L.A. in a nutshell
Encyclopedia Britannica‘s entry on Los Angeles (subscription req’d.) contains this nugget: “…perhaps, no city in modern times has been so universally envied, imitated, ridiculed, and, because of what it may portend, feared.”
Advocating obesity?
The heroically-named Center for Consumer Freedom is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers lambasting the conventional wisdom that obesity is unhealthy. If this were, in fact, a group of consumers tired of being rebuked about their dietary habits, one could certainly sympathize. But, according to this Reuters story, the Center for Consumer Freedom is funded by none other than the “casual dining” industry. The ad, of course, says nothing about this. It calls the Center for Consumer Freedom “a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting consumer choices and promoting common sense.” And misleading the public, apparently.
‘I hereby resign…’
Arianna Huffington and her webmonkeys have put together an interesting collection of historical resignation speeches and letters. Read Mikhail Gorbachev‘s. Then read Ginger Spice‘s.
The smoke seen ’round the world
I guess somebody had to do it… MSNBC has trained a webcam on the Sistine Chapel chimney from which a puff of white smoke will herald the selection of a new pope. Some will no doubt see the “SmokeCam” as a revolution in you-are-there journalism. Now you, too, can experience the anticipation that comes with staring up at a chimney for hours at a time, waiting for the next round of papal balloting to end. Wake me up when someone says, “Habemus papam!”
What’s in my Dock?
My Dock (for non-Mac users, this is where the most frequently used applications are kept) is literally overflowing with cool stuff. I must share…
- Mail — The nerve center of my online life. Who says e-mail is dead?
- Address Book — Helps me keep tabs on my 205 contacts — a few of whom I actually contact on occasion.
- iCal — Shows me what I’m doing tomorrow (dean’s forum at noon, studying all afternoon, comprehensive exam at 6 p.m.).
- Safari — Still trails the Mac version of Internet Explorer slightly in features and usability, but it’s much faster and more reliable, so I have to use it.
- iChat — An elegant IM client with impressive videoconferencing capability that’s fairly useless because nobody else has it.
- NetNewsWire Lite — Trusty RSS reader.
- iTunes — Where I keep all my music.
- iPhoto — Where I keep all my digital photos.
- iMovie — OK, I hardly ever use it, but I think it’s cool, so it stays on my dock.
- iDVD — Ditto.
- GarageBand — Love it! I just bought the new Symphony Orchestra Jam Pack, which sports an absolutely stellar Steinway grand piano sample.
- QuickTime Player — When you need to play something — video, audio, Flash, etc. — there is almost nothing QuickTime can’t handle.
- Microsoft Word — This program is the epitome of bloatware, but everyone uses it.
- Interarchy — My fav Mac FTP program.
- BBEdit — The. Greatest. Text. Editor. Ever! I sometimes find myself writing papers in BBEdit and pasting them into Word.
- Art Directors Toolkit — Remarkably handy little program for measuring things on the screen, converting units, picking colors and other things that web designers do all the time.
- Adobe Photoshop — The de-facto standard for photo editing and bitmap image design.
- Macromedia Dreamweaver MX — Actually this doesn’t work at the moment. All my Macromedia Studio MX programs just quit working all of a sudden, and reinstalling didn’t help. That’s OK, since I prefer to code HTML by hand anyway.
- EyeTV — I do everything else on my Mac, so why not watch TV as well?
- Calculator — Because I can’t add.
- iSync — Lets me replicate my calendar and contact info on my iPod and my cell phone. So, “I couldn’t call you because I left your number at home” is no longer a plausible excuse.
- Network Utility — Every now and then I get the urge to ping somebody.
- Cisco VPN Client — So I can get to all the cool campus resources (library databases, etc.) without ever leaving my comfy poof chair.
- Virtual PC — Once in a while I am forced to descend from computing Nirvana into the wasteland that is Windows.
- CocoaMySQL — I’ve been working on a couple of database projects, and this is a handy little tool for dealing with MySQL databases.
- VNCThing — This lets me drive my home theater/server Mac from my laptop.
Celebrating 10 years on the web
Though the actual birth date of the World Wide Web was some years earlier, many people think of 1995 as the year that the web phenomenon was born. Thanks to the development of a user-friendly graphical web browser called Netscape (offspring of Mosaic), that year saw the beginning of the Internet’s explosive growth into the mainstream medium it is today.
It also happens to be the year I graduated from high school. And 1995 was the year I, like many other Net junkies, first got serious about the web. (For the record, my first exposure to the web came in the summer of 1994 at Northwestern University, where I encountered a version of Mosaic running on a Mac, and I was fiddling around with HTML by that fall).
Anyway, I mention all this now because I was doing a little reminiscing today, thanks to the folks at Yahoo. In a fun little Flash retrospective, Yahoo revisits 100 memorable icons and events from the first 10 years of the web, including the infamous dancing baby, the Pets.com sock puppet and Dotcomguy.
My first (micro)earthquake
Well, I guess this makes me an official Angeleno: After living here more than a year, I have finally experienced my first earthquake. I was sitting on my couch watching TV this evening when I felt a tiny, almost imperceptible rumble. I thought the vibration might have been the result of a big truck passing by on the street, though I didn’t hear anything, and I had almost forgotten about it when I came across this on the AP wire:
A small earthquake struck Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley on Saturday, and there were no immediate reports of damage or injury, authorities said.
A visit to the U.S. Geological Survey’s earthquake site confirmed that what I had felt was a magnitude 2.9 quake situated about 10 miles away, near Encino. According to the site, this is what’s called a “microearthquake,” a term that sounds glibly reassuring. Loosely translated, it means, yeah, the ground shook a bit, but no major catastrophes resulted, so who cares? Just so long as my future seismic experience doesn’t involve any macroearthquakes…
Knitting to help tsunami victims
My former LAT colleague, photojournalist and knitting enthusiast Sedda Kreabs, has come up with a novel way to aid in the ongoing tsunami relief effort. She and her knitting group are selling ‘string scrubbies‘ (knitted dishcloths) and donating $10 from each sale to UNICEF. Knitters from across the country have joined in the effort, and a couple of local merchants are helping them sell the fruits of their labor. Now Sedda is planning a trip to Thailand to help make a difference in person. Read about her plans on her blog.
Alternatives to lawyering
So, I get an e-mail from my friend Adele the other day. We’ve known each other since high school, when we were co-editors of the student newspaper. She recently finished law school and here first and last priority is to become attorneys for personal injury in Tampa, and now she tells me she isn’t so keen on the idea of being an attorney — just like a lot of law grads I know.
Instead, she’s been managing a “roots rock” band in New Orleans. I’m not exactly sure what “roots rock” is, but I do know that it’s a better gig than lawyering in every respect but one: Lawyers make more dough. Anyway, the band, Andi Hoffman & B-Goes, has just been booked to play at the
I’m all in
I have never been much of a gambler. In Vegas last year I clung to the nickel slots while Neil went high-rolling at the craps tables. But on a trip to Kansas City over the weekend, I was coaxed into joining a poker match at the home of Kit’s buddy Joe. Since I don’t know the first thing about poker, I sat patiently as Kit and his friends attempted to explain the rules to me. Then I proceeded to break most of those rules in the next few hours. (Did three of a kind beat two pairs? I couldn’t remember.) But I’m proud to report I was not the first one out of chips, and I only lost $5 the whole night. Not bad for an evening’s entertainment — and certainly cheaper than a movie. Maybe I should reconsider this whole gambling (that can be easily done through Slot77) thing…
On a related note, I was also introduced to the new TV series TILT, ESPN‘s answer to the rapidly growing poker craze. It seems odd to me that a sports network would feature a drama about gambling. But then again, MTV these days seems to air everything but music, so why shouldn’t ESPN broaden its horizons?