September 2009 Archives

"NYC law requires restaurants with over 10 locations to label their menus with calorie totals. Even at Starbucks, drink calories are not even close to what I would have guessed. My morning Frappuccino is 950 calories and a lesson in data transparency."This is awesome. Aside from the 950 calorie Frappuccino, check out this one  - an entire day's worth of energy in something most people have as a treat!

The first clue was that in Safari, if you went to the Kidbrother.ca, elliottcsmith.com or porktrashers.com sites, you got a warning from the browser saying "This site has been identified as containing malware!". Then today I noticed the pages weren't loading properly -- my site wouldn't load the Flash and Kid Brother's front page had basically blown up.

I'm in New York City for work, and no matter how many times I come here, I can't get over the feeling I have as I view the skyline for the first time: I feel like I'm looking at a movie set or seeing a movie star in real life. It's very hard to close the gap between the iconic and the ordinary.

This is the reality of our age: so many places are experienced more through the screen than in person that when you come upon them for real, you can't believe they actually exist for any other reason that to serve as the device for a story.

With the Beatles' albums all finally re-released digitally remastered and spiffed up, there's a lot of the expected deification going on out there. And don't get me wrong, my first album I ever bought was The Beatles Let It Be. 

Last night we went over to the home of our friends Catherine and Pierre for a nice outside meal with some other mutual friends. It's a lovely spot to go, they are such a nice couple, and there's always great food and wine to go along with the conversation.

Yes, it's that time already. If it seemed to come up faster than usual, well it has. Due to some scheduling quirk, the French school board decided the kids would go back the week before Labour Day, for Wednesday and Thursday, then have an extended long weekend and then back to school in earnest next Tuesday.

I think I'm going to start doing this with the Porktrashers songs, except I'd have to add options for when I forget the words or chords.