Toby and Matt

Ha.

Re: this…

Update: This was picked up by Gothamist.

As you can see, we spent a lot of time on the beach.

Holga 120N:

Nikon D70:

Polaroid One600 Classic:

Miss South Carolina Lauren Caitlin’s logic is hard to argue with since it’s hard to understand. Listen to her explain why 1 out of 5 American’s can’t locate America on a map.

The people that hang around our subway station inspired a new bill here in New York City.

When women in his Queens district started complaining of a strange man standing under the steps of the elevated subway at Ditmars Boulevard, looking up their skirts, City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. said he was as surprised as anyone to learn there was no law against it.

So he wrote one.

Mr. Vallone, chairman of the Council’s Public Safety Committee, introduced legislation yesterday to make nonconsensual voyeurism a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $500 fine. Peeping is now illegal only if the subject is recorded on camera without his or her knowledge, or if it involves some other crime like trespassing or stalking, Mr. Vallone said.

Good thing this doesn’t get in the way of those people who practice consensual voyeurism.

The bill would make it illegal to look at a person’s “sexual or other intimate parts” for more than a brief period, “in other than a casual or cursory manner,” for the purpose of entertainment, sexual arousal or gratification, or for the purpose of degrading or abusing the person being viewed.

Casual or cursory? Huh? The New York Civil Liberties Union is also a little confused.

“The problem with this legislation is that it’s trying to get at this amorphous, vague behavior of looking, which is very imprecise,” said Donna Lieberman, the group’s executive director. “The language of the bill reflects how vague the activity that they’re trying to get at is, and the problem is that it’s an invitation to abuse, to selective enforcement based on the whims or prejudice of the individual police officer.”

But don’t worry!

“We took great pains to make sure that the normal admiration of God’s creation was not made illegal,” Mr. Vallone said.

Wow. I’m not sure if I should be creeped out or turned on after reading that last line.

Full story, though I pretty much copied and pasted the whole thing.

This time the robots are selling some sort of razor from Philips-Nivea instead of mini kegs of beer.

It’s about time! You can now easily embed Google maps into other Web pages. The map below shows you Lucky’s Famous, a pretty good burger joint in Hell’s Kitchen.

Look for more map fun here in the future.

View Larger Map

Here’s another example of a journalist telling his readers to just head to Google rather than providing a direct link. It comes from this
What Should You Back Up? Q/A piece.

I have found an extremely good program made by Microsoft called “SyncToy.” It will walk you through the setup to back up exactly what files you need. It can be downloaded for free from the MS Web site. I started to type the URL here but it is more than 100 characters long so just Google for it using “Microsoft Synctoy” and it will be the first page that comes up.

Dead tree media (as they say) really needs to come up with a better way to list URLs in their print editions. Listing out 100-character URLs doesn’t make a lot of sense and either does telling someone to “just Google” it.

It would take some coordination between a tech person and folks in editorial, but it really wouldn’t be very hard for newspapers to set up redirects that could easily be listed in the print editions of the newspaper. “Go to nyt.com/link/ontheroad to see the covers” or “you can get the program at dnronline.com/link/synctoy.” Typing these links into a browser could go directly to the site or even to the newspaper site with a “you will be redirected momentarily” message. Hell, even put an ad on that page if you want.

And that’s my free idea of the day!

This is something Toby noticed this weekend in the New York Times book section or whatever it’s called, but I figured I’d steal the idea and post it.

Our neighbor is out of town for three weeks and he said we could steal the papers that are delivered (and usually just left) on our shared stairs every morning. Toby grabbed the Times and read something about the various international book covers for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road.” That’s when she came across this piece of what she called lazy journalism:

The covers of “On the Road” shown below are taken from a fascinating Web page — find it by Googling “Jack Kerouac Book Covers” — maintained by Dave Moore, a Kerouac scholar.

Here’s the online version where the term “Web page” is linked to the actual site. Of course, that phrase wasn’t linked in the dead tree edition of the Times.

The Web address itself isn’t the easiest thing in the world to print (http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/jkbooks/), but telling reads to go Google something seems ridiculous. The site happens to be the first result, but who would know that since the Times didn’t indicate which of the 10 first-page results they were talking about? Also, who is to say that site will always be the first result?

The site also happens to be the first result for “Jack Kerouac Book Covers” at Yahoo and MSN. Ask users are out of luck as the site doesn’t seem to be in the top 10 for “Jack Kerouac Book Covers.”

I just signed up for a ZogSports Fall soccer league. Woops. I’m not really sure what I was thinking. I’m pretty out of shape and I haven’t played soccer in about 10 years. This could be interesting.

I never heard of the group that runs the leagues until today when I saw a flyer in the bathroom at McReilly’s Pub. From the ZogSports site:

ZogSports is a charity-focused, co-ed, social sports club that promotes charity and social action amongst young professionals in New York. ZogSports organizes sports leagues (touch football, outdoor and indoor soccer, volleyball, kickball, softball, dodgeball and basketball), trips, social events and volunteer opportunities for people in their 20s and 30s. ZogSports donates a portion of all proceeds to charity and helps participants Play For Your CauseTM through corporate charitable donations to winning teams’ charities of choice. In four years, ZogSports has over 30,000 people participating in their activities and has donated over $250,000 to charity.

Robert Herzog conceived ZogSports after his close call on 9/11. He decided to build on the tremendous human charity he witnessed post 9/11 and foster community in New York. Through ZogSports’ athletic, social and social action opportunities, we encourage New Yorkers to maintain perspective and a more balanced lifestyle by having fun while also giving something back to the community.

Sounds good to me. I’ve wanted to play some organized soccer for a while, I like the charity side of this and it wouldn’t hurt to get out and meet some people since it seems like everyone I know has already or is about to move out of New York City.

Well, when I'm in Sunnyvale anyway.