I spent a fair amount of last week (and all of this weekend) sick, so I spent very little time on the wibbles aside from work. Found a few fun tidbits, though:
How to make doctors miserable people (now with data!) – Read the linked articles as well, especially “Doctors as Martyrs“. Any time I read about the stress chamber that is medical residency, I think of 1) Scrubs (sowwy!), and 2) a high school friend of mine who’s a resident now. Oy, vey.
Big Rocks First: Double Your Productivity This Week – This is an old, old Zen Habits post (and one I read a long time ago), but I’m finding it necessary to think beyond the day-to-day MITs lately to get bigger things done. …Like, you know, the upcoming wedding posts and pictures.
Reader Story: How I Built My Own House — Without a Mortgage – Sustainability, small and frugal living, and willingness to be nontraditional. I'm still not interested in truly going off the grid, but his solar energy and house design ideas are interesting, and earth sheltered houses are adorable, although me being me, I’d worry about ground-loving bugs. I'm not sure if solar power is as helpful in North Carolina as out in Arizona (if I judged the landscape correctly).
Should you fly or drive on your summer vacation? – Greg and I have been thinking about planning for future vacations (my family was never a vacationing family). This article hits on some good considerations in flying vs. driving, although it doesn't really address a flyer's resistance to participating the sham of airport "security" as a major deterrent to flying.
Amanda Hocking’s Blog: Some Things That Need to Be Said – From a successful self-published author: "This is literally years of work you're seeing. And hours and hours of work each day. The amount of time and energy I put into marketing is exhausting. I am continuously overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do that isn't writing a book. I hardly have time to write anymore, which sucks and terrifies me."
The Very Rich Indie Writer – Novelr – Making People Read – Looking at the example of Amanda Hocking's financial success, will authors of web fiction start to close off their free writings and move to self-publishing under the lure of it being "easy"?
Broadsheet – Salon.com – Very well-written article on overweight folks having to buy two seats on planes. "See, those of us who are and/or love people to whom airlines' "person of size policies" apply don't automatically envision the discomfort of getting stuck next to a fatty; we envision the physical and emotional pain of being the fatty crammed between two potentially hostile strangers, at the mercy of flight attendants who might decide we're fine on one flight and a "safety risk" on the next."
Four Fabulous Video Band-Aids YOU need NOW! | Bitch Magazine – "My secret ritual is to curl up in my favorite chair (preferably with a hot cup of tea in hand and a kitty on my lap) to devour a few substantive video clips from insightful women."
Create a Professional Web 2.0 Layout | Psdtuts+ – Quite awesome guide, especially since I'm puttering around with a site at the moment. I'll have to translate it to Fireworks-speak, though, since that's what I have at the moment.
sitemap-generators – Project Hosting on Google Code – I definitely recommend this for generating sitemaps. I've got it cron-jobbed on Dreamhost, and it generates a gzipped sitemap in about 1 second — 2500+ links.