Magnificent Seven of JttM,

By now you should have received your invitation to my hitchin’. In case you only read digital text, it will be on August 1st in Tulsa at the University of Tulsa chapel. That is a Saturday at 2:30pm. There is also a website . The “save the date” link is sure to delight.

Since all of you are fairly far away, I don’t expect a full showing, although Mohsen has confirmed his attendance. Obviously, I would be thrilled if you can make it. Even more thrilling would be your presence at the bachelor party festivities which will probably take place on Thursday, July 30.

If you want to get in on that action, please shoot an email to my friend Michael. Some of you might remember him. He and I grew up together and sweat it out in the Hump Dump our sophomore year while you guys were luxuriously lounging on the Brain’s futon in Holcombe. He uses gmail; roadbikr is his handle.

As for the wedding, if you are planning to come and need a place to stay, two of the dudes in the party have extra bedrooms, and I have extra floor space and air mattresses.

Sorry to hijack JttM for my personal uses. I’ll try to keep future posts up to snuff. Thanks!

As of Friday at about 10:00p.m. I am an engaged gentleman. Not necessarily engaged in political discourse, discussions involving the word “nanoscience”, or a grappling match. No, I’m engage to be married.

Her name is Lauren Vanderlip, and she’s a 2L at Oklahoma Law. We met via my friend Amira, who some of you may remember from UA.

Since we both have friends strewn across the globe, we’re recording a short announcement/introduction video this weekend to send out. I’ll keep you posted once it’s posted.

We haven’t set a date yet, but I suspect some time next summer.

We’re thinking CO for the honeymoon* so Ben’s roommate density theory is panning out. I guess that would make me an orbiting electron.

*Yes, I know that I’m basically Zach Johnson, Jr. Going to a Big Ten university for grad school, marrying a girl named Lauren, honeymooning in Colorado. I’m sure dancing on ice and drunken blog posts are soon to follow.

I’ve waited long enough that almost everybody reading this already knows most of it. Oh well.

After jumping through legal and financial hoops for the last two months, Ben and I are finally taking over as CEO and President (respectively) of Site5, the finest web hosting provider in the known universe (tell your friends!). On top of that, we’re moving to Denver, where we just spent the last week looking for an apartment/reconnoitering/working.

Rather than bore you with any more complete sentences, here are some stats:

• Number of legal and financial hoops jumped through: 827,305
• websites hosted by Site5: >200,000
• Increase in my job stressfulness: ~100%
• Decrease in my driving time to mountains: ~93%
• Ptarmigans seen while hiking last week: 3
• Position our new building holds on the Denver Historic Register: 8
• Square feet of stained glass in our apartment: >100
• Days until I move: ~32
• JttM authors living in Denver: 3

It’s been a hectic summer for me. Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York. And that’s not counting weekend trips for ultimate. I took pictures of all those places, but had the most fun taking them in Philladelphia (and a few in NYC). Partly because it was my first time in Philly (I really liked the city), but mainly because I got myself a new camera.

I love the camera, and am relearning why I liked taking photos in the first place. I’ll soon be writing a post on why I love it and why, if you enjoy photography, your next camera should be a low-end DSLR, but in the mean time I thought you might want to see a few pics.

Just thought I would give a personal update in the spirit of things! I bought a house! No just kidding… still homeless. We will be leaving Cairo July 22nd and heading to New York. Me an Lizzie are going to stay with her sister a week and poke around New York. Going to see the Lion King, Monty Python Sir Spamalot, the MET (which I plan to spend 2 days in), and maybe some crappy modern art museum that will make me puke (in a modern way I swear). Then heading back to Fayetteville around July 1st. I plan on being in Fayetteville through November and not sure after that.

I’m planning on seeing Daniel in July when me and Joel drive that direction for Grub. And I’m planning on visiting Seattle at some point to visit M and Zmurder. Especially Zmurder considering I haven’t seen him in a hella long time and owe him some fooseball games (even if I have to go to the cheese state?). Me and Joel will be in C town around July 28th to 30th for a computer conference if anyone wants to fly in and hang out! Small possibility I’ll be in San Jose and Vegas during the next six months for conferences too.

After November I’m not sure what I will be doing, I’ve been looking at the visas for southeast Asian countries like Hong Kong and Singapore but I will figure that out once I get back to the States. I made a small blog post on Egypt which you can read here and some pictures here. It is a nice play to visit for a few weeks but a hard place to live in when you are so outside normal society. Anyway, hope to see you guys soon!

ps, anyone been watching the TV show jericho?

Ladies, gentlemen, Daniel Marsh, April Johnson:

I deposited my thesis last Friday, meaning I’m done and set to receive my M.S. in Cartography (”the Degree of Champions”). You may have heard that I was going to D.C. this summer to be an intern at the Post. Plans have changed, and I’ve taken a job with Universal Mind, a sweet company that makes rich internet apps, including a couple cutting edge mapping/geoviz apps. Technically, I’m a “Software Engineer”, but I’ll be doing a lot of cartographic and infoviz consulting while I get up to speed on Flex. I start June 2nd.

I can work from anywhere, so Lauren and I are sticking around Madison for the summer, and then moving in August, probably to Seattle.

But only as as far as a personal update is concerned. I haven’t bought a house with someone named Kristin.

What I have done is become a felony prosecutor. That means more work, same money and more stress because I’m deciding on punishment that ranges from 5 years to life…or death. Zoinks!

I just moved into an old apartment building in downtown Tulsa that is across the street from the courthouse. It’s called the Blair. I’m pumped because I’m walking to work and saving tons of money on fuel and utilities. The place is tiny, but I feel much more comfortable here than in my old place that is twice the size.

As of Labor Day last year, I have been dating a girl named Lauren. She’s a 1L at OU law. Things are going great, and she’ll be working in Tulsa this summer. Sorry to ZJohnso for trying to become you. Nearly sharing our first and middle names and going to grad school in the upper Midwest was not enough.

I’ve started playing ultimate on the weekends, although I’m still just as slow and inaccurate as ever. I’m also playing guitar and mountain biking when I get the chance. Next up is probably a puppy. Gotta build the yuppie cred.

Am I taking root in Tulsa? Kinda. I’m involved with a church here, and my family’s here, but it’s unclear how long I’ll be here until something else comes along. Work is great, so I’ll just say that for now.

I hope everyone’s doing well, and I look forward to the Summit of the Seven.

I would like to propose we set a date to hang out at Daniel’s cabin or Las Vegas even if its just for a long weekend. Joel suggested Vegas and I think that is a solid idea. We can make this happen.

So what dates are good for everyone? Post in the comments so we can figure this out, I’ll update the thread as they come in.

Ben: I’m fine with either location and pretty easy on dates, maybe late summer or fall sometime?

Also, if this happens and it is at Daniel dad’s cabin maybe ahead of time we can order a Foosball table to be delivered? If we split it would be not too bad.

Thoughts? Ideas?

PS. I’m still in Cairo Egypt and will get back to the states in late June..

I just got back my local Democratic caucus. And in many ways, it felt like I was in a third-world country. Read the rest of this entry »

I didn’t listen to nearly as much new music as DMarsh in 2007. But I still felt like I hardly had time to really digest what I consumed (and some albums, I’ve just not yet listened to: e.g. Battles, Elliot Smith, some dude named Matthew Dear).

Nothing blew me away in 2007. I don’t expect that anything from this year will fundamentally influence my tastes as much as 1997’s OK Computer and Blur or 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. But so much from this year was consistently solid. To continue an annual tradition, here’s my favorite albums from 2007 (for the heck of it, in rank-numerical order):

1. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible. If we could come up with an objective equation to rate music, Neon Bible would be the best album of 2007. In fact, it’s biggest drawback in critics’ circles, I think, must be that the album is so accessible. You, your sister, your dad, and your questionably lame co-worker could all agree that on Neon Bible. Which is not to say that the music is just artless, vapid pop. It’s expansive and thoughtful. The beginning of “Intervention” has a grandness and ambitiousness that I think most indie rock bands today eschew—which is what I think separates Arcade Fire from most of their contemperaries. Arcade Fire aim to write U2-like anthems; not just catchy or clever pop songs.

Read the rest of this entry »

Like DMarsh, to me, 2007 was an incredible year in music, probably the best since 1997 and markedly more impressive than sorry 2006. During 2006, I worried that I was out of touch with the music scene. For a long time in 2006, nothing new really interested me, and I found myself reverting to my familiar mainstays: Belle and Sebastian, 2005-era Ryan Adams, the Clash, etc. But after 2007, I feel comfortable that it wasn’t me being out of touch, it was the music in 2006 that, well, was substandard. Anyone of my favorite albums from 2007 would have been on the top of my list in 2006.

I’ll get to my favorite albums in a separate post, but 2007 was a substantial year, so I also want to talk about a couple of larger points first. Two themes dominated my mood and reaction to music in 2007.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve started a bit of a blog over at my site, indiemaps.com. I’m mostly going to be talking about programming, Flash, cartography, graphic design, and more professional stuff over there. And I’ll be keeping up my drunken political ramblings and personal updates here at jttm.

I’m trying to keep the blog as minimal as possible — just color and text, with images only within blog posts. I’m also using an extremely lightweight blogware called Blosxom.PHP, written by a Hungarian dude. It’s helping me develop my PHP skills and I plan to re-write the program and add tagging functionality over the winter break.

I’m with Joel on keeping jttm alive. Indiemaps.com is more of a professional thing for me, and most of its content I wouldn’t post here anyway. Anyway, check it out if you want to. Look forward to jttm posts from me soon on David Horowitz at the UW and Hitchens as a political conservative. Soon.

You see that guy? That’s me. You see that bummed look on my face? That’s because I’m in Lisbon, at some second rate modern art museum. Outside, they’ve got this Calder sculpture hanging out, by itself in the middle of a vast, ugly concrete expanse, as if it was an afterthought. Why bummed? Because pretty much the exact same sculpture is the signature piece of Seattle’s new Olympic sculpture park. Afterthought in Lisbon. Flagship piece in Seattle.

More pictures from my otherwise awesome trip are here.

I just released the World Freedom Atlas — my project for the past 6 months or so (on and off). I describe it thusly:

The World Freedom Atlas is a geovisualization tool for world statistics. It was designed for social scientists, journalists, NGO/IGO workers, and others who wish to have a better understanding of issues of freedom, democracy, human rights, and good governance. It covers the years 1990 to 2006.

The beast includes over 300 variables from dozens of datasets. It is meant to complement efforts such as GapMinder World and the World Bank Online Atlas of the Millennium Development Goals, though I intended my atlas for a somewhat more expert audience (social scientists and the like). This was a great project for me. I solidified my knowledge of Flash/Actionscript, learned a bit of PHP, even some Python, and worked for the first time with mySQL databases, web servers, and whatnot.

I have been lucky enough to get some attention from the blogosphere — so far the foreign language blogosphere. Check out this Spanish blog and this Italian site.

I figured it’s time for an update of a personal nature, especially if you received the cryptic text message from me. If not, then I probably don’t have your number, in which case, we need to remedy that.

Along with the new phone number comes a move, a new job and a change of plans, in reverse order. After working for the telecom firm in DC last summer, I reevaluated what I wanted to do with my career and how I wanted to get there. In the end, I decided that I really loved being in a courtroom and litigation was what I wanted to do. The most fulfilling work experience I had was working for the US Attorney in Muskogee, OK. So, with that in mind, I called my supervisor there, and she told me that there would be two people retiring in about 3 years. She also suggested that I go to a DA’s office to get lots of trial experience. That’s why I’m now in Tulsa. It’s ironic because this was the one job I told myself that I would NEVER take or even seek to do. But in the end, I think I made the right decision. The pay isn’t even close to what private firms offer, but the work is more interesting than what I was doing at my firm. The trial-by-fire experience is invaluable, and since I’m single, I can afford to live meagerly for a while.

Speaking of the work, for now I’m handling misdemeanors and studying for the bar. I work for 4 hours and take a bar class f/m 6-9 at night. That leaves most afternoons for study. Once I do pass the bar, I think I want to push for a spot in the juvenile division. At Michigan, I was a student attorney in the child advocacy clinic, and I really enjoyed the work and the area of law. Interestingly, children have been largely forgotten in the American legal system. Child law has only been around for about 40 years.

Read the rest of this entry »

After 18 months of solid service, today I retired my lucky shoes. I never had lucky shoes until these, but these guys treated me well– very well. I traveled the world in these guys, walked hundreds of miles, graduated school, moved cities, moved apartments (twice), took a bar exam, saw two Christmases, two New Years’ Eves, and generally just had the best 18 months of my life in these guys. But, alas, their soles had worn through and their time had come. I don’t think my new shoes will be as quite as lucky as these, but it was sweet while it lasted. R.I.P.

I’m the anti-BWB (or he the anti-me?): I bought a condo. The pics are here.

This was a big decision (of course). And I’m not sure I fully considered all the pros and cons. But, at some point there are so many variable and confounding factors to consider, that– like I said about political and social decisions— it is impossible to make a rational decision about buying real estate. At some point, you have to rely on your emotion. And lately, I’ve been craving stability. Read the rest of this entry »

Hey Zach, Pablo, and other runners, what is your opinion on running and needing to drink water? Do you guys prefer the hydration backpacks, holding water bottles in your hands, or the little holsters on your wast? Looking for some input on what you prefer for long runs.

Personal update…
Lizzie and me are moving to Hawaii in a few weeks for the summer. We already found a small place to stay at on the Kona side of the big island. Everyone is welcome to visit and crash at our apartment. Going to be there until late July and then going to Chicago for some work stuff for a week. And then moving to Egypt in August with Lizzie. She is studying at AUC for a year hopefully, still waiting to make sure she got in but I’m sure she did.

I just dropped my third interactive map. It is called streamViz, which is pretty stupid. But the map/visualization is awesome!– at least in my opinion (but then again, I’m biased). This gets more into geovisualization than cartography, and people in cartography like to argue about whether geovisualization is just a part of cartography or vice-versa. The assignment was to just map streamflow data for 3 months in 1993 (a big flood) but I have a hard time spending a lot of time on such a one-off map. So I decided to load in 10 years of daily data off the USGS website. StreamViz is so powerful — please do not use it for evil.

Hey gang, here’s the second map I’ve produced for my animated and interactive cartography class. The assignment was to map like one variable over time, and presumably to have this variable hard-coded into the map. As you can/will see, I kind of went crazy on this assignment. If applicable, this map is the reason I have ignored your emails and failed to return your phone calls over the past two months.

There are two datasets available to be loaded right now, but in theory any dataset of Wisconsin counties could be loaded. There are a ton of things that could be fixed or added, but for now I have a bigger final project to worry about.