found_drama

• 15 Things Worth Knowing About Coffee
  at The Oatmeal — I love this design.
  (tagged: coffee design visualization )
• Fox News Fact-Checks Sarah Palin’s Coin Conspiracy Theory (VIDEO)
  short version: "Sarah Palin is too crazy even for the crazy network." Personally I'd like it if "In God We Trust" came off the money all together (it's part of the reason I don't carry cash?)
  (tagged: money politics atheism crazytalk news )
• Vermont City Almost Encased In a 1-Mile Dome
  a Slashdot News Story — I found out about this years ago and have been telling it to damn near everyone. And no one believes me. Even a few native Vermonters. Not that I'm relying on /. to up my credibility but still—thanks for backing me up, CmdrTaco.
  (tagged: Vermont Winooski geodesic dome absurd surreal )
• 5 Simple, But Useful CSS Properties
  (tagged: css webdev work todo )
• Daring Fireball Linked List: Lots of Excuses
  Perhaps a bit meta but to sum up: this is a good, paradigmatic microcosm of where I think the Android is currently "going wrong". And let's not get me wrong: I wish Android nothing but success—I want it to be as hugely popular/successful a platform as the iPhone. But this is a worrying trend, don't you think? I could link back to Gruber linking back to someone else again here: when we talk about mobile decides—especially mobile "touch" devices—we're talking about how badly there needs to be a common interface language that is not "owned" by any singular entity. Tapping, dragging, pinch-to-zoom, etc. That needs to be taken as the de facto way to interact (and that's just talking about ONE FACET of the the user-input aspect of this discussion). I think it's inevitable that these things will work themselves out (and quickly) over the next couple months and then developers on the non-dominant platforms will be playing a game of "refactor-or-perish".
  (tagged: mobile touch ux ui )
• Move Your Home Folder Off Your SSD Boot Drive in OS X
  at Ransom Note Typography (via DF)
  (tagged: osx ssd mac hack hardware todo )

A self-professed miser and amateur budgeteer, I’ve been hearing rumors of Mint.com’s awesomeness for quite some time now.  A long-time Quicken user, I’ve been a bit reluctant to try it out — once I’ve gotten into the groove of a particular apparatus or routine, I’m loathe to break from it¹.

But Quicken has left me feeling wanting for a while now², despite (or perhaps because of?) how entrenched in it I’d become.

So I decided to give Mint.com the ol’ college try for (give or take) 30 days:

Read the rest of this entry »

1. Not for lack of an innovative spirit, mind you.  But on certain fronts (i.e., tracking your household expenses), the reward for even trying something different seems so… not worth it. [↩]
2. Brief and informal list of complaints against Quicken:  (1) I don’t really like how it does budgets [and consequently, I don't use the budgets feature]; (2) it stopped syncing with my bank statements more than two years ago and no amount of “resetting” the application seems to help for longer than two cycles; and (3) the reporting is all manual and tedious and the UI is just so clunky… [↩]

• Cutting The Grocery Bill–How?
  at Al Dente
  (tagged: food groceries budget money essay todo )
• Gantter Does Project Management in Your Browser
  at LifeHacker
  (tagged: lifehacks productivity projectmanagement GTD projects )
• Polar Rose
  via LifeHacker: "Naming is sharing!" — face recognition for Flickr? on the web?
  (tagged: software tools photography flickr social todo )
• Ajax Experience Talks: Resig, Slocum, and Heilmann
  at Ajaxian
  (tagged: javascript webdev video css todo work )
• Tech Test Drive: Nothing small about Mac Mini’s media-center capabilities
  at TwinCities.com (via Apple News)
  (tagged: MacMini Apple hardware todo )
• 64 Things Every Geek Should Know
  at LaptopLogic.com — a couple of fun-looking projects on here.
  (tagged: hack todo )
• Confluence and JIRA – 5 users for $5
  at Atlassian Developer Blog — no catch!
  (tagged: Confluence JIRA Atlassian via:fogus )

• Doug Rushkoff on DIY currencies
  at B²
  (tagged: currency money economy research )
• NEW MATH by Craig Damrauer
  via DF: worth a link, for sure. worth a few minutes for a smile and a chuckle.
  (tagged: design visualization graphics humor math )
• iPhone Wrestling Smackdown: WWE vs. TNA
  via The Apple Blog: tempting… if only for André the Giant.
  (tagged: wrestling games )
• FireDiff: Firebug extension to track changes to DOM and CSS
  at Ajaxian: worth checking out…..?
  (tagged: webdev css javascript Firefox extensions Firebug )
• VIable Paradise: week-long intensive science fiction writing workshop on Martha’s Vineyard
  at B²: every year, I tell myself: "this year… well, maybe next year…"
  (tagged: scifi writing workshop )
• Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Include Jeffrey Ford, Margo Lanagan, Jack O’Connell
  at Omnivoracious: more to add to the to-read list…
  (tagged: literature todo )
• Look at this fucking hipster
  I mean… Just LOOK at these fucking hipsters!
  (tagged: blog humor anthropology hipster culture fashion )
• An interactive map of vanishing employment across the country.
  By Chris Wilson (Slate Magazine): if you're morbidly interested, click-through; if you're the kind of person that cringes when you watch eye-ball surgery on the Health Channel… Well, maybe I can find a link to icanhazcheezburger around here somewhere…
  (tagged: visualization economy business timeline news )

• Tauntaun Sleeping Bag
  ThinkGeek wins the price this year for best April Fool's prank. Hands down.
  (tagged: geek fun kids wishlist starwars blog )
• Wrong Tomorrow – pundits vs. time
  via fogus, DF — rejected alternate title "pundit fail"?
  (tagged: prediction future blog )
• SXSW Typography: Quit Bitchin and get Your Glyph on
  If there's nothing in here about Unicode symbols, I'm filing a complaint.
  (tagged: webdev typography fonts Unicode todo )
• 5 Reasons Renting Still Beats Buying
  5 reasons this article is stupid: (1) stocks are just as (if not more) likely to experience value fluctuations [they are not intrinsically safer]; (2) there's evidence that housing prices have already bottomed out [but that said, it depends on the region anyway]; (3) he's assuming you WANT to buy a big ass, energy burning house; (4) [see #3]; and (5) neighborhoods changing is a BAD thing…?
  (tagged: money news economy mortgage )
• Graphic Novel Friday: Waltz with Bashir
  at Omnivoracious — looks interesting
  (tagged: Beirut war comic todo )

• Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
  Great article, even if it glosses over certain things. Especially good in combination with: crisisofcredit.com — that said, I'm still not sure what a "credit default swap" is…
  (tagged: money economy business math )
• Italian Food and Woodworking
  "Does enlightenment bring with it responsibility and obligation? That is, making sure your projects live up to the standards you are aware of and are capable of. As a lover of great food, should I kick and scream as Nicole drags me by my ear into the Olive Garden? Or should I shut up and just eat my oily pasta dish? As you progress as a woodworker and learn more about creating quality work, do you feel guilty if you stop short? Do you ever say “good enough”, even though you know you could do better? I am curious to hear where you draw that line….. I’ll go first. I definitely feel a sense of guilt if I don’t do something to the absolute best of my abilities. But there are times, as a business, that I must come up with cost saving solutions that frequently mean lowering my standards. When making my own personal pieces, however, I really do try to make everything as good as it can possibly be given the tools/materials on hand and my current skill set."
  (tagged: via:kapowee craftsmanship excellence )
• Startups in 13 Sentences
  I don't plan on starting my own (certainly not any time soon) but there's still some great material in here for anyone in any enterprise — no matter how established, no matter how personal… I especially like #s 3-5, 7, & 10 (in part because if you do #3, you can get to #5 by doing #4 (by way of #7), tempering it with #10)
  (tagged: essay business )
• EmChart
  Bad ass.
  (tagged: webdev design css typography fonts )
• The Art in Photography (Burlington, VT)
  at Meetup.com (via Flickr)
  (tagged: Flickr photography Burlington Vermont todo )
• ScreenRecycler
  via Mac.AppStorm: interesting idea… overkill or…?
  (tagged: Mac OSX software tools hack recycle )

• IE Float model and the reality
  at CSS Class
  (tagged: webdev css IE floats essay todo )
• When can I use…
  "Conclusion: Not Ready" — hope you like font tags!
  (tagged: webdev reference css )
• Diagramming the Obama Sentence
  at The Millions (via B²): It was funny when the proverbial They did this for Palin's sentences; interesting to see it here for Obama's.
  (tagged: writing visualization politics language linguistics )
• Wanted: Layout System
  Uh… What he said?
  

  Why do we use floats for layout, anyway? clear. That’s pretty much the whole answer. The unique in-flow/out-of-flow nature of floats means they interact with each other and with the normal flow, which means they can be cleared, which makes them useful.

  (tagged: via:fogus css floats webdev html essay )
• The Golden Grid
  at Carrer Blog
  (tagged: via:fogus design css framework webdev )
• Recovery.gov
  "Your money at work." (Let's make every penny count, people.)
  (tagged: reference politics economy taxes money news todo )
• A Splash of color from Colorsplash
  at TUAW
  (tagged: photography iPhone todo )
• AFP: Earth-like planets in our galactic neighborhood
  via /.
  (tagged: astronomy seti todo news )
• Does Earth harbour a ’shadow biosphere’ of alien life?
  at COSMOS magazine (via /.)
  (tagged: science biology evolution essay todo )
• The Hunt for E.T. Comes Home to Earth
  at Wired Science
  (tagged: blog science biology evolution weird genetics essay todo )
• The Role of Experts In Wikipedia
  via Slashdot (via lawnczar, others)
  (tagged: tech wikipedia authority essay todo )

• Federations
  edited by John Joseph Adams: available for pre-order!
  (tagged: reading wishlist )
• How You Write and How You Read
  at DeepGenre: think "feedback loops"
  (tagged: writing reading creativity )
• 18 Unusual Writing Ideas
  at Writing Forward: in a way, it seems appropriate to add variations on these ideas to one's Oblique Strategies deck…
  (tagged: creativity writing essay )
• Photography, and the Tolerance for Courageous Sucking
  at 43 Folders
  (tagged: essay blog photography creativity )
• Stowe Patrol
  (tagged: blog friend )
• AppStorm
  Adding to the 7-day watch-list and see how this goes… Could be a good one.
  (tagged: Mac OSX software blog )
• Preloaders.net
  "Free AJAX animated loading gif's" — pretty neat; worth the link because a radiation symbol is included in their out-of-the-box set.
  (tagged: webdev generator gif )
• Seed: 2009 Will Be a Year of Panic
  …from the always stimulating Bruce Sterling.
  (tagged: science future politics environment money copyright economy insurance essay )

• superuseless superpowers
  via kottke
  (tagged: humor comic parody )
• Beautiful Code Documentation
  at Ajaxian: It's true. Typography does matter.
  (tagged: javascript typography documentation )
• Productivity: How Cory Doctorow Gets Writing Done
  via LifeHacker
  (tagged: writing lifehacks productivity GTD editing )
• Zimbabwe to print first $100 trillion note – CNN.com
  via B²: better unload those Gippers and Ed Meeses….
  (tagged: future money economy Africa )
• 60,000 Piece Star Wars LEGO Diorama
  at Film Roster (via DF, among others) — there is only one word to describe this: holywtfomgthatistooawesome!
  (tagged: geek starwars )

• Semantics in HTML 5
  at A List Apart :
  

  If we continue to be clever with the existing constructs of HTML, more problems such as this will arise. But HTML suffers from a fundamental defect as a semantic markup language—its semantics are fixed, not extensible.

  (tagged: webdev html5 accessibility microformats essay todo )
• Return of the Mobile Style Sheet
  at A List Apart
  (tagged: webdev CSS xhtml accessibility iphone mobile essay todo )
• “I won’t support IE 6 in 2009″
  at Ajaxian: Hot on the heels of Google's announcement re: Gmail. Call it a New Year's Resolution?
  (tagged: webdev IE )
• Filing Your 2008 Taxes With the Economic Stimulus (Recovery Rebate Credit)
  at Consumerism Commentary
  (tagged: money taxes todo )
• 30 Money Sites to Check Out in 2009
  at Stepcase Lifehack
  (tagged: blog money todo )
• More Ajax Experience Videos: JSON and JavaScript
  at Ajaxian
  (tagged: javascript ajax video json todo )
• Diarrhea
  via Julia: she's right — it DOES make me long for a good ol' fashioned Trueschler party.
  (tagged: surreal video meme )
• On Language – Bleeping Expletives
  at NYTimes.com (via DF): Today we are going to deal with the media coverage of profanities, expletives, vulgarisms, obscenities, execrations, epithets and imprecations, nouns often lumped together by the Bluenose Generation as coarseness, crudeness, bawdiness, scatology or swearing.
  (tagged: essay writing language todo )
• Douglas Crockford: "Web Forward" on Yahoo! Video
  (tagged: javascript video todo via:fogus )