All right, it's a marketing video and it's got all kinds of marketing schlock going on... Yeah I watched the whole thing.  Kinda cool.

I spotted it on a slashdot post.

In nerfing around on the site for Frankie Manning's 95th birthday (who is Frankie Manning?) looking at the bands that are playing and the Cangelosi Cards caught my eye.  So I clicked through.  Turns out they are an old time jazz swing band, or something the like.  A search yields a link to Down Home Radio where they appear to be a frequent guest band.  There are also a few video's on youtube of varying quality.  All in all there stuff sounds great.  Their vocalist, Tamar Korn, makes the old vocal style sound effortless.  They play some dates around the city (New York City) and so I must go out and find them.  Ive also subscribed to Down Home Radio's podcast and look forward to consuming the back episodes.

Reduce costume and theme parties... ha ha hah.

First of all the piece is hysterical. As I was watching I realized the BestBuy looked familiar. And while I don't have confirmation, I'm pretty damn sure they shot it at the location below. Let's have a look at street view and see.

View Larger Map

Yep, tree, billboard, brick color, narrow street. I'd say that's the one.

I was looking into my analytics and saw a hand full of traffic from China. I had blogged a bit about Baidu's spider being hyper active and I wondered if that didn't get me on the Chinese radar. Then I looked at the landing pages they were hitting it turned out it was comment page. You see where this is going, comment spam. I guess I had turned off my Akismet off when I made some changes a bit ago. Yeah, I've put comment spam screening back in. I am curious to see what happens to my Chinese traffic once the spam door closes.

As you probably have figured out by now, I use my blog as my memory. And in cleaning out my (overly large pile of clippings) I came across this article The Great Escape: How the CIA used a fake science fiction film to sneak six Americans out of revolutionary Iran by Joshua Bearman with illustrations by Tim Burgard.... Yeah see now you're interested. It was in the May 2007 Issue, and it was really amazing. For some reason the permalink doesn't work, but you can link to a PDF from their page here or Here is the link to the PDF . The article is nothing short of riveting and the illustrations are great.

Actually after looking at the page, there is another interesting pieces you can get PDF from the Wired page:

Pop Up Cities
One day soon, a marshy island not far from Shanghai will become home to a half-million new people. Design company Arup and architect Alejandro Gutierrez have created a new urban model for China. Welcome to the high-density, instant-assembly, bright-green metropolis of the future.

And now I have one less piece of paper in my life.

All, right, it's not by much, but still. So it must be pretty tropical for this time of year in Winnipeg, and it's pretty freakin cold here in NYC

When I tell people I've taken up curling I keep getting asked, "Wait, what is curling?"
And so I do a lot of explanation. However, curling's been getting more than the usual press lately - some might say it's 'heating up'. Yeah groaner I know. At any rate, here is a brief video about curling and was shot at my club (available in HD as well).

I just discovered sumopaint.com where you can use their online image editor to do crazy stuff.  I just played with it for a second, but it seems like it has the basics of what I'm looking for when I'm doing quick image touches.You can access the app here

I've been meaning to write up theses two places for a little while. One is a 'New Mexican Grub' restaurant in Scottsdale, AZ the other is a Pizzeria in Smyrna, GA

Carlsbad Tavern, Scottsdale, AZ - Let's be clear it's not amazing food it's just a great place. I think I saw a description that described it as 'the bat cave but better' and I gotta kind of agree. This is definitely somewhere I will find my way back to. Next time I'm aiming to sit on the patio (pictured). Here is what the folks over at yelp.com have to say.3313 N Hayden, Scottsdale, AZ 8525

Bella's Pizzeria, Smyrna, GA - We found this place wandering around in Smyrna. We actually stopped into a liquor store on in the Vinings we went in to pick up some local beer. They fellow in the store gave us some great guidance on the beer and recommended Bella's. We got a pie to go, took it back to our hotel and relaxed with some good beer and great pizza. We liked it so much that we actually went back the next night and ate in with my Mother and Grandmother. It has that fabulous old school pizza joint atmosphere with a laid back cheerful wait staff and good food. I feel like I had a calzone the next night. 3599 Atlanta Rd SE # A13, Smyrna, GA 30080