This page contains all entries posted to Manufactured Environments in November 2003.

Fire Alarm

Winter suddenly appeared here in Iowa City yesterday. It’s FREEZING out. And of all days, a smoke sensor failed in the building where I work so the alarms went off and everyone had to pile out into the frigid wind for 20 minutes while the FD figured out what was up. The students have all Thanksgiving week off, so at least there weren’t too many people in the building at the time…

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Playing the email catchup

It’s amazing how email just piles up. Even with my spam filters working overtime, there’s still a huge pile of messages to go through at the end of the day. Well, tonight I resolved to get caught up on my email, and that’s what I’ve been doing. So damnit, if you haven’t heard from me tonight, you’re not going to!

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My RSS Feeds

With the addition of stopdesign.com, I subscribe to 61 RSS feeds. That’s what I’m reading on a daily basis. What’s an RSS feed? Well, it’s a way to read frequently updated websites from one application. What sites do I read? Here’s my OPML subscription list, which you can import into most any RSS reader. What reader do I use? SharpReader, of course. It’s free and nicely implemented at that.

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Girl, I want to take you to a gay bar

Here’s another funny entry in the geek rock files. Gay Bar by Electric Six sung by flying Viking Kittens. Girl, I want to take you to a gay bar. I’ve got something to put in you…at the gay bar gay bar gay bar. Weeoow! [Link courtesy of komainu]

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David Carson Interview

Here’s an interview with designer David Carson. Carson’s got a new design book due out next month (his fourth, and his first in five years) called Trek.

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CSS Experts of the World Unite

I’m working on the CSSification of DanielStout.com. My main goal is to get rid of the main <table> in my new design. But it’s not quite working properly. I’ve got a two-column table — and in the CSS version I’m floating left and I’m floating right, but the two columns are going to the far edge of the screen. I added a text-align: center to the body element, but still no dice. If anyone knows how to get this to work, your help would be appreciated. You can look at the working version of the new CSS file here. Mostly I’m using multiple div’s of .left and one of .blog for the left-column and a single instance of .sidebar, which is the right column. I should note that the left column is 640px wide, and the right column is indeterminate — I’m using a nowrap directive to make it as wide as it needs to be at runtime based on the content in the cell.

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Congrats to Jose

Congrats to Jose for his newly published book on Internet worms entitled Defense and Detection Strategies Against Internet Worms. You can buy a copy from Amazon here.

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Wild Bill’s

According to Wild Bill’s Coffeeshop, you know you’ve had too much coffee when…

• Instant coffee takes too long.
• You don’t even wait for the water to boil.
• You introduce your boyfriend as your “Coffeemate.”
• You can jump start your car without cables
• You help your dog chase its tail.
• You answer the door before people knock.

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thanks

A SPECIAL THANKS to F. for getting me a couple of CD’s off of my Amazon.com Wish List. Righteous!

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Halloween Weekend

Here’s the stats from Halloween weekend:

Iowa City Police officers charged 116 people at 12 downtown bars for underage drinking during the weekend.

Police also arrested 16 people for drunken driving and cited 16 for being in a bar after 10 p.m. under the age of 19, from Thursday through Sunday. Twenty-eight people were arrested for public intoxication.

http://www.press-citizen.com/news/110303arrests.htm

Isn’t life in a college town fun?

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What time does the Java House close?

A few months ago, they opened a new Java House over on 1st Avenue not far from where I live. It’s Iowa City’s fourth Java House, adding to the coffee empire in this town. I found out tonight that this new one closes at 10pm on Sunday nights. That’s too bad. I know the East Side isn’t a haven for students; it’s mostly residential, but a coffee shop that closes at 10pm is a damn shame.

I still miss Ground Zero, which I lived above when I first moved to Iowa City. It was a funky coffee shop. Bands played there on the weekends. They were open late. And best of all, their lattes rocked. The Terrapin, which has two locations here, has taken the mantle of the best latte in town. But I still would like a coffee shop in this town that has a performance space. Brewed Awakenings briefly took the mantle after Ground Zero closed, but BA quickly closed down only to be replaced by a club, The Green Room, which seems to be doing pretty well.

When I was out in San Luis Obispo in California this summer, we went and saw a singer/songwriter play in an outdoor space in the back of a coffee shop downtown. It was a great experience, but it reminded me that we need something like that here. There are so many great musicians here, that it seems like somebody would take that upon themselves to start a place. Rock clubs are not the best place for intimate acoustic music. Now, it’s true that every great once in a while, a small group can play at the downtown Java House, but it’s awkward because the space doesn’t accomodate performers and audiences.

Iowa City needs a coffee house with a performance space.

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Halloween Party

We went to D.’s Halloween party Friday night. We had a great time. D. lives downtown on the third story of a building overlooking Burlington St. It was great fun looking out and seeing all of the college students walking by in their costumes. D. has a nice apartment, but she definitely takes a hit for the rent. Downtown apartments are expensive because they’re so close to campus. The other reason I wouldn’t personally like to live there is that Burlington is Grand Central Station to all the students heading out to party on the weekends, or Thursday nights for that matter. She had the window open and it was really fucking loud outside. Tonight is probably another ruckus night downtown because Iowa beat Illinois today. I watched part of the game on TV, and they had a sell-out 70,000 crowd at the stadium. I ran over to CopyWorks during the game to pick up a newsletter I was having copied, and there was virtually no traffic. Iowa City just about shuts down when the game is on. I have good memories of Halloween’s past. It’s often a time of the year that I’m traveling. I remember being at CBGB in New York City on a Halloween. Or being in the French Quarter of New Orleans with Faust a few years back. My grandparents said they had so many trick-or-treater’s this year that they ran out of candy. It was another good Halloween this year.

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