inessential by Brent Simmons

1/9/2000

New Manila features: you can turn off the title on the home page -- as on this site -- and you can include the title in your news day template. (Which I'm not doing on this site.) Here's a demo.

I posted as a sample the script that displays the list of links on the left and gives me an Edit button.

Seahawks lost. It was a good game, but... Oh well, it's just football, not like it was actually important, like say a Mariners game.

Kozmo.com is a cool service -- you can rent a movie via the web, they deliver within an hour. Last night was the first time I'd used their service. No complaints, very smooth.

Also ordered dinner via food.com, which I'd done before. What's interesting is that it appears they've switched from Vignette StoryServer to Apple WebObjects. They've still got issues with performance -- while it's faster than when they used StoryServer, it's still slow. And there are lots of UI issues, it's more difficult than it should be to order food, I kept getting confused. Nevertheless, I expect I'll continue to use their service -- unless a competitor comes along.

My favorite web service (outside UserLand, of course) is HomeGrocer.Com. Easy to use site, on-time delivery, excellent meat and produce, friendly drivers. I've probably had groceries delivered 30 times by now. My wife wondered if they'd let their most regular customers in on their IPO. Okay, so we're dreaming. But I think they're going to make a million trillion dollars.

Phil Suh posted comments on the above. "They [Kozmo] delivered a movie for me at 11pm on Christmas eve."

The Seahawks have made it to the playoffs for the first time since 1988. No matter the outcome, this is the last game of any kind in the Kingdome, ever. Go Hawks!

array: "Manila could be a big, big solution for print designers."

Philly Future is a cool weblog. But it's not the same as being there. I grew up just outside Newark, Delaware, in the Philadelphia sphere of influence. Most of my family lives in Pennsylvania, south Jersey, and Maryland. They send me TastyKakes. I wish I could buy TastyKakes in Seattle (or on the web). And that's not all -- Philadelphia has an unrecognized culture of excellent junk food, the best there is. I wish I could get Herr's cheese puffs, good pretzels, Frank's Black Cherry Wishniak. In Seattle you literally can't get the right kind of bread to make hoagies and cheesesteaks. It's a scandal! Even something simple like non-processed sliced American cheese is very rare. I wish I could go to Friendly's for a sundae.

My personal heaven is Casapulla's, a deli in Hockessin, Delaware with the best subs in the world and the full range of Philly-area snacks.

Karl Martino suggests I try PhillyPretzels.Com, which will FedEx the food I crave right to my door.

Here's another Philly food deliverer: Philadelphia Favorite Foods.

Anita Rowland of Anita's LOL reminded me about Philadephia Fevre, a Seattle deli that apparently serves cheese steaks and TastyKakes. I knew about them, but for some reason I thought they closed years ago.