Ramblings
April 24, 2007
Beardy Guy Powers Activate!
Lore Sjöberg used to run The Brunching Shuttlecocks (which was one of my favorite humor sites at the time) and I especially liked his ratings of random things. which are archived over at Book of Ratings. Now he's back with a video version: State Quarters Part VII. 
April 22, 2007
April 12, 2007
Pearls Before Breakfast
Pearls Before Breakfast is a fantastic article that touches on much more than just "will people in a subway station stop to listen to a great musician?" (via kottke)
Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape: Do you stop and listen? Do you hurry past with a blend of guilt and irritation, aware of your cupidity but annoyed by the unbidden demand on your time and your wallet? Do you throw in a buck, just to be polite? Does your decision change if he's really bad? What if he's really good? Do you have time for beauty? Shouldn't you? What's the moral mathematics of the moment?
[T]hose private questions would be answered in an unusually public way. No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities -- as well as an unblinking assessment of public taste: In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?
Labels: music
April 11, 2007
Snipshot
This is very cool: Snipshot is a website that is essentially a very basic photo editor (think Photoshop Elements Extra-Lite). You can edit a photo from your computer or a website and resize, crop, and adjust brightness/contrast/saturation/sharpness to your liking, then save it. It even allows for undos. If you need to do basic photo editing and don't have the software to do it, check it out.
Labels: photography
April 9, 2007
Amelia Sledding Video
I added a new video of Amelia finally getting to use her sled. I hope to add new videos of the boy soon...
April 6, 2007
Websites for the Kids
I've discontinued the kids' websites on .mac (since I'm not going to renew my subscription) and now host them here. You can see the latest photos of them at amelia.kieranchapman.net and jeremy.kieranchapman.net. (The videos are there, too, but I haven't added new ones...yet.)
Apple Mail and SpamSieve
I had a bizarre thing happen: the built-in junk mail filter for Apple's Mail program stopped working for me. After trying everything to get it going again, I decided to clear the spam filter and start from scratch. After training it for over a week, it's worse than ever: it never marks anything as spam except mail that I sent to myself!
Luckily, I still had my license for SpamSieve, a spam filter I bought when I used Microsoft Outlook Express. So I downloaded the latest version and installed it, "trained" it by having it look at my current batch of junk mail (took 1 minute) and already it's caught all new junk mail messages.
If you're a Mac user and have problems with junk email, try SpamSieve now! There's a 30-day free trial, it works with all major mail apps, and is well worth the $30 purchase price.
Luckily, I still had my license for SpamSieve, a spam filter I bought when I used Microsoft Outlook Express. So I downloaded the latest version and installed it, "trained" it by having it look at my current batch of junk mail (took 1 minute) and already it's caught all new junk mail messages.
If you're a Mac user and have problems with junk email, try SpamSieve now! There's a 30-day free trial, it works with all major mail apps, and is well worth the $30 purchase price.
Labels: apple
April 2, 2007
Weekend Wedding & Opening Day
This weekend my cousin Shane got married and it was probably the best time we've had at a wedding that wasn't ours. It was great weather for an outdoor ceremony, the reception was a lot of fun, and everything was nicely done.
One thing I hadn't seen before was their table assignment method: rather than being assigned a table by number, people were assigned by current and former Red Sox players. (Knowing my respect for the knuckleballer, my uncle was nice enough to pull some strings to get me seated at the Tim Wakefield table.) So congratulations to Shane and Tracey...hope they're having fun in Florida and Hawaii.
And on a related note, it's opening day!
One thing I hadn't seen before was their table assignment method: rather than being assigned a table by number, people were assigned by current and former Red Sox players. (Knowing my respect for the knuckleballer, my uncle was nice enough to pull some strings to get me seated at the Tim Wakefield table.) So congratulations to Shane and Tracey...hope they're having fun in Florida and Hawaii.
And on a related note, it's opening day!
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