Category Archives: On the Radar

Heat Death

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We bowed low and entered the temple of driveling entertainment that is Blockbuster. After searching high and low, we discovered and blew the dust off of the indie flick, “The Squid and the Whale”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/squid_and_the_whale/. We enjoyed it, it had this rubbernecking quality about it such that you _had_ to watch it — peeking out between your fingers as you covered your face with your hands.

Jeff Daniels’ and Laura Linney’s performances as the squabbling, separated parents (Bernard and Joan Berkman) were poignantly true-to-life, and writer/director Noah Baumbach teases out the rationalization and self-protection schemes that are all too common in divorce: “I’m hiding these books under your bed so your dad won’t take them — they’re my books, I paid for them.” It’s funny because it’s true.

In a cast interview on the DVD, Linney points out that the story is about a marriage that has reached the end of its lifecycle. Joan has found her voice as a writer, which Bernard, himself a failed writer and her bitter mentor, finds impossible to embrace. In short: she’s self-actualizing and he can’t handle it, so she’s outgrown him.

I thought Linney’s use of the word “lifecycle” was interesting, as if marriages were born into a sort of Hegelian framework: into each is sown the seeds of its own destruction. But, I don’t think that’s a particularly helpful way to think of marriage. Many achieve their highest level of intimacy and mutual respect just before they end in death rather than divorce. That Bernard couldn’t grow beyond himself and celebrate his wife’s achievements isn’t something we should come to expect as a cyclical process in marriage, it’s a dysfunction.

But the idea of a “shelf-life” or “half-life” of a marriage has merit. All marriages have some rate of decay if left unattended and uncultivated. “Entropy”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death is the inevitable result of what theologians call a “fallen world”:http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=romans%208:19-21;&version=31. None of us is very far from that point in our relationships where we disengage completely. The Squid and the Whale was an urgent reminder of the pain and suffering that comes when a marriage is run aground on the shoals of egotism and neglect.

On the Radar: Digg Dug Edition

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* ??Chris Welch??: “Misconception: Renting is for Suckers”:http://www.investorgeeks.com/articles/2006/05/23/renting-is-for-suckers (“via Matt”:http://photomatt.net/2006/06/25/renting-is-for-suckers/). Many of my friends are reaching that point in their lives where they’re considering buying a home. However it’s unfortunate that so many choose to buy over rent, especially in this expensive market, because many well-intentioned people are buying homes that are actually damaging their finances.
* ??Fresh Pursuits?? “Canvas”:http://www.freshpursuits.com/canvas/. Canvas brings the freedom to express yourself through design without needing to know CSS or PHP. With Canvas and Ink for WordPress, you can easily rearrange, reconfigure, and colorize your entire blog without ever touching a line of code.
* ??Michael Barrish??: “Hell Freezes Over”:http://lumino.us/weblog/hell_freezes_over. Revamped and redesigned, it uses haikus in place of business copy (I couldn’t bear to write business copy) and features a new weblog about making websites (you’re soaking in it). Wondering what “Michael”:http://oblivio.com is up to, I find his new, angsty, neurotic web design company website. Brilliant work.
* I’ve really begun to dig “digg”:http://digg.com lately. As usual, I’m behind the curve (“digg just launched version 3 of their site”:http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/06/22/digg-30-to-launch-monday-exclusive-screenshots-and-stats/), but I think I’m just one of those people that has to see something working well before I can grok it. For the uninitiated, digg is a news site that has its content submitted by users. I had initially dismissed it as another “mob rule by the masses” type app (you know, enhancing the “echo chamber”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/23/echo effect of blogs), but it regularly produces some interesting results. Check it out, and “add me as a friend”:.http://www.digg.com/users/kwalker411.
* ??Granite Consulting??: “Late Binding in Microsoft Access”:http://www.granite.ab.ca/access/latebinding.htm. In essence: if you’re exporting to Microsoft Excel from Access programmatically, just use late binding.
* ??Joshua Porter??: “The MySpace problem”:http://www.thinkvitamin.com/features/design/the-myspace-problem. Joshua gives some thought to what aspect of “design” MySpace really excels at. Hint: it’s not the graphical type. Instead of wondering what MySpace could be, let’s learn from what it is. Let’s assume (forgetting visuals for a moment) that MySpace is well-designed instead of condemning it as a visual failure. Let’s ask the obvious questions: why is it so popular? What makes it so successful? The answers to these questions might make us rethink our basic assumptions, but will make our future designs stronger as a result.
* ??Jason Calacanis??: “The new publishing model”:http://www.calacanis.com/2006/06/28/the-new-publishing-model-or-on-rafat-om-federated-media-ad/ (“via Matt”:http://photomatt.net/2006/06/28/new-publishing-model/). Here is the new model: 1. Start a blog with adsense and make spare change. 2. Scale a blog to 250k to 1M pages a month and become big enough for Federated Media, AdBrite, and Blogads to care about you (i.e. sell you’re inventory)–now you’re making a living. 3. Scale over 1M pages a month and become big enough that you can afford your own sales group and fire Federated Media for taking 40% of your money because your cost of sales will be 15-20% as a stand alone business.
* YouTube: “Pirates of The Caribbean Ride”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTQ5eWBlApY (“via Mike”:http://overloadednoggin.com/2006/06/28/captain-jack-meets-captain-jack/). Johnny Depp meets an animatronic version of himself as Captain Jack on Disney’s new Pirates ride. Very cool.
* ??Lifehacker??: “Windows Vista Beta: A tour in screenshots”:http://lifehacker.com/software/windows-vista-beta/windows-vista-beta-a-tour-in-screenshots-183883.php. Wow, not bad, Microsoft. I mean, after some five years of development, you’d hope that Vista wouldn’t be incredibly atrocious. There’s quite a bit of OS X influence in the finder here (nudge–hey Apple: time to get past “brushed metal”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/brushed_metal in “the finder”:http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/finder/, by the way), and I’m glad they’re getting away from the “Fisher Price”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP#User_interface_and_performance school of design.
* ??Angela Wu??: “So much rage”:http://hereisangela.com/2006/06/29/so-much-rage/. I’ll agree to this mission if I can be assured that your rage level (which was off the charts that unforgettable night which still haunts me) will stay at a reasonable level. It’s true: I’m hosting Anglela’s website because she strong-armed me into it. Fear the rage.
* ??Jen Poley??: “1966 Plymouth Fury II”:http://sojourn-of-grace.net/2006/06/30/1966-plymouth-fury-ii/. What can I say? Jode and Nathan wanted a car to work on….we found this in Lincoln, and bought it. We hope to restore it, but if you can believe it, for now we are just really enjoying driving it around town. I can just imagine how much Jode is enjoying this.

Dig-Dug

Update: if you loaded this page in the last hour or so and saw a bunch of garbage — yeah, that was me. I was trying to set up the “FlickrRSS”:eightface.com/wordpress/flickrrss/ cache so this site would load a little faster. I think I got it working; the the site is loading a lot faster!

Weeked Update: Inconvenient Pirate Sick Day

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Friday: Panera in the ‘burbs, and “An Inconvenient Truth”:http://climatecrisis.net/ at Montclair Theaters. We wondered why Al Gore seemed like such a condescending jerk in the presidential election in 2000, but such an intelligent, passionate politician in this movie. We also wondered if Apple paid out for the “product placement”:http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/05/inconvenienttruth/ that made the movie feel, at times, like a long “Think Different”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different commercial. (Probably not, Al Gore is already “on the payroll”:http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/gore.html at Apple.) The movie was very thought-provoking — you should see it.

We drove back home on Bloomfield Avenue through Newark and thought we may have heard a gunshot while waiting at a stoplight. We won’t take that route ever again.

Saturday: Sarah worked while I went to Riviera to pirate wifi and people-watch. Moved the blog over to a DreamHost “one-click install”:http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/One_Click_Installs setup. This makes upgrading WordPress one-click when new versions come out. I also got rid of a lot of old, crufty files left over from the Movable Type days, which was “over a year ago”:http://kennsarah.net/2005/02/12/migrated-to-wordpress/ now. Spent the afternoon working on a household budget application that I’ve been trying to write. It’s like a spreadsheet, but lets you save different budget versions so you can do what-if scenarios. I should have written this a long time ago.

Sunday: The Village Church. Brunch in the “Tasting Room at Philip Marie”:http://philipmarie.com/page/vyhp/Private_Rooms.html. John Pa and I discussed some bachelor party plans with “Tom”:http://canaanbound.blogspot.com, which he seemed resistant to. Came home and watched Ray — also good.

Monday: “Sick day” from work, so I slept in while Dina worked some of that therapy dog magic (generally hogging the couch on which I was sleeping). Dinner later that night and Krispy Kreme at our “favorite exit off of Route 81″:http://www.google.com/maps?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=krispy+kreme&near=Clarks+Summit,+PA+18411&radius=0.0&cid=41487795,-75705713,17176720887031646617&li=lmd&ie=UTF8&ll=41.498678,-75.691166&spn=0.058885,0.117073&om=1 in Pennsylvania with the Posegate clan. More Evan photos soon.

On the Radar: Slow Week Edition

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Uninteresting week? Or has Ken been busy? You decide.

* ??Slate??: “The Misunderestimated Man”:http://www.slate.com/id/2100064/fr/podcast/. Fascinating piece about Bush’s “aggressive anti-intellectualism,” viewed through the lens of his relationship with his dad.
* Don’t drink and blog. Some revelers from Portugal day a couple of weeks ago found the Newark blog and “voiced some opinions about the party”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/06/09/portugal-day-celebration/#comments. I’m glad they found the site, but it looks like they were maybe a wee bit tipsy…
* ??Jen Poley??: “Route 34, three liars, road kill, and the truth”:http://jenny.sojourn-of-grace.net/?p=84. Oh, those Poleys…
* ??Jason Fried??: “Getting in too-much touch (interruption is not collaboration)”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/getting_in_toomuch_touch_interruption_is_not_collaboration.php. Being productive isn’t something that just happens. You don’t just sit down and be productive. Real productivity takes time. It’s a process. You make your way into it. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes or a half hour or an hour or more to really get in that zone. And when you’re in that zone you are actually getting real work done.
* ??Mark Liberman??: “PHPEnkoder for WordPress”:http://www.weaselhat.com/phpenkoder/. Ooh, this could help us fight spam for emails posted on the “Village Church site”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com.
* Oh, and check out “these photos”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/tags/owenpesnell/ of Owen Pesnell from “last weekend”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/06/19/weekend-update-revenge-of-the-babysat/.

On the Radar: It’s not you, it’s me

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* ??Alissa Clark??: “New York Blessings”:http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life_article.php?id=7212. On love letters for cities.
* “WeatherIcon”:http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/weathericon/. I wanted to use a widget for weather on “Everything Newark”:http://blog.newarker.info, but I realized that my theme, “K2″:http://getk2.com, disappointingly, still doesn’t support plugins.
* ??John Gruber??: “Macworld Expo 2006 in Review”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/mwsf_2006. John mentions in passing that you can mount a WebDAV drive in Mac OS X. Seeing that I have 26 GB (!) available on my web-hosting account (“Dreamhost rocks, people”), I thought I might try to investigate that as a backup strategy.
* Play anything on any operating system with “VLC Player”:http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. This thing is awesome. Schmoo and I were set to watch a movie on the Thinkpad-from-work (the lappy is in the shop right now), and I realized that my computer didn’t have software to play it. A quick Google search for “open source watch DVD” led me to this player, which I have also installed on the Mac. A quick download, slapped the DVD back in the drive, and it just worked. Brilliant.
* ??Hugh MacLeod??: “A man’s heart”:http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/002913.html. So true.
* ??Jeffrey Zeldman??: “Silent phone, secret phone”:http://www.zeldman.com/2006/06/12/silent-phone-secret-phone/. Best snarky Verizon complaint, ever. As far as I can tell, the problem involves phone lines, so you can see why it would take one of America’s largest phone companies five days to tackle a brain teaser like that.
* ??Matt Mullenweg??: “Beeping”:http://photomatt.net/2006/06/13/beeping/ Your assignment today is to take a walk around your blog, application, website, whatever you work with on a daily basis, and allow yourself to be supremely annoyed with the beeping smoke detector in the corner.
* ??Wired Magazine??: “Judging Apple Sweatshop Charge”:http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71138-0.html?tw=wn_index_3. Steve Jobs’ Think Different campaign celebrated labor leaders like Gandhi, who used strikes as a form of civil protest, and Ceasar Chavez, who organized poor, migrant farm workers. But a British newspaper at the weekend published a rather shocking report about the factories in China that make his company’s iPods.
* “Quinn Tetris for the Mac”:http://www.simonhaertel.de/quinn/home (“via John”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2006/june#mon-12-quinn). Free, open source, and oh-so-pretty version of Tetris for the Mac.
* ??Angela Wu??: “How I got here: blogger break-up”:http://hereisangela.com/2006/06/15/how-i-got-here/ All those times you had “outages,” you never explained yourself, and I started to feel insecure. I know you didn’t mean it to be like that, and I still think you’re a good bloghost. You’ll be great for someone after me, I just know it. Maybe I’ve just outgrown you. Maybe it’s me, not you… Reset your bookmarks to hereisangela.com.
* Breitbart: “Microsoft’s Gates to Leave Daily Role”:http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/15/D8I8SD100.html (“via Jason”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/gates_plans_his_exit_from_microsoft_whats_next.php) Bill Gates is stepping down from Microsoft. WOW.
* ??John Gruber??: counterpoint, “And Oranges”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/06/and_oranges. ??Mark Pilgrim??: counter-counterpoint, “Juggling oranges”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/16/juggling-oranges. The tennis ball has been bouncing between two of my favorite bloggers over this matter of open formats. Pilgrim’s argument — proprietary and DRM formats will, one day, trap _everything you’ve ever enjoyed about your computer_ (music, video, photos, email, documents, etc.) if you let them — has been compelling and got me playing with Linux again. Gruber’s responses to this have been frustrating — he still won’t address the point of lock-in head-on. I wonder if Mark’s ultimate statement about DRM hasn’t already been best stated in his 2001 blog entry, “My crush on Spyro, what Flash animations remind me of, and what the past will look like someday”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2001/07/29/my_crush_on_spyro_what_flash_animations_remind_me_of_and_what_the_past_will_look_like_someday.

Weekend Update: Cars, Portugal Day

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Friday was “Cars”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5473455, “Cars”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5471976, “Cars”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5459668, “Cars”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10004076-cars/, “Cars”:http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/cars/. And, Sarah and I were pleased to discover, it’s as good as they say it is. Ka-chow!

Saturday, Sarah and I celebrated our fourth anniversary (woot!) at “Maize”:http://www.rthotel.com/maize.html at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark. We had actually attempted to go to Maize when we weren’t living in the city, two years ago. We got as far as getting dressed up, jumping in the car, and getting on the highway, but then Sarah looked at me and said, “I’m pretty tired.” And I said, “Me, too. Let’s go to Pizza Hut.”

This time around, it was much better (and closer) than Pizza Hut. The food, ambiance and service was excellent. Our waiter — who asked for free veterinary advice, but was witty and prompt — was impressed that we “still had things to talk about” after 4 years of marriage. Here’s to more great conversation for the next 50 years.

Sunday, was, inescapably, “Portugal Day”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/06/09/portugal-day-celebration/ in the Ironbound. The Portugal Day celebration actually extends through the week and culminates in a two-day festival two blocks from our apartment. It’s both an extravaganza of Portuguese & Brazilian culture, and an object lesson in poor life choices.

Half-a-million people funnel into our mostly-quiet neighborhood for barbeque, sangria, and Brazilian pop music. It’s not all family friendly, though, as it’s not uncommon to find someone who’s had more than his fair share of piña coladas passed out on the sidewalk. Last year, Sarah and I passed a man who was sleeping like a baby on the curb in the hot sun — we grimaced to think of what HIS hangover was going to feel like.

With Sarah’s brother in town and Ferry Street having been taken over by revelers, we didn’t even try to go to church in the city (though I’m looking forward to the “podcast”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/). Instead, we walked up to see the endless crowds and searched for a “Pelé”:http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/pele01.html onesie for “little E”:http://flickr.com/photos/posegate/157653688/in/pool-evanposegate/. Once you’ve seen one festival, though, “you’ve seen them all”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/tags/portugalday/. After Russ left, Sarah and I crashed at home so I could work on a presentation for Monday.

On the Radar: Linux, Chicago, Space Quest

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* ??Overheard in New York??: “That Really Gets My Goat”:http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/005665.html (“via Angela”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/06/common-knowledge.html). That has got to be one of the funniest Overheard moments I’ve ever read.
* Google Maps “Send to Phone”:http://local.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=32461 and the “Firefox Extension”:http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/sendtophone/index.html. Send information (“even from maps”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/acmelab/120622272) to your phone directly from Google. This is freaking awesome.
* ??Mark Pilgrim??’s “recent declaration”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks to switch to Linux has got me looking at playing with Linux again. I decided to skip the “Powerbook installation from hell”:http://joh.deworks.net/powerbook/ and just create a partition on my Thinkpad from work. Impressions coming soon, but, overall, “linux gives us the power we need to crush those who oppose us”:http://ubergeek.tv/article.php?pid=54.
* ??Dean Allen??: “Things That Happened”:http://www.cardigan.com/2001/03-18/. Dean Allen’s old Cardigan Industries blog, dead since 2001, still has a lot great entries, many of which are too dirty to highlight here. ;-)
* ??Killing the Buddha??: “Jesus and I Broke Up”:http://www.killingthebuddha.com/confession/jesusandi.htm. I’m frighteningly single. At least once a week I hit the religion section of the local bookstore, pick up the first title that catches my eye and take it home. Rumi one night. Buddha the next. I know it sounds cheap, but each time I hope it’s love. It never is.
* Wikipedia: “Space Quest”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Quest. My favorite video game growing up! Rumors are circulating that Sierra will be releasing a new compliation of these games come December, which is good because their 15^th^ anniversary game is now going for over $100 on eBay (it retailed at $40 a few years ago).
* ??Corissa Poley??: “Identity issues…continued”:http://cori.sojourn-of-grace.net/?p=90. Cori doesn’t exist — coulda fooled me.
* ??NPR??: “Life After Foster Care: A Tale of Two Boys”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5443614http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5443614. These two kids — both 13 years old in 1994, both separated from their families, troubled and already acting up — told me with astonishing innocence and optimism about their lives in the group home and what their lives were like before they got there. I wondered what happened to them after that and what they made of their years in foster care.
* ??Eric Blair??: “Google Calendar and PHPiCalendar”:http://www.raoli.com/archives/2006/04/000561.php. The Village Church “calendar”:http://villagechurchnyc.com drama continues. My “brilliant idea”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/05/22/rethinking-the-tvc-calendar/ to use Google calendar has been working. I set up a cron job to pull in a file from Gcal, got the template to look right, uploaded the files, created a Gmail account, and created the events. All that, only to find that Gcal exports all events as “Private” even though they’re tagged as public. Here’s the part where I create a wonky “regular expression”:http://www.regular-expressions.info/ solution!
* ??Luckymonk??: “About the Luckymonk”:http://luckymonk.com/pages/contact. Best description of Chicago, ever. The second best was when I asked “Graeme”:http://www.myspace.com/graemehinde why he left Chicago to move to New York. He said, “You know, after three years of dating a girl, that you’ve either got to marry her or break up? Well, I wasn’t ready to marry Chicago.”
* ??Angela Wu??: ” A religious exemption for same sex marriage”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/06/religious-exemption-for-same-sex.html. Sarah and I have wondered at the whole “legislating morality” issue before, and there seem to be two prevailing conservative schools of thought. Sam recently “touched on”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/series/mark/2006/06/the-end-of-the-world-is-near/ this in passing: let the civic leaders stave off the inevitable decline of society. Angela’s approach — let the country do what it wants but let the church preserve its identity (and, perhaps, clean up the mess) — is much more laissez faire. Which creates a more just society, and is that the point?

On the Radar: Mostly Apple Geekery

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* Google Video: “George Lucas in Love”:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5058529870025933880&q=George+Lucas+in+Love (“via Cori”:http://cori.sojourn-of-grace.net/?p=84). “Augh! My Hand!” “John Bell”:http://www.effluxity.com/ showed this to me on VHS when we were roommates Back in the Day. Glad to see it made it to the web.
* ??Everything2??: “A Simple Way to Make the Best Coffee You’ve Ever Had”:http://www.everything2.org/?node_id=1181742. So, after about a year from first having received it from “Jen & Jode”:http://sojourn-of-grace.net/, I’ve started to use my French Press. I love it — four cups of excellent coffee, no stupid gurgling machine with a ginormous carafe to clean out. Thanks again, Poleys!
* ??Gamespot??: “LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy”:http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/legostarwarstheoriginaltrilogy/index.html. Speaking of George Lucas, there’s a sequel coming for the Lego Star Wars game. Sarah and I were totally ADDICTED to this game for four weeks while we played it through entirely. I can’t wait for the new one.
* ??Mark Pligrm??: “Bye, Apple”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/05/30/bye-apple. Mark ditches Apple in favor of an IBM desktop + Linux. I dunno — I played with Linux a lot in college and found myself screwing around with it more than I was getting work done. Besides, Mac OS and Windows XP both work with my iPod nano. *Update:* Mark “follows up”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks on his decision to walk away from Apple. His argument is compelling, but I’m not so sure going pure-Linux is. Maybe it’s time to start playing with this “Ubuntu”:http://www.ubuntu.com/ everyone’s been “talking about”:http://lunapark6.com/?p=1235.
* ??Engadget??: “Jobs’ glass elevator locks in group customers”:http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/29/jobs-glass-elevator-locks-in-group-customers/ (“via Slashdot”:http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/31/1319243&from=rss). There’s a joke about first-gen Apple technology here, I just _know_ it.
* ??Alex Basko??: “Rustic Vacation: Definition & Introduction”:http://alexbasko.blogspot.com/2006/06/rustic-vacation-definition.html. (RV – cell phone) + fly fishing = sanity
* ??Heather Armstrong??: “He learned this while visiting the University of Wisconsin”:http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily_photo/06_02_2006.html. We need to teach this to “Dina”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/143197375/.
* ??Steve Smith??: “Jackson Smith at Ordered List”:http://jackson.orderedlist.com/. Now THAT’s what I call a baby site (see also “Jai & Beck’s”:http://brinkofski.com/annie, “Russ & Sarah’s”:http://evan.posegate.org)! I’m taking notes for the day we get to make our own announcements. ;-)
* Wikipedia: “Microsoft Access”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Access. I’ve been using MS Access at work again. Access gets a lot of disdain from REAL programmers because, well, it’s a dumbed-down version of SQL + a dumbed-down version of Visual Basic. But, you can do some pretty tricked-out things with Access in a relatively short timeframe. Someone should register pimpmyaccess.com. :)

On the Radar: Apple Retail, Vendetta vs. Da Vinci, and WordPress Tweaks

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* ??NorthJersey??: “Citigroup pulling plug on its AT&T Cash Rewards Card”:http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyOSZmZ2JlbDdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5NjkzODY4NyZ5cmlyeTdmNzE3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTI. Wow, directly relevant to a “brief conversation”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/05/20/on-the-radar-2/#comments about finances on this site, it looks like the AT&T card is now, officially, too good to be true.
* ??The New Yorker??: “Heaven Can Wait”:http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?060529crci_cinema (“via Alissa”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=324). Awesome, snarky review of the sucky Da Vinci code. It’s amazing that this movie has garnered such vilification. Is it because it’s ratio of quality to marketing dollars is so low?
* ??Wired Magazine??: “The Resurrection of Al Gore”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/gore.html. Funny, I just read an article in another magazine that said Al lost the election largely because his handlers told him to marginalize the environment — the one true issue that Gore is passionate about — in his platform against Bush. Yeah, I think if he sounded less like a robot, he would have scored some extra votes, but I don’t think Bush won the election on the basis of his personality. *Bonus*: out today, NPR takes a look at the art and science of Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5428154.
* ??Fortune Magazine??: “Real Estate Survival Guide”:http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/03/news/economy/realestateguide_fortune/index.htm. Fascinating series of articles from Fortune about the impending market correction. A lot of people got in over their heads with the real estate bubble, taking on massive debts in exotic mortgages on property that isn’t worth what they paid for it. The crisis will occur when those mortgages (such as interest-only loans) turn into “real” mortgages and double the monthly payment for a lot of people. It won’t be pretty.
* YouTube: “CNBC Interviews Steve Jobs”:http://youtube.com/watch?v=y6BFhRkUJEI&search=apple,%205th%20avenue (“via John”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2006/may#tue-23-cnbc). CNBC grills Jobs on Apple’s retail strategy, growth, and even the rumored iPhone. A bit weird to see Steve not totally in control of a media situation. :)
* ??New York Times??: “Apple, a Success at Stores, Bets Big on Fifth Avenue”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/technology/19apple.html. In retrospect, success has a way of looking inevitable. But there was considerable skepticism at the outset about what Apple was doing. And others have failed; Gateway closed its retail stores two years ago.
* ??Signal vs. Noise??: “Is Don Norman right about Google?”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/is_don_norman_right_about_google.php. Matt writes up some interesting thoughts on organizations, innovation, and what the intersection of those two things looks like for Google.
* ??Joe Tan??: “WordPress Flickr Post Bar”:http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/wp-flickr-post-bar/. Joe provides a WordPress plugin that lets you post your Flickr photos into blog entries with a helpful upload bar. I used it for “this entry”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/05/20/how-sarah-topped-the-philharmonic/, and it saved a bit of time flipping back and forth from our Flickr acocunt.
* ??WordPress Widgets??: “Drop Down Archives”:http://widgets.wordpress.com/2006/05/23/drop-down-archives/. The XHTML is not quite valid, but a nice little widget that gives you a drop-down of that growing list of archive months. I used it to tidy up this site a bit: our sidebar was becoming a monster, and I didn’t want to devote so much real-estate to links that weren’t getting many clicks. I also shortened the number of blogs we’re displaying on the homepage — less is more.
* ??Metaphilm??: “V for Vindictive”:http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=475_0_2_0. ??Jim Rovira?? takes an incisive look at V for Vendetta against the backdrop of the Wachowski’s previous power vs. freedom dialectic in the Matrices. Interesting reading — I think maybe I’ll go see the movie now. :)
* ??Tyler Hall??: “How To Backup Your Mac Intelligently”:http://www.sitening.com/blog/2006/05/23/how-to-backup-your-mac-intelligently/ (“via Lifehacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/backup/backup-your-mac-the-smart-way-176314.php). We don’t have a good backup solution right now. I just spent an hour pulling data off of Sarah’s old IBM 570 laptop (which is now officially retired) and onto the Powerbook. I do have a backup of our music and documents on an external hard drive that’s at least a month old, but, beyond that, we don’t have a good incremental solution.
* ??John Gruber??: “Confidence Game”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/05/confidence_game. Gruber analyzes Apple’s hitting on all cylinders in the context of Microsoft’s lackluster performance — at least in terms of products. It’s a great article, but if Microsoft were really coming unglued, how is it that they’re returning profits at a growing rate?