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Will someone please tell me why I would want an album broken out onto 7 10″ vinyl records? It’s bad enough that the whole album is on 2 LPs (though this is kinda the norm these days). I’m not saying someone shouldn’t be excited enough about BSS to want to get the superfancy box set but why would anyone want to change or flip the record 13 times to get through the whole album? Seems like they are trying to get too interesting with the packaging.

I found out about this neat tool that tracks your mouse movements and creates an image from the data. It’s called IOGraphica.

Here’s 27 minutes of me checking my email and other stuff this morning:

checking email (click to see bigger)

The black dots are places where the mouse sits and stays for a while. The longer it’s stationary, the bigger the circle.

And here is an image without the background subimposed on the image:

checking email without background (click to see bigger)

I have 2 monitors and, for some reason, putting the background in only used the main monitor.

It’s pretty cool.

It’s been widely reported that Roy Ashburn was arrested for DUI with an unidentified man in the car after leaving a gay night club. But let’s take a look at the primary sources and see what he’s all about. Here is his CA Senate website.

He has four daughters and two grandchildren and is married to a woman.

He has held a rally to support “traditional” marriage (click image to see it on his site):

And he lists MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving as a resource on his site (click image to see it larger):

That’s all.

Claessen-Wyckoff House, originally uploaded by Dan Hewins.

I am in a history book club called “History is the New Fiction” and we have been reading Gotham, the history of New York City. It’s a great book but it’s just so very long. And all that means is that it’s taking a long time to read.

Some of the folks in the book club got together a couple of weeks ago to take out the Iron Cupcake (a car) and go on a (magical) History Tour. Our plan was to visit the Claesson-Wyckoff House in Flatbush, Brooklyn. The oldest structure in New York, then see an old church nearby. After that we were going to go to Lower Manhattan to see the Customs House, which houses the Museum of the American Indian, and Trinity Church. From there, we wanted to drive uptown to Grant’s Tomb and then over to Highbridge park.

The first parts worked out pretty well. In fact, the Wyckoff House was fascinating–more than I thought it would be. It turns out that anyone (on earth!) named Wyckoff (or one of about 60 variations) is descended from this very house. Yes, that’s true. Pieter Claessen had to change his Dutch Surname under English law and chose “Wyckoff.” Supposedly, nobody else had that name. Pretty cool.

That tour took a while longer than expected so we got to the Church as the people there were leaving. We persuaded them to let us take a look around. It was a nice looking old church with a more new badass pipe organ.

To Manhattan through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel.

Customs House: closed
Trinity Church: closed

Uptown to Grant’s Tomb. By this time I was calling ahead but got the same answer: closed. We went there anyway to take a look though. It was a good view in the late evening snow.

Highbridge Park will have to wait till a sunnier day. But I look forward to seeing the Highbridge (built as an aqueduct to bring Croton water to Manhattan).

See all the photos of the day here

the long tendril…

…comes from here