brett's logjam

• 100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know published by Houghton Mifflin Company
  I missed “abstemious” and “jejune.” Damnit.
  (tags: words)
• Hoopty Rides: Navy X-Ray Facility
  What do you call 4’ thick walls? How about, “a good start?”
  (tags: x-ray architecture)
• Political Arithmetik: Presidential Approval in Historical Perspective
  Graphing the Gallup data.
  (tags: statistics)
• 86 Mac Plus Vs. 07 AMD DualCore. You Won’t Believe Who Wins
  (Hint: it’s not the AMD.)
  (tags: computer productivity nothing-new-under-the-sun)

• Tweet = Twitter + Quicksilver
  Just installed, works great. Oh my, look out, Twitter.
  (tags: twitter quicksilver cleanup)

• Embiggen, a perfectly cromulent word (kottke.org)
  A paper on string theory uses a word from The Simpsons. (“A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” — Lisa Simpson.)
  (tags: simpsons language embiggen)

• Data Robotics, Inc.
  Home of the drobo. Silly name, great idea.
  (tags: data storage backup)

Jack, one of Colonial Williamsburg’s carriage horses, pauses for a close-up.

• blog.pmarca.com: The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity
  On not keeping a schedule, lists, and productivity porn.
  (tags: pmarca productivity schedule I-have-too-many-meetings)
• Time Machine For Tiger | Mac Geekery
  Using rsync, of course. What else?
  (tags: rsync backups)
• Colonial Williamsburg Journal: Summer 2007
  Learn about counterfeiting, goods of the trades, wills, rare sheep, and kitchens.
  (tags: williamsburg journal)

Why yes, Coke is on sale at Ukrops for $0.88 a bottle, with no limit. Why do you ask?

• Your Ugly Mailbox: Save the Manatees!
  “Somebody notify Greenpeace.”
  (tags: mailbox atrocities)

• blog.pmarca.com: Essential HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and miscellaneous cheatsheets
  Good collection of collections. Meta-collecting, mmmm.
  (tags: CSS HTML javascript php reference)

• The Old New Thing : Performance gains at the cost of other components
  Why windows takes so long to load.
  (tags: OS vs Applications)

From Banjocat:

Photos, too.

I don’t really talk a lot about my drive, because, you know, it’s boring.

But tonight was a doozy! Thunderstorms followed us the entire way home.

No, really. When I left at 6 I drove right into one. Stopped for dinner, back on the road at 7, get down past Quantico, blammo, right into a major storm.

7:45 pm, we’re still in the red:

It followed us the entire way down I-95.

A brief reprieve right outside of Richmond around 8:30, then right back into the red at 9:00:

Exciting stuff, I tell you! My headlights and windshield haven’t been this clean in months!

(P.S. The best part? It still hasn’t rained here. Just lots and lots of lightning.)

• OpenDNS launches free porn filter
• ikea hacker: hide your battery chargers in snack boxes
  One of the better “hide your charger” hacks I’ve seen.
  (tags: ikea cord management)

• macosxhints.com - Change the login window background picture - revisited
  Terminal and plist versions.
  (tags: mac osx wallpaper)

One of the trees in the Bruton Parish Church graveyard.

A Gray Catbird (Dumetella carolinensis) has a snack while perching on a fence outside the St. George Tucker House in Colonial Williamsburg.

I was really quite happy with how this series of shots turned out; the Tucker House always provides a nice striking background. (I think the second shot is my favorite for exactly this reason; the background is outstanding.)

And, you know, I’m there every week. So it’s not really out of my way.

This bird rooted around on the ground for a little while before moving up to the top of the fence. I didn’t know what he had in his mouth until after I viewed it on my computer.

Mmmm, tasty.

Because my son loves horses, I am now able to identify most of the horses that pull Colonial Williamsburg’s carriages on sight. For example:

That’s Jack and Jill; I recognized them because Jack could stand to lose a few pounds. (And by a few, I mean a lot.)

Jack, of course, is usually in the pasture on DoG street, greedily taking handouts from the visitors. He looks much more dignified in this picture than when he’s snarfing grass from kids.

• TwiTunes Applescript
  More Twitter Applescripts, this one for iTunes.
  (tags: twitter itunes applescript)
• MacDevCenter.com: Macintosh Home Monitoring
  (tags: home automation macosx)

Where? At the Williamsburg Farmer’s Market, of course.

• iPhone Delivers Up to Eight Hours of Talk Time
  Glass surface, too. via Daring Fireball.
  (tags: iphone battery scratch screen)

• James City County Service Authority - Outdoor Water Use: Water Restrictions
  Rules governing the water use in our county. (Cheat sheet for me: W/F/Sun, before 9 and after 5)
  (tags: jamescitycounty water)
• Jeffrey Zeldman Presents : “Maybe” is one option too many
  ‘”Maybe” is one option too many. As a best practice, we should dispense with it, just as we should replace five-star rating systems with four-star ones.’
  (tags: HCI ratings ui psychology)
• The Pmarca Guide to Big Companies, part 1: turnaround!
  Nine steps to turning around a company. Nice.
  (tags: Yahoo)

Perhaps there’s no more fitting tribute to Stargate SG-1 ending ten years on the air than this clip, I’m stuck on a glacier with MacGyver!

(Via Gateworld’s Farewell to SG-1.)

(Taken at the NRAO 50th Anniversary Symposium.)