Events

The Inner Drive Extensible Architecture™ is about to get wider distribution. After 11 years of development, I think it's finally ready for wider distribution. And, who knows, maybe I'll make a couple of bucks. I've updated the pricing structure and the license agreement, and in the next week or so (after some additional testing), I'm going to release it to NuGet. That doesn't make it free; that makes it available. (Actually, I am making it free for development and testing, but I'm charging for...

Today is May Day, but it feels like mid-March. Instead of the normal 18°C for May 1st, we're going to get, if we're lukcy, 9°C, with some gray skies and drizzle to drive the point home. The WGN Weather Center has more: A sprinkly, damp chill hung over Chicago as April 2014 closed overnight. The month finished 0.2°C below normal—a fraction of the deficit that’s been recorded in a number of recent months. The shortfall, small as it is, means April goes down in the record books here as the 6th consecutive...

Today wasn't nearly as pretty:

If so, these are queued up: A piece about Wrigley Field's quirks. Two about how Oklahoma botched an execution yesterday, coinciding with the Economist (and I) wondering why America still has the death penalty. Chicago's city council will vote today on ride-sharing, with consequences to friends who Lyft and Uber. Via Bruce Schneier, an article about the Quantified Toilet hoax. Yes, there is such a thing. More later...

Here: House prices in my neighborhood are back to 2007 levels, almost. BASIC is 50 years old. GoGo Inflight shares fell 25% today on the news of AT&T's vaporware. After banning a book at the local school, irate religious fundamentalists called the cops when a student started giving the book away for free. More later.

Or, a few reasons why the "Send to Kindle" button helps me get through the day: Cubicles suck. We already have laws that sort out liability for driverless-car accidents. How do you feed a two-headed snake? (No, really. You have to watch this.) Learn the history of business class airline seats. Railroads are investing $10 billion in technology over the next two years, nominally more than they invested in laying rail in the last century. Sarah Palin is obscene.

Parker and I ran around all day because I had an open house. (For some reason, people don't want to meet dogs at open houses.) I'm now catching up on everything I didn't do all day. The best part of having an open house, though: my apartment Inner Drive Technology WHQ is spotless.

I didn't post a lot yesterday because (a) I had tons to do for work and (b) once I'd finished, I had to go out into this: It got all the way up to 21°C, briefly, and there were actual leaves on the trees for the first time since November. Today it's sunny and 7°C. It might get up to 14°C sometime this coming week, once it stops raining. Hey, at least it's spring.

The New York Times has an interactive map of which ZIP codes support which baseball teams, according to Facebook. Some teams, apparently, just can't catch a break. Oh, there they are, that other little team in Chicago:

Busy day, so I'm just flagging these for later: Microsoft has released new Azure Database tiers in preview, with migration required in a year. Stephen Colbert told Jon Stewart he's leaving. Via the Atlantic Cities blog, an interactive map of London rents by Tube stop. Atlantic Cities also reports on a new opera about Jane Jacobs that tells the story of her victory in 1960 over Robert Moses. Also check out the interactive Manahatta Project map showing New York in 1609 overlaid by 2014, in block-level...