Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Okay, so events are past public occurrences that get a URL. E.g., “a man who was wearing a gaudy green coat and playing a ukelele that disturbed people in the cafe at X.” In the case of crimes, these events would be linked to a crime report. But mostly the wiki page for an “event” […]

I was at the local PNC Bank to deposit a paycheck, and I was writing out a deposit slip.  A woman said loudly to the bank teller something like, “I wish she’d just had the heart attack then!” and the teller demurred, “well…” “I have to laugh just so I don’t cry,” the woman explained, […]

Update: It was cute to have the two articles together, but this will be better for googleability and notwastingtimeability. Added information about typing breaks and getting Twhirl. This is also booring, but might be vaguely useful for someone out there. I’ve set up Ubuntu so many times that I’ve put down some deep neural pathways […]

For no particular reason I’ve grouped a bunch of movies I’ve seen fairly recently (all in the last year, most in the last few months) into sets of three. Here’s the first set. Zombies! I watched 3 zombie films recently: Day of the Dead (2008 remake) Diary of the Dead (George Romero) 30 Days of […]

This is another boring tip in case you have to construct a form to send to Rails, and I’m sure it’s documented everywhere: Rails-generated checkboxes return a value of 1 when they’re clicked. That is, the parameters will contain the name of the checkbox and a value 1. But the way checkboxes work is they’re […]

I’m going to share some wonderful things with you now. I’ve saved them up, although my one reader has probably seen them all through my del.icio.us account. I think Christopher Hitchens getting waterboarded is fairly noteworthy. Zadie Smith writes about Kafka again. Funny story about this. I was reading the article, and the writer noted […]

Continuing with the theme of wholesome outdoor athletic activities, Amy and I went to see the Pittsburgh Passion playoff game on Saturday night. It was fun; there was a good crowd; the tickets were $5. The Passion have gone undefeated this season, and tonight we saw why. When we left at half-time (it was raining) […]

Amy and I rode our bikes in Critical Mass for Pittsburgh, which I didn’t realize is a monthly thing. We didn’t know what to expect at all, but it turned out to be a very mellow and pleasant affair. Some of the regulars were making fun of a “competing” ride called Critical Manners1, where the […]