Reasons to Quit Smoking.

Beyond all of the obvious benefits of quitting smoking (such as an extended lifespan and a fatter bank account), let me offer a few other reasons to quit for any smokers out there.

• Peee-yooo. Let me clear up any doubts on this matter. Non-smokers can smell your cigarettes, active and past. You cannot smell it for the same reason that crazy cat lady cannot smell her urine soaked rugs - acclimation.
• Boooring! You addiction is obvious by your stepping outside every so often to feed it, and it interrupts the wonderful conversation we were having. Don't you wonder what you're missing when we're still inside?
• Creepy. I saw a stripper taking a smoke break outside the Lusty Lady last week. OK, I'm not positive she was a stripper. She was wearing high heels and a full length trench coat, and trying not to be seen - draw your own conclusions. If I were her, having to stand outside downtown Seattle in stripper clothes and a trench coat would be a huge motivator for quitting.

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Patriotic Cupcakes.

This weekend, I experimented with a delicacy from my childhood - cupcakes baked inside ice cream cones. They were patriotic because I put star-shaped sprinkles on them; not because they voted or something. Baking the cupcakes inside ice cream cones had advantages (self contained, easy to eat), but there's a few things I need to keep in mind for next time.

• Fill the cones all the way to the top for a nicely rounded top.
• Use a light, fluffy batter. (The brown sugar based batter I used was reminiscent of actual chocolate chip cookies. Very tasty, but too dense to work out well inside the cones.)

Firefox Extensions for Just Folks.

You non-devs out there can find a variety of good add-ons for your Firefox browser.

• Forecast Fox is my favorite weather add-on for Firefox. It's infinitely configurable.
• Colorful Tabs will beautify your browser by 25%. It will give your tabs color, instead of that boring old grey that makes all the tabs look alike.
• Gmail Manager is my favorite Gmail add-on, though there are a bunch out there.
• Adblock Plus will allow you to block ads. Shocking, I know. You can block all kinds of over the top punch-the-monkey style ads, and those sneaky Beacon-style trackers.

1 comment(s).

Webmonkey is Back.

Webmonkey is back. And it's in wiki-form. Webmonkey was the gold standard site for web site makers back in the late 90s and early 00s. A few years laster, Webmonkey was bought, and as the bubble burst, it's content became dusty and decrepit. It had a short rebirth, then died again. But now Wired's got Webmonkey back, and there seems to be a great commitment keep it new, and try to bring it back as a forerunner of web tech news and how-tos. I'm very exited. Welcome back, my old friend.

Ambassador or Pusher?

We went down to Portland this weekend. On the way there, and back home, we stopped at Burgerville to get fresh strawberry milkshakes - yummy. We also got some of the new Yukon Gold waffle cut fries - delicious. I highly recommend both, if you can get them. (By the way - bad choice on the Flash menu on your website, Burgerville.)

We stayed with the parents' in law, and I had fun playing Clubhouse Games on the Nintendo DS with both of them while the husband worked on some photos. We had fun walking through the various games - Word Balloon and Darts proved to be favorites. I'm especially pleased that it was easy for mom-in-law to pick things right up, and that she was enjoying herself. I think I'll have to bring out the DS for all family gatherings.

Firefox Extensions for Developers.

Firefox is my number one tool for web development. I could live without Dreamweaver, but not Firefox. In fact, syntax coloring in the source code viewer is the original reason I started using Firefox a few years ago. Once I discovered all of the marvelous add-ons and tab-based browsing, I switched from IE permanently. Here are many of the add-ons that I use for web development.

• There's the Web Developer toolbar, and Firebug of course. But you already know about those, don't you?
• View Source Chart is one of the most undervalued add-ons out there. Not only are the collapsible code blocks indispensable for figuring out what's going on with foreign code, but the Source Chart will show you the results of any JavaScript executing on the page. That's right - you get the source code; post JavaScript render.
• FireFTP - a fully capable FTP client, which can store settings for multiple. What more do you need?
• JS View gives you a list of all the external CSS and JavaScript files that are pulled in by a web page. This is a very effective tool for inspecting code, or figuring out what resources your pages actually rely on.
• Live HTTP Headers displays header information for webpages. That's the sneaky, secret webpage stuff like redirects, form submission info or status codes like 200 OK.
• YSlow will analyze webpages and recommend speed improvements. It requires Firebug, but all you developers have that installed, right?

Hooliganism Managed.

This weekend we went with my sister and friends to see the Portland Timbers versus the Seattle Sounders. Being Portland ex-patriots, and being in the company of rabid Portlanders, we sat in the Timbers Army section and cheered for the Timbers.

The game was pretty fun. The players made some exciting moves in the 0 - 0 season opener. Sitting with the Army was pretty exciting - they're very energetic and do a great job of bringing the crowd up. But it seems like the original bawdy flavor of the Army is souring a bit from all-talk to a dangerous and un-fun leaning towards fisticuffs. Oh, nothing big happened; a few water bottles were pitched towards the linesman, and there was a little testosterone display when some Sounders "spies" came over and yelled some stuff.

All in all it was fun. And I'm greatly looking forward to going to some games next year. I'm just not sure if I'm ready to be a rabid "FC Supporter" like the Timber's Army.

Taunt Your Kitty.

The kitties love this Red Laser Pointer from ThinkGeek.com. It's their second favorite toy - right behind feathers on a stick. The laser pointer uses AAA batteries, not the really expensive small disc batteries that you find in many other laser pointers. The only bad part is that you have to hold the switch down, and that can get a little tiring after a while. Though, I bet that the husband can take care of that by modding the laser pointer with some parts from Home Depot.

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Articles Too.

I've updated my articles a bit - it's worth checking out. I'm attempting to keep a collection of the technical stuff in one high-quality, updated section, rather than letting old information languish un-attended in the Blog entries. This is a reflection of Jakob Neilsen's "Articles, Not Blogs" idea. But I can't quite ditch the blogs - there are a few folks who really are interested in pictures of my kitties. Really.

Synchronized Napping.

I have finally got my computer back to running how I like it. Doing so consumes 4 weeknights, all in all, so I hope it stays this way. I am celebrating by posting this picture, taken when the kitties started practicing last summer. They are now world class champions at napping.