Thought I’d share a one or two word opinion of a few recently read items…

On Photography) (Susan Sontag)

Smart, fascinating look at photography in a social context. Nice change of pace from the usual gadget chatter.

Marley and Me) (John Grogan)

Funny and touching story taking place over 13 years between a man and his dog. I cried like a baby at the end. Honest.

Consider the Lobster) (David Foster Wallace)

The always-smarter-than-you-and-everyone-you-know DFW writes a series of essays ranging from the porn industry to John McCain to Lobster festivals. My favorite is a piece about ”A Dictionary of Modern English Usage” in which he discusses (at great length) “proper” english usage and who gets to decide its, uh, properness.

I’ve been using Noodler’s ink in my fountain pen(s) for a while now and love it. One thing I didn’t realize is that it “…contains a cellulose reactive dye that remains water soluble in the bottle and in your pens, but becomes permanent on paper when dry.” This means that no-one will be washing my checks. Wait, does anyone still use checks?

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I heard today that the Vatican chimed in on all the hoo-ha over a tiny Danish cartoon… “The right to freedom of thought and expression cannot entail the right to offend the religious sentiment of believers. ”

Excuse me your holiness, but that’s exactly what it does.

A fabulous, but under-utilized feature of OS X is the Services menu. One of the reasons it doesn’t get used enough is that the menu can become unwieldy rather quickly. Enter Service Scrubber).

Works as advertised.

Am I the last to hear about coComment)? This is a great idea. And it works very well.

From 3QD, a little background on how scientists look for new planets.

My editor often has to remind me that the general public is usually more interested in what a finding is than in the technical details behind a finding. Most of the time, my editor is right. In this case, however, I think the techniques employed by planet-hunters are pretty cool so the following is a brief primer on how the techniques work and the pros and cons of each:

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Swirl2

She just can’t help herself when the camera’s aiming her way.

I feel the need to remind you all that Tom Waits is a genius. Do me a favor and pick an album from iTunes and buy it. His music is brooding, experimental, noisy and somehow sweet. Seriously, pick any of them. Try Alice, Mule Variations, or Rain Dogs to start. Each of those three is entirely different from the others. Each is wonderful in its own way.

I have too much stuff. Too much software, too many hobbies, too many books, too many pens, too many cameras, too many tupperware containers, too many shoes I can’t wear, too many jeans that don’t fit, too many half-completed projects, and, some would say, too many dogs. I want to do something about all this crap, really I do. But it’s hard. It takes commitment and time I’m convinced I don’t have. Besides, there are hobbies to attend to.

A few months ago I started picking at it. I want less to worry about - fewer things that could go wrong any minute. So a month ago I leased a new car and gave the old one to my daughter. Now her car is good enough and mine should be pretty much worry-free for the next 3 years.

Last weekend I emptied all of the drawers in the kitchen. Just up-ended them onto a table. I then got a big box and a trash can and went through every single item. Everything that hasn’t been used in 6 months or so but might be useful someday got tossed into the box. Anything useless was thrown away immediately. I wrote the date one year from now on the box and stored it in my basement. Anything I don’t pull out of the box by that date gets thrown away.

This weekend will be the same, only this time I’ll do it with the closets.

There’s a great web site called Discardian) which is very helpful. She writes “One tip every day to help you let go of all that crap in your way.” Most of them are easy and very effective.

I’ll see you at the garage sale.

Neato. A terminal that “…emulates a 1970s terminal monitor, complete with flaws in brightness, warped display curvature, and flicker. It even simulates baud rate lag.”

Full-screen mode is just too much fun.

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