randomwalks/dj

I feel like Wire-lovers are a secret club, even though none of us can shut up about it.

Well, the word is definitely out. My love for The Wire has been well documented. With the fourth season, my love for this show has spun out of control. I have watched each of the first three episodes multiple times, and it drives me insane that I can't seem them all now.

While we wait for new episodes to come available "on demand" on Mondays and then play in HD on Sundays, I am left googling and googling. Did you know HBO links to the iTunes music store for all the songs appearing in the show? And here's a great quote frm David Simon from a Q&A with AOL Members:

And it's nice to be paid well for doing this gig, but if money was the goal I would not be trying to construct a television drama anything like The Wire. I think I've demonstrated, with The Wire and The Corner both, that I am capable of marginalizing myself in a niche within television's mass communications model. Specifically, I've shown the television networks that I can produce stories that receive critical acclaim but do not draw big Hollywood numbers, and therefore, my opportunities to make big Hollywood money are not there. Don't misunderstand: I am well paid. But if money were the purpose here, my bad guys would be Irish or Italian, my cops would hunt them down to great gratification, and the city depicted would be whiter, more affluent and filled with big-titted, long-legged women. The Wire is either not the work of someone thinking about payday, or if I am that someone, I am quite incompetent.

Originally from hello, typepad by David Jacobs reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 11:11PM

Originally posted by David Jacobs from hello, typepad, on September 22, 2006 8:10 PM

Andy Griffin, the former owner of Riverside Farms, one of the spinach growers implicated in the recent E.coli breakout, has written a very informative post on spinach harvesting and why he got out of the baby greens business. (via mn)

Every sealed bag of pre-washed greens is like a little green house. The greens inside are still alive, as are the bacteria living on them. If the produce in the bag is clean, great, but if it isn’t the bacteria present has a wonderful little sealed environment to reproduce in, free from any threat until the dressing splashes down and the shadow of a fork passes over. Frankly, I think convenience is overrated.

And my most recent CSA newsletter has a bit to say about organic spinach growing practices.

Many media outlets, and so-called experts, have failed to understand the details of this event. [...] [T]hey have tried to make a connection between organic produce and animal manure, a potential source of E.coli. Fact: It is a violation of federal law, the National Organic Standards Act, to use raw animal manures on a crop that will be harvested within 120 days of application of the manure. No organic farmers are using raw animal manures on their spinach fields anymore, if they ever did. It  is far more likely that a conventional farmer would use raw manures —there are no regulations prohibiting the practice for anyone other than organic farmers. The FDA never insinuated this connection; they are intimately familiar with the organics law.

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 8:30AM

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket, on September 22, 2006 8:08 PM

I’m certain that Gap’s new advertising featuring Audrey Hepburn will play extremely well with Gap’s elderly, homosexual male customer base. Except of course when the music switches to AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” which is clearly targeted to Gap’s other big audience: middle-aged, heavy-metal fans who still occasionally like to “rock out, man.”

Originally from Adaptive Path by Dan reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 5:21AM

Originally posted by Dan from Adaptive Path, on September 22, 2006 8:08 PM

This hot pink Park Slope brownstone pictured in today's NY Daily News feels like old news to us — after all, Brownstoner was on it over a month ago. The owner, Bernie Henry, decided to go fuschsia back in 1968, five years before the area became a historic district. He told the Daily News that "the current hue on his 105-year-old house is more or less a match of what it was when his wife, Viola, told him to paint it 40 years ago." According to the comments on Brownstoner, local kids love the house and some grown-up neighbors appreciate the outlandish color, but others are downright disgusted by its Pepto Bismol-like shade.
Brown-stone? Not Exactly [Brownstoner]
Back to the Fuchsia [NY Daily News]
Photo by Maisel for the NY Daily News

Originally from Brooklyn Record by Brooklyn Record reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 11:42AM

Originally posted by Brooklyn Record from Brooklyn Record, on September 22, 2006 8:07 PM

A friend recently asked me how to sharpen a serrated knife, and I realized I had no idea. I sharpen my chef's and paring knives at home on my sharpening stone. But I've never sharpened my serrated blade. Poking around online, I found a link that says you can sharpen on a stone by each individual blade serration. That sounds insanely time-consuming. Other sites say it should only be sharpened by a professional.

Anyone have any suggestions for how best to sharpen a serrated knife?

Update: Doh! Forgot to turn comments on. Fixed now, answer away.

comments are open

Originally from megnut.com blog by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 10:41AM

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from megnut.com blog, on September 22, 2006 8:07 PM

this does not bode well for the Guitar Hero franchise  

Originally from Waxy.org Links reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 1:34PM

Originally from Waxy.org Links, on September 22, 2006 8:06 PM

I nearly cried when i had a mini cone of Honey Rosemary Goats' Milk from Capogiro. Luckily, it seems that you can buy pints across the country if you aren't in Philadelphia!

Originally from beXnlog by beXn reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 2:21PM

Originally posted by beXn from beXnlog, on September 22, 2006 8:05 PM

I'm going to post some of the reviews/links that SoundAbout is getting here. My earlier post about it is here.

GoogleMaps Mania:

Philly Sound and Maps Mashup - Here is a fantastic new Google Maps mashup from the "Official Visitor Site of Greater Philadelphia" (gophila.com) that combines sound with Google Maps. It's called Sound About Philly. Various guided audio tours bring you through Philadelphia's history, "flavorhoods", and residents' perspectives of this great city. You can also create your own sound mapmash and leave it for others to view. It's a model mashup for other city tourism sites!

The Philadelphia Inquirer's Blinq blog:

Philadelphia has a promotional podcast. The news is that as a walking tour, it's not totally lame.

The idea behind Sound About Philly was to create a series of audio bits for visitors and locals to hear while sauntering around town with an iPod  - or for someone listening in Peoria by laptop.

It debuted yesterday, this project from the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp, and it's got promise. Teams of interviewers have roamed about, telling stories of the usual places as well as the unsung spots that give this city its charm....

Nice comments from  Shel Holtz (who is helping with the online marketing of the tours)

Originally from DefinitiveInk by joshua mack reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 1:57PM

Originally posted by joshua mack from DefinitiveInk, on September 22, 2006 8:05 PM

I was today participating in a Nokia Design meeting, presenting some stuff at their “IN&Out speaker series” in Topanga (California). My presentation (pdf slides, 6.2Mb) was about tangible interfaces and some potential misconceptions drawn from user experience research, concepts I found pertinent and stuff I’ve read. It’s absolutely not academic research but more “food for thoughts” for designers, like what I do for video game companies. This material is meant to trigger some insights and discussion about design problems/solutions and ideas.

It was also a good opportunity to meet Jan Chipchase and talk more about what is doing it + methods.

Originally from pasta and vinegar by Nicolas reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 7:14PM

Originally posted by Nicolas from pasta and vinegar, on September 22, 2006 8:03 PM

Originally from random($foo) reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 7:12PM

Originally from random($foo), on September 22, 2006 8:03 PM

Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune ran an article about teaching math in school [registration required] that included something I’d never seen before: The multiplication grid.

I don’t have any idea if this is better/worse/harder/easier, but I just found it interesting. It’s refreshing to see alternate solutions (grid) to more common approaches (stacked).

Originally from Signal vs. Noise reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 6:27PM

Originally from Signal vs. Noise, on September 22, 2006 8:03 PM

Each week at Slate, writer Alex Kotlowitz and Steve James (director of Hoop Dreams) dissect the week's episode from the fourth season of The Wire. Warning: they are unabashed fans of the show. AOL recently interviewed The Wire creator David Simon. (via dj) Negro Please is posting fourth season episode synopsiseses summaries...here's 4.2.
Update: Season four of The Wire scored a 98/100 on Metacritic, the highest score for a TV show on the site.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 6:05PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on September 22, 2006 8:03 PM

The Oprah definition
The technical acronym for RSS is “Really Simple Syndication”, an XML format that was created to syndicate news, and be a means to share content on the web. Now, to geeks and techies that means something special, but to everyday folks like you and me, what comes to mind is, “Uh, I don’t get it?”

So, to make RSS much easier to understand, in Oprah speak, RSS stands for: I’m “Ready for Some Stories”. It is a way online for you to get a quick list of the latest story headlines from all your favorite websites and blogs all in one place. How cool is that?

Link (thanks Lifehacker)

Originally from clusterflock reBlogged on Sep 22, 2006, 5:42PM

Originally from clusterflock, on September 22, 2006 8:03 PM

Saving lives is hard enough--what medical professional has time for significant romantic moments in the supplies closet? Anticipating tonight's Grey's Anatomy premiere, a doctor looks back on a lifetime of TV role models.

I should’ve been a hot neurosurgeon. The thought haunts me each time I see an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. If only I’d been wiser in med school, I could be spending my nights saving lives with a sexy intern I occasionally sleep with and my days exchanging sarcastic banter with my sometimes-estranged-yet-fairly-hot wife. Removing nails from children’s heads, performing radical brain resections, containing Code Blacks—all in a week’s work. And I’m not the only one who has these thoughts: Every patient’s eyes seem to say, “Why can’t Dr. Drayer be a little less scrawny? Must his nose be that crooked? And why so many chins?” I’m waiting for one of the 20 acne-suffering teens I see each day in my dermatology practice to ask me, “Who the hell came up with this character? He totally doesn’t play on screen.” Unfortunately, they’re right. Television transports us into foreign and often dangerous... Click here to continue reading this article.

Visit The Morning News.

Originally from The Morning News reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 10:40AM

Originally from The Morning News, on September 21, 2006 11:07 PM

Here's something from that some folks from Nokia are involved in. Sounds really cool. I'm looking forward to see how it develops. It combines many cool elements: mobiles, Web, people far away, people on the ground, the real world, a large display, Web and mobile tools to track the whole thing, sigh, it's so cool.

Will it fly?

I'll check it out next week.

Link: Manhattan Story Mashup.

Manhattan Story Mashup is an urban game, taking place on September 23rd 2006 in Manhattan, New York City. During the event, approximately 250 players will move around Manhattan, taking photos which match a given target. Targets are words from stories, written by you and other visitors on this web site collaboratively while the game goes on. The resulting illustrated stories are shown on large public signs in Times Square in real-time and on this web site.

Manhattan Story Mashup is organized by SensorPlanet, a Nokia Research Center -initiated research program on large-scale sensor networks. We are interested in combining the physical and the virtual worlds through new ways of sensing. As it happens, lots of people always carry a mobile phone with them, making it a perfect platform for this job. This game is a cool way to test our tools and theories in practice with a large number of people. Naturally we're also interested in sharing fun with other people in the Come Out and Play Festival, which gathers together many games like this in September.

Oh, dang. I just saw that Jürgen Sheible is one of the designers. I interviewed him for an article a long time ago. Geez, I gots to catch up with him.

Originally from Lifeblog by charlie reBlogged

Originally posted by charlie from Lifeblog, on September 21, 2006 11:07 PM

Dudes, remember when we talked about Vox a while back? Well it's only gotten better, and we should know since we've started another blog over there. We're using it to catalog quick picks and coupons, sales and deals and whatnot, and we'd love for you to come visit and leave comments and - Gasp! - favorite things!  Just like on Flickr!!

What? you don't have a Vox account? Because we offered them to all our readers and ran out in the first half hour? Guess what?? We've partnered with Vox to give out ONE THOUSAND INVITES to our Awesome readers!!!!!

The first awesome people to clicky click to that special page get a fancy invite to flaunt in front of their friends, and you'll immediately be added to our neighborhood. How great is that, really? We couldn't be happier, unless of course we got a dollar for every invite we gave away.

Hey, wait a second...why aren't we getting a dollar?  Oh yeah, because Vox is free!!

Originally from Awesome! by S H reBlogged

Originally posted by S H from Awesome! , on September 21, 2006 11:07 PM

Our inimitable sister site Gawker takes the Google map mashup to an olfactory extreme with the New York City Subway Smell map.

See what stations smell like perfume, food, poo or a whole host of other lovely big city scents. Having just spent a week back in NYC after a year of California fresh air, I can personally attest to the pungentness New Yorkers unknowingly get used to every day. Ok, so this won't make you more productive, but it might help you plan a less stinky commute through the five boroughs. — Gina Trapani

New York City Subway Smell map

Originally from Lifehacker

reBlogged by Matthew Haughey on Sep 21, 2006, 5:30PM

Originally from mathowie reBlog feed reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 1:57PM

Originally from mathowie reBlog feed , on September 21, 2006 11:03 PM

Jason's looking for cheap eating suggestions in NYC. Got some favorites? Go add them to the discussion.

Originally from megnut.com blog by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 11:44AM

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from megnut.com blog, on September 21, 2006 11:03 PM

Could the lines of this speaker Dieter Rams designed in 1960 (left) have influenced the iMac?

Rams was a key figure in German design and worked as head of Braun’s design staff in the 60s. His clean and simple style has been cited as an influence by many designers, including Apple’s Jonathan Ive.

In this Icon magazine profile or Rams, he discusses how design has to be a priority that comes from the top.

At Braun they were always willing to take a risk - nobody could tell you if a product would become successful. We as designers cannot work in a vacuum. The entrepreneur has to want it; the people at the top of the company have to want it…What’s missing today is that these kind of entrepreneurs are no longer there. Today there is only Apple and to a lesser extent Sony, but not to the same degree as was the case with Olivetti and Braun, or Peter Behrens at AEG, or Herman Miller and Charles Eames, Florence Knoll with Saarinen and so on. These kinds of connections are missing today.

He also talks about the importance of eliminating the unnecessary:

As designers we have a great responsibility. I believe designers should eliminate the unnecessary. That means eliminating everything that is modish because this kind of thing is only short-lived.

Design Museum’s profile of Rams includes his ten principles that define “good design”:

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design helps us to understand a product.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is durable.
Good design is consequent to the last detail.
Good design is concerned with the environment.
Good design is as little design as possible.
Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Originally from Signal vs. Noise reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 10:28AM

Originally from Signal vs. Noise, on September 21, 2006 11:03 PM

Stylus magazine has a list of their top 100 favorite videos, complete with embedded YouTube clips of the videos themselves for your instant gratification. Ok, now let's fight about what was excluded and how wrong that is... (via paul) (Comment on this)

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 4:55PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on September 21, 2006 10:49 PM

I'll be staying overnight next Friday, along with 500 or so our closest friends at open Hack Day.

If you're coming, may I humbly suggest you do not place your caffeine needs at the tender mercies of Big Purple. Bring your own, bring some to share, you'll be popular. (truth be told, they do that whole "soda" thing ok, but the coffee is beyond mention)

And if someone gives me a lift, I'd be happy to bring my Zojirushi, and Saeco

Originally from Laughing Meme reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 4:48PM

Originally from Laughing Meme, on September 21, 2006 10:49 PM

Using 100% of the profits from his airline and transportation companies, Richard Branson pledges $3 billion to fight global warming over the next decade. Will the billionaire philanthropists save us from ourselves? BTW, this happened at the Clinton Global Initiative's annual meeting; there's a live webcast (+podcasts) if you want to watch from home.

Originally from kottke.org remaindered links by jkottke reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 2:38PM

Originally posted by jkottke from kottke.org remaindered links, on September 21, 2006 10:49 PM

Originally from random($foo) reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 1:40PM

Originally from random($foo), on September 21, 2006 10:49 PM

We’re up to Draft 10 of the Atom Publishing Protocol, and it’s very close to what the final product will look like. The APP is getting more early developer support and interop testing than any standards project I’ve ever been involved with, and that includes XML. DeWitt Clinton covers some of the bases, but Dave Johnson makes it nice and simple: “Atom protocol can do everything that MetaWeblog API can do, and much more.” On the subject of the Atom Feed Format, I don’t think much more needs to be said, but the U.S. Intelligence community (which is quite feed-heavy internally) commissioned a study: RSS and Atom Considerations; it seems very thorough to me. In reading it, Wikipedia’s article on Intelink may be a useful reference.

Originally from ongoing reBlogged

Originally from ongoing, on September 21, 2006 10:49 PM

Originally from Gus's blog, adventures in Flying Meat. reBlogged

Originally from Gus's blog, adventures in Flying Meat., on September 21, 2006 10:49 PM

The most difficult part of posting a link to the work of Renato Alarcão is choosing which image to use. His collection of children’s book illustrations, in particular, is a goldmine of marvelous pieces of artwork like this one. And the website ain’t too shabby either

Originally from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog by Johnny reBlogged on Dec 31, 1969, 6:59PM

Originally posted by Johnny from Drawn! The Illustration and Cartooning Blog, on September 21, 2006 10:49 PM

Here's kind of a nice story, because it's always good to hear about really talented people getting a good gig (and after all, it's Happy Week). One of the new downloadable iPod games, Mini-Golf (pictured above) was created with the graphic contributions of illustrators Jeff Miracola, Julian Hector, Nuno Alves, and Justin Degarmo, all of whom were found by an EA art director because they had been featured by the awesome blog Drawn, one of our top 5 daily reads.

Buy Mini Golf here -- I don't know if that makes them any more money, but it's certainly supporting their work.

update: Check out the comments thread on Drawn, which talks about the pretty lame trend of game studios like EA increasingly not crediting artists on games. Makes me reconsider the whole above post a bit.

Originally from shey.net reblog reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 10:54PM

Originally from shey.net reblog, on September 21, 2006 10:48 PM

I bought this portable solar panel from SolarStyle on eBay for $20. This small solar charger has a built in battery (see this previous article for more information). With this portable solar panel, I charge my MP3 player, a portable amplifier, a set of battery-powered Sony surround sound speakers, a cellular phone, a digital camera, two LED lamps, a LED booklight, and a LED flashlight. If you are already positioning yourself to optimize sunlight, it is quite simple to do this. If I added a $50 solar panel, I can power two laptop computer, and have all of my audio-visual and computer devices running on renewable energy.

Originally from Treehugger

reBlogged by Matthew Haughey on Sep 21, 2006, 6:25PM

Originally from mathowie reBlog feed reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 10:23PM

Originally from mathowie reBlog feed , on September 21, 2006 10:48 PM

Here's an idea: let people suggest ideas for an application they'd like to see, and then get people to vote on it, and then get a team of dedicated developers to, uh, develop it. That's the plan behind MyDreamApp; in...

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 7:40PM

Originally from Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog, on September 21, 2006 10:48 PM

Here are the slides from my talk on Mobile Ajax development. I’ve got a longer-ish blog post in the works about getting a working emulation environment set up, but it’s taking much longer than I’d anticipated to try to track down some of these things (if you know anyone at SonyErickson or Obigo, drop me a line). Hopefully next time I give this talk I’ll be able to include a demo of the “foldable interface” thing I keep muttering on and on about.

There’s some fun data in the slides that the carriers would really rather not have disseminated, not that their collective folly hasn’t been laid bare qualitatively already.

Originally from Continuing Intermittent Incoherency by alex reBlogged on Sep 21, 2006, 7:38PM

Originally posted by alex from Continuing Intermittent Incoherency, on September 21, 2006 10:48 PM

david posted a photo:

Originally from david's Photos by david reBlogged

Originally posted by david from david's Photos, on September 21, 2006 10:48 PM

Originally from Perl.com by Larry Wall reBlogged

Originally posted by Larry Wall from Perl.com, on September 21, 2006 10:48 PM

We've long been fans of the Mirage (pdf).  Today we installed 2 idrocompressos at the Corning Museum of Glass.  They wanted bling and they got it:  The side panels were practically melting into the place.  They've been using our 3 group Idro for the past 4 months & loving it.

The roaster project is moving forward.  The new slab has been poured and the south wall framed in.  Windows arrive on Thursday and the NYSEG gas engineers should be on the job next week some time.  Having the 2" gas line in place will be a big shot in the arm.

Speaking of shot in the arm, Brooklyn got a shot in the neck (perhaps eyeball) this past weekend.  One of the dailies did a little spread (pdf) on espresso bars and mentioned ours as one of the trailblazers in the NYMetro coffee wasteland.  Two days later people were lining up en masse, gustafarians fixing for Allah, causing broken record sales.  Rumor has it, the house stereo played Kenny Loggins "Danger Zone" on continuous repeat.  They were denied pemission for a fly-by but did it anyway.

Yesterday Jason from the Coffee Equipment Co, Inc dropped by to explain how not to break our latest equipment asset.  So far, so good.

Originally from gimme! coffee by Kevin Cuddeback reBlogged on Sep 20, 2006, 9:12PM

Originally posted by Kevin Cuddeback from gimme! coffee, on September 21, 2006 9:29 AM

(This post first took hold over on VOX; and after it inspired some pretty active discourse I've decided to throw it here as well; but it's worth going over there and reading through the comments. I'll repost it here with a little extra gained insight, but no less conviction.)

The preceding image was taken from the front page of "The Future of Web Apps" Conference which recently took place in SF. Fourteen speakers; fourteen white guys. Now, I don't mean to single Carson Workshops out, but they're a good recent example, however they're far from the only ones. I know some of these white guys. They're talented guys, sure, and I don't mean to denigrate them. But there are also some fucking talented women in this industry (I work with FOUR of them!) and I'm tired of them getting the short end of the stick. It's becoming a fucking embarassment.

The industry as a whole will suffer from this exclusion. People generally solve the problems they are most familiar with; i.e. white guys tend to solve white guy problems. I'm sure that by the time Web 2.0 is done with there will probably be a way for my medicine cabinet to realize I am low on Rogaine, call in the order to Walgreen's and send me and SMS when it's ready for pickup. But where does that leave the rest of the world?

The way I see it, design is at the service of culture, it's here to solve problems, and that means problems for everyone. In order to do that it probably helps to get a look at who that "everyone" is, and not JUST give them access, but PULL them into the industry so that they may in turn have access to that problem solving.

Some of my colleagues have stated that there simply aren't enough women to put on these panels; or that they make a token attempt at inviting the two or three they've heard of and they don't come. That's a case of looking at the effect and calling it the cause.

My friend and incredibly brilliant colleague Judith Zissman (who you should invite to speak on your panels) who has organized panels herself, put it very well:

...the people we asked for recommendations of who to invite had not necessarily seen prominent women speakers at other conferences, had not schmoozed and networked and drank with them, let alone actually heard what they had to say about technology. This, of course, is the classic affirmative action argument - an open door is not enough. You actually have to bring people into the door. And an open door that isn't well-publicized beyond an already skewed audience isn't an open door at all.

Yes, this is hard. It's easy to ignore if you're one of the select few. But we stand at an interesting period in history, and it would be in everyone's best interest to open the scope of our discussion to the brightest minds possible. And we should do this BECAUSE it's hard.

From now on anyone speaking at a conference WITHOUT any women speakers will be held JUST as liable to abuse as the organizers. Be the role models the situation calls for.

Originally from Mule Design : Off the Hoof by Mike Monteiro reBlogged on Sep 19, 2006, 3:20AM

Originally posted by Mike Monteiro from Mule Design : Off the Hoof, on September 21, 2006 9:29 AM

Spotted tonight at the 3rd Street underpass. I think this captures everything I have to say on the topic.

» Read more on Vox

Originally from alaina browne lives here by Alaina reBlogged on Sep 19, 2006, 1:14AM

Originally posted by Alaina from alaina browne lives here, on September 21, 2006 9:29 AM

This weekend I co-hosted a shower for my preggers gal pal/sister Isha.  She is featured in this animated photo that the talented Ari designed.  I had this idea to do a "Waking Life" version of a pregnant Isha and knew that Ari was the best person for the job.  People seemed to really like the invite.

I am excited for this little boy to come into the world.  I am excited to be a loving, caring, kick butt Auntie/God Mother.  I am sort of nervous because I want to do a good job and I really have no idea what I am doing.  But I am excited to open myself up to loving another human being unabashedly.  It is something I have been holding back on and I think this little munchkin is a good place to start.

Today I have started day one of a two day seminar on Photoshop and other Adobe illustrator programs.  I have learned so much and though I was pretty beat afterwards (and PMSing may I add), I feel good that I have finally have a clue what the hell is going on in Photoshop.  I actually was a star pupil who at times was bored enough to surf a teeny bit on the internet during class.  I found this article about my (and Beebs') beloved director, Michel Gondry.  What a visionary!  I love reading about people like him and I am all over The Science of Sleep.

I came home and had a healthy microwaveable meal (Thanks to the new health food store on Atlantic and Nostrand in Crown Heights.  A single girl's dream!) with a glass of wine from a bottle that my friend bought me for my long past birthday.  I decided to open my mind to Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip which I had low expectations for.  I am the kind of person that hates hype around anything.  It makes me avoid it.  But even skeptical old me loved, loved, loved this show,  It was the best pilot I have ever seen.  Who knows what it means for the future but the 60 minutes I watched it were worthwhile!  Everyone is great on it.  Better than they have ever been on the other shows they were on.  (All right, it is pretty hard for Bradley Whitford to be better than he was on The West Wing but everyone else rocks harder here than they have anywhere else.)

Originally from tuckergurl by Angela Tucker reBlogged on Sep 18, 2006, 11:58PM

Originally posted by Angela Tucker from tuckergurl, on September 21, 2006 9:29 AM

Today New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni published his review of Lower East Site hot spot Freeman's. While he seemed to enjoy a lot of the food, it was the inconsistent service he kept returning to. Coincidentally, Freeman's is the restaurant I wrote about yesterday where I had poor service while dining with some friends. His review captured the experience we had at Freeman's on Monday night.

Mr. Bruni reports there was "dismissive service." A "bossy, brittle man" wouldn't let his party order the artichoke dip while they read the menu--at least our server allowed us that! He describes a hostess who "had all the cuddly charisma of Cujo." Ouch. In the end Mr. Bruni gave it no stars, simply "Satisfactory."

Yesterday, Eater ran a two-part (Part I, Part II) interview yesterday with William Tigertt, Freeman's owner. As I read it, I was struck by how much Mr. Tigertt was concerned with getting the food just right for Mr. Bruni's visit. He changed things on the menu and worried about what Bruni and his party ordered. It was as if running a restaurant were only about the food.

But in my experience, and as Mr. Bruni's review demonstrates, a great restaurant is more than just its food. It's a welcoming environment that sets you at ease. It's a place that treats each and every guest with respect, whether they're a big-time restaurant critic or a few friends stopping in for an early dinner with babies in tow. Perhaps the New York Times review will spur Freeman's to improve their service. I hope so, because I enjoyed their food, and I'd like to go back there again someday.

Update: Eater has a final update from the Freeman's owner. Even after reading the review, they're still concerned about the food. My hopes for a service improvement are dashed already.

Originally from megnut.com blog by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) reBlogged on Sep 20, 2006, 8:36AM

Originally posted by meg@megnut.com (Meg Hourihan) from megnut.com blog, on September 21, 2006 9:29 AM

In addition to everything else Amazon sells, you can now secure small portions of materials and mechanical parts suitable for building and repair. Amazon has teamed up with the supplier Small Parts (reviewed in Cool Tools previously) to supply a huge variety of metal tubes, springs, raw materials (titanium, nylon, polycarbonate, glass, etc.), gears, plastic parts, fasteners and bins of other stuff that tinkerers and mid-night engineers might need. Of course you can order from Small Parts direct, but Amazon's option takes advantage of their incredibly handy interface and billing system. Go to their "Industrial & Scientific" tab.

-- KK

Available from Amazon Industrial and Scientific

Originally from Cool Tools reBlogged on Sep 19, 2006, 9:00AM

Originally from Cool Tools, on September 21, 2006 9:29 AM

Race, income, and location all have profound effects on your health and lifespan according to a new fascinating study from the Harvard School of Public Health concludes "the differences are so stark it's as if there are eight separate Americas instead of one".

The longest-living whites weren't the relatively wealthy. [...] They're edged out, by a year, by low-income residents of the rural Northern Plains states, where the men tend to reach age 76 and the women 82. Yet low-income whites in Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley die four years sooner than their Northern neighbors.

Here is the editor's summary and the original paper itself (which is, by the way, freely available to be read and distributed by the public.)

Originally from Rebecca's Pocket reBlogged on