Events

I'm in London this weekend, having used a bunch of frequent-flyer miles to get here. And because they were frequent-flyer miles, I decided to fly British Airways first class. Usually, when I fly to London, I take American Airlines flight 90, a 767 (my favorite plane in American's fleet) that leaves Chicago around 9am and arrives at Heathrow around 10:30pm. That schedule completely eliminates jet lag for me. On arriving in London, I have dinner at a takeaway curry place or something around midnight, stay...

Via The Atlantic Cities blog, the City of Chicago has unveiled a proposal to beautify the Chicago River: Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday unveiled plans to expand the riverwalk another six blocks along Chicago's River. “The Chicago River is our second shoreline," Emanuel said in a statement. "“It is now time to celebrate this incredible waterway with the completion of the entire riverwalk project, from Lake Michigan to the confluence of the three branches.” The conceptual plans include a theme for each...

Amtrak today will run a train from Chicago to Pontiac, Ill., at speeds up to 175 km/h: The time spent traveling at 175 km/h will be relatively brief, lasting for only 24 km on new rails and new concrete ties between Dwight and Pontiac along the 457 km Union Pacific Railroad corridor from Chicago to St. Louis. Dwight is about 130 km southwest of Chicago and Pontiac is about 30 km further to the southwest. The train will then continue on to Normal at top speeds of 125 km/h before heading back to Chicago...

Last week, I bought an ASUS Transformer TF700, in part to help out with our seriously-cool Galahad project, and in part so I could read a bunch of heavy technical books on tonight's flight to London. And yes, I had a little tablet-envy after taking the company's iPad home overnight. It was not unlike fostering a puppy, in the sense that you want to keep it, but fortunately not in the sense of needing to keep Nature's Miracle handy. Then yesterday, Scott Hanselman pointed out a great way to get more use...

The 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional on equal-protection grounds: This is a really big deal. [George H.W. Bush-appointed Chief Judge Dennis] Jacobs is not simply saying that DOMA imposes unique and unconstitutional burdens on gay couples, he is saying that any attempt by government to discriminate against gay people must have an “exceedingly persuasive” justification. This is the same very skeptical standard afforded to laws that discriminate against...

Yes, one more entry of nothing but links, as my creativity is completely directed at the three five work projects currently on my agenda. But tomorrow afternoon I start a mini-vacation that will include a good, solid 22 hours of being in planes and trains, which I actually find relaxing. (I am not kidding.) For now, here's what I'm saving to my Kindle reader: The President is having an election-night (victory!) rally at McCormick Place; I will try to attend. Newsweek will cease print publication with...

A quorum: With tonight's debate at my alma mater, Hofstra, everyone needs to hear this again. The BBC reports that creativity is linked to mental illness. Or, put differently, people who lack creativity have no other way of explaining it. Five Thirty Eight has an interactive graphic showing how state-level politics has shifted since WWII. Discover interviews physicist Geoffrey West about urban planning. The New Republic thinks Ben Affleck's Argo is brilliant. The Economist's Gulliver blog examines Qatar...

Well, that was a fun demo. Fortunately we have four more Agile iterations before we're done. So, now that I have precisely thirteen minutes to catch up on my email and the news of the day, I will note this lede that could only come from a left-leaning British newspaper: BAA is to drop its name in favour of plain Heathrow after concluding that the initials, derived from the old British Airports Authority, no longer fit a foreign-owned company with no authority that has been forced to sell off half its...

I still haven't moved everything out of the Inner Drive Technology Worldwide Data Center to Microsoft Windows Azure, because the architecture of Weather Now simply won't support the move without extensive refactoring. But this week I saw the first concrete, irrefutable evidence of cost savings from the completed migrations. First, I got a full bill for a month of Azure service. It was $94. That's actually a little less than I expected, though in fairness it doesn't include the 5–10 GB database that...

So far this month, I've worked about 110 hours (no exaggeration), in part preparing for a pair of software demos on Monday. Normal blogging will likely return tomorrow or Monday. Meanwhile, here's a picture of Parker: That's from six years ago this week. Everyone together, now: "Awwwwwwww."