Elf Yourself!

..dedicated to finding common ground between the housed and the homeless. In over 900 relief missions per year, Midnight Run volunteers from churches, synagogues, schools and other civic groups distribute food, clothing, blankets and personal care items to the homeless poor on the streets of New York City. The late-night relief efforts create a forum for trust, sharing, understanding and affection. That human exchange, rather than the exchange of goods, is the essence of the Midnight Run mission.
[Midnight Run]

Everyone I know who’s gone on one says it’s an amazing experience. This is the fifth time she’s lead a run - one of these years, maybe I’ll get to go. I’ve got a few pictures up on flickr that I took helping sort and pack some clothes before the trip in. Hopefully, there will be more coming in from other participants. You can read about her experience on her blog here.

In Brooklyn’s warehouse-turned-artist district of Williamsburg, young hipsters flock to Barcade to sample its roster of microbrews and mingle with the likes of Pac-Man, the Mario brothers and Frogger.

I remember back in high school, arcades were all the rage. Games like Pac Man, Donkey Kong, etc. filled dimly lit rooms and the sound of cheesy synthesized game music was drowned out only by the sound of tokens spilling out of change machines. Well now it’s all come full circle, except now your arcade experience can be augmented by microbrews.

This just seems like a lot of fun, as well as a trip down memory lane. Next time we’re in the city, we should try to go. Of course, now it will end up being impossibly crowded. If it isn’t already.

They also have a Flickr stream and a MySpace page.

UPDATE: I wanted to mention my favorite video game at the time, but couldn’t remember it. It came to me: Tempest.

At first blush, I like it a lot. It took a long time to download, mostly because it uses .NET 3.0, which I didn’t have on my XP machine (it’s a built in part of Vista though), and therefore had to be downloaded. And it also took a while to populate (it archives a weeks worth of news). But once it was done, it was smooth sailing.

I think the main reason I like it is that it’s well laid out. It has sections and columns, just like you’d expect a “real” newspaper to have. There’s a front page, which seems to correspond more or less to the print edition’s front page, and each section (Sports, Business, etc.) also has a page. Each is laid out something like a traditional newspaper - in columns, with the size and position of the headline being a visual indication of the “importance” of the story. Pictures and graphics are positioned like they would be in print as well. There’s an aesthetic there that’s somehow missing from most online news. And the display is very nice - crisp and clear. All this makes for an experience more like reading a traditional newspaper, but with the advantages of being online. Which is exactly what I’ve been looking for. I like the convenience of getting my news online, but I miss the structure and organization of a traditional newspaper, as opposed to the constant linear flow of articles that you tend to see online.

Of course, time will tell if it works well for me or not. It’s free for me, since I already subscribe to the print edition. I’m bummed that it’s not available on OS X, my primary OS at home. I’ve heard that Microsoft is working on a cross platform version of WPF (and some other parts of the .NET CLR) and that when it’s available, the Times will port the Reader. We’ll see if that ever works out. But so far, it’s great.

Originally uploaded by rich_bruchal.

This morning we went on a dog walk to benifit STARS, the Stratford Animal Rescue Society, which is the local animal adoption place. The weather was perfect and it was for a good cause.

There were of course lots of other dogs for Sasha to meet, including some kind of sheepdog who had been given dreadlocks by his owners. I guess that’s one way to keep the grooming effort to a minimum. (There’s a picture of him on the flickr site.) A great time was had by all, except for possibly the drivers who were held up by the traffic cops while a long parade of dogs and their owners marched by. (We had to cross a semi-major intersection at the halfway point in order to turn around and come back.)

Original Star Trek Gets Upgraded: “Kiss the miniature Enterprise model goodbye: CBS is releasing digitally remastered episodes of the beloved 1960s TV series. Will modern, computer-generated special effects leave fans beaming?

My guess is no. Look at the backlash against George Lucas when he “updated’ Star Wars.

(Via Wired News: Top Stories.)