I weighed 193.4 pounds at 9:00am this morning. I know this because I have a scale in my office. A pretty good one I think, and today, it read 193.4. That of course can’t be right, because last Thursday it said 190.2 and I’ve run at least a mile every day since then. I got back on the treadmill because if you run every day you’ll lose weight, right? A mile isn’t very far, but dammit it’s something! As a matter of fact it’s almost exactly one mile further than I usually run. And I’ve had no fast food at all, so I’m confused. I’m sure tomorrow it will be back down to around 185 or something. I’ll let you know.

One of my favorite photos of my dad. He’s a little older now, but still, and always, the best. Happy Father’s Day dad!

I’ve wanted a guitar for something like 25 years now. Only recently have I considered actually buying one. Today, I did. I wanted what many of my heroes played - a Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul or SG. Turns out all of the “real” ones are just way too damn expensive. Instead I “settled” for an Epiphone Less Paul Standard. It’s the affordable version of the Les Paul and I’ll certainly not know the difference. Still looks pretty nice and gets favorable reviews, for what that’s worth.

Of course the first thing I did after buying it was to look for chord charts and whatnot. I quickly found some, but they still don’t make sense, and being left-handed means everything is backwards. My fingers hurt after farting around for an hour and I’ve so far not made a single recognizable sound. Exciting though! Lessons start as soon as I can find someone willing to put up with teaching me.

I’ve ranted against all HTML email for years. Lots of people agree with me - many don’t. Lately, I’ve eased up a bit because I’ve actually gotten a few that didn’t totally suck. Then, this…

Forget I said anything, HTML email sucks again.

I’m nowhere near the level of a whisky snob but I sure do love a good single malt. My current favorite is Aberlour a’bunadh. It’s a cask strength whisky, meaning no water is added before bottling, leaving a powerful 59.6% alcohol content. Sipping is required. Cask strength also leaves the decision of how much water to add, if any, up to the drinker. I add about a half teaspoon per dram. I’ll let the distillery describe it…

Nose

An intoxicating aroma of mixed spices, praline and spiced orange, harmonising with rich, deep notes of Oloroso sherry.

Taste

Orange, black cherries, dried fruit and ginger, spiked with dark bitter chocolate and enriched with sherry and oak. Full-bodied and creamy.

Finish

Robust and intense, with bitter-sweet notes of exotic spices, dark chocolate and oak.

Whatever. All I know is that it’s delicious and has the most beautiful color.

I double-click things on web pages. Not to “launch” anything or in any way make something happen, it’s just a nervous habit. Except on the NYT site. They’ve seen fit to cause a dictionary window to open whenever I double-click on a word. It annoys the hell outta me. Thanks to Greasemonkey I can continue to read the Times without wanting to kill anyone (mostly.). Install this Greasemonkey script and all will be well again.

I typically scan Ryan Stewart’s blog for new information on RIAs and Adobe stuff, but then ignore much of the knee-jerk fawning over anything remotely RIA related. His recent post, Offline is a Small Part of the Apollo Value is spot on however. All of the latest hoo-ha about taking web apps offline has gotten things backwards. What many of us will be building instead of web apps we can use offline is creating desktop apps (with things like Apollo) using all of the fabulous web technologies we already know, then letting them seamlessly take advantage of online access. The difference is subtle, but important. To quote Ryan:

…the biggest value of Apollo will is[sic]: Desktop applications that can be built with web technologies.

A morbid, but favorite site of mine is Corpus Obscurum: “Remembering those whose accomplishments vastly exceeded their fame.” Today for example Developer of the flavor coating for Cap’n Crunch cereal dead at 79. Great stuff.

Well, if you’re going to point it out on your blog, I get to disagree. It’s a small thing, but they’re wrong this time

Running the numbers is a series of images, each of which portrays a specific quantity of something - a large quantity. For example, this image represents 106,000 aluminum cans - the number used in the US every thirty seconds.