A couple of recommendations

• If you need to mail order any of the excellent South African punk or industrial CDs that are only available in that country, and that would be pretty much all of them, I highly recommend Rhythm Online. My most recent purchase from them was the recent Van Coke Cartel album. It cost only R100 (divide by around 7 for USD amount) plus postage, and got to me in around a week. Excellent!
• If you never get around to writing postal letters anymore because either writing or printign the letter out, then addressing an envelope and having to find a stamp is too much hassle, I highly recommend Postful. You can send the letter to them as an email, ad they will do the rest of the mailing process. And they're very reasonably priced.
  

Blue Scorcher in Astoria

A brief entry to note that The Blue Scorcher Bakery Cafe in Astoria has become my favourite coffee shop in the world. They have a wide variety of baked goods (of course), as well as soups and the like. I just had their mulligatawny soup and it is thick and excellent.
Plus the staff is incredibly friendly. I always like that.

04/07/2014:
I should also note that the cafe is right next to the Fort George Brewery. Their Cavatica Stout has long been my very favorite beer.

New Age word of the year

• From the Anti-Guru blog: manifrustration.
  

Couple of wget links

• Jeffrey Veen shows a creative use for wget, demonstrating how to use it to download multiple files across sites.
• And here's the manual on wget.
  

Crowley and Barbara

• I love goofy conspricy theories, and this one is certainly goofier than most: Is Aleister Crowley the father of Barbara Bush?
  

Schneier quote: actual security and the feeling of security

• Bruce Schneier notes the difference between the feeling of security, and actual security:
  Security is both a feeling and a reality, and they're different. You can feel secure, even if you're not. And you can be secure, even if you don't feel it. Really, there are two different concepts sharing the same word.
  It seems to me that a good proportion of the measures set in place, whether by governments or otherwise, is to give the appearance of doing something, rather than providing actual security.
  

Christmas Day

Chess - S and T
Originally uploaded by Alhazred

Part of Christmas Day was spent playing chess with Scott and Todd in a coffee shop in Ladd's Addition. I played a terrible game.