Revolution 2 track cycling Crash fence

The Saturday Strangeness

24. Haunted Roads For Halloween!

Despite London’s congested roads and the daily chorus of thousands of beeping horns, ghosts of the cities roads are in fact sporadic. Look through any catalogue of phantom hitchhikers or ghostly vehicles (for example http://www.roadghosts.com/) and you’ll notice a distinct lack of activity within the capital pertaining to tarmac terrors. Why this is we’ll never know – maybe it’s simply down to the fact that elsewhere in the country, where such spooks are in abundance, there is always the quiet dark lane, the wood enshrouded B-road and other perfect settings for such hauntings.

On Gloucester Drive in Finsbury Park, ghostly children have often been heard running up and down the street. Highgate’s very own ‘vampire’ has company, as in the village there have also been reports of a phantom cyclist. Meanwhile at East Heath Road, in northwest London, a grinning old gent has been seen.

However, the eeriest of London’s road-associated ghosts haunt Enfield, Stanmore and the Blackwall Tunnel.

At Enfield, a witch, rumoured to have been executed in 1622, is said to prowl Hadley Road on misty nights. Also as sinister is the Bell Lane black coach, last seen in November 1961 as it drifted off the ground!

In Stanmore, a ghostly wind is said to swirl along Honeypot Lane, whilst on the A41 during October 1985, a motorist claimed to have hit a man walking his dog. Both bodies hit the bonnet but were nowhere to be seen upon investigation.

The Blackwall Tunnel is haunted by a phantom accident as well as a hitchhiker who may well have been a motorcylist who died during an accident in the ‘70s.

US Navy covering up swastika barracks

Seen here is a Google Earth image of US Navy barracks in Coronado, California. The US Navy has now budgeted $600,000 to cover up the swastika shape through the installation of solar panels and various landscape modifications. They were encouraged to do the modifications by several parties, including US Rep Susan Davis, Anti-Defamation League regional director Morris Casuto, and radio talk show host Dave vonKleist.

Navy officials say the shape of the buildings, designed by local architect John Mock, was not noted until after the groundbreaking in 1967 -- and since it was not visible from the ground, a decision was made not to make any changes...

"I don't ascribe any intentionally evil motives to this," Casuto said, referring to the design. "It just happened. The Navy has been very good about recognizing the problem. The issue is over."

Link (Thanks, Paul Saffo!)

CyleSport on the Death of Disco

Unbeknownst to many, I don't actually get to read everything written in the English language on the sport of Cycling, so if I missed this in other outlets, just ignore this post (yet again) and move along...

But I want to give some props to Lionel Birnie & co. at Cycle Sport for a rather thorough and cogent analysis in this month's mag of why the Discovery Channel/Tailwind folks really decided to pull up the stakes and get on with B-school or starting blogs or whatever "pursuing other interests" is supposed to mean. As I understood it, the official position was that they could have continued but for unexplained reasons decided not to. Obviously nobody believed that, and the real reasons were assumed to be lack of sponsors or something about doping.

The real truth now seems like a complexity of all of the above, and goes something like this:

Cycling is a mess right now, so sponsors are already a tad nervous about investing in the sport.

Discovery/USPS have been the subject of rampant suspicion but no real black eyes. Still, they were very successful at a time when everyone else was doping, so you can draw your own conclusions.

ASO were not fond of the Disco juggernaut and have gone out of their way in the last couple years to paint Lance in an unfavorable light. They were also fully prepared to block the team from trotting out Ivan Basso this July.

The Basso signing is roundly considered the team's downfall, or the single biggest impetus for it. From that moment on, Discovery were on bad terms with the entire rest of the peloton and branded themselves as old-style, win-at-all-costs pariahs.

Given all of this, plus ASO's new-found freedom from the Pro Tour structure, they were by no means guaranteed an invite to the 2008 Tour de France. The idea of excluding Contador's team is outrageous, but not beyond ASO.

All of this taken together -- bad image, murky prospects, huge expenses -- means that they couldn't find a sponsor.

There's an interview with Sean Yates where he admits as much, as well as a clip of Bruyneel saying the same thing to a Belgian paper, despite the official position that sponsors were waiting in the wings. But even still, there's room for elaboration: they couldn't find a sponsor before the date in August where the Tailwind guys got fed up with/exhausted from all the bullshit (in their eyes), so they gave up.

Part of the disconnect seems to be that Discovery feel unfairly singled out... and in Cycling, singling out anyone from the last decade is kind of silly. That said, one cannot understate the fallout from the Basso affair: Bruyneel supposedly spoke loudly for Basso's exclusion from the 2006 Tour based on the Operacion Puerto link... but then, at the earliest opportunity, signed him on as their grand tour captain. Discovery argue that there's no sin in trying to win, but such rank opportunism turned out to be really bad for business in the end. More than the hypocrisy, Discovery broke ranks with teams trying to send a very different message at that time... this may actually be what hurt their fellow teams and riders most of all.

Anyway, it's all a good read and I tip my cap to them for good, canny journalism.

Cancellara...Look familiar?

Your winner and still world time trial champion, Tony Montana! I mean, Fabian Cancellara! I haven't watched the coverage yet, but he was apparently comfortably in front from the get-go, a true patron performance to cap a glorious year. His 52-second win represented the largest gap between any two consecutive finishers on the entire leaderboard, and a crushing end to the race. As late as the final 31km time check his lead was a narrow 22 seconds.

Time trials aren't always made-for-TV excitement, but Cancellara's prologue in London was pulsating, and his win on the road two days later, in the maillot jaune, will be one of 2007's truly lasting images. He also held serve at home in the Swiss Championships and Tour de Suiss ITTs, while otherwise focusing on the cobbled classics. Cancellara certainly still has mountains to climb in his career, most notably the Tour of Flanders, where he showed solid form this year but somewhat impatient tactics. But when he dons the rainbow jersey he rides with true class, and another year of such displays is something to look for

Fellow local cyclist designs Slipstream Cycling team jersey

September 27, 2007 - SLIPSTREAM SPORTS LLC ANNOUNCES "GET IN THE SLIPSTREAM" WINNER

Joe Yule of Redondo Beach, California, Named Official Designer of the Slipstream/Chipotle 2008 Team Jersey

Las Vegas, NV - September 27, 2007 - The fans have spoken and Joe Yule, a graphic designer and avid cyclist from Redondo Beach, California, has been selected as the winner of the "Get in the Slipstream" contest, sponsored by Slipstream Sports LLC and its chief venture, the Slipstream/ Chipotle Professional Cycling Team. The first-of-its-kind contest invited fans to submit design ideas for the official 2008 Team Slipstream/Chipotle jersey.

Full press release link and Jersey after the jump...

Full Release

UK police using hovering camera for surveillance

Police in Britain are conducting trials on a small battery-powered, radio-controlled helicopter called the Microdrone that comes with a camera and a loudspeaker. The manufacturer's demonstration video points out that the copter works as a peeping tom device. (Not that the police would ever misuse it.)

It's battery powered, so it's quieter -- apparently at 350 feet it is rarely noticed from the ground -- but more limited in terms of performance. Although it might seem flimsy, the video shows how stable it is in flight. It is said to be quite rugged and can return to base even if it loses two of its four rotor blades. One unusual feature is a speaker so that police can give instructions to those on the ground.

The video ... contains some footage shot from a Microdrone, which gives an impressive display of its powers. Zooming in on a sunbather in a bikini as a demonstration is not likely to allay fears about how intrusive this technology might be. And the ability to hover outside a window and peer in is one which is equally open to use and abuse.

Link

All Other Countries Have Inferior Potassium

Remember how Kazakhstan invited Sascha Cochen to visit, to show the actor how the country actually was? Or how they blocked access to his website because they felt the Borat character was so unrealistic? Well, someone apparently forgot to pass the “Kazakhstan is not backward” memo along to the sports ministry, as now the Kazakh cycling federation is claiming that Kashechkin has tested negative. In what test this result came about was not mentioned explicitly.

While Team Astana’s spokesperson shrugged cluelessly, Nikolai Proskurin, Kazakh cycling federation president, claimed, while never specifying how, that the tests of Kashechkin were “erroneous”, that Kashechkin is currently preparing his defense, and that Andreas Kloden has no intention of quitting the Astana Team. In fact, the German will be co-leading Astana at next month’s Vuelta a Espana, which, as luck would have it, the team has been re-invited to. High five! Proskurin concluded the interview by noting that all other countries have inferior potassium.

Returning to reality for a moment, the people who actually carry out dope tests have admitted that maybe there’s a little room for tweaking how the ProTour works after all. It’s a good plan, as some prefabbed ProTour races (such as the currently running ENECO Tour) are struggling to draw fans and competitors alike, though Tyler Ferrar’s 4th place in today’s prologue won’t hurt American audiences. As he’s only 3 seconds out of the lead, let’s not forget, the American is a solid sprinter.

As the roads should be...

I can only dream

Getting back

Ok, so it's been a few weeks since I have updated this. Since my last blog post we have had the Tour de France, which went a big sideways with the UCI not showing any leadership. I feel bad for T-Mobile; Sinkewitz you tosser! All kinds of alternative podium finishes were possible if you try to imagine what would have unfolded if Rasmussen was banned before the start, Michael Rogers had not dislocated his shoulder and Evans, Contador and Leipheimer did not have to expend so much energy trying to escape from Rasumussen on the climbs. In any case, well done to the Discovery boys though; not sure yet who will be sponsoring them next year though. Looking forward to seeing Slipstream racing on the continent. Hopefully they will get a wild card into next years Tour.

Also went to see David Beckham's debut with the LA Galaxy against Chelsea. David ~ I'm an Eastender living in LA too, give me a call :))












Of course the footy season (English Premier League) starts next weekend too. Come on you Spurs (Tottenham Hotspur for the non-Brits). Spent 40 million quid this summer so we are expecting a finish above 5th this year.

The Police @ The Staples Center - 6/20/07

After a twenty four year hiatus, the gentlemen of The Police brought forth their inimitably singular sound, serenading a record-breaking crowd at the Staples Center last night with over 20,000 people in attendance.

Sting, looking like a buff and affable Malcolm Mcdowell, was not the egomaniac many expected to see on stage. Rather, he was vital and focused and seemed at ease. Andy, transfixed and charmingly intent, didn't smile at all, but Stewie, with his gloves and jingly chimes, beamed from ear to shining ear.

Their performance was nothing like the comedy of errors Copeland described on his blog. Minus a few minor timing issues, the boys sounded like...boys. Not like old men. Not like a cruise ship flashback act. They sounded like The Police. There were a few moments that bordered on jammy, but largely they played true to form. A brilliant concert....well done......

...this is a picture of Jennifer Aniston taking a picture. I know, major excitement.

SETLIST / The Police @ The Staples Center - 6/20/07
Message In A Bottle
Synchronicity II
Walking on the Moon
Voices Inside My Head
Don't Stand So Close
Driven to Tears
The Bed Is Too Big
Truth Hits Everybody
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Wrapped Around Your Finger
De Do Do Do De Da Da Da
Invisible Sun
Walking In Your Footsteps
Can't Stand Losing You
Roxanne
King of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You Take
Next To You

Photos by Lisa Brenner

free espresso for life

Congratulations, dude!

Seriously, could there have been a better person to win the first Grand Tour of the year? And without a radio, either! I'll bet you a biscotti that all the people at Bianchi are absolutely kicking themselves right now. He also nabbed the ProTour lead and has a nice fifty point buffer between him and Rebellin.

What a badass.

Soho Square, London - Timewarp

And so over to Soho Square, home of New Media, the Football Association and a strange garden shed. 1927 and 2007.

From this angle, looking eastward, alterations to the square appear minimal. Only the buildings to the extreme left and right have changed. The two plane trees in the foreground have grown, but retain their mutually repulsed angles. The clearest mark of 'progress', aside from the vehicles, is the presence of Centrepoint, almost obscured by trees.

Soho Square was built in the 1680s on land owned by the Earl of St Albans. Most of the surrounding buildings have changed several times, but the gardens are little altered since Victorian times. The famous tool shed at the centre appeared in the 1870s, replacing a statue of Charles II.

Images taken from the Wonderful London Flickr group.

Sacha Baron Cohen moments on MTV awards

5:41 - Sacha Baron Cohen (looking handsome as ever) berates Will Ferrelll for not calling him after their tender on-set moment in Talladega Nights. He pulls Will Ferrell in for a long, shameless lip-lock that leaves them both rolling on the floor like fictional teenagers in a fictional meadow.

6:07 - Sacha Baron Cohen announces that unfortunately Borat couldn't be here because the pressures of being a celebrity have taken a toll on him and he's entered rehab. "He crashed his car into Jewtown," SBC explains. "He was caught driving drunk on fermented horse urine. Also, he had more than the legal limit of roofies in his car. And he actually went on a chat show and made pro-Jewish remarks." SBC thanks the crowd and finishes his speech with, "I can still taste Will on my lips!"

Bloomberg On JFK Plot: "Stop Worrying, Get A Life"

Ethan Korngold says: "Finally, a politician with a reasonable view of the true risk of terrorism relative to all of the other risks in the world. Refreshing, indeed."

"On Monday, Bloomberg finally weighed in, but his response was not what some would have expected.

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life," he said.

That "What, me worry?" attitude pretty much sums up Bloomberg's advice to New Yorkers on the terror plot. As far as he was concerned, the professionals were on it, so New Yorkers shouldn't let it tax their brains.

"You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist," he added."

Link

The Best Current Music Artists

My tastes in music are varied. Tastes vary from Dance/Techno to Rock to Classical. The genre of particular interest these days contains artists usually dropped in the "alternative" category (whatever that means). Strangely, these artists are currently all receiving a lot of air-time and chart success.

Here are my favourite 'alternative' artists (alphabetical):
The All-American Rejects
Black Eyed Peas
Blink-182
Bowling for Soup
Coldplay
The Dandy Warhols
Death Cab for Cutie
Duncan Sheik
Fall Out Boy
Foo Fighters
Goo Goo Dolls
Green Day
I-94
Jesse McCartney
Keane
The Killers
Lilly Allen
My Chemical Romance
Relient k
Rihanna
Robbie Williams
Ryan Cabrera
Sean Paul
Semisonic
Snow Patrol
Sugarcult
The Vines
Yellowcard
The Idan Raichel Project

Bests and Worsts of the Giro d'Italia

As Ghisallo notes below, this year's Giro was a smash hit in Italy. I'm guessing a few of us here would agree as well. So while it may take some work to figure out what didn't go over well, the only challenge to listing the good parts is not forgetting anything.

Let's start small:

Five Things to Love About the 90th Giro d'Italia

1. The sprints. There was just about everything you could ask for in the sprinter's program. We were treated to Alessandro Petacchi's emotional comeback, and yet rarely were the sprints as dull as that previous sentence might have implied. Petacchi won five stages, but between his wins were some crazy finales, including the spectacular curves of stage 5 (won by Förster), the crashes on stages 2 and 11, and so forth. Other stages featured great straight-up competition, including Danilo Napolitano's two-day burst of speed which saw him win in Petacchi's hometown. And artful touches, like stage 7's finish on the F-1 track at Mugello, and stage 8's conclusion at the legendary Ferrari test track.

2. The Scenery. The early and transitional stages are usually a chance to tune out the long race for a day or so, but there were few such chances this year. The start in Sardinia was upstaged only slightly by the turn around the Amalfi Coast, a site beautiful enough to make the UNESCO list. Warm-up climbs to Montevergine and Santuario Nostra Signora Della Guardia were beautiful as well. And of course, the Alps and Dolomite stages were postcard-ready too, as usual.

3. An impeccably balanced parcours. From day 1 possession of the maglia rosa was contested. OK, there were a few days off around stage 6-9, but the opening team time trial got things started, and the absolutely brilliant Montevergine stage succeeded in drawing out the competition on day 4. And while everyone knew where the biggest challenges lay, the Tre Cime and Zoncolan stages did NOT overshadow the latter half of the race: stages 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17 and 20 all mattered.

4. The maglia blanca. Often a grand tour will showcase an up-and-coming young talent, but rarely are we treated to talents as young and impressive as Andy Schleck and Riccardo Riccò. Schleck was nearly impervious to the pressure and the demands of either the attention, the competition, and the course. He showed great form on the climbs and time trials alike. Riccò, for his part, could use some ITT practice, but his transition from Classics ace to grand tour climbing stud thrilled the home crowd. Schleck may be bound for France in future years, but Riccò looks like a future maglia rosa for sure.

5. The Winner. Much will be written about Danilo DiLuca's brilliant Giro, but for me, nothing is more significant than this:

Di Luca, from the region of Abruzzo, became the first of the Giro's 64 Italian winners come from south of Tuscany.

The first rider south of Tuscany? There are a lot of Italians south of Tuscany, not to mention some 70% of the land mass, and it took 90 years for one of them to win. This is big.

Thanks Podium Cafe

Tour de France Wild Card Drama

Well, it is now official. Unibet, the Claytons ProTour squad (that’s the ProTour licence you pay for when you are not really getting a ProTour licence), will be sitting out this year’s Tour de France.

It is the announcement that nearly every cycling observer has expected and the one that the Unibet Cycling Team has feared most.

On their official race website, Tour organiser ASO have announced that the 18 ProTour teams pre-selected in December for July’s race, will be joined by three wild cards, of which Unibet is not one.

The invitations have gone to the Swiss registered, very Kazak Astana team, the French registered and very French Agritubel team and the British registered, South African sponsored, but very Italian team, Barloworld.

The 21 teams will each field 9 riders, giving a total of 189 cyclists making their historic lap of London in the prologue time trial on July 7.

Riis and Giro

The past few weeks have seemed like the movie Sparticus with some riders. Instead of everyone saying “I’m Sparticus” we have all the former Telekom riders saying “I’m a doper”. The two confessions that were the biggest surprise because of their current roles are Zabel and Riis. Zabel because he is still racing and there might be pressure to leave him off races like the Tour de France and Worlds. For Riis it is not a surprise that he used drugs I would put his ride in the ’97 Tour as equal to VDB’s Liege win in ’99 or the Gewiss team in the ’94 Fleche Wallone (along with some other ’94 races) as performances that were always the most obvious ones to wonder about. The surprise was that he did not confess. He owns and runs the CSC team so it is not like he could be fired, but he risks loosing and not getting new sponsors. He also risks having his team excluded from the big races as well. Never mind that there is no obvious link between the current CSC team and doping, but they could punish them for Riis’s past.

For current racing the Giro has continued to be the best race since the ’05 Giro. Di Luca has been the only consistent in the race, but we have been treated to lots of other good rides. Garzelli, Ricco, Piepoli have all put in exciting rides. Di Luca chasing down Mazzoleni to limit his loses was great racing. So far the only disappointing stage was the Oropa time trial that only confirmed the strength of Di Luca.

I love the finish that the Giro does in Briancon. Up the narrow streets always brings exciting racing. Whenever the Tour de France goes to this city they go the easier way avoiding the narrower roads. Maybe only the walled city of Avila at the Vuelta is a better finishing city.

Satan Starbucks

I know I shouldn't laugh, but Charles Clover's piece in today's paper regarding the evil Starbucks put a smile on my face.

Too much guilt: are we really what we buy?

Not that I don't agree with him, but it put me in mind of another more notorious critic of the coffee chain: the Reverend Billy, pastor of the Church of Stop Shopping, pictured here being arrested earlier in the year at a Starbucks by the New York Police Department.

The Rev. Billy believes Starbucks to be so evil, he regularly goes about performing 'exorcisms' in them, trying to cleanse those who run and frequent them (well, he is as much performance artist as activist).

A friend of a friend who experienced one such exorcism at a south London Starbucks - complete with a rip-roaring performance by the holy-roller 'Stop Shopping Choir', said it was one of the most extraordinary and wonderful things she had ever seen.

(By the way the Rev Billy will also perform the same service for you on your credit card if you desire).

Anything that makes you laugh and think at the same time can't be bad, but joking apart I wonder whether having to worry about everything from where your morning coffee comes from to the diamond in your engagement ring isn't going to backfire at some point.

How much guilt can one person experience before they tie themselves in knots and give up?

It all used to be so straightforward in my youth: no products from South Africa or Chile and no student at university ever joined Barclay's Bank. Now there are so many things to potentially feel guilty over - the logical conclusion would seem to become a Jainist (the religious people you see in India walking with a cloth over their mouth, lest an insect should fly in and be inadvertently killed).

I am not one given to eco-guilt, but since looking into the details of coffee production, it is something that I think about every morning when I go for caffeine re-fueling after my morning bike ride at the local Starbucks.

Yes, it probably used to be the local baker's shop and is now a big chain, but this coffee shop has also become the hub of our area.

Teenagers can go and meet with friends there, hordes of mums who stay at home looking after their children go for a treat and a chat with mates, to set them up for a day of household duties. Local writers pitch up with lap-tops and at the weekends you'll see plenty of dads taking the kids out, giving mum a well-deserved lie-in.

This isn't to eulogise Starbucks, it's just to say that people are so bombarded with ethical questions these days that I wonder if it isn't all going to become a turn-off, or, whether big businesses will just pay lip service to the demands of consumers by putting labels and certifications on products that have not been thoroughly checked out by independent sources in order to keep people quiet.

I don't feel 'eco-guilt' because I try to do what I can and I also feel that a lot of policy change needs to come from government and big business (although that is not to say there isn't room for improvement by me).

But there is also the wider question of what it actually means to live an 'ethical life', which has nothing to do with responsible consumerism.

My parents passed on to me (and I try to instill the same in my own children) the philosophy of 'do no harm'.

You can try to do no harm to the environment but there is still the question that we are social beings: Are we good neighbours, do we offer to help older people around us? Do we help our family with good grace when they ask? Would our workmates say that we are a generous colleague or team player? Do we give back anything to the community we live in by finding time for even the smallest bit of 'one-off ' voluntary work?

Those are the wider ethical questions I occasionally ask of myself when I'm swigging my 'unethical' coffee.

How Google Gears Will Change Your Life

The announcement of Google's latest development, Google Gears, was met with a lot of excitement over the last few days -- understandably so. The ability of web applications to work even when off-line is a huge step forward for web software, and even if there aren't a lot of apps that can take advantage of this yet, the beta release of Gears signals big changes in coming months.

But how will Google Gears change your online life? In more ways than you might think.

Let me first issue a disclaimer: there's a lot of work that needs to be done on Google Gears, and it will be awhile before enough web apps adopt this feature. It's not going to change the world, but it's a start in a new direction.

How will Gears change things? Here are just a few ways:

• Office domination. For the first time, Microsoft's domination over office suite software will be challenged. Google Apps (currently consisting of word processing, spreadsheets, email and calendar) has been out for awhile but hasn't gone anywhere in terms of widespread adoption. The biggest reason: you can't work when you're off-line. With Gears, this changes. Now, Google Docs and Spreadsheets still won't measure up to Word and Excel, but the appeal of being able to access and work on documents from anywhere is a big plus, and Gmail and Gcal are considered by many to be better at what they do than the Microsoft equivalents. It'll be awhile before there's real competition in this field, but Google took a major step toward being a competitor with the release of Gears.


• Everything online. For the last few decades, computer users have been reliant on an operating system and hard drive storage on their computer. But with online apps getting better and better, and now with the release of Gears, a user is no longer tied to any operating system or hard drive. You can work on your documents anywhere you have an Internet connection -- and soon, the Internet connection won't be necessary. All you'll need is a browser. Even files can be stored online instead of on your hard drive. Of course, you'll still need an operating system and hard drive, but which one you're using won't matter a bit.


• Offline work. This is the obvious one. Those who use online email apps such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail, or any online apps, can currently pretty much only do work while connected to the Internet. But soon you'll be able to do work at any time -- while in the bathroom (assuming you have a laptop), on an airplane, in the remotest areas of the world. This will liberate you from Internet access. Do a load of work somewhere off-line, then go back home or to the office and connect and upload your work.


• Down time won't matter. Another obvious one, but this will make a big difference. Many areas have bad Internet connections, with major down time or up-and-down time. That kind of unreliable connection is a major deterrent for people to use online apps, but now it won't matter. Internet's down -- just work off-line until it's back up. Connect, update, and disconnect. This brings serious online computing to a much wider group of people, worldwide.


• Disconnected offices. A side effect of the growth of online apps will be an acceleration toward an office-less office. Laptops will become king, as you can do work from anywhere, Internet connection or not, an workers will become liberated from the office. Why do I need to be at my desk, as long as I get my work done? In fact, the lack of an office greatly reduces the cost of running a small business, and those businesses who learn that decentralized, disconnected offices are most efficient will have a competitive edge.


• Distraction-free work. This is my personal favorite. Currently, if you use online software such as Google Docs or Gmail to do your work, you have to be connected to the Internet -- which just happens to be the greatest time-waster ever invented. So as you do your work, you've got the constant pull of other Internet sites (beyond the ones needed for productivity), the Siren's call beckoning you at every turn. Eventually, you cave in, and there goes your productivity. With off-line work, you can disconnect from the Internet, only have the apps you need be available off-line, and work without distraction for an hour before connecting and caving in for a little while. Disconnect again for more distraction-free work. Productivity soars, you work less, and soon you're sipping Margaritas on a deserted beach in Baha, work a distant memory.

Get a bicycle. You will not regret it...Oh, and dream a bit

This quote by Amy Webster could make you more paranoid about riding on the street: "The sound of a car door opening in front of you is similar to the sound of a gun being cocked."

This quote by David Perry makes sense if you have ever had a car door open in front of you: "What do you call a cyclist who doesn't wear a helmet? An organ donor."

As much as I love and promote biking (even in Los Angeles), there is nothing more stressful than riding a bike in the street with parked cars on one side and speeding by cars on the other. It's just not fun on some streets, even those with Class II Paths (bike lane on a street)

The shot above is a nice dream though...

Okay, so that picture is from a Kaiser Permanente commercial. And the title is a quote from Mark Twain in Taming the Bicycle

Wear helmets!

This is making the rounds.

As a person who has had his brain on the inside of his skull for twenty-five years and who is in no hurry to reverse that dominant physiological paradigm, I'd also like to point out that the title of the article is "Strange but True", not "Strange but True AND a Good Idea!".

As much as people might lean on the above study to feel better about riding without a helmet, I believe this is all the proof needed to justify wearing one (via Bicycles and Icicles).

StreetFilms.org-The Case for Separated Bike Lanes in NYC

Tour de Cure

I will be riding 100 miles in the Tour de Cure this weekend. If you would like to sponsor me the please do so at my page on the American Diabetes Association fund raising page.

iTunes cracked

The current (?) version of iTunes, 7.1.1 has been cracked by the QTFairUse6 project. Now is the time to uncripple your purchased iTunes tracks (especially those brutally expensive, hard-to-rip audiobooks) before Apple spends more engineering dollars to punish you for wanting to "think different," "switch" and otherwise enjoy the stuff you bought from them. Link (via Digg)

Update: Note that this crack is only for Windows -- Mac users are still punished for buying from Apple.

Macaframa SF Track Bike Promo

Death traps can be graceful, too.

And NO, there will not be any of this in my future. My proximity will not increase my predilection for this type of riding; I can wreck myself just fine on USCF-approved road and CX courses, no need to do it on my morning commute as well.

You, You, You -- you really are special

This is a very amusing article...and somewhat concerning..

Here is the opening text..written by

By Jeffrey Zaslow
From The Wall Street Journal Online

You, You, You -- you really are special, you are! You've got everything going for you. You're attractive, witty, brilliant. "Gifted" is the word that comes to mind.

Childhood in recent decades has been defined by such stroking -- by parents who see their job as building self-esteem, by soccer coaches who give every player a trophy, by schools that used to name one "student of the month" and these days name 40.

Now, as this greatest generation grows up, the culture of praise is reaching deeply into the adult world. Employers are dishing out kudos to workers for little more than showing up.

Lost Delivers

How good was "Lost" last night? Damn!

Unlike many of its critics, I was/am happy with this crazy show meandering and wandering and dragging its feet. I don't need to know why The Others are obsessed with babies. I don't bother myself with details such as why the fat guy hasn't lost a pound on that island despite eating better (less greasy, no fast food) and moving around more. And I don't care that we haven't seen a polar bear in years.

I am very satisfied just seeing these interesting characters move around on the screen and weird shit befalls them. Hell, I even like all the new people they bring on board as if this whole thing is just a parade. Seriously, for a show about an island, the amount of people that have ended up with a credit on Lost has got to be nearing 1,000.

Which is why, I think, they need to kill so many people.

The only problem when you do that though is you don't get to answer any of the questions that those who want answers keep demanding.

Which is part of the beautiful mystery of the Lost "plot", and one of the reasons I like it so much. You seriously never know what is going to happen from one episode to the next.

And if you haven't yet seen last night's episode, go watch it on ABC.com because after the jump I'm going to get into some spoilers that will spoil part of the goodness that went down.

Everything was great last night.

We learned about creepy Ben and how he got on the island and what his parents were like and why everyone bows down to him.

We learned about how The Others began their rule on the island, and what happened to the Dharma Initiative peeps.

We learned about the dead guy with the beer cans in the back of the VW.

And we got to see Locke be the badass that we love. He beat the crap outta eye patch guy, he showed Ben up in front of The Others, and he marched right into the lair of one of the scariest semi-invisible creatures we've seen so far, Jacob.

And then we see him get shot!

But if he actually dies, how will we learn how it was that he was no longer paralyzed?

However, Ben alluded to the fact that Jacob still could "save" Locke, which I'm not so sure I want to see. Because if he is a god the way Ben is presenting him as being - a pissed off, bitter, lo-fi god, then why can't he stop the new moms from dying and why can't he cure Ben's spine?

Fie on you, Superheroes and your limitations!

Television Without Pity has an interesting take:

Turns out that Craphole Island really is the Land of Bad Dads. (Do I see a Disneyland ride in the future?) Ben's craptastic father was so awful that he turned Ben away from the peacenik lovey-dovey ways of the Dharma Initiative and towards the dark side of Otherdom. Ben's chosen path was chockfull of evil doings: he not only killed his Bad Dad (remember Roger? The dead guy with all the beer?), but was actively involved in the Purge of the Dharma Initiative off the Island. The nasty hostiles, lead by a hirsute Richard, gassed those hippies right good! To top off his campaign to be most evil shrimp ever, Ben admits that he lied about being born on the Island and then shoots Locke in the stomach leaving him to die in the mass grave where they left the woebegone Dharma Initiates. Did I mention that he had a Bad Dad who didn't love him enough?

I just want to see more from Ben's daughter now.

Because we haven't learned to love enough characters yet.

Photos via ABC.com

Yetti LA

The Yeti boots are rebelling against me. They have mutated, grown wheels, and are preparing to take over Los Angeles. Take cover people. This is your warning.

Il Giro v. Le Tour

OK, everyone knows Le Tour de France is now and will always be THE race of races. But that doesn't mean we can't find ways to compare No. 2 to No. 1 and see who comes out ahead in other, less meaningful ways. Also, below is a partial list of comparisons; I invite all others to add to the list and make verdicts.

Since things are getting crowded on the main page I'll do this on the Flip:

Competition: Campionissimi v. Galacticos

The only serious note on this post... so the Pro Tour hasn't exactly saved the Giro from the intramural scrum it has been for a decade or two? Once upon a time Tour heroes like Indurain and Hinault and LeMond came to Italy to win. But while the Giro will always fall just short, the comparison could be closer... if Italy weren't producing so many great cyclists. Face it: home teams have big advantages in grand tours, and Italy almost always fields a formidable home team... while French racers have made the Tour available to any foreigner who wishes. If you're Joe International Cyclist, do you want to go take on all of Italy, or wait til July to duke it out with a select handful of outsiders?

Verdict: Le Tour... for now.

Aesthetics: Pink or Yellow?

Kind of a hobson's choice. But the pink has grown on me, and actually looks kinda cool with just about any Pro Tour kit that isn't red.

Verdict: Il Giro

Wine: Chianti or Bordeaux?

As a grandson of Italy, I've tried for a long time to like Italian wine. Ain't happening. Yes, everyone can gin up a nice bottle now and then, but speaking in broad brushstrokes, there's a reason they wrap Italian wines in straw. But don't ask me what it is. Anyway...

Verdict: Le Tour

Crowds: The Nation or the World?

Nobody can top the Tour for crowd size, enthusiasm (albeit largely imported from across the Spanish border), and drunks. The Giro's crowds are smaller and more manageable, though I'm confident it has its share of drunks. Italians are said to harbor the most love for their race... Still, Le Tour has given the world the sport's most intense fan-images, where riders count on the sea of flesh parting just in time to let them turn the pedals again.

Verdict: Le Tour

Scenery: Pyrenees or Dolomites?

The Tour has its monuments, but it also insists on long, flat stages across Normandy, Bordeaux, and the North with nuthin much going on. This may be overly subjective, but almost every inch of Italy looks interesting to me. Look at this year: Sardinia, Salerno (Napoli), Tivoli (Rome), Tuscany, the Riviera... and that's all before the mountain stages. Also, seeing them racing on roads cut through towering snowbanks is awfully dramatic. This year's edition will be non-stop postcards.

Verdict: Il Giro

Randomness: Nature vs. Nurture

Well, the Giro is occasionally undone by foul weather beyond the likes of what the Tour would ever experience. French audiences, however, have a knack for making things interesting, blocking the road, punching Merckx in the kidney, stuff like that. And there's no Italian equivalent of riders sitting down in protest, a decadal event in Le Tour.

Verdict: Le Tour

Cycling Media by some numbers

What is the size of the US cycling market. Here's the results of some googling:

Number of USCF license holders as of 1997: 30,000

USA cycling currently claims 58,000 members on its web site:

Recognized by the U.S. Olympic Committee and the Union Cycliste Internationale, USA Cycling promotes American cycling through its 58,000 members and 2,000 annual events.

Bicycling magazine claimed a circulation of 340,000 in 1989:

James McCullagh, editor and publisher of Bicycling, said the acquisition would increase his magazine's circulation to at least 340,000, from 310,000, after eliminating duplicate subscribers.

I've also seen circulation stats of 400,000 (Sports Illustrated is about 3.2M, Golf Digest is 1.5M)

AMERICANS BUY BIKES

More than 20 million new bikes were sold in 2000, a record high. Throughout the 1990s, sales averaged more than 16 million bikes per year, including more than 11 million “adult” bicycles. The bicycle industry generated sales totaling $5.89 billion in 2000. More than 5,400 specialty bicycle dealers and 1,000 companies are involved in the manufacture, distribution, and sales of bicycles in the United States.

How many hard-core fans of the sport are out there in the USA?

My wild-ass-guess is that it's far short of the 300,000 numbers of Bicycling magazine. Maybe on the order of the USCF membership, somewhere between 30-50,000. A total WAG at how much cash the hardcore cyclists invest in their equipment each year. Assume the average is $1000, and the population is divided up into a normal distribution.

30000 Hard Core US Cyclists

3930 Spend 0-500 per year $982,500

10230 Spend 500-1000 per year $7,672,500

10230 spend 1000-1500 per year $12,787,500

3930 spend 1500-2000 per year $6,877,500

Total $28,320,000

Some sanity checks on dollar figures above: So if the high end folks buy a higher end machine @ $5K a pop only 1200 are sold a year? That seems way low!

Holy Shit

Armstrong's seven Tour de France victories between 1999 and 2005 added jet fuel to the bike boom. In 2000 there were 145,000 high-end road bikes -- averaging about $1,100 -- sold across the country, they made up just 4 percent of the total number of bikes sold and accounted for 11 percent of the retail dollars spent, according to Jay Townley, a bicycle market analyst in Wisconsin.

Dayum, that's $159M clams if 145,000 can be believed.

VS 2006 Tour de France Ratings

Live viewership improved 77 percent from the day before. Overall gross total viewers--the addition of OLN's multiple airings on the day's events--gave the network 1.3 million viewers, some 50 percent higher than the first 19-day average of 809,000 for the event. For the rest of the weekend, OLN made significant viewers gains versus earlier parts of the race. For example, its live telecasts on the final weekend rose 85 percent to 622,000 from the weekend before. All major male demo ratings also climbed significantly--men ages 18-34 were up 93 percent; men 18-49 rose 90 percent; and men 25-54 were 98 percent higher.

Microwave popcorn is the new asbestos

Diacetyl, the buttery-flavored chemical used in microwave popcorn, may be banned in California by 2010. The fumes from it cause terrible lung-disease in people who work around it.

Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D) has introduced a bill to ban diacetyl use by 2010. The chemical is an artificial butter flavoring most commonly used in microwave popcorn. Numerous study have found links between the chemical used by flavor workers and a rare disease called bronchiolitis obliterans. For those of you who aren’t 2000 yr old Romans, that means that the bronchioles and some of the smaller bronchi are obliterated by masses made up of fiberous tissue. It’s like sticking marbles into the networks of tubes in your lung that connect fresh air to the alveoli, the little sacs where oxygen and carbon dioxide are exchanged with the blood. As you Romans can imagine, that’s haud sanus. According to the WaPo, flavoring manufacturers have paid out more than $100 million due to health lawsuits. An excellent case study and background to this whole mess can be found at Defending Science.

Link

Disney World as a Google Map:

A Walt Disney World enthusiast has placed every ride, shop and restaurant in the park onto a Google Maps mashup! Link (via The Disney Blog)

Is track cycling Britain's biggest Olympic hope?

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say there's been a revolution in British cycling; track cycling.

GB won only three golds at major championships during the 1990s. Yet since the Millennium, they have won 15 golds.

There are five main reasons for this:

1) the advent of lottery funding in the late 1990s
2) the building of the Manchester velodrome
3) excellent leadership from Peter Keen and then Dave Brailsford
4) a superb structure
5) top-class coaches and support staff

Things are so good that an official from British Cycling told the BBC they expect to win five gold medals at Beijing 2008, with an outside chance of a further five.

Credit to BBC

Pics from around the world

[image via Pictures from the Sky]

Interactive copyright navigator

Cory Doctorow:
Here is a cool interactive Copyright Navigator that goes through the fundamentals of U.S. Copyright Law." This is a pretty intuitive way fo exploring what copyright does and doesn't do. Link (Thanks, Sarahfenix!)

W.W.G.W.B.D.? flow chart

This chart nicely sums up the Bush presidency. Link (Via Why, That's Delightful!)

On-Demand Harvard Courses: Click, View and Learn

If you have some spare time, why not put it to good use?

Harvard University has dozens of online courses that you can view on demand. It's literally as simple as making a selection and clicking through. You obviously can't get any credits for taking these courses but if you want to brush up on a topic or really fine tune your knowledge, this is the place to go.

Here is a summary of the Spring 2007 online offerings. Not included here is the Fall 2006 course guide, which is still listed on their site.

• Computer Science (15 courses) - Linux, Unix, Java, Web Development, Nanobiotechnology...


• Liberal Arts and Sciences (33 courses) - Intermediate French lessons, Statistics, Metaphysics...


• Management (4 courses) - Accounting, Decision Making, Marketing

Harvard Distance Education

Beckhams Are Looking At Madonna's Mansion

David and Victoria Beckham have reportedly approached pop star Madonna about buying her Beverly Hills compound.

The British soccer star and the former Spice Girl have recently been on a whirlwind house-hunting spree in Los Angeles.

Beckham, who has signed a five-year deal with the Los Angeles Galaxy soccer team that's potentially worth $250 million, is hoping to spend under $20 million for their new home.

The Beckhams' agent, Barry Peele, of Sotheby's International Realty, refused to comment on reports the couple has spoken to Madonna about buying her property, saying he had signed "a lengthy confidentiality agreement".

The celebrity couple reportedly saw 20 homes during their last trip and are looking at properties in the $18-30 million range in Los Angeles' Westside.

Kurt Rappaport of real estate firm Westside Estate Agency tells the Los Angeles Times, "They'll be away three weeks. There will be more homes for them to see when they get back."

FBI and MPAA train Swedish copyright cops

The MPAA and the FBI have gone to Sweden to train six cops in the art of fighting copyright infringement. Sweden is home to the Bittorrent tracker PirateBay, and is the birthplace of the Pirate Party, an international political movement dedicated to destroying the entertainment industry. The Pirate Party arose in the wake of a raid on the PirateBay's ISP, instigated by a Member of Parliament. The MP acted illegally in ordering the raid, and he did so at the behest of the MPAA and the US State Department.

This US meddling in domestic affairs so outraged Swedes that they sided with the Pirate Party in great numbers, throwing their lot in with local rogues in favor of American bullies.

Apparently, the MPAA hasn't learned its lesson: when you intervene in local politics in Europe, locals see you as an evil representative of American hegemony. It's like they want the pirates to win!

In an effort to help stamp out pesky Swedish pirates, FBI agent Andrew Myers and the MPAA have given a group of six Swedish police officers extensive training on how to effectively combat piracy and catch people who engage in illegal downloading from the internet...

Together, Agent Myers and the MPAA's instruction to this new Swedish anti-piracy unit ranged from rules and regulations governing copyright enforcement and piracy, to examples of anti-piracy initiatives in other countries that have already proven effective. The most shocking revelation is a report of a lecture given by the MPAA in which officers were shown the ins and outs of movie camcording, or "CAM-ing."

When the police were asked about possible conflict of interest by having a private interest group such as the MPAA involved in the training of enforcement personnel, they apparently saw none.

credit Cory Doctorow

Tim O'Reilly sounds off on Yahoo's new "Pipes" service

Yahoo this week debuted a new service called Pipes. Here's the official description:

Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line.

Take BoingBoing, for example. You might enjoy one author's work, and find another not to your liking. Pipes provides an easy way to only read specific author(s), and filter out all other posts. Or, if the only subject you're interested in here is Disneyphilia, or ukeleles, or cat macros, or nanotechnology -- or you can't stand any of those, but like other stuff here -- Pipes provides easy ways to filter in or out particular content.

I'm sure other people could come up with far more interesting BoingBoing-related examples, and those are really pretty crude ideas of what this thing's capable of. Here's something else: the most popular Pipe right now is called New York Times through Flickr...

This Pipe takes the New York Times homepage, passes it thru Content Analysis and uses the keywords to find Photos at Flickr.

That's pretty badass.

Reactions from a number of internet-thinkers are very positive. Tim O'Reilly has an extensive post about why he likes Pipes, and he sees it as a manifestation of ideas that have been circulating for some time now:

[It] is a milestone in the history of the internet. It's a service that generalizes the idea of the mashup, providing a drag and drop editor that allows you to connect internet data sources, process them, and redirect the output. Yahoo! describes it as "an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator" that allows you to "create feeds that are more powerful, useful and relevant." While it's still a bit rough around the edges, it has enormous promise in turning the web into a programmable environment for everyone.

Before I get into the details of what it is and how it works, I want to give a little background on why I'm so excited. This is something I've been waiting nearly ten years for.

Read the whole post here -- it's a good one, and provides much to chew on: Link.

The Morning After The Night Before - What Went Wrong For Spurs?

The morning after the night before is often a sobering occasion. Why am I chained to a lamppost? Why the f*ck aren’t we in the League Cup Final? That kind of thing.

For the long suffering fans of Tottenham Hotspur, last night was just another chapter in a miserable catalogue of underachievement and disappointment. 20 minutes of scintillating, breathtaking, poetic football thoroughly spoilt by 190 minutes of dogged defending, dodgy tactics and the inability to double-check a team sheet. Only Spurs.

The kneejerk reaction of a minority has already started to call for the head of Martin Jol, something that is as unlikely as it is ridiculous, but the thought that the great man himself might be scratching his head this morning over another heart wrenching derby defeat is worrying to say the least.

This tie should have been out of sight by the end of the 1st leg, perhaps even the 1st half of that game. The so called ‘youth team’ of Arsenal possess a great deal of talent yet their limited experience should have been punished in front of a White Hart Lane crowd baying for blood after Julio Baptista scored the first of his unorthodox hattrick last Wednesday. They should have been buried by a side keen to show that they would not tolerate facing a second XI in a domestic cup semi final.

Instead, we put the brakes on, a tactical switch that would prove all the more costly considering our two attacking focal points, Lennon and Berbatov, would play no further part in the 2nd leg. It should be abundantly clear that, when fielding an inexperienced side that had already proved themselves in reaching a semi final, Wenger’s brief would be that they had nothing to lose. “Go get those goals back”.

The advantage was lost pitifully and very rarely has a draw tasted so authentically like the bitterest of defeats. Baptista got his 2nd and 3rd goals of the evening, Spurs groaned and Arsenal sang. And when that happens, it really must be going their way.

Yesterday began even better than most ‘big game’ days. ‘Sheringham heading back to Spurs’ read the tabloids, along with 3 or 4 promising names that had been mooted for several weeks. Had we known at the time that none would have signed by the stroke of midnight, it might have been translated as an inadvertent message from the cruel red top hacks that it would have been better off staying in bed.

No Lennon, no pace. No Berba, no physical presence upfront. No attacking changes until a goal down, no ambition. Even passion, surely inherent during a cup semi against your local rivals was lacking from so many of the players. Are Jermain Defoe and Jermaine Jenas REALLY as upset as the fans this morning? I hate to say that I don’t think they are.

What Tottenham need is a battler, an Edgar Davids minus a few thousand miles. Nolan, Barton, even Savage, all wear their heart on their sleeve, run for ninety minutes and, perhaps most importantly, aren’t shirt swapping and hugging their local rivals after losing a cup semi final. And that’s why they are so adored by their fans and so despised by the opposition: they want to win.

All is not lost for THFC and this defeat will be nothing more than a minor blip should our cup form continue and the final victory of the season takes place at Wembley or Hampden Park. But if the current incumbents of that famous white shirt aren’t motivated for a game like Wednesday then it could all be a little too familiar when the silverware is handed out in May.

An American hero is dead

A great American passed away at the weekend. A man who shaped the way this nation conducts itself, symbolises what it stands for and provided an essential tool for living that, on average, each US household has four of.

Ah the remote control...where would we be without it?

Without him, Americans would be a few pounds lighter, some marriages might have lasted longer and those old coins stuck down the sofa would have remained undiscovered, along with dog hair and peanuts from Christmases long ago. I am talking, of course, of Robert Adler, inventor of the television remote control, who flipped channels for the last time in a nursing home in Boise, Idaho at the age of 93.

There is no truth in the rumour his remains were lost somewhere in the couch or that he was cremated and his ashes immediately misplaced. Millions of couch potatoes hit the mute button for a few moments of solemn remembrance. Books called "TV and the Remote Control: Grazing on a Vast Wasteland" and "Remote Control: A Sensible Approach to Kids, TV, and the New Electronic Media" had already examined his legacy.

But really, Bruce Springsteen's "57 Channels (And Nothin' On)" () told us all we needed to know. Except that it's about 300 channels now, Bruce. Adler himself didn't fully enter into the spirit of the thing and continued to be an avid hiker and skier. "First and foremost, I hardly ever turn the TV on," he said in a 1996 interview. "And I certainly never channel surf." His wife said: "He was more of a reader."

On another occasion, he remarked: ""People ask me all the time -- 'Don't you feel guilty for it?' And I say that's ridiculous," he said. "It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television."

This seems to me to be the same kind of approach taken by Mikhail Kalashnikov, inventor of that other gadget that defined the 20th Century - the AK-47 - who shrugs when asked if he feels responsible for the war and death his weapon has been associated with.

Has a remote control ever killed anyone, I ask you say? I seem to remember a story about an obese woman who had to have a remote surgically removed from a fold in her stomach which had grown over it after it got stuck in there. Or perhaps this was an urban myth (aka urban legend).

I'd be surprised if there hadn't been a murder or two over custody of the remote. I know my wife has contemplated it at least a couple of times. But none of this takes away from Mr Adler's contribution to the American Dream - the God-given right to sit around doing sod all but watching crap television and getting fat.

Credit: Telegraph

Google Mashup Mania

I absolutely adore stuff like this! It's a google maps mash-up of handy sites in Los Angeles from Google Maps Mania. You can find the latest real-time traffic jams, where the closest vegetarian restaurant is, what clubs to hit in your area and what's going on with the LA Police, Fire Fighters and 911. There's also a Beer Map, a guide to all the Starbucks sites (heads up Markland!) and a big listing of Real Estate data. Fun stuff!

11 great Google Maps Mashups to get you started..

Real-time LA Emergency events - Real-time map of Police, Fire and 911 Events
My California Traffic: LA - Shows real-time traffic conditions on all LA area freeways. To get started, select Los Angeles from the list
Track inbound flights to LAX - Real-time flight tracker for all inbound flights to LAX
LA Weather Mashup - Current conditions, forecasts, weather cams. Lots of weather info for LA
LA Starbucks Map - Map of all LA Starbucks locations.. Search for Los Angeles, CA to get started!
LA Life - A great LA Real Estate resource with things like home info, community safety and school data to help you out
Trulia LA - Currently mapping 1180 LA properties for sale with an fantastic user interface
LA Beer Map - Find brewpubs, breweries, beer bars, beer stores and homebrew stores in LA
LA FastFood Map - Mapping every McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Wendy's, KFC, Jack in the Box, Hardee's, Carl's Jr. and In-N-Out in LA
Wikimapia LA - Describes hundreds of locations throughout the LA area. Take a look and add your own locations!
Sightseeing with Google Satellite Maps: LA - Scroll down through the list to see a great list of LA points of interest and landmarks zoomed in on a Google satellite map.

Now for the entire list..

Housing & Real Estate:

LA Life - A great LA Real Estate mashup with things like home info, community safety and school data

RentSlicer LA - Rental property statistics for the Los Angeles area

Trulia LA - Currently mapping 1180 LA properties with an awesome user interface

LA Apartment Ratings - 679 Apartments mapped and rated

HomePriceRecords - See recent homes sold by specific address. Search any LA address

HomePriceMaps - Mapping LA MLS listings sale prices

Neighboroo - Zoom in and click on areas of LA to learn about housing, schools, safety, health etc.. for specific LA communities

HousingMaps - The first Google Maps mashup ever mashes up Craigslist housing listings and Google Maps. (Search for LA)

Food and Restaurants:

MenuRequest LA - Mapping menus and restaurants by cuisine and community

MenuMap - Choose the type of restaurant you want to map out and be sure to select LA neighborhood from the list

LA FastFood Map - Mapping every McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Wendy's, KFC, Jack in the Box, Hardee's, Carl's Jr. and In-N-Out in LA

LA Taco Map - Maps Taco places and a whole lot more!

RealFood Finder LA - (Zoom into LA).. Find restaurants, cafes and delis with organic menus or markets, grocery stores and farms with sustainable produce, meat, and specialty products.

LA Eats with Maps - displaying 84 LA restaurants

HappyCow LA - LA vegetarian vegetarian dining and shopping guide

Transit and Transportation:

My California Traffic: LA - Shows real-time traffic conditions on all LA area freeways. To get started, select Los Angeles from the list

Track inbound flights to LAX - You must know the flight number. Works for other US cities as well

Google Transit Planner: Burbank, Orange County

Los Angeles Airport Parking - Map lots near LAX

Los Angeles Red Light Cameras Map - Shows location and associated fine

LA Gas Prices - Search for your location or just key in Los Angeles to get started.

Beer, Wine and Nightlife

Dr. Vino's LA Wine Shops - Only the best shops are listed

LA Beer Map - Find brewpubs, breweries, beer bars, beer stores and homebrew stores in LA

PartyGPS LA - Bar, Club and Liquor Finder for LA

LA Gay Bar and Club Finder

Living in LA:

Recent LA Police Fire 911 Events

Find a bank in LA

Go golfing in the LA area - Bikely can help also!

Find or map a jogging or running route

Find out the weather

Locate a Starbucks (Search for LA)

Map a USPS mailbox

Map LA zip codes (Enter your zip code or zoom in)

Find a WiFi hotspot

Exploring LA:

Wikimapia LA - Describes hundreds of locations throughout the LA area

GeoNames: LA - Browse LA "geo locations" and Wikipedia articles. (If link doesn't work, zoom into LA on the map)

Placeopedia - Map Wikipedia articles to their location - Search for LA

Platial.com: LA - User created maps for the LA area

Tagzania.com: LA - Shows tagged places for the LA area

CommunityWalk.com: LA - DIY Maps for the LA area

NaviTraveler - Zoom to LA for points of interest

Jotle - Zoom to LA for Wikimapia, Placeopedia, Flickr photos and YouTube videos for the LA area

GeoWalk - Zoom into LA for lots of LA related travel info - Wikipedia articles, hotels, photos, weather etc..

Los Angeles Historical Cultural Monuments - Plotted by location around the city

Hollywood's Hottest Hotels Exposed - HotelChatter maps stories of famous hotels

MovieMappr - Find out what hotels were shot, where.. (Search for LA)

LA Priceline Hotel Map

Jargol's LA Shopping Guide - Described as "A map of the coolest independent shops in Los Angeles"

Check "Living in LA" section for more useful mashups for your trip to LA!

LA Photos and Satellite Views:

Loc.aliz.us: LA Photo Map

Panoramio: LA Photo Map

Sightseeing with Google Satellite Maps: LA - Scroll down through the list and check out LA points of interest and landmarks linked for you on a Google satellite Map

GoogleSightseeing.com Stories and comments about LA landmarks - LA Convention Center, LA Zoo, The Getty Center, LA Coliseum, Dodger Stadium, Griffith Observatory

Democracy Player gets even better

Democracy Player, the killer free Internet TV app, is edging closer to 1.0. The new version fixes a ton of little bugs and cleans up the UI even more. Democracy is like iTunes for Internet TV, without the DRM. Just tell it what channels you like (or pick from a huge menu, or your favorite YouTube or Google Video keywords) and it will download a steady stream of programming with BitTorrent. Democracy uses VLC to play back video, so it doesn't matter whether you're trying to view a QuickTime, WMV, or plain MPEG (or DivX, or FLV, or whatever...) -- it just works. And because Democracy has BitTorrent built it, it's cheap and easy to publish your own Democracy channel -- the more popular your channel gets, the cheaper it is to serve and the faster your fans get your video.

Democracy runs with equal ease on Linux, MacOS and Windows. It's solid, easy to use, and free. (Democracy also has a new Ubuntu repository for fetching binaries of the latest versions)

Refined interface. simpler, smoother, easier to use.

Share menu. New ’share’ menu on each item lets you email a video or post to Video Bomb, del.icio.us, Digg, or Reddit...

Pause / Resume downloads. Long awaited! You can now pause and resume any download or all downloads.

Better BitTorrent support. BitTorrent performance is significantly improved.

Teacher faces jail time over "accidental porn" in classroom

The Connecticut substitute school teacher who exposed 11 and 12-year-old students to porn in the classroom -- unintentionally, she says, because of malware on an infected PC -- may now go to jail. If her claims are true, she'll be the first American ever jailed for having had the misfortune of being forced to use a buggy school computer, with incompetent or nonexistent tech support from that school's administration despite repeated requests for help.

From the New York Times story excerpted below, it sure sounds like the school administrators bungled the hell out of this one, and are now scapegoating Julie Amero instead of fessing up to their own failure to protect children:

Ms. Amero’s husband, Wes Volle, was emphatic in saying she was clueless about computers and was in over her head once the pop-ups began. Mr. Volle, a graphics designer, accused the school system of sacrificing his wife to deflect attention from its own failure to install effective filters on its computers.

“The computer was infected long before Julie walked into that room,” he said. No other staff members in the southeastern Connecticut district have been charged or are expected to be charged.

During the trial, Robert Hartz, the information services manager for Norwich’s schools, said the computer’s filters that would have blocked such ads were not fully operational, since they had lacked the proper updated information for several weeks.

In an interview, Pam Aubin, superintendent of the Norwich schools, said that Mr. Hartz had ordered an upgrade, but that the supplier had sent it to the wrong e-mail address, using “B” for Bob rather than “R” for Robert in Mr. Hartz’s name.

reg-free NYT Link. Brian Krebs at the Washington Post interviewed Ms. Amero, and has a thorough, updated writeup on the case here: Link

Google Earth: helpful for evading death squads in Iraq

BBC News Baghdad correspondent Andrew North reports that some people in Iraq are using Google Earth to avoid sectarian violence in Baghdad:

One tip - on the Iraq League site, one of the best known -- is for people to draw up maps of their local area using Google Earth's detailed imagery of Baghdad so they can work out escape routes and routes to block.

Hijacker beaten and burned by passengers

guy who tried to hijack a plane going from Africa to the Canary Islands was ambushed by flight attendants and passengers (with help from the pilots), had scalding water dashed in his face, and was then pounced on and beaten.

Speaking to the gunman during the hijacking, the pilot realized the man did not speak French. So he used the plane’s public address system to warn the passengers in French of the ploy he was going to try: brake hard upon landing, then speed up abruptly. The idea was to catch the hijacker off balance, and have crew members and men sitting in the front rows of the plane jump on him, the Spanish official said.

The pilot also warned women and children to move to the back of the plane in preparation for the subterfuge, the official said.

It worked. The man was standing in the middle aisle when the pilot carried out his maneuver, and he fell to the floor, dropping one of his two 7mm pistols. Flight attendants then threw boiling water from a coffee machine in his face and at his chest, and some 10 people jumped on the man and beat him, the Spanish official said.

Link

Financial Times poll on DRM

This is a link to a poll currently taken at the Financial Times of London. It simply asks, 'Should music companies drop DRM?'" Link

New York City Bike Messengers

Check out this video.
Insane to say the least and so are the bike handling skills.