BnG Crisis on the Horizon

We're saddened here at kj.com (albeit perhaps not entirely equally - the split is along a greasy line...) to learn from the H-T that Ladyman's is slated to close (this HT Blog entry has one bit of info, and this photo should be available to nonsubscribers... the full article is behind the subscriberwall, unfortunately).

Between the closing of Gib and Denzil's and now impending closure, Bloomington's rich diner tradition is slowly drawing to a close. The beneficiary - a more vibrant commercial downtown with higher-end businesses - is a blessing and cost.

Certainly the viability and improvement of downtown is to be enjoyed, as are the successful businesses which are placed there (at 150 employees, Finelight, rumored future tenants of the redevelopment (and crosslinked via employment with the developers, Heartland Development) are one of these). But it's sobering to see the drifting of the past when it happens.

To learn more about dining in Bloomington, keep your eye on Erik and Kira Eat Bloomington. But they better hurry up and get to the L's!

Departures

For reasons not fully explicable to myself, I found myself filled with a bit of bittersweetness when I read this morning on Chuq Von Rospach is resigning from Apple Computer. He's doing it properly (from an external perspective at least), and doing it for the right reasons, and for that I wish him well, in my small way.

I don't know Chuq from Adam, wouldn't know him if I ran into him on the street or in a hallway. I do know that he was one of those people that 'got email and usenet' and how some facets of online community could work for both dispersed and local teams. For what its worth, I identify (perhaps marginalize) him as 'the email list guy' at Apple (even if that isn't the case now), who managed their public facing mailing lists in a time when I didn't see many large companies making those open and available. For that, I think there's a subtle legacy left on Apple's public persona, which is a good thing; and set a standard for some corporate transparency (though, of course, Apple is anything but transparent on future elements, they have proven reasonably transparent (support discussion groups, open KB, more bug tracking openess than some, etc), which this was a part.

Of course, his post does leave me wondering what chatterbox is supposed to be.... Sounds appliance-y, and shiney.

Technorati Tags: apple

hhhhhot It's a mini heatwave in Chicago, reminiscent of the heatwave we suffered through when we moved here a decade+ ago.

This time we have air conditioning, but I have worries that the BarCamp Chicago AC may not be capable of cooling the many laptops, geeks and the rest efficiently.....

C

I share some of the excitement and interest surrounding the new converging Microsoft collaboration strategy. I have some healthy skepticism of course - moving large enterprises likely to benefit deeply from such toolsets and the number of moving parts they entail is a long path (but Microsoft may still have time and pocket to wait out the market again).

And like Bob, I think this is only part of the solution. But my goal today is more whimsical than his.

At my workplace, we have a real time collaboration system, blending several architectures and generations of products, which pushes millions of messages a day through the pipe. But for me one of the most important messages in the morning is:

C?

which means it's time to make the quick coffee run amongst the respondents. I'd like this to become presence extension - be it SIP/SIMPLE or XMPP - to reflect this. I'd like to see it automated, perhaps via a weight-sensor extended mug warmer. You put your empty mug on indicating readiness.

There's prior art here, of course, in MrCozy's sandwich server which saved many a lunchtime back in the day, and EK's stated goal of a seat sensor for presence. So it isn't patentable - it's just useful.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, Onit, presence, coffee

dash and botheration

Or, as someone memorably used on a mailing list I'm on "Rats to Rhubarb!"

A couple-three weeks ago I had a water -> keyboard accident with my trusty Powerbook, which ended up frying the inverter board (meaning: no LCD monitor). This beast is out of even the extended AppleCare coverage, so I sucked in my gut and ponied up for a repair to buy me some time - the theory being that a couple more months (read: WWDC) of rumor tracking will help me make a smarter Intel transition.

Then this weekend the Superdrive started making an unpleasant clicky noise for every disk (burned, manufactured, CDR, CD, DVD, &c) inserted and rejected. Fun console errors, e.g.:

Jul  1 22:52:50 molly kernel[0]: disk2: I/O error.
Jul  1 22:52:50 molly kernel[0]: SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, ASC = 0x09, ASCQ = 0x90
Jul  1 22:52:51 molly kernel[0]: SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, ASC = 0x09, ASCQ = 0x90
.
.
.

It's going to be a long month.

Update 2006-07-04: Through some unknown miracle, after sleeping for several hours, the drive worked again for a while. So this is likely some heat related failing; not a good thing, but this provides a kludgey workaround for the next couple months, at least.

Technorati Tags: apple

Quai Branly

Many fine quotes in Kimmelman's review of the Quai Branly museum in Paris. Like:

The legacy of Duchamp has turned everything in a museum into a readymade. It's no longer possible to look at a Yoruba voodoo object as purely functional, rather than also (perhaps) terrific looking, or to see a Michelangelo as merely beautiful, rather than also as a product of a moment, a society, a religious tradition. Even if it were possible, it would be terribly unfashionable.

It's a terribly negative review, with the endgame being that the Quai Branly is about the museum - the architecture - more than the contents and contexts.

AZ and I spent a half day in another museum that seemed unapproachable, but maintained a fine set of contexts. The Musée Carnavalet. This is a fine museum, though clearly not designed for weak-french-lanuage tourists. it does maintain the context of the history of Paris nicely, even if you (as we did) get lost and approach the centuries in the wrong order. Part of this is aided by being housed in several conjoined old Hotels, so the architecture matches the artifacts being presented.

And a ...pickhits... tip - grab a bite at the Swedish Cultural Institute located nearby. Delicious sandwiches on flatbread, a sunny courtyard and a polyglot crowd.

Technorati Tags: Paris, travel

Saucy Espresso The espresso machine at The Grind is feeling its oats today. Such is the happy morning life in my neighborhood!