spasticrobot

Resolutions for the New Year

1. Live Better:

• (re)Quit Smoking
• Get back into a well regulated and balanced nutritional routine
• Learn to love the bike again; This year I am going to use Joe Friel's training method in order to gain better fitness and become a better rider. I pledge to compete in at least 5 races of which I will finish in at least 4.

2. Geek out harder:

• I will implement GTD into all aspects of my work which will allow me to become a more efficient and productive worker.
• Finish my website! This year I WILL publish a new and complete version of jlangenbeck.com which will include a full portfolio of work.
• Upgrade my home hardware setup. I need to trick out my workspace at home in order to spend a bit more time working on projects from there. At the very least I will buy a new monitor + keyboard & mouse for my powerbook. If I can really manage my money this year I would like to buy a new 12" PB for portability and use my current 15" as a permanent home base.
• Become more proficient in Javascript & XML, which will be aided and abetted by constructing Ajax applications. I would also like to continue to become more proficient at code in general.

3. Travel Further:

• Places I really want to see this year include Austin in March again for SXSWi, Barcelona in May and possibly San Francisco in October. I will at least make the first two.

Best of 2005: Life

This year was one of the craziest and most dynamic (i.e. manic high/low) years of my life. Great and terrible things happened but all in all it was another positive growth experience for me and I feel like I am a better person for having endured it all.

This year I:

• Turned 30
• Waxed Nostalgic about New Orleans, even before The Big One
• Led the March of the St. Anthony Ramblers
• Became a better Print Designer
• Attended SXSW
• Learned all about CSS/XHTML, semantic markup and web standards
• Helped revive the notoriety of Dr. Momus Alexander Morgus
• Bought a City Bike and rode it 5 days a week
• Embraced a healthy nutritional program that I combined with cycling and lost 35 lbs, transforming both my physical and mental well-being
• Watched Lance Armstrong win his Seventh consecutive Tour de France
• Bought a sweet road bike and began taking cycling seriously
• Evacuated to Covington for a rapidly approaching Category 4 Hurricane
• Cowered in my mother's hallway as SE Louisiana was nearly destroyed outside when Katrina finally hit
• Drank heavily and wept openly as the realization set in that our city was flooded, knowing in the pit of my stomach that life would never be the same for any of us
• Worried about the saftey and well being of my friends
• Fled to Dallas when the lack of electricity and water began to cause intense malaise
• Met up with friends in Austin where I had breakfast with Bruce Sterling
• Lived in Covington for over a month
• Finally saw our destroyed home in MidCity which provided closure for much of my K-flood woes
• Flew to Chicago and attended the Dutch Sustainable Waterfronts Conference
• Returned to work
• Found a new home in the Marigny Triangle
• Attended the VoodooFest with some of my closest friends and felt really good about New Orleans for the first time in months
• Built a website for the Bring New Orleans Back Commission with Willcore
• Began working on plans for next year
• Summed up my year with lists like this one

Best of 2005: Text

1. Katrina Lit
The books, articles, essays, and rants that spilled forth after the storm were the most important literary works of the year for me. They helped to forge my anger, sharpen my arguments and prepare for the next phase of this battle. They also provided much needed therapy and kept me sane at times when I thought I might lose it all and reminded of why I love this city so much. There were also a few older books about New Orleans in there that helped in the same way.

Alan AtKisson’s essay Dreaming of a New New Orleans
The Times Picayune, specifically Chris Rose, New Orleans’ new literary hero
Gambit Weekly
Why New Orleans Matters – Tom Piazza
Frenchmen, Desire, Good Children and Other Streets of New Orleans – John Churchill Chase
The French Quarter – Herbert Asbury
The Lords of Misrule; Mardi Gras and Race in New Orleans – Dan Gill

Holiday List

Friends & Family
Smoked Salmon Canapes
Chicken & Andouille Gumbo
the end of the 2am curfew
Cuisinart appliances
Calphalon cookware
Gift certificates for books!
The Cyclist's Training Bible
Bicycling Science
Poboys with homeboys
Lazy end-of-the-year days off

The F-List

Flavorpill has launched a new site called the F-List, "a snapshot of emergent cultural happenings". There's lots of good stuff here including a look at hot web applications, blogs and much more.

WTUL is back!

WTUL went back on the air Friday! They lost the building they were housed in on the Tulane campus so Rue de la Course owner Jerry Roppolo is allowing them to broadcast from the Carrollton Rue until they can move into their new building.

This is great news. The music programming of WTUL during the late 80's and early 90's shaped my musical tastes and interests more than anything else growing up. It's really nice to have them back.

Best of 2005: Music (a mixtape)

I've decided to change things up with a different approach to this year's "best of" music list. Instead of just listing the 10 best albums of the year I decided to compose a "mixtape" of the songs that were most important to me this year. (Contains lots of links to the iTunes music store)

side a
1. M83 – Don’t Save Us From the Flames
This was the first track of the year that I truly loved. My Bloody Valentine + JG Ballard + 1994-era Weedeater

2. M.I.A. - Sunshowers
“Like P.L.O. I don’t surrender!”

3. Bloc Party – Like Eating Glass
This is great, anthemic pop music. This song was trapped in my head every time I rode my bike through the city this spring.

4. Beck – Missing
Lonely, handclappingly good BossaNova off of Beck’s comeback album, Guero

5. The Fiery Furnaces – Here Comes Summer
A really catchy pop tune with great analog backing synths

6. Mia Doi Todd – The Last Night of Winter
Mellow folk-pop as heard on KCRW, a major listening obsession of mine this year

7. Bright Eyes – First Day of my Life
Another single I picked up on via KCRW. This is my favorite single off of the only Bright Eyes album I've ever enjoyed.

8. LCD Soundsytem – Tribulations
Self-deprecation and loathing in the form of a catchy dance song, what?

9. Gorrilaz – Feel Good Inc.
De La Soul’s rhymes and Albarn’s spooky melodies make a nice combination.

10. of Montreal – Requiem for O.m.m2
Sweet & catchy psychedelic pop music

11. Kings of Leon – Milk
The strangeness of Caleb Followill’s vocal on this song is compounded by its bizarre subject matter. “She saw my comb over, her hourglass body, she had problems with drinking milk and being school tardy, she’ll loan you her toothbrush, she’ll bartend your party” WTF?

side b
1. Boards of Canada – Chromakey Dreamcoat
The Campfire Headphase is my favorite BoC production since Music Has the Right to Children. The guitar is such a nice touch and as always BoC are the ultimate curators of organic analog synth tones.

2. Broadcast – America’s Boy
The most beautiful track off of the rather disappointing Tender Buttons LP

3. Vitalic – Polkamatic
Drug fueled 1970’s Eastern Bloc electro

4. Madonna – Hung Up
Lu Cont! ABBA! 50ish Madonna in a leotard! Hung Up is my favorite dance song of the year.

5. Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch
Dark, brooding music that makes me want to live in a Northern European city.

6. Three 6 Mafia – Stay Fly
The only Rap or Hip Hop track that I loved all year long

7. Moussa Douimbia – Keleya
The grooviest song off of World Psychedelic Classics 3: Love’s a Real Thing, a celebration of West African pop of the 60’s and 70’s.

8. Kelly Clarkson – Since U Been Gone
I first heard the Ted Leo cover version of this song and didn’t really see what all the fuss was about. Then I listened to the original and was immediately addicted.

9. Deerhoof – Running Thoughts
A gorgeous track that revels in retro J-pop, dissonant indie rock and synth music.

10. Animal Collective – Grass
This is the Animal Collective song I’ve been waiting for. Singularly weird and catchy at the same time. The more I listen to it, the more I love it.

11. Devendra Banhart - Heard Somebody Say
This is a great song off of a pretty good album.

12. Antony & The Johnsons – Hope There’s Someone
I’ve never heard anyone that sounds like Antony. The intense sadness and isolation encoded in these four minutes are some of the most powerful emotions I’ve heard in a long, long time.

We're having Mardi Gras and that's final

I haven't even brought up the Mardi Gras Controversy on here yet because I think it is such a ridiculous argument. What are we going to do next, cancel Christmas? Carnival is what we do. It's one of the things if not THE thing that makes New Orleans what it is, that makes us who we are. I've been to Carnival every year of my life except for that one time when my Dad made us all go to Key West, and even that year I saw at least one or two parades. There isn't a thing in the world that can keep me away from New Orleans during Carnival, especially this year, of all years.

Today's Chris Rose column puts it so much more eloquently than I could ever dream of. This passage put a lump in my throat:

Mardi Gras is the love of life. It is the harmonic convergence of our food, our music, our creativity, our eccentricity, our neighborhoods and our joy of living. All at once.

And it doesn't really matter if there are superparades or even any parades at all this year. Because some group of horn players will grab their instruments and they will march Down the Avenue because that's what they do, and I, for one, will follow.

If there are no parades, I'm hitching a boombox to a wagon, putting James Booker on the CD player and pulling my kids Down the Avenue and you're welcome to come along with me and where more than two tribes gather, there is a parade.

We are the parade. We are Mardi Gras. We're Whoville, man -- you can take away the beads and the floats and all that crazy stuff, but we're still coming out into the street. Cops or no cops. Post-parade garbage pick-up or no garbage pick-up -- like anyone could tell the friggin' difference!

If you are stuck somewhere else, in some other town, then bring it to them. If you got a job somewhere else now, take off that Tuesday and get all the New Orleanians you know and gather in a park somewhere and cook up a mass of food and put some music on a box and raise a little hell.

Best of 2005: The Web

In accordance with my holiday tradition of publishing concise annual "best of" lists I have again decided to divide this year into five categories; The Web, Music, Books, Film and Life Experiences. Here's the first, Best of The Web. I'll publish the others over the next two weeks.

Overall:
1. Web 2.0
This year everyone was talking about what Web 2.0 is, what it isn’t and what it will be. To me web 2.0 represents the next step in web technology as web sites become active web applications. Web 2.0 sites typically use XHTML, CSS and maybe Unobtrusive Rich Application techniques like Ajax or other XML/JS combos to empower users to publish and/or interact with the application seamlessly. Almost every site on my list this year is some sort of 2.0 application and the web in general was filled with 2.0 talk so how could the #1 spot go to anything else?

2. Google Maps
I LOVE Google maps! The sweet dynamic zooming/dragging action was one of the first times I saw Ajax employed this year. When they opened the API, a slew of great applications flooded the web, my favorite being the Gmaps Pedometer. Their Katrina map was also the first place where I saw my house inundated with water.

3. Typepad
Typepad continues to offer a great blogging service at a very agreeable price. I use it to keep notes, publish my thoughts, and to log my fitness/nutrition program. It’s become an integral part of my life.

4. Flickr
I was late to the game with Flickr but I finally signed up in January. Flickr is a great way to store and share photos but my favorite feature is their tags. If you want to see what’s happening at a specific event or in any given location in the world you can enter in a relevant tag at Flickr and see images almost in real time. This was another great tool when I was evacuated during Katrina.

5. Backpack
37 Signals’ personal productivity tool is a great addition to their family of web applications. I use this tool everyday to keep track of work and to share images and notes with my colleagues.

Blogs:
1. Signal versus Noise
Jason Fried’s presentation at this year’s SXSWi on working with small teams and "getting real" was one of the best talks I saw there. This is a fantastic blog that documents the evolution of his “Getting Real” business manifesto, along with product updates and great usability & design commentary/critiques from his cohorts at 37signals.

2. New Orleans Met Blog
This is the single best source of Post-K commentary anywhere, written by regular folks who are here in the shit. This is funny, inspiring, passionate stuff and reminds me every day of why I chose to stay here.

3. Dispatches from Tanganyika
Poppy Z. Brite is a writer who has lived long enough in New Orleans to be called a native. She typically writes great daily entries about food, writing & New Orleans and her Post-K writing is hilarious and engaging. I can’t wait to see how she treats our new reality in her next novel.

4. Boingboing
Cory Doctorow & Co. produce what has become the standard index of general geekery on the web. Also, Xeni’s Katrina coverage was some of the best anywhere in the immediate weeks following the storm. There was all kinds of crazy stuff in there that I wouldn’t have seen anywhere else.

5. Kottke
This year, Jason Kottke quit his real job and solicited donations from his readership to blog full time. He thanked them in the form of great daily entries on web 2.0 developments, a ton of cultural commentary and travelogues from adventures in Europe and Asia.

Site Design:
1. A List Apart
Jason Santa Maria produced the best redesign of the year with AlA. I love the design concept and the execution; simple, usable, elegant, beautiful.

2. Coudal Partners
I can’t get over this site. I visit it every day to read the log entries and to admire its designed simplicity.

3. Weightshift
This is the beautiful portfolio site of Naz Hamid, designer, photographer and cyclist. I like the work but love the portfolio itself even more.

4. 37signals
This is simple and wonderful design at its best. Just a very elegant display of their applications with a few other links. Very usable, very efficient.

Resources:
1. Google
Where would we be without Google? I wish I had Google Implant™, so that I would have the ability to run queries anytime, anywhere.

2. NOLA.com & 3. WWLtv.com
These two news portals were my link to the city while I was evacuated. No one had more coverage. They also continue to provide the most informative coverage of the evolving Battle of New Orleans 2.0.

4. Bike Forums & 5. Calories per Hour
These two sites helped me shed 35 lbs. and become a serious cyclist. I don’t think I could have done it without either of them.

Services:
1. iTunes
I’ll just repeat what I wrote last year, “The price, quality and great selection of the iTunes Music Store compels me to buy music here instead of just downloading it for free from somewhere else. Of course, if I can't find it on here there is a 95% chance that I'm going to look for it via a P2P application. Record execs, are you listening?" I would add that Kompakt & Warp also offer fantastic music services. I supplemented many purchases through those sites this year.

2. Netflix
I love the response time and control over selection that I have with Netflix. Now, if only the Postal Service would start operating properly again down here.

3. Amazon
My wishlist beckons…

4. Basecamp / Backpack
These are the best collaborative productivity applications around. It doesn’t matter what sector you work in; if you work on a team you should be using at least one of these.

5. Gmail
I use Gmail primarily for file sharing, file dumping, backups and GTD hacks but it also works fantastically for regular old email.

Finding my Legs, Again

I went riding twice this weekend, which is a major breakthrough at this point. My personal fitness has suffered greatly from the K-flood and subsequent aftermath. Riding in the city, especially through Midcity and the Lakefront is really nice right now. The debris in the roads is finally picked up enough to not scare you into the way of cars and even when you do have to swerve to avoid a nail, pile of dirt, or random household item, there are very few cars to worry about.

Saturday I rode solo and it was overcast, windy and COLD. It was my first time really riding in the cold and despite the massive amount of snot that I had to deal with I really enjoyed myself. I rode up Esplanade to City Park, which is a heartbreaking sight to see. Hundreds of the beautiful Live Oak trees that filled the park before the flood are now missing, their stumps the only sign that any trees were ever there at all. And everything is brown, the only bright spot is the mini Christmas in the Oaks display that volunteers somehow were able to get up and running. After a few depressing laps around my old training route, I rode back home.

Sunday I rode with Chris through City Park up Marconi to the Lakefront, which is in really great shape. It was a beautiful, sunny day and a tailwind carried us through the first lap, all the way up to the Industrial Canal. The headwind on the way back was horrible and my loss of fitness really kicked in as I struggled to maintain 15 Mph on the flats and 13 Mph on climbs. Despite my weak sauce on the way back out, I really enjoyed the ride.

Both days felt great and somehow the experience of riding out to the Lake brings closure to many of the things that had been plaguing me after the flood. I rediscovered confidence in my riding and I'm finally ready to start riding regularly again. It's going to be a moderate December, with rides on the weekends and the consumption of some Holiday Treats while thinking about the grueling training months ahead, just around the corner.