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The real life of bloggers

Death of a blog?

It's always a bit of a challenge to filter what you really want to blog about. that's one of the reasons a good blog is hard to find. it's also why it's sad to see a good blog fall to the wayside.

I checked in with a blog I hadn't seen updated in a long time - The City Record and Boston Newsletter. It was a cool blog that posted all hinds of Boston historical tidbits and cool maps. Then it just stopped. Anyone have any info? It's sad that such an interesting read is no more...

We put the UG in UGLY

Well, it's official. City Hall Plaza has officially been declared the ugliest building in the world. Or at least so says website VirtualTourist.

Everyone knows it's an eyesore, and we still argue over it's replacement. But I can see back then people thinking the brutalist architecture would provide the city with something interesting and different. My parents thought the same when they put their wood paneling up. :)

But I also reflected on this today while looking at the new W hotel going up in Boston. This thing is ugly. I mean they had the chance to put up a really cool looking building. but the BRA, maybe much like the people when looking at a new city hall plaza, let developers put up yet another dull building. Sometimes I want to drag these people to Chicago and show them what nice buildings look like. Half of the eyesores going up today look like the generic "IBM" buildings that went up in the 70's.

You can see how bad the building looks, now that the skin goes up a significant number of stories (I'll see if I can get a pic).

So I wonder if we're doomed to just have dull architecture here in Boston. Regular building look dull ( can you say Kendall Square). Buildings that go through BRA approval are dull (or made to look dull - that's another long story). is Boston somehow cursed that we can't have nice buildings????

Instant Replay

I finally did it. After hemming and hawing for months, I finally got a DVR from the cable company.

For the non-techies out there, this is a Digital Video Recorder. Effectively it lets you tape programs like a VCR. But since this is integrated into the cable box, it makes picking what to record a lot easier.

Since the VCR is nearing the end of it's life, I've been looking into DVR service for a while. But wondering if it is work the money (extra $9/month) - and if I'd actually watch all the garbage I recorded. I finally gave in after getting tired of actually using the VCR to record - trying to set it up for something that will be on TV days from now. So I bit the bullet and decided to go for it. So tonight I'm playing with the new toy.

Recording stuff is easy, as it's tied to the cable programming guide. You can just go into the future on the grid, find your show, and select "I wanna record this". way cool. I'm actually surprised how much I'm using the "pause live TV" function. grabbing dinner, that annoying phone call, that pit stop. just pause and catch up during a commercial. I even found a way to program a button on the remote to do the "jump 30 seconds" to help me skip those commercials. DVRs now even come with 2 tuners, so I can record something and watch another show - or record two simultaneous shows.

Also happy the player has all this functionality. When DVRs first came out, I loved the "Replay TV" sets - they had all the functionality, and didn't keep track of your viewing habits. Unfortunately tivo won that battle, so I've been staying away from DVRs mainly for my dislike of tivo. Now that I can have a tivo-free DVR, well that made it harder to resist as well.

yah, yah yah - boys in their toys. But this is cooler than I expected (yah, sometimes it doesn't take much :)

Another reason why we hate the T...

Took the Red Line subway home on Monday night. We get to Park street (A busy stop), and of course there are people standing in the doorways while rush hour patrons and trying to get on and off the subway. Unfortunately, this is nothing unusual in Boston. But tonight...

Who was one of the oafs standing in the doorway while everyone was trying to get out? An MBTA Inspector. Yep, a T employee just standing there. avoiding everyone's stares as he refused to move in or out of the car to make way for people. Like we couldn't see the MBTA Inspector badge on his jacket.

The T takes a lot fo flack for stupid moves; but a lot of times it's idiots like this guy who, who put their worst foot forward, that to more harm than a late train would...

Prop 8 continues

Found this video floating around the blog world. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann with an impassioned editorial on why Gay Marriage should continue in California (and everywhere for that matter). Not only is it a moving piece, but comign form a straight guy with 'no interest' in the subject makes it even more powerful.




Here is the Video if the embedded above didn't work

The future is here.

don't blow it....