'hash' objects as enumerables, just like Ruby.

To convert an existing array to the Prototype extended Array class, wrap it like so: $A(myArray);. Or declare your arrays from the get-go like this: var myArray = $A();. The newly 'mixed in' methods you'll recognize as being from Ruby, or at least Ruby-inspired, include: all, any, collect, detect, each, entries, find, findAll, grep, include, inject, invoke, map, max, member, min, partition, pluck, reject, select, sortBy, toArray, zip

You can get your Ruby on in JavaScript like so:

// show a nice, friendly, sorted, comma-delimited string of all the events tagged 'awesome'

var Events = $A([
  {name: 'Yesterday', tags: $A(['not so awesome', 'snow'])},
  {name: 'Tomorrow', tags: $A(['awesome', 'warm'])},
  {name: 'Today', tags: $A(['awesome', 'sunny'])}
]);

var awesomeEvents = Events.findAll(function(event){
  return event.tags.detect(function(tag){
    return tag == 'awesome';
    });
}).sortBy(function(event){
  return event.name;
}).collect(function(event){
  return event.name;
}).join(', ');

alert(awesomeEvents);


Whew! That was awesome, non? A little messy with all the anonymous functions all over the place, but awesome nonetheless. Thank goodness ugly for loops are a thing of the past. The best write-up on these Enumerable features lives over at Encytemedia (where you can also find the swanky Vibrant Ink TextMate theme).

In Conclusion

Of course we can't forget the AJAX support that put Prototype on the map, the ever-handy $() function, bootstrap exception handling, and the foundation laid for the script.aculo.us effects + UI library. For a comprehensive reference (currently covering only 1.4.0) see Sergio Pereira's excellent developer notes. And enjoy writing joyful JavaScript code, something that wasn't possible but is now.

Originally from Joyeur, on April 12, 2006 7:02 PM

We’re rolling out another monstrously good deal, one that combines really high end versions of Joyent, TextDrive and Strongspace. Similar to our very successful ‘Mixed Grill’ special from earlier this year, you get your sites hosted on our Business servers, which carry 90% fewer accounts than our regular shared machines, a big honking wodge of Strongspace file storage, and a massive 25 user hosted Joyent account. Details are here.

You may need the afternoon to sleep it off.

Originally from Joyeur, on April 12, 2006 7:02 PM

click here for the complete set...

Originally posted by jsmooth995 from hiphopmusic.com, on April 12, 2006 5:58 PM

Feist, Mates of State, Metric, Of Montreal, Kanye West, and more  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on April 12, 2006 5:58 PM

if not, 3D Realms sacrifices half a million dollars [via] 

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on April 12, 2006 5:58 PM

Now that you can run Windows on a Mac, people want to know what runs better on Windows. There is a great post and comment thread on the subject on the appropriately titled Better on Windows blog.

This isn't about starting a flame war over what platform has the coolest software. I'm hoping this discussion can generate a useful one-stop list of best-in-class.

Do any Lifehacker readers have anything to add?

What's Better on Windows? [Better on Windows]

 
Comment on this post
Related: Setting up Windows XP on a Mac with Bootcamp
Related: Dual boot OS X and Windows with Apple's Bootcamp
Related: Mac Tip: Run Software Update from the command line

Originally from Lifehacker, on April 12, 2006 5:57 PM

Luke Seemann's moving eulogy for his father. Fart jokes included. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 5:32 PM

Mark Jason Dominus on the invention of the equals sign, diacritical evolution and the benefits of original documents. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 5:32 PM

The Edge Case (part of a novel.) Five years ago, Jason asked me why I haven't written a novel. Two years ago, I decided to try and discovered that I hadn't learned anything in the interveaning time that should have changed my answer. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 5:32 PM

A debate pitting artistic expression against the marketing of an offensive image has ensnarled shoemaker Adidas, a San Francisco specialty clothing store, and a well-known Bay Area graffiti artist.

Some Asian-Americans are charging racism in the release of a limited-edition Adidas sneaker that bears an artist's image of an Asian man with bowl-cut hair, slanted eyes, pig nose and buck teeth. Asian-Americans say the offensive image, similar to ones used in anti-Chinese political cartoons in the past, perpetuates a negative stereotype of Asians. Meanwhile Adidas and the clothing manufacturer contend it's about art and self-expression. (SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS)

Originally from Agenda Inc. Live Feed, on April 12, 2006 5:18 PM

Donald Trump is getting $1.5 million for an hour-long keynote speech at a Los Angeles real estate expo. Prediction: He will say nothing revelatory or interesting. Another prediction: The type of audience that attends real estate expos that headline Donald Trump won't notice. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 4:32 PM

First Responders Handbook of Humor (with a forward by Marlee Matlin). No, seriously. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 4:32 PM

The Gospel of Judas. JESUS: "No, no, trust me. You're going to come out of this smelling like a rose." -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 4:32 PM

Luke Seemann's moving eulogy for his father. Fart jokes included. -- GK

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 4:32 PM

A number of American soldiers who have been stressing out during wartime have found a new way to relieve their tension -- music. According to the Associated Press, a dozen young soldiers will be featured on a new CD entitled Voices From The Frontline, which is being released through punk label Crosscheck Records.

Joel Spielman, president of the label, came up with the concept after watching a documentary about soldiers' letters home. "My vision was to have it be an audio documentary," Spielman told the AP. "I wanted people to actually hear the voices of the soldiers." (BALLER STATUS)

Originally from Agenda Inc. Live Feed, on April 12, 2006 4:16 PM

While most of us are banking on retirement funds and pensions to keep the money coming in during our golden years, there are certain lucky individuals -- in this case celebrities -- who continue to rack in millions even when theyÂ’re six feet under. ThatÂ’s right; not only do we shower riches upon our biggest stars in their lifetimes, but we even continue to do so after they have passed onto the next one. Here is a sample -- in no particular order -- of some of the highest-earning dead celebrities.

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on April 12, 2006 4:16 PM

Originally posted by miyagawa from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 4:16 PM

word?

Originally posted by sudama from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 4:16 PM

Originally posted by sudama from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 4:16 PM

By Donal Mountain, Google Base Usability

I'm a usability analyst on the Google Base team, and one thing I've been hearing many of you say is that bulk uploading is not as straightforward as you would like it to be. That's why we're currently working to improve this process . Here's your chance to have your say. So, if you have ever tried bulk uploading with Google Base:

* How did your first experience with bulk uploading go?
* How can bulk uploading be improved?
* What is your wishlist for bulk uploading?

Please email us with your answers. I've also started a topic on Google Groups, so you can chime in there as well, if you like. I'll be reading your responses carefully, and I may follow up with some of you, either individually or through this forum. However, I won't be able to answer specific questions about your account; please continue to send us those questions through Google Base support. The more we understand your needs, the better we can make Google Base. So let me hear your answers to these questions; I'm listening.

Originally from Official Google Base Blog, on April 12, 2006 4:15 PM

---

Bad Brains "At the Movies" (live, 1979) [YouTube]
Washington DC band during their punk phase. Loose, proto-MTV intro with White House in background; Dr. Know rocks out; HR does a backflip at the end--Yes!

Originally posted by tom moody from Tom Moody, on April 12, 2006 4:15 PM

I received a number of interesting responses to the piece I wrote for the New Yorker last week on Charles Tilly's new book "Why."

http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/articles/060410crbo_books

For those who haven't read it, Tilly provides a taxonomy of reason-giving. We emply four kinds of explanations, he says: conventions (social formulae), stories (common sense narratives), codes (legal formulae) and technical accounts (specialized stories). And we get into trouble when we use one kind of reason in a context where another is necessary.  What's  fun about Tilly's argument is that it provides a way of understanding all kinds of problematic social interactions. In the piece, I talk about the difficulty children have in understanding the admonition "don't be a tattle-tale" and the Dick Cheney shooting accident and restorative justice--among other things. Here is a comment from a reader, Jason Oke, who is the senior planner at Leo Burnett in Toronto. It's an elegant extension of the arguments I made against focus groups in "Blink," this time using Tilly's taxonomy: 

I think, as I gather you do, that how we feel about a brand, and which products and services we choose, is usually explained by a fantastically complex set of factors: the brands our parents used, the brands we see people around us use, the image of the brand, our personal experience with it, a sale, a half-remembered ad from 10 years ago, and so on.  This is probably best explained as a story - we may both buy Tide, but there's a different narrative that brought each of us to pick it up. 

But in market research, the answers people give sound more like conventions: "It's a good value", "my family likes it", "it tastes good."  And it seems that because of the artificiality of the situation, the perils of introspection, etc, most market research actually encourages people to answer in conventions, and doesn't encourage the telling of stories.  Many of these stories are probably complex and deeply buried such that they are hard to consciously access anyway.

Originally posted by malcolmgladwell from gladwell.com, on April 12, 2006 4:15 PM

Every April 15, I file for an extension on my taxes. -dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 1:32 PM

Argentina on Two Steaks a Day. Maciej may very well have just ended my vegan career, if I ever get to Argentina. -dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 12, 2006 12:32 PM

Originally posted by inkdroid from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 11:38 AM

By improving the electrical system, and switching to Lithium batteries, a big savings in fuel economy.

Originally posted by newculture from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 11:37 AM

Ok, one final recipe to share before I return and regale you with tales from Mexico. I spotted this Crunchy Coconut French Toast and thought it sounded super yummy! A nice change from the usual french toast and looks pretty easy to make too. So this weekend, why not treat your taste buds to a taste of the tropics?

Originally from megnut, on April 12, 2006 11:37 AM

The classic begginer's mistake in Argentina is to neglect the first steak of the day. You will be tempted to just peck at it or even skip it altogether, rationalizing that you need to save yourself for the much larger steak later that night. But this is a false economy, like refusing to drink water in the early parts of a marathon. That first steak has to get you through the afternoon and half the night, until the restaurants begin to open at ten; the first steak is what primes your system to digest large quantities of animal protein, and it's the first steak that buffers the sudden sugar rush of your afternoon ice cream cone. The midnight second steak might be more the glamorous one, standing as it does a good three inches off the plate, but all it has to do is get you up and out of the restaurant and into bed (for the love of God, don't forget to drink water).

The afternoon steak is the workhorse steak, the backbone of the day. It's the steak that gets you around the city, ensures a successful nap, steers you into the bar and (most importantly) gives you the mental clarity to choose the right cut of meat in the restaurant that night. Misorder the first steak and you will either find yourself losing steam by eight o'clock, when no restaurant is open, or scampering to find an awkward third bridge steak, to tide you over until dinner.

All you need to know about the quality of pasture in the pampas is that cows went feral in Argentina. You can still see them grazing pretty much anywhere there is a horizontal patch of grass, all now firmly back in the hand of man, but still with a happy grassy glint in their eye. This most docile, placid, and passive of large herbivores stepped off the boat, took one nibble at the pampas and made a run for it. It knew that it wanted to spend the rest of its life eating the pampas grass, without outside interference. And the settlers, once they caught some of the early escapees, began to feel the same way about the beef.

Eating steaks in Argentina feels like joining a cult. You find yourself leaning on friends to come visit, and writing YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND in all caps more often than feels comfortable. Argentine beef really is extraordinary. Almost all of this has to do with how the cows are raised. There are no factory feedlots in Argentina; the animals still eat pampas grass their whole lives, in open pasture, and not the chicken droppings and feathers mixed with corn that pass for animal feed in the United States. Since this is the way of life a cow was designed for, it is not necessary to pump the animal full of antibiotics. The meat is leaner, healthier and more flavorful than that of corn-fed cattle. It has fewer calories, contains less cholesterol, and tastes less mushy and waterlogged than American meat. And the cows spend their lives out grazing in the field, not locked into some small pen. You can taste the joy.

When the meat is cooked, it is roasted in thick pieces over open coals by obsessive meat chefs who have been cooking meat all their lives, for other people who have been eating meat all their lives, in a country that takes its meat extremely seriously. You are not likely to be disappointed.

Steaks here are ridiculous - not so much in diameter, since they rarely overhang the plate by more than an inch or two - but in thickness, having roughly the proportions of an American canned ham. But what the Argentines have really mastered is flavor. Strange cuts of meat that would be ground into flavorless paste up north come to your table here infused with a delicious texture and flavor, provided they are cooked right. And they are invariably cooked right. The waiters are solicitous about asking (in English) how you want your meat done, but if you let them make the call, you get a two-inch thick of meat that transitions seamlessly from carbon to bright pink and back.

As you would expect, there is a forbidding amount of terminology around beef-eating - bife de chorizo, asado de bife, churrascos, [...], lomo, vaco, bife de costilla, ojo de bife, various more exotic portions of the animal. However the basic principles are simple. Meat is prepared in two ways, either on a parrilla (charcoal grill) or an asador (a system of iron crucifixes circling an open fire). The crucifix shape is suggestive and amusing. An excellent essay on Argentine history by Martín Caparrós may give a clue to its origin:

Juan Díaz de Solís, a Sevillian and a gentleman, arrived in the Freshwater Sea in February of 1516, when none of this existed yet. He voyaged in three ships, as is fitting, and when some shameless natives made him a signal of welcome, he readily leaped onto the shore with his cross and his sword, only to land without further ceremony on the coals of a banquet: he was to be the main course.

His companions, who watched him slowly tranformed into a dish from the boat, then told the world of those who bury their dead that Argentine history had begun as an asado of their captain, skin and all.

">Surely Solís was wearing one of those crucifixes that shows Jesus actually hanging from the cross. It must have been a simple mistake on the part of the natives, who saw him as a friendly gift from the visitors on the boat, complete with a serving suggestion suspended around his neck. In any case, you will now see crucified lambs and calves in the front window of many a larger parrilla, roasting for hours in front of unfazed diners.

At dinnertime, meat is served in a state of nature, which means you don't get any default potatoes, salads, or side dishes - not even a sprig of parsley. The Argentine steak stands alone, towering three inches over the plate, its edges hanging delectably over the sides of its silver platter. Daytime steaks may be more coy. While the parsley sprig as garnish is unknown in Argentina, you will sometimes encounter a fried egg, an olive, or a strip of pickled red pepper, sometimes even a combination of all three:

This gorgeous specimen is called a lomito; it's a standard lunchtime steak, clearly so thin that the Argentines are embarrassed to send it out into the world without a protective wrapping of ham and cheese. An American who didn't know better might greet the lomito as an old dinnertime friend - the choice sirloin - but it bears about as much resemblance to a full Argentine steak as a rubber duck does to a battleship.

Steaks come with a condiment called chimichurri, which is intermediate on the condiment spectrum between salsa and Worcestershire sauce, and can appear in any viscosity from liquid to little diced cubes. Chimichurri is made from garlic, hot peppers, oregano, parsley and vinegar, in varying proportions. Some of the best I've had resembles pesto, with barely any hot pepper and thick bergs of garlic; other chimichurri is much spicier and red in color. It is there to help you - something about the sauce helps the steak go down without fuss - and you should let it do its job. The same goes for Argentine wine; it is excellent and designed to get you safely throuhg the large portions of beef.

There is a darker side, too, to Argentine condiments, and it is called salsa golf, the unholy alliance of ketchup and mayonnaise. This will sneak up on you when you least expect it, including in eight-star restaurants and the most delicate of seafood dishes. Any trip to an Argentine supermarket should give you fair warning: you can find yogurt, for example, in little containers ranging up to about 200 mL in size, but mayonnaise is sold in foil bags (bags!) of up to two liters in size. These are great fun to drop off your balcony.

The Argentine meat obsession is intense but completely democratic. Steak is a staple food here, and you don't have to contend with Peter Lugar-style snobbishness. You are dealing with a food of the people. Argentina is number one in world beef consumption, weighing in at 65 kilograms (about twelve steaks) per person per year, half again as much as Americans (!) eat. There are amusing reminders of this everywhere. The one-touch settings on the microwave oven in my kitchen are marked:

1. Ham
2. Chopped meat
3. Chicken (whole)
4. Pork
5. Beef (rare)
6. Beef (medium)
7. Beef (well done)

As you might expect, vegetarians will have a somewhat rough time here. For most people in Argentina, a vegetarian is something you eat. One's diet will accordingly lean heavily on pastas, gnocchi, salads, and (for the less squeamish ) fish. Vegans will not survive in Argentina. However, even egg, milk and cheese-loving vegetarians should be careful not to get cocky. Two vegetarians have visited me here during my stay, and from both I had to listen to many glowing words about the quality of Argentine fries, unable due to my impeccable upbringing to ask what they thought it was that made the fries taste so wonderful, or why they looked so deliciously yellow. On even the most innocent box of crackers, in the slot where you would normally expect to find "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil", it reads simpy "beef tallow". The homemade cookies bought in the minimarket downstairs taste of steak.

It should be no surprise that the land of beef also has excellent milk and butter. The milk comes in plastic bags that would give any American marketing department a heart attack. They proudly advertise "GUARANTEED 100% BRUCELLOSIS AND HOOF-AND-MOUTH FREE". One brand even brags that its bacteria count *never* exceeds 100,000 per mL, and prints daily statistics to prove it (only 82,000 bacteria/mL on Monday! mmm!). Meanwhile, the butter here either has a different name than in the rest of Latin America ("manteca" usually means "lard" ), or else Argentine lard is the best I have ever tasted.

You might think that fruits and vegetables would get short shrift in this animal paradise, but they are actually delicious. Tomatoes, for example, have odor, flavor, and are colored red, an intriguing novelty. You can get excellent salads in any restaurant, although just like with the steaks, you get only what you ask for. Celery salad is a bowl of celery, with nothing else; carrot salad is a bowl of shredded carrots. You need to be explicit, and you need to be firm in rejecting Mazola in favor of olive oil as a dressing. Most places offer it, but some waiters have the superstitious Argentine fear of seasoning and will try to dissuade you.

There is a strange duality to dining in Argentina. By every measure the food is wonderful, yet foreigners who have been here for a while will get a strange, glazed look when you try to rave to them about the cuisine. After you've spent some time here, you realize this is because the entire country operates off of a single master menu:

ARGENTINA MASTER MENU

ley de 19 de julio, 1988

APPETIZERS

Empanadas

MAIN COURSE

Grilled Meat
Milanesas [Schnitzel]
Salmon or Trout
Pasta
Gnocchi
Pizza

SIDE ORDERS

Salad
Fried Potatoes
Boiled Potatoes
Scalloped Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Golden Potatoes
Sliced Potatoes
Grilled Potatoes

DESSERT

Flan
Fruit salad
Ice cream
Don Pedro (ice cream and nuts in a bowl of Old Smuggler)

This menu is delicious, but with rare exceptions it is all you are going to get. People coming for more than a few weeks are advised to bring a discreet bottle of Tabasco sauce.

With any order from the master menu comes the Bread Basket, which should be treated as you would treat a basket of wax fruit, that is, as a purely decorative ornament. It is considered bad form to actually eat anything from Bread Basket, as this will force the restaurant staff to send someone down into the bread cellar for a replacement roll before placing it on the next table.

In fact, you won't find good bread anywhere in Argentina. You can buy day-old baguette segments in a plastic sack, or else purchase the large sheets of white American-style bread used to make their triangular canapes (sandwiches de miga). The latter are actually punched out of the bread sheets like cookies from rolled dough - I would not be surprised to see miga bread being sold on a giant roller, paper-towel style.

Other dangers lurk in the Argentine pantry. Worst and most puzzling in a country settled by Italians is the horrible ground coffee. Most cafés and restaurants serve good espresso, but you are in the wilderness as soon as you try to find something you can brew at home. The idea of purchasing beans to grind seems to be a great novelty - it took several days of hunting to find both a grinder and something to put in it. Grocery store coffee is inevitably sold pre-ground and roasted with sugar, giving it a dark color and the taste and aroma of burnt socks.

It's possible that coffee, like Argentine yogurt, is just meant as a delivery mechanism for sugar. The sugar cubes here are the size of Lego bricks, and when you order an espresso you are given three packets of sugar the size of a small wallet. Every pharmacy has an aisle devoted to artificial sweeteners, for those who must do without, and there is a general inability to imagine a dessert that does not make your teeth hurt. Items are preventatively glazed with sugar whenever there is be the slightest doubt as to whether they are supposed to be sweet or savory; this is what prevents the otherwise excellent Argentine croissants (medialunas) from being the king of breakfasts.

There is a more serious kind of confectionary panic that goes beyond glazing, and it brings us to the true dark side of Argentine cooking. I am talking about dulce de leche.

Dulce de leche is a culinary cry for help. It says "save us, we are baffled and alone in the kitchen, we don't know what to do for dessert and we're going to boil condensed milk and sugar together until help arrives". This cloying dessert tar is so impossibly sweet that you wish you were ten years old again, just so you could actually enjoy it. It is everywhere. There is a special dulce de leche shelf in the supermarket dairy case, and the containers go up to a liter in size. Even the churros are stuffed with it - the churros, Montresor! For anyone who has had pastries in Europe, the added horror is that dulce de leche is identical in color, texture and consistency to a number of much less sweet, tasty fillings, like the earthy chestnut material the French call crème de marrons, or the tart kind of plum butter popular in Eastern European bakeries. You see a thick layer of dark brown jam-like material and think, this couldn't possibly be caramel, there's just too much of it. And so worldliness leads you to great giant bites and then disaster.

Thank God, therefore, for the ice cream. When the Italians came here at the start of the century, they took one swig of the fine pampas milk and knew what they had to do. The ice cream in Buenos Aires is easily the best I have ever eaten, and the parlors that serve it are everywhere. The secret seems to be an insistence on making it from scratch in each heladeria, since the only remotely similar ice cream I've tasted was the kind our chemistry department in college used to make from liquid nitrogen in its annual bid to attract new majors. Liquid nitrogen ice cream (recipe: heavy cream, walnuts, liquid nitrogen, sugar. Stir) is delicious because the ice crystals it forms are so very small; this also makes the ice cream melt very fast. The same is true for Argentine ice cream; there is no guar gum to contend with, when you get a cone you have to work fast.

I spent a considerable amount of time trying to figure out how meals work in Argentina, and they remain a mystery to me. Dinner is clear enough: people tend to go to restaurants beginning at ten o'clock (for those with small children), with the main rush around eleven, and dinner is pretty much over at one or so in the morning. And breakfast - or rather, its absence - follows as a logical consequence of eating a steak the size of a beagle at midnight. But I have yet to figure out whether people eat some kind of meal in the afternoon, and if so, when. Wander into any bistro or restaurant between eleven and six and you will be served a delicious lunch-sized meal, but you are likely to be the only person there, with the waiter mopping floors in the corner and the parrilla stacked with raw meat for the midnight dinner rush.

I've come to think the culprit in the missing Argentine lunch scene is yerba mate.

What Tim Horton's is to Canada, mate is to Argentina - a national obsession whose appeal is inexplicable to outsiders. Where the ignorant foreigner may see just another kind of herbal tea (yerba mate is a very unassuming shrub that grows in the northern parts of the country) the Argentine sees a taste treat of unimaginable subtlety, and a tonic for all his problems. The Wikipedia article on proper mate preparation should give you a warning of the level of obsessiveness attainable here (the Urugayans are even worse). To the virgin palate, mate tastes like green tea mixed with grass clippings. The beverage is traditionally drunk out of a little gourd, through a metal straw called a bombilla, with hot (but not boiling!!) water poured into it (without wetting the surface!! clockwise!!) from a thermos. What distinguishes mate from coffee and tea is the social context - two or more people share a gourd, with a designated pourer in charge of refilling it with hot water after each turn. The ritual is low-fuss but indispensible. You can buy mate gourds and thermoses in any grocery store, and get your thermos filled with hot water at any convenience store or gas station, but you will never see mate served in restaurants or sold in little disposable paper gourds, to go. it's not that people refuse to drink mate alone - anyone working a solitary shift will have a gourd in hand - but that the concept of being served mate by someone who does not share it with you seems impossible.

Mate aficionados will tell you that mate contains a special compound, mateine, that serves as a tonic and mild stimulant, promoting alertness without making it hard to sleep, reducing fatigue and appetite, helping the digestion and serving as a mild diuretic. Scientists will tell you that mateine bears a suspicious resemblance to a chemical called caffeine. Mate aficionados will then grow indignant, explaining that mateine is really a stereoisomer (mirror image) of caffeine, with different effects, which will in turn irritate the scientists, who will snap that caffeine doesn't have a chiral center, so it can't have a distinguishable mirror image, and why don't the mate aficionados just put a sock in it.

Since I am writing this from Argentina, I will just diplomatically state that mate includes a constellation of chemicals, whose presence may affect the way the body absorbs caff... er, mateine, giving it a unique physiological effect.

The national love affair with mate doesn't just affect lunch. It has the dire effect of making Argentines less than enthusiastica bout booze. The wine here is very good (something has to stand up to that steak), but Argentina has no liquor to call its own, relying on whiskies like Old Smuggler and the low-maintenance Don Juan cognac to carry the flag.

Beer is ubiquitous and comes in a bewildering variety of sizes, although there is a skittishness about the full-on liter. Things level off at 970 mL. In my case, it means I end up drinking 1940 mL of beer as a kind of personal protest, and all is well with the world. To make up for the abundance of sizes, beer comes in only one variety, Quilmes, which inevitably comes served with a tripartite platter of snacks - nuts, salty cylinders, and aged potato chips. On rare occasions, you may even get a four-leaf platter (olives), this is considered lucky.

Once you have had your afternoon chopp and its accompanying beer snacks, there is nothing better in the world than switching on the television to watch one of the many cooking shows that seem to be so popular here. You can take your pick from superhip (filmed at an angle, chef has sleeveless T-shirt) to extremely low-pressure shows for frazzled moms (today's dessert: whipped cream!), but they all pale in the face of the program called "Dulces Tentaciones", starring the Swiss radical nun Sister Bernarda. This fantasy grandmother shows you how to make tarts, tortes, and other old world desserts, carefully cleaning her work area in between recipes while classical guitar or flute plays in the background. It is the most relaxing television program ever created, better than any drug, better than any steak.

If you're really curious about Argentine food, or you are planning a trip here, you might want to take a look at Food And Drink in Argentina. This guide was originally written for foreign residents in Argentina and contains a lot of useful information; some basic tourist info has been bolted on to widen its market, but it still looks like a good resource.

Originally from Idle Words, on April 12, 2006 11:29 AM

There was a spectacular bank heist here the day after I moved to Buenos Aires. What I know about it has all come through the thick veil of my rudimentary Spanish, so I'm sure details and entire facts have been embellished to suit my sense of fun, but even in general outline it's a crime straight out of the movies.

On the afternoon of (Friday!) January 13, four gunmen walked into the Banco Rio in Acassuso (part of greater Buenos Aires) and took the staff and customers hostage. There was a tense six hour long siege by the police, expertly handled by the robbers - they let each hostage call home, so that family members showed up at the scene; the calculation was that the police would be more reluctant to storm the building immediately if hostages' relatives were watching. They made sure to release three hostages right away as a gesture of goodwill, but of course the three released included the security guard and police officer already in the building. While one of the robbers stayed on the phone, negotiating with police, the remaining ones got busy cracking open safe deposit boxes. Towards four in the afternoon, the police delivered six pizzas and some bottles of soda, the fruit of all those hours of negotiation, which the robbers passed along to the hostages. And then they went silent.

After about an hour of no contact and no news, an elite police bank-storming squad stormed the bank, only to find a group of bewildered hostages sitting scared in the smoke. There was no trace of the gunmen.

Initially the police suspected that the perpetrators had mixed in with the hostages, and questioned the hostages rather roughly as a result. "The robbers treated us better than the police!", someone complained to the press later. But after intense questioning, two things became clear to the Argentine boys in blue: all of the hostages' stories checked out, and there was also a rather large tunnel leading out of the bank basement.

The tunnel led to an extensive storm sewer system that underlay all of Buenos Aires. Geologists working with the police estimated it must have taken fifteen days or so to dig the tunnel, and that it had been dug within the last three months. The entrance point in the bank was easily disguisable by making a proper arrangement of furniture, one of many reasons the authorities suspected an inside job.

The robbers had unburdened the bank of 600,000 pesos ($200,000 US) and 145 of the largest safe deposit boxes, which officially were not supposed to contain more than fifty thousand dollars each, but unofficially were probably full of things that their owners did not particularly want declared to the Argentine fiscal authorities. The cash and the boxes were floated out either onto the River Plate or to a nearby superhighway in inflatable rubber motorboats - the tunnels were marked with special paint visible only with night-vision goggles - and the eight or so perpetators then departed to take their well-deserved retirement in Brazil or the Carribean. The guns they used turned out to be props. Apart from some rough handling of hostages by police, no one was hurt.

I read about this heist on my second day in the city, sitting in a beautiful jewel of a pastry shop, eating the medialunas (croissants) that they regrettably glaze with sugar here in an attack of confectionary insecurity. Below the newspaper with the heist story was a glossy magazine with a ten-page photo spread on a derelict Diego Maradona attending somebody's wedding. And I knew I'd come to the right country.

Originally from Idle Words, on April 12, 2006 11:28 AM

Mark Pincus asks a pertinent question: Are there any Web 2.0 companies making money? He floats the question along with the idea that the social networking idea is peaking, because of the number of me-too ideas.

Sure some companies can start offering things free, and then move into business models. But the question is, if they don't have much of a business model, and they can't go public (because practically no one can) and they don't get sold (because there are 20 other video sharing sites or 20 other social networking sites), how do they make it through an inevitable shakeout?

Originally from BusinessWeek Online - Blogspotting, on April 12, 2006 11:28 AM

Saw this tonight on Bleeker Street.

Where is the outrage? It’s for sale at Marc Jacobs in the West Village.

There’s also a joke in here about white people, but I can’t seem to find it at the moment.

Otherwise, I do appreciate the sentiment and the public display.

See previous post: Commodify Your Dissent

Originally from Social Design Notes, on April 12, 2006 11:28 AM

Originally from Modern Art Notes, on April 12, 2006 11:27 AM

Originally from Modern Art Notes, on April 12, 2006 11:27 AM

There’s a new “Links” sub-section at the bottom of the Subtraction.com home page, which is more or less what you would expect: literally, a list of sites that I think are interesting. I haven’t had it before, in part because I think such lists are a little show-offy for my taste, and also because I always feared I’d snub someone by inadvertently leaving out a link to them. But, as time has gone by, I’ve come to feel that such lists are de rigeur for weblogs, and it’s a little impolite not to have one on mine. So here you go; I’m sure I’ve accidentally missed someone, but I’ll be trying to update this regularly — or soon, anyway.

The presentation style of these links is the manifestation of an idea that I had for showing lots of blog links by making use of the favicon, a concept that I had wanted to use for a project at work. As it turned out, we opted not to use it, so I thought I’d put into service for the links section. I’m fond of it because it’s a nice use of some very standardista-friendly elements — a simple, unordered list and favicons — expressed in a manner reminiscent of typographical tricks more commonly associated with print design (the drawback, of course, is that I can only list sites and feeds that feature unique favicons; not for technical reasons, but for editorial ones).

Below: Linky link. Favicons as visual punctuation.

Three’s Company

It even works in Internet Explorer, though I had to replace all the regular spaces with non-breaking space entities in order to avoid some truly weird wrapping. Debugging that got me thinking about how poor is our control over line breaks and text wrapping in CSS 2: if you look down the left edge of the links display, you’ll see a vertical stack of favicons, a visual confluence that I really don’t much care for. That never would have happened in print; I would have used manually line-breaks, tracking and kerning to create a more varied distribution of the icons.

Luckily, the next major revision of the Cascading Style Sheets standard, CSS 3, will generally improve control over text wrapping. The ‘text-wrap’ property will allow CSS authors to determine whether a line of text can or will break. And the ‘hyphenate’ and ‘word-wrap’ properties will control how words themselves break, which, hopefully, will allow designers to finally start designing the rag of flushed left or right text. Finally!

benefits, the typesetting limitations in CSS 2 have become so well ingrained that I think a lot of people have forgotten that we’re still in a primitive state of typesetting — if our tools don’t allow us to control line and word breaks or the rag of a block of text, then we’re still working beneath our capabilities as visual communicators. If you can’t tell, I’m kind of champing at the bit to get these new properties. Why a browser like Safari doesn’t yet support them while supporting far more superfluous text effects like CSS-generated text shadows seems to me like a case of confused priorities.

Originally from Subtraction, on April 12, 2006 10:34 AM

Originally posted by sudama from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 8:54 AM

$

725

Title: Bunny Fall Gallery: Outre

This Kozydan print is the first print I bought (although I considered picking up some of Mark Ryden's back in 1999 when they were cheap(er) and didn't - GAH), and the couple sent me a postcard that year for Christmas, which I thought was the sweetest thing ever and got me started looking into art prints more. I suppose in a way this site is here because of them...

Originally from we[heart]prints, on April 12, 2006 8:53 AM

I'm drooling vicariously through Maciej  

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on April 12, 2006 8:52 AM

an interactive mobile prototype which examines the layering of physical space with the on & off zones of wireless networks. 'trace' maps the invisible quality of wireless technology in the urban landscape onto PDAs to produce a series of cartographies visualising nodes, zones, users, and routes. [tracemap.net| via prusikloop.org]

Originally posted by fofoda from information aesthetics, on April 12, 2006 8:52 AM

Here's a video with several clips of advertisements using rube goldberg machines.(Embedded vid)

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on April 12, 2006 8:52 AM

Originally posted by miyagawa from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 12, 2006 8:51 AM

If you want to think like a CEO, but you don't have the time for school, Josh Kaufman recommends a list of 42 books and periodicals he calls The Personal MBA. If you're very motivated (or need motivation) you can join the PMBA Forum and work through the series with others.

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 12, 2006 8:51 AM

Eye Level is a blog produced by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. "Using the museum’s collection as a touchstone, the conversation at Eye Level will be dedicated to American art and the ways in which the nation’s art reflects its history and culture."

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 12, 2006 8:51 AM

Andrew Leonard takes a look at the convoluted positions partisans have been twistered into by the immigration debate. [Commercial required to read article.] (via rc3oi)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 12, 2006 8:51 AM

Yahoo's been in the mapping business longer than a lot of companies. But the Sunnyvale company has let its competitors leapfrog it in one key area - satellite imagery. That's finally changed. Yahoo's Jeremy Kreitler is announcing at SDForum tonight that Yahoo has finally adding that capability to the Yahoo Maps beta, which we last wrote about here. Yahoo says that "users can now view locations at about one meter per pixel resolution from anywhere within the United States – from rural areas to major cities. This announcement also gives Yahoo! Maps the best medium-resolution global map data of any of the players in this space, and lets users find most cities, towns, and major land features on the planet." What this means is that Yahoo has more roads, towns and other data to overlay on its satellite maps than its competitors. We're ambivalent about satellite imagery. On the one hand, it's real valuable in certain situations. For instane, Yahoo is also announcing the general availability of its FareChase travel search engine, and being able to see real-world images of travel destinations could be valuable. But by and large, we find that a simple image map works great in most circumstances. Regardless, this is an area where Yahoo lagged. So it's good to see they've caught up. Why did it take so long? Yahoo product manager Michael Lawless says the company has been focused on "'the navigation space and the accuracy and usability'' of its current map service....

Originally posted by Michael Bazeley from SiliconBeat, on April 12, 2006 8:49 AM

Tropical Storm Zeta has formed in the eastern Atlantic a month after the official end of hurricane season, leaving forecasters scratching their heads in wonder.

Originally posted by snafu7700 from ATSNN News Feed Science and Technology News, on April 11, 2006 10:37 PM

Till a few years back, it was really difficult to obtain a free version of a compiler to run on ones machine to learn C or C++. And one had to resort to using a commercial compiler either by paying money and buying a licence or using a pirated copy of the same. I still remember, till a couple of years back, Borland C was considered to be the best compiler in the market for windows platform but

Originally from All about Linux, on April 11, 2006 10:30 PM

"Any successful software company is going to consist of a thin layer of developers, creating software, spread across the top of a big abstract administrative organization." Waiting for 37S to sping this into something about Less-whatever.

Originally posted by Michal Migurski from tecznotes links, on April 11, 2006 10:26 PM

Rookie Jarrett Jack will get back in the playing rotation Wednesday when the Blazers play the Clippers in Los Angeles....

Originally from Behind the Blazers Beat, on April 11, 2006 10:25 PM

david posted a photo:

Originally from david's Photos, on April 11, 2006 10:24 PM

After 43 years on the run, Bernardo Provenzano was arrested near the hilltop town of Corleone today.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on April 11, 2006 4:40 PM

Originally posted by axt from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 11, 2006 4:15 PM

Steve Pavlina has written a guide detailing 10 common mistakes made by the newly self-employed, like spending too little money.

Don't let frugality get in the way of efficiency. Take advantage of skilled contractors who can do certain tasks more efficiently than you can. Buy decent equipment when it's clear you'll get your money's worth. You don't have to overspend on fancy furniture, but get functional furniture that helps you be more productive. Don't use an antiquated computer with outdated software that slows you down if you can afford something better.

If you've given yourself the freelancer self-assessment and you've decided to give it a go on your own, you should definitely check out Pavlina's 10 mistakes.

10 Stupid Mistakes Made by the Newly Self-Employed [StevePavlina.com]

 
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Related: Freelancer self-assessment
Related: How to figure out your hourly rate
Related: Veetro Business Management Suite

Originally from Lifehacker, on April 11, 2006 4:13 PM

I ran into my pal Quentin Hardy at the Web 2.0 Conference last October, and he recommended a bunch of books. I haven't read any of them yet, but I just found the list I wrote down back then:

• Disappearing through the Skylight by O.B. Hardison, Jr.
• Imagined Communities by Benedict Anderson
• The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
• 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus by Charles Mann

There is also a note to check CD Baby for the Live from Iraq Rap Album.

Originally from Caterina.net, on April 11, 2006 11:58 AM

world's most obsessive scale model of a Hind 24 helicopter.

Originally posted by maciej from del.icio.us/inbox/djacobs, on April 10, 2006 12:51 PM

To my mind, refusing to go into a game is one of the BIG no-no's of playing on a basketball team.

Picture yourself coaching an eighth grade team. You call for your backup point guard. She says no thanks, she's busy. Is she ever going to play for you again that season?

Scottie Pippen did it once and stained his career forever. Ruben Patterson did it and got sent home, and eventually traded.

Ben Wallace did it on Friday, while reportedly cursing at his coach.

His explanation doesn't really make sense (seems like it might have had something to do with wanting Saunders to use more bench players?). But the man is such a hard worker, such a leader, and such a team-first guy, that in less than three days the story has already somehow been twisted to reflect the odd notion that this terrible happening is a sign of his strength--an indication of his feisty playoff attitude, or his intense desire to win. Or something.

Here's what Wallace says in Chris McCosky's Detroit News article:

"Every time I step on the floor, there is no question why I am out there," he said. "I play to win. I don't want to settle for being a good team. I want to reach greatness. None of this was ever given to me. I had to work for everything I've got and I am going to continue to work.

"I just want to help my team win and if I feel like I am not getting the opportunity to do that, I feel like I am cheating the team."

Even the aggrieved party, Rick Carlisle Flip Saunders, seems to be on board with that vague line of reasoning. From the same article:

"Listen, you can't overlook what this guy has done and meant for this organization over the last five years, and what's he done for me as a coach, just because of something that happens like that," Saunders said.

"You talk things through and that's what we did. I told him that I have a lot of respect for him because of everything he does and because I know he's going to give this team everything he has."

A local columnist plays it down, a teammate says it's good to have a shake-up every now and again.

What's the lesson of all this? Be a lunch-pail guy. Strap on the hard hat and come to work every day, year in and year out, and eventually you might find yourself in the incredible position of being able to throw a major hissy fit in the face of your boss--on TV no less--and everyone will simply give you a freebie.

I'd like Wallace better without this tantrum, but I can't get myself upset about it. It's not like he doesn't "get" it.

Originally from True Hoop, on April 10, 2006 12:51 PM

Blogger Christian Montoya has posted several do's and don't's for pulling an all-nighter.

I happen to have a lot of experience in the area of sleep-deprivation, and I'd like to share my techniques. We must first, however, define the term. An all-nighter, at least in my book, is any night where the sun comes up before you go to sleep. If the sun comes up at 6:30 am and you go to sleep at 7:30 am, then that's an all-nighter. It's also very unsettling.

The intended audience is students, but the tips are pretty universal. Ideally, if you've got all your ducks in a row, you'll never need to pull an all-nighter - but let's be honest, sometimes the unexpected will happen. Christian offers some pretty good tips for successfully getting through a cram session. What are your all-nighter tricks? Let us know in the comments or at tips at lifehacker.com.

How to pull an all-nighter [christianmontoya.com]

 
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Originally from Lifehacker, on April 10, 2006 12:50 PM

    

A "polar bear dip" at summer camp is one thing, but taking a dip in Brighton during the winter months is something else altogether:

"after a particularly cold winter in the sea the water is starting to warm up again. at its lowest i think it got just 4.4C or 40F for you yanks.witch is a lot colder than its was on Christmas day & boxing day"

See more of Kevin Meredith's fabulous sea swimming + lake swimming photos.

Originally from FlickrBlog, on April 10, 2006 11:56 AM

He-Man and She-Ra, on the loose! Cosplayers scare me.

Originally from cheesedip.com, on April 10, 2006 11:56 AM

In New York's tabloid newspaper war, revenge is served in boldface.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on April 10, 2006 11:56 AM

A new version of Jumpcut, which in addition to being my favorite clipboard manager also exemplifies minimal software design and implementation, is now available on sourceforge. -dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 10, 2006 11:35 AM

"He would describe something to me, like, 'Aggressive ships.' And I'd be, 'O.K., I get it.'" Bjork on collaborating with her partner Matthew Barney. -dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 10, 2006 11:35 AM

I have been guest blogging over at Kottke.org, the weblog manifestation of my friend Jason Kottke. He left us with the promise: "When I get back, House on Fire!" What does that mean? I hope he doesn't expect to return to a burned down blog!

Thank you for the feedback on my punctuation, and for the link suggestions. For those of you asking for more (!?) links, I suggest the new sidebar at Mule Design, or my own (still unfinished) reblog. If you *really* like links, then I suggest checking out Eyebeam's my.reblog software, where you can try out the reblog interface.

Originally from hello, typepad, on April 10, 2006 11:33 AM

Jay Rosen on investigative reporting and the Plame leak: "Not only is Woodward not in the hunt, but he is slowly turning into the hunted." -dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 10, 2006 9:32 AM

Looks like Mark Pilgrim is blogging again. -dj

Originally posted by djacobs from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 10, 2006 9:32 AM

Fabulous: Making Tofu at home. Once you've assembled the equipment and ingredients, it looks nearly as straighforward as making yogurt, and only a little more time-consuming.

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on April 10, 2006 8:41 AM

The Gospel of Judas. JESUS: "No, no, trust me. You're going to come out of this smelling like a rose."

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 10, 2006 2:31 AM

A senior administration official confirmed that President Bush made the order in an effort to rebut war critics.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on April 9, 2006 11:56 PM

Slither is awesome, go see it immediately! No, really. It's a classic monster movie, and has just the right mix of horror and comedy for that. (It's also full of subtle references to other horror movies. You know, for the fanboys.)

Surprisingly, it's not the first movie about space slug zombies: that would have been Night of the Creeps, which is also awesome, but I'd say Slither is better. (Among the trivia on the director's site is him claiming that he hadn't seen Night until after Slither.)

Originally from jwz, on April 9, 2006 10:43 PM

"Not only is Woodward not in the hunt, but he is slowly turning into the hunted. Part of what remains to be uncovered is how Woodward was played by the Bush team, and what they thought they were doing by leaking to him, as well as what he did with the dubious information he got."

Originally posted by Jay Rosen from PressThink, on April 9, 2006 10:26 PM

Banksy, a guerilla artist in the UK, recently installed his latest public work: An old-school British Telecom telephone-box, murdered by a pickaxe attack in Central London. Pretty excellent, eh? Even better was the public reaction. The London city council immediately had it removed, whereupon British Telecom officials jokingly offered to buy it and have it installed in their main lounge. As the BBC reports: A BT spokesman said: "This is a stunning visual comment on BT's transformation from an old-fashioned telecommunications company into a modern communications services provider." Hegemony: It's not just for breakfast anymore!

Originally from collision detection, on April 9, 2006 10:25 PM

From Damn Interesting:

For thousands of years, the forceful removal of the human head has been used as a form of capital punishment. In fact, the word "capital" in the context of punishment was coined to describe execution by decapitation, derived from the Latin word caput, which means "head." Since the very beginnings of the practice, there has been much speculation and debate regarding the length of time that the head can remain conscious after its removal. Many argue that a beheaded person will almost instantly lose consciousness due to a massive drop in blood pressure in the brain, and/or the heavy impact of the decapitation device. But there are countless eyewitness reports in history describing a few moments of apparent awareness in the victim.

Originally posted by Chris from Cynical-C Blog, on April 9, 2006 10:25 PM

david posted a photo:

Originally from david's Photos, on April 9, 2006 10:25 PM

I love making mix CDs for friends. I usually try to come up with music that fits a given theme, like Hawaiian music for a Tiki party. To make a truly over-the-top gift, take the time to customize packaging for the CD. Instead of space-hogging (and environmentally insensitive) jewel cases, wrap your soundtrack in heavy photo paper of cardstock. The devil, as they say, is in the details.

Here’s how to do it.

Originally posted by Kevin from ReadyMade Blog, on April 9, 2006 10:25 PM

first, another painting excerpt. anyone who has visited the apartment recently now say "laro-gers, you're not fooling us, that was there already."

cab driver: let's not go to grand central.
me: pardon me?
driver: we’re not going to grand central. i want to go someplace with you. or are you so rich you don’t need the money?
**PAUSE**
me: oh, ha ha, gosh, do i ever! i work with abused children, and it doesn’t pay well. i’m barely scraping by, but what about you? oops, turn left here! and what about you? how do you take care of your wife and children?

then he told me his whole retarded life story. they don't call me a licensed master for nothing, people. but i was too drunk to take down his medallion #. what a cocksucker. i just wrote an email noting he was one firearm away from not making it home himself, wishing i'd had presence of mind to barf in his car.

Originally from serenalarogers, on April 9, 2006 10:24 PM

This is an idea I wanted to build myself, but as I haven't the time, I'll give it out to anyone who'd like it. I have attempted to describe the pragmatical issues to save as much of your time as possible as well.

Problem

People have privileged data to trade with friends, but want it (a) private to those friends, or (b) aggregated to put all friends' data in one place, for easy browsing and searching.

Use case #1

I want to share my friends codes for Nintendo DS games with people I know, but not post them publically. I also want a list of my friends' friends codes so I can put them in at once without tracking them down individually.

Use case #2

Every month I go through a song and dance with someone in comments in order to trade IconBuffet Free Deliveries. It'd be ideal if I could list the sets I have and want and he could list the sets he has and wants, and our friends collecting icons could do the same, and I could search friends for IconBuffet wants I have and haves I want.

Social network

A big part of this app is the social network for authorizing someone to see data. There are a few strategies for developing this part of the app:

• Piggyback on LiveJournal. I guess I'm biased: that's where my network already is. However I don't think you'll find an existing network with the same scope (nearly two million active accounts) and the open protocols that make it easy for you (OpenID for URL-based authentication and LJ protocol or FOAF for getting the friends data).
• Piggyback on Robot Co-op services or Flickr. They both have social network APIs (for "subscriptions" and "contacts"), and you could treat the people's profile URLs as their URL-based identities. This doesn't seem likely to map as well onto the problem as LiveJournal friends though; people use "friends" pragmatically.
• Use open, de-facto standards. As far as I know, this means FOAF and XFN. Neither of them will get you wide adoption, so you'd need to use both. I have no idea how you could possibly present this in some way a random reader of nintendo_ds could understand though.
• Build your own network. This is not pragmatic for various reasons I hope everyone realizes.

From these options, I would build it for LiveJournal, but design around URL-based identity (you need to to use OpenID for authentication anyway), so you can expand generally to FOAF and XFN (and other URL-based identity systems) sooner or later.

Name

I never thought of a good name for this project. The best one I know right now is "jtrade" or "jTrade," which, I admit, sucks. I used one or two others in my abortive versions of this app but don't remember what they were (they weren't any better).

Tech

I would build it as a Catalyst app, of course, as most of the requisite parts are on CPAN, but as I resort to lazywebbing it I won't be picky. I'm sure some Pythonista seeking a Django project could make quick work of it as well.

Build it plz

Unlike a lot of new projects people seem to be undertaking, this is an app that not only could use spiffy buzzy technology, but solves an actual problem for people.

Originally from markpasc.org weblog, on April 9, 2006 10:21 PM

• Apply systems thinking
• Denormalize
• Make it a first-order object
• Apply the 80/20 rule
• Examine the risk profile

Originally from markpasc.org weblog, on April 9, 2006 10:21 PM

The futures of the daily newspapers in New Orleans and Gulfport, Miss., are tied to the economic fortunes of their struggling communities.

Originally from NYT > Home Page, on April 9, 2006 10:20 PM

Donald Trump is getting $1.5 million for an hour-long keynote speech at a Los Angeles real estate expo. Prediction: He will say nothing revelatory or interesting. Another prediction: They type of audience that attends real estate expos that headline Donald Trump won't notice.

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 9, 2006 4:32 PM

First Responders Handbook of Humor (with a forward by Marlee Matlin). No, seriously.

Originally posted by gknauss from kottke.org remaindered links, on April 9, 2006 4:32 PM

THE NAILBITER

Some people manicure their nails,
Some people trim them neatly,
Some people keep them filed down,
I bite 'em off completely.
Yes, it's a nasty habit, but
Before you start to scold,
Remember, I have never ever
Scratched a single soul.

by Shel Silverstein

Originally from serenalarogers, on April 9, 2006 10:27 AM

david posted a photo:

Originally from david's Photos, on April 9, 2006 10:20 AM