Left turns in Beijing really are this crazy

This is just amazing. One commenter nailed it: This guy gives Batgirl a run for her LEGO money.

(Link via Joann)

Must-reads for anyone following the Pirates CEO search

Known to any and every on-line Pirate junkie, the blogger/amateur scout Wilbur T. Miller is the cream of the Internet crop when it comes to Bucco baseball. WTM turns in another gem in this two-part series (one and two) on why Bob Nutting musn’t be fooled by the Pirates good play of late. He argues convincingly that the Pirates are neither good nor young, and that (wrap your head around this) if/when Dave Littlefield is fired, he will leave the Pirates in worse shape than when he inherited them. (Links via Bucs Dugout.)

As far as who might be the one firing DL, John Perrotto from the Beaver County Times suggests Tony LaCava as someone Nutting needs to talk to. Finding an evaluator of talent has to be our no. 1 priority.

Ryan Lang

I talked to my best bud who lives in LA tonight for a glorious hour and a half. Ryan is my friend from China (you can see us together in Beijing to the left) who’s originally from Minnesota and now works for ELIC in California, if that makes any sense. We talked about Disneyland, Starbucks coffee, CTF friends, getting together again, and tried to sum up basically a year of our lives. It was equally as daunting as it was great. One of the best thing about friends is that they don’t care when you don’t call them back for days or weeks at a time (this is for Jason and the Wilseys and Matt Stewart, too) and not only that… they still want to talk to you when you finally do.

I am blessed with some truly wonderful friends–for sure–even though I don’t call any of you back.

(Here are a couple more pictures of Ryan, for fun, one more appropriate than the other.)

Oh, Ryan… and oh, Thailand! (You might not want to enlarge that second one.)

Leopard to the future?

I’ve had fun exploring all the dazzling new features the next phase of Mac’s OS X, “Leopard,” will introduce this October.

And then Digg led me to this today, a blogger speculating that Leopard may abandon the “Aqua” theme OS X has held since it’s inception (or at least begin to phase it out) in favor a space/time travel theme, as seen in the new (and amazing) Time Machine application, which you can see in the Leopard tour I linked to above, or below:

If using a Mac for the first time doesn’t already blow you away, then Leopard ought to change that. It looks just amazing, introducing even more intuitive and user-friendly features that expose Vista for what it is–a cheap imitation and blatant rip-off of what Mac’s been doing well for years–and is about to do even better.

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

Ice Bowl

If at all possible, I will be here to kick off 2-0-0-8. Go Pens.

Thanks, Pensblog for the heads up.

Pittsburgh & Kovacevik

Some of you might know that I’m an avid reader and fan of Pirates P-G beat writer Dejan Kovacevik. I read everything he puts out, and I often take for granted the outstanding insight he provides into my favorite baseball team and (and I think this is where most of you should take interest) my favorite city. Dejan speaks of Pittsburgh the way I hope I speak of Pittsburgh, with the realization that Pittsburgh is a flawed yet unique and beautiful place to live that Pittsburghers should be proud to call home.

Part of my nightly routine before I go off to bed is to read the P-G’s Pirates coverage (mostly written by DK) that’s published every night at midnight. (Fun fact: In China, it was my pre-lunch routine at noon.) I just finished his weeknightly Q+A (which is only found on the Internet) and wanted to point you all to it, because Dejan has a lot to say about cities and Pittsburgh and perspective this evening, all of which I found very interesting. He continyes tonight with a series of “Things That Make Pittsburgh Great” that he includes each weeknight when the Pirates are on the road (which sounds terribly confusing, I’m sure, to a non-baseball fan) and tonight the Bucs won in Denver.

Thing No. 53 that makes Pittsburgh great: We are a terribly insecure people.

We always want to know what everyone thinks of, and we always are surprised when they like us, they really like us.

A history buff might suggest that has to do with our polluted industrial past. After all, who could brag about a place that was immersed in darkness in mid-afternoon?

Someone else might say that the mass exodus of jobs in the late 1970s and early 1980s, one of the greatest in American history, contributed. After all, how happy could anyone be with a place that was being virtually abandoned?

Whatever it is, it most surely applies.

Eve Picker, a loft developer in the Downtown and Strip areas, hails from New Zealand. Way before it became cool — or profitable — she was buying up vacant buildings and converting them into residential properties. And, as I recall from the one conversation I ever had with her, she was doing so with a sense of bemusement that so few people here seemed to appreciate what he had or, potentially, could have. As she put it, it took an outsider to come in and show us. There is a lot of that going on.

The Uruguayan guy who designed the convention center was inspired by the flow of the Three Sisters bridges, a view he glimpsed from driving atop the Fort Duquesne Bridge. Might someone here have noticed that?

The travel writers around the country who come here and glow about the place point out things in a way some of us never could see or, in some cases, never have taken the time to see.

It is a somewhat endearing trait, in a way, that we care what others think about us. But it also illustrates plainly that we do not think enough of ourselves.

Visiting San Francisco last week and now here in Denver, these are two places where you can ask anybody about these cities, and they will do everything but sing and dance in describing them.

We need to do more of that. No rose-colored glasses are needed, either.

If you don’t have any interest in baseball or in specifically a pretty bad baseball team, that’s fine, but I hope you (by, perhaps, spending a few days following his Pirates coverage) can appreciate the seriousness in which Dejan does his work and reports on a city and its baseball team, and I’m glad his thoughts and observations are a part of my daily reading.

On another note, it made me exceedingly proud tonight (as the group I traveled with to Sweden gathered at my house to look back and look forwards) to hear Arianna, who has started blogging here, cite Russ’ thoughts, from his blog here, in our conversation. (It wasn’t only through hyperlinks, I had used what Russ wrote here to initiate some conversation in youth group a couple of weeks back.) I try to take my life, conversations and connections on this Internet seriously and use them, not for viral videos and forwarded e-mails, but for a conversation that we otherwise could never have. It really made me proud and happy. I’ve never specifically realized or thought out all of the things I try to pass on to the younger generation as I work at my church, specifically, but some of these things I’ve been blogging about tonight vaguely (like place, stories, community and conversations) are certainly some of those things.

The Hush Sound at the Rex, tonight

I don’t go to many concerts, and this will be my first time at the Rex (on Carson Street, the South Side). So I’m stoked.

We’re seeing The Hush Sound, an indie rock quartet (Bob, Greta, Darren and Chris) from Chicago who’ve toured with such bands as Jack’s Mannequin and Straylight Run. Tonight they’ll be with Hello Stranger and I’ll be with Adam, Andrew, Jamie, Jessie, ArGu and ArGar. I don’t have anything particularly interesting to say other than that, just thought I’d share my excitement.

Some randomness:
– I played Scrabble earlier tonight (Sunday). Some words I used: jig, fig, zed, easy, quo… and I can’t remember any other cool ones. But there were more. (Aren’t words awesome?)
– Today’s my sister Stacy’s birthday. So, happy birthday, Stac! It’s also Ryan’s birthday. I don’t think you read my blog, but happy birthday to you, too, bud.
– The Pirates have scored more runs so far in August than any other team in baseball. That’s just sort of ridiculous.
– Leopard looks absolutely disgusting. Take the tour sitting down, and then get a Mac.
– Sam and Eee are having a girl!! Her name is Emma, and here’s the baby blog.

We still have lots of work to do

I’ve started tracking this blog’s stats (using BlogPatrol), as in how many people are, and, as much as I can gather, who is visiting my blog (or at least how). The most interesting things for me to see have been what OS’ and what web browsers you folks are using to view and enjoy Doddfodder. Here are the crucials:

Of the last 14 visitors I’ve had, ten of you are using Windows XP, one Windows Vista and only three Mac OSX. That’s not very good, folks.

This is even more shocking: Firefox vs. Internet Explorer is tied at seven, with IE7 beating out IE6 four to three (and no Safari views at all). I can understand the OS thing, as many of you are using family PCs at home or don’t have the money for a Mac laptop or desktop or whatever your silly excuse might be for still using a Windows-based machine. But this web browser thing is inexcusable, as in, why/how/WHY?!? is anyone not using Mozilla Firefox?

Do you like tab browsing? Of course you do. Sweet add-ons. Yup. Design and aesthetics and functionality. Cleanliness, speed, accuracy, reliability, pop-up freedom, friendship, and Google search bars? Firefox invented these things. Really, it did (all of them). And that’s just the beginning. Please please give it a try–for your own sake and the sake of my blog-stats. I promise you that your Internet Explorer will never be missed.

Also, thank you Jme, the Wilseys and Yahoo search for referring me over the last 24 hours. Hopefully I can return the favor.

And finally, I’ll refer back to myself, just for one last reminder of why I’m a Mac/Firefox/truth/beauty/goodness kind-of guy:

The Paperclip.

And one more time: GET FIREFOX.

The Dark Knight, more pics

There are some great new stills floating around the web right now, and they might not be up for too long (also, here). Some almost border on spoiler-ish, so if you’re not into that sort of thing, stay away. But, if you’re into this sort of thing…

Then by all means, click away. And, if you still haven’t seen the teaser trailor with the Joker’s laugh at the end, then here you go:

Photos from Matthew’s house

2724 (Kurt's house)

In related news (as Matthew is now a Christian-school teacher), I found this interesting: Annapolis Area Christian School (where I have some connections a few different ways) is starting a football program, a rarity for Christian schools (from my experience), this fall. They already have a pretty impressive lineup of academics and athletics, so uh, good for them.