If a praying mantis were attacking BP headquarters, who would you root for?
August 2010 Archives
This kid, before age 4 is way cooler than I'll ever be! I love watching the pure joy he gets out of playing the drums.
I've lived in Cincinnati most of my life and I finally made it to The Cone in West Chester. I've driven by the distinctive ice cream cone shaped building many times, but when I'm actually in the mood for ice cream, The Cone always seemed too out of the way. But, tonight after dinner in the Union Centre area we decided to make a trip over. 
It was a busy night at The Cone with a large gathering of people enjoying ice cream at the outdoor tables. After looking at the extensive menu of sundaes and dipped cones, I opted for something simple, a large cone with a vanilla/strawberry swirl.
This is the best tasting soft serve ice cream that I've had in Cincinnati. The strawberry was much more natural tasting than what you would expect for soft serve. It even had little specks of strawberry in it! My expectations for soft serve are pretty low because in my experience, it's served out of convenience rather than taste.
But, even though the ice cream was great, the large cone is still a little more ice cream than what I needed. I got taken in by the .50 cent up sell from the small.
The dipped cones came in all sorts of interesting colors. We saw a girl eating a dipped cone with electric blue "magic" shell. It's a favorite of the kids, but a nightmare for clothing and car seats.
If you're in West Chester, definitely stop by the The Cone. I know that I'll by stopping by again in the future.
This is the best tasting soft serve ice cream that I've had in Cincinnati. The strawberry was much more natural tasting than what you would expect for soft serve. It even had little specks of strawberry in it! My expectations for soft serve are pretty low because in my experience, it's served out of convenience rather than taste.But, even though the ice cream was great, the large cone is still a little more ice cream than what I needed. I got taken in by the .50 cent up sell from the small.
The dipped cones came in all sorts of interesting colors. We saw a girl eating a dipped cone with electric blue "magic" shell. It's a favorite of the kids, but a nightmare for clothing and car seats.
If you're in West Chester, definitely stop by the The Cone. I know that I'll by stopping by again in the future.
Boston.com: Hackers' delight -- A history of MIT pranks
A pictorial history of some of the MIT pranks. Good stuff.
A pictorial history of some of the MIT pranks. Good stuff.
BuildingCincinnati.com: Old St. George hotel proposal needs $65K
I was reading about the proposal to turn the Old St. George Church in Clifton Heights into a boutique hotel. It reminded me of a hotel, the Malmaison that I visited last year in Oxford, England. It's a hotel that was that was created not from a church but an old prison. Instead of completely gutting it to the shell, they left in quite a few aspects of the prison. The jail cells are the rooms, but larger, combining multiple jail cells to create rooms fit for paying customers.
The old stairs and walkways really give the hotel the prison feel, which is a fun contrast from the lush carpet and furniture.
It would be nice if the plans for St. George kept some of the elements of what makes it unique.
I was reading about the proposal to turn the Old St. George Church in Clifton Heights into a boutique hotel. It reminded me of a hotel, the Malmaison that I visited last year in Oxford, England. It's a hotel that was that was created not from a church but an old prison. Instead of completely gutting it to the shell, they left in quite a few aspects of the prison. The jail cells are the rooms, but larger, combining multiple jail cells to create rooms fit for paying customers.
The old stairs and walkways really give the hotel the prison feel, which is a fun contrast from the lush carpet and furniture.It would be nice if the plans for St. George kept some of the elements of what makes it unique.
CNN.com: Chilean miners to create shrine inside mine
Also, according to medical records, there are at least nine miners who would be too overweight to fit through the proposed shaft to rescue them, Manalich said.
The miners are believed to have lost about 8 kg (17 pounds) so far during their time in the mine, and officials expect that the overweight miners will be able to be rescued by the time the shaft is completed.
"Believe me, they will lose weight," Manalich said.So far this story is turning out better than the other cave-ins, but this ordeal is just beginning. I can't imagine what it would be like to be trapped with 32 others for three months in a space the size of a studio apartment.
NYTimes.com: How Power Has Transformed Women's Tennis
Interesting article on the state of women's tennis. The highlight of this article is the slow motion video feature that focuses on the beauty of the female form.
Interesting article on the state of women's tennis. The highlight of this article is the slow motion video feature that focuses on the beauty of the female form.
El Mac and Retna are extremely talented street artists painting enormous works using spray paint. It's hard to believe that El Mac can create such detailed portraits using a tool as imprecise as a spray can.
Of Our Youth - RETNA • EL MAC from RVCA on Vimeo.
Author J.D. Salinger's toilet is on eBay. Asking price? One million dollars.
And an added bonus. It's not been cleaned!
This vintage toilet is from 1962 and is dated under the lid. It will come to you uncleaned and in it's original condition when it was removed from Salinger's old home!
My first thought when I saw this sign is that Coke has now made it easier to hold and drink Coke straight from a two liter bottle.
The Western & Southern Masters Tennis tournament is taking place this week in Mason. My sister and I took off work and headed up for yesterday's day session. If you are able to go during the day, the day sessions are packed with tennis. You'll tire from the sun long before the tennis ends. Lucky for us, we sat in the shade for most of the day. During our session, we would have seen the top four seeds play if not for Roger Federer's opponent withdrawing due to injury.
Here's top seed Rafael Nadal serving.
Rafael Nadal hitting one of his incredible forehand shots.
Rafael Nadal lining up a shot.
The crowd managed to find every square inch of shade in the stadium.
This is Novak Djokovic serving during his match on the Grandstand court. The Grandstand court is much smaller and more intimate than the Stadium court. It's open seating all the way down to the edge of the court. Watching professionals play at close range is an incredible experience. The amount of power and spin the pros use is unreal.
After matches on the Grandstand court, players have to walk through the crowd to get back to the locker room. It's one of the best chances to get an autograph.
But, if you're lucky enough to get an autograph, it may look like this:
If you look closely at the blob, it says "Novak Djokovic". I'm sure my sister, who got the autograph will be treasuring this for the rest of her life.
This tournament is one of the jewels of Cincinnati. It's world class tennis in a more relaxed intimate environment.
Here's top seed Rafael Nadal serving.
Rafael Nadal hitting one of his incredible forehand shots.Rafael Nadal lining up a shot.The crowd managed to find every square inch of shade in the stadium.This is Novak Djokovic serving during his match on the Grandstand court. The Grandstand court is much smaller and more intimate than the Stadium court. It's open seating all the way down to the edge of the court. Watching professionals play at close range is an incredible experience. The amount of power and spin the pros use is unreal.After matches on the Grandstand court, players have to walk through the crowd to get back to the locker room. It's one of the best chances to get an autograph.But, if you're lucky enough to get an autograph, it may look like this:If you look closely at the blob, it says "Novak Djokovic". I'm sure my sister, who got the autograph will be treasuring this for the rest of her life.This tournament is one of the jewels of Cincinnati. It's world class tennis in a more relaxed intimate environment.
ESPN.com: Graham: Facing Bengals 'will be fun'
If he shanks the big kick for the Ravens like he did for us, then it will be fun for Bengals fans.
If he shanks the big kick for the Ravens like he did for us, then it will be fun for Bengals fans.
With the weather being cooler now, if you're looking for a nice outdoor spot to grab some food and beer, I recommend the Cabana on the River.
The Cabana on the River is west of downtown Cincinnati- about a 15- 20 minute drive along the Ohio River. It was a popular spot the night we visited in May.
It has a fun vibe, starting with the artificial palm trees sprouting up near the parking lot.
The restaurant is quite large with both a covered indoor area and a large outdoor deck. The indoor area is covered, but still feels very open. Lots of large long tables that are perfect for large groups.
The downside to being outdoors is that is that people can and did smoke anywhere in the place.
There was quite a long wait for an outdoor table that night we went so we staved off our hunger with a soft pretzel that we ordered at the bar.
The burger was so large, I ended up tossing a few scraps to the cat that came to visit us while we were eating.
After several leisurely enjoyable hours we left, finding the trees had turned to neon. We'll definitely be back, not so much for the food which is adequate, but for the atmosphere and the view.
The Cabana on the River is west of downtown Cincinnati- about a 15- 20 minute drive along the Ohio River. It was a popular spot the night we visited in May.
It has a fun vibe, starting with the artificial palm trees sprouting up near the parking lot.The restaurant is quite large with both a covered indoor area and a large outdoor deck. The indoor area is covered, but still feels very open. Lots of large long tables that are perfect for large groups.The downside to being outdoors is that is that people can and did smoke anywhere in the place.
There was quite a long wait for an outdoor table that night we went so we staved off our hunger with a soft pretzel that we ordered at the bar.It is definitely worth the wait for a table on the deck. There's a great view of the Ohio River from the deck. It's very peaceful this far from the city with trees lining the river. The only reminder that you're near a large city is the occasional barge that floats by. 
This was by far the best outdoor seating I've had in Cincinnati.This is the insanely large Certified Angus Beef chuck burger. I asked the waitress and she said it was 3/4 of a pound of meat. For size, note the iPhone next to it.
The burger was so large, I ended up tossing a few scraps to the cat that came to visit us while we were eating.After several leisurely enjoyable hours we left, finding the trees had turned to neon. We'll definitely be back, not so much for the food which is adequate, but for the atmosphere and the view.
Cincinnati.com: Lights, camera, opening day for SCPA
What a great day for Cincinnati and Over the Rhine.
What a great day for Cincinnati and Over the Rhine.
It's tennis time in Cincinnati. This week it's the Western & Southern Women's Open. This is truly world class tennis with all the top players here. This tournament has come a long way in a few short years- from a Tier 3 tournament to a main event on the tour, just below the Grand Slams.
We went up to Mason on Wednesday and between rain storms saw Maria Sharapova play.
The great thing about watching tennis live is that you can focus on one player to watch how they prepare and hit their shots. I've been taking tennis lessons for years and I've been told that the pros will take 10-14 steps in between every shot. It's definitely true with Maria Sharapova. Her feet are constantly moving and hitting the court just like jackhammers. I've tried this before and I think I can do this for about 5 minutes max. Their conditioning is just incredible.
The facilities have gotten a facelift since last year with more seats and new luxury boxes on the western side of the stadium.
Underneath this, there's a new players entrance where fans can line up and watch players exit.
The finals take place this weekend and then the men's tournament begins. It's a great event and I highly recommend it.
We went up to Mason on Wednesday and between rain storms saw Maria Sharapova play.
The great thing about watching tennis live is that you can focus on one player to watch how they prepare and hit their shots. I've been taking tennis lessons for years and I've been told that the pros will take 10-14 steps in between every shot. It's definitely true with Maria Sharapova. Her feet are constantly moving and hitting the court just like jackhammers. I've tried this before and I think I can do this for about 5 minutes max. Their conditioning is just incredible.The facilities have gotten a facelift since last year with more seats and new luxury boxes on the western side of the stadium.Underneath this, there's a new players entrance where fans can line up and watch players exit.The finals take place this weekend and then the men's tournament begins. It's a great event and I highly recommend it.
UrbanCincy.com: Oudin and Boserup play tennis match atop 630' Cincinnati skyscraper
A nice look from the top of Cincinnati's newest and tallest skyscraper.
A nice look from the top of Cincinnati's newest and tallest skyscraper.
KRonikle: Pencil Tip Micro Sculptures By Dalton Ghetti via DaringFireball.net
Tiny sculptures carved in the graphite of a pencil. Beautiful.
Tiny sculptures carved in the graphite of a pencil. Beautiful.
I picked up the new Shepard Fairey CAC Canvas print over the weekend. They're available now at the CAC for members for $45. The Canvas prints seems to be Shepard Fairey's new style that captures the collage elements of his fine art pieces. This one is printed with black, cream, and silver inks. I like it better than the red ones that we released at the opening.Shepard Fairey's exhibit at the CAC closes August 22.
UPDATE: 2/10/11 I just found this entry again while Googling how to reinstall ImageMagick after moving from Media Temple (dv) 3.5 to (dv) 4. The funny thing is that I had totally forgotten that I had written this entry. I've updated the entry with some adjustments that I made to the procedure.
This post won't mean much to most of you, but maybe it'll be helpful to someone trying to install ImageMagick on (dv) 3.5 or (dv) 4.
I spent quite a bit of time trying to researching on the internet on how to install ImageMagick on MediaTemple (dv) for use with MovableType. Much of what I used came from this article: How do I upgrade ImageMagick?
First, install developer tools on MediaTemple within the admin panel and allow root access.
I logged into the sever using SSH as the root.
I had intially used yum to install ImageMagick, but it installed a pretty old version that I needed to remove using:
yum remove ImageMagick
I downloaded a new version of ImageMagick, using:
wget ftp://ftp.imagemagick.org/pub/ImageMagick/ImageMagick.tar.gz
Decompress the file and change to the directory.
tar -zxvf ImageMagick*.tar.gz
cd ImageMagick*
Once in the directory, I compiled and installed ImageMagick:
./configure
make
make install
Tested ImageMagick (shouldn't report an error):
convert logo: logo.gif
This didn't seem to do anything for me, but didn't report an error.
For me, after doing this, MovableType was still not recognizing ImageMagick but I found out from the MovableType forums that I needed to compile PerlMagick.
Remember the ImageMagick source tarball has PerlMagick (the perl modules and libraries MT requires) bundled with it. So once ImageMagick is installed, navigate to the PerlMagick directory inside of the source tarball and run as root:I entered the PerlMagick directory which was inside the ImageMagick directory and entered the following commands:
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install
The make test showed some errors. It seems that PerlMagick was not finding the ImageMagick files.
I typed the following and then recompiled.
echo /usr/local/lib >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ImageMagick.conf
ldconfig
I ran the make test and the make install and this time it worked!
echo /usr/local/lib >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ImageMagick.conf
ldconfig
I ran the make test and the make install and this time it worked!
During the last several days I've been moving my blog from a shared hosting service at Bluehost.com to a dedicated server at MediaTemple.net. Bluehost is dirt cheap, but you really get what you pay for. You're sharing your server with a lot of other people. A runaway program on someone else's site can take your website down. Downtime and general sluggishness was becoming a major issue for my business website so I had to make a change.
A dedicated server is great, but it comes as a big empty shell. You pretty much have to install the programs you use through the command line. After many hours of work I've successfully got things back up and running. So I will be back to blogging soon!
A dedicated server is great, but it comes as a big empty shell. You pretty much have to install the programs you use through the command line. After many hours of work I've successfully got things back up and running. So I will be back to blogging soon!
ESPN.com: The Franchise : An EA Sports 'Madden' Retrospective (Gallery)
A fascinating look at EA Sports Madden football through the years.
Here's the ESPN: Outside the Lines story on Madden Football.
A fascinating look at EA Sports Madden football through the years.
Here's the ESPN: Outside the Lines story on Madden Football.
