Tyler Uebele

Recently, while preparing a lasagna dinner for some friends, I thought of a new way to build it which would prevent the hard, crusty, edges that plague so many otherwise great lasagnas. The problem is, in the time it takes the innermost depths of deliciousness to thoroughly bake into ooey-gooey-goodness, the outermost edges (and especially the corners) of most lasagnas will completely dry out. This leaves the edges, and sometimes even the whole top layer, as hard as an uncooked noodle. You can't stab it with a fork. You can't cut it with a knife. All you can do is beat it into brittle submission (or peel it off), which gets messy.

Not wanting to serve my dear friends less than perfection, I pondered this problem a moment. I could cover it with aluminium foil, but this technique has often yielded watery, runny, lasagna. A lasagna should stiffen up a bit as the sauce cooks and the cheese sets. Sure, much of this setting occurs during cool-down, but a watery lasagna won't set right. So, I'm back to crusty-edged lasagna. If only there were a way to make an edge-less lasagna. There is (almost)!

Recent items of Interest, Click on picture for story

Previously, when HTML coders wanted to cause a link to open in a new window, they used the target parameter in their anchor tags, specifically <a target="_blank" ...>. This, of course, is deprecated (invalid) in the current standards (HTML 4.01 Strict and XHTML 1.0 Strict). While the target parameter apparently will return in HTML5 we are nonetheless left with the current dilemma of how to recreate this behavior.

I have noticed a small variety of popular responses, solutions, to this:

1. Ignore the standard and use the targetparameter

   <a target="_blank" href="http://tyleruebele.com/">

2. Acknowledge the standard and use a small snippet of javascript to open the link in a new window

   <a onclick="window.open(this.href,'_blank');return false;" href="http://tyleruebele.com/">

3. Hijack another (standard) parameter to indicate intent, then augment with javascript on page load. I see this done a lot with the rel parameter value external

   <a rel="external" href="http://tyleruebele.com/">

   <script type="text/javascript"> var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a"); for(var i=0; i < anchors.length; i++){ if(anchors[i].getAttribute("href") && -1 < anchors[i].getAttribute("rel").indexOf("external")) { anchors[i].target='_blank'; } } </script>

Option 1 is clearly outside the intent of the standard and this article. Option 2 is compliant, and cleanly self-contained in the anchor. Option 3 attempts to replicate the simplicity of <a target="_blank" ...> with rel="external", and recreate the functionality with a few lines of javascipt, typically added to the end of the document.

There has been a lot of chatter lately about using exercise balls as chairs. There are many who tout supposed benefits of sitting on the large inflatables all day, instead of a contemporary office chair. Contrarily, there are some concerned voices letting us know why it could be a bad idea. It's quite the fad of late with balls showing up not just in homes, but business offices. There is even an established radio/podcast personality who does all of his broadcasts sitting on an iconic blue ball. Ironically, he also demonstrated a risk on his live broadcast. Despite his peril, I've been interested in trying it out myself.

Differently Thinking

But I had a different idea. I wondered what I could do that would take up less space. Looking around the house for what I had at my disposal, I found some scraps of wood and decided to try a basic one-legged stool. In the quickest build you can call a build, just nailing two already cut scraps of wood together with three nails, I had my new stool. It was just the right height, small, easy to store away, and not a bad sit. Unfortunately it was too stable -- it didn't accurately enough mimic the experience of the exercise ball. The fixed joint gave me too much lateral stability, and the forward width of just over five inches gave it too much forward stability. Worst of all, it didn't bounce.

... at various Shows and Locations.