Saturday, January 20, 2007

Bill Buchanan Quote

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
With this one, it's almost as if the writers were deliberately trying to come up with something that would get picked up and mocked widely:

"We need to do better than we're doing, and we need to do it faster!"

I see this getting used a lot. By me.

Update: Bill has his own Wikipedia entry. Of course he does.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Mustache update


So, here's the mustache update. I'm waiting for other images to come in because this is the 'revised' mustache. I originally had it wrapping down past my lower lip a bit and left a litte fu-esque patch, too, but that was deemed 'too cool looking' by my fantasy football league mates, so I shaved it down in the bar. The guy in the picture above had brought a razor with him, just in case.

Pretty sweet, no?

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Flickr's "Interestingness" formula?


beans & franks, french style, originally uploaded by sindlinger.

Not sure how exactly this formula works. I believe comments and favorites play a significant factor. The number of views also is likely to be important, perhaps, as an indicator of how interesting something is. But I am really not clear on how the variables are weighted. I have ~3,000 photos uploaded to Flickr. All kinds of subjects, locations and compositions. But according to Flickr, this photo above is --- and has been for a while --- the 'most interesting' photo of them all. 'beans & franks, french style' is the best work I've submitted, apparently.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Review: Vivere

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Had a nice dinner at Vivere last night. Full review on Yelp

Friday, January 12, 2007

London's new public locker room for women

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting
Random interesting idea: WC1 is launching a public, fancy locker room service for busy women in London. Just like the ingenuity of it, no idea if it will fly.

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Visit Azerbaijan?

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Saw this commercial while on vacation, along with some others for Armenia and some OOH ads for Romania. Way better tourism advertising in France, clearly. Consider these are what I usually see on CTA buses or other miscellaneous billboards around Chicago:
* Wisconsin
* Illinois
* Western Iowa
The crazy thing is, I'm now thinking about visiting Azerbaijan, or Armenia, maybe even Romania. At least I'll look into it. Sounds more compelling than a trip to the Dells.
The other encouraging thing is to see that some people are out there hustling on YouTube trying to get semi-legitimate messages out. It isn't all extremely unfunny crap and shameless exhibitionism.

Sunday, January 07, 2007

New Middle Eastern restaurant disappoints

Habeebi's just opened, turning one more empty store front on Bryn Mawr into something somewhat more useful. But our first experience wasn't great. See Yelp for my full review.

Dog Holiday 2006 Photo Shoot Outtakes


P1010044.JPG, originally uploaded by sindlinger.

If 138 pictures of small dogs in varying states of dress and distraction is your thing, then check out these . It's a failsafe recipe for hilarity: 2 small, reluctant dogs + poorly fitting Peruvian mountain costumes + digtal camera. Good times.

Saturday, January 06, 2007

Mari Ramos = "I'm Carol"

Okay, some people might interpret this as not such a nice post, but I'm just calling things like I see them.

I can't recall the first time I saw Mari Ramos on TV, but think it was this past March on vacation. While it's not immediately obvious from seeing her head shot at the above link, if/when you see and hear Mari live, I think the connection becomes more clear: Mari Ramos resembles the SNL "I'm Carol" character, as portrayed by Horatio Sanz.

Even from the stills below, I think if you keep an open mind, you'll see what I'm talking about.

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Finally, from the nothing-should-be-a-surprise department, there are people who have pages of Mari Ramos photos.

Barcelona tapas & dessert joint in NYTimes


P1000186.JPG, originally uploaded by sindlinger.

Just randomly saw that Bubo was quickly covered in the NYTimes. Judy and I stopped there while wandering around the city on spring break last year ['06]. Couple of pictures from that pitstop are here, including shots of what we could see from our table outside.
Note: the crusty looking guy in the shot above appeared to be a regular, as he was greeted in a "Norm!"-esque manner. He was also one of the handful of misguided dickheads we've encountered on our vacations who think it's a good ice breaker to shout "konichiwa" at Asians passing by, because clearly all Asians speak Japanese, right? Sure.

Friday, January 05, 2007

New Year's Eve in Montmartre


P1010453, originally uploaded by sindlinger.

After dinner that delayed us more than we expected [quoting the waitress: "there was a problem in the kitchen - don't accuse me" ... actually, this was much more pleasant than it sounds, just comes across funny in translation], our options on what to do at midnight were somewhat limited. But we had 30 minutes to walk up to the top of the hill near Sacre Coeur and get a view of the Eiffel Tower. This shot here shows you we weren't the only people who had that idea. If you're interested in the rest of the shots, start here and work your way through.
Some blurry shots, some repetitive shots, but also a couple of good ones, such as:

* French family lighting sparklers

* Our view of the Eiffel Tower with the spotlight pointed straight at us

* Some of the amateur pyrotechnics that were going off all over the place

* A sense of the communal revelry

* A minor drunken misunderstanding

* And among it all, a respect for keeping things neat

Would have been smart of me to bring the video camera along to truly capture the sounds and sights of people setting off the bottle rockets, shouting "bonne annee!" etc., but I left it in the apartment. Sweet.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Diversity of TV programming


ParisTV Oman.JPG, originally uploaded by sindlinger.

Setting aside any comment regarding whether one agrees or not with the French attitudes regarding various topics [foreign policy, economic regulation, etc.], you can't argue the fact that the French population has easier access to greater diversity of thought than does the American population. These snapshots show just a handful of the channels that were available on the cable system in the apartment we rented. Programming from Italy, Algeria, China, Russia, Morocco, Poland, Qatar, Germany, etc., etc., etc. Rather different than CNN, FoxNews and MSNBC.