Download Squad
Weblog reviewing new software for download. I’ve already found a couple of nice Mac utilities.

Estimating realistic project deadlines
Quasi-mathematical method for projecting project durations.

Holliston’s immigration profile
5.3% of my town’s residents are foreign-born, most from Canada. Boston.com has similar stats for all MA cities and towns.

Wikipedia entry on Holliston, MA
If you’re not playing with Wikipedia, you should be.

Satellite of Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania
Google has taken their satellite mapping worldwide. So, of course I checked out places I’ve been…

FoundCity
Neat – del.icio.us + geotagging + Google Maps

Finally, if you want to see what I’m bookmarking (some of which ends up in linky goodness), check out my bookmarks page on del.icio.us.

More good TV: 30 Days on F/X.

A. and I saw Morgan Spurlock’s outstanding movie Supersize Me last year and swore off junk foods (for at least a couple of months.) In the movie, Spurlock went on an all-McDonalds diet for a month, with predictably dire consequences.

In 30 Days, Spurlock uses the same “30 days in a lifestyle” immersive concept to dramatize societal issues — minimum wage in the pilot, steriods and anti-aging therapies in the most recent episode. His next one is about a man who lives the life of a Muslim in America for 30 days.

Highly recommended.

It takes a little Tivo-fu to get this recorded, because it’s on at the same time as Lost. At least F/X is good enough to repeat the episode a few times through the week.

I’m 33 today. Call me Larry Bird. Call me Jason Varitek.

32 was eventful. Got married. Bought a house.

Now, we have a little girl on the way. 33 is looking pretty sweet.

Every once in a while I pine for a simple rut, a break from change, time to catch my breath. My last good rut was in the fall of 2002. The next one may not be until 2022.

We missed it the first time around, but we’ve just started watching Lost in reruns. It’s pretty amazing so far.

I should have expected big things from JJ Abrams and David Fury. We own all the Alias and Buffy/Angel DVD sets…

No one in China can view Typepad blogs, reports Rebecca McKinnon.

When I was over there, they blocked all the major news sites; now they’ve extended the ban to opinion and blogging sites.

Censorship is seldom a positive sign.

What it’s like to date an Apple developer.

I like to think that behind every good developer there is a good woman. No. A great woman. It takes a special breed to put up with the stuff that comes along with dating a computer nerd. Those of you who have ever been with a hard core geek know what I’m talking about. Some day I think it would be easier to date one of those guys who hangs out at the golf course all day with his buddies drinking beer.

Apocalyptic fiction has always captured my imagination. As it turns out, I like destroying the world. “People in extreme circumstances” often makes fiction compelling.

I’ve always adored The Stand, Stephen King’s best novel, and one of my favorites. I enjoyed Earth Abides. So, full of hope, I picked up Left Behind, and then actually plowed through all 12 volumes of the series, all the way to Glorious Appearing.

Here’s the plot, in a nutshell: All the “believers” are {killed|raptured}, and those left behind fight a seven-year battle against the Anti-Christ, culminating at Armageddon with the Second Coming of Christ.

Ok, that’s a pretty good setup for a story.

Unfortunately, the authors ruined a fine concept with awful execution. They made the apocalypse boring, the second coming of the Lord tedious. They crammed five books worth of material into twelve books. Of course, I bought all twelve books, so points for them, I guess.

Anyway, that’s my short review. More interestingly, here’s a blog where the writer is deconstructing the Left Behind series. He brings information and insight to the topic, including explaining the series’ basic flaw — “the characters in the book act like they read the book jacket.”

David Weinberger tells us that he’s through lying to people that he’s keeping up with their blog.

I’ve been faking it for a while. Months. Maybe a year. If we’ve met and I look confused about something you told me, and if you said, “I blogged it,” as if that should be explanation enough, I’ve made some excuse as if I read every one of your posts except that one.

I’m still pretty good about keeping up with people I know — I’m lucky in that blogging penetration among my close people is still below 10% (despite my best efforts).

My NetNewsWire subscription list is up over 400 feeds, though. I’ve submitted to the fact that I’ll never fully catch up.

In Sarbanes-Oxley Era, Running A Nonprofit Is Only Getting Harder
I’m addressing issues like this during my Civic Leadership Institute fellowship…

The power of silence
Good story about negotiating.

Purge
Some lawyers are horrifically blase about the prevalence of eating disorders among female attorneys.

The 25 most difficult questions you’ll be asked on a job interview

I’m working at Boston.com, helping them hire a BostonWorks product development team. How would you like to be the BostonWorks Product Manager?

Product Leadership – You’ll be driving the development of the BostonWorks.com product, leading innovation and managing execution.

You’ll work on making the business cases for projects, building the ones that have the most market impact.

It’s your product. We expect you to be able to do something special with it.

We’re also looking for a designer and a developer.

Black market in stolen credit card data thrives on the Internet
Excellent NYT article talking about the secondary market in credit card data. NOTE: most of these credit cards are stolen offline.

How I learned to stop worrying and love the curve
Microsoftie talks about life under the HR ranking system.

How to get Slashdotted

Want secure passwords? Write them down
Good advice from a Microsoft security guru

The teenager’s guide to the real world
Good read for the teens in your life. Real life ain’t cheap.

How to become a hacker

Maybe it’s because of what’s coming this fall, but this video got to me.

The movie looks fabulous. Check out the trailer for The March of the Penguins.

God, I’ve been bad at this. As I’ll explain in a few days, we have a lot going on…

But anyway, on to the Linky Goodness!

RedSox.feedster.com
A fun partnership between Boston.com and Feedster, this site aggregates Red Sox blogs.

Roger Ebert’s Glossary of Movie Terms
Fun cliches from the movie world.

This fish needs a bicycle

Rapid Afterimage
Neat visual effect.

Flickr color pickr
More fun with colors.

How to wash an outdoor grill
Seems timely. I have my first cookout at the new house on Sunday.

Blogging Baby
Timely, for another reason.

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Address
This is pretty inspirational.

Manhole covers are exploding in Central Square, half a block from our old apartment.

Traffic came to a standstill near Central Square after police closed down Mass Ave. between Prospect and Sidney Streets.

Jay has an interesting single-serve coffee Father’s Day gift guide. All sorts of interesting stuff there.

Toddler quarterly objectives.

This was originally going to be in Linky Goodness, but I need to promote it. Here is a fabulously entertaining blog by an NYC nightclub bouncer.