sweet homes chicago

We just launched redfin in chicago. Go ahead, give it a search.

Also, we did a ton of new features and fixes. I feel like I worked on all of them, but I didn't. Like google street view integration. It's the hotness, and it just showed up magically in the dev environment one day (and by "magically" I mean somebody did a bunch of work to make it happen).

If you haven't figured it out, this is the busy that I've been talking about. Not that this means we'll be stopping, just running slower. Ok, 2am is time for bed.

flight of the concords

Still really busy at work, so it's short post day again. Just long enough to thank Rakka for finding flight of the concords.

As I mentioned on facebook, I am the boom king.

streaming into the B.I.G. time

Evreysince I found out about PandoraFM I've been listening to it like crazy. I think, maybe, that the only thing that's been keeping me away from Pandora all these years is that it wasn't getting scrobbled. It's the new pop philosophy: "if a track plays, but it doesn't affect your stats, did you really listen to it?"

So, anyway, now you know why the Notorious B.I.G. has made it into my top 10 for the first time in,... ever (I mean, the big poppa was ok, but really, whatever).

look, some buildings [architecture friday]

I think I mentioned how busy this work is. So it's time for some cheating. A bunch of random pictures. Woooo!

it's a restaurant now. I want ot buy it and live there

Fire Department and disaster prep center, or something.
Pretty nice looking

waiting to meet jt

waiting to meet jt, originally uploaded by Rakka.

Wow, it's wednesday already. I skipped monday because JT came by on sunday and we all hung out. It was awesome meeting JT, but I do my blogging the night before. (Wanna know a secret? I use the hell out of blogger's post scheduling.)

And now it's crunch time at the ol' jaybejoe. So while I probably have something to say this week, I don't remember what it is. And I'm too tired to say it anyway.

So, expect some pictures of some buildings on friday. But probably not any, you know, words.

Monstrosity Garage

Last week I did the raving. This week it's time for some ranting.

A lot of days I walk down 2nd Ave on the way to work. I have to walk past one of the ugliest things ever. This thing.

Macy's parking grage, 3rd and stewart

The worst thing is that it looks like somebody actually tried to make it look nice. Fluted columns, etc. Luckily somebody's building something in front of it. I can't wait. Although, the pit has been sitting there being a pit for as long as I can remember. They need to get a move on.

Here it is in a slightly more flattering light.

Everything looks good supersaturated

It's still ugly. It's not the only ugly garage. The city is littered with them. All cities are. It's one of my least favorite things about urban living: ugly car holes.

At least it's an excuse to play with google maps. I like the "Customize and preview embedded map" thing.

[where: 3rd Ave and stewart st, seattle]

View Larger Map

i'm happy to share my photos, with some people

Spice magazine: yes. Now Public: no.

As I mentioned over on esculents, I got a photo in this quarter's Spice. They asked, I said sure. I'm kind of excited about it. People on nowpublic ask me to use my stuff all the time. I say no.

They're both unpaid (well, Spice sent me some copies of my issue and gave me a subscription). So what's the difference? It's pretty simple: attribution, attribution appropriate to the media.

Spice, like most print media, hooks you up with a photo credit. It's not a link, but hey, it's print. That's exactly what you'd expect from the medium.

Nowpublic does print your name, and it does link. But the link doesn't go to source material (in most cases the flickr page). Instead it goes to your nowpublic profile. You can link your flicker profile from there, they say. Sorry, not good enough.

I have 2,150+ pictures on flickr. That's not that many by flickr standards. Why would I want people to have to sort through that just to find something that they should already have a link to?

It comes down to expectations. In print, you expect a name. On the web, you expect a link back. Nowpublic defies convention and it feels dirty, like you're giving them something and getting squat in return. Bleh.

go crazy

go crazy, originally uploaded by leff.

Normally I'd try and say something interesting here. Well, I'd think it was interesting. But the weekend was pants. I got my tooth done (ground down and rebuilt) on Friday and my face still hurt through Saturday.

Plus it's still freaking cold in Seattle. Over it. I used to like cold, rainy days but enough is enough.

The other thing. Gamefly sent Bioshock. It's sort of depressing. I love the idea of a art deco city (underwater or not), so the fact that it's in total decay is just sad. I keep looking around thinking "this would have been nice". It's also wildly anachronistic; a deco city in 1960 with Victorian era medicine that's actually based on genetic manipulation... I can't... suspend... disbelief.

Anyway, build's almost done. back to work.

Seattle Tower [architecture friday]

There are a lot of buildings I really like in Seattle. Noticing that has made me realize that I actually have a bit of a thing for architecture. (coincidentally, the realization came at the exact moment I became old). So I'm going to do this thing were I rave and/or rant about some building around town, every Friday. It's the lazy blogger's friend: a regular feature.

Let's just start off with the ones everybody knows. We have to see them. Let's just get it out of the way right now.

We may talk more about those later, but my flickr stream is full of them. You've seen it all before. So now, we begin:

Yesterday I walked by Seattle Tower. It's my new favorite. Of course it is. It's Seattle's first art-deco building. And as we all know, that's my favorite junk. Or if we don't, we will soon.

That's some ornate brickwork. And a shit-ton of bricks.

I thought I had captured some weird lighting effect when I downloaded my pictures. It turns out that the thing was built with a gradient. 33 slightly different colors of brick. I shows up better in the pictures than real life, but it's still cool.

You can start to see the gradient a bit here.

The entryway is fantastic.

These doors only open for people in suits (three piece or better)

One last picture.

The long shot. This is from 2nd Ave.

[where: 1218 Third Avenue, Seattle, WA]

counting heads

This past weekend Rakka and I went to Bailey/Coy so she could pick out her birthday present from c&b. I just tagged along to check it out. I ended up dropping 75 bucks; I cleaned them out of Iain M. Banks.
Reading the culture books again reminded me that I've never talked about Counting Heads by David Marusek. And it reminded me of Banks. It's a vicious circle.

I couldn't help comparing the two. I kept thinking "this is like something from Banks, but not quite as cool."

Counting Heads is more focused on nanotech, cloning and the like, which makes it more modern. Maybe fadishly so. But I really shouldn't compare them. I just do it because of the technology discussed is similar. The themes are actually much different.

Heads gets fairly deep into the ethics of technology. Nanotech helps people in a lot of ways, but it's also facilitated a police state that can know, literally, your every move. Clones are 'free' in that they can choose whatever job they want, but they're made to do one thing and they're not really good for anything else. And etc. You get the idea.

Over all, pretty fun. Not quite as polished as it could be, maybe.

my systems are cool, my systems are poppin

After much procrastination, and 3 hours of work, all the video game systems are properly installed and illuminated.

Hey guys, let's play

This was Rakka's idea, and it I love it. It looks great, but the systems aren't all plugged in. I can't find a video source switcher with enough inputs. The most I've found is six. I need at least nine. Right now our three favs [dvd, wii, xbox] are plugged in to a crappy radio shack switcher.

Ikea fans will recognize the cabinetry as an expedit shelf. What's less obvious is the shelf lighting is also ikea. They're dioder lights. There are two things I love about them.

1. They're LEDs so low heat, low power, and I'll be bored with them long before they burn out.
2. They are fantastically thin. Check this out:

They're like, what, three centimeters thick?

I just glued them in place (with the included sticky pad things). They came with tiny little screws too.

This is them. I like the icon

For such a small set of lights, they sure come in a huge package. There is so much wiring that finding a place to tuck it all away is difficult.

I could rewire a beetle with all this

Sorry, that's the second worst thing about them. The first is that ikea doesn't sell them online. Even though they're small and shippable you have to drag yourself to the store. Something that feels more and more like work each time I do it.