Amazing!

(Well, not really)

Recently elected Kennedy-successor MA Senator Scott Brown has shown he can take corporate interest money with the best of ‘em. How does $450,000 in six days, to take a new position on Wall Street reform, sound?

Like a seasoned vet, if you ask me!

So now, instead of the banks seeding a bailout insurance fund with their own money, it’s going to come from tax payers. So once again, we’ll be bailing them out, as needed.

Holy @#$% – that just pisses me off!

Sources: http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/02/01/late_in_senate_race_financial_sector_donations_swelled_browns_coffers/

http://www.americablog.com/2010/06/scott-bankers-gave-me-450k-in-6-days.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Americablog+%28AMERICAblog%29

As I leafed through the latest Hammacher Schlemmer catalog this afternoon, I came across this little gem. I have to say, the photo piqued my curiosity. At first, I thought it could be the most man-tastic pocket knife ever. That was, until I noticed that it’s 8.75″ long!

Well paint me dumbfounded. Would you really set a screw with this thing’s Phillips head screwdriver, rotating a mini steering wheel-sized hunk of metal? Really Wenger, really? Did the world need this bit of utter ridiculousness?

And for those of you chomping at the bit to get one, it can be yours for the reasonable price tag of $1,400 USD.

Here’s the complete tool list:

10 mm Detachable Hexagonal Wrench
Serrated-Edge Scissors and lever
Screwdriver
Shackle Opener
Spoke Key (3.3 mm and 3.5 mm)
Marlin Spike
Extension Lever
Needle
All Purpose Wrench
Shoe Spike Wrench
Bit Holder
Slip-Joint Pliers
Blade with blunt point
Wire Crimper
Can Opener
Inside and Outside Wire Cutters
Case Opener
Nut Wrench
Chain Rivet Setter
Small Blade
Cigar Cutter
Small Blade 65mm
Club Face Cleaner
Small Screwdriver
Combination Tool (screwdriver with safety lock system)
Snap Hook
Can Opener
Special Blade
Can Lifter
Spot Light
Corkscrew
Stroke Counter with 12 graduations
Curved Hexagonal Key
Toothpick
Detachable Marker
Tweezers
Fish Scaler
Wood Saw
Fish Disgorger
Lineguide Flat Phillips Screwdriver
Flat Pliers
Flat Screwdriver (3.5 mm with safety lock system)
Cap Lifter
Wire Bender
Graduated Tread Depth Gauge
Green Repair Tool
Integrated Holder
Integrated Swivelling Compass with straight line
Ruler
Junior Round Blade
Large blade
Laser Pointer
Magnifying Glass
Precision Screwdriver
Medium Screwdriver
Metal File
Metal Cutting Saw
Nail Clipper
Nail File
Nail Cleaner
Screwdriver for small cross head screws.
Needle Nose Pliers
Phillips Screwdriver
Phillips Screwdriver with safety lock system
Reamer
Reamer-Eye
Semi-Round Nose Pliers
Wire Cutter
Nut Wrench

Last week, I introduced a new friend to the wonderful world of web design. I assure you, my motives were purely selfish. I want more designers around me, so I can talk about my passion more. I’m pretty sure that makes me an evil zombie designer. If I can’t find a design community to grow with, I’ll start infecting friends. Mmmmmm… braaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiins.

For four hours, I had the pleasure of overwhelming his sizable gray matter with structure, theory, hardware and applications. And the experience got me thinking, maybe other people would benefit from a list of tools other designers use. So let me introduce recommended software for a windows-based web designer, by category.

WYSIWYG HTML Editor

While Adobe DreamWeaver CS4 is undoubtedly the most popular web page editor, I use Microsoft Expression Web 3. Why? Because I don’t want to pay Adobe prices. Expression Web, now in its third iteration, has matured into DreamWeaver’s little brother and offers 80-90% of big brother’s features.

I confess that there’s one area where Expression Web leaves me wanting more: third party plug-ins. Sheer numbers aside, the quality of DreamWeaver’s plug-ins are outstanding. If that is a deal killer for you, then you have no choice but to bit the Adobe bullet. Otherwise, I would recommend saving a couple hundred dollars buying Expression Web 3.

Conclusion: Microsoft Expression Web is the best value, but Adobe DreamWeaver wins if plug-ins are important to you.

The past couple years, I researched content management systems (CMS), to subjectively determine the best one to build sites with. I own several domains (e.g. AnselTaft.com, CallOnClick.com, SiteLash.com, AmphibiaCam.com) and wanted a fast loading, robust, extensible CMS. Over time, I narrowed the list to the three most promising candidates: WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla (with honorable mentions to Expression Engine and Concrete5).

After 5 years, I concluded that WordPress is the best CMS. Why, you ask?

1. It’s constantly improved
   Matt Mullenweg and company (Automattic) regularly update WordPress with new features and smash bugs every couple of months. (Software bugs, that is. No cockroaches were harmed in the making of their software, as far as I know).
2. It’s easy to update
   I use the updater built into WordPress’ control panel and haven’t had an issues across three sites. You just need to know your FTP account information. If you’re unconvinced, please read more about it here (see the ‘Automatic Upgrade’ section).
3. It loads pages quickly
   While there are more expeditious content management systems, WordPress is no slouch. It is marginally slower than the fastest CMSes, but given WordPress’ robustness, I feel it may be the fastest of the mature solutions.
4. It’s robust
   For simplicity, please refer to WordPress’ feature list. Please keep in mind that that list contains a feature summary, not every last little detail.
5. It’s extensible
   Related to robustness, extensibility enables WordPress’ capabilities to expand via plug-ins. Plug-ins are bits of code authored by third party coders (or Automattic), to bring additional functionality to the CMS. You may search through WordPress’ 8,000* plug-ins here (*7,968 at the time of writing).
6. WordPress has a thriving community
   If you need help, you can reference thousands of WordPress books, websites and forums to solve your problem. It will also be immensely helpful to know XHTML and cascading style sheets (CSS).
7. There are a myriad of themes
   There are hundreds, if not thousands of free and professionally authored themes to instantly change your site’s appearance. Personally, I prefer the commercial offerings from Templatic.com, ThemeForest.net and WooThemes.com.
8. WordPress’ output is accessible and SEO friendly
   Well, accessibility and search engine optimization are fairly native and can be further enhanced through plug-ins.
9. It has a pleasant UI
   WordPress’  user interface is handsome and intuitive. Frankly, I’ve never read a manual to teach me how to use it (and some would argue, I shouldn’t have to). And if the default control panel is not to your liking, you can change the appearance with various theme plug-ins).
10. Best of all… it’s free!
    Need I say more? Okay, I will. You could spend a couple hundred dollars for Expression Engine commercial edition, but WordPress has almost all the same features. And for what it’s lacking, you can generally backfill the gaps with plug-ins.

While the list above is not completely exhaustive for all potential website needs, it culminates criteria I found important to determine the right CMS for me. It’s important for you to decide on ‘must-have’ features and seek out a CMS that can provide them. And if your needs can’t be met by WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, Expression Engine or Concrete5, you’re probably looking at a custom built site. I wish you well, whatever direction you decide to head.