Monthly Archive for December, 2007

Letterman Makes Deal With Striking Writers

Break­ing news from late-night TV land:

Let­ter­man Makes Deal With Strik­ing Writers

“David Let­ter­man has secured a deal with the strik­ing Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca that will allow him to resume his late-night show on CBS next Wednes­day with his team of writ­ers on board…”

Most of the late-night com­e­dy shows are going back on the air Jan­u­ary 2, how­ev­er CBS will be the only one with writ­ers. I still can’t fath­om how John Stew­art and Stephen Col­bert are going to cope with­out their writ­ing staff – my fear is that both shows will be slight­ly more awk­ward ver­sions of Char­lie Rose, (if that’s pos­si­ble), with bet­ter pro­duc­tion values.

Kudos to Dav­e’s nego­tia­tors, and let’s hope that the big­ger com­pa­nies step for­ward and offer to work out some­thing rea­son­able as well.

People David LettermanUPDATE: Dave kept the beard! This pho­to is from the tap­ing of his Jan­u­ary 2 show.

December 28, 2007 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

Happy Christmas!

Santa-Vespa

December 25, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

On Turning 30


Hap­py Birth­day, John! from Pirata718 on Vimeo.

Decem­ber 22 came and went, and now I’m 30 years old. I can’t even com­pre­hend that sta­tis­tic. Grow­ing up, I fig­ured that I would have accom­plished so much by that age – it seemed so far away. Today, 40 seems ridicu­lous­ly far away. There is prob­a­bly some kind of les­son in that.

Con­tin­ue read­ing ‘On Turn­ing 30’

December 24, 2007 » Tags: , , , . » 0 Comments

The Mitchell Report

The Mitchell Report was released today, con­firm­ing what every­body already knows – base­ball play­ers use per­for­mance enhanc­ing drugs. It is inter­est­ing to note that while no promi­nent cur­rent Red Sox play­ers are list­ed, more than a dozen Yan­kees, past and present, were among the 80-plus play­ers identified.

Hmmm… (twoosh)

December 13, 2007 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

Google Maps: Boston Street View

It was announced yes­ter­day that Google Maps’ Street View comes to more cities, includ­ing Boston. So nat­u­ral­ly, I looked up our pre­vi­ous apart­ment in Cam­bridge, MA. The weird thing is that myself, and our friends/upstairs neigh­bors Tyler and Sarah are pictured!

Creepier!

We’re hav­ing our mov­ing sale, and that’s my Saab in the fore­ground. I can prob­a­bly peg the date tak­en to August 11th or 12th, 2007 – the week­end before we moved.

Click the pho­to to see notes, look at it big, or check it out on Google Maps your­self. I am a lit­tle creeped out.

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December 12, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Two essential iPhoto Plugins

There are two iPho­to plu­g­ins that I couldn’t live with­out – Flick­r­Ex­port, and Key­word Man­ag­er.

FlickrExport

If you like pho­tos, Flickr, and OS X, and don’t know about Flick­r­Ex­port, then shame on you. It’s a nice lit­tle plu­g­in that will let you eas­i­ly export pho­tos from iPho­to to Flickr. It con­verts your assigned iPho­to key­words to Flickr tags, enables you to add titles and descrip­tions, and choose to either add the pho­tos to a new set, an exist­ing set, or none at all – all with­in the dia­log window.

The one rub is that it is made by an inde­pen­dent devel­op­er, Fras­er Speirs, who has to feed his fam­i­ly – so, he charges about $25. A nom­i­nal price for some­thing that has saved me hun­dreds of hours, and enriched my Flickr experience.

Con­tin­ue read­ing ‘Two essen­tial iPho­to Plugins’

December 11, 2007 » Tags: , , , , , , . » 0 Comments

Playing Around with the Google Chart API

I’ve been play­ing around with the new Google Chart API, released ear­li­er today. The API enables easy cre­ation of charts, dynamically:

The Google Chart API returns a PNG-for­mat image in response to a URL. Sev­er­al types of image can be gen­er­at­ed: line, bar, and pie charts for exam­ple. For each image type you can spec­i­fy attrib­ut­es such as size, col­ors, and labels.

My exam­ple is shown below. I can think of a lot more con­ve­nient meth­ods of cre­at­ing graphs, espe­cial­ly when chartable data is usu­al­ly already in Excel or Num­bers spread­sheets. Still, pret­ty fun to play around with – check out what Bri­an Suda makes of it, on 24ways.

Chart

December 10, 2007 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

AIGA/NY 2007 Holiday Party

AIGA/NY Hol­i­day Par­ty: DANCE/DANCE/DANCE
SUNDAY, 9 DEC ’07 from 6:00–10:00PM // Snacks, drinks, danc­ing, and a live auc­tion by auc­tion­eer­ing expert extra­or­di­naire, John Hodg­man.

I am not a mem­ber (yet), but think­ing about going. It’s worth it just for the wrap­ping paper.

UPDATE: My one pho­to of John Hodg­man is below the fold.

Con­tin­ue read­ing ‘AIGA/NY 2007 Hol­i­day Party’

December 7, 2007 » Tags: , . » 0 Comments

Radiohead covers… ::yawn::

I don’t under­stand why Radio­head is con­sid­ered by many to be one of the best rock bands of all time. Since The Bends, I’ve been bored.

Radio­head cov­er of Joy Division/New Order’s “Cer­e­mo­ny”
Sounds excit­ing, but 30 sec­onds of this made me want to hear the orig­i­nal instead. One does­n’t think of Bernard Sum­n­er’s voice as in the same league as Thom Yorke, but he wins.

Radio­head cov­ers the Smiths’ “The Head­mas­ter Ritual”
Here again, a life­less, list­less cov­er. Thom does an uncon­vinc­ing ape of Moz’s mock-tor­tured cadence that just ends up tor­tur­ing us all.

Go ahead and try to con­vince me otherwise…

December 5, 2007 » Tags: , , . » 0 Comments

Banksy Opening

snuff

This past Sun­day, we attend­ed the Banksy open­ing at the Van­i­na Holasek Gallery in Chelsea. I love Banksy’s work, but it seemed a lit­tle odd to see his sten­ciled work framed and mat­ted in a gallery, with pen­ciled-in price tags labeled on the wall – $30k, $60k, $150k. It seemed a far cry from the street art and sub­ver­sive work that he’s known for.

Still, he’s one of the more inter­est­ing con­tem­po­rary artists out there – Lau­ren Collins has a nice pro­file piece, from The New York­er in May. And, I love his album art­work for Blur’s last LP, in 2003.

More pho­tos, and a video of Banksy’s sub­ver­sive muse­um activ­i­ty below the fold.

Con­tin­ue read­ing ‘Banksy Opening’

December 4, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 1 Comment

24 ways: Transparent PNGs in IE 6

Glad to see 24 ways is back, for some hol­i­day (web dev) cheer! Look for a new arti­cle every day until Xmas:

24 ways: Trans­par­ent PNGs in Inter­net Explor­er 6

Drew McLel­lan kicks off the web com­mu­ni­ty’s advent cal­en­dar 24ways.org, tack­ling a method for alpha-trans­par­ent PNG sup­port in IE6.

When I find some time, I’ll look into mak­ing this site a lit­tle more con­sis­tent in IE6. They’ve also got a nice archive, from pre­vi­ous hol­i­day sea­sons.

December 1, 2007 » Tags: , , , , . » 0 Comments