Archive for January, 2008

Google Calendar

Monday, January 28th, 2008

calendar.gifGoogle Calendar has become my calendar app of choice. Because it is web-based, there is no client, or OS dependencies. It does a fantastic job of sharing and displaying multiple calendars. It also worked very well for me on the iPhone until, well, Macworld. It turns out the Google mobile crew updated the Google Calendar GUI for Macworld, giving it a monthly view option, and a slicker look and feel, but at the cost of removing what I consider one of its strongest features–view multiple calendars. Fortunately, I uncovered a work around: From the iphone, tap the “mobile” link at the bottom of the Google Calendar page. Once the Google Mobile page loads, tap “Calendar.” Voila, the old multi-calendar page loads.

ZingSpoon

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

From the ‘not a good idea’ department, the Zing! Spoon.

zingspoon.jpg

Wood Bike

Saturday, January 26th, 2008

This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen. A 16-year-old student built an entire bike out of wood. It’s incredible: chain, gears, pedals, the whole shebang, made completely out of wood!  A few years ago slashdot posted about a bamboo bike (really just a bamboo a frame), but this wood bike is in a different class. It’s an impressive example of functional art. Check out Lee Valley Woodworking Newsletter’s article for full info and more photos.

Polenta

Friday, January 25th, 2008

polenta.jpgI was reading about Polenta in Marcella Hazan’s book, “Essentials of Italian Cooking” (available at the Deli) because I’ve always enjoyed grits, and polenta is like yellow grits. She has an extensive write-up on Polenta and admonishes that the best way to cook it is by stirring in an open pot for 45 minutes. I was aghast. I’d never spent that long on polenta or grits and they tasted fine! Besides my limp geek wrists would give out long before the end. Then I saw that she had a cheater recipe that called for stirring for a minute every ten minutes of cooking - that I could do! So this morning I put 3 1/8 Cups of water, 3/4 Cups coarse italian polenta, and 1/2 Tablespoon salt in a pot and brought it to a boil. Her ratio for polenta to water is 1 x 4.2 which I honored and it worked great. I set the heat and my timer and walked away. First ten revealed soupy lava. Ouch, it’s amazing how hot polenta is when it splashes on you! Second ten pretty much what I’m used to seeing. Third ten same thing. Then something happened between 30 and 40 minutes - the polenta went from grainy to creamy and soft. I did another 10 minutes with an open pot stirring every few minutes and it thickened up a bit more. Though it did NOT pull away cleanly (!) from the sides of the pot, as she writes, it seemed ready to my hungry self. I added some butter, grated Parm, and half a tin of warmed Ortiz spanish tuna. Wow. Unlike any polenta I have ever made - there is something definitely magic that happens around 45 minutes in to the cooking and it is so much better I don’t think I can ever go back. The yield was a bit greater than 2 Cups which is perfect for me.

Monster Outlets to Go 3

Saturday, January 19th, 2008

outlets_to_go_3.jpgUntil recently I would end up in travel situations, that were otherwise going along swimmingly, sitting in frustration in a hotel room, or a friend’s guest room, trying to figure out where to plug in my various electronic gear to charge. Then I spotted one of these mini power strips from Monster called Outlets To Go. The first one I ran across had four outlets but they make them in 3 and 6 outlets as well. My favorite is the 3 - it is the smallest and lightest and I rarely have more than three items to plug in. I was so happy with it that I bought one for both Jillian and for my Mom. They run around $12 at Amazon. I think we may carry a few in the IT “store” with our USB flash drives and extra power supplies that staff can pick up from us.Oh, and I’m not sure whether to share this last part or leave it as a surprise, but the connector that goes into the wall has a soft blue nightlight built-in.

Icky PVC Cement

Thursday, January 17th, 2008

We had a plumber come in and replace a piece of the sewer pipe running through the payroll office today. Surprisingly there was no sewer smell - just the overpowering smell of the PVC cement. Wow. It was so bad we moved the payroll folks out of their office and into IT, forwarding their phone line and giving them seats at the bench. Looked up the health effects of PVC cement: INHALATION: Will cause irritation of mucous membranes, nose, eyes & throat, coughing, difficulty of breathing. Exposure to high vapor concentration may cause headache, dizziness, nausea, narcosis. I’m not going to look up “narcosis.”

Macbook Air

Tuesday, January 15th, 2008

apple-macbook-air-14.jpg
Apple has released a cool new aluminum cased laptop today, the Macbook Air. It’s considered an ultra portable laptop, weighing 3lbs with a maximum height of just .75 inches when closed. The Air will be available in two configurations, both of which with will come with the maximum 2GB of ram. The base model has a custom-made Intel Core Duo processor that’s operating at 1.6ghz and includes an 80gb IDE hard drive. The top tier model will come with the same custom Intel chip but the clock speed is bumped to 1.8 GHz. The top model will also include something that has never been seen in an Apple computer, a 64 gb solid state hard drive or SSHD.

(more…)

Motion Mountain - open source physics textbook

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Ran across this on Cool Tools yesterday - a free, downloadable PDF Physics manual written with skill and humor. And at 1500 pages, thorough.

How do objects and images move? How can animals move? What is motion?

How does a rainbow form? Is levitation possible? Do time machines exist? What does ‘quantum’ mean? What is the maximum force value found in nature? Is ‘empty space’ really empty? Is the universe a set? Which problems in physics are still unsolved?

Download at http://www.motionmountain.net/text.html

IT Celebrates 5,000 Tickets

Sunday, January 13th, 2008

A long overdue post…

trophy_sm.jpgIn July, 2005 the IT department started using a help desk. The help desk lets us manage the requests that come in each day; we track progress on issues, communicate with clients, document solutions and share our knowledge. It’s a good thing, and I can’t imagine doing our work as well as we do without it. One of the first entries in the desk was a vision for how IT and the ZCoB would use it. (The vision also had winning a D$E award or two for it, which has become reality.) Since then we’ve averaged 170 tickets/month. We’re pretty durn proud of that, and especially proud of the ZCoB for embracing our system. We thought 5,000 was an impresssive, round number worth commemorating, so to celebrate we had a trophy made up (thanks Ryan!). And on November 21, 2007 Lisa Maskill submitted ticket 5,000. Along with the trophy we gave Lisa a giant stuffed globe, because, well, it meant the world to us.