bitful

Here are the websites I bookmarked into my del.icio.us account over the past seven days:

• Rate Your Music
  'international metadata database where musical albums, EPs, singles, videos and bootlegs (collectively referred to as "releases") are added, rated, and reviewed by users.'
• Collins Lexibase online dictionary
  'free online dictionay service which provides you access to a variety of electronic dictionaries based on authoritative content such as Collins dictionaries, for English definitions, translations in French, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, Chinese'
• SlideShare
  'SlideShare is the best way to share your presentations with the world. Let your ideas reach a broad audience. Share publicly or privately. Add audio to create a webinar.'

Google Docs lets you link a spreadsheet to a web form. Entries via the web form (by yourself or anyone else that you have sent the link to) update the spreadsheet automatically.

I use it as a food diary: I enter the food and quantity eaten in the form (via any desktop browser, my mobile or my iPod Touch), and the data is entered automatically into a spreadsheet where formulas look up the calories for the type of food, multiply them by the quantity eaten, group them by date and create a chart and a Google Gadget.

The chart is contained in the spreadsheet and can be published to obtain a snippet of HTML code that you can embed in any web page (see the example below charting the calories I have had during the last seven days).

The chart updates automatically within the spreadsheet. However, if you want the data in the chart that is embedded in your web page to update, you need to republish the one in the spreadsheet. Moreover, if you modify the data range, chart type or settings in the spreadsheet, republishing the chart is not enough, you will also need to replace the code in your web page.

The gadget can also be embedded into your iGoogle homepage, in which case it updates without the need to republish the chart in the spreadsheet.

There are still a few issues that either are not available or I have not figured out, but on the whole this method can already be very powerful and extremely simple to set up.

Yes, I know I said I was going to stop tracking my calorie intake. But I started putting on weight, and this pushed me to find the simpler solution described above, that lets me enter data only once and visualise remaining daily allowance and trends instantly.

1. If you let iTunes manage your music library, adding 'Disc Number' information will add the disc number at the beginning of the file names, so that they can be ordered sequentially by disc in the directory.
2. The Hawaiian alphabet only has twelve letters and a glottal stop.
3. Georgian has got its own alphabet called Mkhedruli
4. Each Cremosa ChupaChups lollipop has 28 kilocalories - but according to the manufacturer's website, 33 calories in Australia or New Zealand. Mistake or different recipe?
5. Giorgio Moroder produced a 70s disco version of the Battlestar Galactica theme from the original series.
6. Not only there are two semifinals at this year's Eurovision Song Contest, but the countries were split for the draw into groups based on voting history and geographical location.
7. Danny deVito is married to Rhea Perlman (Carla in Cheers).

Un paio di tappi per le orecchie, per favore
A pair of ear plugs, please
Literally: 'A pair of corks/stoppers/plugs for the ears, for favour'.

There used to be a time when I was counting how many sleeps until the Eurovision Song Contest.

My interest has been fading ever since when I went to to see the live show in Athens in 2006. It's not that I was disappointed, far from it, it is an excitement that I might want to experience again in the future. However, the whole anticipation and build-up to the final, starting sometimes even months in advance with the results of national selections? Well, I am afraid I am sort of missing the point now, and I regret it somehow.

Last year I was right at the beginning of a definite swerving of my musical taste towards indie rock, and I pretty much ignored the contest.

This year I was about to dip my toes in the glittering world of wind machines and mid-song costume changes, when disheartened reports from several fronts informed me that the quality of the songs had never been so bad. It puts you off a bit doesn't it?

Because of this, when a friend suggested going to the UK Eurovision Preview Party tonight, I did my best to decline, claiming I'm broke (but it's only 10 pounds), and tired (but it starts early), and I'd only enjoy it with a whole bunch of friends (but they were all going too), and then possibly if Dr B. came along too (and he did buy a ticket, but only once he saw the video for the Icelandic entry and was told they were performing on the night).

So in the end I am going. And I am sure it is going to be excellent fun.

Oggi vado al lavoro a piedi
Today I am walking to work
Literally: 'Today (I) go to work at feet'.

Today is Walk To Work Day.

Yesterday I pledged to walk at least thirty minutes to work, but then I figured out that I could go the whole way in about two hours.

So I am setting off now, equipped with:

1. mobile phone to update Twitter on the way;
2. iPod nano with Nike + to track my speed;
3. gps to tag photos taken on the way (and avoid getting lost);
4. ShoZu to upload to Flickr the photos taken on the way.

Although burdened with all this technology it will take me more like four hours to walk the 10k from home to work.

Here are the websites I bookmarked into my del.icio.us account over the past seven days:

• Restore shell folder icons - Neowin Forums
  How to restore shell folder icons in Vista. Including content of the various desktop.ini files needed for each folder.
• A List Apart: Articles: Quick CSS Mockups with Photoshop
  Tips on slicing and exporting to present website mockups that are quick yet standars compliant.
• Web 3.0 Will Be About Reducing the Noise—And Twhirl Isn’t Helping
  'I need less data, not more data. I need to know what is important, and I don’t have time to sift through thousands of Tweets and Friendfeed messages and blog posts and emails and IMs a day to find the five things that I really need to know.'
• Excel Tutorials
  Very clear and accessible, from the basics to advanced topics, including VBA functions I'm looking into at the moment
• CutePDF - Create PDF for free, Free PDF Utilities, Edit PDF easily.
  Use the Print menu to create a PDF from a web page (handy for confirmation screens to take with you when travelling, for instance - just keep the PDF on your mobile or Gmail for reference instead of printing it).

Ho dormito sul divano
I have slept on the sofa
Literally: '(I) have slept on-the sofa'.

On average two nights a week I sleep on a sofa that is two feet shorter than I am, lulled by the sound of the TV via wireless headphones.

I'll accept it is odd, but most times when that happens, like this morning, I wake up pretty much rested and ready to start the day, so I am unfortunately not particularly motivated to break this habit.

Sorry, what was that? Obesity linked to lack of sleep because

'UK scientists found sleep deprivation led to hormonal changes which told the body to eat sugary or starchy food to provide an energy boost.'

Mug of Horlicks, hot bath and lights out at ten tonight then.

Last Friday, when I read on Techmeme that the Encyclopaedia Britannica is giving out free one-year subscriptions to publishers, including bloggers, I contacted them straight away motivating my application, and did not think much of it.

Imagine my surprise when later that very day I received an email containing instructions on how to activate my free subscription.

As my readers, now you too have access to full articles on whatever I decide you should learn more about. The articles on individual topics are good if we are talking established, historical facts from the past, a bit less when dealing with very recent topics. For instance, the 998 words on Madonna on Britannica do not mention her forthcoming album Hard Candy, a scattering of which can be found everywhere on the web since yesterday.

However, Britannica puts together Topic Clusters, which are:

'…collections of links to Encyclopaedia Britannica content related to current events. Topic Clusters provide quick access to material online writers may want to use in their reporting and commentary on issues of the day.'

If the link to Madonna above does not work for you, please leave a comment to let me know.

I have recently had a chance to look into Open Calais for work purposes. Open Calais is a Reuters-backed web service that returns semantic metadata in RDF format from text it is given.

So when I heard someone had developed a Calais WordPress plugin that suggests tags for your posts based on Open Calais, I thought I'd give it a go.

And what better time to do so than what has become my regular early Saturday morning rendez-vous with stuff I pick up while I make my way through the web during the week and want to play with.

As I am writing this, at the bottom of the WordPress 'Write Post' page there is a 'Get tags' button under a 'Calais Auto Tagger' section.

If I click on the button now [clicks on button] I get a 'Suggestions: web service, Reuters, RDF' followed by a 'Add these tags' button.

If I click on that button now [clicks on button] the suggested tag is added to the 'Tags' section for this post, and I can add more manually if needed.

I would probably have to throw more data to this to test it fully, but hey, if you are into this kind of stuff this is way cool. There is also a version that tags old content.

Dr B. aspetta un bambino
Dr B. is expecting a baby
Literally: 'Dr B waits-for a child'.

Dr B ordered a new computer and is this morning impatiently waiting for the stork to deliver his new baby. I expect him to spend most of the weekend playing with it.

In the meantime, I shall be installing an additional 500GB internal drive into my machine.

One of these days our computers are going to conspire against us and take over the flat, and we'll have to sleep on the landing.