Despite most of my post-college career being spent as a web and software guy, I graduated from UIUC with a degree from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Somehow, no matter where I move, their seasonal magazine finds its way to my house (as well as the magazine for the dorm that I lived in).

Today, the Winter UIUC CEE magazine arrived and I found the cover to be interesting considering the birds that caused the double engine failure that downed the U.S. Airways plane into the Hudson River yesterday:

I haven’t read the article, but the picture of the bird and the plane with the headline “Safer skies” is quite the coincidence. The article is titled “Safer skies – Research by Professor Ed Herricks is accessing technology that promises great protection from bird strikes and foreign objects”. Not the kind of stuff that you normally think about when you think “civil engineering”

That reminds me of another UIUC-related coincidence. The morning of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the Daily Illini ran a cartoon that featured a panel relating to blowing up the WTC. I don’t think that one was a coincidence though, as they handed it out for free to everyone in the dorms on campus late morning after the bombings … I think that the folks at the DI were pulling some hijinks … but that’s probably not a smart thing to be joking around about … well at least it seems a little less smart these days. I just looked for my copy of that cartoon but couldn’t find it (but did find lots of interesting college-era junk).

That’s the end of my rambling for tonight.

Vinyl is back!

Around 10 weeks ago I published a new website: http://wax.fm which aims help you “find your favorite albums on vinyl both online and in the real world”. With just a little bit of promotion on a few social media outlets, primarily Twitter (follow @wax_fm), I have been quite happy with the initial coverage and traffic from around the world.

Record guru Robert Benson published an interview with me a few weeks ago. There has been blog coverage in Japan, Italy, Germany, Brazil and many web mentions closer to my neck of the woods.

I’ve got a lot more features and improvements that I plan to add to the site … just need to balance it with lots of other things on my plate! People seem to really like the feature that allows them to find record stores “in the real world” in their city. This feature is something that I intend to continue to improve by making the data richer and adding features to let users rate, review and comment on stores.

Oh, and check out my silly video blogs at http://blog.wax.fm. I plan on doing more of those … so subscribe and stay tuned.

For the technically inclined, the site is built with Ruby on Rails, hosted on Amazon EC2 and uses Amazon S3 liberally. The logo was “crowd-sourced” using Chicago’s crowdSPRING.

Thanks to all who have kindly supported, linked to and written about the site!

Here’s one of the many YouTube videos featured on the site showing folks playing records:

Rock! Now, go buy yourself a copy of Radiohead’s OK Computer on vinyl, you know you want to!

I was working with some folks and someone reminded us of Beeker on the Muppets and we decided to check YouTube for some Beeker videos. I love this one where they’re trying to solve a business problem that doesn’t exist.

Good stuff. I then recalled Ali G’s “Ice Cream Glove”. I love his market research and his “Zen” diagram.

Just remember that he put a “C” on all this stuff so you can’t nick it.

May all of your business ideas prove to be useful and ultimately profitable!

“I like how the email automatically says ’sent from MacBook Wheel’, that way people know you have one“

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

I am always impressed by the production value of these Onion videos.

I just came up with a brilliant idea for a movie.

Main Characters:

• LMSGGwHoG – Leading Man, Somewhat Geeky Guy with Heart of Gold (he’s a Musician/Artist/Athlete)
• BHEGWIRHSTtM – Blonde Hottie Ex-Girlfriend Who Increasingly Reveals Her Shallowness Throughout the Movie
• FoLWWLtQWALoB – Friend of LMSGGwHoG Who Wants LMSGGwHoG to Quit Wallowing About Loss of BHEGWIRHSTtM
• PDWiNwHaARHSTtF – Popular Dude Who is Now with BHEGWIRHSTtM and Also Reveals His Shallowness Throughout the Film
• NPABWLGM – New Pretty Attractive Brunette Who Lead Guy Meets; Likes LMSGGwHoG for Who He Is and Really Supports His Big Project or Band; Also Has Heart of Gold

Synopsis:
Recently dumped LMSGGwHoG wallows about loss of BHEGWIRHSTtM for over first half of film. Eventually LMSGGwHoG gets over BHEGWIRHSTtM and eventually falls for NPABWLGM. A turn of events makes BHEGWIRHSTtM to come back to LMSGGwHoG, but in the end, LMSGGwHoG chooses NPABWLGM.

What? You say you’ve already seen this movie?

Nevermind.

I am loving the photos posted on Barack Obama’s Flickr account from election night. It’s so cool that we’re going to have a president that embraces technology.

Here are some of my favorites (all photos by David Katz/Obama for America). Click on any image for a bigger version at Flickr:

A Mini Photo Journal for November 4, 2008

I remember seeing the funny name “Barack Obama” on a bumper sticker in my neighborhood in January 2004 when he was running for Senate. That was the first time I’d heard of him. Forward three years he announced his run for the presidency in February 2007. I made a small donation on the day of the announcement and purchased the shirt that Mary is wearing in this photo (this is the first time this original campaign shirt has been worn!). Due to our support status with the campaign, we were granted tickets to the big celebration rally and speech in Grant Park in Chicago.

I don’t do mornings, nevertheless, Mary and I walked to the polls at 6AM. I went to work (my first day as a contractor doing work as Zabada, Inc., the country and my work is changing ). I rushed home from work and was on the Metra at 5:15PM.

We made the 2 mile walk to Hutchison Field in Grant Park. The energy was super high all over downtown Chicago. It felt like … I don’t know … just good. As we got nearer, it was great to see the buildings lit up with red and blue lights and the various floors lit up to spell USA, etc.

We got into the event by 7:30 or 8 and it was really fun to watch the results come in on CNN on the big screens and cheer when another state dropped for Barack. The place went crazy when the news called it for Obama at 10PM. I was glad to be there.

It was weird to watch McCain’s speech at 10:20. For the most part, he gave a great concession speech (although it was disappointing to hear all of the booing from his supporters) … I really think that if McCain would have been himself, as he was in this speech, for his entire campaign and if he would have picked a reasonable running mate, then the election would have been at least competitive.

Anyway, we were maybe 50 yards back from the podium … being tall, I could see Barack in person as he gave the speech. I really liked how he reached out to other countries of the world in his victory speech.

We made the slow walk with the celebrating crowds back to the trains. Michigan Avenue was just packed with people. We took the Blue Line back home. John Stirratt and Pat Sansone of Wilco were standing right next to me on the train (don’t forget about my related tune Jeff Tweedy Turd ). I knew who they were but didn’t bug them … it seems like they can pretty much get around town without being recognized. I also bumped into them outside the Aragon Ballroom last month before the Beck show.

We got to our stop and the buses were no longer running, so we walked another 2 miles home.

It was a long day and I was tired … but I was happy to have witnessed history … and I was happy to live in a great city like Chicago.

That’s it … check out the rest of my photos election day 2008 and enjoy this video with one half of Wilco and Obama …

Here’s the native French speakers translation describing this creative project:

Here is a remake of the “Thriller” song that I’ve entirely recorded with my own voice, using 64 acappella tracks. There is therefore no instrument, synthétizer, beatbox, or even to sampler, but only the sound of my voice livened up with Reverb and slight Chorus on certain tracks. Regarding looping parts, Ive simply used the « looping » technique. Moreover, in the whole piece (which contains several thousand notes), I transposed 8 notes, which were impossible for me to sing in high-pitched . Because of my tessiture, I also must have resigned myself to sing certain parts in head voice, more particularly on the track corresponding to Michael Jacksons solo vocal.

Ive accomplished this non-commercial project at home only with a mobile PC, microphone, headphones and webcam – in nearly 350 hours. Its just an artistic challenge, accomplished during my hours of free time, whose purpose is to make smile my close circle and the internauts.

There was an awesome underrated sketch on SNL in the 90’s featuring Garth Brooks and Robert Duval on a game show called “Who’s More Grizzled?”. It looks like NBC pulled the video from YouTube, but you can check out the transcript.

Well a sure-winner on that show is newcomer to the 2008 race for the White House: Joad Cressbecker. He’s got my vote! Check it:

Old, Grizzled Third-Party Candidate May Steal Support From McCain

Hola, amigos. I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but I’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately. Hell, if a candle had three or four ends, they’d be burning, too.

I’ve always felt like starting a post like the awesome Jim Anchower, and now I just did.

Stuff is a little crazy and changing in my world, more about that later, but in the meantime, I really enjoyed this little ditty by Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain. They’ve got some other interesting ones like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Life on Mars”, but this one’s my fave. RIP Mr. Shaft / Chef / Isaac Hayes. Enjoy: