I first came across David Foster Wallace when I was working in the Processing department at the Monroe County Public Library, circa 1995. At the time, I was an undergrad and working part time putting barcodes on new library books, and checking them in to the library’s computerized card catalog. Infinite Jest was the first…
World Builder is a fantastic video by Bruce Branit, featuring some pretty slick effect work. For anyone who’s spent any time there, you may notice a lot of cues taken from the building tools available in Second Life. [via MetaFilter] // Edit: Wow, just checked out his show reel, and he’s done a ton of…
It’s a big wedding weekend, apparently. Liz has been working on some decorations for the actual wedding ceremony site. She’s got a ton of butterflies, each hanging from an individual strand of ribbon. Group shot. Detail shot of an individual butterfly. Related (somewhat):Butterflies @ The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
Liz and I participated in Earth Hour tonight, and spent our time hanging out in the sunroom, drinking some wine and talking/planning about the wedding. As part of Earth Hour, we turned off all the lights in the apartment and lit up a bunch of candles. We enjoyed the whole process so much that we…
All this week Stu’s been in town on a photoshoot for work. Today was his last day (after a pretty grueling, all-day session the day prior) and a bunch of us met up for dinner at Café Ba Ba Reeba. L to R it’s Stu and Ben. Allison and Justin. Prior to the meal, Liz…
It’s been a long, long time since our last post-work poker game. Technically, Phil pointed out that this was our first game so far this year. Crazy. These are images from last night’s get-together, after the work day. Joining for the first time were a few new faces. L to R it’s Ben, Kevin, Chris…
On heading out to work this AM, Liz found a note attached to the windshield of my car. Looking up and down our street, all the other cars also had a similar note – a piece of paper, folded twice to resemble a square, tucked underneath each car’s wiper blade. If you’re thinking it was…
For my birthday, Justin gave me an odd little thing called Neocube. Essentially, it’s just an assortment of a bunch of tiny, powerful magnets. No fancy mechanical inner workings, no batteries – just a bunch of magnets. They’re fantastic. There are a ton of different combinations you can make – many symmetrical and full of…
I’ve seen this link floating around for a while now, but never bothered to pursue it. I always figured it was some lame Twitter parody thing. Clicked on the link today, and while it is a send-up of Twitter… it’s actually incredibly funny (and incredibly well done). Thanks, Chris! Extra bonus points to anyone who…
I can’t believe there’s enough footage in this guy to last a full 10 minutes. There are maybe two kinda gross points (5:40 or so and 6:30)… but the rest of it is just fantastically silly. I tip my hat spoon to you, Richard Gale. [via MetaFilter]
I happened to see that BoingBoing mentioned Brian Dettmer recently, an artist who does a lot of great stuff with books/paper. The post also mentions that he’s going to have some work displayed, right here in Chicago at the Packer Schopf Gallery next month (April 3 – May 9). Liz and I happened to be…
Using some sketches and a whole hell of a lot of persistence, Mike Carano convinced all the necessary Paramount studio execs (as well as Nimoy and Shatner) to let him stage a live version of the Star Trek episode Spock’s Brain. The result? A whole lot of live action awesomeness. The timing of the cast…
Macarons (not to be confused with the Macaroon) are a French pastry made from egg whites, almond powder, icing and sugar. They are also incredibly, incredibly delicious. Liz has been wanting to make these for a while now, and has a plan to make them for the wedding. This weekend, she got a ton of…
The Galts were in town this weekend, visiting Chicago once again. And in looking things up, they were here exactly one month ago to the day! Last time, they were here for a coffee convention; this time around, it was for the International Home and Housewares show. They were planning on scoping out some new…
Over lunch yesterday, Liz and I checked out a potential spot for our wedding ceremony. It was literally right across the street from where I work: the DePaul Student Center, located at State and Jackson. While we’ve scouted out a few places previously for the ceremony, most of them so far have been pretty expensive….