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I used to work with Joshua Schachter . Or at least we used to work at the same company. Back before blogs were much of anything Schachter created Memepool , a dense repository of links to things of no particular import. I don't check Memepool regularly as it's been replaced by actual blogs, as well as sites like Digg and Reddit –social bookmarking sites that theoretically allow all the interesting links to froth up to the top. (I don't really check Reddit or Digg very often, either. I'm pretty much using my iMac for digital photography and Warcraft .) Schacthter is responsible for the grandaddy of social bookmarking (and tagging ) sites, del.icio.us , and del.icio.us is responsible for making Schachter much richer than he would be if he remained a salaried man. I created a del.icio.us account a few years ago and never really thought much of it. Recently I came across this idea for a del.icio.us recipe book which is rather clever, so I resurrected my account and will...

Saturday brought some beautiful springtime weather, and I ventured out to Brooklyn Heights (and a bit of Cobble Hill) to put the new camera to the test. My primary subject was scaffolding, and I've populated the scaffolding map mash-up thing with quite a few shots. I also spent quite a bit of time getting the JavaScript just so for the site, and while I'm not completely done yet it's mostly up and running. Do check it out, and if you see any scaffolding, take a picture, upload it to Flickr , and submit it to the site. For those who don't care about scaffolding (and why not?), I took pictures of other things as well.

Thank goodness for Wikipedia .

Don't expect a Pirahã version of 34 anytime soon (for some definition of soon).

My Canon Digital Rebel XT arrived at work mid-afternoon, which made it very hard to focus on coding and email and whatever else I do in the office. I left a bit early and set out to play around with it. The camera is a digital SLR , and if you're a n00b when it comes to camera optics (as I am) it's a little intimidating to venture away from the default, auto-ish settings. A friend from work recommended the National Geographic Photography Field Guide as a good beginner's photography reference, and I imagine that will be in my next Amazon order. The manual included with the camera is rife with abbreviations and will hopefully make some sense once I get the basic terminology down. I mostly snapped photos around the apartment, and have uploaded the decent shots to Flickr. (The pirate dude is everyone's favorite.) And oddly enough, I am serious about going around and taking pictures of scaffolding in New York and mashing it up with Google Maps. I put together an initial ...

As Jeff mentioned in his past post, he has been cooking up quite a storm in the past few weeks. One highlight was a replication of a meal we had at one of our new favorite Greek restaurants, Pylos . We loooved the beet and feta towers and the "light as air" meatballs we ordered as appetizers. So I was way excited when I arrived in Brooklyn one night a few days later, Jeff had recreated them, along with lamb and a Greek salad, for our dinner. So very, very good. Last week he whipped up a spicy Manhattan clam chowder to help cure my bout with laryngitis. BTW: Singing Kelly Clarkson at the very top of your voice in a party bus full of girls wearing pink boas and drinking vodka sodas to celebrate a middle school bud's impending marriage (in Florida! next weekend!) can lead to nothing but good when you have a cold coming on. My personal favorite, though, was my birthday meal this evening. At my request, Jeff prepared 2 lovely steaks (thanks, Rich and Adele!) with mushrooms and...

While I certainly haven't been blogging over these past few weeks, I have been doing quite a bit of cooking . I fully intended to blog about the meals. Just not right now. On an unrelated note, I splurged and bought myself a Canon Digital Rebel XT as a birthday present. My big plans for it: go around the city (i.e. Brooklyn) taking very high resolution pictures of scaffolding, get acquainted with the Google Maps API , and create a scaffolding photo/map mashup. At that point we'll see whether anyone else shares my fascination with scaffolding.

Will Beck's next album feature samples from the Star Spangled Banner in binary ? Hell yes!

Columbia Business Schoolies can be funny? Columbia Business Schoolies can be funny .

I always thought I was serious about my chef's knife ; it's over ten years old and still cuts well. (I am, however, eyeing a 7" Santoku that Adele is fond of.) This insanely detailed guide to knife sharpening has put me in my place, though. I've been steeling my knife all along, but that just falls into Section Six: Maintenance of the guide. I'd completely ignored the whole process of sharpening my knife, which entails buying stones or sandpaper and is best done in conjunction with a protractor. I'm about as humbled as I ever get. If I know you, then chances are that you're married and chances are that I've gifted you a knife/knives as part of the marriage gifting process. Please take care of your knives, kids.