July 2009 Archives

This one comes from the brilliant mind of Chris Finne, a great Ruby-on-Rails developer. He forwarded me a table from MyWireless.org which shows the state tax rate on wireless bills. It's 2 years old, so things might have changed. But it shows a range from 1.66% (Oregon) to 18.35% (Nebraska).

Since wireless plans these day pretty much all have free long distance and phone number portability, and since you can manage your entire account online, the actual address where your phone is registered is irrelevant. However, you probably do want a friend or someone you know at the registered address, just so they can receive any physical mail regarding your account and pass it onto you (or at least not send it back as undeliverable).

According to the data I have, the lowest taxes are in OR, NV, ID, DE, MA, MT, and WV in that order. Or, a better tactic might be just to go to MyWireless.org and check the taxes in the states where you have friends who's mailing address you can use.

I haven't actually tried this, so I can't vouch for the effectiveness or even legality of it, but I love the idea conceptually. I'd love to hear from you if you or anyone you know does this. Happy tax-reduction!

I grew up drinking soda. The more sickly sweet and fruity, the better. My favorite was Tahitian Treat, but I also went for Fanta and Crush. Then in college I graduated to Kool Aid. It was cheap, and as sugary as I wanted it to be.

Recently I've been drinking juice. Trader Joe's has some fantastic flavors like Ruby Red Grapefruit and Mango Lemonade. But my taste for sweet is getting a bit more subdued.

While I was traveling in Africa, the camps greeted us with iced tea and grenadine as a refresher at check-in. It was good stuff. And it was then I realized that iced tea didn't need to be made from caffeinated tea. OK, so maybe this is obvious to you all, but I put it in the category of obvious in retrospect.

Since I've been back, I've been teaing it up. We've got a cabinet full of Celestial Seasonings from a trip to Boulder a few years back, and we simply weren't drinking it very fast. Now we are. 3 bags to a pitcher. Fill with hot water. Add  quarter cup of sugar. Steep for 15-30 min. Chill. Perfection.

Yes, they are a bit offensive to some (so if you easily offended, I suggest you move on), but these are some of my favorite jokes:

What do you call a guy with no arms and no legs...

in your pool?
Bob

in your hot tub?
Stu

on your front porch?
Matt

in your mailbox?
Bill

hanging on the wall?
Art

on the BBQ grill?
Frank

and his sister?
Patty

in a hole in the ground?
Phil

lying next to a hole in the ground?
Doug

stuck in a bog?
Pete

in a pile of leaves?
Russell

water-skiing?
Skip

on the beach?
Sandy

under your car?
Jack

under your bed?
Dusty

on a tree limb?
Leif

and his brother?
Bud

on the side of a mountain?
Rocky

lying on the railroad tracks?
Spike

What do you call a gal with only one leg?

Eileen

What if she's Japanese?
Irene

What do you do with a dog with no legs?

Take him out for a drag.

Here in the heart of the enterprise software market, fonts come in two flavors: serif (Times) and sans (Arial). It's hard to make a big visual change in any UI without also making changes to the typography. Luckily, we're moving into an era where alternate type faces are becoming trivial to add to your design.

SIFR and FaceLift are a couple of tools to do this in web pages today, but they're not exactly easy to use. I still can't figure out why SIFR text is showing up tiny in Safari for my site Rated-Best.org. But with the release of Firefox 3.5 and Safari 4, mainstream browsers are now starting to support @font-face. Here's a nice example page using @font-face.

Plus at my company, teams are using Adobe Flex and Air to develop rich apps that span web and desktop, and run on Mac and Windows. This gives us the ability to embed alternate fonts in these rich apps.

This is where Font Squirrel comes in. It's a great resource for designers at companies where you want to explore alternate typography, but you don't want to burn any capital on purchasing font licenses. These fonts are free to use for commercial applications. Check them out, use them in your projects, and if things go well, use that success as a way to move up to a broader palette of paid-license fonts.

I loved it. My favorite Pixar movie, by far. And they are all really good. These guys just know how to perfectly craft a story.

The dogs with collars were fantastic. I need those for my dogs. :-)

Here's an interesting article from New Scientist on the environment impact of the children people choose to have. Worst case (if impact continues to rise) is that each child would contribute 8× your personal impact. Assuming children (and their progeny) have the same impact we do today, each child would contribute 6×. And even in the best case scenario of shrinking impact, each child would add 1/3×.

The main point is that it's not zero. Like the other choices one makes in their life -- such as where to live, how to travel, and what to eat -- how many kids to have is an equally profound question from an environmental standpoint.

Here's the post on the Peta blog.

It was fun. a bit warm, but then I had my CamelBak on in the costume to keep hydrated. The worst part was the costume is clearly designed for a shorter person. With my arms down, my eyes were above the carrot's eyes, so I could only see the ground in front of me. That's why I kept my arms up as much as I could, so I could see better with the costume hiked up. Next time, I'm going to add padding to the top of the costume, and I'll wear my skating helmet to reduce friction and make it easier to turn my head. Next time?! Maybe...

I'm a pretty simple guy, and I adore a simple aesthetic. I don't consider myself an Apple snob, but I really do love the clean and simple design aesthetic they have for their products. This is all the more apparent when contrasting with their competitors.

I got a Lenovo T61 laptop at my new job. It's a pretty decent computer overall, but I really, really, REALLY disliked all of the clutter on the case. There are the stickers advertising the processor and the OS. The inset shiny silver logo cocked ever so jauntily at an angle on the right side. And worst of all, a row of useless lighted icons behind the keyboard that blink randomly like so many props on the bridge of some low-budget sci-fi movie from 20+ years ago.

So I got to fixing it. I removed the sticker and the glue. That was reasonably easy. Then I got out the black electrical tape and cut a piece that fit perfectly in the logo depression. and finally, I put a strip of tape over the row of lights.

It's not quite as elegant as a Mac, but it's a lot less annoying. And I do have to admit, I really like the fingerprint scanner for unlocking my computer. Now when will my mobile phone's proximity do the same?