Hand Coding

This may end up being a fairly brief entry as I’ve been crazy-busy at work lately :-/. In any case, I was pleased to learn that the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal regarding Fallwell.com. In case you haven't heard of the case, it was brought by Rev. Dr. Jerry Falwell (one “L” in the middle) about the domain Fallwell.com which parodies him (with two “Ls” in the middle).

In its ruling against Falwell, the lower court wrote, "After even a quick glance at the content of the website … no one seeking Reverend Falwell's guidance would be misled by the domain name http://www.fallwell.com into believing that Reverend Falwell authorized the content of that website."

Falwell has long been a vocal opponent of human rights for gays and is well-known for taking his arguments and reasoning to laughably absurd lengths. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of 2001, for example, Falwell blamed the attacks on gays and lesbians, among others, on Pat Robertson's 700 Club program. He later denied saying what everyone heard him say and finally issued an apology several days later. […]

Well, yay 1st Amendment :).

To me, MySpace is the online equivalent of a mall’s Hot Topic store. In case you're not familiar with them, Hot Topic is a self-described “punk” styled clothing store. However, when that includes Aerosmith and Lynyrd Skynyrd merchandise (no joke), I dare say that their punk-cred would appear somewhat compromised, to say the least. (I’m not casting judgement on Aerosmith or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s musical abilities — they’re just pretty much the opposite of punk.)

All the same, plenty of Generation Y poseurs like to shop at Hot Topic, thinking they’re edgy and counterculture when in reality they’re lining the pockets of The Man. And that’s where MySpace fits in. Sure, many users think of it as their private treehouse for them and their closest friends, but when your treehouse is home to 72 million other people, your exclusive club isn’t so exclusive, now is it?

To be sure, I have nothing against capitalism. Yes, I’m the kind of guy that buys beverages at Starbucks, and happily — hey, if a given company happens to be profitable due to an effective business model, I’m ok with that. (Well, as long as said company isn’t evil; see also Clear Channel.) Having said that, if you like MySpace because it’s a a website offering “photos, blogs, user profiles, groups, and an internal e-mail system”, that’s fine. It just doesn’t mean you’re more 3l337 for the sake of doing so.

Getting back to KMFDM, I enjoy their music and I’m on their online mailing list (so far, so good). However, in the mailing sent out today, they proudly announce the 1-year anniversary of their MySpace page. Well, what’s the use in having a MySpace page if you have a perfectly good actual domain name? All right, the maneuver be excused if they’re merely trying to make their music available to more listeners. All the same, a part of me is worried a bit that KMFDM could be somewhat HotTopicifying itself — making ventures based on marketing perception rather than substance.

I ran across these food photographs featuring miniature people placed to resemble a scene. (I'm still not sure if the people were computer generated — while the ice-cream guy looks pretty real, the lighting on the bikers doesn’t seem quite realistic.)

Anyhow, I really enjoyed the photography there; the narrow depth of field (common to most of the photos along the left side of the page) really made me ask myself whether I’d have any chance at duplicating that type of focus effect. After some further thought, though, I realized that my camera probably can’t reproduce a low enough aperture for that kind of thing.

I have little doubt that some computer manipulations were involved in the images — after all, even the most strict in-camera digital photographer generally does some color balance adjustments here and there. Still, I can’t help but wonder if some of the depth of field effects were applied digitally after the fact. Even if that was the case, though, I wouldn’t hold it against the photographer; all the shots came out really well.

I brush my teeth — but who doesn’t? Anyhow, on a recent trip to Target, I picked up the Refreshing Vanilla Mint flavor of Crest’s Whitening Expressions line. I had previously tried their orange-flavored toothpaste — titled something like Citrus Blast or something equally ridiculous — and it was a pleasant change from the usual mint flavor that toothpastes generally have. Granted, it wasn't exactly like biting into an orange, or even like biting into a piece of orange-flavored Bubblicious, but it made tooth brushing just a tad more palatable.

Getting back to this other flavor, though, I recently noticed that I was running low on my Citrus Whatever tube and so I picked up “Refreshing Vanilla Mint” to give myself some variety. And, it all just went downhill from there…

The canonical vanilla-flavored food item may be vanilla ice cream (with perhaps vanilla yogurt near the top of the list as well). Well, rest assured, this toothpaste resembled neither of those. There was a hint of vanillaness, to be sure, though it somewhat reminded me of the harsh vanilla-like flavor that you might find in a vanilla-themed hard candies.

As for the mint, well, it was there. What can I say — it was pretty much standard-issue toothpaste-mint. Lowest-bidder, factory-borne mint. That alone is perhaps tolerable on the scale of a few minutes here-and-there, such as when brushing one’s teeth; when fused with factory-vanilla, though, the combination is disastrous. Imagine Crest toothpaste in your vanilla latte. Yeah, kinda like that. (Not that Mermaid Coffee uses cheap vanilla, but the end result would be approximately the same.)

In all, I might otherwise recommend the Citrus Whatever flavor of Crest’s Whitening Expressions line. However, after looking over their site, I don’t see it listed any more and I can’t help but wonder if maybe they discontinued it. All the same, since only one of their flavors turned out to be freakishly bad, the others could conceivably be fine. (And, if you can find their Citrus*.* on store shelves, grab it while you can.)

Many news outlets are reporting on a study by Harvard Medical School on the effects of prayer on cardiac bypass patients.

Known as STEP (Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer), it investigated patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery, wherein a vein is grafted into the heart to bypass clogged blood vessels. According to the STEP report, 350,000 people in the United States and 800,000 people worldwide have such grafts each year, making it one of the most common surgical procedures.

[…]

The 1,802 participants were divided into three groups of about 600 each, with a mean age of 64 years. One group received no prayers. A second group received prayers after being told that they may or may not be prayed for. Members of the third group were informed that others would pray for them for 14 days starting on the night before their surgery.

[…]

In total, complications occurred in 59 percent of those who were prayed for, compared with 51 percent of those who received no prayers, a significant difference.

Deaths during the 30 days after surgery were similar across groups, 13 and 16 in the prayed-for group, 14 in the no-prayer group. […]

I find myself intrigued by these types of studies. Having said that, in the interest of trying not to alienate readers who may be religious nor readers who may be agnostic or atheistic, I think I’ll refrain from saying much more. All the same, if you want to know my thoughts on this, feel free to ask me in real life.

Jones Soda is a self-described alternative soda company started in 1987 which is famous in part for its unconventional flavors such as Blue Bubblegum and Watermelon. In any case, they’ve recently achieved distribution at Target and that’s where I first ran across them. The first flavor of theirs that I tried was their Sugar Free Cola and, to be fair, it was pretty good. It’s sweetened with Splenda and even my sugar-soda drinking chum Matt was pleasantly surprised.

Recently, though, I thought to try their Sugar Free Green Apple. Oh, what a mistake that was — it’s almost undrinkable:

• Color — The first thing I noticed about the soda was its color as I poured it into a glass. Roughly speaking, it very similar to the color of a lime green popsicle. And, if that’s giving you the heebie-jeebies already, you’re on the right track. Needless to say, subtlety is not this soda’s string suit.

• Taste — This was the soda’s downfall for me. The color should have been a warning sign to me, but, yes, it pretty much tastes like carbonated Kool-Aid. If you’ve ever had the Green Apple flavor of Dum Dum Lollipops, I believe that precise flavoring was used here.

That’s not to say that all Jones Soda should be avoided. In fact, their Twisted Lime sounds rather tempting. All the same, I’d stay far away from their Green Apple; it wasn’t their flavor scientists’ finest hour.

I was familiarized with the idea of “sunken costs” during Jason Fried’s 2005 panel at SXSW on How to Make Big Things Happen with Small Teams. I had heard the term before, but didn't entirely grok its meaning until Jason went over a few anecdotes (in the context of small teams, natch). One example he gave is that a small company may buy a new server with the expectation that they’ll need it as part of an upcoming project; however, when it comes to the stage in the project, if it no longer makes sense to use the server, then it shouldn't be used (since the money is gone, either way).

I've internalized this thought process for my personal life, to some extent, but I haven’t really been able to explain it well to others. I ran across an entry in Wikipedia on Sunk Costs which I thought explained it fairly well:

Economists argue that, if you are rational, you will not take sunk costs into account when making decisions. In the case of the movie ticket, there are two possible end results. You will either have:

1. Paid the price of the ticket and suffered watching a movie that you do not want to see, or;
2. Paid the price of the ticket and used the time to do something more fun.

In either case, you have “paid the price of the ticket” so that part of the decision should cancel itself out. If you regret buying the ticket because you do not think the movie is worth the money then your current decision should be based on whether you want to see the movie at all, regardless of what you have paid for it — just like deciding whether you want to go to a free movie. […]

Or, put another way, here’s a scenario that may have occurred to you in real life. Suppose that you go out for dinner, enjoy the entree, and afterwards order a slice of chocolate cake from the dessert menu. Perhaps your eyes were bigger than your stomach, though and you start to become full halfway through the cake. At this point, there are two ways this could end up — either you will have:

1. Paid for the chocolate cake but eaten all of it anyway, or…
2. Paid for the chocolate cake but refrained from finishing the slice

Either way, you’ve paid for the cake. So, you may as well base your decision on whether to finish eating the slice on factors other than whether you’ve paid for the cake :).

I think we’ve all e-mailed someone — or a group of people — but forgot to attach the file that we referenced in the message (d’oh). Well, thanks to a handy extension for Thunderbird that I ran across, that may be a thing of the past :). AttachmentRemember checks a message for keywords before it’s sent; and, if it finds any of those keywords but the message doesn’t have any files attached, a warning dialog pops up.

For example, suppose you set it up to look for the word “attach” (which will also catch “attachment” and “attached”, for example, since AttachmentRemember does substring matches). Anyhow, if you were to then write a message with the subject line “Proposal attached” but click Send before attaching any files, a little dialog box would pop up asking if maybe the message should have an attachment.

The idea seems obvious, now that I’ve heard of it, but I’m not sure I would have come up with it on my own. If you choose to download it, though, just be sure to edit the extension’s options before using it (Tools → Extensions → AttachmentRemember → Options) as the list of keywords that it looks for is empty by default.