Raving Web-heads who stalk the Internet for goodness 24 hours a day frequently express unanimous love for Orisinal. The site's been linked four times on MetaFilter alone, but no one has ever complained about the repeated postings. (If you read MetaFilter regularly, you'll understand the hugeness of this. If you don't, shame on you.)
Only this week did FresnoBee.com super-designer Jason Olmstead point out that Orisinal's creator, Ferry Halim, is a Fresnik.
And you say we never get nice things.
From Mike Osegueda comes word that Maroon 5 will be paying the Valley a visit come spring. May 4th, Save Mart Center, this love will be taking control of you.
Bryan Curtis delivers a tender-hearted explanation for Amber Frey's appeal in Slate today. A tad backhanded in its compliments -- "part of Frey's appeal is her inveterate cluelessness" -- but nonetheless, good reading to get you going for Saturday's book-signing at River Park.
One year ago, a special newspaper-like document shipped with The Fresno Bee. Dubbed The New Valley Times and created by the Collaborative Regional Initiative, the insert was a sunny look at Fresno in the year 2015 -- after the installation of a high-speed fiber-optic information network, the precipitous decline of Fresno's unemployment rate, and the creation of a Conservatory for the Arts. Most of the residents of this FutureFresno seem to be managers of unnamed local technology firms, too. The vision was sponsored in part by The Bee.
Go for the "Fresno Area Sky Train"; stay for the "Olympics in Fresno 2028 Committee".
Princess Sophie of LiveJournal makes the point that the term "Fresnan" doesn't automatically inspire thoughts of unparalelled hip-osity. Sophie suggests "Fresnesian" as a replacement.
This sounds like a worthy campaign. Rebranding can do wonders for a product's perceptions. Would you rather get your cable TV from "Time Warner Cable," which just sounds bureaucratic and corporate, or "Bright House Networks"? When you've got a case of the springtime sniffles, do you ease your sufferings with "fexofenadine" or "Allegra"? The "General Accounting Office" conjures images of TPS reports and troublesome fax machines, but the "Government Accountability Office" could be home to Eliot Spitzer or Eliot Ness.
For the record, though, my preference (as mentioned by another poster in the LiveJournal thread) is "Fresnoid."
Most months since 2000, SmartMoney magazine has been running a column listing widely unknown facts about common industries -- "Ten Things Your ____ Won't Tell You." They've put the full archives of those columns online. An excellent resource to check next time you ship packages, hire a lawyer, stay at a bed-and-breakfast or go out to eat.
Mark off one more step toward Google's ownership of the information world. You can now search through television shows at video.google.com. Since last year, Google's been indexing the shows from several TV channels, capturing images and closed caption text. So now you can find out, for example, that some Fresnan's been doing a lot of calling in to shows on C-SPAN.
(Actually, best video search ever.)
A different kind of video search went beta at Yahoo today, also. This one seems to be more about searching Internet video than television content.
Last week's Time magazine cover story described a new generation of unmarried, non-property-owning, non-parental twentysomethings, whom Time would like us to refer to as "twixters." Judging from the response, which could be collectively summarized as >:O, I don't think "twixter" will catch on, thankfully.
But the delayed nesting impulses of Generation Y2K -- or whatever we're being called these days -- have been pretty well-documented, most notably by Ethan Watters, the author of Urban Tribes. Check out his site for such things as tips on improving your urban tribe, explaining to Mom and/or Dad why you haven't brought them grand-offspring, and info on Watters' own tribe. (He's married now, though, so I think he's been excommunicated.)
Is there a Fresno tribe somewhere that can represent us on Watters' tribes gallery? Come on. Annapolis has a tribe.
Javier Zurita Vasquez
The first time Dannon Kredo appeared in The Bee, it was his birth announcement, in March of 1997. The next time Dannon was in The Bee came in January of 1999, when he was found wandering in front of the Denny's at Shields and Blackstone, holding a milk bottle. After asking for help from the public in figuring out the boy's identity, the police discovered he was the son of one Mona Kredo, whose body they found lying in her apartment, the victim of foul play.
For weeks, police couldn't find Mona Kredo's estranged boyfriend, Javier Zurita Vasquez, but they didn't consider him a prime suspect. When weeks stretched to months, Vasquez became a lot more suspicious. In June of 2000, Vasquez was featured on America's Most Wanted.
Fresno hip-hop group 40 Watt Hype will be opening for Ludacris at this year's Sundance Film Festival, according to the group's press release:
Awall, who rocked the microphone with Vagabond in more than 80 shows across California in 2004, said he plans to fully represent the Central Valley at Sundance."We're ecstatic to play at the kind of event that supports the independent working entertainment community," Awall said. "This being the first show of the year, it's also a cool start for the band. We expect to make the most of 2005 and playing at an international event like Sundance is a great way to kick open the gates."
The Lemoore Union High School Sadie Hawkins Day dance is back on.
For the first time, we're hearing from the former Hamilton Elementary volunteer ordered to limit her contact with the school after another parent there saw her listed on the Megan's Law database. Diana Delgado said she was 23 when she slept with a 16-year-old, almost 20 years ago. ABC 30 has a video interview with Delgado.
The Witness to the Prosecution of Scott Peterson 2005 Reunion Tour has booked its first California gig right here, in Fresno.
You may take pictures of Frey; you may not take them with her, according to the ABC 30 news report.
"Drivers," the report says, "can expect heavy traffic in and around River Park on January 29th."
Want a Gmail account, but haven't managed to snag an invite? Head on over to the Gmail Invite Spooler, enter your e-mail address, and join the exclusive cult of the connected. Then go crazy with all the add-ons available. Then get Firefox. Add-ons. Then you've just got one more step towards entry-level geek cred.
This week in the Beehive, we bring you the official launch of our CD Roundup, a weekly-updated collection of albums recorded by Central Valley artists. The roundup features audio clips of each CD, cover art when it's available, and links to all of Mike Osegueda's archived Tunetown features from The Bee.
Via some guy in San Francisco, here are instructions for how to make a bench out of those big wooden pallets you often see discarded behind stores.
More projects from ReadyMade magazine:
Fresno vintners are all aglow over some recent developments, including Trader Joe's move to start stocking wine from Fresno State in its local stores, and our recent props from the San Francisco Chronicle. Now SF has thrown down a new gauntlet. We gotta get ourselves a wine dispenser.
Fresno is in serious danger of becoming "that town." You know -- a good weekend, a few energetic romps on the mat, you go back home feeling nice, and two weeks later -- cold sores. Clovis West is busy fending off suspicions that it gave an Oregon high school wrestling team herpes.
Local coaches say Clovis West is scrupulous about preventing this kind of stuff. And don't get the wrong idea, to be sure, this isn't the kind of herpes that's transmitted through sexual intercourse -- it can happen through any skin-to-skin contact, including a perfectly standard wrestling match.
But it might be too late to preserve our rep as a respectable town. The Oregonian, among others, has already spread the news nationwide that if you get down and dirty in Fresno, you'd better be prepared for one giant Walk of Shame. And it gets worse.
The long-awaited title explaining Sony's decision to delay the launch of the PlayStationPortable is finally available as a PDF on Amazon, for the low, low price of $750.
The customer reviews are truly incredible:
Fresno State sent along this press release announcing a new local TV station this morning:
On Thursday January 13 at 10AM, members of a unique community collaboration consisting of the City of Fresno and school officials will gather at Fresno State's Speech Arts Building, to launch "The Fresno Channel." The Channel is devoted to local government and educational programming and will feature a variety of programs. Viewers can watch LIVE coverage of Fresno City Council meetings, along with school board meetings, discussions of current issues, homework help for students, and distance learning courses.
"The Fresno Channel" is Web site-less so far, it seems. But Googling turned up this. Who knows what it could mean?
The Visalia Unified Board of Education is soliciting names for its new school, set to open in August. The board's school-naming policy (PDF) recommends names of "recognized geographical or historical landmarks" or "thematic names which represent the character of the community culturally and historically, or which identify it by reference to indigenous and characteristic flora and fauna." The board frowns upon naming its schools after people, commercial developments, or the school's expected street name.
Judging from Visalia Unified's current list of school names, you'll have the most success with names that involve trees, mountains or bodies of water. Go crazy; submissions are due by January 28. (Via CBS 47.)
If you've been playing along at home, you might have caught this December story about a proposal for the Fresno City Council to give its future members a raise. Here's the update -- the council rejected the proposal. No raise.
This week's top story on the Beehive is an interview with Jarah Euston, the editor of Fresno Famous. Find out the secret identity of the new Assistant Editor (Sports), what befell the Famous intern, and more.
Lemoore Union High School principal Jim Bennett is a rock star. Or maybe the exact opposite. At any rate, he's getting his 15 minutes, with the news from Tim Bragg's story in yesterday's Bee that he's decided to cancel school dances until students stop freaking.
KGPE's got video, and the MTV.com story's got the best lead:
For students at one California high school, there will be no more dropping it like it's hot, no more leaning back and definitely no more dipping it low.
Update, 1/21/05: The dance is on.
We'll put in a plug for the article from The Bee this weekend on the burgeoning efforts to hip-ify Fresno, partially because it's a good rundown of all those efforts, but especially because it gives us the chance to bring you this excellent infographic, full-sized.
And it gives us another opportunity to plug our own, interactive infographic showing how indie-movie-deprived Fresno stacks up against cities that do have indie movie theaters.
Via MetaFilter, here's a site that will help you track what your Congressional representatives are up to over in D.C. and what bloggers are saying about them.
This is similar to the CapWiz software The Bee subscribes to, which lets you find your legislators, send them messages (either e-mails or letters which will be printed and hand-delivered), keep track of key votes and pieces of legislation, and more. Check it out.
You've read the book, now see the movie.
From the AP:
CBS has bought the rights to make a television movie based on Amber Frey's book, released this week. ..."Having the rights to her life story, as well as her book, provides an opportunity to tell new dimensions of the story and give viewers a personal look into one of the most notorious crimes of the past decade," said Bela Bajaria, a CBS senior vice president.
We don't encourage or condone schadenfreude (parental advisory: link contains explicit language). But still, these images of a tiny Jeep freeing a giant, stuck H2 are pretty darn funny. Via The Red Ferret Journal.
Is it too late to take back my Christmas gift requests? I changed my mind, Mom. I want a Chocolatiere.
Excalibur's new Chocolatiere is both a chocolate fondue pot and your personal fancy-candy maker.Delight your guests with an invitingly warm (but not too hot!) dipping chocolate for their strawberries, pineapple chunks, orange slices, bananas or other favorites. Or create a five inch, whipped-cream-filled chocolate-covered heart for Valentine's day. Or use the other included molds to make delightful solid-chocolate bears, stars, moons, snowflakes, chocolate coffee beans and even Christmas trees.
With this amazing tool, we can rebuild the once-great Fresno chocolate empire. And for only $29.95. (Via the always excellent Red Ferret Journal.)
Once again, Fresno's one of the nation's 25 fittest cities in the Men's Fitness rankings for 2005. And we're even getting better! We moved up from the 15th-place spot last year to number 14 this year. That's right, Albuquerque, we're gunning for you.
From the writeup:
This California city climbs one spot from last year, with slight improvements in statewide nutrition and health related to being overweight. But to squeeze into the Top Ten, Fresno needs to shape up: The city is low on gyms/health clubs for working out, has worse air quality than last year, and continues to rank near the bottom for parks and open space acreage.
You wrapped, you ripped, and then you recycled. Where did all that Christmas trash go? Find out in this interactive look at the story of the Christmas after Christmas, featuring a different kind of Santa Claus. Macromedia Flash Player required.
All over the Web, this very minute, Webcams peer into every corner of our lives, in hotel lobbies, laundromats, and workshops. And you get to watch. Finally, someone on MetaFilter has discovered what the Internet is for.
It's just like the "Spies Like Us" episode of This American Life. In it, a man discovers a channel on his television that's apparently tuned to a random security camera somewhere in his city. It provides him with hours of fascination.
In case you missed it, Fresno Yosemite International is becoming something of a trailblazer. From Sandy Nax's Dec. 29 article in The Bee:
Fresno Yosemite International Airport is the first in the nation to use a Web-based wireless system that displays flight information on monitors and portable kiosks throughout the terminal.SkyWest Airlines displays its flight information on monitors, but this is the first system to show departures, arrivals and other data for all 92 daily flights arriving at and departing from the airport, said airport spokeswoman Patti Miller.
The PASSUR FlightLink system is different because it does not rely on air carrier updates or software at the airport. Instead, the database uses PASSUR's own radar, which is independent of any airline, said Ron Dunsky, a spokesman for Megadata Corp., which developed the software.
As a follow-up to this post reminiscing about Y2K hysteria, we bring you "The Surprising Legacy of Y2K", an American RadioWorks program about the real, lasting effects of the Y2K bug.
From the show's website:
Five years after the hoopla and warnings about Y2K, many dismiss it as a hoax, scam, or non-event. Not only was Y2K a real threat narrowly averted, but it is still having major effects on the economy. It also continues to change how we look at technology. For the fifth anniversary of Y2K, we look at the history and the legacy of the millennium bug.
Via MetaFilter.
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