Black Background — Matt Shobe's Blog

Saturday, April 11, 2009

OMG Rainbows!!!

Sorry, but that's exactly what this post is about. We've been visiting with my parents over the Easter weekend, and tonight some fast-moving rain showers passed through, leaving an unbelievably vivid rainbow in their wake. The video below, shot with my trusty Flip, captures the action:

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Comcast "free system upgrade" appears to have really boosted broadband speed

Got a note from Comcast in the mail saying they'd been working on system-wide speed enhancements; I just needed to reset my modem to get the benefits. I did so, and decided to run a speed test. Holy Camoly:

The best download speed I'd gotten previously was about 6.2 MBps.

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Only so many ways to write this headline, I suppose.

The Chicago Sun-Times:

The New York Times:

Really, guys: why drag Sinatra into this?

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Running for a charitable cause: repost from my VOX blog

My feed situation is pretty messed up right now, so it's more than likely you missed my recent VOX blog posting on the marathon I'm running in December and the charity I want to support, with your help, via each full mile I complete. Here's the post; please follow the pledge form link at the end if you're compelled to do so. Thank you!

Monday, September 29, 2008

The funniest thing I have read since "bite bite bite bite bite."

…although this article hails from the New York Times, not the New Yorker. What's more, it appears to be based on actual events.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/automobiles/28LEMONS.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2

Monday, August 18, 2008

I went all "Malkovich! Malkovich!" on my feed. Sorry.

Thanks to those of you who pointed out that my temporary switch to my FriendFeed as a feed source caused massive trouble. I managed to redirect myself to myself in the process, and it was all the same posts/tweets/photos in a horrific loop.

I've reset the source and all that should be here, for now, are my plain old blog posts. And no, this wasn't FeedBurner's fault; pure, unfiltered PEBKAC. Cheers.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Planespotting in Google Maps’ western suburbs

I love it when you run across stuff like this in Maps:

View Larger Map

That's a United 777, on short final to runway 10 at O'Hare. Looks like he's arriving right around noon. The daily nonstop from Beijing? That's my guess.

UPDATE (23-May): As you may now be saying to yourself, “What 777? Shobe, you hitting the highmaker again?” I’d like to point out that Google Maps updated its terrain photo layer and the 777 moment is lost to the mists of time. I should done an actual screengrab instead of trusting the damned widget to never, ever change. Nice to see Itasca repaved its portion of Irving Park Road.