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Airborne. Most of us know it. Some of us question whether it works. Others swear by it. I'm not sure which camp I fall in to, but the company that makes it does a really good job preying on those of us who believe that spending $6 or so for a package of it will allow you to avoid illness. Same thing goes for Purell which ironically I'm not a big believer in.       The strange thing with these products is that you don't see people on relief missions in post-conflict areas using them religiously (I assume they use things that actually work); you see people in offices using them. It all relays the fact that people in offices are terrified of getting sick and not being able to work, when in reality, if they really wanted to avoid illness, then they should avoid the stress of being in the office 12 hours a day. Anyways, this is just an American attitude towards work and social interaction to which I am digressing.       The reason I bring all of this up is because at The Sometimes Office, I wasn't feeling so well one day, so I popped an Airborne, leaving the tube of the pills on my desk when I was done. The reaction from those who came up to me was unanimous. They started talking, glanced down, and then jumped back once they saw the Airborne Tube (or Tube of Doom as I call it.) "Oh, um... are you sick?" "Maybe." "Okay, I'll stay back." This is a pretty funny thing to say since A) Most cold germs aren't spread through the air (making the name 'airborne' even funnier) and B) If they were spread through the air, then the closed ventilation system has got you hosed.       Working in computers and office environments, I've found that it is true you catch colds and flus through contact, specifically computer keyboards and mice. Those things are crawling with germs in their plastic depths. Having one or two stints in Information Technology, I realized that I caught everything that anyone had in the office because I would have to get on their keyboards. The only upside was that because I couldn't ever call in sick (not enough staff to do that), I would come in and spread viruses from one computer to another. Calling me Patient Zero or The Carrier would be a bit of an understatement. Did I try Purell? Yup, as well as sanitizing baby wipes. Didn't matter. Those little germs are quite resilient buggers and are built to spread.       Now that I've refocused on web development again for the last couple of years, I get sick a lot less because I'm on one machine. There are lessons to be learned in this:        - don't do IT        - do web work        - Airborne probably doesn't work        - A Tube of Doom on your desk is more effective that the "George Frown"        - Purell really doesn't work        - Go to Mediterranean often

For those living in the US and specifically in coastal states, we all know how the real estate market has gotten so out of control lately. As you can see in this bit from San Francisco magazine which was written at the end of 2003, the market has been hot for quite some time. But as you can also see in this bit from the SF Chronicle, the market has cooled a great deal in recent months. Notice that it hasn't died, just cooled. Somehow prices continue to increase.       Just today though, I came across a BBC article about the possibility of a Spanish property crash looming on the horizon. They've had a good run for some time there, but the parallels between it and the American (specifically, Californian) market are rather scary. It definitely seems poised to go and I think that the fact that most of the economic growth seems to be centered around the growth in property, it's going to be bad. Unfortunately for the US, we're in nearly the exact same boat with what I've heard to be around 3/5 of the recent growth in the economy based on real estate. But of course, no one wants to talk about that.       While it's easy to draw theoretical conclusions from this and shrug it off as out of our hands, I can't quite shake it. I suppose it's because I had family visiting from Bend, Oregon last week who said that the situation there was a lot like San Francisco with all these people who seemed to suddenly have money out of thin air. In reality they all have money from selling their places in California and moving up to Oregon where the market is slightly cheaper. Sure, there is something of a cushion, but people forget that money runs out and things change. So many folks have bought with these damnable adjustable rate mortgages and are about to get spanked badly with any slight downturn in the economy.       But, back to the BBC article and the fact that they make one very good point in that people only need so many houses. This is a finite market with a saturation point that it seems we are quickly approaching, or maybe we've hit it already and no one really wants to talk about it, because honestly, it's a serious bummer. I guess for myself personally, it's good that I didn't buy property and more importantly didn't buy speculation property to flip as so many have here. Obviously, time will only tell with this, but maybe while in Europe, will be a good time to buy there? I can't tell you how badly I'd love to say an emphatic yes, but know better.

I love launching new sites. I would use some over-zealous phrase like it's "giving birth to a new child", but that's a bit over the top and smarmy. Still, it's fun to release them on the world and see what happens.       The new site in question is www.elia.ws. Why .ws you might ask? Well, try and find elia dot something that isn't already taken and you'll be hard pressed to find one that's free. So, this was the best choice and it's rather fitting since Ms. Elia who writes there is a world traveler and the .ws extension was originally supposed to mean world site. While it was just one of the countless new domain names that ICANN has released in recent years, I find it quite fitting in this instance.       But, who is, Elia? I'll let you read what she says in her own words. Oh yeah... one other thing I might want to mention... the site is completely in Spanish. This proved to be a bit of challenge, but one that was worth undertaking because you have to get creative with things like month names (MySQL only outputs in English) and non-English characters (UTF-8 is a wonderful thing). Beyond those little stumbling blocks, as long as you have the lovely Spaniard with you to work on the site, it will all come up roses.       So, dust off your Español, or get out your BabelFish and get reading. She happens to have a delicious photos section if you're feeling linguistically impaired at the moment.

It's not the most well-known holiday outside of Catalonia, but it should be. You see, today is Diada de Sant Jordi, otherwise known as Saint George's Day in English. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, Saint George is an English saint. Well, regardless of that, he's mighty big in Catalonia and they celebrate the day in a pretty cool way.       You can read all the details on the almighty Wikipedia, but the crux of it is that it's a lot like American Valentine's Day, but without the gross consumerism because all they give are roses and books to each other. Actually, historically, men gave the women a rose and women gave the men a book, but many people seem to give books and roses now. It's certainly not without its profitability though, seeing as how it pulled in $90 million dollars just for this one day, in just Catalonia, a region that has 7.1 million people. That's a lot of books and roses (5.5 million roses to be exact)!       But, it's a very smart and very cool holiday as well as a good time to be in Barcelona (no, not Barthelona) with all of the streets filled with makeshift book and rose sellers for the day. If interested, you can see some coverage in photos. You'll notice that there are some famous Spanish authors there who are signing their books for the day.

As I am gearing up for a bit of a trip, I started to think about how in the world all these budget airlines made money. I mean, seriously how can an airline like Ryanair fly me from London to Slovenia or what have you for $10, or even free?!! Many others have asked these questions as well and of course there are the easy answers such as:       - Flying in to smaller airports with little or no taxes       - Getting paid by smaller towns to fly there and bring tourists       - No inflight services, like meals or drinks       - Leaner organizations that aren't as bloated as the big carriers       - Carrying cargo in addition to people (although I have only rumor to back this one up)       - Quantity and very, very full flights to very, very popular places.              One thing that I never thought about and was never that obvious to me was: baggage. Every previous trip I've taken, I've only had a backpack that fits as carry on. I'm pretty proud of that fact considering the last trip was for nearly a month and I managed to have everything I needed in there. But for this trip I want more space, not so much because I want to bring more, but because I want to bring more back. Since US fashion currently looks like someone had fashion poisoning and vomited up with 80's again, I am forced to buy my clothes overseas. This being the case, I want to bring a proper suitcase that I'll check. Naturally, I started to look in to the airlines' regulations on how much weight you can bring.       Overall, it's not too bad with Virgin (whom I'm flying to London on) where they allow 23kg (about 50 pounds) as you can see on their regulations page (very similar with United.) The catch comes in connecting with these budget airlines though. Airlines like Easyjet and this new one Clickair allow 20kg as you can see here and here respectively. Ryanair is a real stinker and only allows 15kg.       So, how do you make up this difference in allowance from a bigger carrier like Virgin to one of these smaller budget guys? Simple, you pay for it. The fees run from six to eight euro a kilogram. It's not too bad if you're just making up a couple of kilo difference, but still an extra $25 or $30 makes that $10 flight a bit more expensive and really, for them to carry an extra ten or twenty pounds per person makes little difference.       There is one little itch in all of this, which is that Virgin (and other large carriers) allows two pieces at 23kg each, while budget airlines only allow one! So if you're traveling with a bit of luggage, then the cost you're going to pay goes up dramatically. Ryanair even has a separate page on their site for extra baggage charges. I'd really recommend taking a look at all of this if you're traveling soon and be prepared for it. Or go the student traveler way that I used to and just bring one piece of carry on, although with the new bastard liquid restrictions that are undoubtedly a conspiracy by the cosmetics and toiletries corporations, even that won't work these days.              In other traveling news, I have to say that the ability to do online check-in with so many airlines is a fantastic thing. Being able to pick a spot on a flight to avoid being squished between people and maintain a slight air of civility makes the flying process all that much better. Of course, trying to know what seat you're sitting in for what flight and what plane can be a real bugger. Naturally, someone with far too much time on his hands created Seat Guru so that you can pick the exact right seat you want to have when doing the check-in. Pretty awesome and I can't believe that I hadn't found this before, but now I know and knowing is half the battle.

I think there are two reasons that I'm such a tea nut and love doing my Tea Reviews. The first reason was a trip to London in 2004 where I was exposed to good tea for the first time and got hooked. The second was due to this bit I saw on Good Eats where Alton Brown went in to the depths of food geekness in talking about tea. It was a good show, but it was his "recipe" for the perfect cup that really got me hooked on tea and as any reader of this site knows, it's a bit of a passion for me.       One thing that Alton went on and on about was the need for perfect water when making tea. I had been somewhat taking this for granted because I brew at home or get a cup where they boil the water properly. It wasn't until I tried using the hot water in the office water cooler that I realized how important it was to have good, properly boiled water. I would rather be tired and un-caffeinated than drink tea made that way because really, it sucks.       It wasn't until recently at one of my sometimes offices where I pointed out the fact that the coffee drinkers get all these fancy coffee pots, $500 espresso machines, and what not, while the tea drinkers are stuck with the crappy hot water thing on the water cooler that makes me prefer Starbucks. So, after much hassling, I managed to have them get an electric tea kettle. Specifically, this on from Sunbeam. The only catch (which I didn't think of as an issue at first) was that it's made of plastic. This probably isn't a big deal to most people seeing as how nearly every damned thing is made of plastic these days, but really it makes a difference. While this pot will actually get the water to a rolling boil, there is something never quite right with it. Tea doesn't steep as dark as it does at home and there is always this slight air of plasticness to it that I don't quite care for.       All things told though, I greatly prefer this over the water cooler and it is a lot better than spending $2 every time I want a cup of hot water and Indian leaves. Still, it's not great and short of having a gas burner with a proper Chantal kettle (god I love these) in the office, I believe this is the best I will get. Quite obviously, I need my own company and office...

I have recently been shown the exploits of one, Rune Monstad, otherwise known as Viking Biker. The premise of his journeys and blog sounded fun, being that he's a Norwegian biking around all the continents for a couple of years and documenting it. Naturally, images of some blond, tall, long haired wild man popped in to my head as he tore around the open road on a Harley or something. But, no, this guy is pedaling a mountain bike everywhere. Thusly, it's taking him quite a long time to get places.       Probably the best thing about his site are the videos. They show that yes, he is indeed insane with frozen ice clinging to his face while riding his bike from city to city in Canada and refusing rides from people because it would destroy the premise of what he's doing. The videos also show that he has one of the thickest Norwegian accents I've ever heard.       Pretty crazy guy and in fact crazier than the one I had originally envisioned. A good read for anyone who is happy being wherever they are and not freezing while pedaling along a highway somewhere.

Live Maps, the blatant attempt by Microsoft to take on and improve upon Google Maps, are in a state of rapid data collection currently. For those who haven't checked out this new mapping system, it will actually give you a street view of the location you're looking for. Oddly enough, I had this idea about three years ago and was going to call it streetment.com (still available if you want it) or something, but I realized that I simply did not have the manpower to pull this off because I can't cover all the streets of San Francisco like they'd need to be covered to make this work. Microsoft however, in their endless pile of money (insert Scrooge McDuck image here) does have the manpower to make this happen though. The end result is that they are in the process of mapping all these streets with guys driving around in cars that have cameras mounted all over them. A slight tinge of 1984? You betcha.       So, yesterday, I was walking along Sansome Street and saw one of these guys turn in front of me to drive up Commercial Street, right past the home of the $40 burrito (Tlaloc). It was a weird sight. Here was this guy in a Toyota Camry, with a sunroof that had a tripod sticking up through it. On top of that was mounted this four-lensed camera, which I assumed was taking pictures of everything as he drove. Then I realized that I was in these shots and at some point, I would appear when people looked at this street. Check it out for Powell Street on their current maps. It's pretty weird. I doubt that there's anything you can do about this since it's legal. Still, it's weird, but hey, it's Microsoft and everybody loves dancing monkeys.

I've been around for a bit in this crazy world of the internet and I've learned a few things with time. Naturally, I'm no expert on everything, but I've found that working as a contract web developer has its ups and downs. I thought that I would share a few of these so that others could commiserate, or learn about potential pitfalls before they happen. Why only seven? Well, that's all I could think of at the moment. Maybe I'll expand on this in the future, but for right now, here you go:              1. Always have a contract.       This may seem elementary or a real pain to deal with, but I've found that if you have a solid outline of the work at hand whether it's a $500 job or a $5,000 job, you're going to be a lot happier in the end. Every client I've worked with where there has been a relatively explicit contract has been a good experience. Every client where I've gone without has been a nightmare. Even if it's just bullet points on one sheet of paper, have each of you sign off on it.       2. Avoid restaurant websites.       When you're out looking for work, you don't really want to turn anything down and if you're like me, living in a metropolitan city, you'll see a new eating place open up or realize that one of your favorites doesn't have a site. You think, "Ah, I should pursue this." Ah, but you shouldn't. While it's always a good business practice to drop a card to test the waters, I've found that restaurant owners in general are clueless when it comes to the web. They tend to not want to pay anything (despite the fact they'll ironically spend a fortune on print ads) and then they want everything. Trying to pin them down on a design is like pulling teeth, even if they have a heavily designed space and you try to copy that. If they really come to you for their site and have a solid idea (write a contract) and be very cautious. But, if they require the least bit of chasing, don't bother because most of the time, this is one-off work that will not provide any steady form of income.       3. Avoid jobs under $200 (scale for locale).       For those who, like me, survived the dot-com crash, this may seem like an arrogant attitude. But, every site that I've worked on in this range, whether it be a favor or just to try and help out a group with little money has been a disaster. Think of this this way: $200 buys you about 4-6 hours of development time (in San Francisco anyways) and if someone doesn't want to pay anything close to a partial going rate, then they most likely don't understand the work involved, yet don't realize that they can't do it themselves. You're much better off doing a job for free so that you can cut your ties to it if it gets out of hand. While generating some bad karma in the process, at least you're not liable for anything.       4. Watch out for "designers".       These types are in the print world as well and are nothing new. For those who don't know of these, what I am talking about are the people who really think they can design and will want to basically control the mouse through you. These might work out all right if you can swallow your pride and just let them do whatever they want to do no matter how ugly or unusable the end result. I am getting better with this type, but it's a hard thing to do and it really just makes the work feel meaningless. This group are also another good reason to obey rule #1 because they will often have you go through 20 mockups and still be unhappy.       5. Don't maintain sites that require DreamWeaver access.       Hey, I love DreamWeaver. I use it daily, but I hand code everything and make it as lean and compact as possible. DreamWeaver has this top heavy habit of creating a new definition for every freaking bit on the page when some things can easily be condensed for clarity and speed. These types of jobs are also tricky because the reason that people want the DreamWeaver access in the first place is so that they can muck with things, which inevitably means that something is going to get broken and you'll have to wade through .denseBlue1, .denseBlue1a, .denseBlue2, and .denseBlue to figure out which damned class is creating some table that has it's display set to inline and is looking like hell.       6. Count your friends and family carefully.       I always try to help the people I know and love. Some of them, I will do anything for. In the past, I've always tried to be there until one day I realized that I was only working on pet projects for other people and not my own pet projects. No matter how silly they may be, I love my pet projects and it wasn't until I went on vacation for month and wasn't able to work on others' sites that I realized how much time they were taking up. Naturally, keep working on others' sites that you care about, just make sure to budget your time.       7. Find some way to holiday.       It's so easy to let the web life take over your life. Some new site or new feature is coming out all the time and you want to be on top of it. It also seems that if you leave for a little bit, you're going to lose clients and the momentum you've built for the work you do. Naturally, all of these things can happen, but if you don't get away from it once in awhile, you'll burn out and go insane. I recommend anywhere from two weeks to however much off each year to go hike in Banff or float in a sailboat on the Adriatic. Your body and soul will thank you for it.

Ajvar. Many folks in the US have no clue what it is. Honestly, I was one of them until I traveled to the Balkans. During my initial trips, I would see it spelled and not know that it was pronounced "eye var", but now I know and now I love it.       Basically, as you can see with the Wikipedia link provided, it's a spread made from red bell peppers, garlic, and some eggplant. The mixture varies from region to region, but whatever the case, it's good on just about everything. And whatever it isn't good on, use Nutella. The Slavs who eat it, will always warn you that's it's really spicy. For someone from the Northern Midwest who has never had Mexican food, maybe it is. For me, it was about as spicy as red onions and garlic. A decent pep, but nothing crazy.       So, once I got a taste for this delicious treat, I naturally wanted to find it in the US. No such luck. Supposedly, you can find it at "ethnic" stores in some areas that mainly import Russian food. Ask the people working there and they'll shake their head and not know what you're talking about.       I was somewhat dumbfounded and had no idea why I couldn't find this red demon spread anywhere. Then, one day when at the eternal Trader Joe's, my girl and I were browsing the spreadables aisle and came across "red pepper spread" that was made in Bulgaria. This seemed promising, so naturally we bought it. Once home, we found out that yes, this was indeed ajvar. While not as tangy or amazing as the ones we've both had in the Balkans, it was a very passable substitute.       The moral of the story is that if you're looking for Ajvar, look for Red Pepper Spread. And if you can't find it at your local market or even Whole Foods (what's up with that?!!), then check out the TJ's and try, try, try to avoid buying the cheesecake.