I live in Chicago, which is a fairly dense city. But I am over 2 miles from downtown, so the tallest building around me is usually 3 stories, so the density is not that high. But with that kind of density, parking is clearly at a premium, and I understand this. I even pay for extra parking outside of the 2 spots that I have at my house and I am fine with that.

What I hate are people that double park. HATE it. I hate it when people do it on quiet little residential streets, but it isn't the end of the world, because there is room to get around and one is really not blocking the flow of traffic due largly in part to the fact that there aren't usually that many cars driving by. I hate it more when it is done on a major artery, so Ashland, a major north south street in the city that is 4 lanes plus a center lane.

The thing that often makes it more frustrating is it is almost ALWAYS done with an empty spot within a stones throw. Perhaps it is a no parking zone, or a hydrant, but it is a place you could park your car that is not impeding the flow of traffic. And really, if there is a fire, I am not sure double parking is really any better.

I can only assume that the people that do this are either too self centered to even consider parking a little further away as to not block traffic? Or perhaps, even worse, they considered it but just don't care? Let those people go around me? Or perhaps they just don't want to have to walk so far?

I mean how can one not feel like a giant asshole blocking all the traffic on a major road?

On my way to work today, which is what prompted this rant, I encountered an even more slefish situation. I am driving on a quiet residential street. I approach a stop sign, and none of the cars are moving. This is due to the fact that both other vehicles, a school bus and an SUV wanted to go east. However eastbound was blocked due to a double parked car that had managed to back up 4 other vehicles, one of which was another school bus. I, going north, thought oh, that is unforunate that one person is causing a problem for so many others and drive on.

I notice that traffic is not moving much northbound either, but due to the one way nature of the streets, north is looking better than east. I get up there and there is a couple loading a uhaul truck, of course double parked, blocking my northbound lane. On the southbound lane, there is a gentleman unloading a uhaul trailer, again double parked. These 2 geniuses managed to leave JUST enough room for 1 car to slalom between them. Meanwhile there are 4-5 cars in each direction that have essentially gridlocked themselves in due to the fact that southbound traffic is already stopped by the OTHER double parked car. Awesome.

To make this entire thing worse, there is a LOADING ZONE about 10 feet from where the uhaul truck is parked that is sitting empty. In fact people are using it to turn around.

So there are now about 15 cars all stopped, honking, with no place to go. Would you, as a perhaps NOT insanely selfish person, feel a little anxiety if it were you blocking the road? Would you perhaps feel a little emabarrased or al the very least uncomfortable? I would. I would feel really bad.

These 2 groups of people, who are evidently very important people, so much more important than the rest of us, but not so as important to be able to hire movers, have stopped unloading and loading their respective vehicles and are walking up to the cars and yelling at us.

Insane. Seriously. Insane.

As you may know, I am a web developer by trade, so I am often more critical of sites than the average bear. That being said, the Green Party will never get ANYWHERE at this rate.

Number one, Jesse Johnson. Not sure about his logo from a design point of view, but I AM sure that it should not be that pixelated. Header and footer design are a bit lacking in terms of style. Not liking the font either. But I REALLY don't like how the navigation is present only on the home page, and is gone on every other page (although there is a 'back to the home page' link). Seriously, dead end every click? And needless to say, it doesn't pass validation.

Number two, Kent Mesplay. Not sure what year it is, but is isn't 2008. Those buttons are nice and smooth. The header takes up the entire 'above the scroll' area. Awesome. Table layout. No doctype? You can imagine how validation went.

Number three, Kat Swift. oooookkkkkk really? This is your bid for the president of the united states? Really? Your index page doesn't even have your full name on it. Perfect for SEO. The blog link is first and foremost, but it is off site. And written by someone else. Design wise, I won't even start. Again, tables (surprised?). And Doctype is also missing. Serisouly. It is tabbed nicely, so that is a plus. White and yellow text on a black box with a green background is not a plus. My eyes are still adjusting. I'll stop here.

Number four, Cynthia McKinney. This one actually looks like they used photoshop, so that is cool. Not sure on the middle hump top shadow thing, not sure what light source could actually create that. I guess I am supposed to think the green box is coming TOWARDS me. But the other buttons on the page have lighting effects that don't support that. Glowing text is a good use of a filter in the aforementioned photoshop. ALMOST had the heavy header thing working, but for some reason stopped shy of full width. The even have a gradient in the background. Would have been cooler if the background and the content box worked better together. They are the only one with an RSS feed, which is good. Not updated too often, but hey, they have one. Table layout. And this is the ONLY site I have ever seen were w3c couldn't complete the validation. Oddly enough, this seems to be due to a comment in some script. The calendar link takes you to another site, with a totally different look and feel. I wish they had done some more styling of the text in the site. But really, this is the best (?) site of the bunch.

So this is the current state of the Green Party's candidates.

Awesome.

I also have had this MacBook for a while now.

On the MacBook, you can use 2 fingers on the track pad to scroll. Obviously, 2 fingers going down on the trackpad scrolls down. Two fingers up scrolls up. Amazing. I use it all the time. Love it.

Recently though, I have noticed myself thinking 'lets scroll down' and my fingers 2 finger scroll up. My mind says 'wth' and my fingers do it right. You know how it is, it happens quickly and you you think nothing of it. It just now dawned on my it is a result of the fact that the MacBook and the iPhone do OPPOSITE motions for scrolling.

It is kinda frustrating. Opposite paradigms for the same thing. Both make sense.

So I always thought that a place where you place your order via a touch screen or something would be dope. Then have a runner bring the food out. Still have a staff to refill water and bus tables. And a call button would be good, but that would be it. Then I can do what I wanted to do all along at the resturant: eat and hang out with the person/people I came with.

When I would propose this idea to friends/family, I was always presented with the 'but where is the social interaction?' and 'but that seems so cold and lonely', etc. The same response I used to get to the concept of peapod, netflix, etc. Am I to understand than that people are willing to be more inconvenienced doing mundane albeit necessary tasks so they can revel in the social interaction with the cashier at the grocery store? The blockbuster employee?

Having been a grocery store employee, I am not sure I agree with that. While I tried to be friendly, primarily because it would make my day go faster, it was hardly the interaction that I would get excited for. And I have known blockbuster employees. They rarely liked their job, and they were rarely over 20.

My retort was always that the time savings from eliminating the time suck of many 'low quality' social interaction level tasks, like grocery shopping, movie rentals, brick and mortar shopping, etc would free up time to create 'high quality' social interaction, like dinner parties, play dates, hanging out with friends, etc.

Of course my parents still scoffed at the concept, but I maintain it is true. And with that time savings, some friends and I could go to this new automated resturant: Baggers restaurant in Nuremberg. While it is kind of a hike from chicago, it is the kind of place I would be all about. He even has an automated track system to deliver the food. I am not sure that is necessary, but I am sure that will be a draw for customers, so I am sure it will make people more inclined to visit.

I am not sure that I see the design/implementation of the track system to be cheaper the cost of food runners alá my idea anytime in the first few years of operation, but I am sure that wasn't his plan. I would like to see his place take off and do quite well. I would like to see more resturants like this. I will admit I always kinda thought that japan already had such restaurants, although I don't recall seeing any when I was there or reading of any however I haven't looked too hard.

So while I don't wish that every resturant goes the way of Bangers, I would like to see some here. I would give it a shot. Anyone know of any here in Chicago?

I also have people following me... and I don't know who they are or what their angle is. One of them appears to be a journalist angle... like following people will be a 'finger on the pulse' of the scene or something. My tweets are rarely that topical, but there are obviously some people who have such content that would be worth following. Seems fine by me, but it also seems there would be better ways than monitoring a bunch of random peoples' tweets, but hey, what do I know.

I am still not sure how I feel about twitter. On one hand, it is nice enough to keep tabs on people. Obviously some people have a higher signal to noise ratio than others, and that will certainly vary from user to user. I feel like I have enough going on. Enough RSS feeds, todo lists, emails, IMs, etc to keep an eye on. I am looking to reduce the inflow of information while still trying to keep up to date with things. And that is one of the great things about twitter, it forces a small form factor. And that very form factor that makes it nice encourages people to post things they wouldn't post to a blog since it isn't often very important. Obviously controls are in place to limit the flow and how it reaches me, which is great.

But sometimes I wonder if I care enough. Currently, I am sticking with it.

I have been a faithful user of your service for years. I have 18,000+ images there constituting 40+ GB. I have them organized the way I like, and many are tagged. My point is I have a significant investment in your service, and due to that I am paid in full through 2011.

I have never been a big fan of flickr. I have an account there, but I have found their organizational style works great for the stream of consciousness that I used to use when I used to take a lot of photos with my phone. And perhaps I will get back into that. But for actual photo storage, I hate it. I prefer the more traditional style of the fotki organizational model.

That being said, we need an API for premium members. I need to be able to do all the cool stuff that I can do on flickr, with fotki. I need to be able to easily pull photos into another application based on various queries. I need to be able to integrate my fotki library into my other web life. I will NOT use facebook to store my photos, but I would love to be able to easily and automatically pull my fotki pics in.

I have thought about writing a scraper to get them, but that is really really absurd. I have thought about writing something to sync my fotki and flickr accounts, but that is also dumb.

There was talk of an API in a fotki journal post in 2005, but that is the last mention of it I can find.

Please step up to the plate. Mimic the flickr API. It really wouldn't be that hard. Make it available to the premium members only.

Let me know if you need testers. I will be glad to help however I can.

bryan

Side note... I hate it when websites don't use title and meta tags correctly... for example... google the title... the top 3 include the IMDB page, the trailer on apple.com, and then the 'official' site... which has a title of 'Lars and the Real Girl - Coming Soon' ... which is dumb, since the movie is already released, and the site itself acknowledges that. Then the lack of meta tags on the page combined with the fact that the page is entirely flash means there is actually NOTHING to show on the google description. Seriously, really?

I really don't watch any of these 'talent reality shows'. And I realize it is cyclic, and we are in the part of the cycle where people care about these shows. America's Got Talent, Singing Bee, So You Think You Can Dance, American Idol, etc etc etc are all popular, and I realize that people love them, but man, they are annoying. It doesn't help that many of them take more than one time slot a week.

I for one welcome the return of normal shows. I am sure it will happen in a few years when people get around to boredom.