I see over at ongoing Tim Bray favours us with his litmus test for telling good radio stations from bad ones. Apparently the bad ones are the ones that play music he doesn't like, while the good ones are the ones that don't play music he doesn't like.
Thanks for clearing that up, Tim. :-)
Well, not all Web Designers, obviously, but answer me this: When I'm filling out a form with name, address, etc., why do they insist -- positively insist -- on using pop-up menus for "Province/State" and "Country", forcing me to interrupt my smooth form entry typing to navigate with the mouse to a hard-to-acquire target, then pick from one of sixty or over a hundred options. I've just filled out four of these forms and they all do it like this. Who are these idiots? I can type "BC" in less than a second, but they think I'll get it wrong or something and have me pick from a list. Ludicrous. Even worse is when the list of countries is alphabetized, so the default is "Afghanistan". I mean, it's the WWF Canada web site, isn't "Canada" a reasonable default for the country?
Sheesh.
When the iPod shuffle was announced last week, I had to chuckle at the timing of it because at that time I was just in the middle of reading Edward de Bono's book Simplicity. I don't know why I was reading that book -- it somehow ended up on my reading list for this year (along with How To Be More Interesting). De Bono is the guy who coined the term "Lateral Thinking" and has written fifty or sixty books. He's a smart guy, but not the most captivating author out there. Frankly, I think he's getting a little tired of writing books, but he just has so much to say that he keeps doing it. His style can be very terse -- almost point form in some places. (And no, I'm not missing the point: I realize he summarizes things before he tells them to you).
Anyway, back to the iPod. Back when the rumors of a flash-based iPod were all over the place, I was skeptical for many of the same reasons that John Gruber was. Mainly, I had a difficult time with the idea of a very small iPod with a tiny screen -- how much smaller can you get than an iPod mini's screen anyway? -- or, conversely of an iPod with no screen. My skepticism about the latter came from having worked with the ludicrously expensive and underpowered Bang & Olafsen BeoSound 2, which is beautiful to look at but nearly impossible to use because it has no screen, but about seven buttons, all with similar labels.
To paraphrase de Bono: Simplicity isn't easy. It looks easy, but it's very hard. The BeoSound tried to let you have multiple playlists and give you the controls that you needed to access them. De Bono says to make things simpler by throwing things out. The iPod shuffle is a study in how to make things simpler. Throw out the screen, throw out the playlists. Reduce the number of controls to the barest minimum to be useful. I love the big switch on the back to control power and mode. Trying to get some MP3 players (even the iPod, IMHO) in and out of shuffle mode is a pain in the butt.
When I heard that the president of another company that makes audio players was criticizing the iPod shuffle because it was years-old technology, I thought: you know, he's right. The shuffle is actually less capable than many of the first generation MP3 players. No screen even. And that's the beauty of it, because it's simple, and it doesn't suck. Less is more. I want one.
That the tunes for Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Baa, Baa, Black Sheep are essentially the same? Try it:
One of the things that I don't do a whole lot and would like to do more is to cook "real" meals. That means a meal like we get when we visit our parents: one with multiple dishes that is served on a plate, usually containing at least one dish that is primarily meat. You see, when we eat at home, we usually cook these single-dish meals that are pretty easy to do... plus maybe throw together a salad (thank goodness for the prepackaged stuff).
Well, since I'm doing things that I've always wanted to do this year, I decided that I'm going to cook a turkey dinner some time. Since cooking a full-on turkey seemed a little excessive at first -- I have no idea which end is up when it comes to poultry, I thought I'd start with a chicken.
First Mistake: I bought a whole frozen chicken from SuperStore. The mistake wasn't buying it frozen -- I had a couple of days before I wanted to cook it so it had an opportunity to thaw (mostly) -- the mistake was that I bought the first one that I found. It was pretty large as chickens go -- about six pounds -- which made everything a little more difficult. Most of the recipes I saw talked about three and four pound chickens.
Second Mistake: I didn't thaw the chicken quite long enough. I thawed it in the refrigerator for two days, which was nearly long enough, but there was still some ice around the outside when I opened it up. I suspect this is why it took a fair bit longer to cook than I expected, almost two hours instead of 90 minutes. (The rule of thumb I saw was 1 hour for a 3 lb chicken, plus 10 minutes per extra pound.)
Third Mistake: I was trying to rub the chicken with butter and herbs (basil), but I hadn't dried the chicken thoroughly after washing it. Bad idea. Most of the butter ended up on my fingers since the chicken was so slippery. Also, I should have used a rack during this process because a lot of the butter ended up on the cutting board I had set the chicken on.
I didn't have a single recipe that I followed, although I did rely heavily on Roast Chicken Made Better, Start to Finish, which seemed to have good advice. I ended up rubbing the bird with dried basil and butter, squeezing a lime over the outside and then stuffing the cavity with the limes, a few sprigs of fresh basil, some onion and mushrooms. I roasted for 20 minutes at 450°F and then for the rest of the time (about an hour and a half) at 375°F. I started the chicken breast down and then turned it over after the initial 20 minutes to match the photo on the web page (and so I could stick the thermometer into the thigh).
The end result was not quite a failure. I finally took the chicken out of the oven because we were starving -- there were a few pink bits so we finished those parts up in the microwave. The legs and thighs were certainly cooked enough -- the leg bone came right off the bird when I tried to separate the thigh.
Carving was a joke too. I know a little more about bird anatomy now than I did before, but I still don't really have a good handle on how to take these things apart. I think I did a passable job, but it wasn't elegant by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway, with some mashed potatoes and veggies, it was a decent meal with lots of leftovers. Plus we made soup with the carcass. Now, that makes your house smell good.
Next time I'm going to try a smaller bird, hopefully fresh. I'm going to stick with the lime and basil theme, though. It was pretty tasty. Hmm. I'm hungry... leftovers....
Finally, a review of the Mac mini by someone who really understands technology.
(Via MacSlash.)
Well, it's been once month since my resolution to watch less television... so how am I doin'?
The answer is: reasonably well. I watched a total of only 23 hours of television in January, which is 8 hours less than my "budget", and certainly vastly less time than I would normally spend in front of the TV. A particular benefit of this is that I'm spending a bit more time sleeping, and am a bit more rested as a result.
So far, so good. February's a short month, so it should be easy to keep it up.