cityblog

. . . I won’t be blogging here anymore. I’m permanently at tomandalissa.com.

So long and farewell, but come on over for lots more of the same.

Filed at 3:47 pm under Links
1 Comment

Okay, folks - this is a big day in the life of alissaclark.com!

As you should know by now if you’ve been paying any attention, Tom and I are getting married this Saturday, September 2, 2006 at Loudonville Community Church. We’ll be heading to Cape Cod for the week and then back to New York City to take up real (and improved) life at home in Brooklyn.

So, I’m changing my name. I won’t be Alissa Clark anymore. I’ll be Alissa Wilkinson. (It sounds like a writer, right?) This URL has therefore become obsolete.

Therefore:
Update your bookmarks to tomandalissa.com!

We’ll be co-blogging there - I’ll be writing the vast majority of the content, as I spend more time in front of the computer, and Tom will be popping in and doing a good bit of photoblogging. We will also be adding richer content, including reviews of film, music, and books, combined photo albums, and general mayhem and fun. alissaclark.com will remain active for at least a year so that people can find me.

So update your bookmarks! tomandalissa.com.

Filed at 9:44 am under Links, Wedding
1 Comment

Very cool rings, shirts, etc., all girly and flowery and stuff. Love it!

Filed at 4:52 pm under Links
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In my free time at work, I’ve been going through the inspiring archives of Girl at Play and found this sweet little article about taking a minivacation. Enjoy.

Filed at 12:17 pm under Links
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Excellent article - “What On Earth is Christian Film Criticism?“.

Filed at 12:55 pm under Links, Writing, Film
1 Comment

• Hygge House: I think this will be a cool site.
• Feel better about yourself: I’ve been looking for this site for a while (I’d seen it once, but neglected to bookmark it). Note the before/after gallery.
• It’s amusing that all my favorite pictures are of coffee.
• If I had unlimited resources and a bit more free time, I would get an MFA. Because I’m just that nutty.
• Starting to drool over this.
• Bending to my feminity, I made an Anthropologie wishlist.
• Johnny Depp and Tim Burton team up again - this time for Sweeney Todd!
• Lastly, people keep sending this to me, so I’ll blog about it: RPI makes Kaplan’s “25 New Ivies” list. Please note that this doesn’t mean it is an Ivy, but it’s like an Ivy - overpriced and tough to finish sanely. I am amused that the picture on the first page of the article is the McNeil room, as taken from the third floor of the RPI Student Union, also known as Home during college. Literally. If I wasn’t there for a day, people would call me and email me, wanting to know if I was ok.

Filed at 11:51 am under Links
3 Comments

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you probably notice that I steer clear of politics and world news in general, reasoning that a) you can get it from many many other more knowledgeable sources, b) it’s not that interesting to a lot of people (I don’t read political blogs), and c) I disagree with most of what I read and I’m not terribly interested in starting catfights on the web.

That said, I had to chuckle when I was dashing through the Rockefeller Center concourse this morning and saw “Castro Cedes Power” as a CNN headline. (NYTimes article here). I personally have long maintained, mostly at parties, that Fidel died years ago - shouldn’t he be, like, a hundred and seventy-two by now? - and there have been look-alikes in his place ever since as puppets. I mean, Saddam Hussein reportedly never went to his own political appearances. It was always a stand-in, in case of attempted assassination.

Hey, it’s not that far-fetched.

Filed at 9:28 am under Links, Facepalm
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One of the few things we actually registered for were some cute espresso cups (a set of four, because espresso makes you wittier and therefore should always be shared with friends). But if we hadn’t . . . aren’t these ones from Nestle (of all places) great?

Filed at 3:29 pm under Links
2 Comments

I am a girl, and as such, I am coveting two adorable makeup items.

Lip glaze in six delicious colors. And they’re named after coffee!

This stuff is amazing, as it’s got crayon-style eyeliner, eye shadow, and a smudging brush all in one neat little package that even completely-makeup-illiterate I can manage. I think I want it in lapis, lilac, and ivy.

Think I can get it and write it off as a “wedding expense”? ::wink wink:: Just kidding. Sort of.

Filed at 2:43 pm under Links
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Remember Ken Jennings? The Guy Who Essentially Beat Jeopardy in 2004? He has a blog, and it is quite good. He is a witty and interesting writer. Books, Ken! Books!

Filed at 12:44 pm under Links, Geekitude
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I’ve been very busy lately, but I have been greatly enjoying my hop back into web programming & design. I decided that on this iteration (haha, haha) I would ditch tables altogether and make the jump to CSS positioning, which is what I should have been doing all along.

A few sites that I’ve found recently that I love:
» Squidfingers - check out the great pixel patterns.
» Kaliber 10000 - also includes a lot of great pixel patterns.
» A List Apart - everyone knows this site, but it’s worth repeating.
» Design Method - just because it carries the tagline on the right, “Made with Flash . . . and a Brain”.

And worth noting:
Google plans to roll out some sort of Gmail for every domain thing. If they succeed with this, I think it’s going to kick the whole webhosting world way up. I put my name on the waiting list.

Filed at 10:50 am under Links
1 Comment

My favorite T-shirts on Threadless right now.
- Impossible Love
- Cheese (LOVE this one)
- Cookie Loves Milk
- Spanish
- So Far

Filed at 9:08 am under Links
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The Google Office is coming.

Filed at 2:21 pm under Links, Geekitude
2 Comments

We went to Fishs Eddy yesterday to poke around at the dishes. What great stuff! We’ll go back for glasses and possibly some baking dishes later, I think. But I thought these dishes were incredibly clever - they are Pantone color dishes, which is both ironic and pretty, especially for people who are into design.

Filed at 12:47 pm under Links
3 Comments

Because I’m moving into a teensy space today:
Apartment Therapy’s Smallest, Coolest Apartment Contest 2006 Finalists. Pretty cool stuff.

Filed at 11:10 am under New York City, Links
1 Comment

This is a great kick-in-the-pants article for writers. Also check out SlushPile.net.

And someone, please tell me this is a joke. Please.

Filed at 8:23 am under Links, Writing, Facepalm
2 Comments

Been wanting to get an ESV (English Standard Version) Bible for a while - mostly because I literally wore out my old RSV from Urbana ‘03 - it’s split right in the middle of the Psalms, so I’ve got “two”. I need something that will hold up and be small & light enough to fit into my messenger bag (New Yorkers always have a bag on their person - it comes of not having a car).

Anyhow, hurrah for the new ESV journaling Bible, arriving in the fall, which looks a lot like the trendy little moleskine notebooks that I’ve got in my bag already.

(Via Ken)

Filed at 10:56 am under Links, Books, Faith
2 Comments

Yay! Someone made a subway map overlay that actually appears to work!

Filed at 3:17 pm under New York City, Links
2 Comments

Wired News: Soderbergh: Burn, Hollywood, burn

This whole discussion sounds suspiciously like the debates we had in college over the “broken” music industry paradigm - how CD sales were dropping drastically, and how the industry needs to re-invent itself in order to stay alive. And in a lot of ways, it has (thanks to outfits like iTunes and eMusic). The whole topic was a bit of a hot button, as two RPI students were among the four college students that the RIAA sued for creating a search engine that could find MP3s (the case didn’t have a leg to stand on, but the RIAA has more money than random college kids, so they settled out of court). Don’t even get me started on that.

I haven’t looked at the statistics since I wrote a paper my sophomore year rebutting the idea that downloading music was killing the industry. My argument was that music executives were lazy and wanted to be able to make money the same way they always have. But the point of a free market society is that if something new comes along, you adapt, you change, you go with the flow. If people don’t like your product or the way you sell it, you figure out a better way. Because whining and lobbying Congress is not how an agile structure works. And as we learned in college, industries hit an inflection point where they can either adjust and re-invent and mature, or they can drop and fall apart.

So now Hollywood is catching on - not because of illegal downloading, but because Netflix and Blockbuster may be taking over the world and ruining cinema ticket sales. Personally, I think it’s because most of last year’s movies were lousy, but that’s another discussion for another time.

The point is, Hollywood needs to be as agile as the rest of them and re-invent their way of doing business, and I’m glad guys like Steven Soderbergh, at the Tribeca Film Festival, are catching on - whether or not their solutions always work. (Soderbergh’s solution this year was to release Bubble simultaneously on DVD, in theaters, and on cable TV - see the New Yorker’s take on it.)

Anyhow, there’s nothing new under the sun, but I’m glad the entertainment industry is waking up. The dot-coms had to reinvent themselves to stay afloat (enter web 2.0), the music industry is working on it, and thankfully, Hollywood is starting to get the picture.

Filed at 9:45 am under Links, Music, Film, Art
3 Comments

Finally, the cure for information overload. (It’s fascinating.)

Filed at 1:39 pm under Links, Daily Goings-On
3 Comments

I’m a connoisseur of little things, and I love it when I find cool stuff (myself, or because someone showed it to me). And I like to list it out occasionally. So here I curate the little things I’ve found in an unegalitarian smattering of stuff that just makes me happy.

The Onion Radio News - from the people who bring us the fabulously satirical Onion (found on streetcorners around New York for free) comes their daily “top story” podcast. Good for a giggle.

Woot.com - Brendan, my all-around partner in crime, showed me this website in college but I had forgotten about it. There’s one huge deal every day on something really cool (a great coffeemaker, a geek toy, etc). You have to check every day and buy it then, but it’s well worth it. It’s also an impulse buyer’s dream.

Martini Shot - KCRW has many good podcasts (”The Treatment”, “The Business”, and the always-popular “Morning Becomes Eclectic”), but this one’s an amusing weekly five minute sketch about the TV and entertainment business.

Drugstore.com - I hate visiting drugstores in New York. They never, ever have what I want. They almost - almost - make me miss WalMart. Lo and behold, drugstore.com, which sells everything I want or need plus much more, at WalMartworthy prices, and the lowest level of free shipping gets to me within two days.

Live From Nowhere, Volume 1 - Over the Rhine’s new live album, hopefully first of many.

IN:NYC Card - My very first American Express card. It accrues points for purchases that are exchangeable for stuff in the city (also in Chicago and LA). Plus, double points for dining/movie tickets/etc.

Park Slope - Awesome neighborhood in Brooklyn, good chance I may live there soon.

Google Calendar - I sing the praises of the Google calendar, which only needs a Blackberry-compatible interface and a tasks list to send me towards complete ecstasy. Exactly what I needed, when I needed it, and integrated with my entire life so prettily. ::cartoon hearts::

Time Out New York - everyone knows about Time Out here, but I’m surprised how many people never read it. I decided that if I subscribe to Time Out (about $25) and the New Yorker ($40) every year, I’ll never need a NYTimes subscription (can be $100 and upwards) and I’ll always know what’s going on.

Filed at 12:02 pm under Links, Geekitude
2 Comments

A great geek link from Wired News: weirdest USB gadgets.

Filed at 10:17 pm under Links, Geekitude
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Jeffrey Overstreet posts a few interesting links today, one of which is Screwtape (yes, that Screwtape) on The Da Vinci Code (which, to be fair, I haven’t read). I noticed it mostly because I ate lunch one particularly memorable day of the IAM conference last month with the author.

Filed at 6:44 am under Links, Theology
1 Comment

Prompted by the always-wonderful Ken, I give you 30 boxes. It’s a calendar. And it’s shareable. And I have one.

Filed at 9:31 pm under Links, Geekitude
1 Comment

The New York Times has a facelift, and it looks 100% better.

Filed at 11:55 am under Links
2 Comments