Tell Me What To Eat

Because every reader of this blog is not just beautiful but also brilliant, I'm asking for your help deciding what to have for dinner.

No, this isn't just your usual blogger-having-a-cheese-sandwich-type post. This is my sweetie, Tom, decideding that we need a fabulous night out on Saturday to celebrate five years of holy matrimony (okay, legal matrimony) and so is taking me to Cyrus, the current local hot restaurant.

Here's the menu. I plan to have the three course meal + wine pairings, although I could be talked into the four course (read this to understand why the tasting menu isn't an option).

I am so not a foodie. I wouldn't mind becoming one, but I haven't had the kind of life that's prepared me for it. I look at that menu, and I don't have the slightest idea which options to pick. Hell, I don't even have the slightest idea what some of them even are (what is "Crispy Truffled Poussin" anyway?). If it's three courses, am I supposed to pick one starter, one entree, and one dessert? If so, how on earth do I live without trying the Truffled Red Wine Risotto with Parmesan Broth?

Okay, that one's a definite. But other than that, please tell me what a wanna-be foodie should order to get the most out of the experience. Thanks!

Anyone know a little VBA (or AppleScript)?

As many of you know, I'm not the programmer in the family. That would be Dori's spot. But there are some programming languages that she won't touch with longish poles. Of course, those are the ones that are most often useful to me, namely VBA (the macro language for Microsoft Office) and AppleScript.

I've got a Word problem that I know can be solved in either language, and I've wasted a couple of days flailing about trying to figure it out. So I'm shouting help! Maybe one of our fine readers can figure out the answer.

Here's the scenario. We're working on the Sixth edition of our JavaScript book now. From our publisher, we got the latest versions of the Fifth edition's document files, in Word format. These files were backed-out of InDesign into Word. The trouble is, in the conversion, all of the straight quote marks in the code examples were turned into curly quotes. That makes the scripts not work. So I want to have the macro turn all of the curly quotes into straight quotes, but only within a particular Word style called "Code Text in Body"; curly quotes in text within other styles should be left alone.

I looked around for a script that would do the job, and I found a VBA script that got me most of the way; it turns the Unicode characters for the four curly quote variations into straight quotes. But I can't constrain the change to just text in the Code Text in Body style. So I tried an If statement, and that's when things stopped working altogether, or they work and ignore the constraint.

Here's the VBA code that I have that doesn't work, and I understand that you can do much the same thing, with different syntax, in Word 2004 with AppleScript. If you can help, please leave a comment and tell me where I went wrong. I suspect it's a relatively simple thing. Big thanks in advance!

Sub Quotefix()
ActiveDocument.Content.Find.ClearFormatting
With ActiveDocument.Content.Find
If Styles = ("Code Text in Body") Then
' Change the double quotes
.Text = ChrW(8220)
.Replacement.Text = """"
.Forward = True
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Format = False
.MatchWholeWord = False
.MatchWildcards = False
.MatchSoundsLike = False
.MatchAllWordForms = False
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = ChrW(8221)
.Replacement.Text = """"
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
' Change the single quotes
.Text = ChrW(8216)
.Replacement.Text = "'"
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
.Text = ChrW(8217)
.Replacement.Text = "'"
.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll
End If
End With
End Sub

Links of Note

A couple of good links today:

• Macworld Expo has a blog. And about time, too. I'll be looking forward to hearing Paul's take on Apple and Mac goings-on.

• Now that it's stopped raining here, we're back at work on the backyard. We're thinking about a small kitchen garden (among other things), so here's a link to the Culinary Herb FAQ. Now, if I could only figure out what zone, or region, or whatever-it's-called we're in.

Numbers We Like To See

Some book writers are anal about their sales rankings on Amazon and keep charts of how they're doing when. I'm not that bad, but I admit to checking occasionally. This:

is a very good day.

Too Good To Be True?

OK, I just ran across Innline Electronics, aka "Order-2Day.com" and I have to ask: what's the catch?

• They've got a palmOne Treo 650 for $269 (list price: $599).

• They've got the Dell UltraSharp 2405FPW 24 in LCD Monitor for $670 (list price: $999).

Okay, there's a minimum order of $599, but hell, they've got Mac minis for $170! This is the exact same computer (minus AirPort and Bluetooth) that Apple is currently closing out — refurbished — for $519.

My experience is that if something sounds too good to be true, it generally is. So, what's the catch on these guys?

Update: They appear to be in some way related to MegaStore-Electronics, so stay far away from them. Considering that they just opened for business yesterday, I'm calling this whole thing a fraud to be avoided.

April Tabdump

Over at Now This, Steve says:

This usage of tabdump is surprisingly uncommon so far given tabbed browsing's steady growth.

In 2004 a journal named Aquarionics used it, and a guy named Bernie Zimmermann whose site now seems down. I recently saw Backup Brain use it, and immediately liked it. But in a brief search I found only a few other occurrences of the term used in this fashion between 2004 and now.

Thanks for the shoutout, Steve, and I'm also surprised that it's not more used.

Hey — as of right now, tabdump.com is available. Let's see how long that lasts.

• Remember my rant about how Michael S. Cox is a spammer? If you go to Google and search for "michael s. cox" spammer, you get over 21000 hits. If you search for "michael s. cox" -spammer, you get about 800. I call that a success, so thanks to all of you who helped out!

• One of the favorite things I've come across lately: Code Monkey, an MP3 from Jonathan Coulton of Thing a Week. You can read the lyrics here. It ranks up there with Stan Rogers's White Collar Holler, and that's high praise from me.

• I've heard no shortage of people complaining about how CSS is too hard. When it's being pointed out by people like Sho Kuwamoto, though, it should be clear that's something is very wrong.

• If you have an iSight and are running Tiger, go check out this O'Reilly Network page, now.

• For my own future reference: Scripting with JavaScript in Cocoa.

• At every conference I'm at, I try to convince people to run SubEthaEdit. The fact that it's Mac-only is a drawback at most conferences I attend, sadly. I've been trying to find a cross-platform equivalent, and Gobby is the first I've seen that even comes close. Pro: it runs on Windows, OS X, Linux, and other Unix platforms. Con: it's a pain to install on the Mac. Why can't it interoperate with SEE? That would be the best of all possible worlds.

• Google released SketchUp, and I immediately looked at the What are the hardware and software requirements for SketchUp? page, where it gives the specs for both PC and Macs. "Yay!," I think, and then I went to download it. That page says, "Macintosh: Coming Soon". Sigh. Faked out again by another piece of vaporware.

Advice to the Dems

The Republicans are floundering, and the average Democratic elected official is still casting about for a response and giving off "don't hurt me" signals. The grassroots, on the other hand, are coming up with better sound bites than the pros. Here's the best I've seen so far, from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, in regards to what the Dems should be saying about Iran:

Double or Nothing is Not a Foreign Policy.

As I've been saying for years, the biggest problem I have with US politics is that the Dems are playing chess while the Repubs are playing tackle football. When the opposing team's quarterback is on his own 32 yard line, it's time to sack him, hard.