Blog

• Advertising Is Getting Ridiculous

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:56:00 EDT

Got two slices of pizza tonight. One broccoli and mushroom, and one pepperoni. When I was presented with the box, I was a little surprised.

As I was walking home, I began to think about what the pizza shop gets for using advertising on their boxes...most likely, free boxes. That made me think that the pizza should cost a little less since they don’t have to pay for the boxes anymore, but then I remembered that costs get passed on to the consumer, not savings. I guess it really doesn’t matter that there is advertising on the boxes, other than it’s just another example of us being bombarded by advertising.

And the worst part...Verizon FiOS isn’t even available to me.

Update: Looks like I might be able to get FiOS sooner than I thought.

Related:

• Apple’s App Store Doesn’t Understand Its Customers

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 08:05:00 EDT

So I’m browsing around the Apple iTunes App Store looking for a cool game for my iPhone, and I’m reading some reviews about a few games when I notice that the iTunes Store allows people to sort of review the review. At the end of each review is a simple question: “Was this review helpful?” followed by clickable “Yes” and “No”. To the far right of the review title, it tells you how many people found the review helpful. The problem is that it thinks App Store users are “listeners”, when I’m pretty sure they’re “users”.

A song from the Music Store. 2247 “listeners” found the review helpful.

A movie from the Movie Store. 456 “viewers” found the review helpful.

An app from the App Store. 18 “listeners” found the review helpful.

I guess someone copied and pasted code from the Music Store and never made the change?

• Close-Up Photo: Popcorn

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:00:00 EDT

• Close-Up Photo: Self Portrait

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:44:00 EDT

• A Tale of Two Internets

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:50:01 EDT

Several days ago I was trying to figure out the elevation of an elevation marker near my apartment. I couldn’t read it off the marker itself, so I scoured the Internet to see if I could find a topographical map of Manhattan. No matter what I searched for, or where I searched, I couldn’t find a map that displayed what I was looking for. I got tons of topographical maps for sale, but that really wasn’t what I wanted. After trying for what seemed like days (in actuality, it was 63 minutes), I broke down and asked my father if he had any idea on where to look, or even if he could look next time he was in or near the library. Less than a day later, he e-mailed me back with an answer to my question. He had gone to the NY Public Library and found the answer to my query in a matter of minutes using nothing more than the map room and a verbal question (thanks Dad).

In contrast, the first published collection of the plays of one William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon is generally known as the “First Folio”. It was published in 1623 and of the roughly 1,000 copies produced, about 230 are known to be in existence. In 2001, Christie’s auctioned one of the two still in private collections for over $6 million. Next to the Gutenberg Bible, it’s probably the most famous printed book in history. The NY Public Library has a copy, but access to it is limited to researchers “who demonstrate a need to use this irreplaceable material”, which is why I would probably never be able to see it. However, thanks to the University of Victoria, a scanned copy of a First Folio can be browsed online, in all it’s glory; and unlike the printed facsimiles available in bookstores, the resolution of the web copy at the large size is very, very good, and you certainly can’t beat the price.

• Breakfast

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 10:55:00 EDT

How Sunday mornings should start.

• Chicken Piccata

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:36:01 EDT

Since today was a sort of rainy Sunday, I decided to make something new for dinner. I didn’t go crazy and experiment with something complicated like Chicken Kiev, but I hadn’t made chicken piccata before, so it’s new to me. I love chicken piccata because of the light lemony flavored sauce, which is perfect for summer.

• Apartment Grilled Salmon

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:50:00 EDT

The best thing about this meal is that it takes about 15 minutes to make.

One downside is that I have to try to time things properly, and when you have to use the same saucepan to make the rice and steam the broccoli, it can be a little touch-and-go there at the end. Another downside is that the George Foreman grill cooks both sides at the same time, and sears them both, so the salmon doesn’t flake off as nicely as it does if you pan sear it or truly grill it. Those are both minor downsides that the ease of cooking relegates to nothing.

• Close-up Photo: Blown Fuse

Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:41:00 EDT

• Added “Woody Paige’s ‘Around the Horn’ Chalkboard Messages” to Projects

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:34:00 EDT

A list of all of Woody Paige’s chalkboard messages from Around The Horn in 2008. A complete and utter WOMBAT.

• Close-Up Photo: Oatmeal

Thu, 29 May 2008 10:00:00 EDT

• Close-Up Photo: Meat Tenderizer

Tue, 27 May 2008 12:00:00 EDT

• Close-Up Photo: Blueberries

Sun, 25 May 2008 12:00:01 EDT

• As Useful As A Screen Door On A Submarine

Fri, 16 May 2008 23:04:00 EDT

Sigh.

Update: Time Warner Cable just called to tell me about the benefits of home phone service (the only reason I answered the phone was because I thought they were calling about my issue). I interrupted the woman from her script to let her know that my internet service through them was quite bad at the moment and that the only reason we were able to talk on the phone is because I don’t have phone service through them. She was quite flustered at that. I also tested my internet connection while she was on the phone, and it’s even worse.

Update: Yay!

• Close-Up Photo: Mouse Ball

Wed, 14 May 2008 10:30:00 EDT

• Changes Are Afoot

Mon, 12 May 2008 21:23:01 EDT

So joshmadison.com (jmdc) has been redesigned. This is about the seventh major redesign of this site, and it’s the biggest one yet. Besides the obvious visual design changes, the back end was completely redone using Expression Engine as the content management system.

I’ll be updating this post with issues and concerns that might be occurring.

Issues and Concerns:

~~There seems to be a problem with the RSS feeds. The ‘asides’ links aren’t linking properly, going to the jmdc entry rather than what was linked to.~~ Forgot to include isPermaLink="false" in the guid def. Oops.
~~Some images aren’t showing up.~~ I think I got them all. I’ll be keeping an eye on the error log to see if any 404’s come up related to images.
The ‘Humor’ section has not been migrated at this time. There’s a small technical issue with it, but I didn’t want to hold up the benefits of the new design while those details were being dealt with. If the issue can’t be resolved quickly, the previous version of the ‘Humor’ section will be used until it is fixed.
Some of the most recent comments from the old system need to be migrated and cleaned up.
~~There’s an intermittent issue that’s causing IE6 and IE7 to periodically lose the navigation bar.~~ Have I mentioned how much I hate IE?

• Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins in Silicone Muffin Cups

Mon, 12 May 2008 07:24:00 EDT

I don’t have a muffin pan because I don’t make muffins that often, and with a Manhattan apartment kitchen, storage is at a premium so every device in there needs to be used often or have multiple purposes (or just be easy to store). In the past few weeks I came across several muffin recipes that I would love to try out and during this time I was made aware of silicone muffin/cupcake baking cups that you just place on a baking sheet (which I have). They were $8, so I decided to pick them up and give a few muffin recipes a try.

There are few things I like more than bacon. Chocolate is one, and banana flavored things is another. For some reason, I’m not a huge fan of bananas, but I love banana flavored things. If you combine those two flavors in a muffin, you can bet I’ll be all over it. Last night, I gave them a try.

As you can see from the pics above they didn’t come out looking all that great, but boy did they taste incredible. The woman I marry will need to make these, and in fact, should bring samples to the interview.

• Mint Crisp M&M’s

Sat, 10 May 2008 10:26:00 EDT

In the run-up to any big summer blockbuster, there are usually any number of tie-in products hoping to take advantage of the cross-promotion possibilities. With ‘Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ right around the corner, M&M’s has introduced a new variety, Mint Crisp.

I picked up a pack to give them a try, not really knowing what to expect. Upon opening, I was greeted by M&M’s that were colored with the three generic mint related colors of white, light green, and mint green. I was also treated to a slight minty aroma. The candies themselves were about the same size as the standard crispy M&M’s, but their shells were less uniform in shape. In keeping with the tie-in to Indiana Jones theme, some of the M&M’s have an additional symbol printed on the side with the ‘m’. Upon biting one in half, I could see there was the standard candy shell, a layer of mint, chocolate, and the crispy rice center.

As for the most important characteristic of the new variety, taste...they tasted exactly like a crispy Andes mint would. Since Andes are the gold standard of drug-store chocolate-mint candies, this is not a bad thing at all. Would I have them again? Yes, absolutely.

Rating: 8/10

• Traffic At LGA Is Really Bad

Fri, 09 May 2008 08:43:00 EDT

Google Maps, with it’s satellite view and street view, is one of the better time wasters on the web. I love zooming in and getting a different perspective on areas around the world.

One day I was curious if the resolution was good enough to be able to tell which airline an airplane was part of, so I took a look at LaGuardia (LGA) to see if I could make them out. I found the following picture interesting:

As you can see, there seems to be a plane halfway down the runway, taking off; one at the end of the runway, about to take off; and one a few hundred feet out, about to land. About to land?

Wow, they really stack ‘em up at LGA.

It’s 99% likely that the shot of the plane landing was taken at a different time and the sets were “stitched” together.

• Installing Solaris 10 on VMWare Fusion

Thu, 01 May 2008 00:31:01 EDT

When I got a new MacBook Pro I also ordered VMWare Fusion at the same time so I could run Windows and play around with a linux installation or two. It works great, but I ran into a problem trying to install Solaris 10.

Windows XP, Vista, and Ubuntu all installed without issue, but the installation of Solaris, both graphical and text-based would hang at various points. When I finally got it installed, it would hang on running, never even making it to the login screen. The problem was that even though I was specifying a 32-bit VM in VMWare, the Solaris installation was still identifying the Penryn chip as supporting 64-bit, so Solaris would install the 64-bit version. I wasn’t sure that was the whole problem, but I knew that was the first troubleshooting step. After a doing a little exploration around the interwebs, I found a very simple solution to that problem.