Yesterday I had the lucky fortune to wander around a Baltimore landmark I’ve always wondered about but never been inside: The Crown Cork & Seal factory on the city’s east side. I was searching for a vendor to drop off a package, and it took me some careful moseying around the property to find them.

Crown

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to explore or shoot photos, but certain parts of the sprawling complex have a Children of Men/Full Metal Jacket-type feel to them: ancient brick buildings, soaring courtyards filled with years of debris and trash, along with the odd shopping cart or plastic storage bin.

Repent or Perish

After being shuttered in 1956 when management moved the company headquarters to Philadelphia, the 15-acre site lay empty (as far as I can tell; information online is sketchy at best) until recently. Now it looks like the property has been split up into separate rentable buildings under the care of a management company.

Work Safely To-Day

At some point, I’d love to go back and spend a day shooting everything I saw.

Date posted: September 7, 2007 | Filed under history | 1 Comment »

Right on the heels of my gadget diatribe yesterday comes this: the Leatherman Skeletool, a $75 work of art that weighs in at 5 oz., perfect for carrying in a bag or pocket. I can testify to how important weight is, because I’ve got an original Leatherman and it weighs about 50 lbs., although I’d never give it up.

Date posted: September 7, 2007 | Filed under design, shortlinks | Comments Off on Leatherman Skeletool

The “blog” of “unnecessary quotation marks“. I find this subject “annoying” and “irritating”, so I’m happy that someone decided to “enlighten the rest of us”. (via)

Date posted: September 6, 2007 | Filed under design, shortlinks | Comments Off on Unnecessary Quotation Marks

If I am hearing the news correctly, Apple (among other cool things) just lowered the price of the 8GB iPhone to $399. Which means when I get the next big check in for my Orlando trip, I’m going straight to the Apple Store and buying one.

Update: Ok, so let’s analyze the backlash here a little bit. Jobs writes a letter and says, in effect, Whoops. Sorry I pissed you off, fanboys early adopters, so here’s what we’re going to do: I’ll give you each $100 back in credit at the Apple Store, and I hope that makes you feel a little better.

Gadget-blogs, whose sole purpose on God’s green earth is to salivate over grainy camera-phone pictures of techie shit only available in Japan, are heaping on the abuse, crying foul over this development. “$100 doesn’t go a long way in Apple land… Either way, the money’s going back to Apple.”

Well, guess what, asshats? You stood on line to buy the phone. You had to be the guy with the shiniest toy on the block, the guy who just threw your last latest-and-greatest wonderphone in a shoebox in the closet with the scores of other phones you’ve had since you got a cell plan. Now you’re upset ’cause they dropped the price? Did you scream and cry this loud when your Xbox went on sale or the price on your RAZR dropped $300? Nobody made you buy the iPhone when it was $600—you did that yourself.

I happened to read a fantastic essay buy a guy who was an editor at Gizmodo, then left, then came back, wrote said essay, and got fired for it. (Now he’s the gadget editor at Boingboing.) In essence, it says something like this: knock it off. Quit spending your time, money and energy buying every brand-new techie piece of hardware out there to fill the empty void in your lives.

It’s pretty sobering reading, because I lust after the unobtainable shiny gadgets as much as the next guy. I want a 42″ LCD TV, a TiVo, a PDA, a tablet PC, a robot that does my laundry, my own unmanned surveillance plane, and a supercomputer whirring quietly in my basement.

But I don’t have any of that stuff. I have a 15-year-old TV and a three-year old Motorola phone that I can’t wait to throw in a lake. I am a fan of Apple, I believe in their products, and I try to be an evangelist without being an annoying fanboy. I’m going to buy an iPhone in a month or two, not because I need to show it off, but because my current phone sucks, I already have an AT&T plan, I use a Mac daily, and I think it would help me do business. If I’d gone out and dropped $600 for the iPhone two months ago, and then found out they were giving me $100 back in credit, I think I’d have to be pretty happy—show me another company who’s publicly admitted a mistake and taken immediate action like that in the last year.

Date posted: September 5, 2007 | Filed under geek | Comments Off on It’s On.

A new (award winning) documentary about the Apollo space missions, compiled from remastered NASA footage, with interviews of the surviving astronauts. The trailer alone gave me goose bumps. It’s hard to even imagine what living through that time must have felt like. (via)

Date posted: September 5, 2007 | Filed under other, shortlinks | Comments Off on In the Shadow Of The Moon

Last night we finished up our washer comparison shopping at Sears, after temporarily raising the hopes of the floor salesman at Lowes. They all get the same look on their faces when they see us comparing models—it’s a predatory look, masked with the “I’m here to answer your questions” smile, and it’s a little comical to see how quickly it fades when they realize we’re carrying a fistful of Consumer Reports articles with notes scribbled in the margins.

I react pretty poorly to hovering salesmen, I’m sad to say. Jen compares my tone of voice to an old-school running back, where I’m carrying the ball with my arm straight out, aimed directly at the forehead of the oncoming rushers. I’m the type of person who does not care for the hard sell. I don’t need the expensive accessories, and I’ve most likely already made up my mind what I want, just please tell me if you have the stupid thing in stock and in white, mmmkay? Sears, unfortunately, tries to push the extended warranty thing, which is always a comical bit of salesmanship—you’re selling me a $700 metal cube and now you’re trying to sell me an insurance policy with scare tactics? I understand that appliance margins are tight, but I’m not stupid enough to buy that line of crap. Also, if I say I’m not interested, I’m not interested. Take a hint.

Knowing we’re looking at adding to the herd this year, we bought a front-loading washer in preparation for mountains of baby clothes, and I imagine we’ll be down there with shovels, constantly feeding it, like coalmen on the Queen Mary. We found a Kenmore model next to lots of little red bubbles in the Consumer Reports chart, and within about three minutes had it set up for delivery on Friday. Which means I need to build a platform for it by tomorrow night (the metal platform sold as an accessory is $199—HA) and clean up the last of the flood debris so that they can haul away the 3-year-old GE unit that crapped out on us.

Date posted: September 5, 2007 | Filed under house | Comments Off on After the Flood.

time for preserves

The back porch of our house has been smelling like grape Bubblicious for the last week, something that takes me back to grade school and Krauzer’s (New Jersey representing!) and chewing three pieces at one time to keep the flavor going. We inherited a grape vine next to the stairs with the purchase of the house, and one of the many dreams we’ve shared is to be able to do something cool with the grapes. However, in years past we’ve been robbed of our fruit by bad weather, critter infestation, and bad luck.

grapes 2

This is the first year we’ve enjoyed a bumper crop of grapes, due in part to the dry weather and also to the netting I purchased early in the season to keep the birds from eating the entire vine clean. Jen did a whole lot of reading online and found several ideas for what we could do with the bounty, settling on an Epicurious recipe for jam that sounded good.

After helping her pick five pounds of grapes off the arbor yesterday, she got to work peeling, cooking, milling and canning, and the result is five jars of grape goodness waiting for a taste test. (We need another 12 hours or so.)

Date posted: September 4, 2007 | Filed under house | 6 Comments »