Tufte (Recommendation)

I'm a big fan of Edward Tufte, and managed to make off with our selection of Tufte books during the downsizing of NovaNET. His web site is always interesting; recently he posted some remarks on the iPhone interface, demonstrating similar design principles from his '97 book.

We're Bushed (Reblog)

The Democratic Caucus has released a (totally unbiased I'm sure :-) chart of the Bush administration's achievements.

Our Trustworthy Government (Reblog)

Looks like in the 2 years since 9/11, the top officials of the Bush administration fed us 935 lies about the so-called Iraqi threat. Bush himself had 231 lies just about weapons of mass destruction. Kudos to our free press for meekly reporting about this in third page news 7 years after the fact.

Mad World (Reblog)

This is an old video of a song by Gary Jules that was featured on the under-appreciated film Donnie Darko. I just thought the choreography was really clever.

Birthday Dinner (Chow)

In celebration of NDM's father's natal day, she told me at the last minute that I had to make baked mostacolli -- something I've never made before.
To distract from my lack of expertise with the dish, I threw together a fancy baked garlic and herb butter to make garlic bread with. A head of garlic drizzled with olive oil and baked for an hour, thrown together with parsley, oregano, basil, cayenne, lemon zest, and of course butter. Mmm!
Even I had no difficulty cooking the noodles until they were almost, but not quite, done.
Whipping up a quick red sauce was also pretty simple; I live and breathe red sauces. I made this one a little spicier than normal to cut through all the cheese, and also threw a bunch of parmesan directly into the sauce.
Topped it with a whole bunch of mozzarella and it was ready for a half hour in the oven.
My error was in the cheese course. I used some handy light mozzarella we had in the freezer, which as you can see did not provide a nice oozy melty top like fresh buffalo mozzarella would have. Live and learn. The crunchy top wasn't bad, but it wasn't what I was shooting for.
Of course the wife had to one-up me with a fancy cake...

Sexy Office Supplies (Reblog)

A Lifehacker post led me to the Rollabind site. I love having actual physical paper to work with when I'm scribbling, taking notes, editing, or really doing anything at all involving words of pictures -- and nothing makes me happier than some slick fascist conformist note system to stuff everything into. Unfortunately, I'm thousands of times more likely to get something done if I can type than if I have to pen or pencil it, so these cute little binders are just going to sit in a starred link instead of ending up on my desk. Still, I can dream...

Zagat's Favorite Restaurants (Reblog)

Apparently we've got one of Zagat's 11 top-rated American restaurants nearby -- has anyone ever eaten there? Carlos' is a French restaurant at 429 Temple in Highland Park. Maybe a group of us can explore it later this year after hitting an afternoon play.