• Google Voice Quick Reference Guide Google Voice’s great feature set takes your phone and voicemail out of the past, but that doesn’t mean you won’t still have to navigate the occasional touch-tone menu. Weblog Cool Geex comes to the rescue with a pocket-friendly quick reference guide.

  There’s not all that much to it beyond that. Their reference guide is handy, it’s printable, and it gives you a simple way to quickly navigate Google Voice’s calling and voicemail menus.

• Build a Silent, Standalone XBMC Media Center On the Cheap – Feature – Lifehacker You won’t find a better media center than the open-source XBMC, but most people don’t have the space or desire to plug a noisy PC into their TV. Instead, LH converted a cheap nettop into a standalone XBMC set-top box.

  Total cost: $222 including remote, but not including the spare flash drive you’ll need for the install. Add a bit more to double the RAM and it’s a serious contender to the AppleTV or MVix units

• Save Money And Stay Cooler with a Whole-House Fan – Household – Lifehacker
  Depending upon its size, a whole-house fan uses only 10% to 20% as much electricity as a central air conditioner. Also, it uses significantly less electricity than a window air conditioner, yet it keeps the entire house more comfortable, not just one room. Installing one generally provides a good payback on the investment.

  I'm seriously considering this for my house as our (non-functional) central air unit is from the 60's, and it's not really worth cooling the basement of a brick house anyway.

• How to Build a Simple Sandbox, CBS, Bob on TV, BobVila.com
  An easy-to-build sandbox can be constructed in a few hours using basic tools. Most lumberyards will cut wood to length at no extra charge. Do-it-yourselfers with a circular saw or a power miter saw can make the required cuts with ease. A box of 2-1/2- or 3-inch galvanized nails and a hammer complete the job.

• How to Build a Rotating Canned Food Shelf
  Thinking seriously about having better inclement weather preparations, as well as overall better storage for food stuffs led me to this. I'm somewhat itching for a building project. This looks like fun.

• Make This: Boon Stash Storage System
  Individual storage compartments for sorting everyday objects is always good for workspace organization. Like a cafeteria tray for your junk drawer or home office, this simple, pre-built storage system is an easy, inexpensive, and attractive DIY when you've got some PVC on-hand.
• How Long Do Coffee Beans Last Once Opened?
  To check if your beans are fresh, scoop 1/2 cup into a zipper-lock bag and press out all the air, then seal the bag and leave it overnight. If the beans are within seven to 10 days of roasting, they will make the bag puff up from the carbon dioxide that they release. If the bag remains flat, then the beans are not producing gas—a sign they've passed the point of peak freshness.
• The Burger Lab: The Fake Shack
  According to Adam's sources, the meat is a 50:25:25 blend of sirloin, chuck, and brisket. Don't use too much oil. With a Shack Burger, you want the meat to stick to the pan—that's how it gets that flat, sheath-like crust.

• Magnetic Knife Strip Keeps Drillbits Handy and Organized Via Lifehacker: The hardest things to keep organized in your garage/workshop are the things you use most often. Screwdrivers and drill bits fall into that category around our home, and no matter how much we think we are returning things to their proper place, screwdriver and drill bits are easy to lose.

• Effective Twitter Backgrounds: Examples and Current Practices Smashing Magazine's article about creating an effective twitter background should be inspiring me to create my own, but I still can't justify the hours (or even half-hours) spent doing so. Maybe some day?

• Master Lock : MarkEdwardCampos The instructions are pretty self-explanatory, and while there's no secret sauce that'll instantly crack the combination for you without a little bit of tedious trial and error, this method will crack that 64,000-possible-combinations lock in 100 tries or less.
• INSIGHT: "Because it sucks" is not a reason to redesign Starting the conversation with a team about what’s right leads to very interesting results. Especially when someone says “Nothing”.

  svn rm .; commit -m ‘ctrl-z’

It helps that I’ve read it before. The first-person narrator, Sangamon Taylor, is an asshole, and he’s hilarious. Every one of Stephenson’s focal characters is just a little bit of an ass, just a little too smart for their own good, and just precocious enough that the story almost happens to them solely because of who they are. (I suppose that’s the point, right?) This is a formula for fiction that I find incredibly entertaining, hence the repeat read.

I mentioned the first time I read the book on my old blog back in November of 2004:

I started reading Zodiac by Neal Stephenson at the airport, and was about 2/3 of the way through it by the time we landed at Midway. I gotta say, there isn’t a thing that I’ve read by him that I don’t like. I need to pick up The Diamond Age before reading his current trilogy set in the 17th century called The Baroque Cycle.

The book is set in Boston, which means that when the narrator says “We took the green line to Kenmore Square and took a bus to Watertown Square…” I know exactly what he’s talking about, and happen to know he probably took the 70 or 70A bus.

One of the things I like most about Stephenson’s books is that he throws in all of this semi-random, yet utterly useful background information about his characters and the science behind whatever it is they’re dealing with. This means that I learned a lot about Chlorine last night, which I don’t much care about, but was nonetheless entertained.

I highly recommend this book, based only on the first 250 of 308 pages. I’ll re-endorse it later, I’m sure… and on that note, I think I’ll go finish it.

This is actually the third time I’ve blasted through this book, I enjoy it so much. It’s still holding place as my favorite Stephenson novel of all time, just ahead of Cryptonomicon, with Snow Crash in at a close third.

The book was a very easy read, much like Spook Country and the rest of Gibson’s books I’ve had the pleasure of reading. Again, however, I was struck with the single-person-on-drugs thematic element which I have yet to see anyone else take and interest in. Maybe it’s so minor that no one else cares, but every one of his books that I have read to date shares it. It is as if Gibson is a closet fan of substance abuse, or that he’s never experimented and wants to live its effects vicariously through one of his characters. Nevertheless, it was just as entertaining this time around. There is, again, an element of control loss when the addiction is in play.

I’m still psyching myself up to get started on The System of the World later this year. I think I’m going to cram in another book before the end of the month, and try to do another two in September so that I can spend October through December on the third tome of The Baroque Cycle and hit my “one book a month” goal, in number anyway.

via XKCD: Newton and Leibniz.

Coffee is very important! No, I don’t have a problem!

*sip*

Variety being the spice of life, here’s how each of the five samples faired, in my only-kinda-sort-humble opinion:

Hazelnut

A fair cup of coffee. The flavor is good, and not overwhelming or sweet. I’m neither impressed (Hazelnut is my favorite coffee flavor) nor disappointed.

Original

Fair. Certainly not Dunky’s or Starbucks, but it’s pretty decent. I’d drink this on a daily basis and not nearly be as crabby as I am when I have to drink the swill free stuff we have in our break room.

Vanilla

The best of the bunch. The vanilla flavor is stronger in proportion than the Hazelnut. I don’t know if I could drink it every day (I’d get sick of the flavoring after a while), but it’s certainly enjoyable.

Gourmet Roast

I expected this to be a tad better than the Original, seeing as it’s “Gourmet”. In this case, Gourmet must mean “tastes like your normal office kitchen coffee”. Blech.

100% Colombian

Pretty strong for instant coffee! I liked it more than I was expecting. It’s better than the Original, and easily the best non-flavored of the group.

Decaffeinated

I… don’t drink decaf. Ok, fine, I’ll try it… meh.

Overall, I’d have to say I’m pleased how well I enjoyed the instant coffee. I had my doubts, though my experiences with Starbucks’ Via line were also positive. Maybe I’m not cut out to be a coffee snob.

More? Yes, please!

This book is loaded with hilarious anecdotes about Lewis’ experiences with his three young children. He has some interesting theories on fatherly love, mostly that it comes from wanting to toss your children from high balconies and not doing so. I can’t attest to personally scaling any tall objects with my son in tow, but I can relate to the surprise that is the level of stress an infant brings. It’s incredible, and the level of openness in this book is refreshing and easily relate-able.

Yes, I know “relate-able” is not a word, but my inner thesaurus is failing me. Identifiable sounded wrong.

I highly recommend this book for any new or soon-to-be new father. You’ll laugh. You’ll groan. You’ll think “yeah, me too!”. You’ll wonder why he’s storing his cheese outside.

Well, you would too.

Every so often I flip through the thousand-ish old entries and find a few that are still relevant now. In that vein and that vein only, I am going to sprinkle a few of them in here and there, whenever it makes sense.

For instance:

On blogging

Originally posted to the old blog: August 12th, 2005

“God, no. What I do is far worse. Trust me, preserve your innocence.” – dooce

/me is a sad doobie.

Via rose from the dead

On average, I get a “courtesy call” from one Verizon service or another almost every day. As both a VZW and FIOS customer, each professional service organization tries regularly to up-sell me. So far I have not received a call from both on a single day, but I won’t be shocked when/if I do. My wife and I have the lowest possible family plan for wireless, and the 20/5 FIOS plan with home phone service. Slap that all together with their combined billing, and we’re shelling out ~$180 per month for media-related utilities. This is a much better deal than when we were paying almost $300 monthly for 3G network access on our phones.

About six weeks ago, I received a notice that my introductory FIOS rate was about to expire, giving me no price protection, and increasing my cost by about $10 per month. I called and the best they could offer me was another $10 per month for a lower data rate than I currently had, or another $20 per month for a slightly better one. My wife and I agreed that there was no sense in paying to get less, so it made better sense to pay to get more, and spend the $240 annually for slightly faster network service. I didn’t act, however, because I thought I’d call back later and see if I could haggle for a better rate.

So tonight when I got a call from “UNKOWN, CALLER” at 6pm I was generally nonplussed. They were right on time.

Tonight, however, was different. I was in an odd mood, and when the woman asked if I had a few minutes to talk about how she could analyze my calling plan to make sure we had the best possible deal, I told her she had up until my 11-month-old started crying (this doesn’t take long), and that we already had the cheapest family plan.

Or so I thought.

She looks at my account, sees that we use fewer than 100 minutes between us, and offers me a “loyalty” plan. This saves us $10 a month, with no contract extension. I double-check that we’re not losing our SMS options, and she notices that my wife’s line has a more expensive plan than mine (and she only sends a dozen or so messages a month). Fixing this saves us another $5. She also asks if I want to use my New-Every-Two and upgrade my phone. I do, but since I can’t settle on a phone I like, I have to pass for now.

Then she asks if either of us send picture messages, and I take the opportunity to note that my old phone now won’t send them — I get an error message that I had chalked up to it being old. She discover that when we turned off our internet service, it put a “network access lock” on the phones, so pictures couldn’t upload to their hosting service. She fixes it, and the call is now +3 awesomeness in Verizon’s favor, and -15 dollars in mine.

This was the best five minutes I’ve ever spent with Verizon’s customer service. Maybe luck will strike twice and the FIOS folks will give me a break as well. One can dream, right?

(Photo Credit: Verizon Ad)

It seems so obvious: If you want to develop software that’s useful to people, you’ve got to talk with them. But too many developers take the anti-social approach and consider customer support to be beneath their status… If you really want to write useful software, stop spending all your time keeping up with technology. Don’t worry if your resume isn’t filled with the latest buzzwords. Instead, invest your time in talking with your customers. They don’t care what programming language you use – they only care whether your software meets their needs, and the best way to ensure that is by breaking out of your cone of silence and opening the lines of communication.

— Nick Bradbury: If You Want to Write Useful Software, You Have to Do Tech Support (Via SvN)

I’ve been a big fan of The Hyannis Sound since 1999, when the first Chip joined the group. Some friends and I camped out in the backyard of their (then) Orleans house in the summer of 2003 because… well, just because. It seemed like a good idea at the time, (though incidentally that was the same weekend my Jetta’s engine decided to explode, so maybe I should have stayed home?) I digress…

On the Clock is THS’ third 100% studio album, their 16^th overall, (though wikipedia would have you believe it was 14). It’s an excellent work overall, and most definitely re-playable. I have the slightly annoying habit of listening to new music on repeat ad nauseum, and there are absolutely tracks on this disc that will make my recurring playlists. Without further ado:

Biggest Surprise: Track 7 – Falling Slowly (Holy Crap!)
Biggest Disappointment: Track 10 – Something Happened on the Way To Heaven
Overall Rating: The mathematical average of my ratings is right around 75%, but since I’m rating on a scale of 1 to 10, I’ll happily give it an 8/10.

01 – Foreplay / Longtime (Boston)

The first 1:55 of this track, which is almost six and a half minutes in total, absolutely kicks your ass. I can’t imagine it sounds this good live, so I’m going to chalk up some of its mastery to the recording studio, pun completely intended. Even so, I love it. It’s a Boyer arrangement, and has all of the hallmarks of the awesomeness that is Ed Boyer.

Let me tell you, that’s a lot of awesome. My favorite moment is around 2:30 when the guitar solo kicks in. It’s a very, very well engineered solo — not too vocal, and not so produced that I’m annoyed. This was the best possible way to start this cd.

02 – Unchain My Heart (Ray Charles)

Whose idea was it to put two Boyer’s back to back?

I normally love any decent Ray Charles arrangements. (In 2003, THS was performing “I Wish” at, I think, just about every show I saw. The “Bootleg I” recording isn’t superb, but it was awesome live. Trust me.) Unchain My Heart is well-arranged and well-recorded, but it’s not that special. It sounds like Ray Charles, so that’s nice. Eric tells me that if I would take the three hours to watch Ray, I’d appreciate it.

Ok, I can believe that, because all in all, it’s probably a very good song. To me though, this song is kinda meh. Fredo pulls off a good Ray, though, so that’s cool, but I’m going to have to accept that it’s a matter of taste and move on.

Incidentally, with a name like Alfredo Adolfo Austin III, how is Fredo’s nickname not Triple-A?

03 – Everything (Michael Bublé)

Having just listened to Firedrill!’s latest disc on repeat for two weeks, I don’t have nearly the appreciation for another Bublé tune that I should. “Everything” is better than Firedrill!’s “Comin’ Home”, but here’s another matter of taste. It’s just not that special. Andy’s good. There’s nothing wrong with it, and I won’t skip it in a playlist, but I probably won’t seek it out, much unlike the next track…

04 – Feels Like Today (Rascal Flatts)

Jeebus.

First of all, Gary LeVox has one of the most distinctive voices in country music, so trying to do anything he sings is a challenge. Second, Rascal Flatts has had this knack over the last half-decade of putting out a track or two per album that seamlessly crosses over between country and pop. This was a great selection by the group, and Jeff’s arrangement is spot freaking on. I appreciate that Patrick doesn’t try to imitate LeVox, and he nails the part in doing so. I could easily listen to this and the original in the same ten minutes and enjoy both.

/me adds this to the repeat list

05 – Your Love (The Outfield)

I nearly stopped my car to listen to this song. I love the original, and this is a picture-perfect arrangement of it. I’ve never given Cooper nearly enough musical credit, and this is an excellent work. Nate nails it, and I’m going to forget that he’s a really short asian kid, because he might as well be Tony Lewis without a British accent.

This track gets a 9 only because while it’s not quite as awesome as “Feels Like Today” or “Falling Slowly”, it is still quite kick ass.

06 – Still The One (Orleans)

Classic, very classic. I bet this track sounds awesome live. I actually don’t think the recording does too much for it, and I’m kicking myself for not picking up Bootleg #5 which has a live version. I’ll have to remedy that at some point. That’s all I have to say, there’s nothing bad about it.

07 – Falling Slowly (Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová)

This track makes me wish my star rating system were more flexible, as it goes to eleven.

Apparently, I missed Once, and didn’t note it in the Oscar results last year. Until I looked up from where this absolutely gorgeous song comes from, I had never heard of the film, which is now in my NetFlix queue, simply on this song’s merits. Arranged by Samrat, the harmonies are haunting and powerful. The backgrounds ebb and flow, crafting a passionate picture of love, loss and hope. Brian and (I think) Micah 100% nail the lead vocal on a track with zero percussion. I love that the arrangement is well-crafted enough to completely eliminate the need for VP. I have exactly one nitpick, and it’s that at 3:25, the held notes aren’t 100% in tune.

What? I was scraping for a criticism, and when the bottom line resolves the chord, it’s fine! Leave me alone!

I will listen to this song at least a hundred times before I even start to think about taking it off of repeat. It’s that good.

08 – Would You Go With Me (Josh Turner)

At this point, I’m asking myself, since when did THS do country tunes? Better yet, two on the same disc. Even better yet, one by Josh Tuner, giving a bass a real chance to shine? Since now it would seem. This track is probably just as good live, but that doesn’t give the recording much credit, I suppose. Overall, very enjoyable, but not quite one of the best. Dave impersonates a rising country star well, and that’s not normally something to be said in relation to an a cappella recording.

09 – She Talks To Angels (The Black Crowes)

Good syllables, but surprisingly average overall. I feel like I could have found this track on any college group’s album, and I expect a bit more from THS. (Sorry, it’s my review.) It’s another Boyer arrangement, and it is well-produced, so maybe only college groups that Ed likes?

Andy nails the solo, and does a fairly decent Chris Robinson impression. It’s just not anything special.

10 – Something Happened on the Way to Heaven (Phil Collins)

When I read the track list before listening, I nearly skipped to this song purely out of instinct. This is my favorite Phil Collins tune, and I know that sets the bar incredibly high. Jeff’s arrangement is really, really solid. I have no complaints there. There’s something really tangible missing in the recording, though: intensity. It’s completely absent. Increasing the volume should make the song crawl up the wall and take you over, and instead it’s just louder. It’s entirely possible that whoever normalized it was way too aggressive in doing so, so I could understand it to be a mixing mistake. But. Still. There are these horn hits that smack you upside the head in the original, but do nothing to me here.

I was really looking forward to loving this track, and I couldn’t, which is why it was the biggest disappointment. It wasn’t my least favorite track, but I wanted it to be my most.

11 – I Can’t Make You Love Me (Bonnie Raitt)

There has to be at least one soft, pretty song on any album for me to not think someone’s trying too hard. This song is gorgeous. It’s almost too gorgeous, and were it not for my pure adoration of Micah’s smooth and totally effortless vocal delivery, I would complain. I won’t, however, because it’s just so pretty.

I would argue that he sings it better than Bonnie Raitt. Yep, I would. Argue with me, I dare you.

12 – Industry (Jon McLaughlin)

I have never heard of Jon McLaughlin. I’m not sure I’m all that inclined to go look him up now that I’ve heard one of his songs as an a cappella arrangement. Crap, I just did. Huh, some dude from Indiana. Ok, I’ll give some respect to those who grow corn.

It’s a pretty cool arrangement, and Tim does some neat things with the moving lines in the beginning and throughout the song. The song itself just isn’t that interesting. I don’t think I would have picked it to end the disc, but looking back at the rest of the selection, maybe it was the right choice. I think the song will grow on me, and I could see myself rating it a bit higher after a few more runs through the track list.

Conclusion

I haven’t written an exhaustive a cappella review since, I think, Cape Standard Time. That write-up isn’t online anywhere, but I’m certain it was less well-thought-out than this was. (In fact, remembering what I was up to in 2003, I can almost guarantee it was written at 4am.) I really enjoyed this disc, and I’ll do my best to send anyone I can to see the Cape’s Boys of Summer anytime I can. Keep on rocking, guys!

One of the tenets of XHTML is to force (strictly!) the user-agent to be responsible for the agent-specific actions on the page. In this case, since a modern browser on a modern OS can handle a “new window”, the browser should handle it. But, the same site, when rendered in a different browser (e.g. Safari on the iPhone) might not be able to handle a new window, so the markup itself shouldn’t add such an instruction. Sounds annoyingly simple enough, except when I want the non-standard action.

Enter JavaScript, which shouldn’t surprise me since I want to manipulate the DOM within browsers that can handle it. A quick google led me to an example over at Sitepoint using Javascript to add the target="_blank" attribute after the page loads:

function externalLinks() {
 if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return;
 var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
 for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) {
   var anchor = anchors[i];
   if (anchor.getAttribute("href") &&
       anchor.getAttribute("rel") == "external")
     anchor.target = "_blank";
 }
}
window.onload = externalLinks;

This really seemed inelegant to me. I’m already using jQuery on the site for something else, so I re-wrote the above into a jQuery chain, which just feels better:

$("a[rel='external']").attr("target","_blank");

I’ve ranted about math education before. There’s something just so effective about his three-minute stated solution to the problem. I dig it. I never use calculus, but statistics? Easily on a weekly basis.

Instead of our students learning about the technique of calculus, I think it would be far more significant if all of them knew what “two standard deviations from the mean” means, and I mean it.

Via digg.

Dugg via -Gareth- – RIP MJ.

We switched insurers last year after Mass de-regulated it’s auto insurance. I was a Commerce customer via AAA for years, and put up with their piss-poor customer service for the 15% discount I was recieving. (It was *almost* an even trade.) My company offered a group discount for a couple of companies, and based on what I wanted to insure, my only option was Liberty Mutual. I hadn’t heard anything *bad* about them, but also nothing *good*. From the first call with our rep, I’ve been pleased, but not so over-the-top pleased that I felt I needed to say anything about it.

When people do what you perceive as their job, that’s not much to write home about. When they exceed those expectations, then it’s noteworthy.

I’ve been pretty busy the last month and haven’t had a chance to get the trailer hitch installed on my car. As a result, I never bothered to register the trailer after my visit to Liberty’s office. Today I received a call from the agent who assisted me saying they noticed I hadn’t registered it yet and that my RMV-1 form was about to expire.

Wow, that’s totally my own darn fault. Matt FAIL.

Then she said there was a new form in the mail and that it should arrive tomorrow.

Liberty Mutual WIN. +10 for making my life easier, guys. Thanks.

Not sure which is funnier: the comic, or the ridiculous banter on the dilbert.com website about how “software can’t be 100% bug free” and “it’s impossible to fix every bug”.

Oh shut up people! It’s a comic strip!

[/Monday]