I’m into hip-hop, rap, electronic, hip hop and experimental, including:
Lil Wayne, Burial, Eminem, Atmosphere, Beastie Boys, Notorious B.I.G., Drone, Clark, Bibio, Michael Jackson, Madlib, Gang Starr, Percee P, Mase, Guru (of Gang Starr), Cedric Burnside & Lightnin’ Malcolm, Chris Clark, D12, M.I.A., Longshot, Jedi Mind Tricks, Boards of Canada, NoidBoy, Roscoe Dash, Qwazaar, Jay-Z and Linkin Park, Raekwon, Koen Park, Jay-Z, Prefuse 73, Rick Ross, Ali, Obie Trice, Ad.R, Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Roglok, Murs, Shamanez, jo jena, NEUBAU, Benefit, JT Money, CandlestickMaker, Do or Die, MF DOOM, The Books, T.I..

Check out my music taste: http://www.last.fm/user/starschreck

After I purchased my last cell phone, I put in the google information number GOOG-411. It seemed like a good idea because I had no regular 411 service on the phone. And, what if?

Probably a year later I found myself in a situation. I was traveling to Florida with a friend and his wife. We were there for one day and off to board a cruise the next morning.

We took a cab from the airport and the seasoned cab driver had not heard of my hotel or the street it was on. Uh oh. Thankfully my friend had an iPhone and was able to give the driver directions.

I dropped off my things at my hotel and took a cab to spend the day with my friends at their hotel because it was a million times nicer.

I was dressed for swimming and only brought a few things. One thing I did not bring was the address of my hotel. I think it was one of those quick judgements, deciding that I had my bearings when I actually didn’t.

Later that day I find myself walking home. The town isn’t too large. It’s walkable to the hotel, but a long walk. I have the feeling that I should have passed my hotel by now. Or maybe it’s just a little further, I think. I look further down the road and everything looks the same in that direction. That’s when I realize that I am lost. It’s late, I’m out of town, and I’m lost.

I am embarassed so I decide not to call my friends. My hotel is basically a tiny hostel and remember the cab driver who told me it didn’t exist. I decide that I need to be sure of the right direction to walk before I go any further. I’m looking through my phone and I see the GOOG-411 number. I look up from the phone and see a landmark, I think it was a Holiday Inn.

I realize that I do remember the cross street I am looking for. I call GOOG-411 and search for the Holiday Inn I am standing in front of.

I am transferred to the Holiday Inn. The hotel looks shut down for the night. A security guard answers and I say I am a current guest. I tell them I am having trouble getting home from a long day out. I tell them I am standing on the street that my hotel is on, the one I am actually looking for. I tell them all I need is to know what direction to walk in. I think the guard was sitting in front of a computer and was able to locate the difficult street.

I get my answer and reverse engineer the directions given to me. I know what direcion to walk to find my hotel. The security guard told me approximately how long it would take to walk. Problem solved and no need to cause a scene.

Interdisciplinary is a term of art in several professions concerned with education and training that refers to the qualities of studies that cut across several established disciplines or traditional fields of study. This involves researchers, students, and teachers in the goals of connecting and integrating several academic disciplines, professions, or technologies, along with their specific perspectives, in the pursuit of a common task. Interdisciplinary approaches typically focus on problems felt by the investigators to be too complex or vast to be dealt with the knowledge and tools of a single discipline, for example, the epidemiology of AIDS or global warming. The term may be applied where the subject is felt to have been neglected or even misrepresented in the traditional disciplinary structure of research institutions, for example, women’s studies or ethnic area studies.

The adjective interdisciplinary is most often used in educational circles when researchers from two or more disciplines pool their approaches and modify them so that they are better suited to the problem at hand, including the case of the team-taught course where students are required to understand a given subject in terms of multiple traditional disciplines. For example, the subject of land use may appear differently when examined by different disciplines, for instance, biology, chemistry, economics, geography, and politics.

In a sense, interdisciplinary involves attacking a subject from various angles and methods, eventually cutting across disciplines and forming a new method for understanding the subject. A common goal of understanding unites the various methods and acknowledges a common or shared subject or problem, even if it spreads to other disciplines.

[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

I’ve always wondered why online banking wasn’t better than it was. All the information seemed to be there, but it never seemed to be organized in any useful way. I concluded that banks weren’t all that concerned with helping customers manage their money.

Mint organizes information not only from each account in a useful and visual way but also from different accounts even if they are from different banks. This transaction data is saved for future reference.

One feature I’ve recently discovered is that Mint keeps track of bank fees like overdrafts and yearly credit card fees. Mint searches other banks and credit cards to see if I could be getting a better deal.

I would now like to take this opportunity to give Mint.com a “good use of technology” award. It’s started to influence the way that I actually spend money. Good job!

It could be because the internet has a certain sweet anonymity to it.

It could be because the dollar came from the Montrose Sinkhole T-Shirt line, an idea I wasn’t sure would pass the trials because it had to be Right.

I know that it was nice to be selling my own idea, rather than someone else’s.

What’s funny is, the money is not even in my physical possession. All I have so far is a balance on a webpage.

Shortly after the street collapse there was good news coverage about the high percentage of chicago streets that were in a similar condition to Montrose Avenue, prior to it’s collapse. I haven’t heard much on this topic from a news standpoint since then.

The dreaded Lincoln Park porch collapse of 2003 brought about significant building inspections and investigation. After doing a bit of research on the aftermath of Montrose Sinkhole, I haven’t been able to find any similar investigations, percentages of improvements, or updated standards. Maybe I’ll email the media…

For pictures, videos, and location information about Montrose Sinkhole visit it’s squidoo lens. Also here is a good Flickr set.

Update: I emailed the Chicago Tribune on this subject, let’s see if they have a response!

This recently came up in conversation: How do you star in a major motion picture and not have a photo on IMDb?