Hey, Favicons!

How do you get those little icons next to your URL and why don't I have one, I asked myself. Typed "little icon next URL" into Google and learned it is called a favicon and how to make one.

First: "Save your image as a 16 x 16 pixel Windows file." Huh? What is a Windows file? Platform-specific files are passé, right? Well whatever, there are sites that generate favicons on the fly. No need to know what a Windows files is.

I uploaded a GIF of Edea (image A.) to favicon.cc and it generated image B. which did not look too promising, but Edea's my girl, so we pressed on, placing the file—which must be called favicon.ico—in the root directory of my web site.

That brings us to image C.: Edea as a little icon next to my URL!

I'd have to classify this as Not-Quite-Successful. But hey, I have a favicon. You can too.

Hip Mama

I'm thrilled to announce my story "Over A Barrel" has been accepted for publication in the Summer 2008 issue of Hip Mama. It's the story of an ongoing battle with my in-laws over eating at Cracker Barrel.

Mangda Na

There are many reasons to love Chicago, but finding frozen water beetles at your local Thai grocer has to rank up there with Navy Pier and Rock n Roll McDonald's. And at $2.88 for four, I couldn't not buy them. Aside from mangda na, the Golden Pacific Market, 5353 North Broadway, has an amazingly huge selection of fish, meat, produce, soy sauce, noodles, wraps, candy, soda, sauces, and more. I got a 56 ounce can of sesame oil for $14! And organic tamari!

But what does one do with water beetles, aside from photographing them and posting them on a blog? I kinda figured you'd fry them with garlic and hot pepper and they'd taste like garlic and hot pepper, but no! According to Duck Fat and Politics:

"Mang da is one of the most haunting flavors I know, with an intense floral fragrance that reminds me of essence of gewurztraminer, with a concentrated rose petal and faint citrus taste."

Oh. That leaves another question: what is gewurztraminer? A bratwurst? Ah—a wine; thank you, Google.

Honey, This Decaf Is Awesome!

Maybe because it's not decaffeinated. According to this Consumer Report, there is no legal definition of decaffeinated. Like your weight, it is what you claim is. Nice! So while the average caffeinated coffee contains 100 milligrams of caffeine, you'd expect decaffeinated to contain: 0? 1? 5? Check out these brews:

Starbucks: 21 mg
Seattle's Best: 29 mg
Dunkin' Donuts: 32 mg (yee haw! have a sugar-free donut with that)
McDonald's: 5 mg

Consumer Reports found caffeinated coffee at these chains to contain anywhere from 58 to 281 mg, so with those apples, 32 mg could well be considered decaffeinated.

Stuff Happens In Britain

Which is why I get so many posts from The Telegraph UK.

Headline: Heinz advert offends viewers with male kiss

If Kerry had been elected, the press would be having a field day with a Heinz mayonnaise ad featuring a male kiss. The commercial is too complex (and silly) to sum up pithily, so read the original article here.

Would You Like A TV Show With Those Commercials?

If you want to be seriously offended by commercials, count up how much of your 30 and 6o minute shows they consume. According to Austin.360:
An episode of the hour-long CSI has up to 19 minutes of commercials.
An episode of half-hour Arrested Development has up to 11 minutes of commercials.

Turnoffyourtv.com has similar numbers:
"The AAAA report showed that in the primetime slot, non-programming time on network television was 16:43 minutes per hour. The daytime level of advertising was 20:53 minutes per hour.

On cable, the Fox Family Channel was the most cluttered with 18:03 minutes of commercials per hour; E! came in second with 17:19 minutes of ads per hour; and MTV was third with 17:19 minutes per hour of clutter."

For tonight's entertainment, may I recommend instead of a Cialis commercial, The Secret History by Donna Tartt? At 542 pages, it should cover a couple weeks worth of non-programming airtime.

Glowy Photos

A trick from dooce.com for glowy photos—perfect for babies, kittens, and brides. Dooce has clearly written steps if you want to hop over there. Here are less clearly written steps: open image, duplicate layer, gaussian blur top layer to 5 (or whatever floats your boat), set transparency of blurred layer to "darken." Ta-da! Insta-schmaltz!

Plus, another lovely thing about rounded corners, they clean up the schmutz on the edges of your not-so-perfect snapshots. See the little black triangle in the bottom right corner of the middle photo? Round the corners, and—gone.

New Crop Circle

Top: According to Telegraph.co.uk, this crop circle, "measuring 150ft in diameter, is apparently a coded image representing the first 10 digits, 3.141592654, of pi . . . and has been described by astrophysicists as 'mind-boggling'."

Bottom: Mind-boggling to an astrophysicist maybe, but crop circles are child's play to those of us with Photoshop. I made this one in ten minutes.

Uncle Fun

One could dedicate an entire blog to cool items found at Uncle Fun, at 1338 W. Belmont, Chicago. That won't happen here, but are these 3-D stickers stunning or what.

The Secret of Sea Salt

It's time that somebody told the truth. The single most important ingredient in your kitchen is salt. Substitute sea salt for your table salt and your life will change forever. There are very few secrets to life, but sea salt is one of them. (A firm mattress is another.)

Why did the french fry call the police? It was assaulted.

Pre Wii Entertainment

I found these glass slides at an antique show in Sandwich, Illinois. The image is cropped weirdly, but they appear to mount on some back lit viewing contraption, providing hours (seconds?) of viewing entertainment. There is something stunning about them, in a Tintin kind of way.

Electric Composter

Remember compost piles? Whodathunk that stinkin, flea flocked mountain of grass and chicken bones my mom kept in the yard would become obsolete?

Now all that molting goodness is available right in your kitchen.

According to treehugger, this jobbie from Sharpe "digests organic food waste with its proprietary Composting Bio Mix--a blend microbes and yeast cells, which also suppress odors while they work via Plasmacluster Ions that inactivate airborne mold."

There you have it. And only the size of a pony.

I'm thinking of a Kitchen Gadget Composter for kitchen gadgets you don't use anymore. In with the breadmaker, waffle iron and pasta maker and out with their raw component materials.

Round Corners

Love that Web 2.0 look of rounded corners but don't want to spring for PhotoShop? Here's a web tool for creating rounded corners on the fly, for free. Go to roundpic and upload your image. You can specify the corner radius and which corners you want rounded, then preview the result. Click Round It! and voila, download your newly-rounded image.

You can even specify image size, image quality and background color. And, last time I used roundpic, there was a conveniently placed google ad for getting rid of a yeast infection in one day. Talk about one stop shopping.

TOP: That's Mike with square corners. Bor-ing! MIDDLE: Mike rounded. Spiffy. BOTTOM: Mike with square and rounded. Now that's fancy.

The Joy of the Bag

For years, I dreamed of a custom made bag with a pocket for each thing I carry: glasses, phone, address book, iPod, wallet, address book, appointment book, pen, pencil etc. Thanks to Cinnamon Cooper, custom bag maker extraordinaire and overall decent person, that dream is realized, and it was surprisingly inexpensive.

I'm now an evangelist for the custom made bag for every one. This just may be the key to happiness. Keys? Check. Make up? Check. Bike light? Check. I've probably gained weight from not searching car, home, garage, yard, pockets and old bag for my keys alone. If you've been thinking about doing it, take the plunge. Call Cinnamon.

TOP: I got to pick the cloth, natch. Cinnamon vigilantly tracked down that hard-to-find vintage pattern for the stripe and lining. MIDDLE: There's that pattern lining the interior. Interior includes a velcroed pocket for wallet and a tabbed pocket for iPod, among others. BOTTOM: Under flap storage for business card, pen, pencil, glasses, phone. Perfect.

This design has been impatiently waiting to be printed on a shirt. Maybe this summer.

CAWS Newsletter #1

NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER
Welcome to the Chicago Area Wildlife Society, an egalitarian society made up of people doing nothing in particular. Membership in the society is free. There are no dues, there is no board of directors, we hold no meetings, elections or tribunals. We kick no one out; we let no one in. You are a member if you say you are. You need not qualify yourself, though ownership of Society apparel confers a certain amount of legitimacy to membership claims. Otherwise, we do not care whether you love or hate wildlife or if even you are urban. Some of our members communicate with animals (see accompanying article), others chase them with sticks. We do not judge.

We like t-shirts and we like them soft and we like them cotton. We like our cottony softness made in the US by adults. Therefore we choose American Apparel garments whenever possible.

FEATURE ARTICLE
Conversations with Squirrel Whisperers
People who speak to squirrels and rodents tend to be reclusive, but in this rare interview, society members Randy and Jane (real name withheld) share their secrets.
_ _ _ _ _
Q: Randy, I want to ask you a few questions about talking to squirrels.
Randy: You don’t talk to squirrels, you communicate with them.
Q: Butofcourse. And how does one communicate with squirrels?
Randy: Squirrels make two sounds: one like a cockatiel or a parakeet squawking and one that’s a clicking. I might click at a squirrel and if the squirrel clicks back like it’s chuckling, it’s happy. I never use the
squawk noise; that’s a fighting sound. That would be like barking at a dog.
Q: Can you make the happy sound for us?
Randy: Tsk tsk.
Q: Jane, what sound do you make to communicate with squirrels?
Jane: I don’t actually communicate with animals like Randy does. I just noticed that when I make a certain sound, they’ll come over to me.
Q: What sound is that?
Jane: Ffff ffff (high-pitched noise).
Q: What happens when you make that sound?
Jane: It gets their attention. I think it sounds like the cry of their young. One day I did it in a pet store and all the rodents in the store came out of their burrowing places and banged against their glass cages.
Q: Such power could corrupt.
Jane: Yes! I think the noise might mean something bad because it freaks them out.
Q: Randy, how did you start communicating with squirrels?
Randy: I watched them on the lawn of the state capitol (of Wisconsin) and noticed that they do a lot of communicating by twitching their tails, posturing and barking. I started to move my arm to imitate
their tail movements and imitating their sounds and I found I could communicate with them for hours. They’ll continue engaging as long you keep them at ease.
Q:Any advice for aspiring squirrel whisperers?
Jane: Just don’t use my real name for this interview.
Q: OK, but that’s not technically advice.
Jane: I think you should get that from Randy since he actually communicates with squirrels.
Q: Randy?
Randy: Don’t make a squirrel a promise you can’t keep. They’re sensitive beasts.
Jane: I completely agree.

Chicago Area Wildlife Society

The Chicago Area Wildlife Society is a labor of love that celebrates urban wildlife, in particular: squirrels, skunks, raccoons, rabbits and other rodentia. It's basically a line of clothing including track jackets, t-shirts, onesies and lap-t's, plus a newsletter. That's my son up top. He doesn't appear happy, pushed into modeling at only 5 days old.