Pizza Hut Now Serving Vegetables
Nick Rallo:
Before we all stuffed our bodies with Thanksgiving last week, Congress declared pizza a vegetable. Only not really. Tomato paste, which is obviously associated with pizza, was declared a vegetable. ... Meanwhile, in San Antonio, where the above photo was taken (via Reddit's San Antonio page), Pizza Hit is enjoying Congress's findings.
So You Want to be an Entreprenuer
Dave Winer:
I'm afraid the adults are not levelling with the young folk. And we should be. Even the universities glorify the idea of being the next Zuck. That's like betting your future on winning the lottery. And you're not going to win the lottery. And you're not the next Zuck.
Marco Arment:
Previous-me tried to persuade everyone to switch to my setup, but I now know that it's not worth the effort. I'll never know someone else's requirements, environment, or priorities as well as they do. I don't know shit about Windows or Outlook or architecture.You should use whatever works for you. And I no longer have the patience or hubris to convince you what that should be. All I can offer is one data point: what I use, and how it works for me.
My thoughts exactly. His post could have been a page right out of my own journal.
“The End of Local Radio”? Reports Say Clear Channel May Be About to Go All “Robotics."
Robert Wilonsky:
Clear Channel owns and operates six radio stations in the Dallas-Fort Worth market: KDGE-FM, KDMX-FM, KEGL-FM, KFXR-AM, KHKS-FM and KZPS-FM. But several times this morning, Friends of Unfair Park have sent this piece from Time Out Chicago that says at any moment, any or all of them could lose their local voices.
Rick Perry’s Balanced-Budget Illusion
Jim Schutze:
...if you want to know what a state really owes, you have to add up all of what it owes to its own pension funds and other public obligations, as well as gimmicks like the ones reported in the Star-Telegram. When you do that for Texas, we're in the top five debtor states in the country with California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. We're actually in 48th place -- with California in 50th as the most debt-ridden. Our debt per capita ranking is not great -- 29th place.
And Perry’s holding this up as a model of a well balanced budget? Remind me again, why we didn’t tell him to “Adios, mofo” in the last gubernatorial election.
Peter Bright:
But in many ways, the thing that cemented Windows XP's status wasn't Windows XP itself: it was the lack of any successor. Microsoft's Longhorn project, an ambitious plan to radically rework Windows, with an all-new set of APIs and a database-like filesystem, was delayed and ultimately abandoned entirely. Windows Vista, a massively scaled back, more conservative release, eventually arrived in 2006, but by this time Windows XP had become so dominant that users, particularly business users, didn't want a new operating system. That Windows Vista had trouble in its early days, thanks to its steeper hardware demands, its polarizing appearance, and display driver issues--mirroring, in many ways, Windows XP's own introduction--just served to entrench Windows XP further. Business users stuck with Windows XP, and Windows Vista struggled to ever make a serious dent in its predecessor's market share, peaking at just 19 percent in the final days before Windows 7's release.
If Apple were to make a thermostat, it would be like this.
UPDATE: It’s made by the guy who created the iPod.
Solid update to a great productivity tool that, although I’ve used it for years, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of it’s potential.
Jeff Atwood:
As an adult, you may think you've roughly mapped the continent of love and relationships. You've loved your parents, a few of your friends, eventually a significant other. You have some tentative cartography to work with from your explorations. You form ideas about what love is, its borders and boundaries. Then you have a child, look up to the sky, and suddenly understand that those bright dots in the sky are whole other galaxies.
Posts like this both excite and freak me out. My Henry is coming at the end of this year, and the only thing I seem to know is that I don’t really know what I’m in for.
Talk the Talk: Mayor Mike’s Pals Shovel Up the BS at Council Retreat
Jim Schutze:
I feel sorry for the rest of the city council having to sit through this kind of goofy-ass bullshit. I wish we could have a mayor who knows how to be mayor instead of how to do Ouija-board tricks for out-of-it corporate Moonies still high from their last group herbal massage and martini hours.
Schutze sure has a way with words.
Slowly But Surely, Elm Street’s History is Being Erased One Old Building at a Time
Robery Wilonsky:
Those buildings are just two being added to the growing pile of rubble up and down Elm, which is slowly but surely being shed of whatever history that remains: "In the course of eight months," writes Noah, "807 Elm, 1600 Elm, 1604 Elm, 2222 Elm, 2224 Elm and 2226 Elm will have been leveled."
In case you forgot why we’re called the city with no history.
Oracle JDK7 Mac OS X Port Developer Preview Release
java.net:
The Developer Preview should work on any Intel-based Mac, and has been tested on Mac OS X 10.6.8 and 10.7.0.
This is an important first step in the new world order for Java and Mac OS X. Java 7 will be the first Java release for the Mac not released by Apple. Once upon a time, the Mac was considered the best platform for Java. When Apple announced it would discontinue official support for Java, many began to question the future of Java on the Mac.
As a Java developer, I hope Oracle will continue to put out a quality product so that I can continue to make my living on my platform of choice.
Paul wants to phase out federal student loans
Associated Press:
Republican presidential contender Ron Paul said Sunday he wants to end federal student loans, calling it a failed program that has put students $1 trillion in debt when there are no jobs and when the quality of education has deteriorated.
When you consider that the average student that graduates with a Bachelors degree has $23,186 in student loan debt, and that the unemployment rate for recent graduates is on the rise, this sounds like a pretty good idea.
(via Slashdot)
1/2 of US Qualifies for Affordable Housing
Larry James:
So, over one half of all working Americans are eligible to occupy one of our [low-income] apartments!
Anna Merlan:
[Frank Lutz offered] the city council members [a list of] "good" words versus "great" words. Don't say "sustainability," but use terms such as "cleaner, safer and healthier." Instead of saying "working together," say "partnership." In place of "sacrifice," use, "We're all in this together." Don't "inform" the public, "educate" the public. (So if you notice a sudden shift in city council's vocabulary, that would be why.)
I’m so glad they spent $15k of our tax money on this. (Plus another $15k private donation.)
Meanwhile, my council person, Angela Hunt, had this to say:
I think we just wasted $30,000 on a banal presentation that could have been provided as a handout ... I'm not interested in how we develop better messages to better manipulate the public's perception, or learning buzzwords to prompt the most visceral reaction.
It’s moments like this that make me glad I voted to re-elect her.
Dean Brackley:
The problem for us is that the new freedoms and economic security have distanced the non-poor from the kind of daily life-and-death struggle that has been the daily fare of the poor of all times right up to today. Maybe 90 percent of all the people who ever lived have struggled every day to keep the household alive against the threat of death through hunger, disease, accidents and violence. By distancing the non-poor from the daily threat of death, the benefits of modernity have induced in us a kind of chronic lowgrade confusion about what is really important in life, namely life itself and love.
What’s Better than One Giant Ferris Wheel?
Because: “Why not?”
J.L. Long library mural painted by Hall of State artist
Rick Wamre:
Few people know that J.L. Long Middle School and the Texas State Fair Hall of State building have something in common. In 1934, students watched as well-known local Dallas artist from the era, artist Olin Herman Travis (1888-1975), painted the “Food” mural in the school library. It was one of the WPA arts projects produced in Dallas during the Depression. Mr. Travis is also known for two murals he painted in the Hall of State at Fair Park.
Women’s Museum in Dallas to close
Gaile Robinson:
The 11-year-old institution, located in Dallas' historic Fair Park district, will close its art deco doors after the State Fair.
Another blog? Really? Don't you have enough of these already?
The real answer, is that I have too many of these and I need to consolidate. When I post something online, it’s usually either a link to something I found interesting or it’s a full page blog post that’s been gestating in my brain for a while. Up until now, I’ve had two separate avenues for publishing this content. Links went to my linkblog (and from there to Twitter and Facebook). Full posts went to my blog (often with a link to the post being added to the linkblog).
I rarely post full posts, most of the stuff I post are links to other sites. The linkblog is great, but it has one flaw: there’s just not a good place to add my commentary. This is important because often I will want to share a link that I do not agree with, but find interesting. When you post a link to Twitter, it’s implied that you like and agree with what you’ve just linked to. I really want some space (more than 140 characters minus the url) to add my 2 cents.
This blog represents the combination of the full blog and link blog. Most posts will be just a link to something else with a quote and some comments. Nothing more. Occasionally I’ll hop up here and ramble for a full page, but that doesn’t happen too often.
When I was in kindergarten, I published a newsletter called Ted’s Tidbits and passed it out to my classmates. (Actually I’m pretty sure my Dad did most of the work on this one.) I don’t remember much about that except for what it looked like and the name. Considering I’m really just commenting on what I find as I read the internet, I think the name fits this format perfectly.
Like everything else I’ve done online, this is an experiment. We’ll see how well that goes.
Oh yeah, I definitely ripped off daringfireball.net with this site.
The State Fair of Texas starts today, and I’m very excited! The State Fair is a family tradition for us, and so we go early and go often.
This year, we’ve decided to take our combined 160 years of fair-going experience and share it. If you want to learn how to visit the Fair like the Howards, make sure you follow http://howardguide.com. We’ll be posting our tips and reviews on all things State Fair of Texas.
Now, I’m off to the Fair!
I was talking with my friend Josh the other day about how easily we forget things. We both have a problem with reading books: we tend to forget most of the material. When reading for fun, this isn’t a big deal, although it can be embarassing. (I read Ender’s Game twice without realizing it.) When reading a business or technical book, it can become problematic. What’s the point of reading the book if you don’t put it into practice?
This morning, I was again thinking about how to best retain what I read, when I ‘heard’ the word retain in a different context in my head. Bear with me now as I attempt to compare self-improvement with iPhone application design.
When you build an iPhone application, you store lots of ‘stuff’ in memory: images, web content, other information, etc. Often that same stuff will be used in different places inside the same application. For example, in a game, you might want to display the high score on the game screen itself and on another summary screen that could include a list of high scores, so you design the application so that both screens have access to the section of memory that stores the high score. When you do this on the iPhone, you also need to tell each screen to retain that section of memory. The reason for doing this is that as soon as the iPhone doesn’t think that memory is being used, whatever was stored there is erased and made available for storing something else.
Did you catch that? Unless your application specifically retains a section of memory, whatever was stored there will be lost forever.
Back to reading. When you read something important, you need to do something with that knowlegde quickly or it will be lost. This is why the best students are the ones that take notes in class and when they read. It’s not necessarily that the notes are beneficial later (although they often are), it’s that the act of taking notes engages the brain in a way that casues it to retain the knowledge.
Taking notes is a good step, but an even better solution is to attempt to use the knowlegde for something real. The best way to learn a new programming language is by writing a real program in that language. If you’re reading a book on time management, put the strategies to practice immediately as you are reading the book. The more you use the knowledge, the more of it you retain.
A few years ago, I read Getting Things Done. It’s a great book, and it’s helped me a little, but not very much. I’m practically as disorganized as I ever was. Why? Because I read that book a few chapters at a time either in bed or in a comfortable chair. I read it the same way I read a novel. I picked up some decent tips, but I’ve forgotten most of the material. I’ve decided to read it again, only this time I’m going to play along as I read. I want to retain and use all of the knowledge in that book, so I’m going to try to put it into practice immediately. I hope it sticks this time.
What about you? How do you retain what you read?
On Saturday, I wanted to share a video I had made with some friends. I used iMovie to produce the video, so I just used the built in sharing support to upload the video to Facebook. It was really easy to to, and just a second later my phone dinged with a Facebook notification for me, but it wasn’t what I expected. I figured my video was done encoding and was ready to be shared. Instead it was a message that Facebook had removed my video because it contained copyrighted material. I had to acknowledge that I had read the message and understand that if I uploaded copyrighted material again, I could be banned from Facebook.
Did I include copyrighted material in my video? Well, yes I did. The music was the opening theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I legally obtained. I didn’t really think much of it because I wasn’t doing a promotional video for a company or trying to sell anything. I just wanted to share a fun video with my friends. Then I thought, maybe YouTube has a different policy. I’ve seen videos with copyrighted soundtracks in them there before.
So I uploaded the video to YouTube. It uploaded, processed, and I received an email telling me that they discovered a copyrighted soundtract, but that I shouldn’t worry about it. They took care of everything. So I went to view my video and discovered what they meant. The way they took care of it was by removing the audio completely from the video, which in my case, ruins the video.
This is completely ridiculious! I’m not trying to profit off of their material. I think 2001: A Space Odyssey has been out long enough that a silly video shared between friends isn’t going to dilute or damage their brand. Plus, isn’t everything a remix anyway?
Then my solution became very obvious to me: I’ll just host the video myself. That’s kind of the point behind ec2 for Poets, Blork and the World Outline: control your own content. Those tools made it very easy for me (once I had my video encoded) to build a landing page with a video player, create an easy to remember link (odyssey.infoted.com), and share it with my friends.
Self Hosting Matters.
Can’t see the video? Click here.
I usually avoid making predictions about what Apple is going to do, but when this one came to me on my way to work this morning, I felt it was too good to ignore.
Here’s what we know:
My prediction is that in this fall’s announcement, the iPod Touch will be going away, and that it will be replaced by the iPhone Wi-Fi.
Most people refer to the iPod Touch as an “iPhone without the phone.” With FaceTime and iMessages, the iPod Touch essentially becomes a phone. The only difference is that it can only connect to a Wi-Fi network, not a 3G network. The iPad line is currently split into Wi-Fi and 3G, it makes sense to me to do the same with the iPhone.
I’m probably wrong, and I’m ok with that. You have to admit, this sounds plausible, doesn’t it?