I started using Baking Soda shampoo late last year and it’s been going fantastic, so I thought I’d share my experiences.

I’m not exactly sure why I first decided to look up baking soda shampoo, but I think it had to do with the fact that my head gets so oily. I shave my head down to about a half centimeter and I hate exposing my scalp to soaps/shampoos filled with chemicals. I know there are great natural hand-made soaps (Amme uses local handmade soap) but I remembered reading somewhere that you could make your own baking soda shampoo and liked the idea. A quick search online revealed two things: 1. My mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, lots of people make and use it. And 2. It’s dead simple to make!

The best reason to stop using shampoo is the long list of chemicals most contain. If you’re scared by the long unpronounceable names on shampoo labels then baking soda is a great alternative. Baking soda shampoo is also a great once-a-week (or whenever) clarifier or “de-gunk-ifier”. Another bonus is savings. While some shampoos are quite cheap, baking soda is even cheaper. I like it because it keeps my scalp clean without stripping so many natural oils that my head goes into overdrive replacing them (the most common cause of excessively oily hair).

I learned most of what I know about baking soda shampoo from naturemoms.com, and I highly recommend you go there and read the excellent article. I use their technique for massaging it into my scalp, pay close attention to that section, and use about the same amount that I would for shampoo. WikiHow also has a great article on shampoo alternatives.

My own favorite recipe for baking soda shampoo is this:

Fill your container (a water-tight one you can get your hand into) 3/4 full with baking soda. I add the tiniest pinch of xanthan gum (you can pick it up at most health-food stores and a little goes a long way) but it’s strictly optional. You can also add a drop or two of your favorite essential/scented oil. Then just add enough water to make it a paste, about the consistency of toothpaste. Put the lid on and shake it well and you’re done!

If you find the mixture too thick to massage into your hair, or if your hair feels wiry, then add more water. If the baking soda settles out overnight (which can happen if you mix yours more watery and don’t use xanthan gum) just give it a quick shake before you use it.

Make sure to rinse your hair thoroughly and, just like regular shampoo, remember not to get it in your eyes!

I’ve added a bunch of UrbEx photos to flickr for the Blotner IFC, FJETC, Runway POL Garage, and the Dow WSA.

As always you can also view my photos by following the Photography link at the top of my blog. Thanks for viewing!

At any rate, this is the playlist my brain has created in the past two days:

• Bonnie Raitt – Something to Talk About
• Bob Marley – I Shot the Sheriff
• Fleetwood Mac – Landslide
• Peter Gabriel – Sledgehammer
• Metro Station – Disco

So, what random songs have you had in your head lately?  Don’t be embarrassed… hell, Landslide is up there.

The exposure time on these photos range anywhere from a few seconds to over a minute, I basically put it on manual (“bulb”), held down the shutter release button, and waited for a strike. When I saw one I let go and repeated. These aren’t as close up as some of the others I’ve taken, but I’m really happy about how many I managed to capture! You can also check them out in my photo section or as a slideshow. If you’re interested, you can see my previous lightning photos here.

photo by Jurvetson (flickr)

Tell your average hipster that they can use VZ Navigator on their phone to get directions to the coolest new club through a GPS chip in their phone, and they’ll probably think its pretty neat. Tell the same thing to your average healthily paranoid geek, and they’ll hopefully question how else it might be used. Sure its cool, but if Verizon can do it, so can the government. On top of that, they may also turn on on your mic even when you’re not on a call. In a follow up to my article on FBI cell phone tapping, we’ll be discussing how you can be tracked on your cellphone, and under what circumstances.

Flip a switch and your cell is a bug

There is at least one documented instance where a case against the Genovese crime family relied on evidence collected by activating one of the defendants’ cell phone microphones (not during a call, but while it was not in use!) to use it as a “roving bug”, recording all conversations in its vicinity. This was done through the cell provider, and could be used against any civilian if a court order is given. The ability to do this is latent in most any modern cellular phone, and requires no physical contact with the device.  Some sources say all GSM phones are vulnerable, while others say it depends on the manufacturer:

from nets.zdnet.com

Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. “They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time,” he said. “You can do that without having physical access to the phone.”

If the civilians can find you…

Arguably worse than turning your phone into a bug, it seems any civilian could potentially track you with the help of paid services like Accutracking, uLocate, World Tracker, and Flexispy (just to name a few).

To use these services, the spying person often needs to install the software on the victim’s phone, however the spying person need only have the phone in their hands long enough to navigate to a web page with the phone, and enter their user code. This causes the spying software to be downloaded to the phone and enabled.  In some instances, the user will be sent a seemingly innocent text message that requests they download some software.

Once installed, the offender has a web page where they can view all manner of information.  If the phone has GPS, you will get their exact latitude and longitude. If not, you get the CELL ID of the tower they are closest to, or their general location through triangulation.  Most of these programs also give you the phone’s in/outbound calls and text messages, all without giving any indication to the victim that this information is being transmitted.

…So can the Feds

It almost goes without saying that government agencies have a much finer grain of control over tracking your location.  Due to September 11th and e911 compliance, by 2006 all cell phone carriers were required to provide the ability to trace cell phone calls to a location within 100 meters or less.  Since many rural areas lack the necessary density of towers to triangulate to that accuracy, cell phone carriers instead integrated GPS technology into cell phones.  Often times this chip isn’t accessible to the user, so don’t think that just because you can’t see it, it isn’t there.  Some networks do have that density, however, and your cell carrier may be able to triangulate your position based on your signal strength to each tower your phone connects to.  In these cases, then the more populated the area you’re in (and hence the more cell towers around you), the greater the accuracy you can be tracked down to.  And for any of you would-be 911 pranksters:

from ezinearticles.com

when the person who has the phone has made an emergency call, this GPS transmission will always be sent. This is designed to ensure that the police can always track a cell phone location, in order to get help to people who need it.

Another way the government can pinpoint your location is through the use of a technology called a Triggerfish.  Triggerfish are pieces of hardware that emulate a cell tower.  Once your rough location is determined based on your connection to a cell cite, a triggerfish can be deployed (perhaps in an unmarked black van?) to home in on your signal.  Triggerfish can also get your phone’s unique IMEI and serial numbers, phone numbers, and other data.

Update 2-11-2010: Apparently it’s completely legal for the feds to track you without a warrant.

What you can do about it

In the case of the Genovese family case, the court denied motions by 10 defendants to suppress the conversations obtained by “roving bugs”.  That being the case, I would personally not count on arguing the legality of being bugged or tracked after the fact.

The first precaution I would suggest is to never let your phone out of your site, and not download files from untrusted sources.  Beyond that, the only sure-fire way to make sure you aren’t bugged or tracked through your cellphone is to take the battery out when you don’t wan’t to be… not very practical for the average joe.

If you watch or read a lot of techno-thrillers you probably know the trick of buying a disposable pay-as-you-go phone (with cash).  This is possibly the only way to make sure you aren’t tracked, and even then you’ll need to change phones quite often to avoid patterns.  All that, however, is beyond the scope of this article.

In reality, while using a celular phone you are at the mercy of the government, the FCC, and the phone company.  The best defense is to stay off everyone’s radar by not doing anything that arouses suspicion.  For as they say, being a “law abiding” citizen isn’t the issue, whom defines “law abiding” is the real issue.

Awesome.

It seems a successor to the ubiquitous Chuck Norris Facts meme has arisen. The target? Action movie director Michael Bay.

In the wake of the new Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen movie a stream of Michael Bay Facts has been pouring out of twitter, and as with Chuck Norris Facts, most are hysterical.

Since Michael Bay Facts mock their target rather than revere him (he really is a shitty director, though I loved Transformers: ROTF), and since Michael Bay will never be bad-ass like Chuck Norris, I’m sure this meme will be quite short lived. With that in mind, get them while the getting is good. I see io9 has posted some of their favorites, and I’d like to do the same.

These are some of my favs:

• jbneal: When you fist-pound Michael Bay, your hand literally blows up.
• MattCox: In some states, it’s illegal to say “Michael Bay” in airports or crowded theaters.
• frontierwoman:To clear a hangover Michael Bay straps a grenade to his head and dives headfirst into empty swimming pools.
• burnflores: Michael Bay doesn’t like gum. He chews C4.
• chris7crows: Michael Bay emerged from the womb with a detonator in one hand and a supermodel in the other. His mother then exploded.
• MattCox: Bomb squad was at the library today. Someone returned Michael Bay’s autobiography.
• jpmccu: Michael Bay’s school film project is lost to the world, as it blew up from awesome. The audience ran away in slow motion.
• DJBullock: Michael doesn’t use a camera to film his movies. He burns the movie into the film using the heat of exploding orphanages.
• And possibly my favorite: mrbs: Michael Bay was preceeded down the birth canal by a dove in slow motion. And followed by a column of flame.

It seems Aimee_B_Loved has become the unnoficial queen of #MichaelBayFacts on twitter with a slew of great ones:

• Michael Bay literally fights fire with fire, but insists token minorities do so with clever, urban-sounding comments.
• Michael Bay sleeps on a bed of hot coals and uses bundles of dynamite as pillows.
• As an infant, Michael Bay had to recast his mother because her breasts weren’t big enough for the part.
• Michael Bay uses battery acid as lube.
• Michael Bay purposely edits out “sissy shit” like plot and character development.

And then some people are just Doing It Wrong:

• ABAwesome: There are approximately 94 people in the USA with the name “Michael Bay”
• Flonk2: Michael Bay was adopted.

See my own paltry (at least by comparison) MichaelBayFacts here, and let me know what your favorites are that I’ve missed, or if you think some up on your own, please share them!

We chose to go up the Gorham Mountain trail. It’s listed as a moderate trail, but doesn’t require any climbing. It did get our hearts pumping though!

There was a nice little overlook that we stopped at to catch our breath and take some photos.

Eventually Amme let me know how she felt about the camera being pointed at her, lol.

When we got to the summit we took a little break to enjoy the beautiful view and how gorgeous the ocean looked.

We still felt pretty energized so we decided to keep going forward instead of backtracking, continuing on the backside of the Gorham trail.

We met up with the Beehive trail and on the way down, saw some hikes taking a more perilous trail above us. The Beehive trail ends at the Park Loop Road at the entrance to Sand Beach.

Once we got there we hiked a ways back towards the car and had a picnic on the rocks just above the rising tide. We ate bologna (Wunderbar!) sandwiches and then sunbathed for a while before heading back to the car. I was too relaxed to remember to take more photos, but Amme did!

While we were hanging out on the rocks some ballsy seagulls pestered us. After feeding them a while they got even bore brazen and tried to grab our bag of orange and banana peels (which is funny because Amme threw them a piece of orange and they were having none of that!). This photo was snapped while he was about 3 feet from my face.

We drove into downtown Bar Harbor after hiking back to the car and got some huge dark chocolate truffles before heading home. I love hiking days!

PS: See the full album in my photos section, or on flickr, or as a nifty slideshow!

Whatcha think?

Barring minor tweaks, My new layout is now done! Most all of it is a 3rd party theme, a first for me! But I chose to use it because I both learned a lot from modifying it, and because programmers always say don’t reinvent the wheel! I chose instead to modify a lot of the spacing and positioning, and add some little touches here and there.

I like how much information it shows, hopefully it doesn’t look too cluttered. As Tufte says, information is the whole point so your design should focus on it and provide a high density without making it unusable. This isn’t exactly ultra dense, but does give you a quick glance at what I’m up to online, as well as focus mainly on the posts–the whole reason for this blog.

I still want to add a couple of navigation links because right now it’s hard to go from post to post (done!), but other than that I’m really happy with how it looks and behaves. Please let me know what you think of it, and offer any suggestions/constructive criticisms. This site is for my readers so I want it to be as easy for you to use as possible!

I’ve also been uploading my backlog of UrbEx photos. I’ve recently added the rest of the POL Tanks, Coal Elevator, Building 943, and the Civil Defense Bunker.

John: i know

John: but the do more on facebook

John: right

John: why do it on a site that just does updates then?

What do you guys/gals think? Amirite?

I came across this via Make:, but the source, and a great gallery of examples, is over at Noise Addicts.

It’s strange how well it works out, especially some they have posted. Here are three I did this morning (I could seriously make these all day):

Go try it out!

Google’s API is quite easy to work with, and I’m very pleased with the results. For most people this map isn’t very useful, and at any one time there are only a few markers plotted on it, but for myself it will be quite useful, and it was a great learning process. You can view the Maine Power Outages map at http://euicho.com/power

The new albums are: X-mas 2008, Virginia Fall ‘08, Nanny’s 75th B-day.

Japanese American Memorial

Union Station

Parker on X-mas 2008

Moments later, the page updated with “Retraction on Stave Jobs comment…we don’t know how that got in our feed.

The popular apple fan-site MacRumors.com was providing up to the minute coverage on the MacWorld 2009 Keynote address, when the page started displaying profanity and all-CAPS nonsense and 4chan slang.

Screenshots of the initial onslaught follow (Warning: NSFW, profanity):

Shortly thereafter both MacRumorsLive.com and MacRumors.com were down.

UPDATE:

as of 1:29pm EST, MacRumors.com was back online with the following post:

Our MacRumorsLive keynote coverage was hacked today, inserting inappropriate content into the text and photo feeds. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to restore our services. The hack appears to be limited to the MacRumorsLive servers so forum accounts should be safe.

We’ll continue Macworld Expo coverage on an ongoing basis this week, and will report on Apple’s announcements shortly.

As an aside: Sorry about the long break in posting. This semester is one of my last ones, and consequently one of the hardest yet, so I’ve not had free time for much of anything. My friends can attest to how little they see of me online, but over the break, at least, posting will resume on a weekly or better schedule. (^_^)

I can’t express how proud I am of our nation right now, not just because we’ve elected the first African American, but because we’ve elected a truly great man and the leader our country needs. Barack Obama will guide us back to the just path our country needs to be on, and right all of the wrongs our past leaders have done to us as a people.

McCain’s concession speech made enough reference to Barack’s race to imply that was why he was elected. Such an implication is not true. He won because he stuck to the truth and promised us change. We all now wait to see this change, and I for one am not worried.

That said, I still am immensely proud of seeing this happen in my lifetime. Mock me if you will, but I’ve always loved Tupac Shakur’s aptly titled song Changes. One line of the lines in this song reads:

“And although it seems heaven sent, We ain’t ready, to see a black President”

.

Look how far we’ve come not only in the decade since that line was written, but more importantly, since the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of 1964 and 1965.

The Democrats are back in control and its time to make this nation great once again. I’m proud to be an American.

With just an hour to go until the first polls close, many people have asked me if I’m nervous. I voted two weeks ago and even then I was cautiously optimistic. I am by no means cocky and I knock on wood as I write this, but I think Obama has a fantastic shot.

Matty B. Turned me onto a great website for electoral vote projections and information in general about the elections, www.fivethirtyeight.com, and I’ve been there throughout the last couple of months. One of the latest articles posted there affirm my optimism:

If those states go roughly as expected (meaning, say, an Obama win in Virginia and a close race in Indiana), we can conclude with almost literal 100 percent certainty that Obama will win the election

fivethirtyeight.com

C’mon Virginia! Vote Obama!

I’m crossing my fingers, eating bread and cinnamon butter in lieu of popcorn, and watchin’ the map

When I first read this, about 2 minutes ago, I shouted “Oh my good f***!” in a room full of strangers:

Boondock Saints 2 is officially filming, right now, in Toronto.

Get more info plus a couple of production diaries over at Geeks of Doom (the above link).

I found Shelfari a little over two years ago. Back then it was in private beta I believe, and it had the usual kinks and errors to work out, but it was even then a well done and well integrated website. Its grown into a very beautiful site with a great community of friendly interesting readers with some really nice discussion groups.

A sampling from my shelf
I’ll leave the formal reviews to other sites, and suffice it to say that Shelfari has some really neat features like everyone having their own interactive bookshelf to display and personally track the books they own, have read, want to read, etc. When I first got on I entered in every book in my apartment, and although I am far from having every book I’ve ever read in there, I sure as heck have most of them. If you ever want to buy me a book but are unsure of whether I already own it, just check my shelf!

I was reading reviews of some Robert A. Heinlein novels, one of my all-time favorite authors, and I came across a really short, unintellectual, un-cited review of Stranger in a Strange Land that I should have ignored but made me fear others would take it seriously, so I decided to write my own. You can search for my review on the book’s page, but I figured it’d be a lot easier if I just reproduce it below. I certainly won’t be offended if you don’t read it, but if you’ve ever wondered about the book, you may find it useful (BTW: You’ll notice I referenced the passage I quoted in the Garfield Minus Garfield post, because it really is one of my favorites). I hope I did it justice and if you agree or disagree or if my memory just plain sucks, please do let me know in the comments or email (euicho at euicho dot com).

Stranger in a Strange Land, A Review

Thomas S.E. Gagnon

Stranger in a Strange Land is a story I hold quite fond in my heart. This novel taught me a lot about life and human nature. Some say it was Robert Heinlein’s way of coming to terms with what Hubbard was doing at the time, while others think it’s just a dated and closed minded book. I find it to be an insightful comment on being human and dealing with all that entails, as well as challenging our own set ways of thought. I am by no means a subscriber to the philosophy of “free love” that finds its way into this novel, but I still absolutely loved this book.

If you’re not sure what this story is about, the short, short synopsis is that it’s about a human male, raised as a martian, coming to earth and learning how to be human, and about human beliefs vs. the martian ones he grew up with. However that description is unjustly simplified–it is really so much more than that. Stranger in a Strange Land challenges common views on organized religion, sexuality, and family structure. Although written by a SF grandmaster, and dealing with an “alien”, the story is set on Earth and deals strongly with character development versus cheap techno-thrills, so if you’re not really into SF this book should still strongly appeal to you.

Now, as I’ve read some of the other reviews on here, I feel a need to defend this novel against attacks. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, including those who hated this novel, and what follows is my own.

Some people have claimed Stranger is a racist and/or misogynistic work. I just didn’t see either of those. I think of myself as very supportive of equality of men and women of all races, and even philogyny to some extent, for all that woman do for us, and I felt this book exalted women. Recall how smart and dynamic Jubal’s assistants were, for example. They all had a firecracker-quick wit and never buckled under pressure. They did whatever their desire was and only obeyed their boss Jubal, because they where his employees, and they cared for him as a father figure. I found no objectification or sexism.

I agree that there is an overabundance of sex in this novel. But I am quite aware of the double standard in society where promiscuous men are applauded while women are called “slutty”. In Stranger in a Strange Land, some of the women are quite promiscuous, and yet are never judged, but seen as loving, and never forced by the men in the novel to do so. As I said, I don’t feel women should be treated as objects by any means, but this book shows a woman can have sex with whoever she pleases and it is nobody’s right to judge. I cannot find the misogyny in that. Heinlein wrote several novels that portray how strong and equal to if not better than men, that women are. See Friday for one example.

As for the terrible comment Jill makes about rape in one passage, I think that shows how wrong Jill’s way of thinking was at the time, and is not to be taken as Heinlein’s belief. If an author writes about how a Nazi character thinks “Jews are evil”, that does NOT mean the author believes this. He is simply exposing the character’s own terribly wrong ideology. Whether these are the author’s views, speaking through his/her characters, or not, cannot be judged by reading their work of fiction. This is likewise with Jill’s comments about gay men, whom she calls “poor in-betweeners”.

As for racism in this novel, all I can say is that I cannot find any! Some of Heinlein’s novels do sadly have racist elements, like The Day After Tomorrow (which reflects the common thinking at the time I’m afraid), but Stranger in a Strange Land is not one of them! See Ender’s Game if you want a REAL racist pile of… ugh, let’s not get me started on that.

One Caveat: If you are a Christian, you may find this book blasphemous or at the least quite critical of Christianity toward the last half of the story, but even many Christian friends say they really enjoyed it by treating it as just a story and its not an attack on their own beliefs. That said, if you do not take kindly to criticism of your belief system, you may want to avoid this one.

The characters in Stranger in a Strange Land are both well developed and intriguing, and you don’t have to subscribe to any of the ideals outlined in this book in order to benefit from the sparking off of a good deal of deep thought and introspection. I recommend this book to any adult that wishes to broaden their exposure to philosophical ideas or just read a great book.

I’d like to, quit typically, end this review with a quote from the book–One that makes me tear up every time I read it:

I’ve found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much… because it’s the only thing that’ll make it stop hurting. -Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land-

Lately I’ve just been working and finishing up classes. The mall on campus (long stretch of grass, not shopping mall) is once again the constant home of one of the many slacklines owned by those of us that love the discipline. I love having a break between classes and going out there to find that there is always a line set up. Sometimes one of us will put one up, go to class, and come back later, knowing that our friends will make sure nobody steals it while we’re gone. I’ve made some really cool friends through slacklining over the last few years. Amme hasn’t had a chance to do it since the beginning of the summer, but she’s gotten really good.

I’ve also started climbing again at the rock gym here on campus. Its free for students which is awesome, and I still fit my shoes so that’s a bonus. I can’t climb at the level I used to, but I still know how to move and not overexert myself. I’m making progress slowly.

The leaves were all messed up this fall. We had a couple of bouts of cold weather that caused some of the trees to change and others not to, so we didn’t get the nice vistas of dense autumnal hues. Instead there were a few beautiful trees surrounded by clumps of green or dead brown. This made for some nice contrast, but I didn’t get any good landscape photos. I’ll have the photos up on Flickr within a week. I also have some shots from UrbExing around the former Loring Air Force Base on there, so be sure to check those out.

They include our trip to the old Nuclear Weapons Storage Area, the first of its kind in the US! There are no weapons there now, of course, but you can really see how hard they were hiding the stuff from satellite surveillance and how thick the walls and vault doors were. Its pretty nuts thinking back on it. There are also photos of some of the Oakfield Station in Maine, for you railfans.

Classes are good, I’m finishing up my second degree and can’t wait for it to be done. I want to WORK not have all of my time monopolized while I pay for it. I’d love to start my own company but I need to learn more about the process. I also need the free time for it. I’ve let friends down in the past by trying to take on projects that I didn’t have time for and I hate myself for doing that even though I’m putting schooling first.

Amme and I went to NY for her cousin Subee’s wedding. We had a great time; it’s been so long since we saw a lot of the family down there. I have the photos up here and here. BTW: the facebook photo resizing algorithm makes my photos look all artifact-y. If you want a high quality photo from that album email me and I’ll send you one.

I have two wisdom teeth coming in. One of them is already exposed and is currently stopping me from opening my mouth all the way. It makes eating difficult. It just started doing that out of the blue, else I would have had it extracted by now. I went to the dentist at the healthcare center here that has a sliding pay scale since I don’t have insurance and it’s very affordable. They did a panoramic digital x-ray of my jaw, which was very cool. Our vet uses a digital x-ray as well. They can open the image in a viewer and change the contrast, levels, and zoom in and out to get infinitely better images than the film and developer x-rays. That visit was fast and cheap, but to get my tooth extracted the next opening they have is in the end of January! I won’t be able to open my mouth at all by then, so I have to look elsewhere for an oral surgeon. I’m homing someone has an opening within a week. I’m tired of eating
soup and cutting things into toddler-sized
pieces.

Amme has been taking good care of me though. I hope I take just as good care of her. I’m anxious to get on with life and make a name for myself, but as long as we have each other I can never be discontented. I could move out to the woods, build us a house, and just provide for us both and be happy forever.

Fortunately there are some great monospaced fonts that do scale up nicely. In my experience, it is important for me to use both my own favorite fixed-width fonts, and the great fixed-width ones below. This is because at small sized, most vector-based fonts like some below look fantastic at larger sizes, like on web pages or in print, but look fuzzy or blurry in the 8-12pt range in notepad++, gedit, etc. Conversely, my favorite bitmap based fonts only look good at one size, usually in the 8-10pt range, and are pixelated and blocky at larger sizes.

With that in mind, I present to you some smooth and delicious monospaced fonts that retain high legibility (slashed or dotted zeros, 1, l, I distinction, etc).

Inconsolata

The font that actually started me on this post was Raph Levien’s excellent Inconsolata. Spurred on by Luc(as) de Groot’s Consolas (below), Raph created a free and open source monospaced font that renders nicely at high resolutions, and looks great in print:

Inconsolata is still in development and lacks bold/italic styles, but is already in fine shape. Its major drawback is that it currently has no “hinting” support, so it doesn’t play well with Microsoft’s Clear Type technology. Everyone else should find it renders quite nicely, however.

Consolas

Developed by Luc(as) de Groot, Consolas is another nice-looking fixed-width font with good distinction between visually similar characters. Consolas is included in Windows Vista and MS Office 2007, and if you’re using only the included fonts on Vista its the only one with a slashed zero!

Consolas has full hinting instructions and works great with Clear Type.

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono is a variant of Bitstream Vera. It was designed by Jim Lyles and also has full hinting instructions. Bitstream Vera was released for use under an open source license agreement with the GNOME Foundation, so all you free/OSS developers are good to go!

I know Nyrath has his own custom made font, and it’s actually one I use frequently in notepad2 and notepad++. So, what are you guys’/gals’ favorite programming fonts? I’d love to know about any other monospaced fonts I’ve not come across yet.