Come on, nobody look stunned.

I have always been a vocal minority trying to dissuade people from using artificial sweeteners at the rate at which they are consumed in our society. Now I cannot make any claim that I have ate any cancer before, but I would suspect that cancer would taste like a tall refreshing nutrasweet addled soda. Sweetness isn't supposed to have a flavor that makes you taste like you were drinking out of a test tube.

It's amazing to me that if there were proper and extensive studies on these chemicals prior to being shoved down our throats, that now... what about 15 years after it hit the market extensively (since 1983 limited approval) there is continued evidence that it causes cancer in lab animals. Meanwhile a natural noncaloric substitute (the active chemical discovered by modern man in the 30s, likely used by ancient man, and widely used in japan since 1977) has had a hard time being approved for use as a sweetener stateside with much less conclusive evidence accrediting its harmfulness. This is a chemical that tastes a lot better than sucralose, saccharin, and aspartame and also seems to have other medical uses.

I wonder if a certain subset of corporate america might have made it's approval difficult, far be it from me to insinuate that the FDA cares more about the profit of lobbyists rather than the well being of the American public.

So you want to be a webserver?

So you want to host and serve web pages from your own pc but spending your evenings configuring web and database servers isn't exactly your cup of tea? Xampp is for you!

While I thoroughly enjoy an evening of configuration, researching and testing, you may prefer to have your local development environment setup in less time than it would take to consume that caffeinated beverage you'd need to stay up and actually setup Apache webserver, MySQL Database Sever, PHP and Pearl. XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start. Xampp is available for Linux, windows, os x and solaris. It includes an array of utilities to assist with other net tasks such as file transfer and messaging. Best of all, Xampp is FREE.

The philosophy behind XAMPP is to build an easy to install distribution to get netizens into the world of Apache. It is put out by Apache Friends, an organization founded in 2002 to promote Apache, its ease and use, documentation and community.

To make it convenient for users XAMPP is configured with all features turned on. The default configuration is not good from a securtiy point of view and it's not secure enough for a production environment - please don't use XAMPP in such environment. XAMPP can be configured securely by simply running an included script

More information available at http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Running gmail securely

Bobu just laid this amazing tidbit on me (amazing if you're a paranoid uber geek, like me). You can log into gmail thru https:// . Which runs the whole thing through SSL, making it as secure as pretty much possible as far as standards on the web go. Apparently his boss has been doing it that way for the longest time, and just now found it interesting to tell him.

Also the shortcut keys on gmail are pretty fucking neat. It's worth turning them on even if you're not a keyboard junkie (like me). The option is the 3rd one down in your general settings tab, under settings when logged into gmail.