Sunrise at Cannon Beach, Oregon — mist, fog, and mood.
Month: September 2004
You need a 2005 wall calendar
This image is available as a calendar, if you like it.
rustic plum tart, unleashed
Well, that was easy and awfully good (half of it has already been dispatched).
The thing it’s resting on is a Matfer Exopat Nonstick Baking/Roasting Sheet that I just got: I have heard/read a lot about these but not even the most effusive praise seems enough. OK, so it’s not such a big deal but anything that saves cleanup and removes the risk of tearing up your creation is worth having.
css fiddling
I think the only aspect of MovableType I miss is the elegant designs: I think Mena had something there. WordPress has a geek ethos about it, with the look and feel having “some assembly required.”
I’m slowly putting together a new face for this site, based on the Gutenberg style listed in the selector. It’s called, oddly enough, new, and is very much a work in progress. The changes are by no means sweeping: I’m just trying to de-clutter the mess I’ve made of things. As soon as I earn enough to get a check from Google, the AdSense stuff is going: I’d pitch it now, but I’m 41¢ from the point where they cut checks. I’ll stick it out. (Of course, it might take the rest of the month to get that.) I may lose the iTunes affiliate link, since I don’t need something I have to maintain: if they can’t rotate ads in, I’m not doing for them.
And I’m going to just simplify the styles, fonts, and colors. As appropriate, I’ll add stuff. And it’s not like you have look at my experiments: the selector will stay there. So if it looks even worse, I’m the only one stuck with it.
Now playing: Airbag by Radiohead from the album “OK Computer” | Buy it
winning the peace
The browser war may be long over, but the lessons of history have much to say about winning the peace.
Now playing: Put The Message In The Box by World Party from the album “Goodbye Jumbo” | Buy it
if we didn’t have Shakespeare, would we have to invent him?
The New York Times > Magazine > Shakespeare’s Leap:
How did Shakespeare become Shakespeare?
(This reminds me: I need a new copy of Harold Bloom’s The Western Canon. This will be the second book I have had to buy this year to replace one I have loaned. I may learn my lesson . . . )
Bloom has written extensively on Shakespeare as the first modern writer, even first modern man, with his gift for understanding the internal workings of other minds and letting them tell their stories in their own words.
Now playing: Big Ben by Roddy Frame from the album “Surf” | Buy it
evolution, reversed
some wags at Harvard’s primate center are having some fun with the president’s alleged similarity to our simian relations . . . a smaller version of this clip is given pride of place on their site’s main page.
[link]
more uses for plums
It occurred to me that someone must have married the flavors of plums and almonds . . . . if you look at the pit of a plum, nectarine, or peach, you can see a resemblance to an almond.
I think I like the rustic look of the first one of these: the second is nice but not my style.
Weir Cooking in the City: Recipes: Little Almond and Plum Galettes
Fresh Plum Galette
Another batch of plum jam today . . . somehow 3 pounds of plums made 4 16 oz jars yesterday but only 3 today. This batch will be better, I think, since I used pectin rather than relying on the plums’ natural reserves of it. I’m surprised how easy the process is: if I had known, I would have started doing this years ago. With a summer like the one we’re just finishing, it’s a shame not to put stuff up: there has been so much of everything.
Now playing: Mixed Up Love by Roddy Frame from the album “Surf” | Buy it
shorter 2000 election recap
GrabTheMic » Zogby: “…no way is he up 11 points”
Whine. Whine. Whine.
Gloat. Gloat. Gloat.
Now playing:Tally Man from the album “Beckology (Disc 1)” | Buy it
insurmountable opportunity
George Lucas afraid of invisible piracy boogieman (kottke.org):
Jason Kottke bursts George Lucas’s bubble: score one for Team Pyjamas. I didn’t realize the studios made more on DVD sales than they do in theaters, keeping up to 80% of each dollar versus 50%. I wonder what the number of DVD players is relative to theater screens?
100 Million DVD Players in the U.S. – DVD Town:
The Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) reported that, so far this year, another 13 million DVD players have been sold in the United States. This increases the total number to an impressive 100 million since the launch of the format in 1997.
In 2002, there were 35,170 indoor screens, and 634 outdoor.
What would you rather do, release a product that can be seen in 36,000 places that people have to travel to and that they find to be more of a hassle each time they go, or sell into a market with 100,000,000 locations, many of which require no travel and scheduling commitments? I’m not sure George is being honest with us or, worse, with himself.
Constant Craving from the album “Ingenue” by k.d. lang