Roll your own search engine with Rollyo. This is a handy new app which aggregates the search results of any collection of sites you choose. Name and create as many collections as you like - then share them with others. (Yes, it’s a Rails app.)

Take a movie trailer and remix it so that it seems as if it is for a completely different movie. What a great idea! Someone apparently ran a contest for just that sort of remix. The winner is called Shining, based on the great Kubrik film. Waxy has a mirror. It’s great.

I admit it. I’m guilty. Yes, I sometimes toss some CSS inline just so I know where to find it later. Otherwise, I’ve got to reverse-engineer the entire document structure and a 4000 line stylesheet just to find out why the hell that font isn’t blue like I damn sure told it to be!

Simon Willison is asking for some guidance and I hope he gets enough of it to help little ol’ me get some work done.

I’ve moved my RSS feed to Feedburner. Now I get free usage stats and they deal with the bandwidth. Not bad. The catch was that I needed to, as quietly as possible, redirect the existing URL for my feed (http://blog.jackbaty.com/xml/rss20/feed.xml) to the feedburner location (http://feeds.feedburner.com/jackbaty.) Lighttpd makes it even easier than apache, since version 1.4 supports nested conditionals. Thanks to Poocs.net, I just added the following to the lighttpd config…

<code>
$HTTP["useragent"] !~ "FeedBurner" {
url.redirect = (
"^/xml/(rss|atom)" => "http://feeds.feedburner.com/jackbaty"
)
}
</code>

The more I use lighttpd the more I like it.

I have been replacing the mundane with the exceptional.

It started slowly, as I began to realize that little things do matter. This is not about irrationally spending too much on stupid, obvious things. It is about removing as many of the boring, crappy, ugly items that we use/touch/eat/carry every day and replacing them with things that are well-built and beautiful.

The opportunities are endless, but beware. Eventually everything becomes something that could, nay, should, be better - and damn if I’m not going to find it!

The following list contains things that I either have or would like to, well, upgrade.

• Writing instruments (these used to be called “ink pen”). I received a Montblanc Meisterstuck some 12 years ago as a gift and still use it every day.
• Paper. I like Moleskine notebooks and Levenger 3x5 index cards
• Music Player. Apple’s iPod, of course
• Books. Hardcover, signed if possible
• Cameras. Leica, but they better hurry up with the digital M. (My black M6TTL is for sale, BTW).
• Computers. I completely love my iMac.
• Drinks. I like Scotch - a lot.
• Knives. J.A. Henckels
• Clothes. All of my clothes are cheap and usually wrinkled, so it looks like I’m not finished yet.
• Phones. Haven’t found a cell phone I like. Too many features and not enough phone. For the desk, I’ll still take the old 500 rotary for sheer dead-simple design and last-forever quality.
• Bags. I have Domke bags and love them. Get canvas, don’t be tempted by the new-fangled “ballistic nylon”. I hear good things about Crumpler bags (but their site sucks)

I’ll bet there’s more. And of course the above list should come in handy for Christmas and birthdays as well.

The new Jack Johnson CD is housed in a fancy, very thin plastic case that is cool but ugly and impossible to use. No biggie, CD cases have been crappy and frustrating for years. There’s nothing to see here. I then stumbled onto Jewelboxing. I love them without ever seeing one. Why? because it takes something mundane like a CD jewel case and tries making it exceptional. Don’t underestimate the value in that.

In Hipster PDA Tips for People Obsessed With Productivity Pr0n But Bad At Actual Productivity, you’ll find the following advice…

“Go out and buy all the cool pens that everyone mentions in relation to the Hipster PDA. No really, go ahead. You won’t feel right until you’ve test-driven them all. Then, when you realize that all the new pens are too big/too small/the cap falls off/are too pretty/made you afraid to remove them from your desk/whatever, use the pen you normally use. If you must make ANY change, go for a fine or extra fine point version of your usual pen preference.”

So?! What’s wrong with that, huh?

Gillette introduces Fusion the 5-bladed razor. I guarantee you that 5 blades won’t give you a better shave than say, three. And yet here we are.

[Update] Dan points out this article over at The Onion. I love those guys, thanks Dan. Here’s a taste…

“What part of this don’t you understand? If two blades is good, and three blades is better, obviously five blades would make us the best fucking razor that ever existed. Comprende? We didn’t claw our way to the top of the razor game by clinging to the two-blade industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, five blades is the biggest chance of all.”

“Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama’s about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Put another aloe strip on that fucker, too. That’s right. Five blades, two strips, and make the second one lather. You heard me–the second strip lathers. It’s a whole new way to think about shaving. Don’t question it. Don’t say a word. Just key the music, and call the chorus girls, because we’re on the edge–the razor’s edge–and I feel like dancing.”

Recently, Google was kind enough to release Gmail Notifier for OS X. This seemed like a better alternative, long-term, than what I had been using (GmailStatus), since it’s, made by y’know, Google. The only thing lacking was Growl support. It turns out that Gmail Notifier can use Plugins, and sure ‘nuff one of the first plugins available is Gmail+Growl. Marvy!

John Gruber’s hilarious dialog between Apple’s Brushed Metal (B.M.) interface and its (his?) agent.

“Brushed Metal: Calculator? I’m out of iTunes and you tell me I’ve still got Calculator? When is the Special Event scheduled for the next version of Calculator? Oh, that’s right, there is none, because no one gives a shit about Calculator.”

The ending is very funny.