In pennsylvania.

This is a test image from the new phone.

Hello estrip!

As you may know from the post below, Sarah and I are moving. While it's really exciting, it's sad that we'll miss both the Violent Femmes and the Jurassic 5 concerts this summer. The Femmes is free at TiTS, but J5 is a pay concert happening at the Towne Ballroom on Main St. on August 24th. It costs like $50 for two tickets.

And that's where we are: We bought two tickets for the show as soon as they were available. But we can't be the only Jurassic 5 fans in the city, can we? Their new album comes out on July 27th and a little birdie (name BitTorrent) told me it's really damn good, much more like Quality Control than Power in Numbers, which any J5 fan can tell you is good. Sarah saw and photographed J5 at a short set at E3 a few years back, and they were awesome. I'm sure this show will be really great. (And for those who don't know Cut Chemist and DJ NuMark are the J5 DJs, so expect some badass turntable antics, too.)

Anyway, we're not interested in scalping tickets, and we love J5 so much that it kills us to not be able to go. Still, we figure they'll hit DC sometime on this tour (Buffalo is the second date and the others have yet to be announced) and we've had some real good luck lately, so we thought we'd spread the love.

So we're NOT selling these tickets. We're GIVING THEM AWAY FOR FREE to somebody on estrip.org . That's the kind of love we have for this place and for J5. Hopefully the community won't let us down and some serious J5 fans will be rewarded.

So here's how we're going to do this. Your referees are Sarah and (e:shawnr) , so we're the ultimate deciding factor. We want to see any kind of show of devotion to or adoration of J5, and/or a display of desire to attend the show. Some ideas: Essays about why you love Jurassic 5, analyses of J5 lyrics/videos, poems about J5, photos showing demonstrations of J5 fandom, paintings about how great the show will be, comics about your love of J5, whatever.

UPDATE: We wanted to make clear: Lip sync and dance routine videos are perfectly acceptable homages to Jurassic 5. So get wacky with the webcams people!

You can post your entry in the comments here, either in its entirety (in the case of an essay, poem, etc.) or link to a website where we can see your entry. You can email us images, audio, video, etc. too. Just use the email link on my profile.

If you have any questions post them in the comments or emai/msg me. Sarah and I really look forward to giving somebody these tickets who will enjoy the show as much as we would have. The only thing we ask is that you post about it on estrip after you go.

So the deadline is August 15. That might seem like a long time, but it's only like 6 weeks. I have no idea how popular this will be, but I hope somebody is stoked.

Just for clarity: The Jurassic 5 Concert is August 24, 2006 in Buffalo, NY at the Towne Ballroom on Main St (theater stop).

I typically try to keep business businees, and estrip not business, and i plan to maintain that separation. But sometimes an offer comes along that one can't resist. Such is the case here:

In spite of how much I'd love to stay in Buffalo, there doesn't seem to be much paying work. Having graduated this summer from UB, the expected thing is for me to move on. Although there are a lot of things I can be involved with in Buffalo, I kept feeling like I could probably make it to another level of creation. I love the idea of what (e:paul) has found at Roswell -- somewhere with a cool group of people where I could do work that feels useful. I mean, c'mon, how cool is it to help doctors manage info to cure cancer? That's like crucial to the whole cancer-curing process.

So I started looking at sites like Idealist.org, not really thinking I'd find much, but my thought was that I either want to keep teaching, or to work in some kind of rewarding project "in the real world."

Well, I found it. I interviewed and now I have a job offer. I'm going to accept. We're moving to DC.



I'm going to work for PBS, as a "Web Technologist," on the Teacherline site which is an online school for teachers K-12. Teachers can enroll in accredited graduate courses in educational fields, as well as courses to prepare for different certifications and state tech requirements. I've always been a huge fan of PBS.org, and I'm thrilled about the job. The folks there were super nice, and I can really envision a good time. I think moving to DC will be an incredible adventure, and I'm so grateful that Buffalo has prepared me.

It kills me to leave my courses and my students. I've seen so many of them succeed this year, and so many promising young students coming up. But I think I'll be a better teacher for my experiences. And I'll be continuing a thread of my teaching experience that has been there for a long time: that is, online education and tutoring teachers in technology and working with them on experiments in tech integration into the classroom.

I don't plan on leaving estrip.org, so this should not be taken as a goodbye letter, or even a pre-goodbye. My wife's family is still based in Buffalo, and we'll be back from time to time I'm sure. I've made some real friends here, and I hope folks at UB and around will invite me back to present my artwork and fiction, which will continue unabated (perhaps even invigorated by more concentrated daytime development experience).

I think of (e:paul) as inspirational: what he has accomplished at Roswell is huge, plus he's made much of it available to everyone else to use with things like SurebertCom. I hope to continue to be as productive in my own work.

Anyway, I'm a bit of a hermit and kind of feel weird at parties, so it's not like I'll be a missing fixture at the big (e:strip) shindigs. I'll still be onine, but now I'll be working for PBS. woot!

My good pal PFC_Spengler from the Unofficial UB Forums (a must-read for any UB students/alum and pretty fun for many others) hooked me up with this awesome video and photo content all for estrip!

Story goes like this: This morning, somebody noticed this vehical perched precariously over a ~20 foot wall (located here ). The car was running and lights were on. Apparently the cops were being called...

This afternoon the car is turned off, but nobody has come to attend it. Kids on summer break gather.

This evening: The events you are about to witness.

The runup to the big pushover happens here:

::DOWNLOAD MEDIA::

And the vehicle goes over. I love the bleeting horn and the sound of screams! hahaha

::DOWNLOAD MEDIA::

And here are some images.

So apparently somebody thought it was a good idea to do a bunch of damage. Not sure who did this, but it wasn't there in the morning. Did I mention that according to witnesses most of the kids were totally drunk. Here are some close-ups of the vehicle. No plates? weird, huh?









And, of course, being so close to the Fourth of July in Buffalo, what would some mayhem be without a roman candle. No good shots of the candle going off here, but if you slideshow these three images you can see the smoke rise.