Weblog
Jan 21, 11:28 PM: Weekly Link Wrap Up (January 21)
Here's the weekly links wrap-up.
What Would Jeb Do?
The Washington Post looks at what the state of the union would be, had Jeb Bush been president.
PS Brushes
A large collection of free brushes for Photoshop.
Move iTunes to another computer and keep library intact
A helpful guide if you need to move your iTunes library.
Bushisms vs. Obamaisms
Compares quotes from the two politicians.
Get out of your cell phone contract
A site for swapping or selling your cell phone contract.
The Pale Blue Dot
View of Earth taken from the Voyager spacecraft.
Authorize your iTunes library on more than 5 computers
Get around a bothersome "feature" in iTunes.
Once More Into the Security Breach
A woman boards an empty plane to retrieve her purse, sets off an alarm, and no one seems to care.
Jan 18, 02:23 PM: Why I Switched to Ma.gnolia
I’m fairly new to the whole social bookmarking phenomenon. This past summer, I signed up for del.icio.us and started using it with some frequency. I was never a person who kept their browser bookmarks very organized, and the tagging features of del.icio.us seemed pretty nifty.
If you’re not familiar, social bookmarking sites allow you to save your bookmarks online, and “tag” them for easy sorting and categorization. Then you can see what other people have bookmarked, what the popular tags are, and so on and so forth.
del.icio.us is owned by Yahoo!, but as with Flickr, Yahoo! had the good sense not to alter the service once it was acquired. I’m not a huge fan of the del.icio.us layout, and it seemed some functionality was lacking. I wanted to integrate my bookmarks (given a certain tag) into my Textpattern blog, for example.
Now, I know, I’m sure all of this could have been done with enough hacking around with plugins. In fact, anything that works for Ma.gnolia should work for del.icio.us since they share the same API. Well, let me get to the point.
I discovered Ma.gnolia while browsing alternatives to del.icio.us. I immediately preferred the design, it struck me as cleaner and easier to use. del.icio.us always seemed a bit cluttered. I also found a plugin which made it easy for me to import certain entries to the linkroll on the blog. That was what won me over, but I began to enjoy everything else about the site.
It just seems more thought-out, more elegant. I haven’t delved into the contacts/groups aspects of the site yet, but that seems very fleshed out and substantial. If you’re on Ma.gnolia, let me know!
To be sure, there’s nothing specifically wrong about del.icio.us, it’s just Ma.gnolia beat it out. The Ma.gnolia Dashboard widget for OS X is also pretty nifty, and would alleviate the need for a bookmarklet.
I suggest you check out Ma.gnolia for yourself and see if it fits your needs for bookmarking.
Jan 17, 08:45 PM: Washington Post partners with The Onion
And no, this is not an Onion article…
From the Post itself:
“The Onion, the Gen-X satiric newspaper, is coming to Washington and will partner with The Washington Post, which will produce and print the paper and sell local ads.
The Onion, which also maintains a Web site, will be distributed free in news boxes and by hawkers in Washington beginning the first week in April. The Post will be paid for its business services.”
A Washington Post spokesperson said he believes the Onion will be popular amongst young Washingtonians.
Just make sure White House staffers don’t pick it up on the way to work, they may think it’s real.
Jan 14, 10:55 PM: This Week's Links: iPhone, Chewbacca, 767 Accidents
Here’s a new feature, a wrap-up of all the links that have appeared on the “linkroll” this week.
Best 50 hacks for your Life
A wrap-up of 50 ways to improve your daily life.
Baghdad Burning
A blog written by an Iraqi living in Iraq. Heartbreaking, truly.
Fast Order Classic
Story about the classic Waffle Shop diner in D.C., and how it may soon be history.
Safeguard Your Privacy in 2007
Tips for protecting your privacy in an increasingly privacy-unfriendly world.
We Will Rock You – EBN
A classic video. Just go watch.
The Chewbacca Offensive
A look at the futility of Bush’s new Iraq policy.
Nuclear Power Plant or Retirement Community
From McSweeney’s Lists.
The Apple iPhone unveiled
Will it change everything? Or is it a big letdown?
The Gimli Glider Incident
A 767 Airliner runs out of fuel at 42,000 feet. What happens when a jumbo jet becomes a glider.
Finally, Wireless Power?
Will 2007 be the year that we can shed our power cords?
A Mysterious Number – 6174
Some interesting number theory musings.
Oct 11, 09:29 PM: Hidden rooms
When the day comes, after I’ve made a few millions with some slick Web 2.0 start-up, I’m going to build secret rooms in my house.
Wait, what?
Now I don’t mean a secret room ala Panic Room with Jodie Foster. More of an obscured room, with a slick secret passageway, like in the old movies. Maybe you pull a book out of a bookcase, revealing a hidden study. A secret passageway revealed by a spinning fireplace, that sort of thing.
Anyway, I thought I was the only one who thought that would be a neat idea. Then I read this article in the New York Times.
ON a recent Saturday morning Cami Beghou, 13, pushed the right side of the tall, white bookcase that is built into one of the powder-pink walls in her bedroom. The bookcase, holding rows of books, a stuffed dachshund and a volleyball, silently swung outward, revealing a tiny, well-lighted room. Containing a desk, a chair and a laptop computer, it serves as her study area.Cami, an eighth grader, considers the hidden room the best thing about her family’s five-month-old French colonial-style house in this Chicago suburb. “When I heard that I could have a secret room, it sounded like so much fun,” she said, noting that the room initially conjured images of secret passages from Scooby-Doo cartoons. “My parents told me, ‘You could just put curtains over the doorway,’ but that wasn’t nearly as cool.”
Since March, when the Beghous moved into the house, Cami estimates that she has had about 30 friends over. Not one was able to detect the bookcase’s secret without guidance. “Most people don’t even recognize that it’s there,” said her father, Eric Beghou, who owns a consulting company with his wife, Beth. “When the home inspector came by to examine the house, our builder shut the bookcase, hiding the room. The inspector went up and down the stairs a couple times — he knew that something was unusual — but he couldn’t figure out what was there.”
Pretty slick indeed. I’m not sure what the point of obscuring it from the building inspector is, though. Unless you’re really paranoid.
