Ravings of an Intermittent Fool

I've written about JeanRo before, but the Cincinnati.com writes about a new twist that I didn't know: The Pichet du Jour. Basicly its 500mL (about 3 glasses) of red or white wine for $8.50. That is an excellent bargin. This would be a nice alternative to after work beers or cocktails.

Have you ever wondered why a lot of Microsoft products have directories called '1003'? The wonderful blog, The Old New Thing, has the answer.

MT makes it easy to add sites to ping when you save content. The troubling thing is that new sites pop up all the time and pinging a bunch of sites for each post can slow you down. Enter Ping-o-matic which acts as a proxy pinger and does all the dirty work asynchronously. A nice win-win.

(via Bedevieled Mojo Slop)

Finally, I have gotten around to posting visual proof of the debauchery that takes place at Put-in-Bay, OH. From a lead singer wearing a Target bag as clothing and people gladly consuming vast quantities of margaritas from a pitcher...its all here.

Of course, more pictures are available.

p.s. It should go without saying, but tequila really hurts when you get it in your eyes.

p.p.s. Mark Vaughn also has some pictures posted.

Cincinnati Craigslist: Apparently this just launched sometime in June. If this takes off, it will be quite excellent for da 'Nati.

Here is another recipe that I have cribbed off of Indigo's. It starts off with some fresh baby spinach. Add to it freshly made bacon bits, croutons, roasted garlic cloves and grated cheese (I like pepper jack for this but you could use some sort of goat cheese if you want). Top it off with a few grinds of black pepper and homemade balasamic vingerette (a dollup or two of Dijon mustard, black pepper, 1-2oz of balasmic vinegar and then enough olive oil to make a nice emulsion).

If I ever get around to doing some serious J2ME work for my Nokia 6600, I will definitely check out Programming J2ME on Symbian OS. Looks like an excellent resource with a lot of good examples.

(via Russell Beattie)

SharpReader, a Windows-only RSS reader, has just released a new version. This new version adds the option for SharpReader to copy proxy settings from IE upon startup. This is a boon for people who switch between a bunch of different networks with differing proxy configurations (like me).

Last month, I got an email from Matt Vance who told me that he used some of my Hawaii photos in a Wiki presentation that he put together. This is all legal and legit because my photo gallery is licensed with the Attribution, Non-Commercial Creative Commons license. This is a shining example of how this license is supposed to work in the real.

BTW, the use of Hawaiian photos for a Wiki presentation is very apropos since it is the Hawaiian word for "quick".

This item is a bit late in being posted but nevertheless here it is. Amy had everyone over for the first party in her new house. As the pictures details, much beer, spirits and whipped cream was consumed by all.

Of course, there are more pictures available.

Here is another item that is late to be posted. Jen organized a trip out to Arthur's for Burger Madness to celebrate James' birthday. James proved that you can eat a burger with all the toppings.

As always, there are more pictures available.

Highway Links - Links to more sites about highways than you could possible believe existed. The web never ceases to amaze me.

(via Metafilter)

Just some random musings:

• The US Women's Gymnastic team's budget for glitter must be enormous.


• The juxtaposition of balding, mustached male gymnasts and pixie-like female gymnasts is kind of creepy.


• I just can't get enough of people rowing.


• If they can combine events and make synchronized diving, why can't we combine the trap shooting and discus competitions.


• While we're at it, why can't the floor excercise apparatus get that technology from tennis that sounds an alarm when the ball goes out of bounds. Seeing the look on the gymnast's face when they step outside the line would be priceless.

I saw this car in the Hyde Park Plaza parking lot. Not sure what it was doing there because it was parked in the middle of the lot near none of the stores. In any case, this is the first time I have seen this car, but I have been told by others that it is fairly famous.

This CSS Float Tutorial is the best I've seen on this topic.

Not sure what I changed, but suddenly each time I click on a url in my mail client Firefox opens two browser windows . More oddly, one is for the correct url, and the other appears to be opening the same html file but file browser cache and with the file protocol as opposed to http. Definitely strange, but in any case John Haller provides links to a registry patch that fixes it perfectly.

I can't believe that XM Radio is complaining about software that acts like TiVo for the service. Its even more ridiculous because the tuner this guy uses came with a USB interface and a XM supplied SDK. What did XM really think people were going to do with this SDK? Even more egregious is their tone in the article:

"We remain concerned about any devices or software that permit listeners to transform a broadcast into a music library," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said.

It's a friggin' tape recorder or VCR. And how about this gem:

XM Satellite Radio Holdings said it was concerned about the software, based on a description of its features.

"That's a product that's not authorized by XM," Chance Patterson, vice president of corporate affairs, told Reuters last week.

"That program is something we don't condone ... It's our expectation they will be shut down," he added. "We're also researching any potential legal violations."

Let me get this straight. They haven't seen the software yet, but they are sure that its illegal and they have sent in all the lawyers to find something wrong with it. Way to go XM, go insult and alienate your customers and encourage them not to make your product more useful.

Existance of this product makes me want XM more...knowledge that XM is being idiotic at the least, and evil at the extreme makes me want XM less. So its really a wash now.

I realize this reaction is probably because they are concerned about pissing off the RIAA or they are planning on introducing a similiar product. Even if they offered a similiar product, you know they would add some fair use limiting DRM feature that would make the product less useful than this independantly developed application. I think one other thing is that the existance of TiVo like features limits the needs for consumers to use any future Audio or Video on Demand service (that would bring in more fees). I know with my ReplayTV, I always have tons of things to watch so I have no need to use the VOD services of my cable company.

In any case, I hope that someone at XM jumped the gun on this and we will hopefully see a press release that clears up this mess.

My little sister got married recently and Angela and I had the great privledge of being in the wedding. Everyone seemed to have a good time (as the pictures attest to (although my mother was a bit frazzled at times).

Of course, there are more pictures available.