Do you want a way to merge or aggregate multiple feeds into one master feed? Do you want to filter a feed or set of feeds and scan for entries that either contain (or don’t contain) a particular item? Then FeedShake is for you. Do you want to make sure you don’t miss any items published to an active feed? Then feedcatch is for you. Do you want to know why the heck either of those things is useful? Then this blog post is for you.
I make smoothies every morning before work. I know, I know; how very California of me. Years before moving to California I bought a blender and started trying to make smoothies. The blender came out a couple of times, but making smoothies was always too much work to do regularly. What’s different now? I’ve learned how to blend quickly and easily.
The smoothie recipes that you find in cookbooks and in smoothie books are all fairly complicated and take too long to prepare. I’m going to explain how I make great tasting smoothies quickly and without hassle. These days it takes me less than five minutes to make two smoothies, pour them into to-go cups, wash out the blender, and clean off the counter top.
A week or so ago I wrote about why GMail fails to meet my email needs. I’ve used IMAP for years now, and before using IMAP I read my email on the same server it was stored on. You know, using mutt (similar to elm and pine). I recently switched service providers and in the process of doing so poked around a little bit to find a top notch email provider. After looking at various providers and reading posts in various forums, I ended up choosing tuffmail. Sixty days have passed and I’m happier with Tuffmail than I could ever have hoped to be. What makes Tuffmail so great?
It really does. Alton Brown covered making popcorn without a special popcorn maker or a microwave on Good Eats using this recipe. Inspired, I bought some white and yellow popcorn from the bulk food aisle at Whole Foods and tried this over the weekend. “Real” popcorn truly is better than microwave popcorn. Even without a topping, the popcorn I made came out at least as good as the best movie theatre popcorn I’ve had. Adding just a touch of real melted butter really completed the “dish.”
Yahoo! mail and GMail are very usable services today. A majority of internet users are quite happy using web based email from one of these major providers for all their personal correspondence. There are, however, some major limitations to the web based email model that will make these offerings incomplete unless they add offline support via the IMAP protocol. Given these providers’ reliance on revenue from ads viewed while accessing email via the web interface, this is not something I see happening anytime soon.
If you’re flying with travel sized liquids, don’t forget your one quart, clear, zip-top bag. TSA isn’t kidding when they say all travel sized liquids must be in such a bag or they’ll be confiscated. Over the course of the last few weeks I’ve seen three people asked to throw away all their liquids and gels because they weren’t in a baggie. Thankfully these folks were all business travelers and managed to throw away the (new) toiletries without throwing a fit.
