- Snowflakes Under an Electron Microscope (via @ThisIsTrue)
- The United States of Autocomplete (Strange Maps) – What happens if you type each state name into Google and see what the popular searchers are?
- See something? Cite something! (How to share content on the Internet)
Category: Life
You Know You Need Coffee When… (Volume 2)
Continued from volume one…
- You put a filter in the coffee maker, then go back to get…a filter for the coffee maker. And then put the bag of coffee back in the fridge…where you’ve never kept coffee. Ever. (Yeah, I was batting 1,000 that day.)
- You get halfway up the stairs before realizing you left your travel mug in the car. (I’ve done this several times.)
- You get impatient with the pour rate while filling your mug.
- You pour cereal into your coffee mug instead of a bowl. (Well, almost.)
- You come up with a great item to add to your “You know you need coffee when…” list and can’t remember what it was.
The Office Barista: Simple Drinks For Your Coffee Break
Don’t have time to go to Starbucks, but want something more than plain coffee? Here are some simple drinks you can make with ingredients that might be in your lunch room, or that you can easily keep at your desk.
Coffee + hot chocolate mix = mocha
Coffee + hot chocolate mix + cinnamon
Hot chocolate mix + mint-flavored black tea
Hot chocolate mix + cinnamon-flavored black tea
Hot chocolate mix + masala chai tea
Since I realized that this was more of a list of what you can do with hot chocolate mix, I’ve been meaning to fill in more detail for…well, months now. Apparently today is National Coffee Break Day, so I figured rather than letting it sit in the drafts folder forever, I’d post what I had in observance!
Starbucks’ new Trenta Coffee: Big Deal
I can’t get worked up about Starbucks’ new super-size for iced drinks, the 31-ounce Trenta. Here’s why:
- It’s only on iced drinks. Iced tea, lemonade, iced lattes, etc. Unless you’re getting plain iced coffee, you’re not getting 31 ounces of fully-caffeinated coffee.
- Even then, there’s ice taking up a lot of that space. So you’re still not getting 31 ounces of coffee.
- You can get a 32-ounce drink in any fast food place in America. Sometimes it’s called a large. Sometimes it’s called a medium.
A 31-ounce Frappucino might be a bit much…but how much do you typically get in a milkshake at a restaurant that specializes in them? I’m going to guess it’s 12-16 ounces in the glass, plus about the same in the metal mixing cup that they usually deliver to your table at places like Ruby’s or Johnny Rockets. That brings it to 24-32 ounces — in other words, about the same.
So, a little perspective. Is the Trenta bigger than any other Starbucks drink size? Sure. But compared to a Big Gulp? No one would think twice if you picked up a 32-ounce iced tea or lemonade at McDonald’s (except to ask why you weren’t getting a soda), or refilled your 12-ounce glass twice at a sit-down restaurant.
Comment Policy
The Internet needs a new rule: Do not comment on an article about a controversial topic until you’ve actually read and understood the post to which you’re responding.
Firefox 4 Beta: The Missing Status Bar
If you’ve been following the Firefox 4 betas, you’ve probably noticed that they’re dumping the status bar. OK, a lot of people didn’t use it, but here’s the thing:
When you hover over a link, the status bar tells you where it will take you.
This is important (especially for security) — important enough that they’ve moved the functionality elsewhere…but in a broken manner. They’ve put it into the location bar — you know, the field where you type in a URL, or look to see where you are.
The problem is that there isn’t room in the location bar to show the full URL of a hovered link except for very short links. The status bar has the entire width of the browser. The location bar has to share that space with the navigation buttons, the search box, the feedback button (during the beta), any custom toolbar buttons, the site name on secure websites, etc.
Just about every link I hover over ends up with critical information cut off in the “…” between the start of the hostname and the parameters at the end. That’s almost useless. (Almost, because at least the hostname is visibla, but it would help to see the page name as well.)
Displaying the target URL in some way is core functionality for a web browser, and you shouldn’t remove or break core functionality. In some ways this is worse than the proposal a few years ago to remove “View Source,” because that at least isn’t core functionality for a browser (though it is core functionality for the web, because it encourages people to explore and tinker and learn how to make their own websites — which is exactly why that was put back in). It’s crazy that I need to install an add-on to get back something as basic as a working preview for links.
Old Town Irvine After the Storm
Well, technically, during a lull in the storm. The clouds were moving very fast, with light and shadow moving over the empty fields and office parks, and I waited several minutes for the sun to play over this scene.
I particularly liked the contrast of the dead brown tumbleweeds scattered around the bright green meadow.
My one regret with this photo is not being able to capture the steep drop-off into a wash right below the frame. I could get the wash, or the sky, but not both.
The large barn-like structure used to be a packing house for the Irvine Ranch farms, and is now split between a motel (the La Quinta Inn) and a group of restaurants.