peat dot org

We’ve drummed up a lot of interest around Chatter Mill (our internal communication tool for large businesses), so Nova and I are headed to Chicago next month for the Corporate Communicators Conference.  It should be a good time — I haven’t spent much time in the Windy City, and on the off chance that I have a spare evening to drink beer and hang out, it would be great to meet up with some fellow geeks.

I’ll be there from May 8th through the 10th, and we’re staying somewhere near the Hyatt Regency Chicago.

Any takers?

Found in the OmniPlan manual:

Heh.

I’m looking for two skilled people ASAP who I can refer for some quick gigs that want attention before the end of the week.  They’re short jobs, and they pay!

First, I’m looking for a Flash developer with a clue or two about ActionScript and XML, and is willing to trouble shoot some potentially hairy stuff.

Second, I’m looking for someone with a little HTML knowledge to update a static site with some new content.  Updating text, changing dates, and adding a couple of pages (identical to some existing pages, just different text and photos).

If you have the chops, please send me an e-mail (peat@peat.org) and I’ll pass your information on!

“One Dutch researcher estimates that there are some five trillion spiders in the Netherlands alone, each of which consumes about a tenth of a gram of meat a day. Were the victims people instead of insects, they would need only three days to eat all sixteen and a half million Dutchmen.”

- Burkhard Bilger, “Spider Woman” (PDF – The New Yorker. March, 2007)

For what it’s worth, I recommend OmniPlan if you’re on a Mac and in the habit of taking on fair sized projects with a bunch of people.  The manual is super easy to follow, and it makes the process of estimating and tracking progress a lot easier (particularly if you have a lot of dependencies).  It’s about $150, and the trial licenses are limited to a single day (grumble), but it just about halved the time it takes me to do estimates for time, people, and materials.

More Firefox goodies!  A short while ago I noted the S3Fox extension for wrangling files on Amazon’s S3 file storage service.  Today I found a great extension for managing EC2 machines — the aptly named EC2 UI.  It’s about as simple as it gets.  Very handy!

It turns out someone down the street has one of those PODS. We’re moving within the next month or so, and it occurred to us that having one of those big white boxes parked in front of our house for the next few weeks is going to make our lives a lot easier when it comes time to move. We can pack at our convenience (not frantically on moving day), and have it trucked over to our new house … whenever. Pretty cool. And cheaper than movers.

But it also reminded me of something else: shipping container architecture.

This stuff is brilliant. Mix standard shipping containers with a bit of creativity, and you have extremely sturdy and pretty sweet looking buildings.

LOT-EK has some of the best conceptual examples of how shipping containers can be used to build interesting houses, offices, and other such things. fabprefab.com has a gallery of builders and designs for structures built from shipping containers. Container City has descriptions and photos of real world projects. ContainerArchitecture.co.nz has some great designs.

Very, very cool. Anyone know if any container structures here in Portland?

(illustration courtesy of ContainerArchitecture.co.nz)

I like risotto. It’s easy to make, it tastes awesome, it’s cheap, and it has a name that impresses people (“ohh, it sounds Italian!”).

This is a particularly kick ass risotto.

Here’s what you need:

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil.
• 3 garlic cloves, crushed.
• 1 medium white onion, finely chopped.
• 2/3 cup Arborio rice.
• 2/3 cup barley.
• 1 bottle white wine. (some for the dish, the rest for the chef — that’s how we party.)
• 4 cups chicken stock.
• 1 pound ground turkey.
• 1 cup parmigiano-reggiano, grated.
• 1 cup asparagus tips.

First, pour yourself some wine. Then, put the chicken stock in a small pot to warm up over medium heat. Separately, in a deep skillet, saute the onions and garlic in the olive oil over medium high heat. When the onions are a bit transparent and softened up after a couple of minutes, drink some wine, and dump the rice and barley into the pan (plus a little salt and pepper if you’re keen). Mix it up and enjoy the crackle and sizzling for a couple more minutes, then dump in the rest of your glass of wine (probably half a cup or so, at this point).

Refill your wine glass.

When the wine in the skillet has boiled off, ladle in the warm chicken stock until the rice and barley are just covered. Drink some wine, then add all of the ground turkey in little bits.

Stir the rice and barley, add chicken stock, and drink frequently for the next 20 minutes or so. You’ll know it’s done when you’re out of chicken stock, the grains are al dente, and you have a pretty good buzz going.

Add the cheese and the asparagus tips. This is when it starts to get gooey, and your guests/roommates/significant other will start wandering through the kitchen more frequently, because damn, it’s a good smelling dish.

When the cheese is melted in and the asparagus is bright green, season with ground black pepper, and turn off the heat. Keep stirring for a couple of minutes, polish off the wine, and viola. You’re done.

This dish supposedly serves 4, but I’m skeptical. By the time I’m done cooking, I’m ready to eat half of it.

I’m a huge fan of my little white MacBook.  I think it’s just about the best deal on the planet for a personal computer, laptop or otherwise.  The only thing that isn’t so hot is the screen size.  Great for use as a laptop, not so great for sitting at a desk all day.

So I went out looking for a cheap monitor that wasn’t totally hideous and rendered text nicely, and I found this:  a Hanns G 19″ widescreen.  No, I’ve never heard of them before … but it gets the job done nicely.  I bought it at a local shop, but Amazon has it for $180.  We now have a couple of ‘em, one at home on the Mac Mini, and one at work.  No troubles what so ever.

If you need a little extra screen space, and you’re not a stickler for color accuracy or incredibly high resolution, it’s a pretty sweet deal.

I swore I wouldn’t join Twitter.

I thought it was more irritating than useful.

I still think it’s more irritating than useful.

And yet … http://twitter.com/peat