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• Our Events. A public calendar for events of interest, recommended shows and concerts, birthdays, etc.
  
  
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• Site News. Administrivia and other internal memos.
  
  

Thanks to everyone who finished off the latest Ishbadiddle Challenge projects. I added a few more and upped the goal!

Breakup Girl! She's back, with new episodes and a new, bloggier format!

Will Breakup Girl be spotted at the Superhero Costume exhibit at the Met?

I've put some new proposals from DonorsChoose.org on the Ishbadiddle Challenge -- check them out and throw some money at them if you're feeling eelymosynary.

Thanks to everyone who's given so far!

I got my "thank-you package" from the Knuffle Bunny project. Letters from kids, drawings, pictures -- it made me think "wow this DonorsChoose.org is really great!" Then I remembered: Oh yeah, I work there.

Ishbareaders will remember the sleuthing work that Alex B. did in uncovering the Misleading Water Filter Comparison Chart, which ranks "Aquasana" as number one but hides the fact that it's sponsored by... Aquasana. There's been some back-and-forth between President of Sun Water Systems, maker of the Aquasana water filters, me, and various other folks who feel that Mr. Strand was not being above board.

Yesterday a satisfied Aquasana customer, "Miguel," posted here about his wonderful experience with Aquasana.. "After all, I wanted a water filter that would do the best job, not the one who I thought had the best marketing team," says "Miguel."

Curious, I looked up where "Miguel" was posting from. Hmmm -- his IP is 67.152.98.19 in Fort Worth, TX, home of... Sun Water Systems! And it's the same IP used earlier by.... Charles Strand, President of same!

As Henry David Thoreau said, "Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk." Ladies and gentlemen, we have a Sock Puppet. This from a man who wrote here: "I've always been suspicious of people who make defamatory remarks, but use aliases to do so. If you feel good about what you are saying, why use an Alias..."

You lose! Good day sir!

Update: He wrote again, still claiming to be Miguel, and clearly not understanding what an IP address is. I've closed the thread, since I really have better things to do than argue with a sock puppet about water filtration marketing.

I had Jury Duty yesterday. This was my third time on duty -- served once on a trial, the second time I was picked but the case settled just before the trial started. I've seen plenty of potential jurors try to get out of service during voir dire, but yesterday this guy really won the prize.

The case I was called for was a murder trial. Stabbing in East New York, defendant claiming self-defense. (I think I got off because the case I served on ten years ago was an assault case where the perp also pled self-defense.) As we were sitting in the jury box, the defense attorney asked us yet again if there was any reason we might be biased. "Yeah," said the guy who was "in construction" in the back. This was the guy who had earlier volunteered the fact that he once found two bodies in a building, as if that might disqualify him. "I guess I feel bad for your client, because you're kind of boring. The prosecutor is a lot more interesting so I'd be more likely to listen to him."

I don't think he got picked.

• This morning on the subway I ran into a friend who was on his way to record an audiobook. As I was asking him about what it's like to record both fiction and non-fiction books, somehow we started talking about radio plays. "You know, they made a Star Wars radio play? I've been listening to it!" He looked down on me (literally) and said, "You know, you're a total geek." Damn straight, and proud of it!

  
  

• When I joined DonorsChoose.org, 2+ years ago, Andrea asked why we didn't have an RSS feed. Well, now we do! Do a search and you can then subscribe to a feed that meets those search criteria. (Insider tip: use your zipcode as a keyword search and you can find out when projects show up in your zip!)

  
  

• Speaking of Ishbadiddle's favorite charity, we won a Crunchie award from TechCrunch. You can see a video of the awards ceremony -- we're on at 50:30.

Last week was the 7th anniversary of our first Ishbadiddle post. Yay! This makes post 4506, giving us 1.76 posts per day. Thanks for sticking around, folks.

There I am on TV in Boston, hawking DonorsChoose.org! MyFox Boston | DonorsChoose.Org Helps Needy Classrooms

Thanks, Fox News in Boston!

The lovely and talented Claire Danes! Pictured here at our event yesterday celebrating the national expansion of DonorsChoose.org!

Also present, the former Senator with the highest heightegrity (integrity x height), Bill Bradley:

The whole set is here. You can also see Zac Efron delivering school supplies from DonorsChoose.org in LA.

Liz tagged me with this "8 random things about you" meme and so here you go:

1. I am missing four wisdom teeth and my appendix.

2. I have a strong aversion to fruit rollups because I was eating one when I was hit by a car in 1978.

3. I have sailed a boat and flown a plane.

4. I have been suspended from school; I was also valedictorian.

5. Not counting drive-throughs, I have spent time in every state except North Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, Alabama, Minnesota, Kentucky, and Indiana.

6. Thanks to a genealogical quirk, I am my own fifth cousin.

7. Because of my common name, I have collected several nicknames: Miguelito, MEL, Kitch, and once at Atari Computer Camp, "Doc." I've never liked being called "Mikey," though.

8. There are 164 google hits for "Mike Everett-Lane" and 35 for "Michael Everett-Lane". "Ishbadiddle" outstrips them with 219. Yes, I couldn't think of an eight interesting thing about me.

Now, chain-letter like, I'm supposed to tag 8 other bloggers with this. Well, there are plenty of Ishposters whom we haven't seen for a while, so if this inspires any of you, go to it!

Hey all, today's the last day in the DonorsChoose challenge so if you have $10 to spare (or more) head on over to the Ishbadiddle Challenge page and help out some public school kids! I just added a project, From Denmark to the Boogie Down: Grendel Meets the Bronx because I just loved the title. Go give and do your favorite blog proud!

My Mom has been taking photographs for years -- she's now gone pro, selling prints and cards at local craft fairs. And she has a website! Check out Natalie Searl Photography to see her new site.

Mom writes:

You realize, of course, that I was very influenced by my parents, both of who were in a camera club, complete with competitions, etc. I was most influenced by the Grandmother's taste; she loved old barns, animals and birds, etc. I think subconsciously that's what I tend toward.

I think my Grandfather would have been all over Flickr.

I'm waaay behind on my flickr uploading. Here's an advertising poster for Dell with culturejam on it. The ad series is supposed to promote their different color notebooks (A Vegan Didn't Choose Green", "A Democrat Chose Red," etc.) here's the "Republican who chose Blue":

Before

After

Well, we've finally gone and done it: we're composting! Ever since we moved here with our little back yard we've talked about composting our garbage. Finally, Debbie went to a workshop at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and then drove out to Fresh Kills to pick up a composter. The NYC Dept. of Sanitation -- New York's Strongest! -- subsidizes composters in order to reduce the size of the landfill. Which is a big issue; food waste accounts for "27.6 million tons per year, or 11.7 percent by weight" of the Municipal Solid Waste stream. Which is why we're doing this. I mean, it'll be nice to have some compost soil for the garden, but really we're just trying to reduce the amount of garbage the family produces.

You might think that food just biodegrades in a landfill, but it doesn't. Landfills are airtight, and without air, food can't break down the way it normally would. So that banana peel will just stay a banana peel for a long long long time. Those biodegradable forks made from potatoesor corn? If you're just throwing them away, they may as well be plastic.

So Saturday we built the composter (the plastic parts just slide together to make what is essentially a big box), dug a shallow pit for it, and put wire netting on the bottom to keep out the critters. The boys had a great time filling a bucket with our "browns" (leaves from the garden) and we ceremonially dumped in our first load of kitchen waste!

Now we just wait for the worms to discover their new feast....

Here's Stephen Colbert talking with Craig Newmark about DonorsChoose.org:

Nation, the VotersChoose portion of the DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge currently has Stephen Colbert as #1, with over $10,000 given in honor of his Presidential bid. And yet his challenge stands at a paltry 1% of his overall goal! The Ishbadiddle Challenge, thanks to your generosity, now stands at 80%! Let's show that upstart what a real media powerhouse* can do!

* Not really.

Thanks everyone! You stepped up to the plate and gave $1,158 to the Ishbadiddle DonorsChoose.org Challenge, busting my goal of $1,000! And you all fully funded one of the most expensive projects, the class set of globes. I'm truly touched.

But since we've got all month... I've raised the goal from $1,000 to $1,500. Heck, we're 77% of the way there! Let's see if we can make a few more classroom projects happen!

Thanks again, everyone. We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog.

So outside of me and one other generous donor, the Ishbadiddle Challenge has gotten no love from you, our loyal readers. Come on, people -- it's for the kids. Do I need to go in blogstrike? Here are the projects I've picked, you can click directly on these to give to the challenge:

Picture This: Knuffle Bunnies and Talking Pigeons. Inspired by Mo Willem's book "Knuffle Bunny," kids will take pictures in Prospect Park and make their own books.

"Of Mice and Men" for Everyone! Speaking of rabbits... 34 copies of the book, plus the audio book.

Globes: Class Set. Help our kids get smarter than Miss Teen South Carolina. I know some of you out there like globes. This is for the school down the street from us.

How Do You Spell D-I-C-T-I-O-N-A-R-I-E-S?. Buy 100 dictionaries. It's that simple.

Young Artists Would Love to Paint! They need paint.

Who's Got Game? I really like this one, it's for board games, blocks, and jump ropes.

OK people, now get out your credit cards and go help some kids!

Yes, folks, it's that time of year again: Blogger Challenge time! This year DonorsChoose.org has some big-time bloggers up for the Challenge, and I'm hoping that you'll help out by either starting starting your own challenge or by giving to the Ishbadiddle challenge. I've picked some projects at needy schools in Brooklyn, and our goal is to raise $1,000 toward these projects.

Bonus! Everyone who donates will get an original work of art, signed by Ben or Zach, and suitable for your refrigerator!

I mean, really. He makes $29 million a year. Does he really need a discount?

Last year I tracked my region's performance at DonorsChoose.org from week-to-week using sparklines, generated with the data that Lauren my SQL ninja would compile for us. This (fiscal / school) year, the data has multiplied (tracking nine regions instead of two) and my team has grown from 2 to 5. I needed a better dashboard. Here it is:

Over on the right are sparklines for week-to-week trends. To the left of those are Bullet Graphs which basically show a thermometer against my YTD goals. Both are made with Micro Charts which gets the thumbs up from me, especially if you're doing this sort of thing.

One of the articles on their site showed these nifty red dots as Key Performance Indicators, and I wondered how to do them. It turns out you don't need any plug-ins at all, you can just do some fancy conditional formatting, as explained here. The dot is actually a dingbat from Webdings.

But I wanted to take this idea a bit farther. Could I have more than three states to show the severity of the problem? And couldn't I also vary the size of the dot to indicate the magnitude of the problem, in addition to the shade of red? If, say, my Maine figures were only at 56% of my goal, but since my Maine goal was so low to begin with it only amounted to a deficit of a few hundred dollars, I really shouldn't worry too much about it:

Well the problem is two-fold. First, Excel (at least in Office 2003) you are limited to three formats. Second, Excel won't let conditional formatting change the size of a font. Drat! Getting around the first isn't hard:

There are actually four conditional formats that can be specified. The fourth one is the format that is used by Excel if none of the three conditions specified in the Conditional Formatting dialog box is true. (In other words, the way you format the cell to begin with is the fourth format.)

In my case, I formatted the "dots" column white. If none of the three "alert" conditions apply, then the dot's invisible. If one of them applies, the conditional formatting rules turn the dot light pink, pink, or REDOMGREDOMGHELP!!!

Changing the size of the dot merely requires a bit of slight of hand. (Mouse?) Instead of using the Webdings "n" (large dot), I substitute the Webdings "=" (small dot) if the problem isn't large using a simple IF formula where the dot should appear:

=IF(J5>10000,"n","=").

Format the column with font Webdings and ta-da! Tufte Dots.

New York Is A Woman, Suzanne Vega

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New York City spread herself before you
with her bangles and her spangles and her stars
you were impressed with the city so undressed
you had to go out cruising all the bars

your business trip extended through the weekend
suburban boy here for your first time
from the 27th floor above the midtown roar
you were dazzled by her beauty and her crime

and she's every girl you've seen in every movie
every dame you've ever known on late night TV
in her steam and steel is the passion you feel
endlessly
New York is a woman she'll make you cry
and to her you're just another guy

look down and see her ruined places
smoke and ash still rising to the sky
she's happy that you're here but when you disappear
she won't know that you're gone to say goodbye

and she's every girl you've seen in every movie
every dame you've ever known on late night tv
in her steam and steel is the passion you feel
desperately
New York is a woman she'll make you cry
and to her you're just another guy

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Listen here.

Check out today's Doonesbury!:

Thanks, Garry!

Check it out!

DonorsChoose.org is now open to every public school in every state in America!

It's a huge day for us and one we've been working toward for a long time now. So if you know any teachers, tell them they can start writing proposals !

Felix!

There's me, sharing a "jovial beer" with some music bloggers: Merry Swankster: After the Jump Fest: Spotlight on Donor's Choose