Ravings of an Intermittent Fool

I made this bread pudding recipe from Giada De Laurentiis. Instead of the fancy Italian bread that she used, I used a store bought Hawaiian Sweet Bread. I also added a bit of cinnamon to the custard.

I am pleased to say that my mother and father-in-law (who are big bread pudding fanatics) said it extremely delicious.

Anatomy of a XHTML Document is a good, step by step introduction to what makes up a fully valid XHTML document. Right now the example is pretty basic and probably won't help people who have spent a bit of time with XHTML but it would be a good link to pass along to someone who needs a quick primer or gist of what is going on. I also do hope that the author continues to expand the example because this is something that could be a true resource for the community.

It is said the open source developers scratch an itch when they pick something to work on. With that said, I'm kind of surprised that no one out there is itching to make some quality Windows disk utilities that can deal with NTFS partitions. The best known tool on the market, Partition Magic does its job pretty well (I just dropped $69 on it and it did what I needed to do without rebooting the computer). I would think that someone out there would have tried to fill this niche. Granted the low level details of NTFS are probably pretty confusing, arcane and probably not publicly documented very well, but one would think that this would be a challenge that someone out there would undertake. Just implementing a small fraction of Partition Magic's feature set would be a serious boon to all users.

Caller ID is a great thing, but it does show a fatal annoying usability flaw of the telephone company. On my land line phone, caller id numbers show like this: 1-513-555-1234. My home phone allows me to press one button and it returns that call. The problem is that number is a local number and the phone company gives me a unhelpful message about the leading 1 and area code are unnecessary and then disconnects the call. This forces me to manually type in the number of the person to return their call. Poor usability since the phone company could easily program in call routing rules to do the right thing regardless of how I typed the number. After all, I am being more explict rather than implicit about the person I am calling.

I'm sure this rule stays in place as a legacy of long distance and how it used to cost a fortune and was a very special thing that required a forcing function (i.e. the 1 and the area code) to make people prepared to reemed come time for the monthly bill. If you think about it, if people still have the mindset that 1 is special and expensiive, you are doing them a favor by not charging them long distance for those local calls that are dialed with the area code. People then would think they were getting a bargin on their bill.

Recording iTunes Music Story Preview Clips is a great little article that shows you how you can get ahold of the store samples. This gave me a great idea for some fun. As I have mentioned before, I am a big fan of pub quiz. One of the most difficult part of this game is the music round that involves identifying artist and title for ten snippets of songs. I'm horrible at this (partially because I haven't ever been a big music fan but also because the music they use is typically outside what little music I listen to). What this iTunes hack allows me to do is create my own pub quiz like games for use with my friends and use music that is more relevant to me.

I've been meaning to write up my thoughts on Digital Rights Management but I haven't ever gotten around to it. Charles Miller however sums up my feelings pretty well. That's not to say I don't love my iPod Shuffle or I don't like iTunes. They are both fine products, its just that I try to avoid buying their DRM encumbered music (I've spent maybe $5 max at the music store). BTW, I am much more forgiving of buying an episode of tv show. I treat this more as a rental or paying for convience when my DVR can't catch a show. After all, how long am I really going to keep an episode of Lost around on my hard drive. However, music is different and I expect that I will want to listen to a lot of what I have well after my shuffle dies. When that happens, I'd like to have to freedom to buy the best available music player without any hinderances to play the music that I already have.

Balustrade - A low parapet or barrier.

I've seen this word used to describe the series of columns outside of buildings that prevent vehicles from driving into them.

In no particular order and with no particular theme here are some interviews and podcasts that I found interesting recently.

Rita Rudner on The Leonard Lopate Show - When I was much younger and started paying attention to comics I noticed that there was a serious lack of female comics, but I did notice Rita. She has a very reconizable style and I enjoy the dry dead pan delivery. In this interview she talks about being a female comic, living in Vegas and her new novel which is based in Vegas.

Jared Fogle on The Leonard Lopate Show - Yes, its Jared from Subway. What surprised me was how earnest and non-toolish he appeared in this interview. That is about 180 degrees from the vibe I get from the commercials so I was very surprised.

A Year to Live, A Year to Die - Stewart Selman was diagnosised with a maligant brain tumor and kept an audio diary of his last year. I've always thought that if I was faced with a similar scenario that is something I would like to do. After listening to this piece, I am not so sure. What starts off so beautifully and sweet spirals into darkness as the tumor induces paranoia and extreme anger. Also it is very moving to hear him try to convey his thoughts but the words and phrases just won't come out of his mouth. What really hits you hard is how this effects Selman's wife. She knows its the diesese that is causing this but that is no consolation when you have to live with someone who has so dramatically changed. Its been awhile since I have listened to this and it still haunts me when I think about it.

To end on a lighter note, there is KCRW's The Business. This is a behind the scenes look at show biz industry. It would make sense that the Santa Monica, CA NPR station would cover this beat throughly. The weekly episodes are 30 minutes in length and cover the show biz news du jour as well as interviews with writers, producers, directors, etc.

While crusing around the Wikipedia I came across some interesting articles on typographical symbols. Who knew that the ¶ symbol is called a Pilcrow or that the glyph § is called the Section Symbol. Lastly, the section on the asterisk is pretty extensive and wide ranging. It has been used across more disciplines then I had imagined.

If you've ever had the joy to work with Code Access Security in a Microsoft .Net application, then you will know that sometimes it feels like you need to chant and invoke the good graces of spirits to get this security mechanism to work (hard alcohol also seems to work as well). I have fortunately found an article that has made a bit of this more clear. In particular, if you are getting errors with the System.Net.WebPermission in an Asp.Net application, than this article can help. Stefan Schackow explains how to use the WebPermission in a partially trust Asp.Net application. In particular, this article will explain what the $OriginHost$ and OrginUrl tokens mean in CAS files and the web.config. I can honestly say that I understand things a whole lot better after reading this.

Unlike my first Wikipedia submission, I am hoping the article I just created on my alma mater, Wheeling Central Catholic High School gets a bit more traffic and editing.