everyday

via: Signal vs. Noise

37 Signals, the amazing web design company behind such products as Basecamp, Highrise and Campfire, have introduced a new feature to one of their applications, namely Backpack [read article]. This feature allows a person to drag and drop items from various pages onto other pages. If this doesn’t make any sense, watch the video!

This company makes me sad, sad because I am in awe of their skills. While I fancy myself as a web designer and programmer, I really am just an amateur. This is ever so evident when looking at the offerings from 37 Signals. I would like to think that with enough free time I too could have these skills, but that is akin to thinking that, with enough time I could play in the NBA!

Unbeknownst to most, your when you provide your user name and password to the Google Notifier for either Gmail or the Google Calendar you are transmitting those credentials in plain text. In order to secure your credentials, you need to configure the Google Notifier to transmit your credentials via secure http (https). To do, follow the directions in this article on macosxhints.com. I have discussed security in regards to Gmail before (see: “Secure your Gmail“), but that wasn’t necessarily in regards to the notifier.

While this may not seem all that important to you, just take a moment to consider how much of your personally identifiable information is transmitted through email. Without securing your credentials, you are inviting anyone to sniff your packets and pull any information that they want.

As far as I know, this little tip only works on the wonder-filled Mac OSX operating system.

via: Live Science

An article at Live Science talks about a rare species of fish, known as the desert pupfish that has been found in some man-made ponds far removed from any known natural habitat for the fish. The ponds are filled with water from nearby rivers which begs the question, “is this endangered species thriving in these rivers?”.

via: treehugger

Found this on treehugger, a very interesting take on a house. It is basically a series of layers going from concrete to wood to translucent panels to an exterior tent.

We are planning a short camping trip to the Sequoia National Forest. Since we have not been there before I was hoping that one of my legion of faithful readers would have some insight and recommendations on camping sites, trails and general things to see and do. We will be entering the Sierras from the West as we want to visit some family members who live in Exciter, CA on the way there. This will be a “car camping” trip, so no backpacking into the country. I would like to be able to do some day hikes that aren’t too strenuous and definitely want to see the Sequoias, apart from that I am open to suggestions.

Thanks in advance!