Archive for May, 2007
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31 May 2007
Memorial Day weekend is a somewhat-traditional planting weekend in the Northeast. This spring, even USDA hardiness zone 6a[1] has been experiencing some quite balmy temperature, so we’ve actually had our sprouts outside for almost all of May. But this weekend, we couldn’t buck tradition, and we went ahead and planted the majority of them, and took a trip out to Milton (a.k.a. the city that got beat up in middle school) to visit some nurseries. We came home with a butterfly bush to help screen our yard from the neighbor’s. The directions on the bush said to dig a hole twice as deep and thrice as wide as the root ball.
Eight inches down, I hit a layer of something weird. It was hard, and kind of looked like paint chips. And there were a bunch of them. Under the paint chips, there were plastic bags. (Wonder Bread! Doritos!) Under the bags were cans of Schlitz (!) and empty bottles of Nair (!!). Eventually, we passed through the garbage and emerged into some nice-looking dark organic soil. Shove the bush in the hole and run. But wait.. paint chips? The Schlitz can was clearly an old-style removable pull tab. According to the Wikipedia article, the new style was invented in 1975, and was almost universally adopted by the early 1980′s. And lead paint wasn’t banned for sale in the US until 1978.
Although plants don’t take up much lead, we should definitely clean all of our vegetables thoroughly, and probably get a testing kit.
[1] Boston is in zone 6a under the official (but relatively old) 1990 hardiness zone map. But it’s been placed in zone 7 under the 2003 draft of updated hardiness zones and other more recent drafts based on new climate data.
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31 May 2007Fire on Broadway
Right down the block from us.
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30 May 2007
Recently listened to: The Beatles – White Album (Disc 1), Amy Millan – Honey from the Tombs, Interpol – Turn on the Bright Lights
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29 May 2007
Firefox's new open-source crash reporting system is going to be another big change in Firefox 3. -
28 May 2007The other half
It's also a lot better than last year's, and it's not even all done, yet. August is going to be the fricken bomb.
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25 May 2007Rosebuds (not the sled kind)
In our garden. There must be a million of them, just on the verge of opening.
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24 May 2007
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24 May 2007
Thinking of bad memories and experiences in the third person helps you recover, and self deception can increase the amount of benefit you gain from exercise.
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23 May 2007
(Warning! Spoilers!) "I do think the Sandman didn’t open his mind to lot of options that became available to him when he got particle-ized. ... Considering his strength and versatility, I bet any construction firm would have hired him in a flash."
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21 May 2007
The typical digital magazine reader is a 45-year-old professional with over 17.5 years of industry experience.
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21 May 2007Cow puke
Talk about mixed metaphors. (At Creperie Beau Monde in Philly)
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19 May 2007
The most exciting sequel since Half-Life 2. It looks remarkably true to the original. I am still hoping it's not a MMOG, because I'm going to buy it.
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18 May 2007
The following is a classic science post I wrote for the coolass metablog in May 2004.
Sometime last week, Penta Water was introduced to our group. Not having any on hand, and only having vague second-hand assertions of “five-molecule water”, the usual response was “What, it’s just a very small quantity of water?” Based on the assumption that it was probably five-atom water (since that made slightly more sense to us), theories ranged from “Maybe it’s a liquid with a different molecular makeup but similar characteristics to H2O,” to “Maybe they count disassociated Na+ and Cl- ions from a tiny amount of salt in the water as two additional atoms,” to “Maybe it’s total bullshit.”
The key to unlocking this marketing mumbo jumbo is understanding water.
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17 May 2007
This is the kind of reference I need to keep on file for when we go visit M's sister out there.
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17 May 2007
How to create a consistent button style across browsers.
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17 May 2007
The average of 12 submitted chocolate chip cookie recipes. Cooked at 354.17°F for 13.04 minutes.
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14 May 2007The peanuts were good
The Red Sox whupped the Tigers, and Dice-K pitched the whole game!
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14 May 2007
Recently listened to: Stars – Nightsongs, Stars – Heart, The Beatles – White Album (Disc 1)
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12 May 2007Sunset over Boston
(Submitted to "Guess Where Boston". Guess where this photo was taken!)
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10 May 2007
More medical jargon you didn’t realize you needed to know:
- emesis – vomiting
- pandiculation – yawning and stretching
- singultus – hiccups
- rhinorrhea – runny nose
- borborygmus – stomach growling
- eructation – burping
- sternutation – sneezing
- epistaxis – nosebleed
- horripilation – goosebumps
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9 May 2007
Excellent. I'm not moved over yet, but dear god that UI looks much better. The old UI was a bit of a bear.
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7 May 2007
"Training wheels without the bike". Listen, I'm really sorry, Brian, but PHP is junk. Junk!
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7 May 2007
Recently listened to: Minus Story – Heaven and Hell, CAKE – Pressure Chief, Audioslave – Out of Exile (more)
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7 May 2007
The top header seems a little too big, but otherwise I really like it.
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6 May 2007The multi-story party
There were people on every floor of Matt's condo. It was an awesomely successful event.