OpenOffice mouse.
"You can do far more with this mouse than most people are likely to realize at first," said mouse designer Theodore Beale. "You can launch applications from the desktop, and in your browser you can fire up a specific Internet site with one button, then close it with a double-click on the same button. In Writer and Calc, you can have your most powerful and complicated macros on one row of buttons and simple functions like Bold, Undo, and Format Cell on another. It's very useful in games like World of Warcraft, because even without taking the joystick into account, you've got 16 commands within one click, 40 within two, and all 72 icons on the six action pages within just two double-clicks or less."
I congratulate the OpenOffice developers for a subtle, cutting, and hilarious satire of the user interface design problems in much open-source software.
(Please tell me it's satire.)
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One thing I really wish would change, or at least get examined, in the activist/progressive blogosphere is the use of the phrase "calling someone out." It's used as "I'm calling you out for your sexist language."
I don't know exactly where the phrase started being used for this purpose. The thing is, to call someone out means to challenge them to a duel or at least a fight. It means that someone has made a grave insult to your honor as a gentleman, and you are demanding satisfaction.
Consider for a moment the social structure and assumptions all tied into that.
While people who use this phrase don't literally expect pistols at dawn, the connotations of "honor, insult, violent challenge" are definitely there. And, as with dueling, the only ways to answer the challenge of being "called out" for something are to fight, or to apologize.
I am aware that this is not the only place "to call out" is now used to mean, or try to mean, "identify/expose." A quick Google will tell you that much. The thing is, it also always means a personal challenge.
This is not a "tone" argument -- "You should be nicer and then you would educate people!" But I am questioning the framing of the interaction as "insult to honor - challenge - fight." I think it partakes of a whole host of other things that aren't cool.
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I am pretty sure I don't want to go to Halo when I die, because I don't want to spend eternity with frat boys.
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I use Feline Pine litter for my two cats. It does a really good job of neutralizing the urine odor that is usually the worst part of cat ownership. I've actually had people comment on how the bathroom, which contains the litter box, doesn't smell like cat pee.
Then I learned, from a comment on this kitty litter post at Lifehacker, that Feline Pine is exactly the same thing as pine horse bedding, which is significantly cheaper. I googled it, and darned if it isn't true. Google implies it'd be about $5 for a 40 pound bag, vs. $25 for a 40 pound bag of the cat litter.
Now all I need to do is find a horse supply store nearby.
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Though I don't live in Washington, my new favorite urban planning-related blog is Greater Greater Washington.
This post about parking policy made me think. I used to live in Greensboro, NC. Greensboro has had a lot of success in the past 10 years revitalizing its downtown area. One of the things that encouraged people to come downtown was the fact that city parking decks are free on nights and weekends. Yet this blog post argues that free parking is a bad idea.
The difference is whether there are any alternative methods of getting downtown. In Greensboro, there aren't. Buses don't run late at night, and they never run frequently or very reliably. There is no subway or train. And most people live a fair bit out of downtown anyway, in a city built on a car-centric, sprawling plan. If you don't provide copious free parking, people will simply not come downtown to eat, drink, attend movies, concerts, or plays. They'll go elsewhere in the suburbs where it's easy to park.
I agree that alternative transportation is ideal. Walkable planning is what more and more people want these days, and building cities for cars is incompatible with walkability. Acres of parking lots do end up killing downtowns, as do poorly placed parking garages. But in cities with no alternatives to the car, you do need parking. It's easy to say "Well, just create a transit system then," but the Triangle has been working on this for decades. I think it's better to get people downtown by making parking a bit easier. It's certainly stimulated motion on the transit front in Raleigh, which now has a free downtown circulator bus.
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New literary enjoyment: Dodie Smith.
Think Jane Austen, combined with Charlotte Brontë, with a bit of L.M. Montgomery -- Anne Shirley when she's not being too florid.
I was pointed to Smith by Jo Walton's review of I Capture The Castle at Tor.com. (Incidentally, you should also read Jo Walton. Her Farthing is a compelling mystery story that slips in strange detail upon strange detail, until suddenly the truth of things bursts upon you.)
But Dodie Smith. I've read I Capture The Castle, and just finished The New Moon With The Old. Her characters are romantics, placed in the encroaching, brutal reality of poverty -- as it comes on eccentric, previously comfortable English families who aren't ready to admit it. But the romance wins, as it did for Anne Shirley.
Things aren't as neat as in Austen, and not quite as gothic as in Brontë -- and not so full of golden nostalgia as the Anne books. But if you liked any of the above, let me highly recommend Dodie Smith.
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Overrated List, via Kate Harding.
My list:
1. The blogosphere
2. Literary fiction
3. Radical politics
4. Wolverine
Also-rans:
5. New York City
6. Graduate school
7. Unshakable self-confidence
8. Skepticism
9. Coca-Cola
10. McDonald's
11. Snack cakes
12. Summertime
Things that are not overrated:
1. Paris
2. Sushi
3. The movie Independence Day
4. Empathy
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