Paul Ford is making a difference. "That barbecue sizzle? Locally...
Paul Ford is making a difference. "That barbecue sizzle? Locally raised (ten miles from home), humanely slaughtered heirloom pandas."
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« August 26, 2007 - September 1, 2007 | Main
September 8, 2007
A Typographic Walking Tour
More than fonts, it's lettering that contributes the dominant flavor to New York City's typography. More often than not, these one-off inscriptions and signs, handmade by artisans in a variety of media, were rendered in styles unconnected with the business of typography, which refers only to the practice of creating alphabets for printing. But the advent of digital type has made it easier than ever to use a mere font for architectural lettering as well. Combined with the building boom that's transforming our city faster than ever, the grand inscriptions and humble signboards that constitute our alphabetic inheritance are vanishing fast.
In preparing the Gotham typeface, which celebrates just one of New York's unmistakable typographic themes, Tobias Frere-Jones assiduously photographed <a href="../fonts/font_history.php?historyItemID=1=100008" target="_blank"tens of thousands of signs/a throughout the metropolis. On Saturday, September 29 at 11:00, Tobias will be leading a typographic walking tour for a href="http://www.aigany.org/events/events_upcoming.php" target="_blank"AIGA/NY/a, which promises two and a half hours of the city's most unexamined — and imperiled — typographic treasures. Space is limited, so book early. Don't forget your camera, and a snack./p p class="download-link"Download the a href="http://www.typography.com/downloads/H"itinerary/a for Google Earth/p /p
Osama Bin Language Acquistion
Silent for three years, Osama Bin Laden just released a video tape in which he name drops academic Noam Chomsky, suggesting that while in hiding, he's become familiar with the American researcher's extensive work.
Exclusively, Mind Hacks publishes a deleted section from an earlier draft of Bin Laden's latest speech that lays out his demands for the science of linguistics:
People of America: while the cognitive revolution started within your own shores and changed the face of the world, it seems the lessons of the destruction of behaviourism have not been learnt.
Through the careful analysis of Chomsky, it was clear that language could not be entirely accounted for by the influence of environment and culture on a general learning mechanism. While some heeded the messages, some of your brethren remained unconvinced.
Now that the spector of connectionism has raised its ugly head and has been inappropriately glorified by the power of technological corporations, our understanding of the role of transformational grammars in language development is threatened.
And I tell you, artificial intelligence is a false god that provides correlative and not causal models of language acquisition. The infallible methodologies are the comparative study of world languages and lesion analyses of those who must be treated with mercy owing to their acquired dysphasias.
Those who stray from the path will be doomed to repeated the errors of the empty vessels of strict behaviourism and the Standard Social Science Model. Every just and intelligent one of you who reflect on this will be guided to the truth.
Rumours that Steven Pinker has been taken in for questioning have not been verified.
Rebar bench
Rebar bench
Originally uploaded by schickr.Cool
September 7, 2007
Cleaning up the CPAN Modules List
tsee writes "The PAUSE administrators are planning to do a little house keeping on the CPAN Modules List. We intend to remove old namespace reservations which have been registered with the modules mailing list but for which there never has been an actual implementation on CPAN. This will apply to all unused registrations from May 2007 and earlier. Since there are surprisingly many of these unclaimed registrations, we will send an email to every PAUSE author who has such an unused namespace asking her to contact the modules-at-perl-dot-org mailing list about the issue. Registrations for which we have not received any correspondence until December will then be made available again. If you are among those to receive such a reminder, please don't be offended. If you are still around, it is most likely a misunderstanding. For example, people have sometimes registered namespaces with the wrong capitalization. We intend to send the reminders within the next two weeks. Thank you for your understanding."Read more of this story at use Perl.
YouTube Jumping
Google has implemented their jumping feature into YouTube videos and it's really nice. As you know, with most flash videos, you can't scroll ahead until the video completely loads out beyond the point you want. With a YouTube video, now you can jump ahead and the video will start to load out from the new point foward, wasting no more time or energy loading any of the prior sections of the video.
Above, you can see I clicked the scoller to the middle of the video. It then began to play from the new point and started to load out ahead (and then behind next).
This is a very elegant feature that saves bandwidth and gives the audience way more flexibility for consuming information quickly.
Aw, man...Eliot is ceasing publication on slower.net, one of my...
Aw, man...Eliot is ceasing publication on slower.net, one of my favorite photoblogs. Ended on a great note though.
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iPhone Hacking Kit, the Next Generation
Ben Long updates his instructions for how to install and use third-party iPhone apps. (The iPhone screenshots are full resolution; that they look so big on your computer display shows how small the pixels are on the iPhone’s 160 ppi screen.)
The Family of Languages
From the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a delightful family tree of Indo-European languages, though I was kinda miffed at the omission of my parents' native tongue.
iToner 1.0.1
Updated for iTunes 7.4 compatibility. Given the aforelinked “use any AAC audio file as a ringtone just by changing the file extension” tip discovered today, though, I’m not sure there’s a market for iToner any more.
A 1993 New Yorker story by John Seabook called The...
A 1993 New Yorker story by John Seabook called The Flash of Genius is being made into a movie starring Greg Kinnear. The story revolves around Bob Kearns, the inventor of the intermittent windshield wiper and his struggle to get the US auto industry to pay him for infringing on his patent. "There's no question that Dr. Kearns' wiper circuit was interesting. He had a three-brush motor, with dynamic brake and intermittent on one speed only -- his system was a concatenation of a lot of different ideas. But we figured there was just no way in the world it was patentable. An electronic timing device was an obvious thing to try next. How can you patent something that is in the natural evolution of technology?"
BTW, the phrase "flash of genius" refers to a test of patentability enacted in 1941 saying that the act of invention had to be a "flash of creative genius" on the part of the inventor and not the result of tinkering. That standard was replaced in 1952 by the non-obviousness test.
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R.I.P Madeleine L'Engle
Via NYT, Author Madeleine L'Engle has passed away. The Wrinkle in Time trilogy had a profound impact on me as a young child- they got me interested in science and reading. I've tried to pass the books on to young relatives and friends' kids at every opportunity.
Tauba Auerbach: startling starting staring string sting sing sin in...
Tauba Auerbach: startling starting staring string sting sing sin in i. More of her typographic work here.
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Friday afternoon Apple links, iPod hangover edition
To get you over your iPod hangover, Friday links presents news on iPhone headphones, patent reform, Google ads, and a bottle opener.
In Private Letter, Howard Dean Pleads For Party Unity Over Primary Chaos
We've just obtained a private letter that DNC chair Howard Dean has sent out to DNC members in which he mounts a spirited defense of his party committee's position in the current jostling with rogue...
Joined for Life: Abby and Brittany Turn 16 is a...
Joined for Life: Abby and Brittany Turn 16 is a documentary about Abby and Brittany Hensel, conjoined twins who are essentially one physical person with two heads (as well as a few other body parts). From a review of the film by Kevin Kelly: "Endless questions ensue from this documentary about their suburban life. If each girl controls only one arm and one leg, how can they ride a bike? Hit a baseball? Swim? When they drive a car, how do they decide where to turn? And do they get one licence or two? That particular question is answered on their 16th birthday, as this film follows them to the driving test center, where they pass the driving test (both turning the wheel). Their local DMV decides to issue them each one licence."
A clip from a previous film on the girls is available on YouTube.
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burqas for everyone!
This outfit is too naughty to be allowed on Southwest Airlines:
Southwest explained its treatment of Ebbert in a letter to her mother, saying it could remove any passenger "whose clothing is lewd, obscene or patently offensive" to ensure the comfort of children and "adults with heightened sensitivities."They walked out onto the jet bridge, where Keith told Ebbert her clothing was inappropriate and asked her to change. She explained she was flying to Tucson for only a few hours and had brought no luggage. "I asked him what part of my outfit was offensive," she said. "The shirt? The skirt? And he said, 'The whole thing.'
Keith asked her to go home, change and take a later flight. She refused, citing her appointment. The plane was ready to leave, so Keith relented. He had her pull up her tank top a bit, pull down her skirt a bit, and return to her seat.
Steve Jobs Speaks the Truth
Saul Hansell, writing for The New York Times’s Bits weblog:
We are so used to cryptic and seemingly disingenuous communication out of Apple that we miss it when Mr. Jobs says crassly what most businessmen try to hide: Apple lowered the price of the iPhone because it wants to make lots more money by selling boatloads of them this Christmas.
I think Jobs speaks the plain truth far more often than many think. Or at least he says what he believes is the truth.
Another thought on why the price drop doesn’t mean sales have been slow. The central rule of technology is that the unit price drops sharply with volume. If Apple sold more than it hoped, then it would achieve scale faster and would be able to drop prices sooner. Apple’s introduction of the iPod Touch, using many of the same components as the iPhone, gives it an even bigger checkbook to brandish in Taiwan to secure good supplies at good prices.
Best iPhone pricing analysis of the week. Brilliant.
(This is why The Times is so well respected — they hire smart writers. That they’re putting their writers to work on weblogs such as Bits bodes well for their future. Most old media companies are hell-bent on the quixotic goal of keeping the world the way it was; The Times seems to be trying to adjust their business for the changing world.)
Blogging From Windows
News of MarsEdit 2.0 has spread like wildfire, thanks in no small part to people like you blogging about the news and sharing it with all of your friends. Please don’t stop!
One of the side-effects of this massive news-sharing is I am getting requests from people to release a version of MarsEdit for the PC (for Windows, that is). I addressed this in the comments on Guy Kawasaki’s blog, but I thought I’d reiterate and expand on that here.
I love writing software for the Mac. If I had to write software for another platform, I probably wouldn’t be nearly as interested in doing it. Heck, I might work more on becoming a musician, or a designer, or one of the other many trades that I have an interest in. For that reason, the chances of MarsEdit for Windows are almost nil. There would have to be an incredibly sweet deal, like “this technology makes it painless to deploy your Mac app on Windows!” Not likely.
Fortunately there are some brilliant developers on the Windows side who apparently do like developing for Windows. At least I assume as much because their products are fine-tuned in a way that only happens when somebody cares about and enjoys their work. In many ways, I see these guys as Mac developers who ended up programming for Windows. Lucky for Windows users!
Believe it or not one of the leading products for blogging on Windows is from none other than Microsoft itself. Windows Live Writer is the desktop blogging component of Windows Live. Or something. I don’t know what the heck all that junk means, but I know that when you launch Windows Live Writer, you will feel transferred to a magical place, free of the usual stereotypes against Microsoft products. (Some of Microsoft’s Mac software also achieves this).
Kudos to Microsoft for achieving excellence in a field near to my heart. Joe Cheng, one of the product’s developers, also stays in touch with myself and the Atom Publishing community, sharing his opinions about the ever-evolving client development world.
BlogJet is another excellent application, and is dear to my heart because it’s developed by indie developers. And look! It has a cute globe-oriented icon. We were bound to be app-buddies. The Coding Robots, Dmitry and Vladimir, are a couple guys running a (mostly) Windows software startup near Moscow in Russia. They have a very entertaining blog where you can catch glimpses of what it’s like to run a Russian indie software business. I especially like the toilet paper dispenser that looks like a robot!
I mentioned that the Coding Robots are “mostly” Windows developers, but it turns out that at least Dmitry is also a huge Mac fan. He does most of his development on a Mac, even though the flagship product of the company is Windows-only. I expect to see more offerings for the Mac from these guys, because I’m sure by now Dmitry has caught “Cocoa Fever,” big time. In fact, Dmitry just released a public beta of his upcoming Mac OS X application, Mémoires, which is about the simplest journal-keeping application you’ll ever see, but is very elegant and easy on the eyes.
In fact, the only glaring omission I see in Mémoires is a “Send to MarsEdit” option. Add that, and we’ll be cooking!
More on Batali and Food Network
ABCNews.com digs a little deeper into the story about Mario Batali's relationship with the Food Network. Serious Eats' own Ed Levine is quoted:
"Food Network has made a sharp turn away from celebrity chefs," he said. "They're not featuring great chefs; instead, they're creating their own stars out of good home cooks like Giatta De Laurentiis and Rachael Ray."
C-Store: A Column Oriented DBMS
nominally like GBigTable I think
bookmark this on del.icio.us - posted by fruminator to db opensource - more about this bookmark...
Cava
Spanish sparkling wine made by the traditional methode Champagnoise. The wine undergoes a secondary fermentation in bottle to give it its sparkle. And, in case you care…the word originated in Catalonia, where it means “cellar.” Ryan and Gabrielle, please correct us if we’re wrong on any of these counts!
● Bee space
Langstroth's crucial insight -- "I could scarcely refrain from shouting 'Eureka!' in the open streets," he wrote of the moment of revelation -- was the concept of "bee space." He realized that while honeybees will seal up passageways that are either too large or too small, they will leave open passages that are just the right size to allow a bee to pass through comfortably. Langstroth determined that if frames were placed at this "bee-space" interval of three-eighths of an inch, bees would build honeycomb that could be lifted from the hive, rather than, as was the practice up to that point, sliced or hacked out of it. He patented L. L. Langstroth's Movable Comb Hive in 1852. Today's version consists of a number of rectangular boxes-the number is supposed to grow during the season-open at the top and at the bottom. Each box is equipped with inner lips from which frames can be hung, like folders in a filing drawer, and each frame comes with special tabs to preserve bee space.
So says Elizabeth Kolbert in an article about colony-collapse disorder, a bee disease that's wreaking havoc on beehives and food production around the US. Bee space! I'm unsure whether similar research has been done to determine the proper "human space", although the placement of houses in a suburb, tables in a restaurant, blankets at the beach, or social space in elevators might provide some clues as to the proper measurement.
But returning to the bees, a coalition of scientists working on the problem has found a correlation between bee deaths and Israeli acute paralysis virus. An infusion of bees from Australia in 2004 may also have contributed to the disorder's development. Full details are available on EurekAlert.
An animated history of the NYC subway system
This is really, really cool: an animated NYC subway map, with the lines and stations appearing in the order in which they were built. It's amazing to me that the West Side IRT -- what are now known as the 1/2/3 lines -- were built way before lines in lower Manhattan, at a time when lower Manhattan probably had a crushingly greater need for a subway line; it wasn't until later that the IRT was extended down into the lower reaches of the island. (It's also cool that two lines in Brooklyn started it all.)
What's Your Go-To Weekday Breakfast?
Everyone, or just about everyone, has (or should have) and needs a go-to breakfast, the one they eat just about every weekday morning without thinking, a breakfast that is easy to prepare, can be eaten while reading the paper, and is a breeze to clean up. It should be reasonably filling, not too fattening, and nutritious according to some objective standard.
Your go-to breakfast can't be bacon and eggs or pancakes with sausage, because those are too unhealthy, fattening and time-consuming. Either of those could be your weekend go-to breakfast, but that's not what we are talking about here.
One of my most enduring memories of my dad, who died when I was 12, was watching him every morning eat his go-to breakfast of a Thomas' English muffin, farmer's cheese, and lingonberry jam. My wife's weekday go-to breakfast is currently a container of 2% Fage Greek Yogurt, and before that it was Brown Cow Maple Cream Top Yogurt. A little austere, a little too tart for my taste, and it has no crunch, but fine choices nonetheless.
Mine is a toasted Kossar's bialy, a schmear of cream cheese, and a glass of Minute Maid light limeade. Let me explain why.
What is a bialy? In her definitive book The Bialy Eaters, Mimi Sheraton describes a bialy as "the squashy, crusty, onion-topped bread roll eaten as an alternative to the bagel." She then goes on to say that "I cannot remember when I first ate one of these fragrant rolls, but surely it was addiction at first bite, starting with the mouthwatering scent of onions and yeast and the crisp bread's affinity for sweet butter and fluffy cream cheese."
Sheraton and I don't agree on much, but we both share a passion for these rolls that a cheeky waiter at New York's Barney Greengrass restaurant once described to an uninitiated friend of mine as the Jewish English muffin.
A toasted bialy (and you must toast a bialy, unless you get one fresh out of the oven) is the perfect vehicle for cream cheese or butter. It's light and substantial, crunchy and pliant, and just salty, yeasty, and oniony enough. Though many bagel bakeries across America sell holeless bagels they call bialys, in reality only a handful of bakeries in New York still make an authentic bialy, which is made with a completely different kind of dough than a bagel, and is simply baked—rather than boiled and then baked as a traditional bagel is. Bialys ship and freeze beautifully, and, thankfully, Kossar's on Grand Street in New York City, arguably the preeminent bialy baker in America, sends them all over the country.
My cream cheese of choice is Breakstone's whipped cream cheese. It's lighter than than those Philadelphia brand bricks. If your grocery store doesn't carry Breakstone's, buy Philadelphia brand whipped cream cheese. I have discovered another commercially available whipped cream cheese, Zausner's Original Amish Recipe , I like even more (it's slightly saltier), but I've only been able to buy it on Cape Cod. And my absolute favorite cream cheese in the world is Zingerman's farmstead cream cheese which is not whipped, but is wonderfully tart and creamy and has larger curds than commercial cream cheese. It has the rough-hewn texture of farmer's cheese.
I drink the Minute Maid Light Limeade with my bialy and cream cheese because it's simultaneously tart and sweet, has a nice spicy, citrusy tang, and very few calories. My first choice for a breakfast beverage to accompany my bialy would be fresh-squeezed orange juice, but I try to save the calories. Maybe I'm being silly here, as I believe an eight-ounce glass of orange juice has less than 100 calories.
So that's my weekday go-to breakfast. It has less than 250 calories, and is oh so satisfying.
I think there's a chance my dad would have switched to it if he could have seen this post.
Man Sues Bodega Over Alleged Cat Attack
Meow! The Post reports that a Long Island man is suing a West Village bodega Andy's Deli at Seventh and Grove Street because the bodega's cat attacked him - and wants $5 million. However, Andy's Deli owner Andy Singh says he doesn't even own a cat. Dunh dunh DUNH! The claim: Adalberto DeSousa says he went to Andy's to buy a sandwich when he "felt something strange on my shoes." It was a kitty at his feet. DeSousa said, "I didn't want to hit the cat, so I pushed him away with my hand," only for the cat to attack his hand and arm.
"A guy in the story came over and yelled at me to get off the cat," DeSousa said. "A lot of blood came out." He said that deli-store clerk gave him a bottle of rubbing alcohol and let him rinse the blood off his hand in the sink. DeSousa said he grabbed his drink and his Philly cheese steak and went home to Inwood, L.I. When he woke up the next day, he said, his hand was red, throbbing and swollen.DeSousa says he was in the hospital for a month and "says he still has not regained full use of his right hand." But Singh told the Post, "We don't have a cat. We've never had a cat." Though many bodegas have cats, bodega cats are actually against the health code. For some reason, the Health Department thinks that having cats means there are mice in an establishment, versus being a preemptive measure against mice. The only stores allowed to have cats wandering around are pet stores.
September 6, 2007
iphone refund logistics
Two potential options for iPhone "early adopter refund" logistics:
Require users to present their original purchase receipt for their iPhone (along with the phone itself) at the Apple Store by a certain date. Check receipt for validity, check iPhone serial number for valid date range, check the customer's photo identification. Have them fill out a form, and only after validating the purchase and collecting appropriate personal identification, present the user an Apple Store gift card for $100.
On iPhone sync, during a scheduled update, recognize that the device was activated before the price drop, or through the serial number that it was purchased before the price drop. Connect the phone to the user's iTunes store / Apple ID email address. Offer the customer $100 (or potentially even more, $110?) in iTunes store credits on the spot, or an emailed coupon with a custom code and potentially a custom generated bar code that can be printed and brought to the store.
Option 1 has the potential to maximize breakage. Option 2 has the potential to minimize breakage and provide more immediate data to Apple on redemption patterns. If they do something like option 2, in something approaching "real time" (like they pull that off in the next week or two), you have to wonder if the price drop and resulting letter from Steve was planned well in advance...
For all you Internet People
Today we launched our first original animated series from Next New Networks, Channel Frederator’s Meth Minute 39, by genius animator Dan Meth. The first episode — Internet People! — is a tribute to everyone who’s entertained all of us on the web the last couple of years. Here’s the whole story behind its birth, but what’s untold (for now) is the amazing support the NNN team gave Dan and company to make this thing internet-ubiquitous in less than 12 hours. We published at noon, and right now the video is already on the front of MySpace, YouTube, DailyMotion, climbing on Digg, and embedded on dozens of sites and blogs… and I feel like it’s just getting started.
Hope you like it, and stay tuned for more episodes of Meth Minute 39, coming soon. Believe me, they actually get better than this one.
iToner Disabled With iTunes 7.4 Update
Ambrosia’s Andrew Welch:
We’re on it. Here’s what is happening. iTunes 7.4 thinks it is the sole entity that puts custom ringtones on your iPhone. As such whenever you sync (even if you aren’t using any ringtones from iTunes), it just blindly writes over the database of user-installed ringtones.
MUJI Announces NYC Location in SoHo
Remember this March when we told you about MUJI opening up a location in the new New York Times building? Well apparently that location is delayed, because Japanese retailer MUJI is telling us that their first United States location will be at 455 Broadway in SoHo. The new space will be about 3,200 square feet and will open in November. People that are unhappy with just shopping for their plain-looking products at their MoMA store locations can rejoice. The new location will carry over 2,000 items including around 570 stationery items, 40 types of furniture, 590 housewares items, 30 electric appliances, and 330 apparel items amongst other things. MUJI, which was originally known as Mujirushi Ryohin, means "no brand quality goods."
Dinner Party Wine: guest edition…what to bring to your boss
We covered situation #1, the wine curious friend, ages ago. So we thought it was about time to get to…
Situation #2: dinner at your boss’s house
So, you’ve been invited over to have dinner with your boss. Perhaps this is the first time you’ve been asked to do something social on a weekend, even though you’ve done mid-week business dinners together before. You know your boss likes wine (perhaps even a little too much…) so it’s the perfect thing to bring. But how much to spend? What kind of wine will send the right message? You don’t want to seem too cheap, like you don’t appreciate the person you work for, as well as the extension of an invitation usually reserved for more senior colleagues. But you also don’t want to seem too flush with cash, since you’re hoping for a raise during your next performance review. What to do? (more…)
iPod Hi-Fi: We hardly knew ye
It's official! Apple has killed the iPod Hi-Fi.
Timelapse animation of the moon going through a full lunar...
Timelapse animation of the moon going through a full lunar cycle. Wobble wobble wobble wobble. More info here.
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[bit] Google Reader adds search
Google Reader adds search. Finally. The link also mentions the new 1000+ upper limit for unread item counts, which I noted a few days ago.
Apple may have announced their ringtone strategy for the iPhone...
Apple may have announced their ringtone strategy for the iPhone (30-second ringtones cost $1.98 to make and you must purchase songs through the iTunes Music Store), but Ambrosia Software's iToner utility lets you make ringtones from any mp3 or acc audio file with a simple drag/drop, all for $15 (free 30-day trial). iToner seems like the clear winner here.
Update: The just-released new version of iTunes (7.4) makes iToner ringtones invisible to the iPhone. Ambrosia is working on an iToner update. (thx, jim)
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taste test
Fresh news from deep within Tag Mountain: we just launched an early, limited Preview of the Delicious redesign we’ve been working on for the past few months. We’ve refreshed the UI, built an entirely new (and faster) search engine, and added numerous improvements based on your feedback. The goal of this Preview is to get feedback from our users about the design changes and also start to put our new platform through the paces.
The initial invite list is already full, but we will likely be adding more openings in the near future. Check your links for you to see if you’re in the first round (sorry to be so indirect about it, but our privacy policy doesn’t allow us to email users about this sort of thing and we take that very seriously). If you don’t see the invite link but are interested in taking a look and giving us some feedback, you can add your username to the list.
We’ll be posting updates to this blog throughout the Preview process to keep everyone informed of what we’re learning. Thanks for your feedback and support!
A Brief History of Ugly: Apple in the last 10 years
We have been inspired by the recent release of the new, third-generation iPod nano: here it is the ugliest of Apple products from the last 10 years.
Obama Introducing Bill to Require Reports On Bundlers
Barack Obama is proposing a new bill to require campaigns to track and report the activities of bundlers. From his Senate office's press release: Obama’s bill will require candidates for Congress to...
Damn You, Bruce Willis.
Last night in my rush to prepare dinner for my neighbors (that's right, we like our neighbors), I sliced my middle finger on my left hand at the cuticle edge. A good Kyocera 1/4" slice. Arm resting above my head...
Engadget Interview With Phil Schiller
Ryan Block: Speaking of taking these products around the world, especially these touch screen devices, what do you make of the iPhone software unlock, um, “market”?
Phil Schiller: [Laughter] I’m not really sure there is a market there at all or yet. So, I’d really rather not make a comment on it. But I don’t think there is a “there” there.
Maybe Schiller doesn’t read Engadget, because Block reported back on August 24 that AT&T has already lost “iPhone exclusivity” because of iPhoneSIMfree.com’s amazing software technology. Sure, it was promised for release within “24-72 hours” and that didn’t happen, and sure, just three days ago Engadget reported again that bulk orders would begin shipping on September 4, and that hasn’t happened.
But it certainly isn’t a joke that Phil Schiller should be laughing at. It was reported on Engadget.
domaine547 Wine Club! Join now and get a free gift!
We have this cool wine club at domaine547, meant for learning as well as drinking good wine. Every six to eight weeks, we send you at least two bottles of wine (but we’ve sent as many as four) as well as a newsletter telling you all about them. There’s always a theme, whether winemaker, grape varietal or region, and shipping is included. Order a pre-paid 3 shipment membership and we’ll send you a beautiful everyday carafe! Next shipment coming towards the end of September.Find me in da club…
Find a needle in a feedstack with Google Reader
Posted by Ben Darnell, Google Reader Engineer
The fundamental problem with information is that there's too much of it, and this is probably why we all go to our trusted sources to learn what we really need to know. Your sources filter out the noise and present the most interesting bits to you in a useful way. For many of us, these sources include newspapers, magazines, and of course blogs. We built Google Reader as a way for you to see all of your online sources in one place.
So if you want to keep up with the chatter about the new iPods or Superbad, now you can. We've added a familiar search box to the top of Google Reader so you can search across all the blogs and sites to which you're subscribed.
See if this doesn't help with your information overload. And by the way, if you want to learn more about feed readers, here's a great explanation:
Filmmaker Errol Morris is writing a blog for the...
Filmmaker Errol Morris is writing a blog for the NY Times about photography. It's supposed to be Times Select only and therefore behind the Times' stupid paywall, but I can get to it just fine for some reason. His most recent post concerns the confusion over the identity of the hooded man in the iconic Abu Ghraib photograph, which topic Morris is researching for S.O.P.: Standard Operating Procedure, his upcoming film about the prison and the events that happened there.
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Open Letter From Steve Jobs to All iPhone Customers
The nut: a $100 Apple store credit for everyone who already bought an iPhone, and a straightforward apology to anyone who was upset by the price cut. It’s also a wonderfully plain-spoken statement regarding “life in the technology lane”:
Second, being in technology for 30+ years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon.
I think it’s clear that Apple was taken by surprise by the magnitude of the backlash regarding the price cut. They’ve responded quickly, humbly, and well, to avoid letting this issue spoil the good news from their impressive product releases yesterday.
NYC Food Film Festival
The New York City Food Film Festival continues tonight and over the weekend with its third and final installment for the year. Three nights of barbecue films, people. That's something we at Serious Eats can get behind.
- Thursday: Barbeque Is a Noun, 9 p.m., preceded by three shorts starting at 8:30 p.m.
- Friday: Whole Hog, 9 p.m., preceded by three shorts starting at 8:30 p.m.
- Saturday: Barbeque: A Texas Love Story, 8:50 p.m., preceded by three shorts starting at 8:30 p.m.
Lights, camera, action at Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City. Films are free and 'cue can be purchased at the event. More info here.
Top 10 Uses For Used Coffee Grounds » Curbly | DIY Design Community « Keywords: coffee, how-to, cleaning, alternative_uses
Muji announces their NYC Soho location...it'll be on Broadway just...
Muji announces their NYC Soho location...it'll be on Broadway just south of Grand. The store opens in November 2007 and will carry furniture, appliances, clothes, and a bunch of other stuff (food?).
Update: No food and no cafes. (thx, armin)
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● Raiders of the Lost Ark
Action films tend not to age well. Raiders is a happy exception. Expertly paced, a trait not shared by many contemporary films, action or otherwise.
Rating: 4.5/5.0
A Different Kind of Personal Computer
Interesting to watch more long-time Windows nerds switch to the Mac. Long-term, I think it’s very dangerous for Microsoft how many power users are abandoning Windows. It’s most palpable at non-Mac-specific nerd conferences — MacBooks abound.
ThisService 2.0
New version of Jesper’s excellent freeware utility for turning AppleScript and Unix scripts into system-wide services in your Services menu. Highly recommended; I can hardly live without my handful of custom services.
News unFlash: New iPod touch could do iPhone apps
Since the iPod touch likely runs the same mobile version of OS X found in the iPhone, it was only a matter of time before hackers try to fill up the new iPod's empty app slots with Apple's own creations.
Documentary Blasting Rudy's 9/11 Performance Is Released
Here it is: The first of four short documentary videos about Rudy Giuliani by filmmaker Robert Greenwald has just been released. Don't miss it. The first installment by Greenwald -- who made the well...
Zero Punctuation's review of Bioshock
his reviews are extremely entertaining, while still insightful; it's like Ze Frank on games
Before the 2007 season started, mathematician Bruce Bukiet's mathematical model...
Before the 2007 season started, mathematician Bruce Bukiet's mathematical model predicted the NY Yankees would win 110 games this year...they might win 90 based on their current pace. Related: check out how the team salary vs. performance graph is shaping up as we move into the last few weeks of the 2007 season.
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Google Reader adds search
by far, the most requested feature
Breaking: Craig Likely To Resign, After All
There's been yet another twist in the Saga of Wide Stance Larry -- now one of his top aides is saying that he's likely to resign, after all: "The most likely scenario, by far, is that by October...
'Top Chef': Design on a Dime
After a one-week hiatus, Top Chef returned last night with a vengeance. Seven contestants remain, with no clear favorite now that viewer darling Tre has been sent packing.
The "Aisle Trial" Quickfire Challenge introduced the theme of the evening, which was to take limited resources and impress. Each chef was given $10 and assigned one aisle of the grocery store in which to acquire ingredients. After ten minutes of shopping and 20 minutes of cooking, they were supposed to have a dish worthy of oohs and ahs. Not easy, and the results would prove it. [Warning: Spoilers after the jump.]
Brian came out on top, giving himself an extra degree of difficulty by choosing the oft-maligned Spam as his main grocery ingredient. He dressed it up nicely, however, and indeed presented a dish that both looked good and, according to guest judge MIchael Schwartz, tasted great. On the other end of the Quickfire spectrum, CJ's dish was deemed only one short step up from Howie's offering, which was nothing. Nothing but an apology for being unable to come up with something he was willing to serve. Oops.
In an entirely other universe was Hung, who took raw material from the cereal aisle and created a pyschedelic candy-colored landscape that pretty much blew everyone's mind. Lost in the hilarity of Hung's kid-inspired creation was the fact that he actually produced something even stranger—an endearing sound bite. His interview clip during the Quickfire Challenge gave a rare glimpse into Hung's background, and it was a welcome relief from the usual puffed up bravado he trots out in front of the cameras.
The Elimination Challenge continued the day's motif: Produce lots of flash with very little cash. The entire crew was informed they'd be be working as caterers for a two-hour party in honor of fashion designer Esteban Cortazar. When they were told they'd have a total of $350 to spend on supplies, most of the chefs looked like they'd already been asked to pack their knives and go. No-one was happy about the cost cutting.
That said, Brian, who made himself squad leader after winning the Quickfire, was undaunted by the budgetary constraints or the idea of wrangling seven independent-minded chefs into one cohesive team. He marshaled his forces at the hotel the evening before the challenge and did a good job of letting everyone have a hand in planning the menu.
When it came time to actually shop, things got a little more dicey. It was clear that the budget was a serious obstacle when Howie had exceeded his $50 before buying even half of his ingredients. There were some serious negotiations at the checkout aisle and Dale got the short end of the stick by giving up goat cheese for his gougère and substituting yogurt.
In the galley (the event was thrown on a yacht), the chefs worked well together. No tantrums. No tough love. Howie explained that he was making an extra effort to be a team player. That's not to say everything went perfectly. Sara and Casey stepped out of their comfort zone, tried, but failed to make a chocolate mousse dessert, despite the fact that they'd bought a pre-made mix. Strange choice. Bad result. But luckily, both chefs had other dishes they'd prepared and the omission of the mousse was a good game-time decision.
The actual party went well enough, with the guests greedily devouring anything and everything that was sent topside. The empty platters illustrated just how far the chefs' budget needed to stretch to meet the basic requirements of the party. Head judge Tom Colicchio was critical of the team's decision to produce as many different dishes as they did, but it was clear that no matter how much variety they offered, the key challenge may have ultimately been quantity.
Of course, at the judges' table, it wasn't quantity that got put in the spotlight, it was quality. The panel was generally unimpressed with the originality of the items. They were clearly looking to be wowed by the dishes, while the contestants were just trying to pull off a decent party without the guests starting a revolt. Just about every chef was put through the wringer at judges' table this week, and it almost seemed like that was part of the challenge—to endure a high level of criticism without cracking. It that was the case, it was a smart move, because things sorted themselves pretty well.
Brian was severely chastised by taskmaster Colicchio for not "editing" the menu. Having taken on the mantle of executive, Brian was expected to be responsible for the entire presentation, top to bottom. He stumbled a bit trying to defend himself, but it was clear he was in no danger of dismissal when just about every other chef lauded his leadership and passed up any chance to fall in line behind Colicchio's criticism.
Hung was back to his usual stubborn self, defending the "classic" nature of his salmon mousse and caviar hors d'oeuvres. Guest judge Dana Cowin (editor of Food & Wine magazine) rolled her eyes at not only the dish, but at Hung's steadfast refusal to admit that it was a boring choice. The interchange between Hung and Colicchio on this point was a pretty great moment, and for a minute there it looked like Hung was going to crack and start yelling "You want me on that wall! You need me on that wall!" à la Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.
Ultimately, though, it was Howie who cracked. When it was clear that the judges were unimpressed with his two dishes—phyllo and bacon-wrapped aparagus "cigars" and mushroom tartlets—everyone's favorite sweathog decided it was time to fall on his sword and, in a classic Top Chef move, he tried to send himself home.
The judges wouldn't have it, however, and instead of letting Howie resign and remain the master of his own fate, they sent him back to the waiting room to stew, sweat, swear, and generally twist in the wind, waiting for the inevitable ax to fall. Which it did. Bye bye, Howie. You made it a long way, considering you messed up the first Elimination Challenge and could have gone home on day one.
On the flip side, Casey won the challenge, having come in on time and under budget and produced one of the only hors d'oeuvres that genuinely impressed the judges—a beef carpaccio with shiitake broth that you can find on the Top Chef website, nestled alongside a raft of new blog entries.
Some Infinite Jest fashion notes: an Enfield Tennis Academy tshirt...
Some Infinite Jest fashion notes: an Enfield Tennis Academy tshirt from Neighborhoodies and...
Was the designer of Infinite Jest's book cover influenced by the color palette of the Nike's that Andre Agassi wore in 1991? Compelling visual evidence is available at lonelysandwich.
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After Chasing American Dream For 42 Years, <br/>Beloved Chinese Bakery Will Close
On Monday, the NY Times reported about Chinatown mainstay May May Bakery's end-of-the-month closing. To those who flocked to the Pell Street bakery for the prepared dumplings, shu mai, zongzi ("Chinese tamales"), roast pork buns, and many other items (much, if not all, made at its Long Island City warehouse), it's an upsetting prospect. The bakery is run by three brothers whose father opened the store in 1965. The Times explained the closing, which oddly enough is not due to rent issues or lack of customers:
The Hung brothers are closing the company because they are tired, and their five children — who include a lawyer, a pharmacist and a teacher — are unwilling to put in the 11-hour days in steaming kitchens and on the factory floor. “Our second generation is fully educated, so they don’t want to work as hard as their uncles and their father,” said John Hung, 55, the youngest of the brothers. “This is one thing we most regret. We don’t have the young generation to take over.” After five years of deliberating whether to sell the business, the brothers — John, Alex and Bill — decided they could not find a buyer who could continue to assure the same quality. “I can sell at a good price, but if they ruin the name, that’s something we don’t want,” John Hung said.It's a sad but understandable phenomenon. We just wonder if the ambitions of second generation children of all cultures - and the first generation's hopes for them - could spell the end of other types of businesses as well. We just wish that the factory would stay open - when we went to May May to stock up on our favorite, Shanghai vegetable buns, we were sad to see that many products were simply not being made anymore.
Wii and coffee
Not much going on news-wise so thought I'd point stragglers to a few stories doing the rounds at the moment. First, the new Official Nintendo Magazine has a preview of Super Mario Kart Wii that mentions a 16-player online mode...
September 5, 2007
My friend David Galbraith just launched a gadget site called...
My friend David Galbraith just launched a gadget site called Oobject. The gadgets are organized into hierarchically ordered collections and you can vote on the position of a particular gadget within the collection. Two of my favorite collections are the iPod knock-offs and revolting gold gadgets (it's interesting that gold makes technology look vulgar and therefore cheap).
Oh, and David's Smashing Telly is still cranking along nicely. I wish I had time to watch all the shows featured recently.
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A Plethora of Plugins
Movable Type 4.0's only been out three weeks, and we've seen dozens of poweful new plugins for the platform, with new ones popping up every day. As someone who first installed Movable Type as a beta six years ago (!), I've never seen a time where more compelling or just plain fun plugins have been launched in such a short period of time.
Because a lot of us have been busy uploading the new "Works With MT4" plugins to our blogs, it's probably worth taking a look to see what all the plugin developers in our community have been up to. And of course, the vast majority of older plugins still work with MT4 as well -- these are just some of the ones that show of MT4's features the best. Check 'em out:
Never Get Dash-BoredGetting the Word Out
- Google AdSense Widget: David Raynes lets you keep an eye on the bottom line from your MT4 dashboard, showing your recent earnings information from Google's AdSense service.
- Google Analytics Widget: One of the breakout additions for MT4, this popular plugin lets you see your daily traffic right on MT4's dashboard, with David Raynes making smart use of the built-in charting functions in the platform.
- FeedBurner Widget: Just like his Google Analytics and AdSense Widgets, David Raynes show you the number of people subscribed to your site's XML feed, letting you keep tabs on a key metric of success.
- Feeds Widget: This one's killer -- Yuji Takayama made it easy to subscribe to any XML feed right in your MT dashboard, and then create content right from the items in that feed. Indispensable for inspiration for your entries.
- Dashboard Twitter: Fumiaki Yoshimatu gives Twitter users exactly what they're looking for: The ability to update your Twitter status and see your friends' updates, right from the MT Dashboard.
Getting the Words In
- Fast Search: Mark Carey adds a lightning-fast dynamic search to augment MT's built-in search features.
- MT-Twitter: Brandon Fuller's made a perfect plugin for people who use MT to blog and also use Twitter to connect to friends -- each time you create an entry, MT-Twitter lets your Twitter friends know about it.
- Sort Categories and Folders: Tired of being constrained by the alphabet? Hajime Fujimoto has made an elegant interface that lets you sort your categories and folders in whatever order you damn well please.
- PostVox: If you're using MT's sister service Vox, you might want to make sure your posts on your MT blog show up there as well -- with PostVox, it's just a checkbox away.
- MotionBased: Connect your MT blog to this popular geotracking community, using Brandon Fuller's clever plugin.
Cool For Comments
- Blogger Importer: Takatsugu Shigeta makes it easier than ever for Blogger users to bring their entries into MT4. No need to mess with import or export files -- just log in to your Blogger account and this plugin does the rest.
- Entry Post: Mark Carey has made it easy for your site's community to create new entries on your blog, even giving you the power to customize the fields they use to create entries.
- Refeed: Ben Trott has made a small but slick plugin that could well be called Movable Pipes: Give it a list of feeds, and it'll turn them into a stream of entries on your blog.
Tip Top Templates
- Customized Sign In Templates: Mark Carey takes MT4's customization to the next level, letting the sign-in screen for MT authors and commenters take on the look of your blog.
- AIM OpenID Plugin: With nearly 90 million users, AOL and AIM provide an enormous base of existing user identities. With Minh Nguyễn's plugin, they won't even need to make a new password to sign in on your site.
- WordPress.com OpenID Plugin: Byrne Reese's plugin lets anyone using wordpress.com sign in on your MT blog, using the power of OpenID.
- Comment Subscribe: Robert Synnott has made it dead simple for your blog's readers to subscribe by email to any conversation in your comments just by checking a box.
- This Is Good: Yuji Takayama brings one of our favorite features from MT's sister service Vox to your blog. Your commenters can show some love for your posts just by checking a box.
- Quote: Make it easy for your commenters to excerpt earlier parts of the conversation using Reed Cartwright's handy plugin.
MT UI OK 4U?
- Snip It: Arvind Satyanarayan shows off MT4's template snippet feature with a plugin that automatically inserts custom snippets of code into your templates, which you can customize and define at will.
- Template Shelf: Arvind Satyanarayan's plugin gives you a handy way to switch between templates that you're editing, indispensable if you're doing serious template hacking.
- Template Installer: Mark Carey's clever work makes it a snap to install new templates on your blog, even letting you share templates that others have created.
- Template Exporter: The complement to Template Installer, Mark Carey has made a simple way to export your templates for reuse on another blog, or even on another MT install entirely.
- Fiscal Yearly Archives: One of the less-heralded features of MT4 is its extensible archiving system. Hirotaka Ogawa shows it off beautifully with Fiscal Yearly Archives, which provides exactly what you'd think.
- Clean Sweep: Byrne Reese has made it dead simple to find and fix 404 Not Found errors on your site, with no fuss.
- Favicon Manager: Akira Sawada has a slick plugin that gives you specify the miniature icon that browsers use to signify your site.
These are just some of the dozens of astounding new range of plugins available for MT4. We've heard word of many more on the way, but by the time you've picked a few of these and tried them out, you'll be able to check back in and see what's new. In the meantime, enjoy the breadth of new features that are only available for your Movable Type 4-powered site.
- Bookmarks: Kevin Shay made the first indispensable plugin for MT4, a simple way of bookmarking your most useful screens in the MT system.
- New Entry Template: Patrick Benny automates some of the drudgery if you find yourself writing similar entries frequently; This plugin lets you define a template that automatically appears when you need it.
- Dynamic Menus: Mark Carey does it again with a much-requested tweak to MT4's UI -- you never have to see menu items that are disabled.
- Hot Date: Dan Wolfgang has the best-named plugin, which is also extremely convenient, letting you tweak the dates on your entries with a simple user interface.
- Navigation Breadcrumbs: Mark Carey adds a feature that might appease those homesick for older versions of Movable Type: A breadcrumb trail showing where you are in the application.
- Movable Type 4 Video Plugin: Kris Drey of Fliqz has a straightforward plugin to integrate their interesting video service directly into your MT posting screen.
The Wedge Wine 'Rack'
Brendan I. Koerner, who writes "The Goods," an underappreciated but often hilarious column in the Sunday New York Times business section, says that Bluw, a London design firm, has finally come up with a cheap, space-saving alternative to the wine rack. It's called the Wedge. And according to Koerner, it actually works:
...Though the package copy recommends that each two-piece set be used to hold a maximum of six wine bottles, I was able to create a very stable 10-bottle pyramid.
Even after downing several glasses of pinot noir, in order to affect a partygoer’s clumsiness, my jostlings of the pyramid caused almost no discernible movement.
The Wedge, $9.95 a pair, at Firebox.com
Ouch that Hurt!
One of the big switches that lets Flickr talk to the outside world went on vacation without telling anyone about 30 minutes ago. The problem has been fixed and we’re wobbling our way back up, but you might still see some strange behavior for the next 10-20 minutes.
Actual photo serving wasn’t affected so any photos you were showing elsewhere (like on your blog) should have gone on happily showing up.
update 12:58pm: hmmm, still stuck in baggage claim on the way back up. We’re looking at another 20 minutes at least until everything is all shiny.
Product photos of the iPod classic
Product photos of the "refreshed" iPod classic line. Same old iPod design, beefed up storage space, now in metal.
Bill Murray Filling in for Harry Caray
Bill Murray Filling in for Harry Caray
Related to the hotdog theme for today, here’s a pretty great clip of Bill Murray filling in for Harry caray in ‘87. I remember watching this game at the time. It’s pretty great to have Murray do the whole game and just goof off. There are some other clips on youtube from the broadcasts. WGN broadcasts with Harry and Steve Stone are some of my favorite MLB memories. I think Steve Stone is filling in on White Sox broadcasts at the moment, but I haven’t been able to catch one yet.
Leeds.pm
Various things went wrong with my attempt to set up PM group(s) in the north of England. But a trip to Vienna has my enthusiasm all fired up again, so it's time for another attempt. There is a new mailing list is at The plan is to restart Leeds.pm, and have an inaugural meeting on (tentative) 7th December. Interested? Join the mailing list.Read more of this story at use Perl.
On the Contrary: Batali Shooting Two 'Iron Chef' Shows Next Week
I just talked to Mario Batali, and he tells me that what's reported in the New York Post about his leaving Iron Chef America is incorrect and that he's actually shooting two episodes of the show next week.
Hot Couple News: Two Hookups & A Breakup!
Summer flings are coming to an end and a couple of celebs are looking for new mates to keep warm, as the temperatures begin to drop. First up, serial dater Drew Barrymore has found a new boy to lock lips with. Her latest conquest? Her new co-star Justin Long! The message of their new film, He's Just Not That In To You, certainly doesn't apply to Drew, who was seen making out with Justin on three different occasions. "It was hot and heavy,” says an onlooker of the pair, who got pretty close at Jet in Las Vegas. “They were all over each other!” Next!
Secondly, Drew's sometime fling, Zach Braff swept Roswell star Shiri Appleby off her feet, when he took her to the Four Seasons on Hawaii's Big Island over Labor Day weekend. Spies say they were "making out all over the place. She even got on top of him at one point. It was the middle of the day." What is it about Zach? I think he may be some sort of genie.
Lastly, cycling extraordinaire Lance Armstrong has broken up with his Sheryl Crow-look-a-like girlfriend, Tory Burch. A source close to Lance told Us Weekly, “It was a distance thing,” but one of Tory's pals says, “Tory would have moved to Texas for him if he popped the question. But he didn’t want to commit.” Are we shocked? Hardly.
Trailer for In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary...
Trailer for In the Shadow of the Moon, a documentary that "brings together for the first, and possibly the last, time surviving crew members from every single Apollo mission that flew to the Moon along with visually stunning archival material re-mastered from the original NASA film footage". BOY HOWDY! Here's a review of the film from Ad/Astra, the magazine of the National Space Society.
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● Summer news regarding The Wire (including season five info)
Show creator David Simon talks with author Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, etc.) in the The August 2007 issue of The Believer. The entire interview isn't available online but one of the three best bits is:
My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.
Simon goes on to talk about the overarching theme of The Wire: the exploration of the postmodern American city and the struggle of the individual against the city's institutions. Many of his thoughts on that particular subject are contained in this Dec 2006 interview at Slate. But in talking with Hornby, Simon draws a parallel between these city institutions and the Greek gods:
Another reason the show may feel different than a lot of television: our model is not quite so Shakespearian as other high-end HBO fare. The Sopranos and Deadwood -- two shows that I do admire -- offer a good deal of Macbeth or Richard III or Hamlet in their focus on the angst and machinations of their central characters (Tony Soprano, Al Swearingen). Much of our modern theatre seems rooted in the Shakespearian discovery of the modern mind. We're stealing instead from an earlier, less-traveled construct -- the Greeks -- lifting our thematic stance wholesale from Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides to create doomed and fated protagonists who confront a rigged game and their own mortality.
But instead of the old gods, The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. It's the police department, or the drug economy, or the political structures, or the school administration, or the macroeconomics forces that are throwing the lightning bolts and hitting people in the ass for no reason. In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed. Greek tragedy for the new millenium, so to speak.
The NY Times still deals in the Shakespearian and tells us the story of Donnie Andrews and Fran Boyd (thx, nirav), whom Simon and The Wire co-creator Edward Burns introduced to each other. Andrews was the inspiration for the popular Omar Little character on the show and Boyd was depicted in a previous Simon/Burns collaboration called The Corner. The Times also has their wedding announcement.
And finally, some news about season five. Sadly, instead of 12 or 13 episodes, the final season of the show will only consist of 10 episodes. The shooting of the final episode wrapped on September 1 and the season will premiere on Jan 6, 2008 (both facts courtesy of a Washington Post article about the end of the show). The season 4 DVD should be out a month or two before that. Two actors from Homicide: Life on the Street (based on a book by, you guessed it, David Simon) will appear in the final season: Clark Johnson (who also directed the final episode) and Richard Belzer, who will reprise his Homicide role as Detective John Munch.
Happy iPod Day
If you're bored of the usual apple rumors, may I humbly suggest iPhone @ home, the "superset of all Apple rumors, ever."
Welcome Back, Kottke
I’ve been waiting to use that headline ever since he went on paternity leave.
Jen Bekman updates us on how Carson Systems is doing...
Jen Bekman updates us on how Carson Systems is doing on their efforts in gender diversity for their conferences. A: Much better. Whereas their Feb07 Future of Web Apps event had only one woman speaker, their upcoming London event features eight women. See also: gender diversity at web conferences statistics from Feb and Bekman's list of women speakers for your conference.
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Game Over for Mario at the Food Network
Celebrity chef Mario Batali has been cut from the Food Network roster:
"He said that if his shows weren't going to be renewed, then he wasn't going to do 'Iron Chef,' " said a network insider. "And then they essentially said 'ciao.' "
Don't worry. You'll still be able to watch Batali TV when he teams up with actress Gwyneth Paltrow on their upcoming public television cooking show.
OPEN SPACE to Open In Beacon New York This Weekend
Congratulations to Kalene Rivers and Dan Weise who this weekend will open their first gallery, called OPEN SPACE, in Beacon, New York on 510 Main Street.
The inaugural show (which opens this Saturday, September 8th from 3 to 9) features a series of new self portraits from Michael DeFeo.
Michael lives in New York and has shown his work internationally over the past decade in both solo and group exhibitions at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum - Ridgefield, CT, the Neuberger Museum - Purchase, NY, The National Gallery - Bangladesh, Leipzig University - Germany, MASS MoCA, The New Museum of Contemporary Art - NY, A3 Art Fair - Paris and Colette - Paris. Best known for his flower image, Michael has been creating street art for over fifteen years in cities around the world. Last year he was featured on the cover of New York Magazine’s "Reasons to Love New York" issue and participated in our Wooster on Spring exhibition in December.
Mortal Thought(s)
Part 2 Of The KRS Interview
Silverlight & TextMate
Cédric Bleimling directed my attention toward the video tutorial site for Microsoft Silverlight. Not only are they using TextMate for the screencast, they put its icon on the graphics for the download.
Clearly the message has been well received in Redmond :)
September 4, 2007
Lunar Eclipse
fjny’s composite photo beautifully records Augst 28th’s total lunar eclipse.
NASA has a list of upcoming events if you want to mark your calendar.
Click here to see more eclipse photos on Flickr.
Technical Brief
Wow, the response to A Brief Message so far has been terrific. Thanks to everyone who posted comments on the site, on last night’s post, or who wrote in to me with your support — and to everyone who read the site, too! My partner-in-crime Liz Danzico and I worked long and hard to make this happen, and the encouragement has been deeply gratifying.
I just wanted to take the time to write a few additional notes about the site to clarify some points, and also to has out some technical details.
Fast, Cheap and Under Control
Framework? We don’t need no stinkin’ framework!
Actually, we’re kind of using a framework, even if we’re not calling it that. It’s “The Subtraction.com Framework,” so to speak. That’s right, as many of you pointed out, A Brief Message bears a very strong resemblance to Subtraction.com — mostly because it’s largely the very same code base.
The original idea behind the site was to build something small, and to build it quickly. Rather than start everything over from scratch, I re-used as much as I could from Subtraction.com; the same CSS, the same template code, even the very same grid structure.
It’s not a proper framework in the way that the Blueprint CSS framework is. But I’ve been using it so long, and I’m so familiar with it, that developing with it was pretty fast for me. Besides, with all modesty aside, I think the end product looks pretty nice.
The Move to Movable Type
A Brief Message is being run off my creaky installation of Movable Type 3.33 on my creaky, shared Dreamhost plan. This explains the interminably slow comment processing times (a problem here on Subtraction.com, too). Sorry about that folks. I am working on trying to get someone with considerably more knowledge in this area to help me fix this.
We had originally intended to launch on a brand new server over at Media Temple using Movable Type 4. But we didn’t plan it properly, so the move didn’t happen. Plus, there are some quirky new things about Movable Type 4 that made getting up and running on it immediately a greater challenge than I had anticipated — I would have had to have rebuilt the template code that powers the comments feature almost entirely, which is not something I wanted to do.
Still, after spending a good deal of time in version 4, I have to say that I like it. Which is a surprising turn of events given where I thought the product stood a year ago. This newest version is really nice, and once the kinks get worked out, I will likely upgrade A Brief Message and probably Subtraction.com.
Image Replacement
Yes, we’re using Scalable Inman Flash Replacement to render those lovely (to my eyes) headlines and display text in Apex Serif. The latest version is a big improvement over previous versions I’ve used… but it’s still a little bit like doing needlepoint whilst wearing mittens. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for it, because its authors have worked very hard to continue to improve faithfully. Plus, let’s face it, A Brief Message wouldn’t have been possible in its current form without sIFR. That doesn’t stop me from wishing we lived in a more perfect universe where online typography wasn’t so technically convoluted, though…
The Deck
A Brief Message was incredibly fortunate enough to have early encouragement and commitment from the esteemed Jim Coudal. He’s just been great. One of the comments I’ve gotten a lot is how impressed people are that we had ads from The Deck — the very classy and growing advertising network that Jim runs — on our site right out of the gate. We really owe him a debt of gratitude… very often advertisements are a kind of blight on content, but in a subtle way, I think ads from The Deck actually helped legitimize our debut.
Frequency
We’ll be publishing every week — unless we publish more. In these early weeks, to help build and sustain momentum, we’re going to try to publish more often. This week it looks like we’re going to pull it off. Tune in on Thursday (hopefully) for a really wonderful Message from Debbie Millman, illustrated by Felix Sockwell. I know I’m the founder of A Brief Message and all, but to me, that’s a bill worth lining up for.
Di Fara
A lovely lunch with some lovely friends. I was particularly fond of the artichoke pie. Tip: get there around noon and wait until Dom opens the doors. We didn't witness any line fights until we were leaving.
The expanding boundaries of science
The medical scientist in me loves that the world of web interface design has entered the land of evidence-based research -- it justifies the web researcher in me.
stavrosthewonderchicken -- wonderchicken.com
stavrosthewonderchicken (User #2238) seems like he'd be a hardass, but he's mostly an expat softie with a keen design sense and a tendency towards good writing. His profile URL is wonderchicken.com but that's just a portal page to his main blog at EmptyBottle.org his Korea clearinghouse at OutsideInKorea and this site which is a great URL but with very little content at the moment and this which is mysterious but great. Those of us who were around the site in 2002 remember his site acutely for his reporting on the Bali bombing that killed his friend Rick and his poignant remembrance of that event a year later.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KENYATTA!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY KENYATTA!
Originally uploaded by triciawang 王 圣 㨗.
Photo of the Day: Homer Cake
Travis's Homer cake contains the three crucial Homer components: Duff beer, a sprinkled donut, and the pièce de résistance—a trickle of drool. I think Homer would approve of such craftsmanship...and then proceed to shovel the cake down his throat in five seconds.
West Indian Day Parade Dazzles Again
Millions of people flocked to Eastern Parkway to celebrate the West Indian American Day Parade yesterday. This was the 40th year of the parade, which had floats, dancers, and bands interacting with the crowds. Many of the spectators wore or waved flags of native countries and enjoying delicious food. Many politicians marched in the parade, including Governor Spitzer and Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, who said, "This day is for everyone. Everybody is Caribbean today." Mayor Bloomberg drew laughs when he said he was the only person in his administration who could call himself a West Indian because he's in Bermuda all the time. And Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was one of the grand mashals. There was one report of violence: A 26-year-old man was shot twice in the leg at Troy and Eastern Parkway and three people were taken in for questioning. Last year, there was a shooting and stabbing and, in 2005, a man was shot to death. Many people took beautiful photographs of the parade. Here are some from ultraclay!, FlySi, EricaJoy and mcbnyc. Photograph by mcbnyc on Flickr
Hillary Supporter James Carville: National Polls Are "Meaningless"
James Carville has repeatedly identified himself as a Hillary supporter (though he doesn't work for the Hillary campaign). But he diverged pretty wildly from Camp Hillary's message yesterday, when he...
Apple Stores sell 7 times as many iPhones per day as AT&T
iPhones are selling pretty well at Apple Stores. AT&T stores? Well, not so much. That's okay though, because the iPhone is doing pretty well anyway, and analysts believe that Apple will have no problem meeting its fourth quarter sales goals.
Switch Problems Cause Subway Delays
The MTA says all service is running normally now, but, earlier, a switch problem at 59th Street/Columbus Circle caused delays with the A, B, C, and D lines. The trains were diverted, with the C going express between Canal and Columbus Circle and the B and D running local between West 4th and Columbus Circle... we even heard that the B and D were running on the northbound N/R line. Because these delays affected the A, B, C and D, we're pretty sure that's why some other service was impacted One F train rider told us that his train waited 10-15 minutes at EACH stop during his commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan. This must have been fun for commuting students.
Sanitation Truck Meets Huge Hole in Union Square
A number of city agencies, including the FDNY, NYPD, and Department of Transportation are on West 17th Street, off 5th Avenue, to inspect a sanitation truck that is stuck in a hole that's reportedly four feet deep. No one is touching the truck because it's leaning on a van that it crushed!
We heard that a crane was needed to extract the truck. It's definitely not your average pothole - and we guess the Mayor's fleet of street inspection scooters didn't make it to West 17th yet. Though the city wants to use technology to track issues, other organizations are stepping up in the interim. For instance, Stay Free magazine created a Flickr photo pool called "The People's 311" where people can submit pictures of things just like potholes, dead trees, open/damaged fire hydrants, etc. as a response to the city's SCOUT program. Previous sinkhole/Hellmouth incidents: One in midtown Manhattan and another in Brooklyn. Update: We hear the truck is now a "hazmat condition"! Then again, aren't most garbage trucks? Or could it be leaking fuel? Update 2: It's a possible hazmat situation because the truck is leaning next to a gas main. Oh, dear. Update 3: The street is being closed and buildings are being evacuated (initially some buildings' occupants were told to stay put). In fact, the truck is right in front of SVA's sculpture building (with kilns!) and students have been sent home.
Physicist discovers Mary Jane/Peter Parker the strongest tie in the Marvel social network
This is beyond awesome: Pablo Gleiser, a physicist, took 12,942 issues of various Marvel comics, traced all the connections between 6,486 different characters -- and produced a massive social-network map of the Marvel Universe. Some of his findings? Superheroes have way more connections than villians -- which may help explain why they win so often. "Only heroes team up," Gleiser notes, "while villains do not." Superheroes are superconnectors; villians sit on the periphery of the social web. This, he theorizes, is probably due to the built-in rules that comic-book authors must follow. As he writes in his paper, the PDF of which you can download here: We believe that the origin of this division is due to the fact that, although the Marvel Universe incorporates elements from fantasy and science-fiction the arguments of the stories were restricted by a set of rules established in the Comics Authority Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America. In particular, rule number five in part A of the code for editorial matter states that "Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates the desire for emulation ..." With great power comes great responsibility. Speaking of which, Gleiser found that the single-strongest bond in the network -- i.e. the tie most commonly reiterated in Marvel plots -- is between Peter Parker and Mary Jane. ("A fact," he writes, "that shows that although the [Marvel Universe] deals mainly with superheroes and villians the most popular plot is a love story.") The next most-important superconnectors? The Thing, the Beast, Namor, and the Hulk. That map above illustrates the sad plight of villians. It shows the strongest 300 links. The black dots are heroes -- most of which are nicely and tightly interconnected. The white dots are villians, which tend to be connected only to a black dot -- usually their sworn arch-enemy. (The grey dots are "other types of characters, such as people, gods or nodes with no classification.") But here's a thought, fanboys. Network theory also predicts "the strength of weak ties": I.e. the fact that while superconnectors have lots of strong connections, the most interesting, creative and unpredictable social effects come from weak links -- connections between people only slightly joined. Does this hold true for the Marvel Universe? Are the stories in which those weak ties appear particularly intriguing, wacky, or unexpected than the ones that are characterized purely by strong ties? I want some grad student to tackle this one and get a PhD for it. (Thanks to the New Scientist for this one!)
Next for the Ess Eff Chron...
Several months ago a tipster suggested that I keep an eye on the FAMSF board of trustees. It was a...
at least book tours at airports cut down on cab expenses
Kottke (and Buzzfeed! and the New York Times!) on virtual book tours, which would have been the more appropriate option for the guy hawking his September 11 historical fiction / conspiracy theory tome at McCarran Interational Airport in Las Vegas last week. He was walking up to people and handing out these glossy bookmarks that must have cost him a buck a pop, the poor guy.
Gothamist's Week in Rock, Volume 35
Bookeaters Return! What started off as an excellent concert lineup just got better and better as the date approached. The additions of Spoon's Britt Daniel and Kevin Drew were a bonus treat. Music, reading and charity aside, perhaps the biggest wow moment was show headliner Jim James' new closely cropped haircut. The My Morning Jacket front man sheared his trademark Muppet locks since the last time we've seen him about. Not that it affected the music in any way, which nearly stole the show from some other very capable performers. Check out more thoughts and pics at BV and Stereogum, and check out our interview with 826NYC's Sarah Vowell. (pic via Muzicspy's flickr) Feist Fills the Pool Miss Feist has had a busy week around these parts. Aside from the aforementioned Bookeaters reading and the previously posted Letterman appearance, she headlined a sold out show at McCarren Pool, featuring an opening set by her old friends Broken Social Scene (mostly performing songs off Kevin Drew's new album) and more recent pals Grizzly Bear. Taking into consideration that her scorching hit (and Verizon jingle) My Moon My Man was our jam of the summer, this was a fine way to take the pool season into the home stretch. Three more shows planned through September (maybe ever?) with Modest Mouse, Gza and the Chemical Brothers closing out the season. The Boss Still Rules I doubt a fan would expect anything less from the man who now has well over three decades of hits under his belt, but the new single off his upcoming album, Magic is a an absolute killer track. Radio Nowhere debuted this week as an free iTunes download and it's one of his best songs in a long long time. He’ll be hitting the road this fall with the good old E-Street Band for the first time in five years, taking two passes through the area. They’ll be at Continental Airlines October 9th and 10th and MSG the 17th and 18th (not CMJ affiliated, we assume…). While you wait for the return, check out this classic video of the boys performing Thunder Road in ‘76. I guess we’ll see if they still got it in a couple months...
PowerPoint Pecha Kucha
We know that PowerPoint can be a tool of productivity, and hopefully everyone's embraced the idea that constraints are conducive to creativity. The next natural step, then, is Pecha Kucha, introducing the constraint of PowerPoint presentations that are limited to twenty slides shown for twenty seconds each.
Get to the PowerPoint in 20 Slides Then Sit the Hell Down is Wired's take on the presentation format, written up by Dan Pink. But far more impressively, he's created his own presentation in the format, and it's a smart and thoughtful look at the emotional expressiveness of signage in public spaces.
Pink's presentation is a delight. For my own tastes, a well-rehearsed slideshow should go a lot faster than one slide every twenty seconds, but I realize this is still much better than most presentations where people linger on a single slide for 5 minutes and read you all the bullet points. And for Pink's images, the timing works almost perfectly. (When I spoke at OSCON in 2006, I did 72 slides in 12 minutes, which I think works out to about one every ten seconds. Any slower than that and I think I would start to bore people.)
- Last week I wrote a bit more about Office Tools of Expression
- 20×2 is a long-running Austin tradition tied to the SXSW festival where twenty speakers answer the same question with two minutes each for their answers.
Guides: JavaScript Coding Guidelines for Mac OS X
Provides an overview of the JavaScript language, its object-oriented features, and coding best practices.
Alleged Apple event outline touches on just about every rumor
Almost 24 hours until showtime, and a outline of the event that just about everyone is skeptical of sees the light of day. Coincidence?
Strike Promised By Thousands of Taxi Drivers
The New York Taxi Workers Alliance said that it definitely will strike on Wednesday and Thursday to protest the city's plans to put new technology, including GPS systems, in all taxi cabs. NYTWA spokeswoman Bhairavi Desai said, "Leave the car parked at home or at the garage. No yellow cabs for hire." The city has said that the new technology, which also includes the option to pay by credit, is useful; for instance, the GPS would be able to help passengers track down lost items in cabs. However, Desai, whose organization has about 7,000 members (there are 44,000 taxi drivers in the city), said, "The Taxi and Limousine Commission is trying to ram this new technology down our throats. It's heavily priced, unnecessary and most of all it's been unproven to be operable in the streets of New York City." NYC Hack blogger Melissa Plaut had an op-ed in the NY Times yesterday, outlining why the technology is something drivers would be better off without: The GPS doesn't provide actual navigation, it's not accessible to the driver (it's in the partition for the passengers), it costs about $3000-4000 to install, and when it breaks down, the meter stops. And when we asked a driver who had one of the systems in his cab if he liked it, he sighed and said, "It's horrible." Still, there's been some opposing views from other taxi workers' groups. The NY State Federation of Taxi Drivers's Fenando Mateo said, "When there's no reason to fight, why fight? Ninety percent of the cars will be working, and the 10% who don't are going to be the losers." At any rate, the city's Office of Emergency Management is drawing up contingency plans in case of a strike. Photograph of taxi sign by Triborough on Flickr
September 3, 2007
Music Subscriptions, DRM, and iPods
Music producer and would-be savior of the record industry Rick Rubin, in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine:
“You would subscribe to music,” Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. “You’d pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you’d like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home.”
The iPod as we know it might be obsolete in such a world, but why couldn’t the Walkman-like device that plays the subscription music be an iPod? I’ve been saying this for years: just because Apple hasn’t engaged in subscription-based plans for music yet doesn’t mean they couldn’t. And if they did it now, theirs would be more popular than all existing ones combined.
But here’s the problem with subscription-based music: you can’t have it without DRM. Because without DRM, what’s to stop someone from subscribing for one month, downloading every song they might ever want, then unsubscribing but keeping the music? And the thing with DRM is that people hate it, because it restricts what they can do and where they can play their music. To argue that subscriptions are the future of music is to argue that DRM is the future of music, and the evidence points to the contrary.
Less Than a Year After CBGB Closes, Hilly Kristal Dies
Just as we were looking over amNewYork's story on CBGB, sad news has come in. Hilly Kristal, who opened the club in 1973, died yesterday. Battling cancer for some time, the 75 year old had quite the last year -- seeing many celebrate his legendary club upon its closing last October. Kristal, also a singer/songwriter, opened the club while it was only $600/month to rent out and he had visions of showcasing country, bluegrass and blues bands. We all know the history of the now vacant venue, and it's hard to separate the man from it. So what's going on with Kristal's former haunt these days? It's been gutted and "walls plastered with yellowing flyers and holes in the floor where the bar and stage once stood" are all that remain. Apparently the air inside still reeks of its rock n' roll past (mold, stale beer, cigarettes). In spite of that, the space will rent for around $200 per square foot - a far cry from what it rented for 34 years ago. So far there have been inquiries from art galleries, retail shops and high end companies, but no takers yet. As for the former tenant, there were talks of reopening the venue in another (lower rent) city, but will Kristal's death mean that CBGB is officially gone, too? A private memorial service is planned. A public memorial will be held at a later date. Contributions in Hilly's honor may be made in his name to the American Cancer Society or to the Hilly Kristal Foundation for Musicians and Artists (168 Second Avenue, PMB 207, New York, NY 10003). Expect to see some fresh flowers (and maybe even graffiti eulogies) outside of the former CBGB. Photo of Hilly Kristal by Spencer Drate.
Using del.icio.us as a Writing Summarization Tool
Jeremy Zawodny:
It occurs to me that with a sufficient number of people bookmarking an article and selecting a short passage from it, I have a useful way to figure out what statement(s) most resonated with those readers (and possibly a much larger audience). It’s almost like a human powered version of Microsoft Word’s document summarization feature.
I’ve noticed the same thing: When something I write gets linked to by enough people, a consensus usually forms regarding which is the best or core passage. And it’s often not what I would have chosen myself.
The New York Times Rick Rubin Piece
In case you missed it, the Rick Rubin profile everyone's talking about, from Lynn Hirschberg who also brought us the legendary Suge Knight profile back in the day, and had people asking why non hip-hop journalists were doing the best...
Test::Harness 2.99_01
As most of you know, Andy Armstrong, Eric Wilhelm, Leif Eriksen and myself have been working hard to get the new version of Test::Harness out there (Michael Peters, also, but that's for TAP archives for Smolder). You can now download Test::Harness 2.99_01 from the CPAN.Read more of this story at use Perl.
Camera in the Kitchen: Resto
As much as we’d like to laud Belgian newcomer Resto for the things it does right—the beer selection, the delectably fatty pork toasts with deviled eggs, and the pommes frites—Gothamist left late on a recent Tuesday night feeling disgruntled and reluctant to return. An hour and fifteen minute wait for the table became an hour and a half, but we took the busyness to be an indication of a worthy wait. After passing some time at a nearby bar, we headed back to Resto where the hostess noted the weekdays were consistently this busy. Upon sitting, we scanned the meat-heavy menu and decided on the pork toast appetizer, the best and most timely part of the meal. Three fatty, 2x2” slabs of pork were topped with sliced hard boiled egg and a creamy whipped yolk, every greasy crumble worth savoring. Then the wait began.
Checking It Off
Life lists are really in vogue right now. It's a pretty good fad if you ask me. I decided to go back to my 43things list because I recently did a major thing on my list: finish a screenplay. The satisfaction of writing THE END was really incredible. There is so much more in store.When I revisited my list, I realized that I had done more things on my list than I had thought:
-Get a tattoo
-Learn to ride a bikeI am going to rewrite this list because I have many new goals. The more you accomplish on your list, the more you want to do. When I create a new one, I will let you know.
One big thing I want to do is drive cross country. When I say drive cross country, I mean a drive where I am actually behind the wheel! The Frugal Traveler in the Times had a great article about his trip. It inspired me.
Share your lists (or just a few things on it).
dave winer on twitter
By way of followup to that last post, can I say that Dave Winer has the best Twitter background image + user icon combination ever?
A Toot and a Snore
Fantastic find: bootleg recordings from a 1974 jam session with John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
CouchDB
"Cluster Of Unreliable Commodity Hardware " - experimental REST/Javascript/JSON/erlang/mapreduce non-relational database.
wnyc's john cage celebration
New York's WNYC is celebrating the birthday of John Cage (9/5) with 24 hours and 33 minutes of special programming, carried both on its HD Radio channel and online. "24:33 features rare audio drawn from the WNYC archives over the past 40 + years, including live performances and interviews with Cage — as well as Cage tributes, commentary, and performances by some of the most influential musicians of our time."
I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones. -- John Cage
September 2, 2007
Not Exactly Jaws on Rockaway Beach
That shark that washed up on Rockaway Beach yesterday and briefly caused lifeguards to close the beach was not much of a threat. The shark, which seems to have beached itself, was pushed back into the water by a beachgoer and was seen swimming offshore for about an hour afterwards. WCBS reports that, according to an Animal Department Supervisor at the New York Aquarium, the shark was a thresher shark, not known for attacking humans. Its attempts to swim onto shore are considered abnormal so the shark could have been sick. In fact, a 10-year-old witness said, "It was like freaking out. Its tail was flopping everywhere...Maybe it got separated from its family. It looked sick." A parks department spokesperson said that sharks aren't native to New York's waters, but are sometimes caught in fishing nets and released nearby. While thresher sharks may not attack humans, we sure wouldn't want a 6' shark nipping at our toes while in the water. Update: We just got this statement from the Parks Department:
At 6:00 a.m. this morning a dead thresher shark (five foot in length) washed ashore at Beach 113th Street in Rockaway, Queens. It is presumed that, despite yesterday's rescue efforts, this was the same shark seen yesterday in this location. At that time the Parks Department lifeguards appropriately closed that section of the beach for most of the day, as the shark could be seen swimming just off shore for several hours. All beaches opened today at 10:00 a.m. and will be open until 6:00 p.m. this evening. "It is now safe to go back into the water and we invite beachgoers to enjoy a picture-perfect Labor Day weekend at the Rockaway Beach," said Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "A portion of the beach was closed yesterday for public safety reasons as the citizens, the Urban Park Rangers, and the Riverhead Foundation worked to save one of the most respected creatures of the deep. The Parks Department welcomes beachgoers to Rockaway Beach and all of the city beaches and pools for the last two days of the 2007 swimming season."Here's information on the last 2007 summer season of city beaches and pools. Photo of shark on Rockaway Beach from WNBC
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