Ketherian's Notebook

Cool new product.
Hype, Facts, Slashdotted, Lifehacker, Alternate use: The new gaming table., Popular Mechanics video
Best quote: It's a giant DS.
But wait: There's more!
I've always dreamed about this type of interface. Remove the hype attached to this one and it reminds me of the MIT project Oxygen. User interface design is a fairly new topic of study, and while there are many milestones there are still numerous limitations; and the current hardware proposed for Microsoft Surface looks pretty expensive; so we'll see how deep their market penetration becomes over time.
Recipes

• Gordon Ramsay's scrambled egges. A youtube video to watch when I get a chance.
• My recipes - looks like a nice recipe site. I got there by clicking on a recipe for Southwestern Potato Salad on the CookingLight website.

Worth listening to (does that make it listen-worthy?)

• The Open Culture sight article from way back (February 8th) links to sources to listen to Orson Well's famous recording of War of the worlds. Well with listening to. While Open culture isn't really a podcast - I've subscribed to its RSS feed in Bloglines under that heading. The blog is all about the podcasts that the Open culture site finds and links to. They are a library, of sorts, that regularly updates their catalog.
• Open source sex. No I've not listened to it yet, but the blurbs seem interesting, and with that title -- well, I'll be saving this one for after dinner.
• Heroes has its own podcast. Go figure. It seems to be episode specific and features the voices of the cast members as well as citing stuff from the forum and the blogs. This is one TV show that is totally wired to the web. (Ug. That was a bit of social jargon I didn't need to see myself write.)
• The Jazz Vinyl Podcast. Old vinyl records played as a podcast. Good quality MP3s the website lists the tracks and other "liner notes". There's an associated blog available too. http:\\jazzvinyl.blogspot.com, I'm definitely subscribing to this one as I love old Jazz!
• 60 minutes has a podcast (who knew)? At least now I know where to go if I miss a report. http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/60minutes/main3415.shtml has all their up to date articles (available to be read, exported or watched). and http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/07/06/utility/main706903.shtml seems to be the general list of RSS feeds for the podcasts, downloading, iTunes or checking the archive (the first link).

As an aside - I'm subscribed the del.icio.us link rss feed for "podcasts". Each times Bloglines updates there's a good 50 of them showing up. This is more links than RPGS (which averages at about 25 an update)!

Roleplaying

• D&D Counters. A great collection of free images to print & use at your game. Got it from my rss of RPG links and added it to my own bookmarks.

In the humorous yet painful category:

• Boing Boing today pointed out LOLCODE - LOLCats meets programming. And I quote: "programming using the strange, ungrammatical argot of the LOLCats mem." I'll spare the programmers who read this site the example. But check out the link if you're perversely curious.
• Global nerdy posted a fascinating comparison entitled "Cyberwar ain't what it use to be". It compares terms from Cyberpunk stores to "similar" real world scenarios. It makes for interesting reading. With a name like Global Nerdy you know it's so going on my bloglines daily tally for a while. If anyone reminds me (in a week or so) I'll even review it.

Thus ends the links of the day

• Mustard. Growing up I was known as the mustard kid. Other kids wanted peanut butter - me, I wanted mustard. To this day I will still put plain yellow mustard on any source of protein. Last week the San Francisco chronicle had an article on Mustard that made my mouth water.
• Pumpkin-Apple strussel For those of us who hate pie crusts, but love pie.
• According to Epicurious - rich flavor and deep colored gravey begins with turkey stock made days, or even months, ahead.
• Washinton Post's Dinner in 25 minutes features spicy ground beef with green beans.
• Soup recipes from meta filter
  

Give your resume a face lift It's a good introduction to typography in a useful setting. It also is an article with a great set of links. I think I'll use it to update my resume tonight.

There's a leak in my roof (I rent an upper duplex) and its growing. The landlord is trying to get the roofer in to patch it before our appointment in August. There is no attic and it's a flat roof, so all I can do is deal with the dripping water and try and protect the hardwood floors beneath.

I've read from eHow that it's a good idea to put a tack in the ceiling and dangle a piece of twine or string into the bucket. Drips will follow the string and thus not drop from 9 ft and splatter the floor. I wish I'd read that sooner ... it would save me some laundry.

Has anyone done this? Does it work or does it cause the plaster to buckle and get worse?
I'm going to ask my landlord about drilling a few choice holes in the plaster tonight but I believe that one leak (in the door frame) can't quite be fixed that way.

Yes, I'm fretting about this. It's what I do. :)
Advice welcome.

hittite has created a community for Anticipation in 2009 (anticipation_09). Unfortunately I don't know how to contact him short of posting on the community. Guess this one will take some time to figure out. Anyone have a suggestion (or three)?

Has anyone else tried LJ's to-do lists?
I just finished signing up with Ta-da to do about the same thing. Admittedly, on Ta-da my list is private (or shared with a very few folk).

Soda drinking, snacking, and the plethora of bad habits are very hard to break. Fortunately, in this world of self-conscious agrandizing DIY'ers - help for everything is available on the web.

Before the association between soda and diabeties, there were associations between soda and cancer rists, and osteoporosis.

Dr Robert Rich, M. Sc., Ph. D has a webpage called "How to break a habit (any habit) The article suggests that you figure out why you do something and then change your response to that something (eg: you drink soda because you're tired or bored, so when tired go to bed, and when bored go for a walk).

Charles Burke has an article entitled "Never Break Another Habit". He says it's impossble to "break" a habit. Instead he suggests that "...the most effective way to deal with a habit is to treat it as a living (or
semi-living) entity that has your best interests at heart." Rather than fight against a habit, change it into something better. Say, for example, when you're bored you currently drink soda. Why not drink half-a can instead of a whole one, then reduce again, or replace it with something good for you (real fruit juice, or water). Add new choices and try to stop yourself from responding automatically (by habit).

Both are good ideas.
I haven't stopped drinking soda, but I have cut back on it. Now for lunch I bring a bottle of 1/2 fruit juice, 1/2 water. I drink tea in the morning and save the soda as a desert after dinner or lunch (if I want one). I like cold water so I try to keep my water-filtering pitcher full and in the fridge.

I'm not sure it's really necessary to stop drinking all soda, especially since I believe in trying to live life in moderation; but what amount of soda is too much? It's hard to determine. Recommended serving sizes for most sodas is 12 fl.oz (about 1.5 cups, or 360ml, which is the contents of one can). Most people drink a lot more than that. Fruit juice usually recommends 8 fl.oz (about 1 cup or 250ml) or less as a serving size, and soda usually has a lot more calories.

Kicking soda pop is like kicking any kind of 'bad' habit; it takes motivation, time, and determination. Now if only I could kick my carb and tea addictions ...