Ploafmaster General

VIRBº finally rolled out the blog import feature.

Thanks to Joshua Blankenship for the heads up. Now I'll finally have some content on my profile page since I write on my own site with reasonable frequency.

McSweeney's has a hilarious piece up about Democratic Presidential candidates.

Clay Risen writes a response for The Morning News' "The Non-Expert" this week about modeling. Check it out and laugh your $400 jeans off.

Once again...this exemplifies why Ask Dan never had a fighting chance :-)

John Gruber's Daring Fireball links to Adobe's new font family, Hypatia Sans Pro. The page describes in excellent detail the background behind the design. Good read, if you're a nerd like me - or simply appreciate good design.

And you thought eating spicy food could lead to hot times on the porcelain bus...

Peep Engadget's story on the Head from Hades.

I don't post often about food, and my few posts have spanned the full range of culinary quality - from a sandwich at 821 Cafe, to the fine dining of 1 North Belmont.

Today, though, I have to opine about Wawa and their quality eats. Yes, Wawa is a convenience store, but man. Their food is a huge step up from their immediate competitor, Sheetz. Wawa eschews variety for quality, limiting it's menu to an assortment of sandwiches and subs, made fresh to order. They use good bread, real cold cuts, and fresh toppings. I'd have to say that the toasted chicken Philly sub has become one of my favorite subs in town.

The side items make the whole meal better, however. Wawa offers up a huge variety of snackable items such as apple slices with caramel or peanut butter, yogurt, fresh fruit cups, or pepperoni slices with cheese cubes and crackers.

It's fair to say that I've had too many meals at Wawa over the past few months, but I've enjoyed every one of them.

Alright...hopefully the final theme change before I rebuild my site.

I found this slick theme today, and I think it demonstrates my Apple nerdiness. You can collapse elements in the sidebar if you want, and rearrange them, too.

Enjoy, or if your Mugs, complain :-)

So you can probably see that I've changed themes...again.

I just updated to the latest version of WordPress (for security reasons), but it broke the VeryPlainText theme. So here we are.

Just biding my time with this anyway while I roll my own blog app...

Two weeks from today will be the last day of work before my vacation. Then, on Saturday, April 28th, Val and I will drive up to Montclair where her mom lives, and on early Sunday morning the three of us will fly out of Dulles International Airport, stopping in San Juan, Puerto Rico on our way to Sint Maarten in the Caribbean. Val's sister will join us there the following day.

I'm REALLY looking forward to this relaxing beach trip...

...that the first thought in my mind, upon seeing the eye-patch-ed cashier at Taco Bell, was "Arrrrr!!!"?

A couple of months ago I joined up with the Central Virginia Ruby Enthusiasts Group - CVREG for short. This is a small but excited group of fellas who seem genuinely to want the use of the Ruby programming language to advance in the Richmond area.

Last night I went to my second meeting - a "code jam" - aimed at getting newer users involved. I'd have to say it was quite excellent. There was camaraderie, good work time, effective networking between IT professionals, and plenty of helpfulness from the experts in the room. These were not th "RTFM" crowd. These guys, rather, are the type who prefer to see questions answered, even if somebody else asked them.

While I suppose it may be a little too early to call it more than a club, I certainly plan on continued participation in the future.

So it feels, lately, that my site here is kind of dead...My last comment was a week ago, and before that a few days. Even Jake and Mugs seem to have quieted down a bit.

This hasn't removed my motivation to keep writing stuff here, however; rather, I've been pretty busy working on my Blog application in my spare computer time, so I've sort of neglected this page. I'm actually quite close to having a really bare prototype of my blog site up on the web soon, however. As soon as I can sort out the routing issues :-)

I read an article on CNN's site today (which I cannot seem to relocate here at home for the life of me) that highlights ABC.com's move from flash-based online video to a new format.

This new technology requires the installation of a small plugin which is definitely available for Firefox, and works in both Windows and OS X.

The essential benefit of this switch is fast-loading, high quality streaming video that's playable "full-screen" (it only filled half the screen on my Macbook Pro). I have to say the quality is impressive. The load time is extremely fast, and you're only interrupted periodically by 30 second ads - less advertising than a regular TV program over all.

It may just be the thing to introduce me to a few ABC programs.

Holy crap.

I mean...wow.

EIGHT CORES.

'Nuff said.

Dale breathed a sigh of relief and dusted off his jacket while he reflected on his narrow escape when, suddenly, before his eyes...

w00t!

I finally got the post categorization functionality to work on my work-in-progress blog app!

I think I'll spend the next hour or so detailing the functions I want, and what I want each function to do. I figure I should outline my goals a little better before I get too ahead of myself and forget to take care of certain things.

I'm just glad to finally build something of my own from scratch, and each small victory is motivation to keep going.

I'm still pluggin' away at my new blog application built in Ruby on Rails, and tonight I managed to get the Post functionality up and running...at least listing and adding.

Once I get a chance I plan to put up a test database on this site and post the blog in progress with frequent updates so I can show you how it's coming along.

Be forewarned, however...I'm working on functionality first - looks last. I already know how I plan to style it, but I have to have the frame before I can add the facade.

This is nerdy, yes, but it's a step in the right direction for my personal development work. Building an app from scratch is enabling me to truly see how this stuff works, after which I'll feel confident enough to offer my services to other people. Rock on!

MaCNN reports that Apple just rolled out a hot new feature in the iTunes store.

Now, if you purchase a single from the store which later appears on an album, you can buy the album from iTunes and receive a full $0.99 credit on the song you already purchased. This works for any purchase of songs from an album with a later purchase of the entire album, with a full credit for each track, as long as the album purchase occurs more no more than 180 days after the song purchase.

Pretty slick! Less buyer's remorse should equal higher sales, methinks.

Not quite...

The Irish singer born Paul David Hewson cannot be called "Sir" rightfully because he isn't a British citizen, according to the BBC who reported on his honorary knighthood today.

I am, without a doubt, sick.

I wanna go home and sleep.

Last night I watched The Motorcycle Diaries, borrowed from my buddy Dave. This gorgeously filmed Che Guevara biopic quickly earned five stars from me because of it's lush photography, fantastic acting, and artfully rendered events in the life of the one-day revolutionary.

I only wish Dave's copy had been in wide screen instead of full-frame :-)

Reeling from the unexpected blow to the forehead, Allen spun around to face his attacker screaming, "..."

Dang...there's a lot of crazy web apps out there intended to "connect" people together.

There's the reprehensible MySpace. I tried it out hoping to drive more traffic here. Didn't really work, but I did get in touch with a few folks I hadn't heard from since high school. That was kinda neat. Now my profile lays dormant with a message pointing people to a different service...

I also tried Facebook (and still sorta use it), but while I gathered "friends" rather quickly, it seems mostly like a way for people to post a few inane messages on the profiles of those folks they don't see too often.

There's del.icio.us, the so-called "social bookmarking" action. I essentially created a profile there for two reasons: 1. Universally accessible bookmarks, and 2. Topical RSS feeds. I don't usually get around to putting much in there, but then I don't suppose I often consider much of my web-reading to be bookmark-worthy.

My neglected Myspace profile now directs people to my presence on VIRBº - a slick new profile/friends/music/etc. site that allows for truly beautiful customization (and naturally the hideous is pretty easy, too). I check that frequently, but most of my real-world friends that use any sites of this nature are still stuck on MySpace or Facebook. So I don't see a lot of activity on my profile.

Finally, there's the new Twitter app. I've already said most of what I can about it for now. I use that pretty heavily, just because it's kinda fun to play around with. And the BBC World updates are quite useful. Again, only a few people I really know use it, so it's not as cool as it could be.

I can't imagine what other forms of Social Networking are around the corner. AOL's Ficlet's looks promising and fun, but trying to keep up with one more thing is onerous and ridiculous at this point. Maybe I'll drop MySpace forever. It's about time. And Facebook? I'm already tiring of it.

There are too many distractions, and I suppose I'm still old-fashioned enough that I prefer to interact with my friends over a sandwich at a local restaurant instead of teh interwebs.

Today, Jake and Nate were gracious enough to help me hang a new front door. The process took nearly twice as long as I thought it would, but after 3.5 hours, my new front door was up and swinging perfectly with it's glorious oil-rubbed bronze hardware assembled.

Now I just need to put in some new weather stripping and a new threshold (and likely a sweep as well) and we'll be all set.

Q: what is your favorite kitchen utensil?

A: Chris, you've asked a question that is very dear to my heart, as I enjoy cooking so much. I revel as excitedly about culinary gear as I do the latest tech gadgetry.

Before I say what my favorite kitchen utensil is, I have to clarify - as oft I am wont - my terms. When I talk about utensils, I don't mean simply that which may be used. In this context I'm talking about purely mechanical implements that aid food preparation. I'll exclude the cookware/bakeware itself, but my definition also excludes electronics such as my KitchenAid stand mixer or my electronic probe thermometer.

All that being said, my favorite Kitchen Utensil is by far the pair of stainless steel Oxo Good Grips tongs. Tongs in general are extremely versatile - whether for fishing something out of a marinade or rotating that pork tenderloin in the frying pan.

Some close runners-up, however, would include my Microplane zester/grater and my 8" Chef's Knife.

There it is...post questions for the next Ask Dan in the comments!