Armchair Cook: A Food Network Addict: Friday Frozen Dinner's Guide to Emeril

Armchair Cook, my new favourite food blog, on Emeril; or, as he’s known in this household, that blowhard sack of shit Emeril. “Emeril is just like my grandpa. If it’s just a small group, my grandpa is relaxed and fun to be around. But as soon as he’s in a crowd, my grandpa’s inner entertainer comes out, and pretty soon it’s nonstop jokes, pronouncements and interruptions.”

Walnut Creek On Ice

A temporary, but real, skating rink in Civic Park: pretty cool. Shame about the huge and noisy refrigeration unit right next to the library, though…

SFGate.com: World's Ugliest Dog Dies at 14

Who could resist a headline like that? Not me.

phil ringnalda: No, ask what Bloglines can do to you

This doesn’t look good at all…

Efectos Especiales: How to exit

Hans Nowak on a minor, but pointless, annoyance in the Python interpreter. Me too: those messages, with their undertone of “you’ve got to do it our way, you dolt” always felt a little hostile to me.

Ask MetaFilter: Pluralisation of acronyms and abbrevations?

The NYT believes the plural of CD is CD’s; it’s wrong.

Famous for 15 megapixels: Second Class Citizens

Stef on tokenism. Vicious twist at the end.

Light Field Photography with a Hand-Held Plenoptic Camera

The dry title belies something really boggling: recording light rays from multiple directions at each pixel produces digital photographs that can be refocused after they’re taken. Check out also the macrophotography section in the video, with its noodle-baking virtual observer. A real conceptual leap away from the boring sensor-instead-of-film digital camera model. (via New Scientist, MetaFilter)

Armchair Cook: A Food Network Addict: Breaking Bobby Flay

The Armchair Cook eviscerates Food Network’s perpetual frat-boy Bobby Flay: “arrogant and obnoxious and mean.” Also worth it for the link to Flak Magazine’s comprehensive The Staggering Dicketry of Bobby Flay: “Emeril seems, at all times, dangerously close to actually copulating with the food he prepares.”

telescreen.org: Plagiarism at the San Francisco Chronicle

Perils of publishing in the blogging age: bloggers have long, and easily-searched, memories.

The Life and Opinions of Andrew Rilstone: On the Origins of the BCs

A savage dissection of the Daily Express via a misguided but typical “political correctness gone mad” article; a pleasure to read. (via Pete Ashton)

Eric.Weblog(): My life as a Code Economist

Eric Sink on triaging bugs: a long read, but a valuable one. (On a lighter note, The End of an Era is very evocative of small-company social culture: “the full spectrum of absurdity you see here didn’t happen overnight.”)

defective yeti: $eason$ Greeting$!!

Matthew Baldwin imagines conversation spamming: “Great conversation! Keep up the good work! Enlarge your penis. penis pills emporium dot net.” (Bonus link from the comments: McSweeney’s on Responsible Spam.)

Tea Leaves: Dancing About Architecture

Art criticism in the style of tech-happy games reviewing: “The improved technique used by Cezanne now allows him to depict many more objects on the canvas simultaneously.”

BitWorking: Camera-Ready Copy and the Social Denial-of-Service Attack

Joe Gregorio on committee disruptions: “Any technical group of sufficient size and activity will spontaneously generate its very own sociopath.”

Le «blog personnel» de Joe Clark: Stop fighting your distractions

A riposte to the “trendy buzzword bullshit” of the Getting Things Done crowd: “You were a procrastinator today and, when you get around to it, you’ll be a procrastinator tomorrow.” (I like the little nod to speakers of French in the URL, too.)

Bay Area Bites: Scary Food

Meghan buys weird stuff; tries to eat it; mostly fails. (Bonus foolhardy link: Steve, Don’t Eat It!)

Coding Horror: Avoiding Booleans

Simple but profound. (I’ve seen plenty of code with mystery FALSE and TRUE parameters in my time, too…)

The Daily WTF: Self-Documenting Comments

The WTF is a little hit-and-miss (and its commenters often veer a little too far towards the inane for me) but this one really tickles me.