Keeping the blog alive....

Sorry, I've been busy lately. Here is a random assortment

• Velvet Underground on YouTube
  
• Justice, War, Etc from David Friedman
• Interesting article about Crime in Atlanta
• A nice profile about a former client of mine.
• The Agitator puts it very well with "we’ve reached the point where even jaded libertarian cliches present an inaccurately optimistic picture of what’s going on"
• A very good explanatory video by Tim Hartford.
  

The line of last night...

(Woman I was talking to referring to band on stage)

"The singer sounds like he's hitting a baby with a cat"

I hold my nose

I hold my nose, club my conscience, and smother my scruples and voted for Chambliss today. Barr's suggestion was important to me, enough to get me over my outrage at his campaign literature mentioning "Fiscal Responsibility".

Incidentally my polling place was deserted, which points to a substantial win for Chambliss.

The funniest thing I read today

Is this Urban Dictionary entry on Atlanta (Definition 26):

If you like ghetto fabulous craphole dumps, you will think you have died and gone to heaven in Atlanta.

The simple and direct entry on Forsyth County is good (and somewhat accurate) too.

Saturday night special

• Inequality and the Sergei Brin effect - self selection on a grand scale
  
• What Paulson might get out of the bailouts
• Cobb Country gets a tank - for real. I grew up there, and in general, the place makes Mayberry look like Escape from New York. Perhaps it's to quell the riots should (really, when) McCain lose.
• Tom puts it quite well with

  the penchant for blaming the problems on “greed” is the Great Chicago Fire on oxygen.

• My neighborhood makes the news. Apparently it's "rich in tolerance and diversity". I was not interviewed for it, though I still like it a lot.
  
• Rocksploitation now has a real music video - sort of.
  

Least surprising headline ever

Report: Crack users with HIV engage in unprotected sex

Only in Atlanta

I went to the all night convenience store last night on a beer run after we ran out at the recording studio. Ahead of me in line was an obvious heroin addict (lots of track marks) wearing pajamas. Behind and to the side of me was was an attractive debutante type having a loud conversation on her cell phone. The heroin addict is having a loud conversation with the clerk about her kids (apparently it's a lot of work but they're worth it); the debutante is having a loud conversation on her cell phone that ended with "Some people have NO MANNERS!".

I savored the irony for an hour or so.

Sunday reading

• Cities and Ambition -

  "A friend who moved to Silicon Valley in the late 90s said the worst thing about living there was the low quality of the eavesdropping."

  I've always judged cities by the quality of the homeless and convenience stores, but there's all sorts of different metrics I suppose.
• What if politicians pandered to economists?
• The AJC now has foreclosure listings

I play with video

From my new tiny video camera. The sound quality is impressive, the degree to which YouTube Crunches it is not welcome.

The rare wise move from the APD

Finally the Atlanta Police department cracks down on the idiotic critical mass rides.

After years of looking the other way, Atlanta police recently cracked down on a monthly bicycle ride through the city streets that includes blocking cars and flouting traffic laws.

At least 10 officers, eight on motorcycles and two in patrol cars, followed more than 300 bicyclists through downtown Atlanta, Little Five Points and Virginia-Highland on June 27 from about 6:30 to 8 p.m. Most of the bicyclists stopped for red lights they normally would have ignored. At least two bicyclists were ticketed for disobeying traffic laws.
...
Highsmith, a graduate student in mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, said Critical Mass would not be the same if the bicyclists followed the rules.

"The little bit of disruptiveness and the civil disobedience is a part of raising awareness [about bicycles] in a more conspicuous way," he said.

The group wants both better infrastructure for bicycles, including bike racks and lanes, and to show drivers that they, too, can hop out of the car and onto a bike.

Now honestly, if the cyclists are lobbying for better infrastructure, how does NOT using the infrastructure that's already there help matters? Why should anyone pay for more bike lanes when the existing lanes aren't being used and the people agitating for them are as boorish as possible?

Not that many people will care about this, but it's been a pet peeve of mine for years...

Tom Waits

Last night I saw Tom Waits playing the Fox Theater. The show was wonderful; he did about half the songs I was hoping he would do. The only fly in the ointment was the massive array of hoops that TicketMaster made everyone jump though; only two tickets per household, original credit card required to enter, ticket checks every 20 feet, etc. It was a bit like the old Soviet Union. Security was much tighter at the show than at my visit to the capital last year actually.

And an addendum - I was talking to a long time Waits fan after the show and she said that the security concerns probably were Waits' idea; apparently he's willing to go a long way in his vendetta against scalpers.

Update on the two murders across the street

A news update here. It seems that there were two killers, and also that they planned to torch the house when they were done. Scary business.

Meeting the trouble halfway

So now it seems that the "incident", which is to say, two murders, that happened 100 feet away from my house was a drug deal gone sour, and not a home invasion. That does make me feel a bit better. The shooter(s) being caught would seal the day nicely.

More info on the blue lights

Here is the article. Scary business. The article does describe the neighborhood as "Upscale".

The night the blue lights kept the neighbors up

The street is taped off in front of my house, there are three police cars to the left and right of my house, and the church parking lot across the street is cordoned off with yellow police tape. A news van was here too (they left after about an hour). I've heard something of what happened, but I'll link to the news story when it comes out in the morning.

At the zoo

I'll be doing a more formal gallery soon, but here are some samples of my visit to the zoo with Mike and Erin.

I venture out in the middle of the day with camera

To the studios of Griffin Mastering, conveniently located six doors down the street.







The quote of the afternoon was by the new harmony singer: "My armpit smells like hamburger."

Rockspoloitation on Saint Patrick's Day

They needed some photos for their site, and I took quite a few. I finally got a chance to shoot in daylight which made quite a difference.

Tornado parties and the kindness of strangers

So, last night I venture out into one of the more interesting parts of downtown to go to a party at the offices of my good friends at Lucky Fish. I carefully check the weather beforehand so as I can be home before any thunderstorms so my dog won't have his usual psychotic break that happens when a storm comes and I'm not there. The storms were supposed to come around midnight and I planned to leave around 11:00 PM. All was good.

It was a great party, with casino games and cool people. I'm near the door around 9:30 when I notice the wrath of God happening outside. Someone checks news on a ubiquitous I-Phone and says that CNN Center and the Georgia Dome have just been hit by a tornado. The first tornado to hit downtown in living memory. The history is made more notable by the fact that the party is a quarter mile away. Crap I think. I'm not worried about my personal safety as we were in a converted 100 year old well built factory . Nonetheless leaving is out of the question. I've driven through one tornado and I'm not driving through another one.

We all head down to the basement, and the party continues. The power goes out too, which makes for a very fun party by candlelight. The second tornado warning passed around midnight and I made my way back home through downtown Atlanta.

Not surprisingly the city looked like a tornado had just passed through (photos from the AJC here and here. My house is about four miles from the first link and two miles from the second.). I resign myself to the thought that the dog had destroyed the remaining blinds in my office (his favorite target) and hope for the best in terms of structural damage.

I return home to find the house untouched, the blinds shredded, the back door open, and the dog gone. Fresh teethmarks on the knob tell me that he had opened the door to come look for me when the thunder hit. I also make the unpleasant discovery that the back door no longer latches (hence his ability to open it).

I first look in the jungle/backyard area beyond the fence where has sometimes jumped, to no avail. I sneak through all my neighbors backyards and can't find him. I drive around the neighborhood looking for him, and he's nowhere in sight. It was quite dark and foggy and the odds of finding him were close to zero, so after several hours I decide to wake up at dawn and look then.

I get a call at 3:50 AM from someone asking me if I was missing a dog! I thank them profusely and congratulate myself on the custom tag I'd gotten him with my name and phone number. I then rushed over to where they were.

Somehow he'd make it all the way to the East Atlanta village, a distance of two miles. All the power was out in that neighborhood, even emergency power. I find the very nice people on the sidewalk standing over an exhausted but unharmed pooch. Apparently he had stopped to rest and they came over to him thinking he was hurt, and found my number. Why and how he made it all the way over there I have no idea. I thanked the good Samaritans profusely and went home. Drex was almost asleep by the time we got back and he's been sleeping for most of the day.

And that was my Friday adventure.

Quick Link Roundup

• ASP.net best practices
• The Georgia Encyclopedia
• A quick start guide to SilverLight
• A periodic table of visualization methods
• Patrick Lang on Obama - featuring the notable line that Obama is the "Trophy Messiah"
• The first look at SilverLight 2.0