Emacs workgroups, birthday beer, smart people

Random notes:

• I recently came across Emacs Workgroups, and holy crap is it amazing. From the description:

It's tedious setting Emacs' window layout just the way you like it -- splitting windows, adjusting their size, switching to the right buffers, etc. And even when it is set, it won't stay that way for long. On top of that, you can't save your window-configurations to disk, so you have to start over from scratch every time you restart Emacs.

There are solutions out there to parts of the problem -- elscreen, revive.el, window-configuration-to-register, etc. -- but none provide a complete solution. Workgroups does.

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.

• Samantha Wright is answering biology questions again on her Slashdot journal. She's smart, well-spoken (-written) and generous with her knowledge; it's well worth taking a look at all her entries.

• A while back I brewed a double IPA that came in around 9% ABV. I used almost a pound (!) of hops, most of them Falconer's Flight. It turned out pretty well...but I made the mistake of bottling some of the sludge at the bottom with all the hop gunk. I thought it would settle out, but hop bits are surprisingly floaty, and I think I'm going to end up pouring it through a sieve of some kind. (Incidentally, I have not brewed at all this year. Yes, it's only 6 weeks in, but still.)

• I am turning 40 tomorrow. (!!) I've taken the day off work, my wife and I are dropping off the kids at my in-laws' 'til tomorrow, and we're heading out for...well, an afternoon on the town :-), heading to Saint Augustine's to see what they've got on tap.