• 1 can tomato sauce
• 3 cans tomato paste
• 1 can diced tomatoes (do not use fresh)
• 2 lbs black olives sliced
• 1 lbs mushrooms sliced
• 1 white onion diced
• 1 yellow onion diced
• 1 green pepper diced
• 2 orange or yellow peppers diced
• 2 or 3 cloves of garlic
• 2 tbs olive oil

Seasonings

Various seasonings according to taste (and availability) in general order of amount:

1. salt
2. dried red pepper (crushed)
3. black pepper
4. marjoram
5. thyme
6. savoury
7. sage
8. oregano
9. sweet basil
10. onion salt

Preparation

1. Pour the canned tomato products into a large pot and start heating on medium heat
2. Stir the pot regularly (about every 3 minutes) throughout the entire process.
3. Add the spices, olives, and peppers
4. Saute the onions and garlic and add them when the onions are translucent
5. Brown the meat and add it
6. Brown the mushrooms slightly and add them.
7. Cook on medium for about one hour, don’t forget to stir regularly
8. (optional) let it mellow in the refrigerator over night and re-heat on the stove top the next day before serving.
9. Serve over (or mixed into) spaghetti or other pasta, preferably whole wheat.

I first started turning angle brackets into dollar signs on a full time basis in the summer of 2002, a little over 6 years ago (I did contract work, internships, and worked part time before then).

Allow me to tell you a little bit about the ol’ interweb job back then.

The company I worked with was on the cutting edge… of backwards compatibility, that meant that in 2002 we were developing for 4.x browsers circa 1997, Today that would be like developing for IE 6 and Mozilla 1 (as a focus!) so it wasn’t really a big deal it just wasn’t exciting. Tables and spacer GIFs were the name of the game (GIFs were still patented back then you know!) We used Flash too, we tried to publish for Flash 3 or 4, and of course we offered non-flash, non-javascript, non-cookie versions of pretty much everything thing because a surprising number of users back then thought they were bad. Some clients (especially in the the government) were in offices where they used dial-up to connect to the Interwebs from their Windows 98 computers with 640×480 256 color screens, used IE 4 with no plug-ins, no scripts, no cookies… o and they still wanted nice websites. Boy howdy did we deliver! It’s amazing what you can do when you have to.

If you’re wondering just how much things have changed in the way of rich content access I just checked the stats for a couple of popular wide audiences websites I have access to and browsers with no-flash access make up only 1.5% of the the hits, including those from mobile devices. Just for comparison about 3.3% of people in North America are visually impaired, 0.4% are legally blind, 1% are functionally illiterate. How often do you develop with non-flash users in mind? How about the blind or even illiterate ones?

So where is the future?

I see the bulk of the skilled development work shifting from a) making pretty designs, b) marking up content the client wrote, and c) hammering out oodles of non-interactive sites to developing really interactive rich applications.

This might actually mean fewer web designers, and developers over all; but let’s face it, at one time a lot of people made a lot of money by “thinking in fortran” and punching cards, those people didn’t die when the technology changed. We just need to be ready for the changes. A lot of the really dull repetitive, wheel re-inventing jobs will be eliminated, and the people who aren’t capable of moving on will certainly be forced to find new jobs, some of the jobs may move to emerging markets, but don’t expect “basic” web jobs to be sticking around here all that much longer. At-least not very many of them.

CMSs are getting pretty good, rich editors are almost decent and if IE gets it’s act together the lumps with that will smooth out pretty quickly. I’ve even seen a fairly convincing demo of a product that cuts up PSDs into XHTML and CSS automatically.

By 2019 I see development of the typical small business website going a bit like this (and I’m being very conservative here). A designer makes a layout (probably based on something from a library of wireframe designs), perhaps even in a tool which transparently works directly with XML, CSS and SVG (Or whatever code we’re using by then!) bypassing Photoshop (or whatever the big tool is by then) all together (in most cases). That design is point and click marked up for use with a template system and is then plugged into a CMS. The client will fill out the content, which I’m sure will still be difficult to cause to happen, even in 2019.

It’s already pretty close to being the case, all we’re really losing is the skilled work of turning designs into code and plugging them into a CMS, and don’t expect to be doing a lot of work writing CMS software either. How many people are writing new word processors these days? At one time that was the product of the future, Now you have three, Office, OpenOffice and Pages, and you can almost ignore the last two, actually most businesses do. I’m expecting an end to end Adobe solution that actually works, right now they don’t have that, but Adobe isn’t stupid, they’re just slow.

That means Joey McCodemonkey isn’t going to be able to eek out a living turning PSDs into HTML anymore; so what will he do? Well that means Joey is going to have to do what all those programmers who were writing desktop publishing software back in the ’90s had to do when that dried up. He’ll have to get a job doing something else, and for a lot that’s going to be outside of programming. Technology careers have a tendency to chew people up and spit them out. How many programmers do you know? How many who have been doing it for more than 5,10,15,20 years? Those numbers shrink pretty fast don’t they. It’s not like people were not programmers in 1989, sure there might have been fewer but they did exist, and probably in greater number than you’d think.

So what will the Joeys who can adapt be doing?

Well they’re going to be writing apps, web apps but we’re not really going to consider them that because it’s all going to be “web” apps, and you can drop the web because that’s not going to be important. You can call them, internet hosted applications or something if you like. The line between desktop and web apps is already under attack, heck Microsoft tried it with the whole HTA fiasco back in the day. More recently Microsoft, Apple and Google have all been playing around with web based office suites.

So what does it come down to?

Rich, unskilled-human friendly interfaces to important and interesting data, just like desktop apps today, just like desktop apps in 1999. Our idea of what good usable software means changes all the time. In 1989 color terminal based software was the bee’s knees in usable computer software. In 1999 it was rich GUI desktop applications. In 2009 it’s rich web apps. In 2019 it’s going to be rich interfaces delivered over the Internet. What will rich mean? Well I suspect it’s going to be ever more interactive and ever more social. Indeed John Gage was a genius when he came up with the one time Sun Microsystem’s slogan of “The Network Is The Computer”. It’s been lauded as an idea before it’s time, and it only gets more true with time.

When it comes to income, median is better. That’s because very rich, and very poor people individual effect the mean a lot, so one billionaire makes it look like we can all afford more. Or a well off city with a large retired population will look much poorer if they’re counted as zero income

However median income is just the value which splits the pack down the middle. 50% of the population has more, 50% less. That makes it very good for looking at actual experience, especially over time because it reflects a fixed percentage of the population. Let’s say we have a very small town with the following hourly incomes:

1. Kelly the teacher at $8
2. Morgan the tutor at $9
3. Renee the ranch hand at $12
4. Sam the shop keeper at $13
5. Sandy the contractor $35
6. Terry the veterinarian at $50

In our little town the mean (average) rate is $21.17, sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? So perhaps you decide to charge $21.17 to mow someone’s lawns. You figure you’d like to make some extra cash and you probably can only do one house per hour including drive time and that price sounds good to you because most people would figure that it’ll save them nearly an hour anyways. There’s a problem with that you see, only one person in our town of six can actually afford it. At-least with the rational of being able to say “Well that’s less than an hour’s wage!” So say Terry does hire you. You’ll make $21.17 with your little Saturday business. But if you charge the median of $12.50 you’ll get $37.50 for your Saturday’s labor, 77% more. Of course this model gets even more important in populations with millions and a individuals worth billions

In 2006 the median US household income was $58,407 the mean income was 32% higher at $77,315, that can cause you a serious issue. To further illustrate this, in 1947 the median was $3,031 and the mean was $3,546 only 14.5% higher. So when you’re comparing affordability over time, it’s even more critical.

I hope that helps.

Details

• It’s starting at Jill’s Parent’s House for snacks and fun at 2:00pm (map)
• At 7:30pm the party leaves for the theater to line up at 8:00pm. The show starts at 10:10pm however we have to line up at 8:00pm! Theater rules mean Jill can not saving you a spot in line! We’ll have games, if you don’t line up you’ll be sitting by yourself, or standing.
• It will be at South Edmonton Common (map)
• The cost: $9.50 this covers the ticket, taxes, and the hidden transaction fees. You do not need a PayPal account to pay, a credit card will do.
• Please remember to enter your name and cellphone number so Jill can contact you!
• If you have to buy multiple tickets you must do this multiple times, sorry.

THIS APPLIES TO YOU! Please enter your name and cellphone number so we know who made the payments and so Jill can contact you day-of so you’ll know what’s going on.

Your Name

Cellphone Number

Sorry there will NO REFUNDS.

Hey there, you’re probably here because you called the Kinsmen Twin Ice Arenas in Edmonton where I (Noah) work looking for skating lessons. We get calls all the time from nice folks who want to get involved in skating; but we don’t yet have a website (I’m working on it) so I figured I could post the information here for those nice folks until we get the Kinsmen Arenas website up and running. This list isn’t complete but here’s what I have for you.

Figure & Synchronized Skating

• Edmonton Synchronized Skating Club
  • http://www.edmontonsynchroskatingclub.com/
• Federation Figure Skating CLub
  • http://www.federationskatingclub.com/
  • +1 (780) 489-0971
• Figure 8 Skating Club
  • http://www.figure8skating.ca/
  • +1 (780) 944-5388
• Gateway Skating Club
  • http://www.gatewayskatingclub.org/
  • +1 (780) 463-4341
• Ice Palace Figure Skating Club
  • http://www.icepalace.ca/
  • +1 (780) 444-1943

Power Skating & Hockey

• Edmonton Power Skating
  • +1 (780) 483-9417
• Elite Power Skating
  • http://www.elitepowerskating.com/
  • +1 (877) 307-5283
• Subar Power Skating
  • +1 (780) 430-6552

1. ABBA
2. AC/DC
3. Ace of Base
4. Aerosmith
5. Barbra Streisand
6. Barry Manilow
7. Beach Boys, The
8. Beatles, The
9. Bee Gees
10. Billy Joel
11. Bob Dylan
12. Bob Marley
13. Bob Seger
14. Bon Jovi
15. Boney M.
16. Boyz II Men
17. Brooks & Dunn
18. Bryan Adams
19. Carlos Santana
20. Carpenters, The
21. Celine Dion
22. Cher
23. Chicago
24. Creed
25. Cure, The
26. Dave Matthews Band
27. Deep Purple
28. Def Leppard
29. Dire Straits
30. Doors, The
31. Drifters, The
32. Eagles, The
33. Earth, Wind & Fire
34. Elton John
35. Elvis Presley
36. Eminem
37. Engelbert Humperdinck
38. Enya
39. Eric Clapton
40. Frank Sinatra
41. Genesis
42. Greatful Dead, The
43. Green Day
44. Guns N’ Roses
45. Iron Maiden
46. James Taylor
47. Janet Jackson
48. Jefferson Airplane
49. Jethro Tull
50. Jimi Hendrix
51. John Denver
52. John Mellencamp
53. Johnny Cash
54. Justin Timberlake
55. KC and the Sunshine Band
56. Kenny G
57. Kenny Rogers
58. Kiss
59. Kylie Minogue
60. Led Zeppelin
61. Linda Ronstadt
62. Linkin Park
63. Lynyrd Skynyrd
64. Madonna
65. Mannheim Steamroller
66. Meat Loaf
67. Metallica
68. Michael Bolton
69. Michael Jackson
70. Neil Diamond
71. Neil Young
72. Nirvana
73. Oasis
74. Pearl Jam
75. Phil Collins
76. Pink Floyd
77. Police, The
78. Queen
79. R. Kelly
80. R.E.M.
81. Radiohead
82. Red Hot Chili Peppers
83. Rod Stewart
84. Rolling Stones, The
85. Roxette
86. Sting
87. Stone Temple Pilots
88. TLC
89. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
90. U2
91. No seriously, U2, admit you like them.
92. Van Halen
93. Whitney Houston
94. Who, The
95. Yes

You see, forgot that you like those bands didn’t you? How many did you say “Man I’d never tell my friends I like that song by that artist!” Now go buy some of their music and stop pretending you only like indie bands.

As a side note, I’ve also switched to using a brush to apply my shaving cream, I tried shaving soap with it but it was a lot of work and the results weren’t great. So now I spray foam into the brush and work it in. This has two advantages, one the brush is excellent at helping the little hairs to stand up in the foam, rather than be smoothed down by the hand, and two it means I don’t have to get shaving cream on my hands.

I’ve also tried a number of foams, gels, soaps and creams and have found Barbasol’s Beard Buster is an excellent product at half the price of some of the others. Although I’ve not been able to find a quality English soap to try, just the cheap $3/bar type. I have had the “freshly stropped straight razor with expensive soap preformed by a barber” shave before, and it’s spectacular. However that route is time consuming and expensive.

If you know me well you may say “But Noah, you’re not a well shaved man, and you have red bumps and pimple!”, and that’s true, but you should see what happened before I got this under control, now I get maybe 4 ingrown hairs when I shave, I used to get 50 or more when using an electric razor and when just using a 5 blade razor with foam I’d get 10 or so.

So I was feeling pretty great about this, then it got even better. I was informed that the tickets that get handed out here have the force or normal municipal tickets, and that they are $65 instead of $35. Aww shucks, I bet he needed that money for smokes too.

However, I’ve found that Wordpress is not adequate for where I want to take my public writing in the future, and since I can’t find a decent package, even a Django project to start with. So I will be writing my own. I hate re-inventing the wheel, but it just seems nothing has what I want.

That said, I don’t want to invest more effort in trying to make this work when that time can be spent working on something better.