Category Archives: Uncategorized

New Jersey Elections, Side by Side

nj-gov

As results in the New Jersey governor’s election started rolling in tonight and I was trying to make sense of the early numbers, I kept wondering how Corzine’s performance compared to the the last election

So, Matthew Bloch did some quick hacking of his election maps, and voila, side-by-side New Jersey maps let you see the shifts in Corzine’s share of the vote. Notice in particular my home county of Middlesex, which Corzine took 56%-39% in 2005, but lost 48%-45% this year.

How Big Is That Phone?

verizon-phone-size

I discovered the other day that Verizon Wireless has a slick little feature on their Web site that lets you see how big its cell phones are by displaying them next to three items you may have around in your house: an iPod, a pack of playing cards and a pad of Post-It notes.

Given the varying sizes of computer monitors, it’s a smart way to let online shoppers see how well a phone will fit in their pocket or not.

You can try the interactive out yourself by going to Verizon’s page for the LG enV and clicking “View Size” at the top.

Food Rules

Michael Pollen has a fun set of 20 food rules today on nytimes.com. My 3 contributions to the cause:

1. If a restaurant doesn’t specialize in mussels, don’t order them. I’ve had mussels at far too many restaurants where they’ve clearly been around for a while or were cooked to death. Instead go to BXL (Times Square) or Monk’s (Philly) where they do them right.

2. “Truffle oil” on a menu usually indicates that cheap, artificial-tasting stuff that a chef added to make a dish look impressive, but which often overwhelms the dish, and not in a good way. (See also Frank Bruni’s lament on the same subject.)

3. Ever since I discovered that Costco sells prime rib-eye steaks for about $10 per pound, I’ve virtually stopped buying steak from the grocery store — there’s just no comparison in taste. If I’m going to consume that much fat in one meal, it’s not worth it to have a sub-par steak. (And the healthy upside, if you can call it that, to the Costco steaks: since it’s more of an ordeal to go to Costco than the grocery store, and the steaks only come in 4-packs, I end up eating steak far less frequently than before.)

A Couple Weather Tweaks

Pushed out a couple little fixes:

  • weather.ericson.net should now default to the last place you viewed each time you visit. (I think my cookie handling code is OK, but if anyone runs into problems, post a comment.)
  • And there’s now better error messages when you enter a non-U.S. city or a non-existent place. The rails “Something went wrong” screen should be banished, I believe.

And next up on the to-do list: the iPhone friendly version. Maybe this weekend …