TiVo, in a recent publicity stunt, held a mock funeral for the VCR.

But they might as well have burned cable and satellite boxes, too. Because television is broken. Broken compared to the Internet.

The web is vast; far bigger than 83 channels of cable. But it’s a completely different model. It’s 100% on-demand. Read on…

I bought a bag of potatoes. The intention was to boil and mash them, and make shepherd’s pie. But then I had mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving.

So I did homemade french fries instead. And here’s how it went down.

Recon

The only “real” home deep fryer I’ve ever encountered was an intimidating affair comprised of thick stainless steel and heavy plastic.

The primary function of it simple: It completely contains the volatile grease as the food is lowered into it.

As chopped and washed potatoes descend into 150+ degree oil, all the surface water boils very very quickly. Beneath the surface, this causes the oil to go psycho and splatter all over the place. At 150 degrees, this isn’t simply messy, it’s hazardous.

It was this functionality that would need to be replicated. Read on…

Joy seems to be back.

It’s one of those words that sort of fell out of favour for a while. Are we too cool to be joyful? No one pretends that most of life isn’t the relentless pursuit of happiness, so what about Joy?

What are car commercials? Get the car, get the girl. Girl + car = happiness.

Happiness is a feeling. But joyfulness is a state of mind, perhaps even of being. Joy made the cut for the nine fruits of the spirit, and happiness didn’t. And Joy certainly fits better with the likes of Patience and Faithfulness. Read on…

Since I’ve been through a handful of site migration situations, I thought I’d share a few tricks for seamless forwarding. Read on…

Nearly all webpages have a Top, a Bottom, and some kind of tile-able stuff in the middle which gives it all room to grow.

Once you try for a stretchy liquid layout, then it’s the same deal, except that the horizontal axis needs room to grow too.

The heart of liquid layouts is the Ruler. It’s a horizontal element which has one image tiled along it, and two more images stapled one at each end to close it off.

I’ve found various ways of accomplishing this simple task, so I might as well share a few. If I’m missing your favourite trick, let me know! Read on…