HipSmart

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

2008-03-25T15:37:00.001-05:00

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

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

2008-02-29T13:25:00.001-06:00

University of Illinois website takes a step backward

2008-02-11T14:59:00.001-06:00

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."

Bang! Bang! at darkroom, 6 December 2007

2007-12-19T16:53:00.001-06:00

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

tips: getting started with life-hacking

2007-08-22T11:46:00.001-05:00

Wired article: "Condense Your Day With the Life-Hacking FAQK"

concert: The Methadones/The Dollyrots at Beat Kitchen 2007-08-10

2007-08-11T14:07:00.000-05:00

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.

new tactic from the inscrutible spammers

2006-10-11T12:34:00.000-05:00

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.

big idea: The Bitchun Society

2006-10-05T09:18:00.000-05:00

Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kindom come alive at The Bitchun Society
xposted to web2.0depot.net

badge: squirl

2006-09-28T14:20:00.000-05:00

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

web tool: GroupLoop

2006-09-22T23:24:00.000-05:00

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

badge: Twitter

2006-09-22T11:15:00.000-05:00

flash version:

follow Erik at http://twitter.com

JavaScript version:

xposted at web2.0depot.net

thoughts on the convenience of the new iPod shuffle

2006-09-22T10:18:00.000-05:00

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

mashup: Flickr + business cards = MOO

2006-09-21T15:38:00.000-05:00

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

web tool: Weebly

2006-09-21T10:59:00.000-05:00

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

mashup: BookMooch meets LibraryThing

2006-09-20T16:14:00.000-05:00

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

shiny new toy: web2.0depot.net

2006-09-20T13:37:00.000-05:00

Lots of activity over at web2.0depot.net, a new blog where I'm testing out all the nifty badges and live content you can get nowadays.
xposted to ErikSwedlund.com

badge overload

2006-09-12T11:29:00.000-05:00

If I ever get around to putting all these web 2.0 badges in my sidebar, it's gonna get busy (okay, busier) around here.

See more of esswedl's picks at ThisNext.

Shopcast
powered by

fit news

2006-09-11T20:32:00.000-05:00

More web 2.0 fun at traineo.

tricksy

2006-09-08T14:22:00.000-05:00

There are just too many web 2.0 tabs open in my firefox! I'm drowning in a sea of gradients.
I remember seeing someone's suggestion on digg that you could use Google's personalized homepage as a Google Desktop-like proxy with Firefox on a Mac, by loading the bookmark in your sidebar, and arranging all the modules on your IG into the left column. I tried that out for a day or two, but wasn't thrilled (though it certainly seemed like a great idea). The problems were that I had too many modules, and couldn't lower the font size in the sidebar; lots of scrolling.
Now I've had a flash of my own: load meebo in the sidebar! That sucker can be skinnied right up, and I can have my buddy list always visible. Every once in a while I need to resize to grab a chat box that's popped up too wide, but the meebo virtual desktop is very flexible.
I followed someone else's suggestion a few weeks ago to set meebo as my active desktop on my Windows machine at work, but that also failed to impress. It was always hidden behind my pile of maximized windows, and there's something flaky about the active desktop connection that caused meebo to log out on an annoying regular basis.

hip news: BookMooch

2006-08-15T15:07:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm liking BookMooch: a community for exchanging used books much better than BookCrossing so far. The local community and "random acts of kindness" aspects of BookCrossing are pretty appealing, but it's hard to feel part of a Whuffie economy when you never find any books for yourself and no one finds the books you leave out (or at least they don't visit the website to update the tracking if they do find one).
By contrast, I joined BookMooch last week, and today received my first book, with two more on the way--and I've already sent out two. I have emailed with a user in Austria, who doesn't mind the postage to send me a book. Interactivity abounds!

loveable losers: Cubs Anti-Magic Number

2006-08-15T13:51:00.000-05:00

Two things: check out Cubs Anti-Magic Number, a site I just created to track how long it will be until the Cubs are eliminated from the playoffs; and, if you dig it, why not digg it?

read more | digg story

hips news: hanes "shot blocker" commercial

2006-08-15T09:27:00.000-05:00

Why is Michael Jordan being so mean to Kevin Bacon? And isn't that totally goal tending?

smart news: grumpy vikings get it wrong

2006-08-03T11:12:00.000-05:00

This Business Week story, "Apple defends iTunes-iPod compatibility," details the efforts of the Scandanavian countries to force Apple to allow music files purchased from the iTunes Music Store to play on third-party devices. Huh? Do we complain that Gillette's Mach 3 razor blades only fit in Gillette's Mach 3 razor? How about this: I'm pissed that other online music stores sell crappy wma files that won't go on my iPod.Good grief, I feel awful this morning.

read more | digg story

smart news: save money with your left-over cotton-gin trash!

2006-07-27T10:03:00.000-05:00

Cool! A biomass pellet heater for my lakeside cabin: Wired News: Eco-Heating System for the Lazy. Now I just have to get a lakeside cabin.

hip news: tiny living

2006-07-07T11:49:00.000-05:00

Extremely cool apartment, especially for only 426 sq. feet, wins Apartment Therapy's smallest coolest apartments 2006 contest: Finalist #3: David & Im's OneSpace