Knuth writes, Wanted: A Name For High-Tech Grief. My vote: fragged¹.

1. Succinct, and a geek reference to Doom/Quake ↩

Here’s a quick food-geek comparison of various forms of basil:

• Freeze-dried (in bottles) - expensive, flat taste, not at all visually appealing
• Frozen, store-bought (cubes) - medium-priced, almost-fresh taste, fairly appealing
• Fresh, store-bought - expensive, vibrant, looks good
• Fresh, home-grown - cheap, vibrant, looks great, but a bit of effort
• Dried (in bags, not bulk) - cheap, tasty, looks better than freeze-dried

In most of my dishes I use dried basil, and a bit of cubed/frozen for garnish. Next year I’m hoping to start growing it again.

McSweeney presents A Letter to Optimus Prime from his Geico insurance agent. Geek and 80s culture intersect.

A tool to help you find a movie review site that matches your preferences. My matches?

• Peter Travers : 86%
• Rotten Tomatoes : 85%
• Roger Ebert : 85%
• James Bernadelli : 83%

I’ve always avoided Rotten Tomatoes, but apparently we agree on most movies.

A good overview (and examples) of Rails routing. Routing is how Rails defines what URLs mean.

[stars: 4] Nokia 5300 MP3 phone. I love the form factor, display, and the menus are a solid extension of Nokia’s previous phones. The camera and MP3 player are uninspired, but the FM tuner is surprisingly good. The phone also comes with a mSD slot, a USB2 cable, and supports USB2 FS. For $30 this is a great geek phone.

[stars: 5] Primer. Absolute brilliance on a shoestring budget. A solid reminder to geeks that you can make anything, given 6 months of hard work.  They paint the life of engineers in a believable way, wrapped around a twisted sci-fi plot.  This movie will leave you inspired and confused–and trying to figure out wtf actually happened.

A large set of 200 calorie food portions pictures. My favorite mass:calorie ratio is Canola oil at 23g/200 calories.

I like to spend my winter holiday thinking about the year, and what I didn’t do enough of. Next year, I hope to:

1. Write more. Not just web fluff and links (which is fun), but more real fiction and non-fiction. I love to write, but life and complexity just keep on getting in the way.
2. Do more creative stuff. I have an artistic side, but the geek in me naturally suppresses it. I need to learn better balance.
3. Learn more healthy habits. I love good food, I grok nutrition, and I enjoy exercise. I need a bit more of each (and less of the crap).
4. Learn Ruby/Rails well. Last year I polished my C#, Javascript, and Php skills (as well as time spent with SQL, CSS/XHTML, etc.). This year I need to at least know why Rails isn’t for me. So far I’ve only spent a dozen hours with it, which isn’t nearly enough.
5. Focus. Life is noisy. Work is noisy. Learn to deal with both: I will overcome the chaos.

One thing I like to keep in mind with resolutions is that sometimes a year isn’t enough. Life is a garden, and sometimes crops fail. The key is to keep doing healthy things, and remember that growth takes time, practice, and effort.

Sometimes it is actually possible to LMAO. Another great t-shirt from Think Geek (thanks Jason).