 20050430
It's about time! Indiana Adopts Daylight-Savings
20050429
I became concerned for myself last night when I realized how genuinely angry I was with Fox for preempting The OC with the President's news conference.
Update: The Washington Post has an entertaining and thorough column about the ordeal: The President's Preemptive Strike.
Einstein's Only Self-Portrait. Reprinted by the Rheinische Post, Flickred by Mareen.
20050428
Danceoff!
 Monday night after work, I went to CoDa to support Jakob who was competing in LVHRD's Battle of the Moves. I sat up front with Youngna, Janelle, and Jake, to root Jakob on. As the show kickoff neared, the emcee came on and said that they needed one more dancer to round out the field of 16, and asked for a volunteer from the audience. For a split second I considered it, but became violently nauseous at the idea of dancing in front of a large group of people. To my annoyance (later forgiven), Youngna and Janelle pulled the "Pick Him, Pick Him" move, and pointed me out. And, despite my curse words and protesting, the host wrote my name on the contestants' board, and I nearly vomited. Ok ok, I can get through this. In the first round I just had to dance with three other people on stage. No sweat. All I had to do was dance for 2 minutes, not look lame, quietly get cut, and then continue rooting for Jakob. But it went all wrong. People liked my spastic stage-clobbering style, and cheered for me ... all the way to the final four. In the end, I had more fun than I can remember of previous months. I had the chance to stand like a rockstar might, stage-dive, jump off walls, stand on my head, and seduce and makeout with an audience member on stage (Sorry, Jen?!). A few photobloggers were on hand and they have more pictures and stories: Jake Dobkin. Youngna Park. Kara Canal. Dens Crowley. There's rumor that a video exists. Working to get it ...
RSS Digest : Show and syndicate RSS and news feed on your Web page with no programming.
20050427
Here's another one, keep 'em coming.
Planzo: An Online Planning Community.
Listening to (on repeat) ...
Animal Collective's Kids on Holiday.Labels: Listening First Flight
Airbus A380: So hot right now.
After 200 Years, U.S. Remains King of Cotton
All Things Considered:When you buy a T-shirt that says "made in China," there's a pretty good chance it's made of cotton that was grown on a farm somewhere in the United States. Plenty of countries in Asia and Africa have natural conditions that are better for growing cotton than those in Texas, where much of the world's cotton comes from. But the United States has managed to maintain its supremacy in cotton by investing heavily in technology ... Many of the world's T-shirts begin life as cotton in Texas, before becoming T-shirts in places such as China. They re-enter the U.S. market for sale and are eventually shipped to third world countries such as Tanzania for resale. (See Illustration) Listen to the full report on NPR. via Chris.
I put some video from The Shins show on Vimeo ... like this clip of them playing New Slang.
20050426
Jason Kottke modeled for Defunker. Here's a teaser.
Friend Meg is visiting Japan. Her photos from Hokkaido are fantastic, and envy-inducing.
20050425
Google worth more then Viacom. via Josh.
Zee Germans are here!
An ARD crew is filming in our loft today for a documentary about Broadway, which airs June 19th in Germany.
Nick told me he heard good things about the M1000 model.
20050424
Cool! Some of my photos have been included in Wikipeida entries ...
20050423
m4r33n: I wish there was a plugin for iTunes that lets me tag my music ... so I dont need to make playlists. I could just type 'party' and a list of tagged songs appears.
20050422
Yay - BuddyGopher is back online.
Today, I learned about the China Interocean Transport (CIT) company, and the term FOB.
My friend Will Fresch, editor of Crazewire, needs help getting some passes to the Coachelle Music Festival. Please read his blurb.
20050421
THE ANTS ARE HERE!
Trying Farechase (beta).
Andrew's piece Message will be performed at the IDEAS Festival in Bloomington this weekend.
I forgot to mention last week that we launched the splash page for our Scrolling LED Belt Buckle.
Processing 1.0 (BETA): A programming environment for designers and artists. via Kottke.
20050420
Defunker
 We launched Defunker today. Using everything we learned while building Busted Tees, we created this alternate site for artistic, obscure and just plain good-looking shirts that we like. The site is live and accepting orders, but is still unfinished in some ways. Please take a few moments, browse through it, and let me know if you find any bugs -- or simply evaluate it and share all feedback with me. If you do make comments, please be sure to state which brower and operating system you are using. Thanks so much in advance. Giddy schoolboy report
Last night, Ricky, Jeff, Kunal, Michael and I went to see a showing of The Aristocrats, a movie about one joke with dozens of comedians' versions of it. One of them was supplied by Matt Stone and Trey Park, which you can watch here. (It's very dirty). As we left the MGM building, we approached a tall, gorgeous woman with amazing posture. I stopped, unsure who we were nearing, but certain she was superhuman. First, I thought it was Uma Thurman, but she spun towards us to reveal herself as Nicole Kidman. Behind her was Sean Penn. We slowly walked past, but stared on in that stunned-by-a-new-New York-moment kinda way. She was totally hot. What Kind of American English Do You Speak?
70% General American English15% Upper Midwestern 10% Yankee 5% Dixie 0% Midwestern I think the results would have been truer had I not answered soda, instead of pop. I used to say pop until I went to college in the South, which is apparently where I picked up that 5% Dixie. (btw, the Pop vs. Soda Map.) Test yourself. via Nick.
Alert! Two of Jakob's vidblogs are being shown this weekend at the Brooklyn Underground Film Festival. 5:30pm on Saturday, April 23rd at the Brooklyn Lyceum.
Maple Syrup
 My older brother Justin lives in North Java, NY, a very small town in the heart of Upstate's maple region. To celebrate the end of the Sap and Syrup season, he sent me a small box of maple sugar candies (I would have liked to photographed the box full, but I ate most of them before I thought do so). My grandma, who also lives in North Java, made the candies from sap that Justin collected himself. He personally tapped 150 trees on distant-family farms, which yielded 2-4 gallons EACH per day. Riding an ATV with a 200-gallon tank in tow, he collected the sap daily and boiled it down. It took him 6 hours to boil enough sap to make one gallon of syrup (40 gallons of sap = 1 gallon of syrup). Following the end of this season, he inherited an evaporator, a device critical to mass maple syrup production, from one of our great uncles. Justin hopes to build a sugar shanty before next season to house the evaporator -- and to serve a tradtional purpose as the center of much great beer-drinking as you sit for hours and watch the sap boil down. I can't wait to visit for a weekend. Additional reading -- I found these links interesting: The History of Maple Syrup. Wikipedia's entry for Maple Syrup. Univ. of Maine's Pamphlet on How to Make Maple Syrup. Thinking about ...
... childhood adventure novels: The Cay, Hatchet, Where the Red Ferns Grows, and Lord of the Flies.
Just that I would like to reread them now.
Tonight, Spoiler Film Festival at the Knitting Factory. 8pm.
20050414
I live across the street, so we can beers at my place afterwards. COME! Pssst...
'Secret' Beck show at the Hiro Ballroom, beneath the Maritime Hotel, tomorrow night at 8pm. Tickets go on sale today at 5pm here. The password to purchase is girls.
R & D
Jakob and I are building an ant colony. We're starting with a big fruit jar and 25 of these.
Josh and Ricky are in LA on business, and to fill the void of their absence Jakob and I hosted a get-together. Youngna posted some photos. Despite my fever, which kept me on Tylenol and tea all night, I had lots 'o' fun and was surprised to see how great a Wednesday night party could be.
20050413
As far as who had the better night, Ricky might have laid the trump card when he emailed me a cameraphone pic of him with the OC's Rachel Bilson at the Hotel Cafe. To approach her, he asked, "Hey. Were you on Boy Meets World?" Awesome. BTW, new episode of the OC tonight at 8pm on Fox.
Google Video (Beta) now online and accepting signups.
20050412
I dig Shaun Inman's personal site. I am such a sucker for grayscale.
Ben Gibbard, of Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service, told RollingStone:
20050411
Radio, for the most part, is not so helpful to bands ... And, frankly, I don't see much difference between performing on Letterman and on The OC -- you're just playing your songs. I'm sure it's not cool to some people who've liked us in the past, but I could really give a fuck.That's a pretty cool thing to say. via Ricky.
Skype USB Handyphone. It's neat because it may contain a version of Skype in its internal 64MB of memory, which means you could have Skype ready-to-use on any computer you attach it.
20050410
Viral Watch: iVentster
iVentster is a social event networking site. Since April 1st, its Alexa Ranking has jumped from >350,000 to 20,000. Impressive. It's most likely a credit to their parasitic spamming feature that allows you to import all of your Facebook contacts and invite them to join.Nick is convinced, and is on a crusade to convince me, that iVentster has won the inaugural 2005 Social Event Networking Foot Race. He believes that EVDB will probably use some of their recent financing to buy iVentster and its already 100,000 users. I accept this as a possibility, but not the obvious choice. Actually, I don't even think the winner of this so-called race to finish has even put on his track shoes yet. As for the site itself, I find iVentster's user experience to be insufficient; Plenty of room for improvement ... Will TheFaceBook add these features to itself? Play with iVentster yourself with my login: user =zach@alumni.wfu.edu, password=demo. Spring Shopping
Walked around SoHo today, and learned a few things:Ted Baker, at Grand and Mercer, has the best fitting rooms. They are oversized, and complete with thick rugs, floorlamps, and leather chairs. Prohibit Tokyo has neat tshirts. I especially like the ones with yarn-knitted designs. Seize sur Vingt has handsome dress shirts. Their patterns are unique and could double nicely as webpage backgrounds. The employees at Bloomindale's are most likely to say "you look great" no matter what you are trying on. Bluefly has great sales. Today, all men's clothing was $10; Even some Michael Kors jackets ... which, unfortunately, were only available in big sizes. Duncan Quinn, near Spring and Bowery, has the exact suit I want for the exact price I can't afford. Facial Index has the best selection of eyeglasses. And, Barneys Co-op has the cutest female shoppers.
Anyone in NYC have a car I can borrow for the weekend?
ColorCombos.com: Quickly select and test color combinations.
My buddy Fabian just returned from a stint in Kenya, and has Flickred some photos.
20050407
20050406
I like this one particularly. And, I thought their safari checkerboard was funny.
Not sure if I am out of the loop, but I just found out that CNET's Download.com has LOTS of good music for free download.
20050405
I am trying new tracks at random -- just downloaded The Cryogenic Strawberries.
Tribeca Film Festival guide and tickets now available.
Marta Crowe's new blog is starting off well! I LOLed at her post about seeing an obscure band in NYC.
Google Mapped My Homes
Have been playing with Google Map's new satellite feature since midnight, delaying bedtime until I have tried every address I can remember.Maps of every place I've ever lived: 1982-1986: Rochester, NY 1986-1993: Buffalo, NY 1993-2000: Fort Wayne, IN 2000-2004: Winston-Salem, NC 2002: London, England (no map yet) 2003: Viersen, Germany (no map yet) 2004: San Diego, CA 2004-5: New York, NY Post yours. Labels: Fort Wayne
Wow -- I randomly came across halftone and found that Youngna's and my Candy Candy project is expanding with the help of strangers!
Following up on my pelican research, Mareen found a report by Andrea, a 3rd Grader from Amherst, MA who alerts:
20050403
If you see a pelican's nest, you should leave it alone. If you go near it the parents will go away and never come back and the baby will die. Heed.
I am looking for the correct collective noun for a bunch of pelicans. The Palomar Audubon Society has a thorough list, but one short of what I need.
20050401
A murder of crows ... how cool. Interview on Gothamist
I did a quick Q & A with Nichelle Stephens for Gothamist. Read it here.I don't know what I was thinking when I replied to her photoblogging question. I should have just said "Because ... it's fun!".
Wikipedia is keeping track of this year's April Fool's Day hoaxes.
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 Hi, I'm Zach. I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana and graduated from Wake Forest. After college, I moved to Manhattan to get serious about a company I ran with friends. We sold it to Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp in 2006. I just wrapped up with a project I co-founded called Vimeo and left CV to focus on being a twenty-five year old. I have another blog called Copy and Taste, where I post about learning to cook. I live in Brooklyn now.  Del.icio.us My Flickr Me on Flickr Last.fm Linked in MySpace Netflix History Vimeo  Amir Blumenfeld Chris Bodenner Mareen Fischinger Fort Wayne Observed Nick Gray Hype Machine Jake and Amir Jakob Lodwick Oh My Rockness Jonathan Marcus Youngna Park Megan Scheminske Eliot Shepard Shorpy Signal vs. Noise Alex Soth Stereogum Ricky Van Veen Khoi Vinh Eugene Wyatt  June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007  Postal Skype SMS (via AIM) |
