Category Archives: Culture

Weeked Update: Inconvenient Pirate Sick Day

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Friday: Panera in the ‘burbs, and “An Inconvenient Truth”:http://climatecrisis.net/ at Montclair Theaters. We wondered why Al Gore seemed like such a condescending jerk in the presidential election in 2000, but such an intelligent, passionate politician in this movie. We also wondered if Apple paid out for the “product placement”:http://www.apple.com/hotnews/articles/2006/05/inconvenienttruth/ that made the movie feel, at times, like a long “Think Different”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different commercial. (Probably not, Al Gore is already “on the payroll”:http://www.apple.com/pr/bios/gore.html at Apple.) The movie was very thought-provoking — you should see it.

We drove back home on Bloomfield Avenue through Newark and thought we may have heard a gunshot while waiting at a stoplight. We won’t take that route ever again.

Saturday: Sarah worked while I went to Riviera to pirate wifi and people-watch. Moved the blog over to a DreamHost “one-click install”:http://wiki.dreamhost.com/index.php/One_Click_Installs setup. This makes upgrading WordPress one-click when new versions come out. I also got rid of a lot of old, crufty files left over from the Movable Type days, which was “over a year ago”:http://kennsarah.net/2005/02/12/migrated-to-wordpress/ now. Spent the afternoon working on a household budget application that I’ve been trying to write. It’s like a spreadsheet, but lets you save different budget versions so you can do what-if scenarios. I should have written this a long time ago.

Sunday: The Village Church. Brunch in the “Tasting Room at Philip Marie”:http://philipmarie.com/page/vyhp/Private_Rooms.html. John Pa and I discussed some bachelor party plans with “Tom”:http://canaanbound.blogspot.com, which he seemed resistant to. Came home and watched Ray — also good.

Monday: “Sick day” from work, so I slept in while Dina worked some of that therapy dog magic (generally hogging the couch on which I was sleeping). Dinner later that night and Krispy Kreme at our “favorite exit off of Route 81″:http://www.google.com/maps?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=krispy+kreme&near=Clarks+Summit,+PA+18411&radius=0.0&cid=41487795,-75705713,17176720887031646617&li=lmd&ie=UTF8&ll=41.498678,-75.691166&spn=0.058885,0.117073&om=1 in Pennsylvania with the Posegate clan. More Evan photos soon.

On the Radar: Slow Week Edition

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Uninteresting week? Or has Ken been busy? You decide.

* ??Slate??: “The Misunderestimated Man”:http://www.slate.com/id/2100064/fr/podcast/. Fascinating piece about Bush’s “aggressive anti-intellectualism,” viewed through the lens of his relationship with his dad.
* Don’t drink and blog. Some revelers from Portugal day a couple of weeks ago found the Newark blog and “voiced some opinions about the party”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/06/09/portugal-day-celebration/#comments. I’m glad they found the site, but it looks like they were maybe a wee bit tipsy…
* ??Jen Poley??: “Route 34, three liars, road kill, and the truth”:http://jenny.sojourn-of-grace.net/?p=84. Oh, those Poleys…
* ??Jason Fried??: “Getting in too-much touch (interruption is not collaboration)”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/getting_in_toomuch_touch_interruption_is_not_collaboration.php. Being productive isn’t something that just happens. You don’t just sit down and be productive. Real productivity takes time. It’s a process. You make your way into it. Sometimes it takes 15 minutes or a half hour or an hour or more to really get in that zone. And when you’re in that zone you are actually getting real work done.
* ??Mark Liberman??: “PHPEnkoder for WordPress”:http://www.weaselhat.com/phpenkoder/. Ooh, this could help us fight spam for emails posted on the “Village Church site”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com.
* Oh, and check out “these photos”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/tags/owenpesnell/ of Owen Pesnell from “last weekend”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/06/19/weekend-update-revenge-of-the-babysat/.

On the Radar: It’s not you, it’s me

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* ??Alissa Clark??: “New York Blessings”:http://www.relevantmagazine.com/life_article.php?id=7212. On love letters for cities.
* “WeatherIcon”:http://www.viper007bond.com/wordpress-plugins/weathericon/. I wanted to use a widget for weather on “Everything Newark”:http://blog.newarker.info, but I realized that my theme, “K2″:http://getk2.com, disappointingly, still doesn’t support plugins.
* ??John Gruber??: “Macworld Expo 2006 in Review”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/mwsf_2006. John mentions in passing that you can mount a WebDAV drive in Mac OS X. Seeing that I have 26 GB (!) available on my web-hosting account (“Dreamhost rocks, people”), I thought I might try to investigate that as a backup strategy.
* Play anything on any operating system with “VLC Player”:http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. This thing is awesome. Schmoo and I were set to watch a movie on the Thinkpad-from-work (the lappy is in the shop right now), and I realized that my computer didn’t have software to play it. A quick Google search for “open source watch DVD” led me to this player, which I have also installed on the Mac. A quick download, slapped the DVD back in the drive, and it just worked. Brilliant.
* ??Hugh MacLeod??: “A man’s heart”:http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/002913.html. So true.
* ??Jeffrey Zeldman??: “Silent phone, secret phone”:http://www.zeldman.com/2006/06/12/silent-phone-secret-phone/. Best snarky Verizon complaint, ever. As far as I can tell, the problem involves phone lines, so you can see why it would take one of America’s largest phone companies five days to tackle a brain teaser like that.
* ??Matt Mullenweg??: “Beeping”:http://photomatt.net/2006/06/13/beeping/ Your assignment today is to take a walk around your blog, application, website, whatever you work with on a daily basis, and allow yourself to be supremely annoyed with the beeping smoke detector in the corner.
* ??Wired Magazine??: “Judging Apple Sweatshop Charge”:http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,71138-0.html?tw=wn_index_3. Steve Jobs’ Think Different campaign celebrated labor leaders like Gandhi, who used strikes as a form of civil protest, and Ceasar Chavez, who organized poor, migrant farm workers. But a British newspaper at the weekend published a rather shocking report about the factories in China that make his company’s iPods.
* “Quinn Tetris for the Mac”:http://www.simonhaertel.de/quinn/home (“via John”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2006/june#mon-12-quinn). Free, open source, and oh-so-pretty version of Tetris for the Mac.
* ??Angela Wu??: “How I got here: blogger break-up”:http://hereisangela.com/2006/06/15/how-i-got-here/ All those times you had “outages,” you never explained yourself, and I started to feel insecure. I know you didn’t mean it to be like that, and I still think you’re a good bloghost. You’ll be great for someone after me, I just know it. Maybe I’ve just outgrown you. Maybe it’s me, not you… Reset your bookmarks to hereisangela.com.
* Breitbart: “Microsoft’s Gates to Leave Daily Role”:http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/15/D8I8SD100.html (“via Jason”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/gates_plans_his_exit_from_microsoft_whats_next.php) Bill Gates is stepping down from Microsoft. WOW.
* ??John Gruber??: counterpoint, “And Oranges”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/06/and_oranges. ??Mark Pilgrim??: counter-counterpoint, “Juggling oranges”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/16/juggling-oranges. The tennis ball has been bouncing between two of my favorite bloggers over this matter of open formats. Pilgrim’s argument — proprietary and DRM formats will, one day, trap _everything you’ve ever enjoyed about your computer_ (music, video, photos, email, documents, etc.) if you let them — has been compelling and got me playing with Linux again. Gruber’s responses to this have been frustrating — he still won’t address the point of lock-in head-on. I wonder if Mark’s ultimate statement about DRM hasn’t already been best stated in his 2001 blog entry, “My crush on Spyro, what Flash animations remind me of, and what the past will look like someday”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2001/07/29/my_crush_on_spyro_what_flash_animations_remind_me_of_and_what_the_past_will_look_like_someday.

Weekend Update: Cars, Portugal Day

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Friday was “Cars”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5473455, “Cars”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5471976, “Cars”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5459668, “Cars”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10004076-cars/, “Cars”:http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/cars/. And, Sarah and I were pleased to discover, it’s as good as they say it is. Ka-chow!

Saturday, Sarah and I celebrated our fourth anniversary (woot!) at “Maize”:http://www.rthotel.com/maize.html at the Robert Treat Hotel in Newark. We had actually attempted to go to Maize when we weren’t living in the city, two years ago. We got as far as getting dressed up, jumping in the car, and getting on the highway, but then Sarah looked at me and said, “I’m pretty tired.” And I said, “Me, too. Let’s go to Pizza Hut.”

This time around, it was much better (and closer) than Pizza Hut. The food, ambiance and service was excellent. Our waiter — who asked for free veterinary advice, but was witty and prompt — was impressed that we “still had things to talk about” after 4 years of marriage. Here’s to more great conversation for the next 50 years.

Sunday, was, inescapably, “Portugal Day”:http://blog.newarker.info/2006/06/09/portugal-day-celebration/ in the Ironbound. The Portugal Day celebration actually extends through the week and culminates in a two-day festival two blocks from our apartment. It’s both an extravaganza of Portuguese & Brazilian culture, and an object lesson in poor life choices.

Half-a-million people funnel into our mostly-quiet neighborhood for barbeque, sangria, and Brazilian pop music. It’s not all family friendly, though, as it’s not uncommon to find someone who’s had more than his fair share of piña coladas passed out on the sidewalk. Last year, Sarah and I passed a man who was sleeping like a baby on the curb in the hot sun — we grimaced to think of what HIS hangover was going to feel like.

With Sarah’s brother in town and Ferry Street having been taken over by revelers, we didn’t even try to go to church in the city (though I’m looking forward to the “podcast”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/). Instead, we walked up to see the endless crowds and searched for a “Pelé”:http://www.time.com/time/time100/heroes/profile/pele01.html onesie for “little E”:http://flickr.com/photos/posegate/157653688/in/pool-evanposegate/. Once you’ve seen one festival, though, “you’ve seen them all”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/tags/portugalday/. After Russ left, Sarah and I crashed at home so I could work on a presentation for Monday.

On the Radar: Linux, Chicago, Space Quest

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* ??Overheard in New York??: “That Really Gets My Goat”:http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/005665.html (“via Angela”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/06/common-knowledge.html). That has got to be one of the funniest Overheard moments I’ve ever read.
* Google Maps “Send to Phone”:http://local.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=32461 and the “Firefox Extension”:http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/sendtophone/index.html. Send information (“even from maps”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/acmelab/120622272) to your phone directly from Google. This is freaking awesome.
* ??Mark Pilgrim??’s “recent declaration”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks to switch to Linux has got me looking at playing with Linux again. I decided to skip the “Powerbook installation from hell”:http://joh.deworks.net/powerbook/ and just create a partition on my Thinkpad from work. Impressions coming soon, but, overall, “linux gives us the power we need to crush those who oppose us”:http://ubergeek.tv/article.php?pid=54.
* ??Dean Allen??: “Things That Happened”:http://www.cardigan.com/2001/03-18/. Dean Allen’s old Cardigan Industries blog, dead since 2001, still has a lot great entries, many of which are too dirty to highlight here. ;-)
* ??Killing the Buddha??: “Jesus and I Broke Up”:http://www.killingthebuddha.com/confession/jesusandi.htm. I’m frighteningly single. At least once a week I hit the religion section of the local bookstore, pick up the first title that catches my eye and take it home. Rumi one night. Buddha the next. I know it sounds cheap, but each time I hope it’s love. It never is.
* Wikipedia: “Space Quest”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Quest. My favorite video game growing up! Rumors are circulating that Sierra will be releasing a new compliation of these games come December, which is good because their 15^th^ anniversary game is now going for over $100 on eBay (it retailed at $40 a few years ago).
* ??Corissa Poley??: “Identity issues…continued”:http://cori.sojourn-of-grace.net/?p=90. Cori doesn’t exist — coulda fooled me.
* ??NPR??: “Life After Foster Care: A Tale of Two Boys”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5443614http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5443614. These two kids — both 13 years old in 1994, both separated from their families, troubled and already acting up — told me with astonishing innocence and optimism about their lives in the group home and what their lives were like before they got there. I wondered what happened to them after that and what they made of their years in foster care.
* ??Eric Blair??: “Google Calendar and PHPiCalendar”:http://www.raoli.com/archives/2006/04/000561.php. The Village Church “calendar”:http://villagechurchnyc.com drama continues. My “brilliant idea”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/05/22/rethinking-the-tvc-calendar/ to use Google calendar has been working. I set up a cron job to pull in a file from Gcal, got the template to look right, uploaded the files, created a Gmail account, and created the events. All that, only to find that Gcal exports all events as “Private” even though they’re tagged as public. Here’s the part where I create a wonky “regular expression”:http://www.regular-expressions.info/ solution!
* ??Luckymonk??: “About the Luckymonk”:http://luckymonk.com/pages/contact. Best description of Chicago, ever. The second best was when I asked “Graeme”:http://www.myspace.com/graemehinde why he left Chicago to move to New York. He said, “You know, after three years of dating a girl, that you’ve either got to marry her or break up? Well, I wasn’t ready to marry Chicago.”
* ??Angela Wu??: ” A religious exemption for same sex marriage”:http://hereisangela.blogspot.com/2006/06/religious-exemption-for-same-sex.html. Sarah and I have wondered at the whole “legislating morality” issue before, and there seem to be two prevailing conservative schools of thought. Sam recently “touched on”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/series/mark/2006/06/the-end-of-the-world-is-near/ this in passing: let the civic leaders stave off the inevitable decline of society. Angela’s approach — let the country do what it wants but let the church preserve its identity (and, perhaps, clean up the mess) — is much more laissez faire. Which creates a more just society, and is that the point?

On the Radar: Mostly Apple Geekery

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* Google Video: “George Lucas in Love”:http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5058529870025933880&q=George+Lucas+in+Love (“via Cori”:http://cori.sojourn-of-grace.net/?p=84). “Augh! My Hand!” “John Bell”:http://www.effluxity.com/ showed this to me on VHS when we were roommates Back in the Day. Glad to see it made it to the web.
* ??Everything2??: “A Simple Way to Make the Best Coffee You’ve Ever Had”:http://www.everything2.org/?node_id=1181742. So, after about a year from first having received it from “Jen & Jode”:http://sojourn-of-grace.net/, I’ve started to use my French Press. I love it — four cups of excellent coffee, no stupid gurgling machine with a ginormous carafe to clean out. Thanks again, Poleys!
* ??Gamespot??: “LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy”:http://www.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/legostarwarstheoriginaltrilogy/index.html. Speaking of George Lucas, there’s a sequel coming for the Lego Star Wars game. Sarah and I were totally ADDICTED to this game for four weeks while we played it through entirely. I can’t wait for the new one.
* ??Mark Pligrm??: “Bye, Apple”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/05/30/bye-apple. Mark ditches Apple in favor of an IBM desktop + Linux. I dunno — I played with Linux a lot in college and found myself screwing around with it more than I was getting work done. Besides, Mac OS and Windows XP both work with my iPod nano. *Update:* Mark “follows up”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/06/02/when-the-bough-breaks on his decision to walk away from Apple. His argument is compelling, but I’m not so sure going pure-Linux is. Maybe it’s time to start playing with this “Ubuntu”:http://www.ubuntu.com/ everyone’s been “talking about”:http://lunapark6.com/?p=1235.
* ??Engadget??: “Jobs’ glass elevator locks in group customers”:http://www.engadget.com/2006/05/29/jobs-glass-elevator-locks-in-group-customers/ (“via Slashdot”:http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/31/1319243&from=rss). There’s a joke about first-gen Apple technology here, I just _know_ it.
* ??Alex Basko??: “Rustic Vacation: Definition & Introduction”:http://alexbasko.blogspot.com/2006/06/rustic-vacation-definition.html. (RV – cell phone) + fly fishing = sanity
* ??Heather Armstrong??: “He learned this while visiting the University of Wisconsin”:http://www.dooce.com/archives/daily_photo/06_02_2006.html. We need to teach this to “Dina”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/143197375/.
* ??Steve Smith??: “Jackson Smith at Ordered List”:http://jackson.orderedlist.com/. Now THAT’s what I call a baby site (see also “Jai & Beck’s”:http://brinkofski.com/annie, “Russ & Sarah’s”:http://evan.posegate.org)! I’m taking notes for the day we get to make our own announcements. ;-)
* Wikipedia: “Microsoft Access”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Access. I’ve been using MS Access at work again. Access gets a lot of disdain from REAL programmers because, well, it’s a dumbed-down version of SQL + a dumbed-down version of Visual Basic. But, you can do some pretty tricked-out things with Access in a relatively short timeframe. Someone should register pimpmyaccess.com. :)

On the Radar: Apple Retail, Vendetta vs. Da Vinci, and WordPress Tweaks

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* ??NorthJersey??: “Citigroup pulling plug on its AT&T Cash Rewards Card”:http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjczN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyOSZmZ2JlbDdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5NjkzODY4NyZ5cmlyeTdmNzE3Zjd2cWVlRUV5eTI. Wow, directly relevant to a “brief conversation”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/05/20/on-the-radar-2/#comments about finances on this site, it looks like the AT&T card is now, officially, too good to be true.
* ??The New Yorker??: “Heaven Can Wait”:http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/?060529crci_cinema (“via Alissa”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=324). Awesome, snarky review of the sucky Da Vinci code. It’s amazing that this movie has garnered such vilification. Is it because it’s ratio of quality to marketing dollars is so low?
* ??Wired Magazine??: “The Resurrection of Al Gore”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.05/gore.html. Funny, I just read an article in another magazine that said Al lost the election largely because his handlers told him to marginalize the environment — the one true issue that Gore is passionate about — in his platform against Bush. Yeah, I think if he sounded less like a robot, he would have scored some extra votes, but I don’t think Bush won the election on the basis of his personality. *Bonus*: out today, NPR takes a look at the art and science of Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5428154.
* ??Fortune Magazine??: “Real Estate Survival Guide”:http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/03/news/economy/realestateguide_fortune/index.htm. Fascinating series of articles from Fortune about the impending market correction. A lot of people got in over their heads with the real estate bubble, taking on massive debts in exotic mortgages on property that isn’t worth what they paid for it. The crisis will occur when those mortgages (such as interest-only loans) turn into “real” mortgages and double the monthly payment for a lot of people. It won’t be pretty.
* YouTube: “CNBC Interviews Steve Jobs”:http://youtube.com/watch?v=y6BFhRkUJEI&search=apple,%205th%20avenue (“via John”:http://daringfireball.net/linked/2006/may#tue-23-cnbc). CNBC grills Jobs on Apple’s retail strategy, growth, and even the rumored iPhone. A bit weird to see Steve not totally in control of a media situation. :)
* ??New York Times??: “Apple, a Success at Stores, Bets Big on Fifth Avenue”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/19/technology/19apple.html. In retrospect, success has a way of looking inevitable. But there was considerable skepticism at the outset about what Apple was doing. And others have failed; Gateway closed its retail stores two years ago.
* ??Signal vs. Noise??: “Is Don Norman right about Google?”:http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/is_don_norman_right_about_google.php. Matt writes up some interesting thoughts on organizations, innovation, and what the intersection of those two things looks like for Google.
* ??Joe Tan??: “WordPress Flickr Post Bar”:http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/wp-flickr-post-bar/. Joe provides a WordPress plugin that lets you post your Flickr photos into blog entries with a helpful upload bar. I used it for “this entry”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/05/20/how-sarah-topped-the-philharmonic/, and it saved a bit of time flipping back and forth from our Flickr acocunt.
* ??WordPress Widgets??: “Drop Down Archives”:http://widgets.wordpress.com/2006/05/23/drop-down-archives/. The XHTML is not quite valid, but a nice little widget that gives you a drop-down of that growing list of archive months. I used it to tidy up this site a bit: our sidebar was becoming a monster, and I didn’t want to devote so much real-estate to links that weren’t getting many clicks. I also shortened the number of blogs we’re displaying on the homepage — less is more.
* ??Metaphilm??: “V for Vindictive”:http://metaphilm.com/philm.php?id=475_0_2_0. ??Jim Rovira?? takes an incisive look at V for Vendetta against the backdrop of the Wachowski’s previous power vs. freedom dialectic in the Matrices. Interesting reading — I think maybe I’ll go see the movie now. :)
* ??Tyler Hall??: “How To Backup Your Mac Intelligently”:http://www.sitening.com/blog/2006/05/23/how-to-backup-your-mac-intelligently/ (“via Lifehacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/backup/backup-your-mac-the-smart-way-176314.php). We don’t have a good backup solution right now. I just spent an hour pulling data off of Sarah’s old IBM 570 laptop (which is now officially retired) and onto the Powerbook. I do have a backup of our music and documents on an external hard drive that’s at least a month old, but, beyond that, we don’t have a good incremental solution.
* ??John Gruber??: “Confidence Game”:http://daringfireball.net/2006/05/confidence_game. Gruber analyzes Apple’s hitting on all cylinders in the context of Microsoft’s lackluster performance — at least in terms of products. It’s a great article, but if Microsoft were really coming unglued, how is it that they’re returning profits at a growing rate?

On the Radar: Massive Hollywood Snore

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* So, you’re digging through your start menu trying to find that application you want to launch to get your work done, but you forget where it is. On a Mac, you’d be using “QuickSilver”:http://quicksilver.blacktree.com, but what about on a PC? Enter “Launchy”:http://www.launchy.net/. Hit Ctrl + Space, type the name of your app, and — boom — it launches. Sweet. (“via Lifehacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/keyword-launcher/download-of-the-day-launchy-172527.php)
* “NetNewsWire 2.1 Released”:http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/changenotes/netnewswire2.1.php. Syncing with NewsGator, performance enhancements and bugfixes: the best news reader for the Mac just got better.
* “Jode is psyched”:http://existential-stillborn.net/?p=3 about the “Moleskine Bible”:http://www.esv.org/blog/2006/04/journaling.bible.coming (“so is Alissa”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=309) and links over to a “web 2.0 eBible”:http://ebible.com/ application set to launch whenever. They’ve even “got a Typo-powered blog”:http://blog.ebible.com/, but aren’t really saying _what_ it will be. Hm.
* “Google Trends”:http://google.com/trends?q=newark&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all is out and provides very basic tracking on search terms. At first, I thought this was huge (online marketers _drool_ over statistics like this), but then I saw that they’re not providing any numbers — just graphing trends. (“via LifeHacker”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/google/google-morning-google-trends-173038.php)
* “Alissa notes”:http://www.alissaclark.com/?p=319 that the Da Vinci Code movie just sucks. I lean towards the church on the issues of Dan Brown’s stirring up the Gnostic gospels debate (our pastor “just podcasted about this”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/2006/05/the-life-of-jesus-christ-from-afar/ if you want to hear some defense of that argument), so I can’t say I’m sorry. But you know when Tom Hanks starts making fun of the marketing machine behind the movie, like he did on NPR’s “Wait, Wait — Don’t Tell Me”:http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=35&prgDate=05-13-2006&view=storyview, that it’s just another massively hyped Hollywood snore.
* “Slashdot reports”:http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot?m=5413 that the sequel to my favorite game ever, ever, ever will be available on the Nintendo Wii, and it “looks totally awesome”:http://media.revolution.ign.com/media/748/748545/imgs_1.html. ;-)
* Apple’s got “a new MacBook out”:http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html which I totally want (can you believe I only got my 12″ PowerBook G4 a year ago?), and a new store on Fifth Avenue which “looks incredible”:http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/05/18/pictures/index.php. Anyone want to go to the store this weekend?
* Speaking of the PowerBook, I love “this photo of us”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/82312386@N00/52530035/ that Tom took of us at the Poleys.
* ??Sam Anderson?? for ??Slate??: “By the Power of Grayskull!”:http://www.slate.com/id/2141626/ Hilarious reflections on a show I used to love while growing up.
* “JGNash”:http://jgnash.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Road_Map is an interesting cash management and budgeting application with a miserable name. It stores its data in an open XML format and, since it runs on Java, is cross-platform. I’ve been using Microsoft Money since 1999 (!) and have, at times, wrestled with being hopelessly dependant on yet another Microsoft application — Money is the only app that I haven’t replaced since moving to a Mac. Switching to a new application would require a huge effort, and very little actual benefit to our household finances, so we’re not making the jump. But, if you’re starting from scratch…
* Speaking of finances, Sarah and I loved the little “filter your selection”:http://www201.americanexpress.com/apply/Fmacfservlet?csi=0/22000/b/2/1258083950/13720005790/20/n&from=0 user interface provided by American Express to figure out which card is best for you.
* ??NPR??: “Beyond Frou Frou”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5200569. Imogen Heap, who is my new favorite self-produced, plays-everything artist (in the vein of Trent Reznor and Billy Corgan) was featured on WXPN’s World Cafe. I first heard of Imogen on Steven Garrity’s “Acts of Volition Radio (Session 24)”:http://actsofvolition.com/archives/2006/april/actsofvolition, which ends with one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Check her out, then “buy her music on iTunes”:http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=83486513&s=143441.
* “Our photos on Flickr”:http://flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/. It took me a LONG time to grok Flickr, which speaks poorly of my ability to commune with the force. Truth be told, I had initially thought I could find photo-hosting software that I could publish here and style myself to produce “wonderful, stunning photo albums”:http://dbowman.com/photos/london05/. Shortly after that, though, I realized that not all of us could be Doug Bowman and “outsourced our site design”:http://kennsarah.net/2005/12/22/facelift/. Only then was I willing to use a photo-sharing service like Flickr — and, man, did I see what I was missing. Very, very cool app. If you’ve got a Mac, check out “Flickr Export”:http://connectedflow.com/flickrexport/ to upload your photos from iPhoto with ease. If you’re the PC-type, check out this article how to “upload your photos from Picasa”:http://www.lifehacker.com/software/digital-photos/upload-images-to-flickr-with-picasa-and-gmail-039095.php.
* “Graeme Hinde on Myspace”:http://www.myspace.com/graemehinde. About two weeks ago I get an email from Myspace telling me I’ve got a new friend request. Thinking it was just spam, I was very pleased to find out that it was, in fact, one of my oldest friends from growing up. He’s landed in an apartment in Brooklyn, so we hooked up for breakfast in the Village. As we caught up on life and mutual acquaintences, it was good to find out that, in many ways, he’s the same Graeme and that I’m the same Ken.
* ??Heather Armstrong??: “Superior cleaning power”:http://www.dooce.com/archives/nubbin/05_19_2006.html. I, too, am in this market demographic.
* ??Mark Pilgrim??: “Digital cameras, again”:http://diveintomark.org/archives/2006/05/19/digital-cameras-again. Mark’s looking to upgrade his camera. I’ve also got a budget item that I’m trying to get through the Walker Household Budget Committee for a “new digital camera”:http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canonsd450/. Our Sony Cybershot has served us well over the past four years that we’ve been married, but, with plans to visit Europe this fall, I’d like something way more portable, with way more battery life, and way more capacity.

Newark in a Nutshell

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A few readers of Our Story have maybe been perplexed my interest in the city of Newark over the past few weeks, and might think our local politics aren’t really interesting to anyone outside our physical borders. I think, though, that if you take a look at what’s happening here, that you might find yourself fascinated by the tale of a city about to experience a resurgence similar to Baltimore and New York. Newark is an underdog that, for decades, has languished in flagging attempts to recover from damage done by the 1967 riots. For the past forty years, the city has been trying to rebuild, heal the wounds of poverty and racism, and recover from its reputation as politically corrupt and a hotbed for crime.

Newark has been “turning a corner” since as far back as 1990 — bringing in new development, arts, and culture — but its growth over the past decade has come in fits and starts as the city continues to struggle with crime and poverty. For many, a change in administration has come to mean a new era for the development of the city.

In 1995, Stanford-educated Rhodes scholar Cory Booker saw the potential of this city, and a place where he could make a difference with his life. He moved into one of the most run-down neighborhoods to identify with the people living there and find out how best he can help turn it around. His social concern developed into a political interest, and, four years ago, he ran for mayor and narrowly lost in a brutal campaign against five-term incumbent Mayor Sharpe James.

But, after staying under the radar and continuing to develop grass-roots support in the city, Booker ran again in the 2006 mayoral race. This time, his 10-year commitment to the poor of this city, his idealism, and his new approach to governing seems to have struck a chord with Newarkers looking for the next phase in the city’s history. Last night, Booker won the mayoral election in a 72% landslide.

??New York Times?? reporter ??Damien Cave?? has summarized this story in an article entitled, “Cory Anthony Booker: On a Path That Could Have No Limits”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/nyregion/10man.html?_r=1&oref=slogin. Booker’s success could mean a real change for the city of Newark: safer streets, better education, and real growth for this city of 280,000 just five miles from Manhattan.

The “Everything Newark”:http://blog.newarker.info blog will continue to follow the story of the historic changes on which the city is about to embark. So, stick around — things are just about to get interesting. :)

Weekend Update: Newark Election, M:I:III, Top of the Rock, and Wearing Thai Food

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Election Day in Newark is tomorrow. Cory Booker “will doubtless win the mayorship”:http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/08/nyregion/08newark.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, a prize he has sought for at least five years, but the big question is whether he will be able to install enough of his team in the city council to be able to stabilize crime, resolve the looming fiscal crisis, and continue the city revitalization that has ever-so-slowly been coming to hopeful Newarkers. More coverage on the “Everything Newark”:http://blog.newarker.info blog.

Friday night was crash night: Sarah and I dragged ourselves out of NYC and into a movie theater in Elizabeth to see Mission: Impossible 3. It was everything we had hoped: fun, fast-paced, and mentally undemanding. “Highly recommended”:http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/mission_impossible_3/.

Saturday was gorgeous, though I spent most of it in a laundromat. Afterward was the much anticipated “unusual date”:http://kennsarah.net/2006/04/11/brag-moment/ at “Top of the Rock”:http://www.topoftherocknyc.com/ODTStatic/site.htm. I had briefly considered something at NJPAC this month, but didn’t want to repeat another performance venue. It was fun, with some “breathtaking views”:http://flickr.com/photos/tags/topoftherock/interesting/ of New York City and New Jersey. If you go, though, skip the “Rock Center Cafe”:http://www.rapatina.com/rockCenterCafe/ — the food, service and view were all underwhelming.

Sunday at the Village Church, where ??Sam Andreades?? showed off his apologetics chops (link forthcoming). Got Thai food with Darin and his son while Sarah and Krissy drove out to yet-another-baby-shower in the suburbs. “Owen celebrated our rare guys-only get together”:http://www.peznet.net/mig/index.php?currDir=./Owen_Sept_to_Dec_05&pageType=image&image=6.jpg by covering himself and everything within a three-foot radius of him in sticky white rice. Worked a bit on tweaking the sermon downloads page (“example”:http://www.villagechurchnyc.com/worship/sermons/2006/01/the-redefinition-of-simon-peter/) for the Village Church to make it more user-friendly and include links for bulletins.