Events

Yes. And snowy: Snowfall’s been quite relentless here. Flurries (or more) have fluttered to earth 8 of the past 9 days. And, with just under 250 mm on the books to date, the 2013-14 season has been accumulating snow at nearly twice the normal pace and ranks 33rd snowiest of the past 128 years. That places it among the top quarter of all Chicago snow seasons since records began here in 1884-85. There’s been only one day with a temperature even briefly above freezing in the past 12. An eight day string of...

Apparently, Chicago's Divvy is really popular with tourists—and tourists have trouble returning the bikes on time: Chicago's Divvy bicycle-sharing program took in up to $2.5 million during its first five months, a figure driven by tourists and others who bought daily passes and racked up the majority of overtime fees, according to a trove of preliminary customer data provided by city transportation officials. As much as $703,500 came from late charges, which kick in when bicycles aren't returned within...

This weekend's cover story in New York Times Magazine looks in detail at Google's grand plan to map everything: Street View cars have already mapped six million miles. Depending on your perspective, that’s either a quite a lot (equivalent to 12 trips to the moon and back) or not much at all (only one-tenth of the world’s estimated 60 million miles of road). Either way, Google’s huge investment in the camera-equipped cars — not to mention trikes, boats, snowmobiles and, yes, rafts — has yielded the most...

I posted a photo of the Korean Joint Security Area the night after visiting it, while still in Seoul. Finally, today, one of my colleagues had time to assemble a high-dynamic-range image from a set I took for that purpose. I think it's a much better photograph: Not only did I get the colors closer to reality (always hard to do with a laptop), but combining three different exposures into this one HDRI brings out the details in the shadowy foreground as well as on the DPRK building we were facing. Thanks...

After a string of days when the temperature was so low even Parker didn't want to go outside, this morning's -4°C felt downright balmy. Of course, it's warming up ahead of the 15 cm of snow forecast for tonight. Looks like we're getting a real winter this year.

It happens in every form of art ever invented. First the tinkerers discover the art form, aided by a new techology. Then come the dilettantes, people who figure out the rules and structures of the medium. Next the amateurs refine the techniques, pushing a fad into a form that has commercial possibilities. Finally, the professionals—people who make the art for a living—push everyone else out. Eventually you wind up with nothing but the last two groups—and the amateurs that remain do it because they love...

My company's holiday party happens tonight, preceded by a stop at a client's party, so it makes a lot of logistical sense just to hang out at IDTWHQ and bang away on work. But there's another practical reason: With the opening 11 days of December 2013 running 9.2°C below a year ago, the Chicago area moves into an 8th consecutive day in this early Deep Freeze. The past 7 days have averaged -8.7°C, a jarring 7.8°C below normal—-cold enough to have ranked 8th coldest on record here and the coldest such...

While London's bike-share program seems to have some problems, Chicago is expanding its Divvy program, and asking for user input: To cap off the Year of the Divvy, the city is crowdsourcing all you urban dwellers for suggestions on where to install 175 more stations across Chicago next year. Still no word on if they will make sure Divvy riders know not to ride the bikes on crowded Michigan Avenue sidewalks. They bred like rabbits this summer, popping up in succession so close to each other. I could...

The Atlantic Cities blog sounds the alarm about London's bike share program: While the system recorded 726,893 journeys in November 2012, last month there were only 514,146. To cap these poor user figures, today Transport for London announced that the scheme's major sponsor, Barclays Bank, will pull out of its sponsorship deal in 2015. Given the bad publicity the system has received recently, it may be hard to find a replacement sponsor without some major changes. None of this would matter much if...

Yesterday's forecast really didn't go far enough. We weren't expecting -16°C until tomorrow night, but we got -21°C early this morning: The temperature dipped below zero overnight at O'Hare International Airport, the earliest that has happened here since 1995. The cold will hold through the week, bringing a burst of snow in time for the morning rush Wednesday. The temperature fell to one degree below zero around 12:55 a.m., according to the National Weather Service. That's the earliest subzero readings...