An Event Apart Boston Flickr pool

(Uploaded by karschsp)

300 pictures from An Event Apart (where I was on Monday and Tuesday) on Flickr.

I haven't written up a run-down of the event yet because i'm mad I didn't win the Adobe CS3 Mega Ultra Suite-pack.

Making the shopping game a little more meaningful

Over the weekend, Kat and I decided (or, spoke about) to invest 50% of the dollar amount of savings I (obsessively) collect each week through grocery shopping.

I think this gives a little more...value...to obsessive shopping habits.  While racking up 40% to 50% "savings" each week, I kind of knew that this was really meaningless:  at the end of the day, these prices are set by companies and stores, possibly inflated to give homebodies like me a greater sense of self-worth.  And the savings were just on the receipt...it would be lame to spend $100 on food when I could spend $50, but I didn't really do anything with that $50 I "saved."  I probably spent it on beer.

So, now i'll be keeping track of these savings and moving half of it over to a Roth IRA perhaps monthly (why only half?  Because i'm so awesome at shopping that investing all those savings would be a little too much to set aside each week.  And by "so awesome" I mean "sad.").

Speaking of investing, we've also moved some of our money into a couple "green" funds...specifically, the iShares KLD 400 Social Index and PowerShares WilderHill Clean Energy.  I kind of view it as a Terrapass that...we can keep in investing in.

An Event Apart - Tomorrow

Tomorrow (and Tuesday) I'm off to Boston (the big city!) for An Event Apart Boston. I almost forgot about it until Friday...I tend to do that with office-sponsored trips...but now that it is the night before, I'm definitely looking forward to it.

I kind of liken the event, what with AEA being chock-full of internet superstars, to how, when I was young, I always wanted to go to the Superfriends' Hall of Justice. I hope Firestorm is there this year.

Awwwwww....sit.

Roam the streets in style

Shed your tattered raiment and roam the streets in style, you fabulous guttersnipes...Clampants has released the URCHIN T on CafePress:




"So that thousands of poor English people trembled before a mysterious chieftain with an ancient destiny and a diadem of evil stars--when they are really trembling before a guttersnipe who was a pettifogger and a pawnbroker not twelve years ago."  - The Wisdom Of Father Brown by Gilbert K. Chesterton

Matthew Dear @ Bump

I failed to mention that as part of the pseudo-birthday party (kindly and adeptly organized by my lovely wife) on Sunday...Chris, Doug, and I meandered over to the Phoenix Landing to catch Matthew Dear, aka Audion (the night provided by Randy at Marz).  This was the first time I was able to catch Mr. Dear (I almost caught him out in Chicago late in 2005, but...as is the usual, got tired around 2am after Rex The Dog's set) and he absolutely ripped the walls of the Phoenix apart:  flawless mixing, squelching electro, thunderous bass...endlessly, relentlessly huge sounds.

The night ended with Doug telling Matthew Dear that he should have performed at the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Boston.  Then I realized that getting home at 3am does not a responsible father make.

Davidday has a nice set of pics up that capture the evening well over on Flickr.  For proof that I was there, you can see my wall-flowery noggin blocking the "G" in the Guinness mirror in this photo.

Here's some Matthew Dear madness, so you know what you missed (or didn't):

 - Live at the 2006 DEMF (real)
 - 3 hours of Matthew Dear and Ryan Elliot live at Mocad in Detroit, 10/26/06 (from Paxahau)
 - Spectral Sound presents Matthew Dear (from Samurai FM)

Ratcheting up the Switching Rhetoric

I really haven't thought much of our iMac purchase in terms of a shrill Mac vs PC argument, but reading this "Arrogance and Stupidity" article (the spirit of it, not necessarily the Linux letter of it)...I kind of feel smug (insofar as it sounds like, as an XP user, I would eventually be cornered into a Vista upgrade, which sounds nauseating...and given the unusable, barely bootable condition of the now 3 or 4-week-old Vista box at our office, probably is nauseating).  Not terribly, smug, mind you, just...well, i'll quote Lilly Allen...

At first when I see you cry,
yeah it makes me smile, yeah it makes my smile
At worst I feel bad for a while,
but then I just smile I go ahead and smile

Things I find annoying about a couple of applications I really want to like

• Ma.gnolia (and OpenID):  I signed up for an OpenID, ostensibly to have "one login for multiple sites" (though, I am still learning about it).  So far, the process works pretty well on a few sites (like Livejournal)...login, have OpenID "authorize" the site, and voila.  But not so, it seems, with Ma.gnolia.  So far, I have 12 "approvals" of the site by OpenID, but I still simply cannot login to Ma.gnolia.  Attempting to "sign in using your OpenID" with my OpenID URL...it just redirects me back to the same, now-empty sign-in page (with no error message).  Tried clearing cache/cookies...tried switching browsers/machines...still nothing.  Maybe I'm just missing somthing...
  
• Twitter posting:  IM posting is currently down (though, it is being worked on).  Posting via the neat little Firefox search bar widget works, I think, but if you happen to be logged out of Twitter, the post action takes you to the login screen, where I log in, hit return....and am greeted by a completely blank page.  Sometimes this happens when I post via the widget and am logged in...I just get sent to a completely blank page.  So, most times, I am forced to go to twitter.com to post, which is silly and negate much of the value of the app...not to mention the site is painfully slow most times.
• Twitter monitoring:  this is the most annoying...my RSS feed (for my friends' twitterings) all return absolutely nothing ("contains no items")...even though (see above) going to the site itself proves this is not true.  The RSS feed (which, to me, would be the handiest way to monitor the app) returns nothing in all manner of feed readers.  Nothing, nada.  So, as above, i'm forced to go to twitter.com, which is onerous for the aforementioned reasons.

Despite all this, at least I have an Alex Smoke Resident Advisor podcast to tide me over.

The Hard Actuators - 2007 opening day roster

Here's how my fantasy baseball draft panned out, through 20 painful rounds of online drafting (for the esteemed Roast Beef League):

1 - Jose Reyes
2 - Grady Sizemore
3 - Justin Morneau
4 - Jake Peavy
5 - Victor Martinez
6 - Brian Roberts
7 - B J Ryan
8 - Ben Sheets
9 - Bill Hall
10 - Alex Rios
11 - C C Sabathia
12 - Howie Kendrick
13 - Pat Burrell
14 - Takashi Saito
15 - Derek Lowe
16 - Dave Bush
17 - Michael Cuddyer
18 - Russell Martin
19 - B J Upton
20 - Barry Bonds

The bad: I feel like Pat Burrell is going to be the guy I just feel as though I can never put in my lineup becuase he's so...boring...but he'll end up hitting 20 HRs on my bench. Bill Hall is...the most boring. Barry Bonds in the last round (only because Albert Belle isn't available). Not enough pitching on my bench, but it's too nerve-wrackingly early to start droping offensive players. Jake Peavy's dead arm. Backup catchers.

The Good: Michael Cuddyer in the 17th round. Young exciting outfielders (good on paper). Anyone named Howie. Barry Bonds in the last round (only because Albert Belle isn't available).

Switch...

Switching from:

eMachines T2482
AMD Athlon XP 2400+ 1.99GHz, 736MB DDR SDRAM, 80GB hard drive, CD-RW and DVD drives, 17-inch CRT, 6 USB 2.0 ports...

Switching to:

20" iMac
2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM, 250GB Serial ATA 7200-rpm hard drive, SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW), 20-inch widescreen LCD...

LCD Remixed

For only a suggested donation to either Oxfam or Mordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, you can get your grubby mitts on "Sounds Like Silver," the LCD Soundsystem remix project:

• 1. Get Innocuous (Geek Chic's Harm-Free Retouch)
• 2. Time To Get Away (ATOM's Exit Stage Left Mix)
• 3. North American Scum (Dunproofin's Not From England Either Mix)
• 4. Someone Great (Shokking Shokkaboy Remix)
• 5. All My Friends (AMIGAMAN Remix)
• 6. Us vs Them (Go Home Productions Remix)
• 7. Watch the Tapes (Team9's Excursion On The Version)
• 8. Sound Of Silver (McSleazy Remix)
• 9. London, I Love You But You're Bringing Me Down (Hearing Double & JCB Soundsystem)

Best baby in the world

I feel hipper already...

Kat and I just purchased an iMac.

Finally, I'm a legitimate designer!

North Andover Freecycle...gone?

Randomly, I received an email requesting that I "join the NASWAC group!"  The only explanation was:

"Recreating the North Andover Freecycle group after it was deleted. We will no longer associate with Freecycle"

I immediately though this was fishy (and possibly spam), but in doing some rudimentary research, I found that our local Freecycle group (North Andover) indeed seems to be totally deleted from Yahoo groups.  Which is absolutely bizarre.  I can't find any information why the group was deleted, but this NASWAC group (North Andover Solid Waste Advisory Committee...friendly-sounding) seems to be...the same thing?  I feel...skeptical?  And confused...?

"Where Readers Came From"

Some amazing searches web users used to find their way to Clampants (and i'm sure by posting these, this can only drive more weird and creepy traffic):

• Google search:  wolf urine too smelly to be around
• Google search:  brooklyn gangster
• Google search:  gangster+ woman
• Google search:  wrestling unitard pics
• Google search:  why can i not load woolworths home page
  

Divorce 2.0

Kat: i like how one of the options on twitter, when viewing your page, is "leave clampants"

Twitterpants

Thanks to an invite from Eric, I am now beginning to get hooked on Twitter.  I kind of sat on the invite too long and the whole Twitter thing seems to have cooled-up in my face (Insane in the mundane!)...but I think it is a pretty amazing concept (and a lot has been written about it recently...so read up).  I mean, how else would I know that Kat just had some yogurt!

So, if you sign up, add me or something:
http://twitter.com/Clampants

It's like this blog, but way more pithy.

Also, there's a neato Firefox search box widget that allows you to post directly from the, well, search bar in Firefox (not an Add-on, but a "search" extension...which is weird, but pretty awesome).

What I've Been Listening To (over the past so-and-so)

• Chrismo - Hot Or Not (full of Trentemøllery goodness)
• Adam Port - Berliner Winter
• Tim Sweeney's Resident Advisor Podcast mix (recorded Live at club LaBeija in New York on February 16th, 2007)
• Thomas Fehlmann's astounding Lowflow live...god, this is good.  "Lowflow (CD/LP Plug Research) showcased Fehlmanns slower, more experimental side. Both minimal and expansive, Lowflow allows its tracks to float across and into each other, an infinite, gentle mix to which Fehlmann playfully introduces the soft murmur of pedal steel guitar, marimba or his very own trumpet."
• Busta Rhymes' "Touch It (Christopher Brave Remix)"
  
• Jaguar Skills (Who Is He?)
  

Happy 6-Months, Big Baby Miles

That's right, the dude is six-months big today.

Milkdromeda

A great episode of Astronomy Cast (which overall is an amazing show, tackling mind-bending subjects in an approachable, understandable way), discussing the Largest Structures In The Universe.  Of note is how, in about 3.5 billion years, the Milky Way galaxy will collide with the Andromeda galaxy:

"So in about three to five billion years, the Andromeda galaxy and our Milky Way galaxy are going to gravitationally fall into one another.credit: NASA and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) As this happens, our dark matter halos are going to hit first, and this is going to send shocks back. These shocks are going to distort the shapes of our spiral arms. Clouds of gas and dust that haven’t yet been used up forming stars are going to light up and start to form new generations of stars in a wild star-forming frenzy.   

As the galaxies fall together, some of the streaming arms, the trailing arms that are behind in the merger are going to get left behind and stretched out, grasping out toward the rest of the local group around us. The cores of the two galaxies are going to fall together and tangle. The supermassive black holes in the centres of the two galaxies are going to light up as gas and dust also falls into the supermassive black holes and we end up with active cores."

But not to worry, it sounds like our sun will have cooked the Earth by that time. 

Man, all the CFLs in the world...

Frog Chow

We ordered our (Miles') first Etsy item...or is it just "an Etsy?"



We ordered an amazingly awesome pair of Frog Chow Baby Booties and a matching Animal Crackers Reversible Overall...from Just Kiddin'.  Very cool.

Random Semi-Green Things

• Today, Kat and I replaced all of our bathroom vanity lights with compact fluorescent lights...next up, our kitchen recessed lighting! As an aside, all of the CFLs I have bought should be nominees for Consumer Reports' "Oyster Awards" (for being encased in impossible-to-open yet easy-to-eviscerate-oneself plastic casings...which, at least I think, these can be recycled)
• Will Gigoit streamline the Freecycle process? I'll have to investigate further...the un-streamlined process for Freecycle is, I think, what makes it great...but also makes it painfully annoying.
• If anyone is interested, Wild Oats (the store that just got gobbled up by Whole Foods) is having a seemingly ridiculous buy-1-get-1-free sale on all sorts of organic things (from flax oil to organic peanut butter, potatoes, 3lb bags of apples...etc etc etc). I have no clue if this link to their circular will work, but if not, just go to Wild Oats' web site and search for your local sales flyer.
• Miles is now sporting all different kinds of cloth diapers (in addition to his disposable and compostable G-Diapers)...he is sporting BumGenius, Fuzzibunz, Happy Heiny's, and Bumkins diapers...and I love stating all of that. We had a major diaper incident this afternoon and the Fuzzibunz held strong.

Traffic Maps - Old versus new

On the left is the traffic map ("service") I used to attempt to use from boston.com. On the right is the new traffic feature of Google Maps.

The simplicity (and the ability to bookmark a unique URL for my commute) of Google wins out over the information overloaded, needlessly convoluted, ridiculously cluttered and generally hard to use (four drop-down menus? a bazillion check boxes? weird map crosshairs?  The collision of all of these at the top-right of the map is a nice little touch...) "Maptuit" map.