Events

Yesterday was almost entirely spent going up to the Bristol Renaissance Faire for its opening weekend. We had a lot of fun, ate more food (and more salt) than was probably healthy, and returned from the frozen North with squeaky cheese curds. Of course, all that fun, sun, and driving requires about a day to clear out of my system. The symptoms of this clearing include following random Wiki threads, thinking about doing basic activities for unusually long times before doing them, and arranging my day so...

Crain's Chicago Business has a web comic (of all things) that explains Motorola's decline from the only company making mobile handheld communicators to today's zombie corporation. Spoiler alert: it was Iridium.

The Atlantic's CityLab blog has a host: Train stations in America span all the styles of architecture this nation has to offer. There’s the the gorgeous Italianate train station in Jackson, Michigan. The Amtrak station in Raton, New Mexico, is a beautiful example of Mission Revival. Even the humble lil’ train station in Mineola, Texas, has got some flair. Whatever you might think about Orlando’s train station, it no doubt looks historic. The stations I want to talk about are not those train stations....

Two by Josh Marshall this morning. First, on how Donald Trump has got the Republican National Committee chair near apoplexy: If you're someone of [RNC chair Reince] Priebus' relative stature, approaching someone of Trump's arrogance and buffoonery, who is insulated from all of the pressures usually used to bring politicians to heel, you're not going to say, "Dude, STFU or else." I think you're probably to say something like "Dude, you're killing it. You've really struck a nerve. But a party can only...

Yes, Illinois was #1 in rainfall last month, making us the wettest state in the country: The National Centers for Environmental Information (formerly NCDC) released their numbers for June, showing that Illinois did indeed have its wettest June on record with 236.2 mm (according to their calculations). That made Illinois the wettest state** in the US for the month. **There are no statewide records for Hawaii. However, an examination of the four main sites in Hawaii indicate June totals that are far less...

Apparently Republican Maine governor Paul LePage (aka "the country's craziest governor") let "accidentally" let 19 bills become law by "forgetting" to veto them: As the Bangor Daily News reported Tuesday evening, LePage appeared to be attempting to use the parliamentary procedure known as the pocket veto. By not signing the bills and "pocketing" them, LePage could under some circumstances have effectively vetoed them. In theory, that would have allowed the proposals to die without legislators having a...

OK, I think the Fitbit "sensitive" sleep setting has to go. Last night, I know I slept for longer than my Fitbit believes I did: I think it's interpreting very slight arm movements as actual restlessness, whereas it used to ignore most of them. If I'd only gotten four hours of sleep last night, I'd have crashed at my desk already. I'm setting it back to "normal" sensitivity now. Let's see what it shows tomorrow.

There's something kind of sad about spending several days extracting code I wrote for one company from code I wrote, while working at that company, for the company I now work for. Then I gotta test it all...

Yesterday I changed my Fitbit sleep monitor setting from "normal" to "sensitive." I got to bed last night at almost exactly the same time I went to bed Sunday night; and I got up this morning within 5 minutes of when I got up yesterday. But my Fitbit says I got 90 minutes less sleep last night. Here's Sunday night: Here's last night: This means either it's been overestimating my sleep, or last night it hugely underestimated it. Or, possibly, last night I just tossed and turned a lot more than usual....

Astronomers have discovered compelling evidence of alien life on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: Evidence of alien life is "unequivocal" on the comet carrying the Philae probe through space, two leading astronomers have said. [Astrobiologist] Chandra Wickramasinghe said: "What we're saying is that data coming from the comet seems to unequivocally, in my opinion, point to micro-organisms being involved in the formation of the icy structures, the preponderance of aromatic hydrocarbons, and the very...