http://puredanger.com/blog Bringing you Alex's most dangerous thoughts since 2006 Sun, 05 Apr 2009 08:18:27 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Last week I took the kids to see Monsters vs. Aliens at the theater. Decent kids movie. Beck sat quietly through the whole movie, which was a first for him - he is usually enthralled for about 45 minutes, then is up bouncing around in the aisle the ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2009/04/05/high-5/ This past weekend was pretty busy. Saturday morning we got going early to see Santa at the Botanical Garden, something we've done for several years now. The kids had put together lists of what they wanted by cutting and pasting from magazines and got to give those to ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2008/12/08/grocery-store/ Friday morning I had an hour or two of extreme parenting that were almost perfect in their chaos level so I thought I'd run it down for you. FAIR WARNING: poop is a frequent participant in this story as it is in the daily life of my house. Truman had ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2008/11/30/extreme-parenting/ Tonight Ella was having trouble getting to sleep so I laid down with her and told her I'd help her make up a story. She has a bunny she sleeps with so I asked her what her bunny was doing tomorrow. With no more prompting than that she ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2008/07/21/ellas-bunny-story/ Truman has always had a hard time with blend sounds and he also comes up with some unique names for things. Here's some of our favorites: skelekon = skeleton Franklinstein = Frankenstein glow up = those blow-up holiday yard things yogret = yogurt Harry Podger = Harry Potter sfool = skool ife cream = ice ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2008/07/09/trumans-words/ So, I know it's been forever since I've posted...sue me. Beck has really been picking up a lot of words lately like dog, door, up, down, more, help, go, etc. The new word for today though is "chocolate" or as he says it, more like "yocowat" yet is ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2008/02/12/new-word/ Here's the Amazon link for Take Cover, a new covers CD from the 'rÿche. And, of course, the obligatory Wikipedia entry. Here's the track list and covered artist: Welcome To The Machine - Pink Floyd Heaven On Their Minds - Jesus Christ Superstar Almost Cut My Hair - CNY For What It's Worth - ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/11/12/queensryche-releases-covers-cd-apocalypse-near/ We took the kids on a whirlwind trip up to Chicago this weekend. We drove up Friday night and stayed at a TownePlace Suites in Lombard. If you've got a bunch of kids like us, getting a 2 bedroom suite at a place like this is great. ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/10/15/trip-to-chicago/ Check it: http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/09/03/hip-hop-violin/ Last Sunday was a beautiful day in St. Louis so we headed out early to the Missouri Botanical Garden and had a great walk with the kids. We also took a bunch of pics and here are some of the best / most fun. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/09/01/sunday-at-the-garden/ This morning Truman said he wanted to be a garbage man, Spiderman, a clown, and a fox. Ella said she wants to be a ballerina, mommy, author, and artist. I guess they'll be busy! http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/08/01/career-aspirations/ Ella is all grown up now, or at least that's how it seems sometimes. She's ever the first born - her room is kept immaculate with everything in its place. If Truman or Beck dare to touch something, she'll freak out and immediately return things to their proper ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/07/31/ella-update/ Truman is heart-breakingly cute when he wants to be and drives us insane the rest of the time. He's a curious, curious boy and wants to know what it's in every nook and cranny of the house, take it apart, put it in his mouth, break it into tiny ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/07/31/truman-update/ Beck has been growing up in many ways but probably the biggest change lately is that he has started walking! About two weeks ago he decided he was ready and walked across a whole room on his first try. He was definitely ready to go. Since ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/07/31/beck/ Check out Living in Three Centuries, a really cool photography exhibit with pictures of mostly very old people. I'm a sucker for black & white photography anyways, but these are beautiful. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/07/01/cool-photo-exhibition/ Here's one for Shag: Blade Runner at 25: Why the Sci-Fi F/X Are Still Unsurpassed. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/06/25/blade-runner-unsurpassed-special-effects/ I took the kids out to the racetrack yesterday to see Cleezmo race. We got there and got to see one race. Every time the bikes went by, Tru would run to the fence to catch a glimpse. They were also really excited to share some orange ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/06/25/a-trip-to-the-track/ I came home today to find Truman sporting a new look. Apparently he was trying to put on makeup with a marker, thankfully a washable one. If you look closely you'll notice that his work extends to both his scalp and his neck. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/06/18/new-look/ I accidentally posted this story on my other blog, so you have to go there to read it. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/06/01/stewart-copeland-calls-vancouver-show-%e2%80%9cunbelievably-lame%e2%80%9d/ ...as Queen once said. This past weekend we went out and bought the first bikes for Ella and Truman. Ella complained about having to wear shorts instead of a dress but relented once she saw the cool princess bike they had. She also got a Barbie helmet. ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/05/31/i-want-to-ride-a-bicycle/ Last week we headed to Sanibel Island in Florida for a return trip to the beach. You can check out some pictures if you're interested. It was fun and the kids had a good time playing on the beach. We felt pretty worn out by the end ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/05/20/good-times-at-the-beach/ Last week Mary and I took a whirlwind trip to Madison, Wisconsin to see the Dalai Lama speak. We drove most of the way up on Thursday night, stopping at Chris and Lisa's to see their beautiful new baby Lily. I love holding the little ones but I'm ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/05/11/hello-dalai/ For those wanna be parents out there, here's how to "mom your ride". If you already have little ones and a mini-van, then no action is required. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/05/05/mom-my-ride/ Ella turned 4 this weekend and we had a fun party at My Gym. I put some pictures of the event up right here. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/04/25/ellas-birthday/ Ran across a good article on the Onion AV Club - 15 Things Kurt Vonnegut Said Better Than Anyone Else Ever Has Or Will. Enjoy... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/04/23/nice-vonnegut-link/ Ella got a little Tinker Bell toy with a tiny tea set from our neighbor for her birthday. She's been playing with it a lot and last night one of Tinker Bell's wings got torn off. This morning when we got up Ella told us that she had ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/04/20/kid-update/ Vonnegut died earlier tonight at the age of 84. I wrote a lengthy post on my other more public blog if you're interested. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/04/12/kurt-vonnegut-1922-2007/ A little Star Wars humor to start you day... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/04/05/emails-to-the-empires-worst-engineer/ My wonderful and talented wife forwarded me this quite funny music video of Alanis Morissette covering "My Humps", which won the Black Eyed Peas the "2007 Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal". You may also enjoy the Wikipedia page for My Humps. ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/04/04/my-humps/ Lately when Truman or Ella gets mad, they will sometimes call me (or Mary) a "mean old thing". As far as insults go, this is fairly tame, almost funny when it's coming out of the mouth of an enraged 2 year old. We've been trying to figure out ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/03/29/mean-old-thing/ Beck has been working hard the last few weeks on standing and crawling and today he is mobile! He started crawling forward for the first time today and wanted to do it all day. He also loves standing and is starting to get the idea about cruising but ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/03/22/beck-on-the-move/ My mom sent me this comic.... When Mary's getting all the kids ready she usually asks them if they're ready to rock and roll. Now they usually pro-actively tell us "Mom, I'm ready to rock and roll". http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/03/20/born-to-rock/ Ella asked Mary tonight: "What do trees eat?" Such a good question... Mary tried to explain but I think it baked her noodle. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/03/08/ella-question/ Wristbands for SXSW went on sale today and my parents stood in line all afternoon and came through big time! THANK YOU!!! So, looks like we will be wristband-enabled for our SXSW trip in a couple weeks. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/02/26/my-parents-rock/ Recently, Shag posted a slew of Nick pictures. Well, allow me to retort. I have here my own set of pictures to honor not only Nick, but Chris as well, whose birthday starts 15 minutes from right now. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/02/21/bday-pics/ We took the plunge this weekend and started potty training Truman. Ah, I'd almost forgotten the joy of wet underpants. Actually, just saying "underpants" a lot is pretty fun. Seriously, he's doing really great and is very enthusiastic about the whole process. I even had the ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/02/20/time-to-potty/ My favorite podcast find lately is Penn Radio, a daily 1 hour radio show done by Penn Jillette of Penn&Teller. If you're interested in a radio show that's a little bit different, check it out. Sometimes they mostly take calls for an hour, sometimes they have a guest ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/02/20/penn-radio/ Ran across some interesting news lately that Medeski, Martin, and Wood will be releasing a children's album early this year called "Let's Go Everywhere". It will be released on a new label called Little Monster Records. You can check out a jamming track from the album at Feed ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/02/14/mmw-childrens-album/ This past weekend Mary took Ella to a dance studio to sign up for a ballet class. Afterwards she went to the store to get various ballerina paraphernalia and when she came she was practically hovering she was so excited. She got a leotard, ballet slippers, tap shoes, ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/02/13/ballerina-girl/ Hey, check out this great article "A Face In The Crowd" written by my main man Cleezmo! Awesome stuff. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/02/07/a-face-in-the-crowd/ I play viola in the Clayton Symphony. Right now we are currently working with the Stray Dog Theatre to put on a performance of My Fair Lady (the musical). It should be a really good show, so I thought I would let you all know. We had ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/02/07/my-fair-lady/ Just some quick updates on Beck. He is now sitting up really well all by himself and loves to sit and play with something in his lap. He's been sucking his thumb for a long time but he's got a new thing that he does. He's always ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/24/beck-update-2/ I was sad but not surprised to hear that Mississippi Night closed it's doors tonight. They've been in gradual decline for quite a while, unable to compete against newer venues like the Pageant. For the years in my life when I was seeing live shows on a weekly basis, MN ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/19/so-long-mississippi-nights/ By the way, recently I added an RSS feed (see bottom right corner of the page for "Listening RSS") that tracks what I'm listening to. The most recent 3 songs are always displayed in the upper right corner, so this is more for those with a truly stalker-like interest ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/11/listening-feed/ Scott's post on MMW covering Crosstown Traffic reminded me of a recent version I ran across by Soulive that's pretty good. The same album (available on emusic) has a tune with Corey Glover that's pretty good as well. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/11/more-crosstown-traffic/ I thought some of you would enjoy this blog from David Byrne about the co-evolution of music and recording mediums. There are some interesting questions near the end about whether music will be created that is produced specifically for MP3 and headphone listening. Not sure I've seen that ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/10/musings-on-mp3s-and-audio-media/ I'm watching the MacWorld keynote with Steve Jobs right now on a live transcript. He intro'ed the Apple TV (formerly iTV) which is a set top box that hooks up to your TV. Lets you watch movies, TV shows, listen to music, look at photo slide shows, etc ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/09/appletv-and-iphone/ Check out this web site that is letting people donate money so that others can see An Inconvenient Truth for free. If you'd like to watch it for free or donate so someone else can watch, check it out! If you haven't seen it you should, and now ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/08/links/ If you want to look at some old TV show intros, commercials, and other junk from the the 70's, 80's, and 90's, check out RetroJunk. If you browse around there is some super fun stuff in here. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/08/retro-junk/ Just a few quick updates on the kiddos. Beck has started rolling over by himself in the last few days, going front to back and back to front. Most of the time he's pretty content but occasionally he gets worked up about it and works hard until he ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/07/updates-2/ Here's a cool article by Clive Thompson (a favorite journalist of mine) about the neuroscience of music. It's a profile of Daniel Levitin, a scientist who studies how music affects us. http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/06/article-on-the-neuroscience-of-music/ For the parents out there, please check out the just released Consumer Reports study that tests the safety of rear-facing infant car seats. A key summary: Cars and car seats can’t be sold unless they can withstand a 30-mph frontal crash. But most cars are also tested in a 35-mph ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/05/infant-seat-crash-tests/ A couple nights ago Ella wanted to play "wedding". She asked Truman but he said he didn't want to get married. I was next on the list. She told me that she knew I was already married to mommy but we could pretend. So, she got ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2007/01/03/ellas-wedding/ James Brown died early Christmas morning at 73. He was a funky, funky man and a legend. Probably what I found most interesting about him was his ability to mold and shape a band around himself. You hear this most in some of the live tracks out ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/12/25/james-brown-is-dead/ Thought it was time for my own personal musical roundup. Here are my favorites. Not all of these are 2006 releases, but they are all albums that were new to me in 2006 and frequently listened. Breakestra - Hit the Floor (2005) - If you've got a thicker slice ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/12/22/my-favorite-albums-of-2006/ Not much I need to say about Pimp My Nutcracker except that my mom sent me the link! http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/12/14/pimp-my-nutcracker/ I just put up some pictures of the kids out in the snow (well, ice really) and making graham cracker houses (sort of the easy version of gingerbread houses). So far they are enjoying winter even if they are a little stir crazy sometimes. They both love going ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/12/12/winter-fun/ Check out Wordie - like flickr, but for words. Check out my words. http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/12/10/for-the-word-geeks-out-there/ Not much else I need to say: http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/12/08/wooten-brother-bass-guitar-showdown/ Random family circus cartoon + random Nietzsche quote = awesomeness. http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/12/08/nietzsche-family-circus/ So we met at the mall tonight after work to visit the great and all-powerful Santa. Santa was out for dinner when we got there and we were first in line. The kids did great and we got a picture of all 3 kids in Old Saint Nick's ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/12/07/santas-infinite-powers/ Just some quick updates on the kids. Beck has been really vocalizing a lot lately. When he's in the right mood he makes all kinds of sounds and is starting to say da-da-da and other sounds like that. He hasn't rolled over yet and doesn't really seem too interested ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/28/updates/ For a long time my friends and I have been making up or running across good (or funny) band names. You can see a lengthy list of names I've captured from our discussions here. I just ran across a link to a list of death metal bands ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/27/death-metal-band-names/ I thought I should post an update to the post the other day about the Kiki Fairy. Ella slept through the night without her kiki. Then we were awakened the following morning by a plaintive voice saying "Daddy, I want my kiki". As it turns out, the ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/24/kiki-fairy-update/ For years, Ella has carried around a pink blanket (made by Mary) that is affectionately known as "kiki". The name comes from the end of "blankie". Lately, she has been relying on the kiki less and less and typically uses it only when sleeping. Today I took ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/21/the-kiki-fairy/ If you're interested in streaming some really great old concerts, check out Wolfgang's Vault, which is all old Bill Graham shows from the Fillmore. You have to register, but it's free. They have a nifty little player and the concert notes are fantastic. Highly recommended http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/21/awesome-concert-site/ Here's crazy half-naked one wrong shoe, one sock balloon man who terrorized our house last night. I put up some other recent pictures as well for your viewing pleasure. http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/19/would-you-buy-a-balloon-from-this-man/ Ella and I went to "Cooking with Dad" tonight and had a good time. We made "breakfast". We painted on bread (with milk and food coloring) and made toast. We mixed up an egg with some cheese and I scrambled it. I let her try to ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/16/cooking-with-ella/ Saw this interesting article about why humans may have whites in their eyes. I guess the theory is that having the higher contrast with the pupil makes them more capable of conveying social information, which has an evolutionary advantage. They did a pretty interesting experiment comparing response of ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/12/why-humans-have-whites-in-their-eyes/ Scott recently posted on his blog about Donovan dressing up as a robot for Halloween. I mentioned on there that I had a great robot costume when I was a kid. It was actually originally created for a contest earlier in the prior school year where you were ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/08/halloween-costumes-of-the-deep-past/ Truman's favorite game with me lately is "chase", wherein I run (slowly) around the house and he chases me. He doesn't want me to chase him (that scares him) and he doesn't really like to catch me; he just wants to chase me. He loves it if I ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/06/couple-quick-things/ Here's Mary's video of the day, guaranteed to make you laugh: http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/03/marys-video-of-the-day/ Just wanted to do a quick roundup of my favorite music stuff on the Internet. Places to buy music: emusic - Used to be very heavily indie but covers a lot higher percentage of mainstream stuff now. Lots of live stuff. Music i DRM-free. I like the subscription model ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/03/internet-music/ I'm talking of course about the singer Beck, not our beloved baby. (No relation of course.) Anyhow, Mary and I have both been enjoying his new album. He did a couple killer performances on Saturday Night Live last week and I finally found someone linking to them ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/02/that-other-beck/ Here is a slew of Halloween-related pictures. There are some from a trip to Rombach farm pumpkin patch (highly recommended), a Halloween party at Ella's school, pumpkin carving, and Halloween night itself. For Halloween, Ella was Angelina Ballerina, a book and TV character that is a girl mouse that loves ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/01/halloween-spectacular/ Yesterday Ella asked Mary why dogs don't have belly buttons. Upon some thought I had to admit that I couldn't fully answer this. It's a darn good question. I mean, they don't have umbilical cords when they come out, so that explains the lack of belly button, ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/11/01/dog-belly-buttons/ Just some random kid tidbits to share today. We carved pumpkins on Sunday; we had a bunch of little ones and one bigger one. Truman kept asking about the big one but we were busy taking care of all the little ones first. Finally, I told him it was ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/30/tidbits/ Mary and Ella were upstairs the other day and Mary realized Truman was very quiet downstairs. Mary came down and it seemed like Truman had been playing with the camera and the video camera. Couple days later, Mary downloaded the pictures from the camera and found he had ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/26/truman-the-photographer/ I ran across a band today called Particle. They're a jam band, kind of on the electronic end of the scale and do mostly instrumental stuff. In all, they've got some good chops and I found a couple of the songs to be great background for writing code ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/25/particle/ Wired did a fun thing asking writers to write 6 word stories recently. You can check out the results here. Lots of science fiction writers and a definite tilt towards time travel plays. Some of my favorites: Gown removed carelessly. Head, less so. - Joss Whedon Kirby had never eaten ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/25/6-word-stories/ I thought it was time for an update on Beck as he is now 4 months old. He's 16 pounds, which is about average I guess. We went back and looked up Truman's stats and he was over 19 pounds at 4 months, as he was a super ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/24/beck-4-months/ I have four recent nature-related items to report. Item #1: A couple weeks ago we had a large and beautiful spider set up residence on our front porch. We later determined it to be a yellow garden spider. It was pretty big (probably 1 inch or more) and the ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/21/nature/ I can't believe the Cards pulled it out but I'm glad to see the Cards going to the World Series. It was extra sweet to take it with Beltran whiffing 3 strikes with the bases loaded at the bottom of the 9th. Couldn't have been better (for us). ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/19/holy-crap/ Check out my buddy Cleezmo leaned way, way over on his bike (he's the one in front). Yowza! http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/16/check-out-cleezmo-leaned-way-over/ Awesome video remixing tons of classic album covers. Mixmaster, this is for you... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/13/album-cover-madness/ We attended another awesome Harfestivus this past Saturday and Andy and Renae threw a great party. We had to exit abruptly due to a baby meltdown but we thoroughly enjoyed the time we were there and getting to see everyone. In case anyone was interested in the t-shirts ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/09/gnomes-gone-wild/ Mary and I got out to see Little Miss Sunshine tonight. I'd give it a big thumbs up. The whole cast is great and the story itself is by turns hilarious and touching and rewarding in the end. There are some great shots in it with the ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/06/little-miss-sunshine/ Ella's vocabulary continually amazes me. She loves to say things like "That was a delicious apple!" She seems to love saying the word "delicious". Yesterday I was taking a walk with the kids and I was talking to Ella about all the ways to tell it was ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/06/vocabulary/ The other day Mary I were discussing financial planning and what kind of college we expected the little ones to go to. The kids were playing in the background as we talked. Mary was saying that she didn't expect them to go to Harvard or Yale or anything ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/04/college/ This CNN story seems kind of important. Doesn't it? Scott, explain me some quantum physics. http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/04/teleportation/ I got a spam email today with some hilarious meaningless text that was generated to get past the spam filters. It worries me that some day spam bots will be writing better poems than I do. In fact, it may already have happened. In fact, maybe this ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/02/spam-bot-poetry/ I've posted on this before but I ran across another great article on the overuse of compression in CD mastering that is ruining the sound quality of today's pop/rock music. I wonder how music from this era will be seen decades from now and whether critics will lament that ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/10/01/loud-article/ Check it out. Yo La Tengo's first album is called "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass". You can see more at the Yo La Tengo homepage or at their Matador Records page or at http://www.iamnotafraidofyouandiwillbeatyourass.com, which is kind of a ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/09/26/funny-album-name/ Truman has been doing a lot of singing lately too which is generally funny as it's in his own peculiar vernacular. His favorite lately is "Baa baa black sheep" Baa baa black sheep Have any wool? Yes, sir, yes, sir Three bags full One my master One my dame ...repeat ad cutey... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/09/21/baa-baa-black-sheep/ When Mary picked Ella up from school today her teacher said she wouldn't believe what Ella did. The teacher had asked if anyone wanted to sing a song and Ella was the only kid to speak up. She sang "Sand in My Sandals", which is a Kindermusik song ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/09/20/quickies/ I was sorry to hear Ann Richards had passed away today. She was a feisty and smart woman and I had a lot of respect for her. I'm a little young to have been aware of her in her hey day, but I saw a lot of her ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/09/14/rip-ann-richards/ Ella had her first trip to the dentist this week! Seemed to go pretty fast and everything went well. We couldn't believe they did all the normal adult stuff but she did fine with it. We had the dentist say a few quick words to Truman too ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/09/14/dentist/ Came across this chat transcript from a popular NY-based chat room. The transcript was reprinted with permission in the NY Times. It starts with the founder of the community posting that a plane had just flown by her window and hit the tower. Gave me goosebumps. ... http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/09/11/911-chat-transcript/ Check out this video of a savant. He takes a 45 minute helicopter ride of Rome, then spends 3 days drawing a 15 foot panoramic line drawing recreation accurate down to windows and side streets. http://puredanger.com/blog/2006/09/09/amazing-photographic-memory/