House of the rising Moonglum

I’ve always felt that Obama understood the urgency better than Clinton. That bill was one of the most ingenious bills that I have seen come forward in a long time, combining a number of policy issues while helping a fading industry at the same time. Unfortunately it never became law. But that kind of thinking is critical for us to be able to maintain our standard of living moving forward. Comparing their stated policies Obama does a little better than Clinton, unfortunately both of them fall short in the over all picture. Her over all plan just seems to be lacking the vision of Obama’s.

Of course having said that, Obama hasn’t had a lot of luck implementing his plan. They both rely too heavily on bio-fuels, but I still prefer the one who talks about the longer term issues on a more regular basis. Too bad Richardson isn’t viable.

Oh and if you haven’t seen it yet, the crude awakening is an excellent primer on what exactly the problem we are facing is.

I can understand NOW-NY supporting Clinton because she is a woman, but to say that Kennedy has made the “greatest betrayal” of women by supporting Obama? That seems a bit disingenuous to me. I admit that I am a white male and so can never understand, yadda, yadda… but if you are really concerned about women’s issues, at least tally up their scores on women’s issues and say that Obama isn’t as strong and that is the betrayal. They specifically mention though that it is because Clinton is a woman that she should be elected. That is insane. Let’s hope Ann Coulter doesn’t run for president! Now there’s someone who would really advance NOW’s agenda.

Via the broken heart, I see that Chicago area slumlord, Kakvand just got 9 years in prison for being the ringleader in “a mortgage scheme that resulted in abandoned, crime-ridden Chicago apartment buildings”. Well that explains a lot. I wonder how many other greedy people like him are out there, ruining people’s dreams. I find it interesting that there are two elements to this story.

The first of course is that it does immediate damage to the neighborhood. When a bunch of supposedly rehabbed condos go up, maybe the ones next door do the same thing, but instead of a condo for a neighbor, you get an empty shell of a building which crime spills out of. Consider:

Kakvand bought 33 apartment buildings in Rogers Park and on Chicago’s South Side between 1997 and 2004, but didn’t renovate them. Units were sold as rehabbed condos at inflated prices, using straw buyers who defaulted on $29 million in loans. The plot displaced renters, and left decaying buildings prone to squatters, drug dealers, fire and water damage.

Which leads me to the second part of this that I find interesting. One man single handedly caused $29 million in real estate loans to go south?! That certainly can’t have helped the mortgage market! But it is an interesting insight into the system, because for that to work (and, well, the less illegal scams that have been put over on unsuspecting home buyers for the past few years) you also need help. “Also charged were Syed Ali Mohammed Razvi, a fugitive, and real estate appraisers Thomas M. Groh, Eric L. Dorsey and Britt J. Pierre, who earlier pled guilty.” Wow. Fugitive real estate appraisers. “Haggerty said Kakvand’s continuing legacy is the reduction in the amount of affordable rental housing in Rogers Park, and the artificial inflation of area home prices.” And here I just thought is was condo conversions. Who knew it was also fake condo conversions. What a world.

So there are a lot of people in this neighborhood who like to complain about the state of potholes and sidewalks and whatnot. It is important to remember that is could be worse. You could have a sinkhole so drastic that it suck the toilet seat covers down on the second floor. I have a really good friend who lives in the building at the top of this picture.

Dude, THAT is a pothole.

I have just watched this twice and am going back to work now, but oh my goodness. Closed captioning on hands as a music video?! The shocking thing is it is actually kind of cool. I tried moving my hands the same way and it isn’t as easy as it looks. There are a bunch of other Daft videos done the same way, but none of them are as good. (One of them only has one word, and is kind of funny.)

The Apple TV isn’t the only game in town when it comes to online movie rentals and purchases. In fact, the XBox 360 has almost exactly the same feature set. Joystiq did a nice compare and contrast of features. Just don’t try to play guitar hero on your Apple TV.

What I really want though is the same thing for Unbox and TiVo

Every time I write a major application for a client, it never seems real during the process. There are so many small issues, little unit tests to be run, small bugs to fix. All the details are small minded thoughts, and only the occasional glance is made up to make sure the details still fit the over all plan. But somehow the plans are always good, and the details all fit together. Then there is a moment of magic when this very unreal collection of pieces turns into something real. And then it is a question of do you feel lucky? Do you trust yourself? Are you going to run it with debugging turned on, or crank it up to the warn level?

Crank it up to the warn level, run it, and walk away. Come back in 20 minutes, and it is done. No messages at all. No sign that it did anything at all. But then you poke at the resultant data, and as if by magic, everything worked. I am still amazed that I can leave the computer unattended for 20 minutes and have it do something useful in the real world.

(now if I can only get my MSSQL connection to stop timing out on me. No, I really do need that connection for 20 minutes!)

I promise this is the last MWSF post.

So, the download movie rentals are pretty cool, but after watching my wonderful wife sit through my going on (and on and on and on) about the benefits of different versions of video systems and why we really need that HD TV for all the new gadgets that are coming out, I think that Erica over at TUAW has this one right.

Charging a dollar more is a tax on people with a certain gene that is predominantly located in males. That is why my brain shuts off and paying $2000 for a TV almost makes sense. And as long as my wife can sit through the whole thing, we’ll wrap back around to the point where I realize that, really, we don’t watch TV anyway, so why do we really need that. *sigh* I think I’m the only gadget freak out there who doesn’t actually like to buy gadgets. I just like to drool over them when they come out.

Not a post, I really am working and not reading MWSF news, but I just had to say something about the funny guys over at TUAW. The new mac laptop is pretty, and if you want to pay an extra grand for something I hadn’t even heard of before, go right ahead. Quote from TUAW: “Sure, it may be worth every penny, but first you have to find all those pennies and herd them into a recognizable grouping of some sort.”

This might be the year that Apple gets large chunks of my money. Too many good products out.

My green credentials may not be up to date, but is pumping 40% of the heat generated by a data center into the San Francisco bay (pdf) considered “green” nowadays?

Straight out of Snow Crash.

Dude, rock on! It appears that an aside in our effort to make everything illegal, the US decided to give absinthe a reprieve. It appears that the supposedly hallucinogenic drink has been legalized. Turns out all those bad side effects were from bad distillation processes. Now if we can only do the same with marijuana we can continue the trend of shifting prison population from drug offenders to violent offenders.

I do however have it on good authority that Absinthe gives a MEAN hangover, so you might want to do your experimentation with small quantities.

Got $15 Million? Want to blow it? The Chicago Spire condos went on sale today. I guess the sort of people that buy $15 Million condos, don’t really care about the housing market. Best line from the article: “With most units priced from $750,000 to $15 million, she added, ‘it will appeal to a specific audience.’”

I was asked who was on my ballot, so here you are. Note that you can get your sample ballot by giving your address. If you give your name as well you will check your voter registration.

Also, please note that this is a work in progress and will be updated as the election approaches.

President: Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, Kucinich, Dodd, Biden.

This is the batch that you know the most about, so I won’t chime in other than to say I have never regretted voting for Obama, and since I used to live in Hyde Park, I have had a couple opportunities to vote for him. Talking presidential candidates is more than this post is worth. OK, I will say one thing. That letter that I hated still pisses me off. Truth is though, Clinton would have signed it as well if she thought she could get any mileage off of it. In terms of general position I agree more with Obama than Clinton (heh, I probably should vote for Mike Gravel, but he didn’t actually seem to make it onto the sample ballot, and who is he again?)

Senator: Durbin only.

Heh, I guess we get to say yes or not vote? I would vote against him on the general stance of always vote against the incumbent, not to mention he signed that letter that Obama did as well. But, I guess we don’t get a choice on him.

Congress: Shakowski, Nocita

I have really liked Shakowski in the past, but two issues jump to the fore. First, she is the incumbent, and well… you know. Second, she signed that other letter. In case you haven’t guessed that hit list is going to show up again.

Also, the guy running against her actually seems to have some thoughts that jibe with my own. Check out his web site and tell me what you think. That is if he didn’t already knock on your door. He seems to be making the rounds.

Delegates: Wow I know (of) some of these people! Having been through a couple election cycles I guess will do that. I’ve always just picked these guys based on who they are voting for. Remember that you get six. Dude, Bernie Stone signed up? Why no Joe Moore?

State Senate: Silverstein only.

Another unopposed candidate. Why do they even put these guys on.

State Rep: Lou Lang only.

Yet another, though I have to say, he pretty much stayed out of the mess that was the last county election, so I have no problem blindly coloring in his box.

Metro Water: Spyropoulod, Meany, Avila, Maragos, Santos, Jones, Podgorski, Stinson

I haven’t found anything on these people yet. If anyone found anything please leave a comment.

States Attorney: Allen, Alvarez, Brookins, Suffredin, Milan, Brewer.

Heh, Suffredin is on the hit list. Lots of people have lots of opinions about this race. Add links here.

Clerk of the Circuit Court: Dorothy Brown

Another uncontested race. She seems pretty competent at least.

Recorder of Deeds: Moore and Smith.

Board of Review: Berrios, Deratany

Judges:

I can’t find any info on these guys, and voteforjudges.org doesn’t even help me out. Arf?

Burke

ONeal, Greiman, Coleman

Steele, Walsh, Gardner

Wolfson, Burke

Reyes, MacCarthy

Kirby, Curielli

Johnson, Papavero

Rogers, Byrne

Walker, Wilson, Doran

Kristyna Ryan, Lingo, Frank Ryan

Sexton, Kardas, Murphy, Hyman

Oneill, Powell, Mulvhill, Riley

Ward Committeeman: Fagus

I wish there were some way that I could vote against this incompetent. I think I personally have gotten more people in the 49th ward registered than he has. That’s what I always thought the primary job of the committeemen was anyway.

Public Question: Shall we fund the VA healthcare system?

I’m not quite sure where this one is coming from, but it seems blazingly obvious. Whether or not you believe in the war, our armed forces are pretty amazing people who were wounded for us. We should do everything in our power to tend to the repercussions of that service.

This Corrosion by The Sisters Of Mercy

Best programming music.  Ever.  Just so you know.

Finally finished the Golden Compass, and followed it quickly with watching the movie. I’ll just assume that everyone else read it a long time ago, so no need to recap them here. The one thing I will say, Harry Potter has really upped my required level of prose for kid lit. I went into reading the book really expecting some outstanding writing. Pullman did an interesting thing in changing the style depending on who Lyra was trying to be, but to me it ended up falling short, as if he bit off more than he could chew. It ended up feeling disjointed rather than someone who flowed smoothly from one persona to the next.

As for the movie, it actually left me with a similar feeling, though for different reasons. In particular it felt like they were trying to hit every single plot point (up until the end anyway) while not giving nearly enough time to the characters or getting the plot from one point to the next.

Negatives aside though, both the book and the movie drew and interesting world, the book through a neat variation of steam punk, and the movie with some trantoresque CGI London. All in all worth reading and watching, but not my favorites. (Oh and could they have messed with Serafina’s discussion of free will any more in the movie? That was one of (IMO) the more interesting parts of the book, and they reduced it to one word?!?)

Blu-ray has just delivered some solid blows. Enough of this and I can finally go out and get my PS3 and HD (not to mention digital) TV. The battle rages, but today Warner Bros threw in with Blu-ray saying that it was confusing for customers. YA THINK!?! Idiots. Over the holiday Target only sold Blu-ray. Nothing final yet, but it does look to me like Blu-ray is winning, 6 to 2 (Warner, Fox, Disney, Lion’s Gate, MGM, and Sony for Blue-ray and Paramount and Universal for HD DVD.) Paramount and Universal are huge though, and both have massive libraries to bring to bear, but between the PS3 and the upcoming transition to digital, I think that we will see more and more consumers transitioning one way or the other.

There are elections this year in Chicago on February 27th 8th. You have until next Tuesday (the 8th) to register. Check your registration. See the longest popup menu on the internet. Don’t forget to check variations of street types (Av vs Ave) the site is stupid about that.

Radiohead recently did an experiment with digital downloads where they allowed their fans to download a full non DRM version of their album for whatever they wanted. Apparently this was a major success and led the band to realize that traditional recording contracts fail in the face of the digital era.

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the recording industry lately as the RIAA is attempting to claim that ripping music at all does not fall under the fair use guidelines. (Apparently that was an inaccurate claim, and it was specifically ripping for uploading.) If that claim went through, I would probably have never purchased another CD again. At this point in my life CDs only serve as high quality backups of my music. And very occasionally as high quality sources. In any case these cases have made me wonder about the future and past of music.

In particular the notion of “the album”. The album comes from the old album of records that were required before LPs were invented as each record could only hold a song or two. In rock music LPs weren’t used regularly to distribute music until the 60s. This means that prior to that time music was recorded and distributed as singles. I have to believe that that model fits the digital era much better than the album model. (Radiohead not withstanding.) The recording industry won’t appreciate that though, since it is very hard to say that a single is worth $25. But if the artists aren’t making anything off of digital sales, as we move away from physical sales (CDs) something is going to have to give. If the recording industry doesn’t give way, I can see artists stopping going to the bug guys and either going to smaller labels, or just going completely independent using a service like CD Baby or if you want to be on ITMS (and everything else), Tune Core.

Sure it will make the job of radio DJ harder, but wouldn’t that be a more interesting world to live in than what we have now?