iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

Please take a look at Lindz and my pictures from Boston, it’s a great town. I was in town for this year’s international WebCT conference Blackboard World 2007.

Last year’s WebCT conference was in Chicago and recently “Schmap” let me know that my pictures of the Double Door bar (the center of grunge rock in Chicago) had been nominated for a contest to be included in their third edition of our Schmap Chicago Guide. Not surprisingly I was so flattered to be nominated that I allowed “Schmap” to use my Creative Commons licensed image commercially. Again, it came as no surprise that my two images where accepted.

Full credit to “Schmap”, calling it a contest is a good way to get free images. They even included in the E-Mail the sent me “If you like the guide and have a website, blog or personal page, then please also check out our schmapplets – customizable widgetized versions of our Schmap Chicago Guide, complete with your published photos:” Another success, because here that guide is.

So here they are:

Double Door
http://www.schmap.com/chicago/toppicks_nightlife/p=125640/i=125640.jpg

Double Door
http://www.schmap.com/chicago/toppicks_nightlife/p=125640/i=125640_1.jpg

Lindsay and I left bright and early this morning to arrive in Boston. I’m here for a week-long conference, Lindsay’s here (over the weekend and a bit) for a good time.

The pictures are flowing into Flickr. Here’s as up on Bunker Hill:

From Dadsmacker

The following titles are better than my original choice:

1. More money than muscle
2. Soccer Mom upgrades from SUV to tractor trailer
3. One’s the brains, the other’s the muscle
4. Segway/stroller collision caught on traffic camera moments before impact
5. Segstroler
6. Taliban unveils new recruitment posters on theme of “Western Decadence”
7. Mother pushes stroller with segway, not pictured: reality

What an amazing movie. If you read the reviews and thought that the movie wasn’t for you then don’t go, but if you loved the cartoon or think giant robots battling in downtown LA are cool then go see this movie (maybe twice). Shia LaBeouf is hilarious as Sam Witwicky. The new transformers arrival story written by Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman and with input by Michael Bay and Stephen Spielberg, and Michael Bay got a 90% CGI-laced summer block buster to theatres for $150 million. Apparently there’s more movies to come and I’m excited to see those (I might even see this one again!).
Interesting Links:

• Offcial movie site
• Jalopnik.com’s huge gallery of images
• Did Michael Bay Recycle Pearl Harbor Footage into Transformers?

Congratulations to one of my favourite F1 drivers, who’s now left F1 and brought his considerable driving skills and considerable Columbian fan-base to NASCAR. His first won came at the Infineon Raceway, one of NASCAR’s few road courses, and I actually watched a good portion of the race and enjoyed it; the zero-areo-efficiency cars (in this case “The car of tomorrow” or “The car of two-decades-ago” technically) do allow for a lot of passing.

Like the great Mario Andretti, Montoya has now won in Formula One, in CART, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and now in NASCAR. Too bad he never won the F1 Championship, but it does leave a bigger crown available to Jacques should he ever make it into NASCAR.

Sports Illustrated Story