For a few weeks now, I've been using Google Reader instead of FeedOnFeeds-Redux as my feed aggregator. I'm nominally a developer of FeedOnFeeds-Redux, though I haven't contributed in a while, and my installation of it was feeling pretty clunky. I hadn't realized how much clunkiness I'd been accustomed to until I tried Google Reader. My only complaint so far about Google Reader is its failure to work with HTTP Digest Auth, which I'd need to see my friends' protected LiveJournal posts. LiveJournal Feed Fetcher would be a workaround, but I'm leery of an accidental breech of my friends' privacy if I use a third-party proxy like that.

After a tiring day of skiing and snowtubing on Friday, my co-workers and I stopped at a Cracker Barrel for dinner. I mention this because of an unlisted item I learned of and enjoyed: a molasses milkshake. I like molasses, and I wish more foods included it. Usually I only get to enjoy the flavor in my mom's gingerbread cookies around the winter holidays. So I recommend the molasses milkshake. For the curious, this Consumer article lists secret menu items for other chain eateries.

As long as I'm recommending things, here are various things I like:

• radio show and podcast Radio Lab
  
• bamboo fabric; I have a hoodie made of bamboo fabric and it's just awesome: soft, lightweight, stain-resistant (in my experience), moisture-wicking, and easy to launder
  
• nonstick aluminum foil; I use it to line my baking sheets anytime I put something in the oven, and I've never had to scrub a baking sheet since
  
• Tide To Go instant stain remover marker; I keep one in my satchel, and it has come in handy many a time
  

Ooo! Ooo! I have an idea!

Remember how I whipped up a few scripts to tell me when amateur radio satellites would be passing overhead in modes I can 'work' with my radio requipment? It's functional and all, but what would be neat is if I used the Google Calendar Data API to create a google calendar for each satellite's passes (for my location)! That would make it easy to see which passes might fit into my schedule.

Who—me, spend time wisely?

I really enjoy reading Maciej Ceglowski's travel writing over at Idle Words. It's not especially easy to navigate through it, though, if you want to peruse older entries, as entries aren't categorized or tagged; the best we've got is a not-quite-up-to-date topic archive.

So I got the idea in my head to make a Google Map with links to his entries. Yay for the Google Maps API! The geographic coordinates are as close as I could get them with a couple hours of effort; if you've got more accurate ones, by all means, please share. Or if you know of some travel or place-related post at Idle Words that I've overlooked, please share that too.

Maciej is currently puttering around South America enjoying two-dollar steak dinners and stunningly gorgeous vistas. To give you a taste of his entries, here's an excerpt from The Collapse of Perito Moreno:

The Perito Moreno is a giant mess of ice that flows out of the mountains in the southern Argentine province of Santa Cruz, near El Calafate, looking for trouble. In a world of sissy nature that requires protection, handholding, wilderness reserves, careful study and constant medical attention, the Perito Moreno glacier is a refreshing throwback. This glacier wants you dead. It wants to come out and crush you under billions of tons of ice, carve its name into your face, and maraud out into the plains of Patagonia until it reaches the sea. You don't have to go into the mountains looking for the Perito Moreno - it's coming out of the mountains to look for you. It wants to come over there and mess you up good.

What's up with Google these days? I snagged from mihow a NYT article comparing Google to Microsoft. I'm not so much interested in the Microsoft comparison, though, as I am in what Google's vision is. They've been recruiting like crazy, including many of the linuxchix I know. They have under their umbrella not just a search engine (including images and products) but Gmail, Orkut, Maps, Google Earth and Google Moon, News, Groups, Desktop, Picasa, Video, Translation… the list seems to expand every day. Then there's the stock sale and the rumor about them giving free Wi-Fi to everyone in America.

(Personally, I use Google, I dunno, twenty times a day maybe? Including to find the links I inserted above, naturally. Although now that I'm trying out Desktop, you could say I use it almost continuously. I have drunk the Kool-Aid. If they released a Google Mind brain implant beta, I'd probably get it.)

What I wonder is, where are they going with all this? Is it just about making money? Is it about a futuristic vision of information everywhere? If they're going for world domination, they're doing it in one of the best ways I can imagine. Take Google Print's goal to make the full text of all the world's books searchable by anyone. That's just amazing.

They say their mission is “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” It's a plain statement, but it's revolutionary, and what's most amazing is that, I believe, they can do it.