Recent research shows that almost every fast food item available at fast food restaurants contains corn [reference article].  For the record this isn’t entirely shocking.  Beef cattle are often raised with corn feed as part of their diet, corn is a thickening agent in various liquidy or faux cheese products, and its also a handy ingredient to have around when you want pizza to not stick to a heating/cooking/baking rack.  Its syrup is renowned for its smoothing abilities in sweet goods like caramel sauce and candy.  Its a cheap (in part due to government subsidies) for sweetening soda, and its also got coloring abilities.  You can’t beat corn’s versatility down, it does come with a lot of skills.

Some research has linked it to diabetes, obesity, and allergies of various sorts.  I am allergic to corn myself, so having it is not a good choice for me.  I just though I’d let you know that if you’re allergic to corn, too, most fast food places could be a bad place to get your food from :)

Favelets are links that only contain javascript that manipulate the content of a page or might possibly do other cool things. You can find a good explanation and some other useful favelets at http://tantek.com/favelets/ However, I just created one that should hopefully be pretty useful. This one should insert the link count in Google for results. Yahoo! adds rank numbers into the HTML, but Google, for whatever reason does not. Hopefully this is useful:
Drag this link into your toolbar or favorites.

Please report any problems with this in the comments.

When I find a new tool that I love to use I often blog about it, but sometimes I forget. However, I thought I’d list the software that I use on a daily basis that is not just work related (Like Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0, which I use because I have to, not because it’s great – it gets the job done). Software can cost money or be open source, but either way, if it is excellent then I recommend it to others. If you’ve seen my root site you’ll see that I link to four pieces of software:

• FeedDemon
• TopStyle
• Firefox
• MDaemon

Why do I use the above software? Necessity in part, and brilliance, too. The software listed there is, I believe, the best on the market. If I didn’t have that software I’d be using other software, or possibly multiple programs to get things done that these programs do by themselves. Of course these are not useful for all of my readers, I do believe that the first, FeedDemon is the most usable for the largest audience.

FeedDemon
FeedDemon is for RSS and Atom feeds. If you don’t know what those are the simplest way to describe them is that they’re files on a web site that allow you to check out the latest headlines or posts on the web site. Practically speaking I think this saves me around two hours of time a day if I was checking web sites individually for new content. However, I won’t lie, FeedDemon has caught me off guard more than once by distracting me from what I was supposed to be doing by exposing me to new sites, new content and new information. However, all of those things are great and I know keep track of 121 feeds [note: 121 is a palindrome].

The usability in the latest version of FeedDemon is incredible. Nick Bradbury has taken user feedback, his own intuition and experience and rolled one of the finest pieces of software on Windows. If you haven’t tried it yet, download the 30 day trial at it’s home page.

TopStyle
TopStyle is a CSS and XHTML editor. Sure, that sounds simple enough but this software does almost everything I could want to do with both of those types of documents including allowing me to edit other text documents. In fact I find myself using it with JavaScript regularly and sometimes XML and XSLT as well. This tool is well rounded, feature rich, and with powerful shortcuts and utilities I maintain this site and do other client work with it. Standards Compliant sites are easier to build with the validation toolset as well as the auto-complete wizard that only offers suggestions that comply with the Document type you’re using. Find out why you should be using it by downloading the thirty-day trial.

FireFox
As most readers of this blog know I’m a FireFox junky. I use it exclusively except for when I test my work on other browsers to make sure that they render well. FireFox blocks pop-ups, has tabs for keeping track of multiple pages in one browser (rather than lots of browser windows), and allows you to add plugins and utilities that are being created and added to by other users. Open Source at its finest. Without FireFox I would probably still be scratching my head using Internet Explorer for Windows.

FireFox integrates usability with functionality and comes out far ahead of its competition. Check it out.

MDaemon
OK, so most people don’t have control over what email server they use, or what email their company uses, or their ISP. However, if you’ve got control over that, use MDaemon. I must confess that I worked at Alt-N for three years, and now I consult with them. I may have a biased opinion but let the following attest to it’s effectiveness against viruses and spam:

• I have never ever had an email borne virus infect my computer [in four years].
• I get one or two spam messages a day at most. Sometimes I go several days without spam.

What software do you use without fail that makes your life easier?

Pictures to view [hosted on Flickr.com]:

Abby on a park bench

A Sea Mushroom (Courtesy of Amanda Dellow)

A Fish [name to come] (Courtesy of Amanda Dellow)

P.S. Sha’i, please show Ed these images and the other images hosted on Flickr.

I have been amazed, amused and confused by various responses to Bush’s re-election this last week. My thoughts aside, which are pretty ho-hum, this Op-Ed article is quite fascinating.

I’m a generally conservative guy (but I’m not registered Republican, I’m ‘unaffiliated’ or some other non-sense term that means, “Please don’t pigeon hole me.”) and I’m not a closet Christian, but I’ve been flabbergasted that so many web sites and news blurbs cited ‘Evangelicals’ as the source of Bush’s win. For crying out loud, there are lots of states with a very small percentage of actual Christians (where Christian does not equal WASP) but where conservative values tend to be held. Heck, I left the Bible Belt to find a home church :)

What I’m most interested in is some reasons why I don’t think Kerry won:

• Anything but Bush is hardly a reason to vote for Kerry, and it’s really not a reason to vote against Bush. It just says that someone disagrees with Bush.
• Bush Lied. Yup. Most likely he spun, or lied, about a lot of stuff. This is typical for politicians, no matter what stereo-type they get labeled with (including Bush’s Christianity). People apparently aren’t expecting truth from politicians or televangelists.
• Bush is against Stem Cell Research which could hold the cure to (insert many diseases here). I want to state right now that I am for stem cell research. With one condition: don’t get the stem cells from aborted babies. The reason this didn’t win people over to the Kerry camp is because not enough Americans recognize this as the issue it is. There is a lot of ignorance when it comes to medicine and the common United States citizen.
• The War on Terror is never ending. You may know that. I know that. However, considering that most of the people voting attend religious ceremonies two or less times a year their recognition that terrorism in the middle-east is often based on religious motivation – they don’t think about it and they don’t get it.
• Peoples children are dying in Iraq. Voters don’t want people to die. However, when you calculate that the number of US citizens that die every month from car accidents in the United States is higher than the number who have died in Iraq in all of that time, the fatality rate has been very low[1]. Granted zero deaths is better than even one death. I’m personally not for war, and don’t want us in Iraq (or any other country) either, but I think that voters didn’t buy this argument.
• Gay (marriage, unions, governmentally recognized relationships). Many Americans may not be homophobes (or many may be, I don’t know enough Americans to tell you this) but I think that this issue really didn’t grab the attention of John and Jane Doe because Will and Grace is their one contact with homosexuality – except if you count their aunty’s hair dresser.

This is a very small list and I know many more arguments were leveled during the time of the presidential running (or, if you want to be humorous, the running of the bulls [as in bull pucky that came out in the mud slinging]). My recommendation for those against Bush’s presidency is to not marry a Canadian, move to Canada or protest all over the place. Instead, move to California, they’ve got plenty of room (not really), join a cult (to counter the Evangelicals) or marry a Canadian so they can move down here and populate the country with Candadian ideas and accents (Pretty good idea, eh?).

I’m interested in intelligent conversation on this and would like to hear other arguments I didn’t list and see what else we can come up with. Also, what candidates do you prognosticate for the next presidential election? Powell verses H. Clinton? That would be quite the race because you’d have a black male verses a woman. Of course Arnold Schwartzeneiger verses Obama would be even more intense! OK, I’m going to bed.