Alley, Chicago’s Loop
Month: September 2011
Raining Down at the Pawnshop
Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: Melodie
Flash: Off
Film: Pistil
rain, rain, rain, rain, rain…
Keyboard Stops Working – Snow Leopard, Lion
I’ve encountered an annoying bug for a while now, dating from Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) at the least1 where my keyboard stops functioning. The mouse still works, the computer still does whatever it doing, but no key input registers with my Mac. The fix is simple enough, mouse into Activity Monitor, select Dock, quit it, and then the keyboard will work again. I haven’t figured out how to stop it from happening, but at least I can fix it without rebooting – which happened the first few times this happened.
I know that Screen Sharing and Spaces are both involved – the bug doesn’t appear unless I use these tools, in some combination, or in conjunction with some other process. Unplugging the keyboard from the USB port has no effect, plugging a new keyboard in has no effect, not using Screen Sharing and Spaces is not an option, so I live with having to quit Dock once or twice a day…
Footnotes:- maybe earlier, my memory of such things gets fuzzy [↩]
Tumblr Raises $85 Million Without a Business Model
Is the tech industry bubbling again? I have a Tumblr account, and like it well enough to keep using it, but there’s not anything compelling enough that I would pay a subscription for a Tumblr blog, and how else exactly is Tumblr going to make money?
Blogging service Tumblr said it has raised $85 million, although the New York-based company has scant revenue and has yet to develop a solid business model.
The lack of revenue kept some major Silicon Valley venture firms from signing onto the deal. But at least two prominent firms—Greylock Partners, an investor in Facebook Inc. and Groupon Inc., and Twitter-investor Insight Venture Partners have joined the investment round.
Other new investors include The Chernin Group, Sir Richard Branson and returning investor partners Spark Capital, Union Square Ventures, and Sequoia Capital.
Tumblr didn’t comment on the valuation that the investment conferred on the company but in recent money-raising discussions investors valued the company at around $800 million
(click here to continue reading Tumblr Raises $85 Million – WSJ.com.)
and even Tumblr execs don’t have a clue as to where the revenue will be coming from…
“Questions around monetization still exist,” he said. “But the company has absolute scale, massive traction, and huge growth and money-making potential.”
So far, Tumblr’s efforts to generate revenue have been mostly experimental.
WordPress on my mind
Strangely enough, even after all this time, I still think about blog posts I should write, even if I never get around to actually writing them. Usually right as I am about to sleep, or just as I am waking up.
This isn’t one of those posts – I am instead testing out the newish WordPress iPad tool.
My photo site is progressing nicely, but there is some sort of problem with the thumbnails (Masonry).
Marty is visiting his mom, and isn’t able to fix this at the moment.
Perpective maintained
Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: John S
Flash: Off
Film: Ina’s 1935
River North
dusty cue Cats
or as it was (ridiculously) trademarked ":CueCat".
[ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuecat ]
Unfortunately, these are the PC only models, not USB models, so are basically useless to me. If you want one, ask. I’ll let ’em go for the price of shipping and handling.
The barcoder can be used for other things, such as a Librarything ISBN scanner ( www.librarything.com/cuecat )
never did throw these away, though they just are taking up shelf space…
Lincoln Continental – set of NBC’s Playboy
filming on Jefferson and Randolph.
Give Your Mind a Rest – Polapan Blues
Detail, Kinzie Street Bridge
www.historicbridges.org/bridges/browser/?bridgebrowser=tr…
modified in Photoshop
Threadless helps West Loop make great
from Chicago Journal RSS west-loop-wanderings
West Loop businesses played a big part in the action. For out-of-town attendees, the Crowne Plaza held a block of rooms. Bottom Lounge hosted the dance, and Butterfly Sushi, Twisted Spoke, Alhambra Palace, Jupiter Outpost and Beer Bistro among others were all suggested restaurants.
Before they opened their doors, neighbors were concerned about Threadless taking over the location formerly utilized as a distribution center by FedEx. I tweeted reassurances to our community, but Threadless did even better and proved right away they were going to make good neighbors. Its been a year now, and the property looks fantastic.
West Loop Target breaks ground Saturday
starred items / from Chicago Journal RSS west-loop-wanderings http://chicagojournal.com
The West Loop Target store is breaking ground Saturday at the corner of Jackson Boulevard and Aberdeen Street, according to a release from Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd).
The store is scheduled to open in a year, with its grand opening in July 2012.
September 13, 2011 at 10:30PM swanksalot
Poster for “Brute Force (Jules Dassin; 1947)” http://t.co/0mITKNA http://twitter.com/swanksalot/status/113741473568141312
Fed Setting Their Hair on Fire
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
Surprisingly, Paul Krugman liked President Obama’s speech:
First things first: I was favorably surprised by the new Obama jobs plan, which is significantly bolder and better than I expected. It’s not nearly as bold as the plan I’d want in an ideal world. But if it actually became law, it would probably make a significant dent in unemployment.
Of course, it isn’t likely to become law, thanks to G.O.P. opposition. Nor is anything else likely to happen that will do much to help the 14 million Americans out of work. And that is both a tragedy and an outrage.
Before I get to the Obama plan, let me talk about the other important economic speech of the week, which was given by Charles Evans, the president of the Federal Reserve of Chicago. Mr. Evans said, forthrightly, what some of us have been hoping to hear from Fed officials for years now.
As Mr. Evans pointed out, the Fed, both as a matter of law and as a matter of social responsibility, should try to keep both inflation and unemployment low — and while inflation seems likely to stay near or below the Fed’s target of around 2 percent, unemployment remains extremely high.
So how should the Fed be reacting? Mr. Evans: “Imagine that inflation was running at 5 percent against our inflation objective of 2 percent. Is there a doubt that any central banker worth their salt would be reacting strongly to fight this high inflation rate? No, there isn’t any doubt. They would be acting as if their hair was on fire. We should be similarly energized about improving conditions in the labor market.”
(click here to continue reading Setting Their Hair on Fire – NYTimes.com.)
And if you had the intestinal fortitude to watch the latest GOP debate12 – you heard the GOP repeatedly criticize the Fed, without having any factual reasons to do so…
Footnotes:Now, however, leading Republicans are against tax cuts — at least if they benefit working Americans rather than rich people and corporations. And they’re against monetary policy, too. In Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney declared that he would seek a replacement for Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, essentially because Mr. Bernanke has tried to do something (though not enough) about unemployment. And that makes Mr. Romney a moderate by G.O.P. standards, since Rick Perry, his main rival for the presidential nomination, has suggested that Mr. Bernanke should be treated “pretty ugly.”
So, at this point, leading Republicans are basically against anything that might help the unemployed.
Rick Perry and the Low Wage Economy
Saturday Morning Lines
Rick Perry’s regularly self-touted Texas Economic Miracle is fake, as regular readers of this blog know.
John Turner of the Guardian U.K. concurs:
The low-wage economy is Texas’s dirty little secret, and it is easy to ignore in swaths of the state. The sad scene at Dove Springs was unfolding only a few miles from the majestic domed state house in downtown Austin, a city which is famed for its vibrant music venues and world-class restaurants.
Austin is also famous for its growing technology sector and is becoming the Silicon Valley of the Texas hill country. It is in many places a city of well-to-do neighbourhoods, with manicured lawns and plush housing. The same is true of other Texas urban centres, such as Dallas and Houston, helped by an energy industry that has been buoyed by rocketing oil prices. The state also avoided the worst of the housing bubble.
Perry touts all this when he boasts of the legion of Fortune 500 companies that have flocked to make their headquarters here and he boasts that, since June 2009, about 40% of all jobs created in America are in Texas, a state whose economy is growing at twice the national rate.
But the devil is in the detail. Unemployment is stubbornly stuck at about 8%, below the national level but still leaving one million Texans out of work. In 2010 half a million people in the state earned no more than the minimum wage of $7.25 (£4.47) an hour. Texas, for all its glittering metropolises, has the joint highest percentage, along with Mississippi, of hourly paid workers earning the minimum wage or less.
Jim Hightower, a longstanding Texas liberal and radio host, has a simple description of Perry’s Texas economic miracle. “It is a hoax. He is telling Perry-tales. You can’t make a living off of these jobs,” he said.
(click here to continue reading The dark underbelly of Rick Perry’s Texas | World news | The Observer.)
Self-inflicted Decline Of United States
Neon Green Tea
The United States has deep, serious structural problems with our economy, and yet the morons in Congress debate trivialities.
Malcom Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia writes, part:
The United States’ friends around the world watched with dismay the recent brawl over raising the federal government’s debt ceiling, and the US congress’ inability to come to anything like a balanced and forward-looking compromise. On the contrary, the outcome represents a significant victory for the Tea Party’s minions, whose purpose seems to be to reduce government obligations and expenditures to a bare minimum (some object even to having a central bank), and to maintain President George W Bush’s outrageous tax breaks for the wealthy. The United States’ current fiscal problems are rooted in a long period of unfunded spending. Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the manner in which he conducted the “global war on terror” made matters much worse, contributing to a totally unsustainable situation. Indeed, Obama inherited an almost impossible legacy.
In the weeks since the debt ceiling agreement, it has become increasingly clear that good government might be impossible in the US. The coming months of campaigning for the US presidency will be spent in petty brawling over what should be cut. The example of recent weeks gives us no cause for optimism that US legislators will rise above partisan politics and ask themselves what is best for America.
In these circumstances, it is not surprising that financial markets have returned to extreme volatility. The expenditure cuts mandated by the outcome of the debt-ceiling debate will reduce economic activity, thereby undermining growth and making debt reduction even more difficult. Providing further fiscal stimulus to boost economic growth would carry its own risks, owing to the debt ceiling and another, more ominous factor: the US is already overly indebted, and there are signs that major holders of US government securities are finally tired of being repaid in depreciated currency.
Most importantly, China’s call for the introduction of a new reserve currency stems from its frustration with the failure of major governments – whether in the US or Europe – to govern their economic affairs with realism and good sense. China recognises that the US is in great difficulty (indeed, it recognises this more clearly than the US itself), and that, given the poisonous political atmosphere prevailing in Washington, there will be no easy return to good government, economic stability, and strong growth.
…
(click here to continue reading America’s self-inflicted decline – Opinion – Al Jazeera English.)
Bank of China
One more important excerpt from Mr. Fraser’s Op-Ed:
The counter-argument – that any sell-off or failure by China to continue to buy US government securities would hurt China as much as the US – is not valid. As each year passes, China’s markets expand worldwide, and its domestic market comes to represent a greater percentage of its own GDP. As a result, China will not need a strong dollar in the long term. Americans need to get their economic house in order before China loses its incentive to support the dollar.
On several occasions in the post-WWII period, the US has learned with great pain that there are limits to the effective use of military power. US objectives could not be achieved in Vietnam. The outcome in Iraq will not be determined until the last American troops have been withdrawn. In Afghanistan, where withdrawal dates have already been set, it is difficult to believe that a cohesive unified state can be established.
As the efficacy of military power is reduced, so the importance of economic power grows. Recognition of these central realities – and bipartisanship in addressing them – is critical for America’s future, and for that of the West.
We ignore these realities at our peril – and allowing the Tea Party to control policy is akin to letting someone hepped up on bath salts pilot your airplane. Dangerously stupid, in other words.