Jonathan Richman at The Abbey Pub, 12 March 2008, Chicago

SidMuchRock was at the Jonathan Richman show with us, and took this video from right up front.

Embedded Video

Friday, February 29, 2008

The Dollyrots / Suffrajett / The Melismatics / Waste at The Note, 28 February 2008



erik 1:25 PM | permalink | yap

Monday, February 11, 2008

University of Illinois website takes a step backward

http://www.uiuc.edu/webteam/flash.html
Blech, this flash-based (sigh) website forces a horizontal scroll-bar even on my 1280x1024 monitor. They forget that "UI" also stands for "user interface."

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Bang! Bang! at darkroom, 6 December 2007

I was sorry to hear that Chicago band Arks was playing their last show, but glad to see them again, opening for Bang! Bang! The sweet deal was the gift bag for the first 100 attendees--3 vinyl records, a CD, and some stickers and buttons. Rock on!

Blogged with Flock

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

tips: getting started with life-hacking
Wired article: "Condense Your Day With the Life-Hacking FAQK"
erik 11:46 AM | permalink | yap

Saturday, August 11, 2007

concert: The Methadones/The Dollyrots at Beat Kitchen 2007-08-10
To say I was already enthralled with the Dollyrots before last night's show would be an understatement. Now, however, my heart is all aflutter to new levels. Others, it seems, feel the same way.

Walking down to the Beat Kitchen, Lisa and I were just saying how much we enjoyed live music (this to the background of some gawdawful jazz being piped out of a sidewalk cafe's sound system) and how great it is to be going to lots of concerts recently. The Beat Kitchen is the perfect proof to our supposition, being one of Chicago's best venues and nicely situated for a drunken stumble home.

Jonnie and Vincenzo met us there, and Vince mentioned to Jonnie that people seem to be drinking PBR at the sorts of bars she frequents; we took this as an opportunity to introduce him to the pleasures of a PBR tall can. During this, the opening band, The Brokedowns, played and we stayed up by the bar and missed them. We spotted Chris from Shot Baker, and as I was wearing a Shot Baker t-shirt, I texted Danny to remark (as he is an old friend of them).

We made our way close to the stage for the start of The Dollyrots and wound up standing next to Chris. Then Kelly, singer for the The Dollyrots, pointed at my shirt from stage and said, "Hey, we just played a show with Shot Baker! Those shirts and stickers seem to be following us everywhere." Swoon!



Lisa's cellphone photos didn't turn out great, but perhaps you'll be able to find better shots at flickr.

They opened their set with "My Best Friend's Hot" and "A Desperate S.O.S." I checked in with Vince and Jonnie, who had been unfamiliar with The Dollyrots, and they confirmed that this was some great, rockin' stuff. My friend Jack, of Bang! Bang!, was right at the stage, really bouncing to it and pumping his fist. He reported that The Dollyrots stayed at his house the night before. Jealous!

Other highlights included "17," "Watch Me Go (Kissed Me, Killed Me)," "Out of L.A.," "Fight Like Jackie Chan," and the amusing story Kelly told before playing "Brand New Key," about her friend's father, who used to hide his pot in his gravity boots.

The Methadones opened with "Say Goodbye to Your Generation," and didn't stop the assault for the rest of the set. Dan Vapid was clearly having fun, holding out the mic to the audience for the front row to sing the choruses. Jack and I were right up in there, bouncing and moshing along. For the last song, the band pulled up everyone onto the stage to sing along.



The evening was one of the best shows I've been to, and I commemorated by dropping a wad on some merch: Dollyrots shirt, pins, and sticker, and Methadones on vinyl.
erik 2:07 PM | permalink | yap

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

new tactic from the inscrutible spammers
Okay, so now I'm getting spam with veiled Isaac Asimov references in the subject line, like "Custom is a religion life so while the Foundation versus Hober Mallow." That's strange. I guess it's catching my eye, so maybe it's effective.

I'm still not going to open it.
erik 12:34 PM | permalink | yap (2)

Thursday, October 05, 2006

big idea: The Bitchun Society
Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kindom come alive at The Bitchun Society
xposted to web2.0depot.net
erik 9:18 AM | permalink | yap

Thursday, September 28, 2006

badge: squirl

Non-interactive badge. Widgets coming soon?
Also, oh, man, I find myself not especially motivated to accept the data-entry position Squirl offers me to catalog my stuff.
x-posted on web2.0depot.net
erik 2:20 PM | permalink | yap

Friday, September 22, 2006

web tool: GroupLoop
With its page title, "GroupLoop ™ - Centralize, organize. Keep your group in the loop!" you can see GroupLoop is an online collaborative manager. It seems to me it falls somewhere between 37signals' Backpack (more of a personal organizer) and Basecamp (project manager). I may give GroupLoop at try to see what it's like, though I've been planning on using Backpack for my next small group project. I'm already invested in Backpack and it will keep my group stuff right next to my personal stuff.
xposted on web2.0depot.net
erik 11:24 PM | permalink | yap

badge: Twitter
flash version:

thoughts on the convenience of the new iPod shuffle
The super-small footprint, integrated clip, and anodized aluminum casing make the new iPod shuffle hott (that's with two 't's). However, the new suffle dock leaves something to be desired.
It's included, which is nice, but it's required, which is not. I'd like to get a MacBook in the near future, so my computing will become mobile. That means if I want to sync a new shuffle, I'll have to connect the USB dock before dropping the shuffle in the dock--with the older shuffle, you could just slap that sucker into a USB port. Of course, if you have a desktop, like I currently do, it's no big thing; a dock might even be nice; indeed, I spent $30 to buy the old shuffle dock so I could stop having to reach around the back of my Mac and find a USB port.
A more glaring flaw is with the shuffle's ability to store files. If you want to use the new suffle as a USB drive, you'll now have to cart around the dock, too, to connect to other systems. That's a serious drop in usefullness. Of course, I don't use my current old shuffle as a USB drive because doing so causes a major loss of stability (I'd have to do a system restore almost weekly when it started locking up).
One of the major selling points of iPods is their ease of use. Other mp3 players I've owned have been a real hassle to use. These little issues are only slightly nagging, but still, that's a step backwards for Apple.
xposted on my iPod blog
erik 10:18 AM | permalink | yap

Thursday, September 21, 2006

mashup: Flickr + business cards = MOO
MOO has launched to great fanfare, and without actually having used it yet, it's probably deserved. Glossy, half-business-card-sized cards with your flickr photos on one side and some contact info on the back--pretty neat! For a design professional, these should make for some distinctive business cards, and they'll be appealing in lots of other cases, too: bands, events, real estate.
Once I get my hands on some, I'll update with a review of the quality and the experience.
xposted on web2.0depot.net
erik 3:38 PM | permalink | yap

web tool: Weebly
You'll need an invitation to join the beta of Weebly - Website Creation Made Easy, but that shouldn't be too hard--drop your email in the form on the front page, and the creator of Weebly will probably get back to you right away.
Weebly is a very slick AJAX WYSIWYG editor. It's incredibly stylish and easy to use.
I've just started playing with it, and it's admittedly a beta; so, then, my hiccups: the text fields (really the main thing you will be adding to a site) won't render JavaScript, so you get a funky looking mess like http://esswedl495.weebly.com/. Also, you'll notice that publishing is to their own server, not via FTP--kinda like the Blogger Beta, which forces you to use BlogSpot servers. Speaking of Blogger, here's one more limitation of Weebly: we're talking static pages.
Still, looks promising.
xposted to web2.0depot.net
erik 10:59 AM | permalink | yap

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

mashup: BookMooch meets LibraryThing
So, I've been reading a lot lately (and I should be talking about that more here), all thanks to BookMooch, a very cool book swapping website. More on that later.
It's still hand-driven at this point, but I like the idea of using LibraryThing's bookshelf and tags to display my BookMooch inventory.
LibraryThing has an awesome Universal Import function that can grab all the ISBNs off my BookMooch inventory and add them to my bookshelf. Then, it's a simple matter of using their widget to output the covers of the books I've tagged bookmooch (automatically done on import, natch):

Unfortunately, the cover links lead to Amazon, not my BookMooch inventory, should someone want to mooch a book. Another annoyance: my LibraryThing shelf will have to be manually updated when I do give away a book.
I'll have to see what I can do about that.
xposted on web2.0depot.net, Wrybrarian.com
erik 4:14 PM | permalink | yap