Events

This is cool: Across New York, there are USB drives embedded in walls, buildings and curbs. The idea is to create an anonymous, offline file-sharing network in public space. The drives are completely public and anyone can plug in to drop and download files. Seriously, you can plug the USB drive into your laptop. ... It's part of an art project called "Dead Drops" by Aram Bartholl and I have to say, it's pretty awesomely creative. I mean, if I saw a USB stick stick out of a random wall, I'd be dying to...

Nice game. Peter Sagal joked about it last weekend, though: "The two mayors made the usual gentleman's bet before the series. If Texas wins, they get to secede from the Union. If San Francsico wins, the have to secede from the union."

I'm two away from finishing the most entertaining series of books I've ever read, the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. I mention this because the one I finished yesterday, Making Money, contained two of the funniest lines I've ever read: There is a time in a thoughtless man's life when his six-pack becomes a keg.... And: "One of my predecessors used to have people torn apart by wild tortoises. It was not a quick death. In context, they're even funnier.

Sullivan finds an attack ad from an earlier election showing what a return to the civility of the founding fathers might look like

Reader DW pointed me toward this blog, a salve to the tortured OCD mind: I love the blog's design, too. Very...neat.

The Daily WTF links to a set of 30 CVs created by graphic designers: Check out the rest.

Doonesbury turned 40 today. NPR reports: Created in the throes of '60s and '70s counterculture, Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip blurred the lines between comics and the editorial pages, and produced some of the most memorable cartoon characters ever sketched. Trudeau developed Doonesbury around three foundational characters — everyman Mike Doonesbury, football quarterback B.D. and campus radical Mark Slackmeyer. They represented the center, the right, and the left, Trudeau says. Six weeks after...

Via reader AS, this has to be my favorite jack-o-lantern ever:

One of the benefits Avanade provides is a fairly generous "technology" budget. I'm given cash, every year, to buy things that either demonstrate my (read: Avanade's) love of technology, or give me better work-life balance. This week I bought a 240 GB solid-state drive for my work laptop to replace the 256 GB drive it came with. So, I backed up the entire drive using Windows 7 System Image, swapped the drives out, and...crap. Did anyone else notice that 240 So, yeah, I can't restore the image. I am now...

This month has set the record, and it's only the 22nd: Chicagoans have been soaking up sunshine at a record rate this month in what has been the sunniest October to date. So far this month the city has recorded 86 percent of its possible sunshine, surpassing the previous Oct. 1-21 record of 84 percent established in 1958. Another mostly sunny day is on tap for Friday before a weekend storm promises to bring extensive cloudiness along with the city's first significant rainfall since October's opening...