Being Mr. Kenny

Charles Guiteau was an interesting character. Born September 8, 1841, he assassinated President Garfield on July 2, 1881. He was hanged on June 30, 1882 after a lengthy and thoroughly entertaining trial.

This information comes, of course, from wikipedia, but it’s all about the Kate Beaton comic I read just this morning.

You should read the wikipedia article about Charles Guiteau, it’s quite interesting. Plus it contains the phrase, “he was blissfully oblivious to the American public’s outrage and hatred of him.”

I like the way wikipedia articles are written with a sense of humour. I really do.

Well it’s not so much an experiment, more a link to a cartoon site but hey. It’s late and I don’t care, K?

I have discovered that the best time to read web comics is late at night, because EVERYTHING IS FUNNY late at night, so you can laugh til you’re breathless because EVERYTHING IS FUNNY.

Anyway, my science experiment was to go back to this site later on today and see if it is still funny when I am awake and doing work and such.

Why don’t you join in with me. All you need is to be geeky enough to be on the internet a lot and also to find stupid jokes funny. If you quote Monty Python a lot then you are too geeky, and you aren’t invited to this experiment. Any results you submit won’t be included in the statistics that I am definitely going to definitely do.

I love blogging.

Anyway, the site is katebeaton.com, and you can get to it by clicking on katebeaton.com or by clicking on CHEESE IS THE BEST THING EVER. Both these links point to the same site, I just thought I’d put silly words in the second one because it is late at night and EVERYTHING IS FUNNY at the moment.

Heavens to goodness*, I have no idea what these sites are about, but they’re funny.

• michelleobamaisyournewbicycle.com
• barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com

* or “Murgatroid”. Your choice.

The Cambridge University Press website has a feature where if you double click on a word, it looks it up automatically in their reference books. I think this is a good idea. I wish the whole world was this easy.

Which prompts me to question whether I really do want the world to be that easy.

Which, in turn, prompts me to want to explain what I meant by that, but then that prompts me to think that by making things deliberately obscure, I’ll make you think about what I mean. And by saying that I’m hinting at what I can’t be bothered to explain. But also making you think.

Try to extricate what on earth I’m talking about and pop your answers on a postcard. Then type what you wrote on the postcard and put it in the comments. I’ll shut up now.

File this under “Careers”.

The best work, at least for me, is the stuff you get to do. If you are really good at that, you’re lucky enough to have very little of the have to stuff left.

Have to vs. Get to from Seth Godin.

TextMate is a text editor for the Mac OS. Regular Mac users won’t generally find it useful, but if you are at all involved in writing computer code — HTML, PHP, javascript, whatever — you will instantly and completely fall in love with TextMate.

I’m not even using my trademark hyperbole here.

TextMate is just a beautiful program. It solves problems in the most beautiful, elegant, behind the scenes way. Using it makes my head feel all clean inside. It is uncluttered, precise, and neat beyond all expectation.

Watch one of the screencasts. I presume that this is the program’s author’s voice. (If it turns out not, I think my little heart shall break.)

Is this not the most beautiful, calming and reassuring voice you have ever heard? If I was on a flight, and this was the pilot’s voice, I would instantly lose all fear and apprehension. Possibly for the rest of my life. The plane could even plummet from the sky in flames and explosions, and if this man’s voice came through the speakers, I wouldn’t care at all.

Using the program has a similar feel to it. It just works. If you’re a fledgling web developer and only know how to use HTML and CSS, get this app, use it, and you will move into PHP almost naturally. I can hand-on-my-heart say that this is one of the best purchases I ever made.

Similar Mac apps that I have fallen in love with include CSSEdit and Transmit (an FTP client).

TextMate: it saved my life, sort of. (The only reason it didn’t was because my life didn’t need saving when I found it.)

I am excited beyond words about HTML 5. It’s all about the HTML 5.