From the TidBITS review of Coda, Panic’s new all-in-one web development app:

And then there was the realization that switching from one application to another isn’t any harder than switching from one tab to another. Yes, that means more window clutter, but not so much that Exposé can’t handle it.

This is exactly what I thought after playing with Coda for a while. It’s slick, but I don’t think the fact that it has several functions in one window makes up for its irritating quirks. This is OS X. It’s not like application switching is a difficult thing when you’ve got cmd-tab and Exposé. Coda is solving something that I don’t see as a problem.

<emma> i don’t know how to type heavy breathing
<emma> hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhuh huhhhh
<hemos> hahaha
<hemos> no, that’s not heavy breathing
<hemos> that’s a zombie attacking
<emma> haha

1. Trying to carry more than one container on the subway at rush hour. Now that I have my Macbook Pro, in all its gleaming perfection, I’m lugging around a laptop bag in addition to my purse and occasional bagged lunch. Just a couple days of this has convinced me that it’s about time to return to the giant messenger bag method, so I can combine at least two of those things into one item, and preferably all three. I’m not sure I want to bring back the actual bag I used for lugging textbooks in college, as it’s not very laptop friendly and is beginning to fall apart, so I’m in the market for a new one if you’ve got any suggestions. I want something that is extremely light when empty and very comfortable to wear for an extended period of time. It’s also got to have a padded laptop sleeve (suitable for the widescreen 15″ Pro) and an abundance of small pockets for the rest of my shit - cell phone, wallet, keys, iPod, DS Lite, novel, notebook, and so on. Go forth, and find me such a bag!
2. Trader Joe’s Organic Trek Mix. This one only really applies if you happen, like Chris, to have a slight problem with whole almonds. And by “slight problem” I mean that after eating a couple handfuls of this stuff yesterday he spent the rest of the night on the couch, curled up fetal-style and moaning. He suggested that maybe he could eat the trek mix if he separated out the almonds, and I suggested that if I reached for a handful of trek mix and found myself with a handful of almonds instead that bad things might happen.
3. Vitamin Water. I drank this stuff for years and loved it but it turns out I don’t really need to be chugging down crystalline fructose with my water. I’ve switched back to plain old water for the most part, or Hint when I’m craving a little flavor.

The rewards for managing hedge funds — lightly regulated private investment pools for institutions like endowments and wealthy individuals — have been lucrative for some time. Yet the survey also shows that for the hedge fund elite, the rich are getting much richer in a hurry… Combined, the top 25 hedge fund managers last year earned $14 billion — enough to pay New York City’s 80,000 public school teachers for nearly three years.

Who needs robber barons or internet millionaires when you have hedge fund managers?

If you’re in New York City, here’s a good excuse to step outside your office and enjoy the weather: looks like FreshDirect has people out on the sidewalk this morning passing out little insulated lunch bags containing free food. Mine had one of the Rosa Mexicano meals - Shrimp in Red Bell Pepper & Chipotle Cream Sauce. While Chris and I haven’t tried the Rosa Mexicano meals at home yet, we’ve found their other Fresh Dining meals to be surprisingly tasty, if a little on the pricey side, so it’s worth snagging one if you have the opportunity. Try walking down Broadway, which seems to be freebie central this morning as I was also offered a free package of hair bands from Goody and some mints in the two blocks between the subway and my office.

I love me some laptop, I tell you what.

There are three reasons I can think of that today has been a particularly awesome day. Here they are:

1. The weather in New York today was really lovely. Mid-sixties, breezy, and while it was a little too sunny for my taste it was nevertheless a nice break from the rain.

2. It’s Friday, historically an excellent day. I favor spending a chunk of it drinking a couple of beers and catching up on The Daily Show while enjoying the notion that I do not have to commute anywhere the following morning.

3. This Friday, I’m drinking my beers and watching The Daily Show while also fucking around on the web from the comfort of the couch, thanks to my brand new 15″ Macbook Pro. I feel this last item is a key ingredient in today’s awesome, especially when you consider that thanks to a particular alignment of the stars (also known as friends) I did not pay a goddamn penny for this beautiful, beautiful computer. It’s okay to hate me a little bit for that, I give you permission.

From that New Yorker article on commuting I linked earlier:

People like to compare commutes, to complain or boast about their own and, depending on whether their pride derives from misery or efficiency, to exaggerate the length or the brevity of their trip. People who feel they have smooth, manageable commutes tend to evangelize. Those who hate the commute think of it as a core affliction, like a chronic illness. Once you raise the subject, the testimonies pour out, and, if your ears are tuned to it, you begin overhearing commute talk everywhere: mode of transport, time spent on train/interstate/treadmill/homework help, crossword-puzzle aptitude—limitless variations on a stock tale. People who are normally circumspect may, when describing their commutes, be unexpectedly candid in divulging the intimate details of their lives. They have it all worked out, down to the number of minutes it takes them to shave or get stuck at a particular light. But commuting is like sex or sleep: everyone lies. It is said that doctors, when they ask you how much you drink, will take the answer and double it. When a commuter says, “It’s an hour, door-to-door,” tack on twenty minutes.

My commute’s about an hour. It’s actually always been that way: when I lived in Brighton Beach it took me about an hour to get to NYU, and it was also an hour to NYU from Washington Heights. It was about an hour to my last job from Washington Heights, too, and an hour to that job and my current job from Roosevelt Island. I think there’s a magical hour-long-commute property that takes effect whenever you enter a bridge or tunnel.

I do hate my commute, but with novels and my DS and my iPod it’s tolerable. I listen to more music than I probably would otherwise, since I often find things like podcasts or anything with lyrics too distracting when I’m working. I get a fair amount of reading done, when I’m not smushed up against a fragrant fellow commuter. And when I finally get to my lovely little island, I can take a bus if the weather’s shitty or have a nice little walk if it isn’t. It could be a lot worse.

From Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold:

“The nerd factor is huge,” Dr. Cuny said. According to a 2005 report by the National Center for Women and Information Technology, an academic-industry collaborative formed to address the issue, when high school girls think of computer scientists they think of geeks, pocket protectors, isolated cubicles and a lifetime of staring into a screen writing computer code.

This image discourages members of both sexes, but the problem seems to be more prevalent among women. “They think of it as programming,” Dr. Cuny said. “They don’t think of it as revolutionizing the way we are going to do medicine or create synthetic molecules or study our impact on the climate of the earth.”

Here’s a thought: if “staring into a screen writing computer code” doesn’t appeal to you, maybe you shouldn’t be a computer science major. Girls think of computer science as programming for a reason, and that reason is that it is actually programming, for the most part. We all know that you can do awesome things with programs, but they don’t write themselves.

And incidentally, the reason I don’t have a bachelor’s in CS is not that I was put off by the “nerd factor.” It’s that my high school’s idea of a computer science program consisted of classes in typing and desktop publishing, and I had no exposure to anything else till halfway through college, when it was too late to declare a double major. (I minored instead.)

1. Grim tidings indeed. I haven’t had time to fully process this story yet, all I’ve done so far is read various news sites in a state of open-mouthed horror. I can’t help but be reminded of that particular time eight years ago, when I got to be the weird goth kid in high school when Columbine happened.
2. Speaking of open-mouthed horror, I had the pleasure yesterday of having a small cavity filled between my two front teeth. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a novocaine shot in that area - up at the very top of your gums where they meet the underside of your front lip - but it’s not all that fun. What’s even less fun is when you feel an unusual amount of stinging during the shot, followed by pressure and the sensation that you need to sneeze, and then suddenly novocaine is running down your throat from your nose. Picture that for a minute, and picture the path a needle would have to take to make that happen, and then imagine trying desperately not to sneeze before the needle is removed. Oh, and then your whole throat goes numb from the novocaine and you feel like you’re choking. Yeah, that was my Monday afternoon.
3. Incidentally, it’s Free Cone Day again.