Author: Chad
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OED can you see?
A used books and records store in my town just moved even closer to my place. Today I stopped by and saw a two-volume Oxford English Dictionary Compact Edition. It comes in a case and with its own magnifying glass, because they weren’t kidding when they called it compact: I exercised enough self-control to pass…
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The Big Short in 3 quotes
Michael Lewis, The Big Short: 1. “What needs to be remembered here,” he wrote the next day, after he’d done [the trade], “is that this is $100 million. That’s an insane amount of money. And it just gets thrown around like it’s three digits instead of nine.” 2. “In retrospect, their ignorance seems incredible—but, then,…
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Final touches in ‘Lost’ and ‘Parks and Recreation’
I don’t know how but Jenny and I jumped back into Parks and Recreation again in season 5 and went all the way to the end. This time through the finale, “One Last Ride”, I saw how much it had in common with the Lost series finale. *Spoilers ahead* I’ve written about Lost and Parks…
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Sweet sounding experiences can’t be downloaded
Magazine mashups from Esquire, May 2017. More here.
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Fly the L flag
On my way to a concert last night, I noticed the flag-like design of the Chicago L train platform and tracks when viewed from above: Track, platform, and the space in between. “The space between” being, in essence, what public transportation is.
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Creativity is the long way
Reading Brene Brown’s Rising Strong, this quote surprised me: Creativity embeds knowledge so that it can become practice. We move what we’re learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands. We are born makers, and creativity is the ultimate act of integration—it is how we fold our experiences into our being. Fully agree.…
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Done gone fishin’ in the Northwoods
Spent a few days in the Northwoods of Wisconsin on a fishing trip with my dad and friends. Beautiful weather, fresh air, fishing, a rental cabin, film noir in the evenings. Not bad livin’. I took a few photos and videos along the way. The tree stumps outside our rental cabin had some nice colors:…
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Make the interrobang banal‽
99% Invisible (a personal favorite podcast) just did a typically great short history of the interrobang and its fight for survival: Today, the interrobang is just barely hanging in there. It has its own character in Unicode, the common directory of symbols which all computer fonts must reference. But Keith Houston points out that it…
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5 tips from 10 years of filmlogging
In July 2008, while on a 24-hour break from the summer camp I was working at, I saw The Dark Knight with some fellow camp counselors. The next day I cracked open the new 3-subject composition notebook I’d brought to camp, flipped to the back third, and wrote a few lines on what I thought of the…
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My case featured on Judge John Hodgman!
A few months ago I submitted this case to Judge John Hodgman, one of my favorite podcasts: I seek an injunction against my wife, Jenny. When I am cooking any kind of meat, I use a plastic spatula throughout the cooking process. Jenny insists on rinsing the spatula after the meat is no longer raw,…
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Recent Views, Colorado wedding edition
I had the honor of being in a college friend’s wedding in Denver last week. My wife and I made a vacation of it and hit up several spots in Colorado. For extended trips we usually put together an itinerary with important travel info; Jenny thought of the title and I contributed the images: We…
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And John Tyler too
When I realized I had yet to read a presidential biography this year, I decided to tackle one that was more obscure and therefore more likely to be shorter. For some reason, tenth president John Tyler came to mind. I opted for John Tyler by Gary May, part of the American Presidents series of short books.…
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Florida Man Busy Book Learning
Going old school with magazine mashups this time, from Better Homes and Gardens, December 1962:
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Life as a CTA rail operator
“In that motorcab was my serenity.” Another great Chicago story from WBEZ’s Curious City: what it’s like to operate the L trains.
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All hail the Royal Empress
My colleague texted me a picture of a curvaceous mid-century Royal standard with no model name and with unknown functionality. Her mother was looking to get rid of it. I told her I’d probably just clean it up and resell it. That was fine with her, and the price of free was fine with me.…
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Hamilton and what makes a healthy republic
The Show Ready for a hot take? Hamilton: An American Musical was really good. I assumed I wouldn’t see it for years, as tickets are prohibitively expensive in Chicago. But it was a surprise anniversary gift from my wife (musical theater tickets are the traditional Year 3 gift, right?) along with a special ticket she…
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Refer Madness: The Book Dropper strikes again
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. A few months ago, a coworker and I noticed that every Tuesday, two items appear on the library’s book sale shelves that shouldn’t be there. The library has a system for what gets placed in the book sale, so we know which items are…
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Browse eternal, shiny and not Chrome
Last month I got fed up with the constant whirring of my MacBook Pro’s fan, and its consistent slowness generally, so I tried a few things to try to improve it. One was quitting iTunes when I wasn’t using it, and the other was quitting Chrome and using Firefox instead. I don’t know if only…