Officially Lucky

Summary of my saturday

Woke up at 5:45am Chilled, ate ramen 7:30am hopped on the bike with Jacqui and rode down to Lincoln Park and the just-opened-for-the-season Green City Market Bought a bunch of delicious food for dinner, watched people and dogs, laid in the grass. Watched Mayor Daley congratulate the operators of the market (it's the 10 year anniversary--just like Ars!) Stopped at Trader Joe's to pick up some items for the mashed potatoes (and wine) Chilled out at home for a while. Around 12:30pm, rode our bikes down to Division/Damen, got some sandwiches from Jimmy Johns and ate lunch in Wicker Park ...

The day there was no news

You can do it

If I can: April 2005: Dec 2006: May 2007: May 2008: It's been a long trip, but I've probably gained 15 years of life and my life has become exponentially better. I was so close to resigning myself, telling myself that there was nothing I could do to change who I am, and with the help of Jacqui and a lot of exercise, better eating habits (frequency and portions), cutting all the non-diet soda out of my life. Nothing will happen overnight. This has been almost a 4 year journey for me and you make little gains every day. You ...

This American Life live

Last night Jacqui and I rode our bikes over to the Kerasotes theater on Western and Maplewood to see a live broadcast version of This American Life. This was unique because the filming was done in New York City and then live broadcast to theaters all over the country. It was really fun and if you haven't seen much of the video version of This American Life, it was a real treat. The place was packed and we got some of the last seats in the upper area. We also ate popcorn and drank giant tubs of diet soda, which ...

Brightkite, easy to use, location based "Twitter" and photos

Long title, huh? I was going to write out a thoughtful post about Brightkite and why I'm kind of warming up to it, but Herschell's vertigo-addled brain did all the work for me: My first text to the brightkite servers was relatively painless and took the same amount of time as it would to tweet it (on Twitter). All I did was send “? LOCATION” to BrightKite’s SMS # and in seconds, BKite (see what I did there? heheh) asked me to verify WHICH LOCATION, in which I replied “1? and PRESTO CHANGE-O! Internets! YAY. Bonus points for the seamless ...

Just for the record

I felt no earthquake and no aftershocks :)

We are Wicker Park Bucktown photo suggestion box

We are Wicker Park Bucktown is an special service area1 with the following mission: to sustain and promote the prosperity and unique qualities of life of the Wicker Park/Bucktown neighborhood and commercial district, whilst preserving its diverse character for the benefit of its residents, visitors, and businesses through the wise and discerning investment of resources to enhance our public ways. They recently held a master planning open house and invited locals to give their suggestions for the area in a really fun photo format. They've uploaded the photos to Flick for anyone to browse through: WBP Open House #1 Suggestion ...

Bike ride on beautiful spring Chicago day

It was 60°F yesterday and it was the perfect opportunity to take Jacqui out and hit the pavement on her new bike. We rode from our place out to Lincoln Park zoo, saw all the animals and then rode down to North Avenue Beach, up and down the lakefront trail, and then took a break and snapped some photos: It was a great day. Jacqui's a little sore, but well worth it. Here's the whole Flick Set (18 photos) and a map of our photos and where they were taken.

Panaracer Tserv Tires

Anyone have any idea where I can buy non-black colored Panaracer Tserv 700Cx32 tires? They come in some cool colors (pink!) but it only seems possible to get them in black stateside. Another option are these Tufo Prestige tires: However, they seem kind of expensive for something I may not end up liking too much. The state of 700Cx32 tires is pretty drab. Black, black, black. Oooh wait this model has a reflective strip! Meh. Maybe I should just bite the bullet and get some 23mm wheels and never look back. The variety of tires for that width are pretty ...

We're a biking team

This past Saturday, Jacqui got herself a new bike. She wrote about our trip to the Village Cycle Shop in Old Town and her new bike, a Gary Fisher Wingra. While there, I picked up a wireless bike computer, because, well, I've wanted one for a while and VCS was having a Spring super sale. When I got it home, it was missing a piece. I got the piece replaced today after work and got it all hooked up. Only problem? The damn thing doesn't work! I've tried aligning the magnet in a billion different ways, moving the sensor up ...

Lee's back wheel was stolen!

(not Lee's actual bike, but a reasonable approximation of what the scene looked like) As Jacqui, Lee, and I left work on Friday, we were talking about biking-related subjects. We opened the front door to our building and walked towards our customary bike rack thing. Lee's bike was U-locked to it, but I noticed something odd. His back wheel was missing! I asked Lee if he had taken his rear wheel up with him earlier (which would've been strange). He told me no and then noticed what I had seen. His rear wheel had been stolen! And not only had ...

Beautiful video submission from 20x2 @ SXSW

20 couples. 20 couches. 2 minutes. The theme is "Is There a Difference?" 20 x 2 : What's The Difference? from photojunkie on Vimeo.

Herschell at Club 720

Jacqui and I went to Club 720 last night to see Herschell and listen to him play his trumpet while some DJ's laid down some music. Pics from Herschell: We had a really fun time! I hear Herschell is hanging out at our apartment right now, I need to get done with work crap and get outta here!

Portland installs their first bike box

Portland has always been an extremely bike-friendly city. It looks to me like they're taking new steps to implement a project called bike boxes. These "boxes" look like color-coded areas within car lanes that add a good bit of padding to the area directly before intersections. Check out this photo for a good illustration (more photos): Flickr photo by BikePortland.org PortlandOnline describes them thusly: The bike box is an intersection safety design to prevent bicycle/car collisions, especially those between drivers turning right and bicyclists going straight. It is a green box on the road with a white bicycle symbol inside. ...

Stupid video of the day: our book case

Weak grab for an idea for a video, but I was struck last night with how much I love our book case and I wanted to show it off, so here it is: Our cool book shelf from Clint Ecker on Vimeo.

Peeking, sleepy cats

Lazy cats

This is from a few weeks ago but I never pulled it off the Flip: Brutus and Rameses from Clint Ecker on Vimeo.

Officially an Illinois driver

Jacqui and I went to the DMV on Friday in a crazy March blizzard. I'm not kidding guys, this was probably the worst snow conditions I've been in all winter. The snow was thick and the wind was blowing HARD. We did, however, get in and out of the DMV in only about an hour, which was nice. With no studying, we were both missed a single question and walked out with our new licenses:

New desk, chair, and a frame for my Octophant

Just wanted to post some pictures of the new desk and chair I picked up today. Also, I picked up a frame for my screen printing I received from Phineas X. Jones. Check out his other stuff on Octophant.us:

Bye Greg

I didn't know you that well, but whenever you came to visit we had a lot of fun. Jacqui's post, for context.

Resumes... what are they good for?

Seth Godin has a remarkable post up today. Remarkable because he manages to express an extremely salient point in a space so small I wouldn't have thought it possible. The crux of his post is this: Here's why: A resume is an excuse to reject you. Once you send me your resume, I can say, "oh, they're missing this or they're missing that," and boom, you're out. Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords, and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine. Just ...

Chicago by night. At 36,000 feet.

All sorts of happy emotions swell up in me when I see this sight after a long flight. The aerial view of Chicago by night is second to none (gotta love those orange street lights!): Check out the full photo on Flickr. Found on... FFFFOUND!

Matt Roan at Dark Room and Hot Doggs at Underdogg

Me and Jacqui went to Dark Room (Yelp] last night in Ukranian Village to meet up with a new friend of ours. Nilay Patel is a writer for Engadget and lives in Chicago. He invited us to Dark Room last night to watch Matt Roan lay down some awesome music. View Larger Map It was one of those nights out when you're supremely happy even though you're cold and trying to grab a taxi. We attempted to um... convince the guys at the 24 hour McDonald's to sell us some double cheeseburgers, but they weren't having it because it's drive-thru ...

Forbes traveler names Hopleaf one of america's best beer bars

Saw the link over on Buzz's blog (he's been posting a lot of good stuff!) about Forbes Traveler's best american beer bars. I decided to skip through it and I found one of my favorite spots here in Chicago! At our old apartment in Uptown, we lived within walking distance of Hopleaf and visited it quite a few times. The bar is amazing and always packed, but they make some mean bavarian-inspired food as well. If you're ever in the area, be sure to check it out! Now we live far away in Bucktown/Wicker Park, but there's a nearby place ...

Bin Wine Cafe plus Pint, a beautiful night

Had an excellent time out with Jacqui last night. Ran into her coming out of Cooking Fools with two big chunks of tasty looking cheese in hand. We walked to Bin Wine Cafe where we each had a wine flight, shared a cheese plate, and devoured a large order of their tempura green beans. Once complete, we walked practically next door to Pint. We drank $4.00 Blue Moon pints for a couple of hours while laughing, talking, and generally having a good time. Oh, I think we also ate some potato skins in there somewhere! We started at 6pm and ...

I was told it would be warmer this morning

It was a lie!

Ditched T-Mobile, got an iPhone

As you may have already heard, Jacqui lost her phone during perhaps the most important week of her professional career. As a journalist covering Apple stuff, you need to be in nearly constant communication during the Macworld Expo! After asking all over Moscone in various lost and found stations, we gave up and used this as a catalyst to finally dump T-Mobile and make the jump to AT&T. And of course we couldn't go to AT&T without buying some iPhones, right? With the updates made during the conference itself, multiple SMS' for one, many of the barriers that had been ...

Goodbye San Francisco!

It was a great, if not busy & tiring, week in my second favorite city in the world. Here's the week by the numbers: Parties thrown: 1 Number of minutes it took to suck down $1300 worth of booze: 30 Number of people who attended: 500+ Number of times someone made a joke about being a PC in reference to my wearing a tie: 10+ Number of parties attended: 2 or 3, depending on what you consider a party Number of announcements from Steve: There were 4 things, not 5 Dollars it costs to buy two people lunch at Moscone: ...

Whenever you feel yourself getting worked up about trival crap

Just remember these two guys and how they couldn't possibly give a shit. Cats only worry about stuff that really matters, like snuggling:

Happy New Year!

Quite possibly the most controlled and normal New Years Eve in a few years. We (Jacqui, Dan, Paul and I) went to a nearby restaurant to eat dinner around 9 PM. The place is called Absinthe, and it's good that it was only a few blocks away because it was snowing and slippery last evening. We had a four course meal which was way too much food and none of us could possibly eat it all. There was wine, and beer, and I think a Tanq & Tonic involved. Lots of fun discussions and laughs. At around 11:30 we took ...

Most popular posts of 2007

Everyone else is doing it so I thought I'd take a peek into my analytics and see what the most popular posts of the past year have been. Without further delay: Tools for optimizing your website: Etag and Expire headers in Django, Apache, and Lighttpd. I put together this post to address methods for improving the performance of your website, whether you're using Django, Apache, or lighttpd Changes in Djangos management. The Django team made an important decision in regards to processing bug reports and tickets in the run up to 1.0. This was at the very beginning of the ...

Smithsonian Natural History Museum & the National Archives

Jacqui and I went to see the Smithsonian Natural History Museum and the National Archives on different days, but I thought I'd combine them here in this single post. I really wanted to go to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur exhibits. Growing up in Kansas, and a fan of dinosaurs, I was always dying to see a real dinosaur skeleton in person. However, because I lived in Kansas, that's a bit difficult. We didn't go on many vacations and didn't go to any museums either, so my opportunities were limited. I saw my first dinosaur at the ...

Vote Jacqui Cheng as sexiest geek of 2007 on Wired

Do it for Jacqui and do it for Ars! Go here http://reddit.wired.com/sexygeeks2007/?s=new Find Jacqui Cheng Vote!

Washington DC day two: Zoo, National Archives, lobster roll

Our second day full day in Washington is over and we (me) took a lot of pictures. We started out by going to the National Zoo, mostly to see the Pandas. We did in fact find them, and they were everything we'd hope. Beautiful and funny creatures. We stayed until around 1PM and decided to head back towards the mall so we could check out the National Archives. The National Archives is the home of many important documents from America's history. We were able to see and photograph the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. Also ...

First full day in Washington, DC

We're on vacation this week in Washington DC and it's been so much fun! Today we decided that we would venture towards the Smithsonian. Specifically, the Air & Space Museum, which we enjoyed thoroughly. I've always loved space, and this place has everything. After spending a few hours in the museum, we ate lunch and walked to further down Jefferson to the Capitol Building. It was beautiful, but as we got close, the capitol police swept down and drove everyone back down to the reflecting pool. It was quite odd and we didn't get to enjoy seeing the building up ...

2007 in pictures: the second half

Continuing from part one: Something noticed about this particular round-up is that you can watch my hair grow longer and longer through out the year. Since around 2006, I had kept my hair cut fairly short. Around the beginning of 2007, I thought I'd start to let it grow out a bit more. I'd gotten sick of my hair and cut it off, and I had finally gotten sick of short hair. ... and at the end of 2008 I've got at least some hair long enough to tickle my nose. I'm not sure how much further I'm going to ...