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Jack Baty – Director of Unspecified Services

Tag Heuer Aquaracer Automatic

Watches are cool, but wearing a wristwatch seems to have fallen a bit out of fashion. I can understand why, since many of us are either sitting in front of a computer all day or are within arm’s reach of a cell phone and either can tell me what time it is. There are some occasions though in which just a quick glance at my wrist is faster and less annoying, so I decided it was time for a new watch.

Stumutilation

Stumutilation: “What if only people who had any idea what the fuck they’re talking about could speak or write about the economic catastrophe in which we find ourselves? It’d be pretty quiet.” (Via Davenetics.)

The Unfinished: The New Yorker on DFW

The New Yorker on David Foster Wallace He conjured the world in two-hundred-word sentences that mixed formal diction and street slang, technicalese and plain speech; his prose slid forward with a controlled lack of control that mimed thought itself. More here

The Pale King

Yes! I think. The Pale King: “A long, unfinished novel by David Foster Wallace is scheduled for a posthumous release next year. ‘The Pale King', excerpted in The New Yorker magazine edition coming out Monday, is set in an Internal Revenue Service office in Illinois in the 1980s.” (Via Daring Fireball.)

I Think You'll Like It

: You think I’ll like it, do you? Well, it has taken me more than 50 years to get anywhere near an understanding of what I think I might like, and even then I get it wrong half the time, so what chance have you got? (Via 3quarksdaily.)

Safari and Innovation

MacNN.com on Safari 4 As is likely self-evident by now, the chief criticism that can be leveled against Safari is its tendency to chase rather than lead. Apple says it’s “leading the way with innovation,” but its actual breakthrough is simply in uniting the better features from a number of different browser into a single package. Isn’t that what Apple has always done?

I need some new friends

A couple of years ago I said, in some meeting or another, that soon we would all be required to log into Facebook regularly. I think I was right, but I’m not at all happy about it. Facebook sucks. Wait, let me rephrase that. Unless you’re 17 years old or completely fascinated by everyone’s latest list of 25 useless things or you’re trying to promote your new self-help program, Facebook sucks.

Trying the Zeiss Biogon 35mm

The problem with being exposed to the best of anything is that everything else becomes, well, not the best. A few years ago I owned a Leica Summicron 35mm ASPH. Best 35mm lens on the planet. Then I sold it with the rest of the film gear when I went insane digital. Now that I’m back in the Leica fold I had to choose a 35mm lens. I want the Summicron, but finding a good used copy for less than $1500 is tricky.

Todo.txt CLI Manages Your Tasks from the Command Line

Lifehacker Code: Todo.txt CLI Manages Your Tasks from the Command Line: “Dozens of fancy point-and-click task managers promise to organize your to-do list, but so often power users find that nothing outdoes that trusty old classic: the todo.txt file.” I would normally be all over this. I love Vi, love text files, and so on. What I don’t want is to fart around with yet another task management toy, so I’ve got to pass.

Legs

This may suffer from motion blur. It may be slightly out of focus and it’s loaded with dust on the negative. It’s still a good photo.