I had a teacher in high school who felt very strongly about the word *suck*. Most adults—those who care—object to the vulgarity of a fellatio reference, but he specifically took offense at the suggestion that the act of giving oral sex should be considered *something to use as an insult*. Our eleventh-grade selves found this pretty amusing; since we held this teacher in high regard, I believe the word did pretty much vanish from our respective lexicons, for the term and sometime afterward.

A fascinating [article in Slate](http://www.slate.com/id/2146866/) this week points out the sheer utility of the word, and suggests that we embrace its use. I must admit, the word is [awfully convenient](http://bash.org/?99835), but I hadn’t been sure why until the Slate piece explained it.

It looks like the [Jello mold layout](http://positioniseverything.net/articles/jello-expo.html) has made its way into an [ASP.NET template set](http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/reference/design/documentation/personal.aspx), so that’s pretty cool. There doesn’t seem to be a live demo anywhere, but I’d be curious to see an example of a site using the template.

The [Half-Bakery](http://www.halfbakery.com/) came up on [reddit](http://reddit.com/info/adpi/comments) recently, and I was strongly reminded of [The Phantom Tollbooth](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0394820371/)’s *Royal Banquet*.

> “The half bakery?” questioned Milo.
>
>”Of course, the half bakery,” snapped the king. “Where do you think half-baked ideas come from? Now, please don’t interrupt. By royal command, the pastry chefs have worked all night to—”
>
>”What’s a half-baked idea?” asked Milo again.
>
>”Will you be quiet?” growled Azaz angrily; but, before he could begin again, three large serving carts were wheeled into the hall and everyone jumped up to help himself.
>
>
>
>”They’re very tasty,” explained the Humbug, “but they don’t always agree with you. Here’s one that’s very good.” He handed it to Milo and, through the icing and nuts, Milo saw that it said, “THE EARTH IS FLAT.”
>
>”People swallowed that one for years,” commented the Spelling Bee, “but it’s not very popular these days—d-a-y-s.” He picked up a long on that stated “THE MOON IS MADE OF GREEN CHEESE” and hungrily bit off the part that said “CHEESE.” “Now *there’s* a half-baked idea,” he said, smiling.
>
>Milo looked at the great assortment of cakes, which were being eaten almost as quickly as anyone could read them. The count was munching contentedly on “IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS” and the kind was busy slicing one that stated “NIGHT AIR IS BAD AIR.”
>
>”I wouldn’t eat too many of those if I were you,” advised Tock. “They may look good, but you can get terribly sick of them.”
>
>”Don’t worry,” Milo replied; “I’ll just wrap one up for later,” and he folded his napkin around “EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR THE BEST.”

Some folks have noticed that [Google Maps](http://maps.google.com/) has a swanky new zooming control. You can now roll the mousewheel to activate it, or just double-click to zoom in one level on a particular point. This feature isn’t in the API yet, but there’s another new zoom control that’s really fabulous as well.

Andre Lewis has cooked up a classy [draggable-rectangle zoom widget](http://earthcode.com/blog/2006/07/gzoom.html). Check it out on his page.

I was down in the shop this morning, where a mechanic was browsing through some [576 pages of bar jokes](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0091897653/). He hit me with this knee-slapper:

> A set booster cables walks into a bar.
>
> The bartender polishes a glass and says, “Look man, I’ll give you a drink, but don’t start anything, okay?”

The fact that there are cables all over the place in the electricians’ work area *does* increase the humour factor. In that one particular setting.

A pretty girl told me recently that she found my writing here to be *charmingly pedantic*. You know, as opposed to *pretentious*, *preposterous*, or perhaps *sophomoric*. The warm fuzzies faded quickly, however, when she mentioned that the site was *rather slow to load*—a problem of which I’ve been aware for quite some time.

This problem is now solved. In between book-writing and work, I buckled down and finished up porting things over to [Wordpress](http://wordpress.org/). So here we are.

Expect words.

Typically, there are two reasons for a blogger to go on temporary hiatus:

1. Extreme busy-ness, or
2. Writing a book.

uwMike will fall silent until May, and actually, it’s for both reasons. I look at my drafts folder, and there’s a half-dozen partially written articles, but I just can’t afford the time to fix them up. Writing is very much an enjoyable experience, but I need my attention elsewhere in the coming weeks.

April is exam month.

Oh, and yeah, I’m writing a book. With [Jeff](http://jeffreysambells.com/) and [Cam](http://www.camturner.com/) from We-Create; my employer for two workterms.

There are lots of reasons to love working at a small company. No, spending nights sipping a Corona and tweaking the templates is not one of them.

But it is really cool to be developing for the web when the company in the next office is innovating for the supermarket. This is an organic tea-based carbonated beverage. It’s really delicious, but it won’t hit shelves until the middle of next year sometime.

And it probably won’t be sold in an unmarked clear glass bottle.

I just updated, but I feel the need to draw your attention to the amazing Google Labs, where they post links to unfinished projects for you to try out.

One of the ones I found the most fascinating is a word association program called Google Sets. My test was to enter in five Ontario towns and bam! it generated a great big list of them. But even with only five as a reference point, it was able to figure out that I only meant Ontario… and that the ‘London’ was not the one in England. When I went ahead and changed the last two items to Edmonton and Victoria, it instantly adapted and gave me major cities across Canada. Unbelievable. Say what you like, but that is very cool.

Perhaps they got the idea from the much more basic, but frequently hilarious Googlism.com.
And the obligatory funny link: I’m Feeling Lucky Boxer Shorts.