chuggnutt.com

Lately I've been playing around a bit with Google Earth, and correspondingly Google Maps, and it's amazing the kinds of things you can do with it. Unfortunately, their source data for Central Oregon is less than impressive; try to zoom in too tightly and you just get pixelated blobs.

Well, the city of Bend website has put their GIS mapping system online, you can get to it here, and it's super-detailed (for Bend only) and largely fills that niche that's missing from Google's maps. It even has some of the same functionality with their layers option. The only drawback is that it only runs in Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater (and, I'm assuming, Windows).

Still, it's pretty sweet. I'm already thinking about how to use this data somewhere...

Now this is some kind of crazy:

The hobbit holes will hold lawn mowers instead of diminutive, barefooted halflings from J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, but The Shire aims to bring some Old World styling and a fantasy setting to Bend's east side.

"We call it the place of enchantment, and we are building to that (motto)," said Ron Meyers, the developer whose business card identifies him as Lord of The Shire....

The application submitted to the city for development calls for a mix of 31 cottages and townhomes on 6.2 acres off Benham Road east of the Parrell/Sisters Mobile Home Park. The project also will have 1.5 acres of common open space that will include trails, ponds, landscaping and an amphitheater, some of which are in place.

Hobbit holes already are cut into the side of the hill, and Karl Anthony, whom Meyers describes as a "spiritual artist," held a concert at the amphitheater a few weeks ago.

It will be the homes themselves, however, that give The Shire its unique look.

Cottages will evoke English country homes. Townhouses will be built to look like medieval city streetscapes.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

...actually, I'd be real curious to see what it looks like when they're done. Jeez, just when I thought the real estate market around here couldn't get any weirder...

One thing the Bulletin forgot: the web site address for "The Shire." Kind of important, there.

But that's okay, I found it: The Shire of Bend, Oregon.

Heard about this on the radio this morning, and I wanted to blog it before I forgot about it. On the front page of the Bulletin today there's a picture of three people floating the river (a popular summer activity here in Bend)—which by itself is no big deal. However, the focus of the article that accompanies it is on the excessive alcohol consumption that goes along with the river floaters.

Back to that picture. Three people floating the river with booze in hand. Here's the picture:

Photo courtesy of The Bulletin

I'm not against drinking, rafting, drinking while rafting necessarily, but damn! That's some hard drinkin' in the picture. The guy on the left is drinking some kind of hard liquor, the middle guy a beer, and there's at least two more bottles visible with them. The girl has a Jagermeister. I like Jager and all, but that's way too hardcore for me.

Besides, everyone knows the proper way to drink Jager is chilled, ideally right out of the freezer ;).

Just a quick note about Chelsea Lane, a nice little wine shop that used to be downtown but is now located at the factory outlet stores on south Highway 97: they're closing! I don't know when the last day will be, but right now they're selling their wines at 30% off, and beer for 15% off. I picked up four normally-spendy beers there the other day.

Get down there while the getting's good. It's really too bad they're closing; I don't really know of any other wine shops in Bend (dedicated/exclusive wine shops—not just wineries or places that also sell wine), except maybe for Vino Mercato.

Eh, it wasn't that bad. We had our picnic dinner in the park with Shannon and Simone, at the farmer's market. I'm rethinking this whole "blogger meetup" thing though since only Shannon, Simone, and myself ever get together... if someone else wants to organize a blogger deal, I'll come, but I'm done trying to put something together. For now, anyway.

The blogworthy part of the evening (the part Shannon didn't want to read... or maybe she did, I'm not sure) was Shannon's skirt. She's wearing a just-above-the-knee orange skirt and we're all sitting on the grass (my family's there, too), and what happens when you're wearing a short skirt and sitting on the ground? Yah, it rides up and every time you shift you have to make sure you're not flashing the person sitting across from you. Which was me.

Do you know how hard it is to not see up someone's skirt in that situation? Well, I didn't see anything—I almost did, once or twice—but at some point Shannon realized that I was studiously looking elsewhere whenever she'd start shifting around and caught herself just in time. It turned into the joke afterward, but no, I wasn't trying to see if she was going commando or not.

See what kind of fun y'all miss out on? :)

Update: No, Shannon wasn't doing anything on purpose... it was just an unfortunate arrangement. See, this is why I don't wear skirts...

I just heard about this at work today, people claiming that Donald Trump said the number one place to invest in/develop/buy/smoke real estate is Bend, Oregon. One guy—a local land engineer even—claims that Trump said this on Larry King Live. He may even be developing something here!

Folks, it just ain't true. Someone's blowing smoke up your ass. It's a rumor someone started to get people talking about Bend real estate. There's no information online alluding to this, and even the transcripts of the Larry King Live episode in question don't bear it out. Bend is not even on Trump's radar.

Let's move on now, m'kay?

You can tell I've been busy these last few days: I've got a number of things to write about but haven't had the time to until now. These next couple of things are about articles that appeared in the Bulletin.

First: 7-story hotel planned for downtown. This, of course, will be literally right next to the five-story parking garage. I'm a little ambivalent about this. I don't necessarily think it's bad for downtown Bend, but does it have to be a seven-story monstrosity? Plus, it'll turn into a cost-overrun, logistical nightmare typical of recent downtown development.

To be fair, though, the city has yet to approve the application. We all know that that's just a formality, though, right?

And the plan is to put a swimming pool on the sixth floor. Uh, okay. I know I sure wouldn't want any room directly beneath several thousand tons of water suspended 55 feet or so above the ground... but that's just me.

The other item is this: Post office will test for anthrax. Yeah, that's timely and relevant, what, three years later? Is this really news? I think bioterrorists have probably figured out by now that anthrax is kind of a no-go anymore, and are more likely to have something different cooked up. Seems to me the post office should be expanding the scope of their testing, if they're really worried about it...

Amid all the craziness of the past weekend, my wife and I were able to have a Saturday evening out (the grandparents watched the kids). We went to Ariana with Shannon and her fiancé

Ariana is located on Bend's west side, in one of the renovated old houses that make up much of the west side's character. My review, in a word: awesome! The weather was just right to sit out on the patio, the wait staff was refreshingly good, the food was excellent. Next time, though, when we're out with friends, I'll order an appetizer; Shannon wrote that I "ate off our plates" and that makes me sound like a homeless person or something. Really, I'm not.

The one nagging question I have is whether the Spaten Oktoberfest I ordered was on tap or from the bottle. Bottle is fine, I don't know of any other restaurant in town that has it, but if it's on tap, then kudos, Ariana. Kudos indeed.

Seriously, I'm not a homeless guy.

Busy busy busy weekend, that's why I haven't been posting. And I'm getting hammered at work with things, but I needed to jump on to post this bit, lest I forget again:

There's finally another Bend blogger meetup this week! Wednesday (July 27) at the Farmer's Market downtown, at six o'clock. Basically we'll have a picnic in Drake Park. (Buy your own dinner at the Farmer's Market.) We'll be meeting near the booth selling fish, though Shannon said if anyone gets there late, look for her and an orange blanket. So if you see a group of people sitting by an orange blanket in the park near the Farmer's Market, odds are it's us.

Maybe we could get a roll call in the comments here, so we know who all can make it?

Jeremy Zawodny wonders When will blogging peak? I don't think it will, anytime soon or maybe even at all. Why? Because, like I wrote last month, it ain't even mainstream yet. Plus, it's too compelling. It will likely evolve, but it isn't even close to peaking, if it ever will.

Dave Winer mostly agrees with this assessment, but then writes this:

Blogs with ads, like their print counterparts, strive to be as broad as possible, to reach as many people, and in doing so, lose their value as an ad for the author.

No, I don't think that's true at all. Blogs with ads don't automatically lose their value. I do think blogs that try to be as broad as possible and make money with ads largely won't work; it's the niche blogging that works. Blogs that do this the right way are making money. Otherwise Jason Calacanis' Weblogs, Inc. wouldn't have just made over $2,000 in a single day with AdSense.

You'll note that I have AdSense on both of my blogs (this and The Brew Site). This blog is broad in scope, and has wildly varying ads; if I was relying on it to make money (rather than just running the ads as a nice extra), well, I'd have to keep my day job. The Brew Site, being much more focused/niched, doesn't make as much as this site but does have a higher quality of ads and click rates. If I were to get the kind of traffic there that I get here, I'd see some nice figures, I think.

Finally, in other blog news, Scoble today tries to downplay being a A-list blogger. Get this: "Forget the A-listers. They don't matter anymore. Well, they don't matter as much." Yeah, right. Sorry, but being an A-list blogger is better than ever, period. Doubt it? In the same post, Scoble mentions that he "was talking to Chris Pirillo [another A-list blogger] the other day about the 'long tail' metaphor and while we were flying over mountains in the Boeing plane...." This refers to the fact that himself and several other prominent (A-list) bloggers were invited on an exclusive test flight featuring Boeing's new in-flight WiFi service... they all got flown to Walla Walla for wine. And buzzed some mountains.

Man, don't try to tell me that the A-listers don't matter anymore. Jeez.

Hmm. Anyone else notice the irony of this post? I'm pointing to the A-listers. Must be sour grapes or something.

I've been seeing lots of referrer hits from MySpace on my site lately, so I thought it was apropos to point to this article on Kuro5hin: MySpace: A Place for Dolts. It's just too funny not to, and it's full of great soundbites.

You see, when you sign up for MySpace, you instantly have your first friend. You're immediately best buddies with the most popular person on MySpace: Tom. Now, to understand the stupidity of this, you have to understand that this is a social networking mechanism; if I'm friends with John and John is friends with Sally, then Sally is syllogistically my friend, and if I visit her profile it will tell me just that: "Sally is in your extended network". But if EVERYONE is friends with Tom, then there might as well not be an extended network feature at all, and he is defeating the purpose of his time and his website. Basically what I'm saying is, Tom is a dumbshit.

But there's a reason why none of this matters. There's a reason why he wins even though he programs in Cold Fusion (I have yet to meet someone who uses Cold Fusion and isn't a complete moron), even though he has no sense of style or ergonomics, and even though he's lazy as hell: he gets an enormous amount of money from the website. Movies, bands, dating services, clothing companies, non-profit organizations, and even the US Army advertises on MySpace.

Ah, you gotta love cynical internet rants.

See also Movable Type Rant, a pointer to another great Kuro5hin piece.

I don't care if it's poker terminology or not, the expression "bluffing into the nuts" is just so, so wrong. It's simply the gayest phrase ever.

Yep, a new Bend blogger: Rhysently. First saw this today show up linking to me in Technorati, and ORblogs has it listed as a new addition tonight. Only two entries so far, but I found them quotable:

Anybody who doesn't live in Central Oregon is a sucker. This is the most amazing, beautiful place on earth. I'm never leaving, ever. It's so unbelievable that this place and someplace like Florida—that miserable swampy armpit with the most roaches and serial killers than any other place in the world—could exist on the same planet, let alone the same country.

And:

I paused to reflect on something that deeply bothered me in the past: the NASCAR fried chicken bucket series....

What kind of white trash CEO thought this one up? And let me tell you, I'm not using that term loosely. I grew up in a town with 23 bars and no library. I lived in a trailer for part of my youth. I have relatives with more tattoos than teeth. I KNOW from white trash, okay? And still, I can't think of anyone tacky enough—not even my mulleted cousin Dwayne who's spent more than half his life in jail and gets conjugal visits from a beer-swilling hottie who can braid her own armpit hair—to actually SAVE THEIR NASTY GREASY CHICKEN BUCKET. Arggh. Seriously, do you display them on the mantel, or what?

Okay, we seriously need to have another blogger meetup and get all these new bloggers to come.

Yep, we're heading up to Portland tomorrow, for the weekend. We've got a bunch of clothes shopping to do. And appointments to keep. And friends to see, if there's time. With all the running around, I wonder when (if) we'll find time to relax...

Taking the laptop, though, so I'll still be checking in.

Get your pimp name right here. This is classic! Here's some of what it gave me:

Suede Jon Shmoove
Pimp Daddy Jon Wicked
Trick Magnet J. Ice
Stealth Maestro J. Glide
Delicious Jon Wicked

Via ongoing.

Today is Bastille Day in France, their equivalent to our Fourth of July/Independence Day. The Wikipedia article I point to there has a pretty good overview.

On 20 June [1789] the deputies of the Third Estate took the Tennis Court Oath (named after the place where they had gathered which was a place where an ancestor of tennis, the "jeu de paume" was played), swearing not to separate until a Constitution had been established. To show their support, the people of Paris stormed the Bastille, a prison where people were jailed by arbitrary decision of the King (lettre de cachet). The Bastille was, in particular, known for holding political prisoners whose writings had displeased the royal government. Thus the Bastille was a symbol of the absolutism of the monarchy.

There were only 7 inmates housed at the time of the siege. The storming of the Bastille was more important as a rallying point and symbolic act of rebellion than a practical act of defiance. No less important in the history of France, it was not the image typically conjured up of courageous French patriots storming the Bastille and freeing hundreds of oppressed peasants. However, it did immediately inspire preparations amongst the peasants for the very real threat of retaliation.

An even more comprehensive history (you gotta love Wikipedia) is found at the Storming of the Bastille article.

Back in the summer of 1989, when I was 16, I spent three weeks in France on a high school trip. We were there for the Fête Nationale (National Holiday), in... Tournon, I believe it was. Not only was it Bastille Day, but it was the bicentennial as well. Sadly, it was half my lifetime ago and I don't remember nearly as much as I should; I remember fireworks in Tournon but the big action was in Paris (where we weren't). I did keep a journal for the time I was there—most of it, anyway—I think I'll dig that up and re-read it. Hell, I'll post it here, even.

In the meantime, happy 14 juillet.

This last weekend was the Bend Summer Festival ("SummerFest" for the rest of us, it's shorter and easier to say) and despite my expressed ambivalence in the past toward the various seasonal festivals around here, we went on Saturday and had a pretty good time.

The weather was decent while we were there, except for a brief interlude during which it downpoured rain—about five minutes worth, and then the mini-squall moved on. Typical Central Oregon weather, though sooner or later some local will trot out the old chestnut about it snowing on the Fourth of July...

There's great shopping to be found there—for adults. The kids got bored pretty quickly as we wandered among the various tents. I got bored after a while, too; there's only so many arts and crafts you can look at before they start blurring together. Ultimately we did buy two framed prints from a photographer, and my wife got a bracelet and a scarf/wrap thing.

The children's section was great. Like last year, it was sponsored by the Working Wonders Children's Museum and had a bunch of fun and educational things to do. The best part was the bird house building; Home Depot had donated crates of kid-friendly bird house kits (seven pre-cut board plus nails and screws) and kids could assemble them and take them home for free. Well, kids and adults; I ended up putting together most of the two we took. But it was still a very cool idea.

Food—good (mmmm Philly cheesesteak sandwich...); alcohol—good but some confusion reigned as to when they could start serving. OLCC rules say not until noon, but no one was allowed to start til sometime after that, not sure why... regardless, my wife finally got to taste some good wines and I had a beer (only had time for one), a tasty Ropewalk Amber from BridgePort Brewing. There was a big selection of other beers on their sheet, too, I was impressed.

We didn't catch any music—a consequence of having small kids who are impatient—but it was still a pretty good SummerFest. I like it best of the various Bend seasonal festivals.

I'll post about the Bend SummerFest tomorrow I think, but I just wanted to get something out there tonight, and I note that ORblogs is reporting another Bend weblog: under the ponderosas. Right on.

In this case, "Barcelona" refers to the restaurant in Downtown Bend, in the St. Clair building. The reason I'm wondering if they're closed is because they have a banner reading "Restaurant fire sale Monday" and the interior looks, well, disassembled.

Anyone know what the scoop is?

Shannon did a lurker day on her blog a couple of weeks ago and said I should do one, too. Okay!

Since it's nearly midnight, let's call Friday "Lurker Day" on chuggnutt.com! If you lurk on my site, make a comment! I'd love to hear from you. Even if you've made comments before :). And, I'll shamelessly steal Shannon's Lurker Day questions for myself:

1. Who are you?
2. How did you find this blog?
3. Why do you come back?

So on the spur of the moment this evening we decided to go to this year's first Munch 'n Music and have dinner. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be any good website source for Munch 'n Music, so for those of you not from Bend, here's the three-second explanation:

Thursday evenings during the summer in Bend, free concerts in Drake Park are accompanied by food and craft vendors, and a beer garden. Parking is hell.

This was the first one we'd been to in years, so the beer garden was new to me. We didn't stay for the full concert—we never do, really, with young kids—but we did enjoy Pilot Butte Drive-in's cheeseburgers and fries. We hadn't had them since forever and they were utterly delicious. It's the only place you can get Pilot Butte after lunchtime these days! Score! The kids had Pizza Mondo. I was totally jonesing for some elephant ears, but the line was too long and we were on the way out.

My wife got a new toe ring and the kids got an ice cream bar and cotton candy. It was a fruitful trip.

One of these days we'll try staying for the full concert. And I will get some elephant ears!

Update: My wife found the website... it's www.munchandmusic.com. Go figure. Couldn't find it on the search engines, so that's saying something.

I guess I shouldn't really be surprised when the oddball stuff happens around here anymore, but... Bend.com is reporting that during next week's Great North American RV Rally in Redmond, participants will attempt to build the world's largest s'more.

The S'more will consist of about 40,000 marshmallows, 40,000 graham crackers and 14,000 chocolate bars, and it'll be built by volunteers on Wednesday, July 13, from 10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Construction is expected to take approximately three hours, with the final product covering 1,600 square feet. The World's Largest S'more is sponsored by Reserve America, and is expected to break the current record of 1,600 pounds, which was established in May, 2003....

People from as far away as Florida and Nova Scotia are expected be on-hand to construct, watch and maybe even eat the S'more.

The world's. Largest. S'more.

Sigh.

Okay, I admit that since I saw the trailer for it at the beginning of Star Wars, I want to see the "Fantastic Four" movie. Even though, as my brother seems to think, it will likely turn out to be desperately bad. But with today's CGI and effects technology, even the desperately bad can look good—or at least the trailers can.

The qualm I do have about the movie is one I share with my brother—the rubbery-looking costume for the Thing. I hope the final version looks a lot better, because right now it looks like, I don't know, Meat Man or something. This is supposed to be a character who's mutated into orange rock or somesuch, not latex. Couldn't they have done an all-CGI Thing?

I don't have a problem with casting Michael Chiklis in that role, though. It seems appropriate. Peter David, who's doing the novelization, made a comment about this: "If I had to guess, I'm thinking Chiklis' Ben Grimm is going to be the character everyone's talking about." So there's hope. Maybe.

Of course, when there's an article on Wired about all the hype and hooplah the studio's going through to promote the movie, that just seems to be that they're trying too hard. The movie will look good—mostly—but it'll likely be another Hulk.

And in related news: Defamer reports that a skywriter promoting the movie messed up by drawing the "4" backwards. Nice.

It started with housecleaning, since we were hosting a party at our place. We managed to finish up in time to go to the Pet Parade, which is always fun (though, as someone was telling me later, is just crazy with too many people compared to four years ago). The highlight of the Parade worth blogging about was the flying dog. Someone had harnessed up a little rat dog of some kind to a bunch of big helium balloons, and had it tethered on a leash at about four feet in the air. My thought was, if they drop the leash, the dog is gone—I hope they have a pellet gun!

For the balloons. The balloons. Yeah, I know what you thought I meant the gun was for.

Oh, we saw Shannon in the Parade, as well. And apparently Chris was in it too. A fake monkey? What?

We fought our way to Drake Park where my wife was looking for toe rings and I bought the kids each a beanbag snake. This was the "old fashioned celebration" part of the public festivities they were advertising, I guess—craft vendors and food, though we didn't make it as far as the food.

The party at our house was pretty good. We had my family, old family friends, Shannon and Simone for a little while, a friend of my wife's and even some of my coworkers. The best part of course was the fireworks, especially for the kids. I set off a lot of them, and we were treated to just as many (legal and otherwise) from elsewhere in the neighborhood.

And this was the first year we let the kids stay up until 10 to watch the Pilot Butte fireworks show (which according to the news this evening is the largest in Oregon. Who knew!). We have a nice view of Pilot Butte from our yard, so it was a treat.

The only downside was going back to work the next day (today)... unpleasant. Maybe I'll start taking July 5th off from now on...

Happy Fourth to everyone, hope you all have a good holiday. We'll be down at the Pet Parade at 10, then kids' swimming lessons and a party to prepare for. Plus it's going to be in the mid-80s today, perfect!

Check out this Flash animation. It's creepy and compelling! It's a mannequin falling through an infinite sky of spheres. Realistic. And you can drag the thing around with your mouse, too...

Via Boing Boing.