Took a day off of work yesterday (Friday, 9/4/2009) and went to noodle around Chicago.

Beautiful weather; and it all turned out to be a nice day.

First we hit the Art Institute – Neither of us are modern art fans, but the new modern wing has gotten a lot of buzz, so let’s check it out. Architecturally – inside and outside – pretty impressive (moronic that you can’t take stairs/escalator to the bridge over Monroe that connects to Millennium Park, however). Still don’t like modern art; I guess I’m just not that sophisticated.

Over the bridge to Millennium Park. Sorry, that’s an awesome addition to downtown. Yep, years over budget and over deadline, but it’s there and there is much to commend. Really. I apologize for the weak picture (best of bunch I took, too): I was more in “tourist” mode than “hmm…the light is better here…” mode. Snapshot day.

After Millennium Park, we – as we always do – meandered over to the Cultural Center. After the Rookery, probably my favorite building in Chicago (and it usually has – bonus! – art exhibitions; concerts). I was, again, in snapshot mode, but this building has so much to offer. At every angle it’s interesting, and all the Tiffany domes and inlays make it a landmark.

We then headed back to my old neighborhood – Lakeview/Boy’s Town. Hit the Coffee and Tea Exchange – best coffee beans out there, for my money – and just wandered to see what was new; what was missing.

For late lunch, we hit a little cafe on Clark between Addison and Belmont, Classic Thai. Awesome food, actually. Pot stickers (steamed; not fried) were great, the cabbage soup was almost refreshing, and the tilapia and red curry (pictured) was alone worth another visit.

Ah, last night (picture) and tonight the Peregrine Falcon has been trolling around for dinner.

Awesome looking bird (click the picture to view larger image; the thumbnail doesn’t do it justice); check out the eyes and beak. Killing machine. (Scale is impossible in this shot, but these falcons are roughly the size of somewhere between chickens/crows. Big ass birds.)

We have two bird baths, one bird feeder and a Shepard’s hook with two different finch feeders. Birds/squirrels/raccoons/opossums love it.

So do the falcons, looking for their flavor of the Backyard Buffet….

Wired.com had an interesting article about Craigslist and its founder, Craig Newmark. The online article was from the actual Wired magazine.

I’ve been following the whole Craigslist saga for years, so much of it was old news to me, but I was struck by the following passage:

Craigslist gets more traffic than either eBay or Amazon.com. eBay has more than 16,000 employees. Amazon has more than 20,000. Craigslist has 30. …. Only programmers, customer service reps, and accounting staff work at craigslist. There is no business development, no human resources, no sales. As a result, there are no meetings. The staff communicates by email and IM.

And the article mentions a consulting firm that tracks Craigslist’s paid ads, and the firm estimates the site’s revenue for 2009 will probably exceed $100 million.

I understand that Ebay and Amazon have larger revenues, but look at the headcount disparity. Wow.

Update: Sorry, had this written last night and never got around to posting.

For some reason – I guess it’s the sped-up media machine powered by cable news and the internet – we seem to be celebrating 40th Anniversaries (such as the moon landing) these days, instead of waiting for the Golden (50th) Anniversary.

Today, it’s the 40th anniversary of Woodstock making the news.

Ah yes, three days – Aug. 15, 16 & 17, 1969 – of peace and music. 1967 was the Summer of Love; August 1969 made it, in some ways, the keystone of a summer of peace, music, love, hippies and drugs.

I was only 10 years old at the time – just getting ready to enter the 5th grade. I think I recall seeing some stories of it on the news at the time (yes, I’d watch the news with my folks occasionally), but nothing really sticks with me. The moon landing – less than a month earlier – had a much more profound effect on me.

Today, of course, I truly wish I could have been there. Wow – look at the talent: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, CSN&Y;, the frickin’ Who! Richie Havens, Arlo Guthrie, Canned Heat (Going Up the Country) and Creedence Clearwater Revival.

And the list goes on and on (who can forget Joe Cocker’s rendition of I’ll Get By With a Little Help From My Friends?).

Best. Concert. Ever.

And a pretty damn good documentary, as well. And – of course – now reissued in a special 40th Anniversary edition. I have the original album from the documentary (circa 1975 or so), and if I recall correctly, Janis Joplin wasn’t on same (legal issue). Maybe she’s on earlier reissues/Directors’ Cuts, but she certainly appears to be here now. Excellent.

• Sonia Sotomayor won Senate confirmation for the Supreme Court. She’ll be sworn in Saturday, Aug. 8, 2009. She’ll be the court’s first Hispanic justice, and only the third woman (Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg).
• John Hughes, director of 1980’s classics such as “Sixteen Candles,” “The Breakfast Club” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” died of a heart attack in Manhattan today. He was only 59 years old.
• 64th Anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. Let’s never – no one – do this again. And let’s not “celebrate” this anniversary, OK?

I wrote yesterday about the Microsoft/Yahoo alliance, and my update to that entry (earlier today) sorta sums up what I feel: Yahoo is circling the drain.

But don’t take my word; here are couple of good snippets about the MS/Yahoo deal by folks way smarter/wired than me:

Make no mistake, Yahoo’s out of the search game. I know the spin. Better user interface, new ways to innovate, a winning play. Let’s not kid ourselves. They’re done. Not today, not necessarily in a year, but down the line at some point. Done.

And it’s sad, because they were one of the originals. There was a time when the mighty Yahoo roared above all other search engines. When people were so worried about being listed in Yahoo that they pondered lawsuits over the issue, because not being in Yahoo was like not being on the internet at all.

Sound familiar? Yeah, Yahoo was the Google of its day. Funny to write that — it should be Google is the Yahoo of its day, but that’s how the tables turned in the search space.

— Danny Sullivan, A Search Eulogy For Yahoo

Yahoo committed seppuku today.

The once proud warrior of the internet space laid down its sword, knelt at the feet of Microsoft and gutted itself today. There was no honor in this death, it was one brought by the shame of losing to Google and a lack of faith in one’s ability to compete in the space they created. To be clear, Yahoo didn’t need to do this deal, Microsoft did. Ultimately Yahoo will look back at this moment as the second–and perhaps fatal–mistake in their epic history.

…

Microsoft’s massive investment into video games, mobile operating systems and search are clear indications that Sony’s Playstation, Google’s Andriod, the iPhone, Google and Yahoo are very important companies.

Nintendo didn’t give up when Microsoft came into the video game space–they innovated. Now the Wii outsells the mighty XBOX 50 million to 30 million. That is how you fight Microsoft: you innovate. Steve Jobs knows this, Nintendo knows this, and Oracle knows this. Yahoo, apparently, did not get the 40-year-old memo.

— Jason Calacanis, Yahoo committed seppuku today

OK, Microsoft and Yahoo today announced a search/ad deal, which basically targets Google.

OK, this was sorta expected, and the full details have not been announced, but the thing that surprised me was the duration of the deal: 10 years.

Yikes!

In internet time, that’s like a gazillion years. Imagine how many Facebook.com-like sites will launch, climb and crash and burn in a decade.

Hell, this is a deal for web search/ads; the market for web search/ads can’t be older than that.

Interesting….

Note: First glance at the union; I’m sure I’ll revisit at some point. All I know now and have had the time/brainpower to process.

Update 7/30/2009: The more I read about this, this is the beginning of the end for Yahoo. It was perhaps a necessary step, but one that makes the company, to a degree, irrelevant. This is sad, as Yahoo pretty much started search; it is an internet pioneer/former giant. On the other hand, I really don’t think Microsoft gained that much in this agreement (other than tripling its search percentage for virtually nothing). I think Google won.

Pic from NASA

Ah, I remember sitting on the cold tiles in our basement, watching the moon landing on our cabinet TV (wood enclosure; TV tube top, speaker bottom).

I remember being upset over the clarity of the pics – we cut from some network news/report from Mission Control to some wildly contrasty images.

From the moon.

Neil Armstrong climbing down the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) ladder and stepping onto the moon.

Forty years ago.

I was 10 years old. When I think back about it, I still am (10 years old). I was there. How amazing?!

Given all that I know (and don’t know) about computers, physics and so on, it’s still that much more amazing (watch Apollo 13 – lots of slide rules [which I mastered and no longer need]; save a space project with a slide rule? I’m listening…).

Kudos to all the Apollo program members, and I recall (after the fact [I was 3] ) JFK’s address to Rice University:

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon… (interrupted by applause) we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

— John F. Kennedy, We choose to go to the moon (9/12/1962)

Ah, nice pic – love the subtle purples and yellow that contrast with the hard line of the leaves in the water/the dark water.

The thumbnail doesn’t do it justice (really, and I’m not tooting my own horn): Click here for the larger image. Nice.

From our trip to the Chicago Botanical Garden, Glencoe, IL, earlier this month.

And yes, I took a bunch of pics, most of are not worth “publishing” (I put that in quotation marks because what constituents publishing these days???). I published my favorites with my home-grown pic publishing system(s).

I’m so circa 2000/pre-Flickr.com. Agreed. Upsides and downsides.

Ya know, this intertubes thing might just catch on.

I’ll fax you all about same….

Finally hit the Chicago Bot Garden (Glencoe, IL) after a few years of missing it.

I don’t know if we hit it at different times – or the weather played a factor – but lots of stuff in bloom this year. I’m putting together a gallery, but that’ll take weeks, to be honest (no time!).

Beautiful day, and saw some good stuff. Good enuf for me…

Update 7/11/2009: posted most of the pics I’ll post for that day in the Chicago Bot Garden – 2009 gallery.