Just a few:

• Passive voice is killing your design documents – " I would argue that if the goal is to communicate clearly, actually stating and explaining the uncertainties is going to be much more helpful to readers."
• The Size Of Our World – Bad graphical quality, but cool comparison.
• 6174 (number) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – Who comes up with stuff like this? Who sits around adding and subtracting numbers to find patterns?
• Ta Prohm temple at Angkor, Cambodia – Absolutely gorgeous.
• 8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City A Horrible Place To Live – I don't normally read the Onion (maybe I should!), but this struck me as a brilliantly-written article. For instance: "'This is no place to raise a kid, that's for sure,' said 32-year-old Brandon Rushing, a lifelong New Yorker. 'I grew up here and I turned into a giant asshole. Why would I want that for my son?'"
• Java Programmers are the Erotic Furries of Programming " Some Guy Ranting – A Programmer Hierarchy. As a budding Python programmer, I have no idea what he's talking about with regards to Python folks thinking they're better than PHP folks. …No idea at all.
• What fuels my passion for technology & writing code – Highlight: "I began having difficulty finding people to discuss ideas and thoughts with. When I did find someone who I could brainstorm and bounce ideas off of it was a very surreal feeling. I loved every minute of it and did not want to stop. Even today I have very few of these conversations but cherish the people I can have these conversations with. I enjoy my ideas being challenged. I enjoy being challenged, period. My level of excitement in these conversations are off the hook."
• A Showcase of Single Page Websites – I like pretty things. And creative things.
• Reader Story: How I Save Tons of Money by Grocery Shopping Once Every … – This sounds really, really awesome. If I were to implement it, it would take some changes in food style–Greg likes meat and I'm lazy about lunches–but it would probably be change for the better.

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• Welcome! – Okay, nevermind on the link below. This intro provides some good insight into the Tiny Living thing, which is more than just 60 sq. ft houses. Not sure that I want to downsize my house in particular, but it's an interesting movement.
• Tiny House In Asheville – I'm increasingly fascinated by this Tiny House movement (and need to do more research on it), although it initially strikes me as a fairly artificial constraint on living.
• a series of rants – Auntie Pixelante gives good rants. On a non-game-related note (but relevant), I really should stop saying "fail". If I talk to you in person, help me stop saying that.
• Google Goes Hard at Microsoft with Exchange Migration Tool – I wish I'd had this when I'd left Rose-Hulman. I still find myself wanting to hunt down select emails and contacts from Rose.
• 20 High Quality Photoshop Web Design Tutorials | Tutorials – This will be helpful as I continue to revise my layout and style on the blago-story-net.
• xkcd: Single Ladies – It was particularly cute today.
• I HOPE TO GOD THEIR MECHANICS ARE BETTER THAN THEIR DESIGN FIRM. | Brain – I had to link to this, especially in light of my recent travel annoyances and Greg's travel horror story.
• Scott Hanselman’s Computer Zen – The Weekly Source Code 51 – Asynchronous Database Access and LINQ to SQL Fun – I don't know that I'll work on any projects calling for this level of coolness soon, but this is a slick trick to bump your DB calls off the main threads of execution.

• Coding Horror: The Non-Programming Programmer – Unfortunately, I’ve worked with a programmer who truly could not program, and it wasn’t pleasant. He talked a decent game and was crunk about technology, but he couldn’t bang out solutions to problems, and we all paid for it. That said, I’m in the middle of Seth Godin’s “Linchpin”, and while if you’re looking for a programmer, you should screen for that, rapport and general intelligence are pretty damn important. Also: I really like Noahlz’s February 22, 2010 6:48 PM comment in that thread.
• Nice process, but what about the engineering bits? – "The major issue is in focusing so much effort and time on project management with what amounts to willful ignorance of the technical and engineering practices will inevitably leads to disaster."
• Bibliobitch: The Girl Who Fell From the Sky | Bitch Magazine – This book sounds amazing. Definitely adding it to my list of to-reads.
• YouTube – Boy Sees A Lobster For The First Time! – "Wow!" Very cute. GPupBoop thinks this is how I'd respond to seeing a lobster, too. …Ma-a-aybe…
• A Showcase of Workstations that’ll Make You Jealous | Inspiration – Gorgeous stuff here.

• Facebook: just don’t understand –
• Yelp Accused of Extortion | Threat Level | Wired.com – I don't use sites like Yelp very often, but I have to admit that this is a pretty clever scam that they seem to be running. They've probably gotten away with it for a while if they're actually doing it.
• What We Learned from the SuperBowl Ads – The Pursuit of Harpyness – The good kind of snarky. "Women and Doritos are of equal value, to be coveted by some men (skeevy would-be boyfriends) and protected by others (aw, cute little boys!), who are their rightful owners."
• Amazing Alternative Interfaces That Will Change Our Lives | Fuel Your Interface – I find BumpTop and other desktop/shell replacements interesting, but I don't use my desktop enough to make things like that worthwhile. I always search for my apps or docs. I want to get my hands on some of the other interfaces, though.
• BitTorrent visualization in processing.js – Really, really cool JavaScript visualization of BitTorrent that absolutely slaughters Firefox's responsiveness once it's at about 10 seeds and 5 peers.

Greg ran his second Promethean game tonight. It’s my first time in a bi-weekly campaign, and that combined with my fatigue and the newness means I’m having a hard time getting a grasp on my character. I picked an unusual character type for me (manic and ditzy, albeit smart… like a “blonde” Miles Vorkosigan), which means I have to keep reminding myself not to be the firm and common sensical (read: grumpy) “leader” I usually feel I need to be.

We have a nice, small gaming group, and it’s a group that I think I can be comfortable enough with to play a manic and ditzy character. Less urge to control the game flow in my usual way, because we’ll pretty shortly be a well-meshed team, I think.

I don’t have enough of an opinion on Promethean. I made the classic mistake of forgetting to write down short-, mid-, and long-term character [mechanical] growth goals (like, “get another dot of Dex, then get another dot of Firearms and that awesome transmutation”) when I made my character up, so 2 weeks later, when I have enough experience to buy some small things, I’ve forgotten what I thought was cool in the books and appropriate for my character.

I still have pictures and reflections on my Tampa trip to post. We spent a whole day at the beach(es) on that Saturday, resulting in my first-ever sunburn (ew, it peeled!). When I came back to work last Tuesday, I was hit with a big project (not mine originally) that needed some major triaging. Got that “done”… all this weekend. Muchos kudos to my awesome coworkers that pulled that off. I’m even less a fan of the Nascar race vendors (since our office is within spitting distance of the race track) than I was last year.

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