March, 2007

Macintoshia — No Comments
28
Mar 07

Black Ink == Cheating

That is, if you consider looking up crossword puzzle clues on oneacross.com to be cheating. Or even if you think that looking up stuff in imdb and wikipedia is cheating.

I haven’t spend a whole lot of time on crossword puzzles before, mostly because I sort of suck at them. But a few days ago, I discovered Black Ink. I never tried the previous (java-based) version, but this version is pretty good. But it makes looking up stuff in oneacross (which I didn’t even know about before) ridiculously easy. And you are one command-tab stroke away from your browser and the crosswordy goodness of wikipedia, google, and imdb.

I haven’t laid down the cash-money for this application yet, but if I keep going I’m going to have to.

General — No Comments
3
Mar 07

No Fortune

After an afternoon of painting trim, I headed over to the nearby Chinese restaurant, Fortune of Reston. I can walk to it, and as I approached it, I realized that the sign for it was gone. Indeed, the whole restaurant was gone, stripped to the concrete floor. A little Google research later, I discover that is has actually been closed since January 7th. I guess it says something that it took me until March to notice its absence. Ah, Fortune, you will be (somewhat) missed.

On my way back, I noticed that the bagel shop in the same shopping center (Manhattan Bagel) was also gone. The same Google research indicated that it had been gone for over a year. Clearly, my powers of observation need work.