Tag: republished

Reading Around on January 21st

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Some additional reading January 21st from 09:11 to 10:24:

  • The Importance of Active Leisure | Happenchance – Photo Credit: swanksalot (and this post is written by a different Seth)

  • Chess Meisters

  • Gangsters & Speakeasies: Buildings of Historic Chicago « AllPropertyManagement.com – The speakeasy, 1920’s icon. When prohibition began, outlawing the sale of alcohol in the United States paved the way for criminals like Al Capone to come to fruition. And if you think prohibition stopped alcohol, well, then… the word naive comes to mind. Alcohol, if anything, was more rampant in the 1920’s. Want to make something that’s already fun even more popular?? Make it taboo. The “speakeasy” was the slang term for an establishment that illegally sold alcohol during these times. Some were seedy bars, others were extravagant nightclubs filled with the rich and famous. The Green Mill Jazz Club, still open today, was a popular speakeasy back during prohibition and at one point even owned by Jack McGurn, a right hand man of Al Capone. photo credit: swanksalot

  • Green Mill Daguerreotype

  • • Fabriquer la ville durable au Maghreb et en Méditerranée : entre épreuves et modèles. – Illustration : swanksalot, « Solar Panels. Chicago Center for Green Technology », Flickr, 19.6.2008 (licence Creative Commons).

  • Solar Panels - Chicago Center for Green Technology

Reading Around on January 20th

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Some additional reading January 20th from 12:07 to 17:38:


  • Stuart Carlson – 2010-01-18 – Satan’s tools, Pat Robertson and Rush Limbaugh

  • DIY Refrigerator Care Saves Money, Keeps Refrigerator Alive Longer – Saving Money – Lifehacker – Pippen becomes famous for his refrigerator love
  • Devotion to CTA is tattooed on her foot – CTA Tattler – This woman loves maps so much — and the CTA — that she has the rail system map tattooed on the top of foot.

  • Open Letter From OK Go – OK Go – Fifteen years ago, when the terms of contracts like ours were dreamt up, a major label could record two cats fighting in a bag and three months later they’d have a hit. No more. People of the world, there has been a revolution. You no longer give a shit what major labels want you to listen to (good job, world!), and you no longer spend money actually buying the music you listen to (perhaps not so good job, world). So the money that used to flow through the music business has slowed to a trickle, and every label, large or small, is scrambling to catch every last drop. You can’t blame them; they need new shoes, just like everybody else. And musicians need them to survive so we can use them as banks. Even bands like us who do most of our own promotion still need them to write checks every once in a while.But where are they gonna find money if no one buys music?

Reading Around on October 14th through October 15th

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A few interesting links collected October 14th through October 15th:

  • Today’s Weather: Dreary – Chicagoist – Another dark, damp, dank, dreary day for Chicago. Off and on rain showers coupled with highs in the mid 40s will give us an unseasonable chill for mid-October. If there’s any glimmer of hope, it’s that by Monday we could crack 70 degrees once more. Still, those warmer summer days are a distant memory far too soon. We dig the autumn, but were hoping for a gentler transition

  • Slightly Beyond the Shore

  • My First Look At Radio Free Albemuth – The Movie –

    About a month ago I had the opportunity to drive down to LA to see a screening of Radio Free Albemuth with director John Alan Simon. Pretty cool, I know. John wanted me to take a look at the current cut of the film before any further changes are ‘locked out’ and they begin the painstaking work of mixing and cleaning up the sound, correcting the color-timing, tweaking the special effects, and putting on the final polish.

    I really enjoyed the movie and think most Dick-heads are also going to like this film 1) it’s an independent release, so it’s free of dodgy chairs, high-speed chases, fight scenes, gun battles or Keanu, Tom, Nick, Arnold, or any other Scientologist; 2) and best of all, it’s very true to the book. While writer/director John Alan Simon was forced to cut some of the material from the novel, I think he did so in a very effective and sensitive way.

  • Mad About Mad Men – The Atlantic(November 2009) – The cognoscenti, though, have largely ignored this quiet virtue while extolling what are really the show’s considerable flaws. Ah, the media juggernaut. If Mad Men were half as good as the hype would have it, the show would be one of the best ever produced for American television. It’s both.

Reading Around on October 5th

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Some additional reading October 5th from 10:44 to 17:11:

  • Study Proposes New Interstate To Link Illinois, Indiana – Chicagoist – The proposed interstate, dubbed The Illiana Expressway, could cut congestion significantly along with providing a surge to the region’s economy. The proposed 25 to 30 mile stretch, operating as a tollway, would connect I-57 in Will County with I-65 in Lake County, Indiana and would cost as much as $1 billion.
  • Kenny Be: “I’d rather be gay than GLAAD” – Denver News – The Latest Word – In this week’s cover story, longtime Westword cartoonist Kenny Be strikes back at GLAAD, which recently named Kenny the “worst” of July. Pick up a copy, or click through here to see the full cartoon.

    It is always nice to be noticed, but for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to name me the “Worst of the National Media” for July of 2009 only reveals GLAAD’s ignorance, not mine.

  • Bloggers Must Disclose Payments for Reviews – NYTimes.com – “The Federal Trade Commission will require bloggers to clearly disclose any freebies or payments they get from companies for reviewing their products.

    But the commission stopped short Monday of specifying how bloggers must disclose any conflicts of interest.”
    I haven’t gotten any schwagg, other than Amazon affiliate percentages, but I’m open to receiving free stuff in return for reviewing them…

Reading Around on September 29th

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Some additional reading September 29th from 11:32 to 20:54:

Reading Around on September 11th through September 14th

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A few interesting links collected September 11th through September 14th:

  • Sprouting 101: How do you sprout seeds, nuts and grains? – Sprouting seeds, nuts and grains is a way of greatly increasing their nutritional value and makes them easier to digest. For example, most sprouts double their protein content and have highly increased levels of vitamins! Sprouting seeds is simple and you don't need a lot of fancy equipment. Here's how:
  • Mac OS X Automation: Services Downloads – These services and Automator actions are provided as examples of the design and use of Mac OS X automation technologies. All service workflows are fully editable and can be customized as need requires.
  • Daily Photo Archive – Photo taken by Seth Anderson

    Featured as our daily photo on 9/11/2009.

Reading Around on September 8th through September 10th

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A few interesting links collected September 8th through September 10th:

  • dy/dan » Blog Archive » What I Would Do With This: Groceries

    – “The express lane isn’t faster. The manager backed me up on this one. You attract more people holding fewer total items, but as the data shows above, when you add one person to the line, you’re adding 48 extra seconds to the line length (that’s “tender time” added to “other time”) without even considering the items in her cart. Meanwhile, an extra item only costs you an extra 2.8 seconds. Therefore, you’d rather add 17 more items to the line than one extra person! ” I’d add – when I do the mental calculations as to what checkout line to choose, I also add gender and age into the mix (of cashier and customer both)

  • Pchela (Bee) No 5 1906..jpg
  • Post Office Buyer May Not Deliver | NBC Chicago – my photo used by NBC Chicago with a fairly crappy credit link: better than none I guess, but NBC didn’t ask either.
  • Peapod celebrates 20 years :: CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Business

    – Thomas Parkinson, co-founder with his brother Andrew of online grocer Peapod 20 years ago, recalls checking customers’ 1200- and 2400-baud modems while he delivered groceries in those early days.

    “There were moments of sweat rolling down my face as I thought I’d messed up someone’s hard drive,” recalled Thomas, Peapod’s chief technology officer. “One woman asked, ‘What do I use this foot pedal for?’ Turned out, it was the mouse.”

    Andrew Parkinson serves as president. The two brothers started Peapod 20 years ago in Evanston with $25,000 they’d raised from friends and family.”

    I find I use Peapod more frequently in the winter months

    William Blake - Ghost of a Flea.jpg

  • Tasty ways to use seasonal tomatoes | Frugal Village – “photo by swanksalot

    If you have an abundance of juicy tomatoes this season, consider yourself lucky to have escaped late blight. For folks not so lucky, I’m sharing recipes that don’t use a ton as the main ingredient but will let you savor every delicious bite.

  • Interview: Wallace Shawn – Chicagoist

    “I suppose I should say that all my roots are all in Chicago,” Wallace Shawn told us. “Both sides of my family. My parents were very identified with being from Chicago, really. My childhood memories of visiting the relatives in Chicago are central to my being. And all sorts of things that some people associate with New York, I associate with Chicago, like going to hear jazz. I went with my uncle to hear Erroll Garner in Chicago.” Shawn is usually thought of as the quintessential New Yorker (in fact his father William was the long-time editor of The New Yorker) but his new book is published by Chicago-based Haymarket Press.


  • Wonk Room » Joe Klein Compares ‘Left-Extremist’ Van Jones To ‘White Supremacist,’ ‘Nazi’ – ”

    Joe Klein, the prominent Time Magazine liberal columnist, has embraced the right-wing

    Hate that Joe Klein aka Joke Line is still called a liberal columnist, even after being a Republican suck-up for twenty years or more.

  • Terror Slaves of the Nile - March 1963.jpg

Reading Around on August 27th through August 28th

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A few interesting links collected August 27th through August 28th:

  • Solipsism « Earthpages.ca – Think Free – This is the philosophical position that only the subject exists and all impressions of others and the outside world are illusory.

    While many dismiss solipsism as an extreme or strange view, others say it is logically impossible to prove or disprove

  • d r i f t g l a s s: Da Mare Would Like To Apologize – "If you've never been to a public meeting where Da Mare or one of his goofs are having their political pipes rodded, let me tell you right off the bat, you should go. Over the years I’ve been to several, and it really is about as purely little-“d”-democratic an exercise as any big city could hope for: In front of Da Mare and the assembled heads of his every office and department, any citizen can step up to the microphone and “Cry Harold”"

    Awesome description: I have to go to one of these sometimes

  • Review: Snow Leopard Review | Mac OS X – Page 1 | Macworld – if you later try to launch a PowerPC app, Snow Leopard will pop up a window to explain that you need Rosetta and offer to install it for you (via Apple’s Software Update utility). I can only assume that making Rosetta optional is an attempt by Apple to goad users to upgrade their apps and to shame developers who still haven’t recompiled their apps to run on Intel chips. But given that most everyday users have no idea which of their apps are Intel-native and which are PowerPC, this seems unnecessarily harsh.

Reading Around on August 20th

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Some additional reading August 20th from 12:26 to 17:28:

  • IVI-IPO Files Suit in Parking Meter Deal – Chicagoist – Will swanksalot's photo be called as People's Exhibit B in the case of The People V. King Daley?
  • Beyond HandBrake's defaults | Entertainment & HDTV | Playlist | Macworld – If you’re a Mac user interested in ripping your commercial DVDs to a format playable on an Apple TV, iPod, or iPhone, the free video transcoder, HandBrake 0.9.3, is one of the easiest ways to go about it. With a copy of the free VLC installed on your Mac, HandBrake can rip most DVDs made today, and the results it produces are quite watchable.

    But suppose you want to go beyond the defaults—tweak HandBrake to produce videos that take up less room on your iPod, dispense with a movie’s closing credits, or bear subtitles? It’s all possible with HandBrake, but it takes some tweaking. And tweaking HandBrake is what this article is all about

  • The Balcony » Web Tip: ScanSnap Community – Fujitsu has opened a site dedicated to ScanSnap owners and those of you who want to become one: the ScanSnap Community. So if you own a ScanSnap or plan to to so, check out the Updates, Testimonials, Tips & Tricks, and Ask the Expert sections to learn more about what you can do with a document scanner.

Reading Around on August 17th through August 18th

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A few interesting links collected August 17th through August 18th:

  • Poaching Suspects Charged – Yosemiter – Criminal complaints against Kyle Narasky and brothers Chad and Chris Gierlich were signed on Wednesday, August 5th, charging them with multiple counts of poaching, violations of the Lacey Act, aiding and abetting the commission of a crime, and many Title 36 CFR violations. The signing of these complaints marked the culmination of a year-long investigation which entailed the issuance of multiple search warrants and close cooperation between wardens from the California Department of Fish and Game, rangers from the Tuolumne Meadows Subdistrict and special agents from across the Pacific West Region. Over the past four years, the Gierlichs and Narasky have poached multiple trophy-sized deer from inside Yosemite National Park. State charges are also pending.
  • camping utensils.jpg
  • When Airplane Stewardesses Were All Glamour and Sex Appeal – Gizmodo 79 – Gizmodo – “1979 I flew to Sweden in SAS, and I still can remember the blondes in the pretty uniforms, their eyes, and their smiles. Which means I noticed (maybe too much, given my passion for the Sweden, Norway, and Denmark—although I blame Lego for that one). Those affable, efficient women hosted the Golden Age of aeronautics, being professional, attentive, sympathetic, and yes, absolutely sexy”
  • 344289163_971fdc78ed_o.jpg
  • Adobe – Adobe Camera Raw and DNG Converter : For Macintosh : Camera Raw 5.2 update – *With the release of Camera Raw 5.2 (and upcoming release of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom® 2.2), there is an important exception in DNG file handling for the Panasonic DMC-LX3, Panasonic DMC-FX150, Panasonic DMC-FZ28, Panasonic DMC-G1, and Leica D-LUX 4. For those who choose to convert these native, proprietary files to the DNG file format, a linear DNG format is the only conversion option available at this time. A linear DNG file has gone through a demosaic process that converts a single mosaic layer of red, green, and blue channel information into three distinct layers, one for each channel. The resulting linear DNG file is approximately three times the size of a mosaic DNG file or the original proprietary file format.

    This exception is a temporary solution to help ensure that Panasonic’s and Leica’s intended image rendering from their proprietary raw file format is applied to an image when converted DNG files are viewed in third-party software titles.

Reading Around on August 17th

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Some additional reading August 17th from 14:48 to 16:44:

  • Laundering Lies – “It’s one thing if Dick Armey, or some other repulsive hack, goes out and gives a speech which contains a bunch of lies. It’s another thing for a major news outlet – print or teevee – to give its stamp of authority on those lies. I’m sure he’ll be back.

    I’ve said a bunch of times that elite journalists oddly cling to authority rather than expertise as the reason they need to have very well-paid existences. But then they don’t bother to use that authority to actually inform their audiences. Instead they use it to bolster the claims of conservative liars.”

    televisiontramp52.jpg

  • Foods of my labors | The Blog | Chicago Reader – Last week I spent a fair amount of time doing laborious data-scrubbing of our restaurant listings; by way of making lemonade from lemons, here are some of the more intriguing restaurants I discovered. I can’t recommend them personally, but that’s sort of the point: they’re the places that piqued my interest enough to go on my list.
  • Gapers Block: Rearview – Monday, August 17 2009 – Monday, August 17 2009
    by Seth Anderson
    photo of Victor Hotel’s Back Door?

Back Door?

Reading Around on August 16th through August 17th

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A few interesting links collected August 16th through August 17th:

  • Woodstock: even the memories are muddy – The Globe and Mail – David Crosby judged his performance with Graham Nash, Stephen Stills and Neil Young as “stoned and funny and fine.” Yet the recollections of one of his bandmates differ wildly from Crosby’s cozy account. “Woodstock was a bullshit gig, a piece of shit,” Young told biographer Jimmy McDonough. “We played fucking awful. No one was into the music.”
  • Death_of_Marat_by_David.jpg
  • Simpsons Did It: Laid-Off Workers Keep Up Appearances, Pretend To Be Employed – Earlier this week, the Washington Post shared the story of a man who tried hard to keep up appearances, and to carefully choreograph his routine so his friends and neighbors wouldn’t think of him differently. Finally, he tired of the charade, and outed himself. As an unemployed person.

    After he lost his job, Clinton Cole continued to wake up early, dress in a suit, and leave the house. Instead of going to the office, he spent the day in a park or public library. While his family knew about his situation, friends and neighbors didn’t, and he wanted to keep up appearances.

  • [removed link because it was apparently a scrapersite of content generated by The Consumerist. Strangely, the scraper-scum appeared in my Google alert before the original site did]

Reading Around on August 9th

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Some additional reading August 9th from 11:29 to 13:20:

Dictation at the Chicago Daily News

  • What’s a Big City Without a Newspaper? – NYTimes.com – “But parts of the system are actually not broken at all. Journalists still know how to gather news. And the Internet is a step forward in disseminating it. What’s broken is the pipeline that sends money back to where the content is created. Most of it is available to readers online, free, including on newspapers’ own Web sites, where it is not sufficiently supported by advertising.”
  • 1434002769_1a680ac1c3_o.jpg
  • Flickr “Not Currently Working” on Account Restore Feature After Users Suffer Losses of Thousands of Photos | Thomas Hawk Digital Connection – “s it stands now when a user’s photostream is deleted at Flickr it is gone. Erased. Permanently and irrevocably. Many Flickr users are appreciably nervous about this fact, especially after reading stories about hackers infiltrating flickr accounts or when overzealous underlings in the Flickr Censorship Division seem to overreact to minor Flickr Community Guidelines violations by nuking users’ photostreams.

    When Flickr nukes a user’s photostream, it’s not just the users’ photos that are gone. It’s all of the rich, important and vibrant social metadata around the photos that are gone with it. I’ve had many very long engaging conversations around my and others photos on the site. When Flickr nukes your stream those all get erased from existence.”

  • Make A Messenger Bag From Plastic Bags (Video) | TakePart Social Action Network™ – “Wouldn’t it be great if you could make a reusable messenger bag out of all of the plastic bags that have accumulated in your house? Well, Make magazine shows us that for a fun Sunday project you totally can, all it takes is a little ironing and sewing.

    Ideally we want to stop using plastic bags all together, so they don’t contribute more waste to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and continue to create a demand for oil used to produce them”

Reading Around on August 4th through August 7th

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A few interesting links collected August 4th through August 7th:

  • Whiskey – "I still hate myself,
    I still don’t believe in God,
    And that hole inside me has grown even bigger
    But I know better than to drink
    So much fucking whiskey
    For no good reason."
  • Backbeats – " The poem project is going fairly well; so far I have about a month’s worth of poems up, one per day. I’m trying to write at least a few per day so I have a backlog of poems ready in case I want to take a break, or go on a vacation, something, anything. I didn’t think I’d ever be writing poems again, but you know, it’s better than nothing. I’m just glad to have an outlet. What I do need, however, is exposure. It’d be nice to have a few inbound links from other people — if you’ve got any websites or leverage, that’d be pretty good. Or even better yet, encouragement, or pinging anybody you do know who’s into this kind of stuff."
  • A Glorious Gallery of Rot: Compost as Art (Pictures) | Lighter Footstep – " Nationally, food waste and spoilage amounts to losses in excess if $75 billion. In some sectors of agricultural production, waste can be as high as 40 percent. These autumnal fruits and vegetables — photographed being readied for compost by Flickr user swanksalot —  will get another shot at the table next season."
  • Obama Foodorama: President Obama Gives Birthday Love–and Cupcakes–To Legendary White House Correspondent Helen Thomas – "Helen Thomas is the oldest correspondent in the White House Press Corps, and today she turns 89, right alongside President Obama, who turns 48. During today's press briefing, the President personally delivered birthday cupcakes to Ms. Thomas in the White House briefing room, a rousing chorus of "Happy Birthday" was sung, and he gave her a birthday kiss"

Reading Around on July 21st through July 30th

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A few interesting links collected July 21st through July 30th:

  • caravaggio-bacchus-1596.jpg
  • The Nichepaper and the Failure of the Fourth Estate – Umair Haque – HarvardBusiness.org – “Where was the fourth estate when our political, economic, and social institutions were being systematically dismantled? What has happened to our economy parallels what Mugabe did to Zimbabwe. Was the fourth estate asleep while this happened? Like other power brokers, it was negligent — and, perhaps worse, complicit.If newspapers had protected the public interest like they were meant to, they would be more profitable. Everyone would be better off today — including newspapers — if newspapers had chronicled this transfer of value. Yet, by failing to protect the public interest, they helped create the conditions for the transfer of value away from people who do stuff, to people who speculate on stuff.”
  • hypnotism-0250-pg1.jpg
  • Plagiarism Checkers: 5 Free Websites To Catch The Copycats – “The use of this rooster of article plagiarism checking apps should be enough to make us all tread on the side of caution and keep our creative spirits intact. If you write (or publish)…do you check? Let us know.” Image: swanksalot
  • Go `Birthers’ go! – Medved has been quoted as saying that Birthers are “crazy, nutburger, demagogue, money-hungry, exploitative, irresponsible, filthy conservative imposters” and “the worst enemy of the conservative movement.” The “movement “makes us look weird. It makes us look crazy. It makes us look demented. It makes us look sick, troubled, and not suitable for civilized company.”

    Shhhh.

    If you know any Birthers, please encourage them in their efforts and don’t, whatever you do, show them these Web links (call it a Nutburgerbliography):