Ravings of an Intermittent Fool

Two things really brought back the weight loss and healthy living to the forefront of my thoughts. First off, I got really nice words of encouragement from a stranger who has been on an impressively dedicated weight loss plan. He even has an online weight loss chart kind of like mine. The other is last night at a Cincinnati Reds game. A guy about 10 rows behind me died in the middle of the game. While I don't know the true cause of death, he was a very large, overweight guy and it was a very hot and humid night. One only can assume that his lack of physical fitness had something to do with it. While we all have to go at somepoint, I would like to think that my getting in shape lessens the possibility that I might die so suddenly and traumatize my family and friends. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family of this man.

As I've mentioned it before I hate it so much when the networks (specially NBC) starts it shows at oddball times like 9:59. Whether it is to juice the Nielsons, screw over PVR users or try to steal marketshare from rival networks, it doesn't matter. What does matter is that its an impedance on the consumer. Way to go networks....iss off the very people you wish to consume your content.

In any case, PVRBlog is reporting that NBC is having a change of heart for the fall season. I hope this is true.

I really like tv, books, radio and blogs that take me some place I know I can't go or shows me the truth behind the veneer. That's why its great that the blog The Religious Policemen is back publishing. This blog is by an anonymous Saudi Arabian citizen who pulls back the covers to expose the bitter truth about what happens in the Kingdom. The author western educated and has the perfect blend of literary flair and insider knowledge. He feared for his and his families' life so he has been silent for over a year. Now that he is living and working outside the country, he feels he can start the postings again. If you want to know more about what really happens in their society, I recommend this blog.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Ranch dressing. I hadn't realized that Hidden Valley Ranch was a real place.

Slate has another good article on how vanilla came to be a synonym for plain or boring. That's a shame really since real vanilla is heavenly to smell and taste.

Not that regulars need another reason to dine at Indigo's, but I have another one. For people not from around here, Indigo's is one of Cincinnati's best places to eat outside and people watch. Its got a primo location right off of Hyde Park Square, and offers reasonablly priced food (1/2 portions too which is very diet friendly). You also can't go wrong with any place that offers Opera Cream Torte from the Bonbonerie. Well I do have to report another great reason to visit Indigo's: Every bottle of wine on the menu is half priced on Wednesdays. Last night I got to enjoy a nice Old Vines Zinfadel for $13. You can't beat that.

What The Amazing Race lacks in opportunities to show off strategical thinking in a competitive reality show, it certainly makes up for it in spades as a travel fantasy. I prefer to watch reality shows that invole some sort of strategy, bargining or allying oneself with others to meet some goals. The difficulty of doing that and the emotions it brings out in people makes for fabulous drama. The Amazing Race doesn't really have that but the premise of traveling around the world is certainly a dream many of us have. That's why I was pleased see a blog by Edward Hasbrouck who seems to be some sort of guru on independant world travel. He has penned a series of blog posts that use each episode of the show as a jumping off point to discuss travel related topics. I've spent a few hours going back thru posts for the last few seasons and he covers a wide range of topics like traveling safely, taking the less beaten path, finding the best way from point A to B. It makes for good reading and I look forward to reading Edward's posts when the new season starts this fall.

IT Conversations has posted a wonderful two part interview with Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple (part 1 and part 2). He describes in lovin detail how he was raised and the things he did as a teenager and college student that prepared him to co-found a computer company (although he didn't realize at the time that is what he was working towards). Its mind boggling the amount of work and dedication he went through toying with hardware designs and building his own versions of machines based on published specs. I think most of us see successful people and wish we had the trappings of their life but often don't stop and consider all of the hard work that went into getting them where they are today. If you want to learn more about people like Woz, I really recommend the book Hackers. The sheer joy that these people got from tinkering and exploring will be inspiring to anyone that has a latent geek streak.

I just got reports that the Beer Simmered Bratwurst was a huge hit at a friend's cookout. I can't hype this recipe enough. Its dead easy and super delicious.

When your only interaction with a site is RSS, you might never know its demise. I came to love The Connection via the long tail as I don't live in Boston and none of the local stations carry the show. A little link by Dave Winer first introduced me to the show and I was hooked. I'd listen to new shows, then use that as a jumping off point to scour the achieves for gems. I found buckets and buckets of gems. The show covered such a wide range of topic from the most serious to the very lighthearded and never took itself too seriously. I loved the show so much, that I wrote my very own RSS feeds for The Connection.

That's what eventually tipped me off. I had noticed that my aggregator hadn't reported any new shows in a long, long time. This had happened in the past but it had meant that The Connection staff had tweaked their web site which broke my screenscaping. That's when I saw this:

The Connection enjoyed a successful run of over 10 years on public radio, and the program’s last broadcast was on August 5, 2005.

Noooooo! Its a damn shame. A quick googling revealed this Boston.com article on the canceling and this letter from Dick Gordon to the show's fans.

The show will be missed and the moral of the story is that not all information comes down the RSS pipe, sometimes those out of band communications are pretty important.

Update 6-Sep-2005: I've updated all the feeds to contain one last new item which points to this entry which should then inform subscribers that there will sadly be no more shows. I'll keep the feeds around for a few months more as people finish listening to shows in their queue.

I finally found the new WVXU program schedule. Silly me, I kept checking wvxu.com for the new schedule. Anyway, the schedule looks pretty good although the 9pm - Midnight block is not news during the week. Ideally this would have been some sort of news programming for me, but for the people who love the old time radio and Echoes, I guess they will be satisfied.

New shows on the channel are Day to Day whcih you may be familiar with since they co-produce some of their features with Slate. Its a nice mix of technology, current events and culture. No podcast yet for them, but they do offer streaming audio of individual stories which is nice.

Another new show is The World which I had never heard of before. Apparently it is produced in Boston and claims to be the first internationally produced radio show for an American audience. It looks promising. They do offer a podcast but it is limited to their technology articles. That seems strange. Why just produce it on one topic and not all of them? Prehaps there is an issue with licensing if they are sourcing their material from different content producers. They do offer a feed of stories with links to the streaming audio but that is rapidly becoming the bare minimum a radio show should do.

There is a new a new local show called Cincinnati Edition. It might be a good show but if they don't offer a podcast, I'll never hear it since it comes on at 7am.

While helping my wife find sort art lesson plans online, we came across The Art of Crime Detection. Its a flash game that shows you a "crime" and then asks you to build up a composite sketch of the "suspect" using a palette metaphor stocked with different shapes of eyes, noses, hair and so on. It was surprisingly difficult to get the sketch right and I knew to pay attention to the "crime scene". This must be a whole lot harder to do in real life of the sketch artists are really skilled at facilitating an eyewitness to narrow down their choices.

Its a neat little game and appears to be very kid friendly (the two "crimes" I saw depicted were the toliet papering of a tree and pushing the elevator buttons too many times).

So, I make a short post on Hidden Valley Ranch a few days ago. Without prompting, my friend Jennifer comments on this post with information about the Wendy's Ranch Tooth commercials. Within a few hours the comments started rolling in. As of last count, this article has gotten 28 comments which by that metric, its the most popular thing I have written (besting my post on Kroger U-Scan machine usability by a long shot).

Its such a strange thing to see the comments pile up when I didn't do anything to start the conversation. The funny thing is, Jennifer was right, my DVR has kept me from seeing this commercial until recently. I don't think its that funny of a commercial but I can definitely see where having a plush tooth doll would be pretty darn cute. Also, thanks to an another commentor here is the link to video of the Wendy's Ranch Tooth commercial. Enjoy.

I was listening to an IT Conversations piece by Justin Chapweske today and he mentioned his Large File Handling Hall of Shame. It is an interesting list of software that can't cope with the gigantic files that our personal computers are capable of creating. Its no where near a comprehensive list, but it is insightful to see that there is a lot of blame to be had all across the industry.

Greasemonkey 0.5.1 Final has been released. Everyone using this Firefox extension should definitely upgrade (and if you're not...run, don't walk to go check this out).

Last night while I was working, the most captivating song came through my headphones. SomaFM's Groove Salad reported that the name of the song was Awaken by Sophie & Ives. I was immediately taken back by the sound of the woman's voice, the downtempo beat and the quiet passion in the performance. A quick search yielded this background on Sophie & Ives. I was just blown away by their story of collaborating from a great distance (he is in the US, she is in Perth, Australia). Furthermore, the fact that they started an unconsumated relationship that eventually ended (they were too far apart and too poor to be able to travel to each other) struck me as so sad and yet so hot at the same time.

This is the first time I felt compelled to buy something from iTunes (up until now, I have only used it for grabing podcasts and managing my existing music). I am very pleased to say that iTunes carries this song (and the rest of the album). I will be definitely checking out more of their music in the future. One last thing, Sophie's website has a far better sample of Awaken than what is available in iTunes. Happy listening!

Apparently, someone finds my photography to be gothic. A new Yahoo Group called Cincinnati Gothic 2 has linked to my photo of the Tyler Davidson Fountain as their website wallpaper. Looks like I need to update my business cards and add "Gothic Photographer" to the mix.

In the past, I put together a Cincinnati Public Library Bookmarklet checks the availability of the current book that you are browsing at Amazon.com (much continued praised to Jon Udell for coming up with the idea). Now that Greasemonkey 0.5.1 has been released with its security flaws fixed, it is time to release my Greasemonkey version of this feature. Its far better than the bookmarklet version, since this code always run and you don't have to remember to use the bookmarklet.

Here it is cincinnatilibrarylookup.user.js.

As you can see from the image, it adds a link below the title that says if the book is in the library or not. Clicking the link will bring up the Cincinnati Public Library Online. Catalog. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Also: For a short intro to the Monkey, check out my first user script. For a longer and better introduction, check out Dive into Greasemonkey.

Wouldn't an upscale Indian fast food resturant (i.e. an Indian version of Chipotle) be fine addition to the wonderful sitdown Indian resturants in our fair city?