The “right or wrong” on Fox Chicago news a couple nights ago was:
“I agree with the survey saying CTA service has improved”

25% say right
75% say wrong

This just in: 75% of Chicagoans are idiots. How in the freaking world can someone say it’s worse? We have a better brown line. We have CTA bus tracker. People just like to complain. My official response on the Fox Chicago bulletin boards

================
Subject: Three words

CTA bus tracker.

I love it.

It's the best.
================

My brother makes a strong (and correct) argument that Tony Gwynn is better than Cal Ripken. There's some cardinals fan bloke commenting on that post saying Gwynn was hopped on steriods for a few years. Which is a complete joke. I made a chart to prove Gwynn's batting was not out of the ordinary. And to show that Tony Gwynn is better than Cal Ripken.

I think the chart speaks for itself:

I'd like to see a tv show named "First Season." Whenever someone says they are watching the first season of another television show, it'll be promo for the tv show named "First Season." It'll be great.

"I'm watching the first season of '24.'"
"You mean 'First Season?'"
"Of 24, yes."
"The 24th show of 'First Season?'"
"Wait. What?"

Then when "First Season goes into it's third season, people will say, "I'm watching the third season of 'First Season.'" Or maybe they could just change the name of the show every year, so the third season of "First Season" will be called "Third Season."

A fun two-line poem:

=============
no delete
co plete
=============

yes! It rhymes and it forces you to complete the poem in your mind. You have to add the m. See! The m, it's missing, but your mind adds it. See! Yeah *sits here happy*

Whenever I would have hot chocolate at work in my big mug, it always tasted bad. Was it the black mug sucking out the heat? Not really. Was it the Swiss Miss brand? Not really. Was it because I was filling the big mug up to the top with water. YOU BETCHA.

It may seem obvious, but too much water for hot chocolate WATERS IT DOWN. Yeah. Duh. I always thought this mug was a pretty normal size. Sure it's a little bigger, but it's not THAT big. This time around I put in half the amount of water. Wow! It tastes SO much better.

Obvious? Yes. But tasty? OOH YEAH!

It's so much fun to type the website address as ALL CAPS into a browser. I'm going to TWITTER.COM. By typing it in ALL CAPS it tells my browser that I'm totally serious about going to twitter. Give me the TWITTER! Then if a URL has exclamation points after it, the website should have fireworks and be SUPER exciting.

However, Firefox cannot handle exclamation points after a website address. Twitter.com!!! gets you a very non-exciting error.

Step it up firefox! I want an add-on that will "enhance" a website when it has exclamation points after it. Whatever the enhancement is, I leave it up to the developers. Just let me give you one suggestion. Godzilla.

Pilcrow Lit Fest has a lot going on this Saturday May 23.
Matilda’s: 3101 N. Sheffield and Trader Todd’s: 3216 N. Sheffield, Chicago

There’s a ton of free panels and workshops.
http://pilcrowlitfest.com/panels.html

For every time slot there are three different workshops. Here’s the ones I’ll be attending on Saturday:
10am: How to promote your work
11am: Social Media
12pm: Publisher’s Role in Community
1pm: Design Panel or 1pm: Teaching Artists Panel (I can’t decide yet on this time slot)
2pm: Life, Technology, Society
3pm: What makes good reading great
4pm: State of the small press
5pm: Event coverage, niche blogging, and technical writing

These are just my picks, check out the full list (with descriptions) at: http://pilcrowlitfest.com/panels.html

According to acronymfinder.com there are only three acyronyms for D.U.M.B.
• Duke University Marching Band
• Deep Underground Military Base
• Disasters Usually Motivate Backups

Shouldn't there be more?

There's only two for S.T.U.P.I.D.
• Smart Talented Unique Person in Demand (via acronymfinder)
• Simply the Ultimate Planets Interface Door (via acronymattic)

Here are my notes from the Society of News Design meetup on May 16, 2009. (Pictured above is Theresa Carter, Audarshia Townsend, Whet Moser, Brad Flora, and Jeff Daugherty on the Social Media Roundtable)

------------------------
Matt Mansfield (president of SND)
Rev. 2.0 and the road ahead

Long traditional narrative not popular anymore.
Need to get things more like data manipulation on everyblock.com
But "Story forms are important as ever before"

Context matters: as people get more mobile where they are is more important.

Audience experiences count as much as content loyality they have with you.

30% of traffic on news sites comes through the homepage.
Homepage like USAToday.com is good. Short headlines. Focused main story. But the page is suuuuuuuuper long.
A more brief design is better, like the mockup at http://www.brasstacksdesign.com/wilson/index.htm

Print design is about control. Web design is about behavior. (photo)

TO DO:
• Visit revenuetwopointzero.com
• Visit twitter.com/rev2oh

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Jonathon Berlin (Chicago Tribune Subject Associate Editor, Arts & Graphics)
Remaking the Chicago Tribune

TO DO:
• Visit themash.com
• Look up open records help desk on Chicagotribune.com

------------------------
Colonel Tribune
Social Media Roundtable hosted by Daniel Honigman (photo)

Jeff Daugherty @chitowndaily
Brad Flora @bradflora
Whet Moser @whet
Audarshia Townsend @audarshia
Theresa Carter @thelocaltourist

Regarding writing policies: "Are you more worried about being sued or more worried about being relevant." --Jeff Daugherty

Jeff Daugherty says that age of new innovative aggregation is over. Then in response to that Brad Flora (Mr. Aggregator of windycitizen.com) says he would love more local niche sites :) yes!

Brad Flora says its hard to get local advertisers to buy ads in newsletters rather than website. [SIDE THOUGHT: Perhaps ad buyers need to be at events like this, so they can be educated of the value.]

TO DO:
• Visit twitter accounts of people on panel.

------------------------
Adrian Holovaty
Everyblock



News is anything that's new. New-s. Even yelp reviews are news.

Everyblock's grant runs out in about 40 days. They are looking for investment or acquisition to keep running.

Listening to Adrian Holovaty of everyblock.com makes me wonder if I can get blogs can submit their local content to his site.

TO DO:
• Check out everyblock crimes on a route
• Check out wrecking demolitions on everyblock.com
• Subscribe to Lawrence Avenue live feed
• Download Everyblock iphone app
• Look up coupons on everyblock
• Email everyblock asking about geo standards for blog posts
• Visit chicagotribune.com/block
• Visit suntimes.com/yourblock

------------------------
Jim Coudal
Coudal Partners



Instead of reporting to clients, they make clients.

Coudal says their website coudal.com is good indicator if they will get along with a client. If the client says they saw their site and didn't quite get it, then chances are they probably won't get along. [i find that to be true as well]

There is no portfolio on their site. Coudal quotes Kevin, "If I'm at the bar with a girl, I don't talk about my previous girlfriends."

Runs ad network called "the deck."
There are three seats in advertising. Reader. Publisher. Advertiser. Online screwed ads up, because they left out the reader. They put in all these garbage ads all over without taking concern if the reader would enjoy these ads. So the Deck was born.

The Deck runs only one ad per page. The Deck has only 40 premium design/creative sites. They only have so many spots for ads. Ads are prescreened for quality and relevance. They only serve ads readers would like.

No demographics. No ad reporting. No CPM. No dashboard for publisher. No dashboard for advertiser. When they add a new publisher a starting payment is negotiated. Then three months later they look and renegotiate. That's it. There's no other change to the price. It doesn't matter after that how much traffic the site sends. The publisher gets paid one flat rate.

Advertisers pay one flat insertion rate. $7200 for one slot.

Renewal rate for publishers is 75%.

TO DO:
• Look at layer tennis from Coudal Partners
• Check Twitterific iphone app (Coudal loves it)
• Visit decknetwork.net
• Visit fffound.com

----------------
Bill Adee & Tracy Schmidt
Meet Chicago Now



Chicagotribune.com gets 100 million page views a month. 10 million unique visitors a month.
(Bill80 corrected me in his tweet.)

40% of their audience is Chicago. Their advertisers want more of their audience to be from Chicago--creating the need for chicagonow.com. It's for chicago eyeballs. 80 local bloggers will be part of it. Right now there are 30 to 40 bloggers.

Mockup of Chicago Now. (http://yfrog.com/14fxjj)

Any restaurant chain with more than twenty stores might be required to show the calories counts on their menu boards. Of course the restaurant industry opposes this. But isn't it time for people to own up and know what they are eating?

Instead of asking for the a "number 1" (Big Mac), people could now say, "I'll have a 540, please."

People who use air quotes with their fingers have "issues." Now picture me saying that and raising my hands and making the hand gesture for quotations. The number of air quote pumps is directly related to the number of syllables in the word. "Issues" has two syllables, therefore gets two air quote pumps.

I dare you to try this as an "experiment" at your desk while you read. The word "experiment" has four syllables, therefore it gets four air quote pumps.

The word "enjoy" is a really neat word. What do you enjoy? (I keep a running list of over 500 things that I enjoy).

Take a look at etymology of the word "enjoy"
en: to cause a person to be in.
joy: equiv. to gaud- (base of gaudēre to be glad)

Enjoy means to cause a person to be in a state of gladness. NEAT!

It's really interesting to look at what the prefix "en-" on dictionary.com:

a prefix occurring originally in loanwords from French and productive in English on this model, forming verbs with the general sense “to cause (a person or thing) to be in” the place, condition, or state named by the stem;

more specifically, “to confine in or place on” (enshrine; enthrone; entomb); “to cause to be in” (enslave; entrust; enrich; encourage; endear);

“to restrict” in the manner named by the stem, typically with the additional sense “on all sides, completely” (enwind; encircle; enclose; entwine).

This prefix is also attached to verbs in order to make them transitive, or to give them a transitive marker if they are already transitive (enkindle; enliven; enshield; enface).

“Our happiness is completely and utterly interwined with other people: family and friends and neighbors and the woman you hardly notice who cleans your office. Happiness is not a noun or a verb. It’s a conjunction. Connective tissue.”
--Eric Weiner, "The Geography of Bliss"

That is a very insightful quote. This happiness thing is such an elusive thing that so many pursue. I've always kinda ignored happiness specifically and focused on growth. Which is rather funny, cuz by ignoring happiness as a goal, i think i actually get more happy. It's kinda like the tighter you hold onto something, the more it slips through your fingers.

I find it helps to think about the things that are around happiness, that create it. Things like being thankful are the concrete steps to happiness.

And now the insightful from this quote functions in a similar way. Happiness isn't this end-goal. It's not a noun or a verb. It's a conjunction. Connecting.

If you want to hear one of the strangest remixes ever, take a listen to the "Muppets Theme Remix" by DJ E Motion.

There are over 30 results on amazon for "muppets theme." Most are fairly straightforward. Like the original theme song.

And there are some amazingly odd versions:
• Quartet version by Quattrottave: will make you scream, "OH NO NO NO NO!"
• The Muppet Theme (for toy ocarinas): extremely strange
• The Ensemble Dreiklang Berlin does an incredible wind instrumental version.

lahp on twitter said: "We've already had a discussion about Klingon cloaking devices this ayem. Yep. We're dorks."

When you say that you are a dork, doesn't that diminishes your dorkness? Dorks don't admit to being dorks.

Or can you safely call yourself a dork and still be one?

Postcrossing.com is a site where you can sign up to send and receive postcards from across the world. (It is #14 on my list of 14 things that inspired me in 2008.) Most people send postcards of photos of their local area. I've been sending postcards of photos of Chicago's 2016 Olympic bid.

Wouldn't it be cool to send a pencil rubbing? Yeah! This would combine two loves of mine. Postcrossing and pencil rubbings! You can't really do a pencil rubbing with thick postcard paper, so I'll have to use thinner paper for the rubbing and spray mount it onto some postcard stock. And I'll spray fix the graphite so it doesn't smear through the mail.

I’m also thinking about doing a dual-card where half the card is the pencil rubbing, the other half is a photo of the building.

A shocking 92% agreed with this statement: "Don't sacrifice your personality for the love" That's scary. What times we live in that people are putting themselves and not others first in life.

----------------------------
Here's how i wrote for my comment:
Disagree.
Love is all about sacrifice. Love is you before me. One must be adaptive to have a loving relationship. Putting your personality ahead of loving is like putting yourself at a higher priority than someone else. Love is putting others higher than yourself. Please do not bown down to the cult of your own personality. Instead please learn how to love and adapt yourself to love.

----------------------------
Do you agree or disagree? Don't sacrifice your personality for the love.
Please leave your thoughts in the comments below.

MLB.com has a game called Beat the Streak where you try to put together a hitting streak to beat baseball's legendary record of 56 games. Choose one player every day who you think will get at least one base hit. If your player gets a hit, your streak is extended. If he fails to get a hit, your streak ends and you can start a new one.

Be the first eligible participant to get a hit in 57 straight games and win $1,000,000 in cash.

I'm also doing my own little pool/league and if you win the league, you get $20 via paypal from me!
How to join the Amazing League:
1) Send me a message via the spudart contact form
2) I'll send you an invite to join our private league via mlb.com.
3) You click on the link in the email and join the league.

So far nobody has ever defeated me in Beat the Streak. One year I got an 11-game streak. Last year I won with 12 games. Think you can beat that? If you get the longest streak in the Amazing League, you get $20. It's totally free to join my league. I'm offering the twenty bucks out of my pocket just to make it interesting. One year, we had about 10 people in the league.

You are looking for this webpage. And hopefully you did a search on Google and found this page. Here is what you are looking for:

Call to God	What is your treasure?	Art Authentication