Events

I've just pushed Weather Now release 5.0.9497, which has a few minor tweaks plus one really obvious one: I switched typefaces. For consistency with the new Daily Parker and the soon-to-be-refreshed Inner Drive Technology corporate site, I decided to switch to the IBM Plex Sans typeface. The app had used Łukasz Dziedzic's Lato typeface, which I like a lot. I think Plex has a cleaner design, no more modern than Lato but just more to my taste. Check out the Weather Now refresh, and let me know what you...

Because I've spent almost all my computer time on my real job and on getting the next version of The Daily Parker ready for its Beta launch, I haven't had many of these link roundups for the last couple of weeks. Another reason: all the end-of-year retrospectives, floofy non-news stories, and all those damned "send us money" emails. I promise you, I will never send you an email begging for money. Of course, if you enjoy either this blog or Weather Now, or find them vaguely useful, please consider...

I've basically finished everything I'd planned for Weather Now this year, and I've made significant progress on the new blog engine. For the former, I just need to make one more small bug fix, so I expect to release the new version tomorrow afternoon. For the latter, I expect to finish the comments feature set Thursday; then I'll publish the link to the dev/test site. Today, though, I have a few other things to do before making more progress on either. But don't change that dial!

Welcome to stop #136 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Polyanna Brewing, 245 E. Main St., RoselleTrain line: Milwaukee District West, Roselle (Zone 4) Time from Chicago: 49 minutesDistance from station: 800 m She may not look like much, kid, but she's got it where it counts. After 135 Brews & Choos stops in the Chicago area and another 13 in the rest of the world, I finally missed a train. The Milwaukee District West line runs hourly on weekdays. I planned to stay only half an hour at Polyanna...

Welcome to stop #135 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: More Brewing, 121 W. Railroad Ave., BartlettTrain line: Milwaukee District West, Bartlett (Zone 4) Time from Chicago: 59 minutesDistance from station: 50 m The original More Brewing in Villa Park was stop #24 on the Brews and Choos Project, back in March 2020. It was, in fact, my penultimate review before Covid-19 shut everything down for 3½ months, making the disappointing brewery that much more disappointing. I have to say, the Bartlett...

Welcome to stop #134 on the Brews and Choos project. Brewery: Suncatcher Brewing, 2849 W. Chicago Ave., ChicgaoTrain line: Milwaukee District West, Milwaukee District North, and North Central Service; Western Ave (Zone 1) Time from Chicago: 9 minutesDistance from station: 1.2 km Suncatcher opened just 13 months ago on land and in an unused supply shed rented from a garden supply store. This means they have an amazing outdoor space that I will take Cassie to visit at some point when the sun is out and...

I've posted the Chicago Sunrises 2026 page a few days before the end of the year in part because I'm still thinking about the way the new blog engine will handle static pages. The fundamental abstraction in the new blog engine is an Event, which is a thing that occurs in time; static pages are, well, static. The solution I'm experimenting with is to have "favorite" or "pinned" posts, which will show up second on the main landing page. First, I have to finish comments, which has led me to re-evaluate...

Here's the annual Chicago sunrise chart. As always, you can get sunrise data for your own location at Weather Now. Date Significance Sunrise Sunset Daylight 2026 3 Jan Latest sunrise until Oct 29th 07:19 16:33 9:13 27 Jan 5pm sunset 07:08 17:00 9:51 4 Feb 7am sunrise 07:00 17:10 10:09 20 Feb 5:30pm sunset 06:40 17:31 10:50 27 Feb 6:30am sunrise 06:29 17:39 11:10 7 Mar Earliest sunrise until Apr 12th Earliest sunset until Nov 1st 06:16 17:49 11:32 8 Mar Daylight saving time begins Latest sunrise until...

The US Supreme Court used its infamous shadow docket Monday to tell the OAFPOTUS he can't send the National Guard to Chicago anymore: In its three-page unsigned ruling against the administration, the court refused to grant the president broad discretion to deploy the military in U.S. cities, citing an 1878 law, which bans the use of the military for domestic policing. It represented a rare departure from recent cases, in which the conservative majority has overwhelmingly sided with Mr. Trump in...