Events

The U.S. Embassy in Moscow just announced sweeping changes to the visas that Americans can get to visit Russia: Starting September 9, Russian and American travelers for business or tourism will be eligible to receive visas valid for multiple entries during a period of 36 months. The agreement also outlines other simplifications in the bilateral visa regime and eases visa processing time for travelers from both countries. Thanks to the agreement, three-year, multiple-entry visas will become the standard...

Science Guy Bill Nye keeps calm and carries on:

The Wind Map is one of the coolest things I've ever seen: And apparently, Isaac is going to hit Valparaiso (and, um, us):

Hurricane Isaac is about to come ashore in New Orleans (check out the current wind map for an arresting view), and by Friday night will be giving Illinois some much-needed rain: As of noon on Monday, August 27, the track of Hurricane Isaac could pass through Illinois on Saturday. Of course, it won’t be a hurricane – just a tropical depression. Even so, large rainfall amounts are expected to fall in parts of Illinois and Missouri. Then, for Labor Day Weekend, it looks to bake and then soak Chicago...

After installing Windows 8 yesterday, I discovered some interaction problems with my main tool, Visual Studio 2012. Debugging Azure has suddenly become difficult. So after installing the OS upgrade, I spent about five hours re-installing or repairing a whole bunch of other apps, and I'm not even sure I found the causes of the problems. The next step is to install new WiFi drivers. But seriously, I'm only a few troubleshooting steps from rebuilding the computer from scratch back on Windows 7. Cue the...

This morning I installed Microsoft Windows 8 on my laptop. As a professional geek, getting software after it's released to manufacturing but before the general public is a favorite part of my job. It took almost no effort to set up, and I figured out the interface in just a few minutes. I like the new look, especially the active content on the Start screen. It definitely has a more mobile-computing look than previous Windows versions, with larger click targets (optimized for touch screens) and tons of...

The Republican National Committee has cancelled the first night of their quadrennial convention because of Tropical Storm Isaac: That move essentially postpones the activities of the first of four scheduled days of the convention. But [RNC Chair Reince] Priebus said in a conference call with reporters that the details of the revised schedule were not yet settled, and could be announced as soon as Sunday. "The Republican National Convention is going to take place. We know that we will officially nominate...

I should really learn to estimate networking and migration tasks better. The last time I upgraded my FogBugz instance on my local web server, it took about 20 minutes. This led me to estimate the time to migrate it to a Microsoft Azure Virtual Machine at 2 hours. Well, 2½ hours later, I'm a little frustrated, but possibly closer to getting this accomplished. The point of a virtual machine, of course, is that it should appear the same as any other machine anywhere. But using an Azure VM means either...

Goose Island beer will start distributing to all 50 states by November: The move will continue remarkable growth for what began as a small brewpub in its current Clybourn Avenue location in 1988, and has arguably become the beer most synonymous with Chicago. But a national reach also seemed inevitable once brewery founder John Hall sold the company to AB at a time when craft beer sales were soaring and macro breweries were struggling to enter the marketplace. Production of Goose Island's biggest-selling...

Three projects and a head cold have robbed me of time and energy this week. I've only got a few minutes this afternoon to list some of the more interesting things I've read in the past day: Andrew Sullivan had two back-to-back posts this morning looking at Obama's strategy at the Democratic Convention and admiring him as a Tory leader for America. Ta-Nahesi Coates dug into Obama's role as a post-racial figure and how he stumbled over Trayvon Martin. Jared Bernstein wrote last week on whether Americans...